Stop surviving and start making things happen, with Dr Eugene K Choi

Welcome to Amplify, the Personal Brand Entrepreneur Show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Dr. Eugene K. Choi. Her story had a weight, a big weight on my heart when she said these words, knowing where she came from. And she said, until you're willing to be wrong about everything, you know, nothing will ever change. You see, that was the biggest challenge for me, too. And this is not a message about everything you know is wrong. I'm highlighting the word willingness. That was the hardest part for me. Willing to be wrong that I don't matter. Willing to be wrong about my belief that my words won't make impact, that I'm not good enough. Hi there, and welcome back to Amplify. My name is Bob Gentle. And every week I speak to incredible people who share what makes their business work. If you're new to the show, then while you still have that device in your hand, take a second to subscribe on an Apple podcast. You want to hit three dots on the bottom right, select go to show, hit the plus icon at the top right of the screen and you're in. And if you're listening on any other device, it should be much more obvious. So subscribe now and welcome to the family. So this week, I am really excited to meet my own Bill Nye science guy, Dr. Eugene Choi. We're going to be talking about neuroscience and peak performance. Eugene, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here. So I love nerds and I am a big fan of science. I am by no means a scientist, but I know my way around a prion. So for the listener who doesn't know about you, your work, what you do. Can you just tell us a little bit about Eugene Choi? Doctor Eugene Choi. I need to talk to doctor before your name, I need to give it to you. Yeah. So a little bit about me. I'm basically a clinical pharmacist turned filmmaker turned business coach, performance coach. So the way that happened was I became very jaded back in the pharmacy life. I didn't want to be doing that for the rest of my life. And I decided to start exploring. And that's kind of how I got into filmmaking for a little bit. I learned a lot there. We worked on multiple projects that got a lot of views that went viral. So that indirectly taught me about marketing. Actually, the biggest project I worked on got 23 million views online. And that led to me going into business, trying to start my own business, and learning a lot through trial and error. I eventually hired a business coach and got mentored by CEOs. So that taught me a lot about business. And then my healthcare background came full circle, where I started going deep into neuroscience. How does the brain work if we're able to just like in the movies, where you watch a main character undergo a phenomenal internal transformation. And I think that's why we all watch movies and love being told stories, because we crave that same internal transformation. Neuroscience, turns out, is the thing that helps you figure out how to do it in real life. Because the big AHA moment for me when I started doing this research, which was really shocking, was I realised that for a majority of our adult life, the part of the brain that has your critical thinking skills, your creativity, your problem solving skills, your empathy, all of these amazing, amazing capabilities of the brain is actually shut off for more or less 70% of our adult lives. So what I do now is I show people how to get out of that at will. Just like it's a muscle, you can flex. It's the same thing we can do with our brains. This is really what I wanted to talk to you about, because I'm somebody that has fleeting moments of excellence, but I also have days when I can't get up in the morning, I procrastinate for half of the day, and then I kind of Bumble through doing some things. Well, consistency is a problem, and I think consistency is a problem for a lot of people, many entrepreneurs, they're great at what they do, but like you said, they've only unlocked a small percentage of that potential. So getting right down to the nuts and bolts of it, how can we spend a little bit more time in this call it flow state, call it executive state, the state where you are working at your best. Yeah. How do you help people even take 10% more of that? Yeah, and that's a great question. And the name of the game is awareness. That's the first and foremost step. One of my favourite movies is The Matrix, right. It's kind of realising that you are in a false reality and you step out and you're finally given awareness to what the true reality is. It's very much so the same. When it comes to performance, we have to be able to be aware of certain things that majority of the time we're not even aware of. And the way I show people how to become more aware of that is through two main principles. So the first thing that we need to understand is it turns out your brain operates either in just one of two state or an executive state. So the thing to know about what is a survival state, it's that part of your brain. If you want to geek out on which part of the brain is called your amygdala, and it's that part of your brain that's reactive, it reacts without thinking. And the reason it does that, it's for survival purposes. So imagine a Tiger that's about to eat you, then your brain needs to react without thinking, because if you start sitting there and thinking about things, you're already dead the Tiger is going to attack you. So the key thing here is if you're in this state, you're cutting yourself off from the part of your brain that you truly want, which is where those critical thinking centres, the creativity, the innovation, the empathy comes from, because you're literally not able to think. And this is the part of our brains that were in majority of our life. The executive state, which is right behind your forehead. It's your prefrontal cortex, for the most part, is where a lot of these amazing capabilities come from. In the brain, human's frontal lobe, where the prefrontal cortex is, it's 40% of our brain. It's the highest ratio compared to any other animal out there. We don't turn it on as much as we'd like, and it's not because we're surviving from actual life threatening scenarios, like we're not running away from Sabre tooth Tigers all the time. And it brings up this question, well, why are we in it? For a majority of our life and based on research, more or less, 70% of our adult lives and we're cutting ourselves off from our highest level of performance. It's because of emotional survival. You see, when we experience emotions that are uncomfortable, think about how often you might feel anxious, frustrated, annoyed, tired. Your brain views that as a threat because research shows that emotional pain can be just as painful as physical pain in the brain, the way it processes. So the brain still processes us as a threat. So then we have to think about, well, how often do we feel anxious? How often do we feel sad? How often do we feel frustrated? Then you just cut yourself off from the part of the brain that you need in the first place. I think this is really interesting because one of the challenges that I have working with clients and I see it with business owners all the time. And I'm going to speak at a quite superficial level here. Is there's always something that feels more important than, for example, creating content, creating content. It's never urgent, it's important, but it's never urgent. And people spend a lot of time reacting to the things that seem to be urgent, those things that are on fire, those balls that are rolling down the Hill towards them. And what you're describing really in practical terms, is this. So how can people triage their day? I guess, in order that they can spend more time on these important things. And this is a great point because the very thing you brought up too, I love how Steven Covey puts it into those quadrants. Right. But when something feels urgent and important, we do get triggered into a survival state. We're reacting without thinking, remember, we can't think, so we can't even look at the whole picture. When you're in survival, you literally develop tunnel vision. Right. If a Tiger is in front of you about to eat, you're not sitting there going. Let me look around all of my surroundings right now. We're literally not doing that. We're in tunnel vision. So this is where a lot of leaders can make huge mistakes because of that tunnel vision. They keep reacting without thinking to what feels urgent. And then all of these other things, they're not seeing it, especially if it's priority. And then that's when mistakes get made. So one of the ways I train leaders to become more aware of a survival state is number one, just we have to be able to see what survival state actually looks like in our daily lives. Because when your life is in danger, like physical danger, it's obvious if a Tiger is in front of you about to eat you, it's what's called a fight, flight freeze response. This is the only thing that only three things that your survival brain knows how to do. And remember, it's a reaction without thinking. So without thinking, we will try to fight and defend ourselves by picking up a weapon or we will run for our lives in flight or freeze is playing dead. So opossums are famous for doing this because their predators like their food alive. Now that's pretty obvious. When your life's in physical danger, it's much more harder to identify for people when it's because of emotional survival. I'll start off with some of the obvious ones and then go into the more subtle ones. The obvious forms of fight is such as when someone says something hurtful and you get triggered and now you get defensive and you're literally fighting. You're getting into an argument and you're fighting with each other. And there's no trust there there's no empathy. There no one wants to look at the other person's perspective. We're busy trying to get our own point across. We're just battling each other. Another obvious form of fight is road rage. I'm an American. There's a lot of road rage in America. I don't know how it is in Europe. It doesn't exist. So that's what you see, right? If someone gets pissed off that they got cut off on the road and they get pissed off, so they're reacting without thinking and trying to cut the other person back off without any consideration of the other vehicles around them, even though they might be putting the others in danger. Yeah. So that's obvious forms of fight, you see, where it gets more subtle is such as things like the need to prove yourself to someone, the need to always be right. Perfectionism being a workaholic overworking. These are actually all forms of fight. And you see, this is very damaging. People feel like it's productive because the world rewards fighters. The more you work, the more they pay you. However, it causes a huge, huge damage. It makes a big impact on mental health and performance as a result of that. Because I'll give an example, I had a client once. He was in his sixty s and he came to me because he was still feeling very unfulfilled. Something was off and the irony was he had everything you could think of that you might want. He had the multi million dollar business, he accomplished a tonne, he's financially free, he has the family and yet he was still feeling unfulfilled. And I'm talking to him about this fight flight freeze response. And when I was talking about fight, he had this moment and he realised, oh my God, my whole life I've been fighting. I'm like, tell me more. Well, everyone always compared me to my older brother and I felt the need to fight to prove that I'm better than him by working harder, accomplishing more, making more money, because his older brother was an NFL football player and even his own football coach said, don't even try, you're never going to be good as your brother. So he felt the need to fight his whole life. And when you fight for that long, it always leads to a lack of fulfilment and burnout and that decreases your performance. At some point you're going to get burnt out. And we need to be aware where we're in this fight mode because again, we're literally not thinking. And what happens to a lot of people is you fight so hard to climb a mountain and when you get to the top of this mountain, you realise it's the wrong mountain to begin with, that you want it to climb. I think something else that I recognise as well and I get now why you were talking about the Matrix analogy, because it actually makes so much sense. Something that I recognise in myself and I've seen it in other people is when things begin to get easy, that's actually when a problem can kick in because you become so accustomed to living in the fight flight freeze zone. Yes, that when you're not there, there's actually an experience of anxiety. Correct. And then people go looking for fights again or something to run away from or they go looking for problems or they take on work that they probably shouldn't have. You probably know this better than I do, but it becomes a vicious cycle and I think this is where tools and strategies become really important. Yes, it gets addictive. You see what I'm saying? When things start feeling easy, your body is going, it's actually an addiction. Just like a person can get chemically addicted to drugs, we can get chemically addicted to an emotion. So if we're addicted to struggle, if we're addicted to stress, if we're addicted to the fight and things start getting easier, your body is going just like a drug addict does, going, hey, I don't have that feeling of being busy, I don't have that feeling of fighting. Quick brain, find something. And then while your brain is going out looking for it and you find a new project that you don't need to do, but you do it anyway while you're going, oh, I'm so stressed and burnt out, your body is going, oh, my God, that feels so good. I got my fix. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And it's interesting because here's the key where it's damaging, especially for people that are running businesses and leading companies, is if you're constantly in the fight mode, remember, you're not thinking. So I'll give another example. I had a client once from rock bottom. He grew up a multi million dollar business, had all those great accomplishments, right? The Ink 5000, fastest scoring company in America. All that kind of stuff. It was placed on that list. And the thing to think about, he was debating with me. He's like, no, sometimes you need that fight, don't you? I'm like, Tell me more. He's like, well, I hit rock bottom. My second wife divorced me because she was cheating on me. And the first wife cheated on him, too. And he still had to pay over $2,500 per month in child support. And he had no more money in the bank. He scrapped up all of those coins in his house that he could find. He goes through those little machines at the supermarket to get cash for it, and all he had left was like, $5. He's with his son. And then his son asked for ice cream. And he was like, I was so pissed off. I'm like, Why? Because you have to buy your son ice cream? He's like, no, because I couldn't get my own. And he said from that moment on, he's like, you don't understand. I had to fight to get to where I am today. And the way he described it was I had to keep my head down and my shoulder up, and I was bashing through brick wall after brick wall after brick wall. That's what got me to where I'm at today. That sounds like a very compelling argument. Right? And I was just approaching it from a place of curiosity. I was like, well, now that we both discuss how the brain works and there's a specific part of the brain that activates even more performance and helps you see even more opportunities and solutions. And what if, as a thought exercise, because this is not about what should have happened, because the past is the past. What if, because you've developed a skill to be in your executive state more often, what it gives you the ability to do is even if it's just for a moment, it's what gives you the ability to put your head up and your shoulder down. And maybe what you finally see is that these brick walls you feel like you're bashing through were only 3ft wide. What do I mean by this? There's a lot of other options. Remember that tunnel vision we talked about when we're in survival? Yeah. As a leader, we need to be able to see the whole picture. We need to be able to use our critical thinking skills to be able to come up with creative solutions that are probably there if we just get ourselves into state to be able to see it, because we literally can't see it when we're in survival state because if that brick wall is 3ft wide, you could have went around it or there are many other ways to get to the destination you wanted to go to. It just doesn't feel like it. When you're in survival, you feel like you're backed up against the wall and you have no options. And a lot of leaders struggle with the fight response because how much pressure is on you as a leader? Right. You have a team, depending on you, you have results you need to produce, revenue, goals you need to meet. So it's easy to go into that fight mode and this is what people talk a lot about. It's just like learning how to work smarter, not harder. When you're in the fight mode, you're working harder, not smarter. If somebody is listening to this thinking, yeah, I recognise a lot of that. What are some daily practises they should consider in order to? Because I'm guessing a lot of this comes down to mindfulness on the one hand and clarity of vision on the other. What are some daily practises that, you know, alleviate symptoms on the one hand and help people move forwards more productively and constructively on the other? So the first and foremost thing to establish here is we just want to be in the executive state as much as possible and the good news is we can develop those skills to get there on a more moment to moment basis. So that's establishing that fact. The next thing to understand is we have to be aware of what it looks like. So one practise we can do on a daily basis. Like you said, you mentioned the word mindfulness. It's exactly that. It's just practise being aware of when you're in that fight mode. Because if you can't see the matrix, how are you going to get yourself out of it? You're just going to stay in the matrix. You see what I'm saying? Number one is I have people be aware of the fight flight freeze response. So that's the fight response. We went pretty deep into it because a lot of high performing leaders, business owners, they are actually stuck in a fight response for a lot of their career, their business for most of their time, and that prevents them from achieving the next level of growth. So it's just being aware of when we're in the fight mode and then we also want to be aware of the flight mode and the freeze mode. The flight mode. A classic example is procrastination. You brought up procrastination earlier. It's our brain's way of soothing ourselves when we're feeling stressed because procrastination, when you think about it, it's whatever task at hand it is that we know we need to do that's going to be helpful for us. That's when a lot of our head trash starts kicking in subconsciously without us telling it to do it right. What if I do this and I screw up? What if I do this and people will think this way of me? What if I do this and what will happen there? What happens if I screw everything up and it doesn't go the way I want and I don't get the result I'm looking for? Therefore, I will put it off for later so that I don't have to deal with distress right now. So that's how Procrastination works. I'm so glad to finally understand you're describing my day. Yeah. And the key thing I'm bringing all this up because I know it's a sensitive topic for some people, but I have to preface something, which is there's no judgement on any of this because the moment you judge, guess what? That's a survival response too. We judge other people out of survival. It's the same reason why people gossip, because I already carry some insecurity with me as a survival mechanism. I feel I need to put people down to help me feel better about myself. So that's one thing I just want to make sure I communicate. Is there's no judgement around any of this? This is all about just let's be aware, have a better relationship with yourself, be more aware of what's happening. This is what gives you the empowerment to change the things you want to change. Because I give an example, an analogy, like if you have a piece of broccoli stuck between your teeth, how do you have the power to remove it until it comes into your awareness, whether it's someone pointing it out to you or you see it in the mirror? So name of the game is awareness. So procrastination is a classic flight response if you take a deeper and what's more subtle flight responses? When we start numbing ourselves, this is where we intentionally distract ourselves for whatever reason. So some people binge watch Netflix and television, some people eat a tub of ice cream, some people over indulge in things like alcohol, sex, drugs. The list goes on to the form of addiction, to the point of addiction. And that's a form of flight. We try to escape from the feeling we don't like feeling that's always been there. So that's flight. Everyone has their own numbing mechanisms. So again, this is just about being aware. Everyone has their own poison. They like to choose on how to numb themselves. And the last mechanism is the freeze response. The freeze response, it comes in the form of inaction. It's also playing dead. So if you ever see someone get caught in a lie, you see how their eyes wide enough and they kind of freeze in place. It's their brain going, hey, if you pretend not to exist right now, maybe this person will stop interrogating you, their heartbeat actually slows down as well. To try to not exist in the moment where it also comes out is when we get overwhelmed. That's when you wake up in the morning and you don't want to get out of that. We're staying in action so we can easily flee into freeze, if that makes sense. We can run away and freeze as well and shut down. So that's the fight flight freeze response when it comes to emotional survival. And we want to become aware of this because guess what? It brings up a question. Well, what are we surviving from? There's a belief inside that we have about ourselves. Whether I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not capable, I don't matter. My life doesn't have meaning. The list goes on and on about these perspectives we might carry on a daily basis to the point where it's conditioned it's on autopilot. It's a really interesting question. What are we surviving from? I actually had to write that down because from a mindfulness perspective, it's so important to think what is it that's triggering me right now? Correct. That clarity shine a light on the monster and suddenly it's actually quite small. Yeah, exactly. That's a great point that you're bringing up, because awareness is that flashlight. And when you can finally see what's actually causing these symptoms that are preventing us from entering into that next level of performance, what you often see is it's not a monster. You see what I'm saying? Because this is kind of what it feels like. You ever watched those horror movies where there's a false scare scene, where the music is getting intense, the bushes are rustling, and the reveal is that it's this cute little Bunny that just pops up. That's what our survival emotions feel like in terms of what's happening in our brain. When we're starting to feel a certain emotion that's uncomfortable, it feels like the music is getting intense, the bushes are rustling, and it feels like a monster is about to jump out. But if we become more mindful and we're willing to just sit with it and not do anything and just be present, what reveals itself is guess what? It's like this cute little boy or girl that pops out, which is a younger version of you, because that kid is the one that created the belief because dad mom did this. It made me believe this about me or because my friends did that. It made that believe this about me. And that's what we're surviving from. At the end of the day, it has to do with the belief we're carrying about ourselves. That's the Matrix, because it's a false belief we carry about ourselves. So that's the thing to think about. Yeah, go ahead. Well, what I was going to say next, you painted such a rich picture there, and I think anybody listening is going to find this extremely useful. What we've essentially described is how to identify the Matrix and essentially know you're in it. But one of the things that happens in the Matrix is once they're in there and they know they're in there, they can start working on their superpowers. That's when the superpowers are unlocked. So one of the things that I know you're focused on is peak performance. What we're describing so far is breaking out of survival mode and into the executive state. Yes. Moving from there into peak performance, into excellence, into more consistently staying in the executive state, what techniques or strategies can people be looking at in order to, for example, unlock your superpowers. Yes. So now that you're aware, because just like I love that analogy, I actually never set it in that way. And I love that because when you realise you're in the Matrix, that's when you start bending reality, you see what I'm saying? That's when the spoon starts scene where the spoons moving and all that, and. That'S what everyone wants to do. Exactly. And we are all capable of doing that. It just starts with this awareness of being in the Matrix, aka survival mode. So once you're aware, there are two buckets that I bring people through to start activating peak performance. So I categorise them into short term work and long term work. So the short term work is when you're aware in the moment, what are some tips and tools I can do right now? And I'll give two right now on the show. The first one is Labelling your emotions. So just acknowledging your emotions, I feel sad, I feel upset, I feel scared, I feel discouraged because I'll give you the research around this, because I know you hear therapists say things like this, but I'll show the research behind it because it makes it more compelling to actually do it. So UCLA, a University out here in California, did this study once where they had people tied to brain scans on their heads to see which part of the brain is active. And they would show photos to these participants of people in their survival emotions, fear, anxiety, anything that feels uncomfortable. Right. Fear, anxiety, frustration, anger. And as soon as they show the photo to the individual, the survival brain, the amygdala immediately lit up immediately. So their survival state turned on immediately. So what was fascinating was the researcher would then ask the participant, hey, can you tell me what emotion you're seeing on this picture? And the participant was like, easy, that's anger or that's frustration, that's anxiety, that's fear. As soon as they labelled the emotion, guess what happened? Survival brain turned off, executive brain turned on. Well, why does this happen? Well, to label something an emotion, you actually need to think about it. Remember, when you're in survival state, you can't think. So when you're labelling an emotion, you're actually calling on your executive state frame, where your peak performance comes from to turn on. So even if you're doing it on your own mind where you just acknowledge, I'm feeling anxious right now, I'm feeling frustrated right now. You actually start calling on your executive brain to turn on because your prefrontal cortex is the part where you can emotionally regulate yourself as well rather than stay stuck in the emotion. There's a nuance here, though. A clinical psychologist buddy of mine mentioned there's a subtle yet important difference in the language that you use to describe your emotions. There's a big difference between subtle yet big difference between I am sad and I feel sad. When you say I am sad, you're presuming it's your identity, just like I am Bob. I am sad. But when we do that, guess what? You're going to stay stuck in survival because you're adopting it as your identity. But if you start making sure your language is I feel, then you're presuming that and acknowledging that feelings come and go, it's not permanent. How do we know this is true? Well, because feelings come and go. Sometimes we feel sad, sometimes we feel happy, sometimes we feel tired. Feelings aren't permanent. So it's important to acknowledge it in that way is to label your emotions. The second thing that I recommend a lot is breathing deep breaths. It's very cliche. We hear it all the time. So I'll just share the science behind it. So just like your brain has a survival state and executive state, so does your body. Your whole nervous system operates in one of two States. If you want to geek out on the terminology, it's your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system. So view the sympathetic nervous system as the accelerator in a car and the parasympathetic nervous system as the brakes is the thing that helps slow it down. When you're in front of a Tiger that's about to eat you, there's a lot of things happening in your body. The acceleration is happening. Your body is overworking, your heart's beating like mad. You're breathing very shallow and rapid breaths. Your digestive system shuts down because this is not a time to be eating if you're about to die, which is, by the way, why a lot of people who are constantly stressed up digestion issues. And they also have sleep issues because another chemical that's pumping through your blood is something called adrenaline. It's kind of like having a whole eight cups of coffee in one shot where your body is going into overdrive. So when you take these deep breaths at the bottom of your lungs in an area called your diaphragm, that's where your parasympathetic nerves are. So when you take these deep breaths, it tickles those nerves so that you get back into that executive state for your body where it's in a rest and digest state where it's relaxing. So now you're recharging instead of wasting energy. If that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. So I recommend two types of breathing. One is called box breathing, which is a five second inhale, you hold it for 5 seconds and a five second exhale. And the other type of breathing that I recommend is this research was shown by this amazing neuroscientist, his name's Andrew Huberman, and where they showed literal scans of taking this type of breath. And you would watch the body relax and get into its executive state so that you can perform better, go into that work smarter, not harder mode. You take a deep inhale and then you inhale again and then slow exhale, and that helps calm the body down. So these are two things you can just do in any moment that you want. There's no Hoops to jump through to do that. That's some of the short term work. I think, for the short term work, what Springs to mind there? I read somewhere recently that 90% of the processing that we do as human beings happens at a completely unconscious level. And the feelings that we have and things like that, they're not something that we rationally control at all. So being able to label them as external to our identity is extremely important, because otherwise I'm going to ask you to carry on. I just was reflecting back how important this is to not identify with your feelings. Yes. And you just brought us something extremely important, actually. So I'm smiling because this is Segwaying into exactly what I was on top of next, which is the long term work, because that's the part that most people don't realise. Just like you said, Bob, is that 90% of the time we're not even aware that these things are happening without us consciously saying to do it. So what do I mean by this? Research shows by the time we're about 35 years old, 90% to 95% of the brain becomes subconscious. So what does that mean? It goes on auto piloting it's, doing it without us telling you to do it anymore, because it got programmed that way. So just like you can programme a computer to do the same thing at a certain time every day. So there's our brain. So just like you're not going down the stairs consciously going, all right, I need to put my left foot forward, my right foot forward, my left foot forward. It does it without thinking. Right. It's the same when it comes to our own perspectives, our beliefs about things, our thoughts. I don't know if you're aware of this, but research also shows that we're thinking about 700 thoughts per day and 90% to 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts every day. If I programmed to think a certain way. And guess what? A majority of those thoughts are a negative thought about yourself. So think about what part of the brain that will trigger. Right. Something that I see a lot is something that I would describe as a success barometer. And this kind of explains it to a certain degree. And excitingly. Also explains how you can reprogram that. Yes, success thermostat quite often you'll see people reach a certain level of income and then for some reason, they just stop progressing. And it's not because of lack of potential. It's not because of lack of opportunity. It's because at an unconscious level, they feel that's where things should be. And some people push way beyond that. And it's not because they're luckier, it's not because they're smarter, it's because they reprogram this barometer, this thermostat. And for me, this is an element of what you're describing. Yeah, I see this so many times now. It's like we have an idea of what we programmed in our minds, what we think success is. And what I actually think is happening for a lot of people is they reach that metric like they hit that seven figure Mark or whatever. And what happens is the reality starts shifting a little bit. They came face to face where it's just like what I thought was real, maybe wasn't real. They're at the edge of the Matrix, if that makes sense. It's kind of like that moment. I don't know if you ever seen the movie Truman Show with Jim Carrey. It's kind of like that moment where you're finally at the end and you're like, what? This isn't real? It's like what I thought I was going to be happy. Now I'm not happy. Right. So then they don't continue to fight for the money in survival because they thought that was the thing. But then when you get aware of, oh, I still have my trust issues, I still have my blank issues, challenges. And you get a little jaded. And that's when you're starting to step out of the Matrix a little bit. Because here's the thing to understand is that your reality and my reality probably look extremely different. Everyone's reality looks very different. But here's the thing your brain gets very easily fooled into what's real? How do we know this? You've ever been in a dream and you thought it was real when you were in it. So it brings up this question of, well, what's actually real is our definition of success real is this perspective I carry that I have to work my butt off to achieve X amount of dollars or achieve this accomplishment actually real. Because at the end of the day, when you break yourself out of the Matrix, you can find out what's real, and it's always empowering. And then you get to experience the joy of feeling pulled towards something instead of feeling the obligation of having to push yourself there. That's what Passion Purpose mission truly is. So in my little ramble about the success, thermostat and you much more eloquently explained what was going on there and what people can be doing about it. I kind of deviated you from the long term strategy, which I really want to come back to, and not have you end the interview with not having gone through that, because that's so important. Yeah. What are some long term things people should? Absolutely. So the long term is the actual rewiring of your neural networks in your brain and we can teach ourselves how to do this. We can learn how to do this with the right support, the right training, because if 90% to 95% of your brain is subconscious and it's doing these things on autopilot, and as your awareness is getting more expanded on what's actually happening within you, then you want to do the long term work of getting the appropriate support to help you rewire. And there are two main ways that I do this. One is just to be training people. Right. I work with people and the second thing I use is technology. So it turns out there's technology that can actually give you in lifetime feedback on what state you're in survival or executive state. So I use two pieces of technology. It's neurofeedback and biofeedback. That's what it's called. So I'll just go into the neurofeedback real quick because I find this fascinating. It's basically what's called an EEG device, electronencephalogram. It's the same technology you would use in a hospital, at a neurology clinic or at, like, a sleep lab when they're measuring your brain waves at night. Imagine you put some headphones on, you turn on the device and turn on the app and you might hear some calm, peaceful rain, for example. So basically what that's saying is that the device is measuring your brain waves and it's showing that you're not in the survival brain wave, you're in the executive state. Good job. But the moment you start worrying, stressing, getting anxious, it's going to turn into a thunderstorm because it's signalling to you in the moment, hey, you're going into survival again, come back. So just like you can work out your physical muscles to get stronger, you can actually work out your mental muscles to get stronger. That's why mindfulness plays a huge role in is you're actually mentally working out. So over time, that's like surface level stuff. And then as you take this much deeper, you actually start rewiring your brain, where if I had a brain scan to your head, you would watch it change its neural networks and over time, you start changing as an individual. So that's the long term work, because these are programmes that have been reinforced in our brains for years, if not decades. Right. So if at four years old, you got bit by a dog and you thought now you might form a perspective that all dogs are dangerous, your brain reinforces that belief for the rest of your life until you make a decision to change it and become aware of it. So we carry a lot of these deeply embedded perspectives, beliefs, realities, false realities in our brain. So the long term work is to dive deep and figure out what those things actually are, because it always has to do with the perspective that you carry about yourself and about the world. That is so interesting. And I think for the listener, there is some training on your website where people can go deeper on this, which I've had a little look at, and it's really, really good. So if people are interested in that, where can they find it? Yeah, on my homepage, it's Destinyhacks Co, and it's right there for the free training. One thing that I recognise a lot of the time when people are trying to build their businesses online, which is really my area of focus, but also in all kinds of careers that we don't have an information problem, really. If you want to learn anything, if you want to know how to do anything, you can go on YouTube, you can find out how to do it. So success isn't an information problem. Success is a becoming problem. And one of my podcast guests sum this up for me, the best I've ever heard that your business will grow when you grow. And this conversation for me today was extremely insightful in terms of how to grow. It's really powerful. But I'm curious to know alongside all of this what your journey has been like in terms of you've had to become a content creator, you've had to become an entrepreneur. It's not an easy journey. And I'm curious to know what have been the challenges for you and what's been your practical application on that journey. Can I share a quick story about that, please? I want to illustrate what became the hardest part. I want to share this moment. This kind of ties into all of my work, actually, is I got to once get briefly trained by this amazing coach. Her name is around the Britain, and I have to give context of her story because she said something that was really powerful and it shook me to my core. And this was also the biggest challenge for me over the years because I want to Echo exactly what you're saying. That's absolutely true. This is a becoming process. It's not about information, it's about becoming the person that you want to become. So Ronda Britain. At the age of 14 years old, her parents were divorced and they were going out for Father's Day, brunch with the family. So mom and Ronda are heading outside of the house. While sisters are still getting ready. Dad pulls up to the curb in this car, gets out of the car, head stores the trunk, says he's going to go grab his coat, opens the trunk but doesn't grab his coat, grabs a shotgun, walks over to mom, very upset and frustrated, proceeds to shoot mom, and then points the gun at Rhonda. And mom is still alive, so she's shouting not to do it. And dad had no idea mom was still alive. So he points the gun back at mom and proceeds to shoot her again. Looks over at Rhonda points the gun to himself pulls the trigger. At 14 years old, Rhonda Witnessed soul. Witnessed is the sole witness of a murder suicide who happens to be her parents. So you would imagine this kind of trauma experience caused so much suffering in her life. And because of that emotional pain, she spent her life in survival, fight, flight, freeze. How did she fight? She kept their grades up, thinking, maybe if I keep performing, this pain will go away. So she fought to get rid of the feeling. And then she went into flight mode a lot, too, through alcohol, she became an alcoholic, and she did the biggest form of flight, which was to try to attempt to take her own life three different times and commit suicide and freeze. As you wake up in the morning, don't want to get out of bed. Well, she turned her life around one day after all of those survival mechanisms, and she became this amazing coach that helped a lot of other people in the 90s. She ended up with her own television show that won an Emmy Award. And she's been on Oprah not once, but twice. And I share her story because she said something. Her story had a big weight on my heart when she said these words, knowing where she came from. And she said, until you're willing to be wrong about everything, you know, nothing will ever change. Until you're willing to be wrong about everything, you know nothing will ever change. You see, that was the biggest challenge for me, too. And this is not a message about everything you know is wrong. I'm highlighting the word willingness. That was the hardest part for me. Willing to be wrong, that I don't matter. Willing to be wrong about my belief that my words won't make impact, that I'm not good enough. Willing to be wrong about that. So this is very much so a becoming process because those are the beliefs I carried with me at a core level. And that was the challenge. And there's a saying that we become experts at what we need the most of for ourselves. That's very true, because I very much needed all this stuff that I'm doing to help other people as well. I think that's a fantastic place to stop. That's still echoing in my head. Unless you're willing to be wrong about everything, nothing will change. It's really powerful. I would invite everyone to spend a few minutes thinking about that because I see it everywhere. Eugene, if people want to connect with you, if they want to go deeper with you, how can they do that? Yeah, I do have a podcast as well. If they want to hear some more content, it's the neurohackingpodcast, and you can get that@neurohackingpodcast.com. And also, if you wanted to email me directly, I'm happy to provide my email address here. It's Eugene at Destinyhacks Co. I still monitor my inbox, so you can reach out to me there and. I have to ask you as well what's one thing you do now that you wish you'd started five years ago? Yes. So the first thing that comes to mind is I wish I slowed down learned how to be more present whether it's in front of my kids while I'm busy thinking about work with my family While I'm in the hustle and bustle on my days where I'm having back to back calls I wish I created more space to slow down practise more gratitude, meditate more be more mindful because it's in those very moments that the idea comes to you that's the game changing idea for your business It's in those moments that help me double triple my business in a year from one thought so yeah I wish I. Slowed down more I think that's a great answer because I'm told that I need to be more present as well And I think for anybody listening you probably need to sing and you've offered some extremely useful tools for today Dr. Eugene Choi, you have been an awesome guest. I've been thrilled to speak to you. I know I'm going to be speaking to you again. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much for having me, Bob this was a blast.