LEAD A LIMITLESS LIFE With Mark Fournier

Hello, it's Howard Brown. It's the Shining Brightly

Show. Oh my god, we got the coach of coaches. How many times

do you meet a Life Mastery a peak performance coach? Well,

I've got one here today, Mark Fournier. Welcome. How are you?

What's happening?

Awesome. Thank you for asking. I mean, awesome

in terms of how I feel and see the world today, and I'm just

happy to be on this call with you and can't wait to hopefully

inspire a few listeners and see if we can contribute to their

lives.

Be well, we're gonna we're gonna make some

impact today. So it's great. Let me tell you a little bit about

Mark real short. So Mark is a Life Mastery and peak

performance coach, number one best selling author, speaker

trainer, and an Emmy Award winning filmmaker. And I love

this part the best. He calls himself a humanitarian, that

means he cares. And that to me, that's heart centered. Man,

that's great. I don't normally do this. But I'm so captivated

by your mission statement. And I just want to start the show with

that. And then we'll, we'll dive right in after that. So listen

to Mark's mission statement. Raising our level of

consciousness not only helps us flourish as individuals, it all

it is also how we will end the atrocities of our world, for

enlightened beings to become heroes by nature. As such,

helping to raise human consciousness on a global scale,

is his passion and his purpose. I'm just letting that sink in.

Because that's shining brightly my brother. That's that we are

aligned. It's it's incredible. All right. So now, normal

question, right? How do you shine brightly each day?

Oh, thank you for asking that. You know what,

maybe there's a kind of like a two part answer to that the, the

first thing I do every single day is I go to a state of

appreciation. It's a form of what we call disambiguation.

Habituation is when we get so used to something that it's,

we're no longer even aware of it. And that can be really

helpful if you live next door to an airport or a train track. But

when it comes to enjoying and appreciating our lives, it's not

so good. Because you, you may have just moved into this

beautiful home. And within a few months, you've habituated

instead of thinking every day, Oh, I'm so fortunate to be in

this home, you're thinking, oh, you know, this, it's an east

west facing house. And now we're getting blasted by the sun. And

you start noticing more of the negative things and taking the

positive things for granted, as we do not only with our things,

but with our people, with the people that we wake up next to.

And so I go through this process every morning, of reminding

myself of how fortunate I am, and I picture my children's

smiling faces in my mind, and all the magic and wonder in my

life. And it it's not about because I have more wonderful

things than the next guy. It's because I spend more time

thinking about them and focusing on them. And so the other half

of that answer is there was a girl one day, it was she came up

to me in the middle of a of a concert, or a seminar. And she

told me, we've taken a break. And so I'm down there on the

floor, mixing it up, and, and she told me that her mother was

was in hospice, and she was dying. And she said that it was

so hard to even be there. She said, we go there and

everybody's so miserable. And it's just so hard. And it's so

hard for my mom. And she said I don't know what to do. And I

just smiled and said, Oh, it's really simple. Have you ever

been someplace where there was there were challenges or was

dark and depressing? Have you ever seen someone who refused to

buy into that who refuse to be a victim to that those

circumstances and decided they were going to bring the beauty,

they were going to be the bright spot. And I said, you need to

make this time. Let it be that you're the bright spot every

time you walk in the door. They're looking forward to

having you and she she cut me off. But isn't that

inappropriate to be smiling and happy when you're with somebody

who's dying? And I said, How would you like, what would you

like if you were lying there in bed dying? Do you want a bunch

of people crying and wailing? Or do you want somebody to come in

with a smile and talk about what a wonderful life we're all still

experiencing? And so on and so forth. And so she came back I

saw a year later. And another seminar she says, Do you

remember me? And after she explained her circumstances, I

said, Oh my gosh, yeah, I do remember that. She goes, Well, I

took your advice. And I put it it works so well. When I would

go to the hospice. It lifted everyone she said so I have

begun to apply it to every year of my life she says so I have

now that's my new logo. My new everything is the bright spot.

He says I like bright spot wherever I go in my life, and

it's the happiest the best year I've ever Ahead.

Wow, that's impact. And I love that. So I

look in the mirror every day and as a guy that faced death twice,

okay, I say that I am blessed, I am grateful, and I am very

lucky. And how am I going to use my light to help myself and help

others today, because most people look in the mirror, they

don't like what they see, right. And we all get knocked down in

life and in business and, and health and relationships. Got to

get back up again. And you gotta, gotta gotta gotta gotta

power through little baby steps, sometimes two steps back. So

let's dig in a little bit more sure, you know what life threw

you some curveballs share a little, you know, touch about

your background and what you had to overcome a little bit.

I'll do that. Howard, thank you, without

coming from a victim space, which we may have a chance to

weave in and out of this conversation, because I'm really

big on on the power of mindsets, which is not same as an

attitude. It's not like you know, your attitude, you can

change every five seconds, you know, I'm in a good mood. I just

heard something bad. And I'm in a bad mood. A mindset is much

broader. It's like in The Matrix, it is the matrix. It's

the lens through which you're viewing the world. That is your

mindset. And if you have an opportunity mindset, which is

the opposite opposite of a victim mindset, the opportunity

mindset, classic Elon Musk is there's an opportunity in

everything. There's no such thing as bad news, there's just

news. Even though somebody may say I have a problem with an

opportunity mindset, it's not a problem. It's just an unexpected

outcome. And you say, Alright, where's the opportunity in this

cloud? You know, it's the cliche with every cloud has a silver

lining, and so on. But cliches are real, they've lasted 1000s

of years, because they're so true. So when, when you can stay

in that space, that say the opportunity space, it makes it

difficult to be in the victim space. And so, so imagine

looking at everything through a lens up and what's great about

this. And so when I describe my past, instead of it being Oh,

yeah, you know, it was really nasty. And for me, it's Wow,

yeah, there were a lot of memorable experiences. That all

culminated into who I am today, I have no regrets. So, so with

that upfront, I can say, yeah, there have been both emotional

and physical challenges. And we can touch on the physical

because we have that commonality, the surviving

cancer and so on. But I have to say that the trickiest parts for

me were my folks got divorced when I was born, my mom trying

to raise four kids, without child support without the salary

of a hairdresser. But she was like that bit like that. That

bartender that everybody comes to for advice. Well, she was the

hairdressers that they did that with and she was a philosopher,

hairdresser. So on the one side, she didn't have a lot of time

for us because she was working day and night, six days a week.

On the other side, when she did have time with us, it was

quality time. And she would spend that time helping us

actually evolve and become more enlightened from his for as far

back as I can remember. Eventually, she married a fella

who turned out to be such a good such a great guy, abusive,

alcoholic, and, and so through my formative years, it turned

out that all the things she had been teaching me started to come

into play. The book she was giving me at 12, she gave me

PSYCHO CYBERNETICS by Maxwell Maltz. And thinking Grow Rich,

which, you know, classic, after that I was hooked. And so

because of the adversity, because we were being challenged

with no dad, and then it stuck, you know, stepped out. Because

of that, she gave me all these tools. And even though they were

really just to help me cope with the issues, I was able to apply

them again to every other area of my life. And that became,

it's just woven into my, into my soul. So, from that point on all

the challenges I continually would come back to, and how can

I turn this into something? So I've had 19 major surgeries. 11

were orthopedic from sports injuries, broke my neck,

snowboarding, my back play in hockey. Now my latest one was

total knee replacement playing pickleball so I'm a pickleball

are

a danger? It's not supposed to be a dangerous

sport.

Well, I know that I've learned that you're not

supposed to dive for balls. Yeah. So anyhow, so you know,

there have been other challenges. Of course, only one

out of two people in our country gets get gets to skip divorce,

and I wasn't one of them. So. So, you know, and it's funny

when, when I'm coaching with somebody, and we started talking

inevitably always about relationships and marriage and

intimate relationships. I've had folks say, Well, how can you

coach me on, on relationships, you got divorced. And I smell

it, I say, so wait a minute. You You want somebody coaching you

on relationships whose they they married, the perfect person

never had to do anything to keep their marriage alive. Everything

always was perfect all the time. You want that guy coaching you?

And they're like, Well, I Is there such a person I go first

of all, probably not. Secondly, you want somebody who's been

there, but somebody who got there before you and had the ups

and downs and the issues and challenges. So you know what, in

the long run, it's in your best interest that I've seen, both

the good and the ugly. And of course, some of the other things

we talked about was like the cancer. So I had stage three

thyroid, and they caught it in time and did a couple of

interesting things to remove it along with my thyroid. And

probably the most harrowing of all of them was I was diagnosed

temporarily with ALS, they have this very rare neuromuscular

disorder. And it's way more rare than ALS. So I had a chance to

figure out what would it what really matters, because for a

week, before I went back to get retested for a week, I got to

believe that I was dying of ALS, I had less than two years to go

and, and I got to choose between a respirator where I couldn't

move at all like Stephen Hawking, or just letting it have

its way and be done in two years. And at the end of that

year, I discovered some really, really important things. So

we'll, we'll I'll weave them into date. Today's conversation,

I

know what we'll dive in there. Thank you for

sharing that because we've all had hardship. And we have to get

back up. And it's the lessons learned that you're starting to

dig into. I got asked the other day, what's my relationship with

cancer? And I sat there and I didn't give an answer right

away. And I said, it's love hate. I said, I hate that. I got

it. I hate that people get it. I hate actually the surgeries, the

chemo, the radiation, the side effects. But you know, what the

people, the heroes, the nurses, the caregivers, the amazing

people living with this, you know, ugly disease and keep on

going, You know what, I've changed? I've changed and I know

what matters now. And you know, I wrote a book about it, I have

this podcast. But again, I've changed and we've all now

committed to, you know, making the world a better place from

your mission to my mission, as well. So I want to dig in a

second because in looking and studying you a little bit, and

I've dug deep on you, human potential. Okay, we all have it.

Talk Talk to us about the human potential and all of us.

Oh, I love that. Thank you, Howard. Thanks for

teeing up one of my favorite topics. Excuse me, so. So my

moniker is the limitless coach. And in my nonprofit is, is it's

a 501 C three is limitless University. So you hear this

word limitless. And I use that for a reason. It's I may have

been thinking Grow Rich, it may have been when I was 12. I'm 67.

So what is that 55 years ago? Is it

that's the last Okay, the mat your matches?

Good. All

right, so so the first time I ever heard the, the

cliche, anything we can conceive and believe we can achieve,

which has been assigned to so many different, they say that

was how Henry Ford's said that it's that it actually goes back.

millennia, it's been around, it's again, one of those

cliches? Well, I did something that I don't know anyone who's

ever done this before. Instead of just being inspired by the

clever line, anything we can conceive and believe we can

achieve. I actually asked myself, What if that's true? I

mean, what if it's not just a platitude? What if it's actually

true? And so I broke it down. Anything we can conceive? Let's

start with that. Can you think of anything that the human mind

is incapable of at least thinking of? If you ever watched

a science fiction movie of your why that was we were talking

about the matrix of yet. There's nothing we can't conceive. I

mean, we can conceive of flat earth we can conceive of all the

wonders of today the iPods and cell phones. There's nothing we

can't conceive. So part one covered anything we can conceive

part two, and believe. And why is belief such a big deal? I

come to realize that we do what we believe. We don't do what's

what's absolutely true. We don't always do what's right. We don't

always do what other people want us to do. But we do. Do what's

what we believe a perfect example would be um, For the

folks who flew their planes into nine, into the buildings on 911,

clearly, you can just reverse engineer it. They believed that

what they were doing was the right thing to do. They believed

that that Americans were these, the scourge of the planet, they

believed that they were heroes, they believe that they're going

to rescue the world by by eliminating this virus called

Americans, right Western civilization, they believed it

so strongly, that they not only killed all of these innocent

folks, but they committed suicide, they gave up their

life, because they believed it. If you believe that if you

jumped off the highest building in the world, that you would

float to the ground, and for being the first one to jump off

that building, you would get the cure for cancer, world peace in

a trillion dollars, if you believed it, and you'll be

totally safe. I couldn't stop you from jumping off the world

ties building, not because all those things are going to happen

because they're not you're going to fall like a watermelon and

splat in 20 different directions. And there'll be no

trillion dollars or anything else. So it's not that we

believe what is we only believe what we actually accept as being

true. And the truth is, we can believe anything back to we can

believe that the earth is flat, even though they've been out

they've gone around it in spaceships, you know, so, so we

can believe anything. Think of the crazy ludicrous things that

people believe right now in our extremist, bifurcated political

system and so on. So so now we back it up, okay, so we can

conceive anything, apparently, we can believe anything. I

thought. So that means that we actually can achieve anything

because these things are true. And so I took that last one. Can

we can anything we can conceive and believe. It doesn't say

everything. We can conceive and believe it says anything. And

there's a distinction there. Because if you pick something,

and you put everything you've got into it, like in the movie,

I use movies a lot, because they you know, they're so great at

instantly telling a story in Apollo 13. You know, when it's

when these this space, these guys were as good as dead. But

the guy who was in charge said, Not on my watch, right? And he

believed that they could find a solution. And so he focused

hyperfocus, one guy comes up and says, Well, what about this one

that goes wrong. And he goes, there's 300 things that could go

wrong. Here, you're talking about 127, we need to figure out

how to make this fit into that using nothing but these. And so

let's focus on what's in front of us. So what I've realized

over the years is anything. Not everything. Because everything

if you believe, if you think of and believe a million things,

and you're at nine years old, well, you might not make it for

another 10 or 20 years, and you need 100 years to pull it off.

So So what I tell people is, is make your list of if you were a

limitless being, if there's nothing you couldn't do, make a

list of all the things you do and then put them in order of

priority. Because you might not ever get to 197, you might only

get to the first three, well make sure those first three are

something that you can live and die without regrets. And so this

idea of the of this, of our potential, our potential is

truly anything you can conceive and believe in once you can get

to that point. There's just about nothing you can't do. And

it's and they found the most successful people in the world

and not that they're not, you know, better looking taller,

smarter that they don't have, they didn't weren't born with

with Infinite Wealth there. They average out to be. There's some

that were attractive, someone somewhere had had a lot of money

behind them. Some had nothing. There's no consistency, except

for they came up with something they believed in it. And the

third thing that is so critical, whether it's creating great

relationships, or building a huge business, that one thing

that all the most successful people have in common after

there were studies on like, 1000s of people who were the top

in their field, and they found there was one thing they all had

in common. And it's something that anyone can have and it's

perseverance. Once they believed it. They committed to it and

they refused to give up. No matter what came along. They'd

say, Okay, it's not a roadblock. It's a detour. I just need to

find another way to get there. And they kept doing that until

they figured out or created a solution. So not a short

soundbite but an honest answer.

No, it's incredible. I so for those that

are listening or watching, you know what, you know, I always

look marks the smartest guy in the room today for sure because

I've got lots of other questions that go dig deep into quantum

consciousness and metacognition, but we don't have time for that.

But I am I do want you to do give me a short soundbite about

the difference between empowerment and enlightenment.

All right, stated in a pithily empowerment in

enlightenment, they each have their value. We hear

empowerment. Almost everywhere we are teaching, we're

empowering our children, empowering women empowering

different cultures and so on. And what empowerment is, is it's

the ability to influence the world around you. And what's

wrong with that. Now, it doesn't say control the world around

you, because we can't stop it from raining. Well, there's lots

of things that we can't control. But we can influence the world

around us. And the more empowered we become, the greater

our influence becomes enlightenment, which is the one

that I love the most of all, is the ability to influence the

world within. And because we technically we live in the mind,

that's 10 times more powerful, because you can actually control

much of the world within, you can't control what's happening

around me. But I can control this, I can control the lens,

how I view it, how I respond to it, what I choose to do next, I

have control over that. And, and that's enlightenment, the more

powerful you are in regard to choosing what what stories you

want you wish to write about yourself about the world around

you a story is basically what do you think? What stories do you

want to tell yourself? And what stories do you want to believe?

That's really all reality is, it's just the stories you

believe, that's your reality, there's not a reality. That

reality, even if it exists, we can't see reality for what it

truly is. Because in order to see, we have to put on a lens,

just like in the old days, you'd have those cameras. And if you

look through a camera without a lens, it was just blurry. So you

put a lens on a zoom lens, a wide angle lens, whatever that

lens was, that would decide it will not only help you see the

world around you, but it will decide what that will look like

a tiny spider and a wide angle lens looks like just nothing but

a dot 20 feet away through a zoom lens, it says 10 foot tall,

monstrous thing, two inches away, and you will respond not

to the spider, which is really only this big and five feet

away, you will respond to what it appears to be through your

lens. So what could give us greater power than deciding the

lens through which we see the world.

I love it. And also a good friend of mine, Lauren belay,

she

talks about written energy and thought

energy is part of enlightenment. But anyways, the show is so

short, we're going to have to move to put on your sunglasses

now because oh my goodness, spotlight we are going to shine

so brightly together. And again, this is a tease people are gonna

go find and dig deeper on you and, and seek you out. So tell

everyone how they can get a hold of you. You have apps, you have

books, you know you have programs, so tell people how

they should get a hold of you. And then let's let's go to the

show with some inspiration, share some inspiration with

after that.

Okay, I'd love to thank you again, Howard. Thanks

for having me on the show. And my, my primary website is the

limitless coach.com. So that's easy, the limitless coach.com.

And that's especially for those who are interested in in the

possibility of coaching. I do one on one coaching is my

primary contribution. My contribution to the world is

through our our nonprofit, which we're building that site right

now we just had finally got it registered the name limitless

University registered and trademarked. We were waiting for

that before and to get the 501 C three approved before we went

really went into launch but so if you go there, there's a few

things but please come back. Because we are launching all of

my back catalogue is will all be for free. I've worked with some

of the top personal development folks in the world. And we're

getting all of their back catalogs and things that they

don't really promote that much anymore. And getting them all to

give it to the world for free. As many insights as we possibly

can. And so the easy website for that is is limitless, the letter

U limitless. you.org. And so those are two quick ways to find

a little bit out. You can always email me directly. My my team

won't, won't grab it and decide whether or not I can I get a

chance to look at it if you send it to my direct email which is

my name so it's mark at born yet inc.com And Fornia is f o u r

and I er than letters I, NC. So market coordinating coordinate

inc.com. And I'll answer one way or another, I won't be aI doing

it. Although I do have some apps, and they're free. One, I

recommend go to just go to your app store life balance test.

That's how you get into it, it's free. It'll tell you where your

life is in and out of balance 10 different areas. And it'll tell

you how you run it out as a round wheel or a flat wheel. Are

there areas that if you find that it's your score is low in

some areas, that's where you want to focus. And then the

other one is Omni coach, and it's all phonetically spelled.

And Omni coach is the world's first AI driven, personal and

career development coach. And that's, again, for the folks

that they can't afford to coach with me directly. You can use

Omni coach and it's incredibly powerful. When would you like me

to segue into an inspiring close at this point,

let's give me some inspiration. Give it give it to

All right? All right. So

let's go full circle. On something I said

earlier about that week, when I thought I had ALS. The lesson

was pretty simple. During that week, I came to terms with

everything in my life, everything that mattered and

everything that didn't, I discovered that very few things

mattered. You know what car I was driving, it really came down

to the relationships chips that I had developed. And had I

earned my right to be here. Imagine we have to wait in line

for a million years for a chance to come down to earth and

there's an infinite number of souls waiting for this

opportunity. And had I squandered that opportunity by

watching 20 to 24 hours a day of television, had I made a

difference in the world had I left any kind of a mark any

legacy had I made a difference. And I had some things I was

proud of and some regrets. But in the end, when they told me,

We misdiagnosed and you're gonna be okay, you know, you're gonna

have some issues and nasty side effects, but it's not going to

kill you, you're gonna be okay. From that moment on. When we

first started, I talked about appreciating life, about

happiness and appreciation are just two sides of the same coin.

And so you want to be happy, go into becoming a master of

appreciation. Well, anything that happens to me no matter

what it is, how unforeseen, how challenging, I always go to the

same place. It's not ALS. It's not als can so see, we compare

up. And that makes us feel terrible. We compare our lives

to those who have more, we compare our health to those who

have better, and so on, do the opposite compare down. There are

a lot more people on this planet who are suffering than there are

who've got it made. And so it's not that difficult. Once you get

the hang of it to go, Holy cow, look at what I have compared to

these, those people and this and this and that. And so don't let

that something if you can carry that around. Without having to

go through a week long diagnosis of ALS, just keep telling

yourself. There's a show on I think it's either prime or

Netflix called Gleason. And it's about a famous football player

who ends up with ALS. And you see the whole progression of the

disease. You you can't watch that show without walking away

and saying this guy is making a difference in the world. If for

no other reason, then he's showing us just how fortunate we

are. Yeah,

so I love that Basler appreciation just a while

thank you for that. So this has been an amazing show, you're

gonna have to you know, reach out to mark, check out the apps.

I mean, this is powerful stuff that can really move you

forward. So you've been listening to the shining,

brightly show. I'm Howard Brown, and you can reach me at shining

brightly.com The books there, make bring me to your event.

I'll make it shine, this podcast as well as my advocacy which is

so dear to me and in cancer and mentorship and entrepreneurship

and interfaith relations. And just a quick shout out to the

people that make me look good. front edge publishing, read the

spirit magazine, amplify you my podcasting group, and also

diamond moments magazine. So this has been amazing and just

remember, all right, if we choose to shine brightly, just a

little bit each day for ourselves, take care of

yourselves. Okay, and then shine brightly and lift up others we

become a force multiplier for good and positive change. And we

do make the world a better place. Mark Fournier, all star

guests. Thank you. I just enjoyed our short time together

when we need to spend more time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Wonderful and thank you