Your Subconscious Mind Is Either Your Greatest Asset or It’s Your Greatest Challenge and Nemesis in Life

I'm John Mitchell. Well, Kelly is off this week. She's moved into a new, beautiful ocean front own just off the coast near Seattle, and so she's got things she's doing with that, but it gives us the opportunity to welcome back Steve Pendergrass, who I taught our methodology to about a year ago. So stay welcome.

It's pleasure to be back, John,

So the title of our podcast today is your subconscious mind is your greatest asset, or it's your greatest challenge in life. Or NIMAS, how's that sound? For a title?

Sounds good to me

As it should all align. Set this up a little. So this is all your thinking, and as we were, they used the last podcast we did together. You, you said that line via the podcast said that your subconscious mind is either your greatest asset or greatest challenge, and I so like it and but it's that's fully trivial to you. But why don't you explain to the audience why that's the case? Yeah,

You know, it's interesting that thought that way, the way of thinking about it that way, hadn't codified in my mind until you and I were speaking about it on the podcast, and I was thinking a lot about kind of inflection points in my life, and how I can very clearly point out how I was operating before I had heard your message and heard, you know, learned this methodology, but really specifically before I had heard the fact that you refer to so much on this podcast that 95% of our thoughts and actions are unconscious before I had heard that fact, which was about a year, a little over a year ago now, in that world I was living in before, my subconscious mind was clearly my greatest nemesis, and it was it was waging a war against me that I wasn't even aware of.

So it was that that you had not heard that. Fact,

No, I had never heard it.

Okay, so, so the effect of that was that you were waging this war against your subconscious mind and you didn't know it. So, yeah, your whole life.

I mean, it had never even occurred to me to question my biology as a starting point for my growth, right? There was just an underlying assumption that you have to use hard work, and you got to figure it out and push through, and, you know, persevere through your strength of will, when, in reality, that's the exact opposite of what you need to be doing. Yeah, you can't fight the 95% and what's interesting is, is when I was first kind of trying to wrap my head around this. As you know, I had found a mentee of my own, because I I believe, one of my core beliefs is that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to somebody else. And so I found a student, poor soul, soul Emmanuel. And as I was explaining it to him, one of the first things that he asked me was, well, how do I get about 5% to 10% and I said, No, no, yeah, that's the wrong question. You can't get the 5% to the 10% and even if you could, even if you could, you would still be leaving 90% on the table. Yeah, exactly. So the better question is, how do I get the 95% working for me instead of against me? And in order to even ask that question, I had to first know that I was even in a war against the 95% yellow so that's where it all started. And I feel like so before that point, it was my greatest nemesis, but it was a shadow nemesis. I didn't even know I was fighting a war against it, but it was my greatest one. And that's probably the greatest challenge that most people have, is that they don't even know they're at war.

Yes, you know, I think that is such a good point. And you know, I see with my students, that's some of them will say just what you said, Well, I got to get more of my unconscious into the conscious. No, you don't have the ability to do that. You just take control of the unconscious. Let it be, say it 95% Yeah, you know, I tell you, think about this. I just put this in in my book, and I threw this out my my class. They probably thought I was crazy when I said this. But think about this. Let's make the assumption that there is a higher form of intelligence in the universe beyond humans, okay, and let's say that that advanced intelligence came down to earth and looked at humans, and I think they would go, Well, You know, they're wired for survival. They're they're fear based, and they're reactive. But, you know, they look pretty comfy to me. It don't look like there's a, you know, a thread around any of them. I mean, it's a total comfy light. So why are they that way? And I bet you the other one would go, you know. We could go into their DNA and reprogram that out so that they're instead of being fear based reactive, let's make them productive, creative and happy, because we know how to do we learned how to do that like years ago. And you know, I think the takeaway from that is you can either wait for advanced forms of life to come down here and actually reprogram your DNA, or you can embrace that idea that you got to do the reprogramming yourself. What do you think do you write all in? Is that a good analogy?

I don't think it's crazy at all. I think that it, the fact that it's crazy probably shocked your students into really thinking about this question, which is, and I would even say there's probably a third scenario in there, which is that you wait for evolution to cause us to to evolve into that type of species. And I don't know as that would ever happen.

Well, I don't, I don't think it really would. Because, you know, one of the things I see that has been enlightening to me lately is, and you've heard me say it 100 times, that you know, the effect of being wired for survival is that your 75% of your thoughts were fear based, and you're reactive rather proactive on your agenda. Well, the part I've been missing is the other thing about being wired for survival is that causes you to be profoundly against change. You don't want to change at all. And so, you know the effect, like when I teach this methodology to people, you know, I'll basically once they sort of understand it. You know, the essence of what I'm saying to them is, hey, you know, let me teach you the simple concept of the top book of the world on success, and so you can apply it to your line. And, oh, by the way, the top book of the world on success is they can grow rich. It's been read by 150 million people. It's the top of the world on success by a factor of 10. And therefore the wisdom of the central concept is probably pretty damn profound in light of the fact that one 50 million people, and the law of large numbers would tell you that it's probably profound and so and even better than that, I'm going to show you how to take that simple concept and apply it to your life. And it just takes 12 minutes a day, and and, oh, by the way, to make it easy to to customize our template to your life. I've got an AI algorithm that makes it super simple, where you just answer 50 questions, press a button, and 10 seconds later, it's customized to your life. I'm like, That's the program, and it's an actual way of doing life, as opposed to winning life like you are now. And you know, when you sort of, when I present that to people, 100% of them go, Huh, that is pretty good. And you know, then I point out to them, yeah, I'm blessed to teach this at one of the top five business schools in the country. So, you know, it had to be vetted. Isn't just me saying all this and and, you know, so, but the the point of telling that story is that, you know, logically, everybody goes, Wow, that is pretty damn good. I like that. But the reason everybody doesn't do it is because, again, their wife for survival, which causes them to be hugely resistant to change, and unless they're totally inspired or they're totally frustrated with their life, the juice just didn't work. The squeeze to make the effort to create the clarity and then take 12 minutes a day a day to feed it to themselves. And so that's why, you know it works logically, but that's why not everybody does it. You know, anything to add to that?

Yeah, what comes to mind is the lesson that you learned from our joint mentor, Darren Hardy, which is that I think correct me on this, if I'm if I'm paraphrasing in Prickly, but he said the dirty little success of this, the dirty little secret of the success industry, is that most people, for most people, success is only more success is just a preference. Only 2% of people is more success a requirement, right? And as it relates to the methodology that you've created and everything that you just described, how simple that you have made it for people, and people's initial reaction, hey, this is great. At the end of the day, only about 2% of people are gonna do anything about it. And I tell that that really frustrated you when you learned it, and it was. Uh, initially inconceivable to me. How could that be true? This is so profound. How could it be true? But to hearken back to your story about an intelligent life force outside of, you know, out there in the universe, I think that it's been designed this way, yeah, that only 2% of people are really gonna go outside of the norm and push the bounds, because, and I don't have any scientific proof for this, but I would hazard to guess that after 1000s of years of human existence, we have evolved to a point in our species where only about 2% of people really can push the balance, because if you get too much more than that, I gotta imagine we start to go into a little bit of chaos.

You know, I think you're right. I've thought about that very same thing, that the species is designed for 2% to be the drivers, and that for whatever reason, God created it that way, that's the number. That's you get 3% it creates more payoffs. And again, we're wired for survival, and that's why only 2% but, but, you know, here's another thing that, and I think this would be great thing to talk about, you know, as I'm finishing up my book, I'm like, you know, I've really got a nail who this is for? And, you know, I used to think, well, you know, it's for, for entrepreneurs, because I was an entrepreneur, you have control of your income, and you got to be driven, quote, unquote, meaning, you know, you got to really want success. And I see all that was misguided, you know? What I see is that it's a person's got to have basically three characteristics. I think the first one is you've got to really, really believe that life is precious, seriously, believe that that life is precious. That's the first requirement. That was certainly me. I always had that feeling. And the second one is, boy, I want to play this game of life that my full potential. I mean, that's who I am, just playing the game of life at my full potential. And then maybe the third component is, you got to be deep. You know, most people are shallow. You know, they're not thinking very deeply about their life. They're just cruising along and but I, I think if you, if you don't have those three, three components, it's probably not for you. But you know, I see virtually every person that I get to know has at their core wanting to play the game of life with their full potential, and they're reflective about their life. What do you is that you,

Yeah, you know when you when we first started talking about this, and when I first kind of shared the discovery that I had made, which is that I had wanted to help you kind of share your methodology with the world, and I felt very strongly, like there were a lot more people outside of just entrepreneurs that could benefit from this, right? And one of the first things that you and I talked about was, well, maybe it's students. We talked about teaching it at universities, which is obviously what you're doing now. And then we also talked about transitioning veterans. And then we talked about, Well, is it people in their, you know, 50s and 60s who want to leave a legacy? And right? I think it's, it's all of those things as much as none of them. And is it interesting timing? Because just yesterday, I was talking to my soon to be business partner, Bobby about the topic of what is our niche, and we grappled with this same problem. Are they veterans? Are they, you know, business professionals? Are they students? And we realized that it's not their demographics that define the niche, it's actually who they are as a person that defines whether they are in the niche or not, which is exactly what you just described, yeah, people who want to live life with their full potential, people who view life as precious, those people, what you have described is the 2% Yeah, that is your niche. And it's almost like when you're trying to find your niche, you have to first decide what you're mining for. You're mining for two percenters. Yeah, you can go and you can mine in a field of students, or in the mountains of entrepreneurs or in the oceans of, you know, geriatric people, whatever it is. But now that you know what you're mining for, you know when you hit a vein, yeah, and then you can either stay and dig a deep hole there, like you did with entrepreneurs, or you can go and you can dig a couple more shells until you find another place that you want to go and explore and mine more. So yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think it's really important to be clear about who the people are more than what the people are

Well, and, you know, I, I became frustrated with entrepreneurs, very camp, you know, I saw that they weren't any different than than anybody else, really. You know, you know, most of them are, are praising through life. They're not thinking very deeply about their life. They're probably happy they're an entrepreneur. But, you know, playing at their full potential isn't necessarily who they are, you know. And I guess the more I go into this, the more I see it's really a spiritual thing, and, and I've been been lately, very aware of the spiritual component where, you know, first of all, you can recreate yourself, literally recreate yourself with intention. Because whatever, whoever you are today, was created from a confluence of factors that were oftentimes have very haphazard you know you are created intentionally. You know your parents had a parenting style that oftentimes is not really intentional from their standpoint, certainly not intentional from your standpoint. But you know you also had things in your life that has happened to you, good and bad. You know that has happened haphazardly. But you know, the beauty about this is, why not? Whatever age you are go, I'm just going to recreate myself. I'm just going to take a blank sheet of paper and I'm going to figure out the ideal me, and I'm going to put it on this template, and then I'm going to feed it to myself every day. And after 21 days, that ideal you that you created with the conscious mind becomes who you have become, because you're feeding that to the subconscious mind, the doing. I mean, it's, it's profoundly simple, right?

Yeah, this is really important, as it ties back to the topic of discussion for today, which is, it's that your subconscious mind is either your greatest ally or adversary here, right? Right? I think many people will come to this realization. They'll they'll hear this knowledge, and they'll think all those things you said, Maybe this isn't for me, because of XYZ things that had happened to me, or what I'd say to people having gone through that same grappling, going through, you know, am I? Am I in the 2% is that for me? I think the fact that you the way you describe it was, it's a blank page. I think about it like a blank canvas. Wherever you are today is right where you were supposed to be. Yeah, everything that has happened to you so far has led you to this moment, and at that moment, you have a blank canvas with which you decide what you do. It's not about are you in the 2% so far? You're like you get to choose in that moment, are you in the 2% right? And start to paint the canvas that will become your future, right? Right? And in so doing, if you don't make that choice, you're you are, in an effect, making a different choice. Yeah, by not choosing to try and get your 95% working for you, you are choosing to allow it to continue to work against you. You are seceding in the war, so to speak, right? And that choice is what defines you as 2% or not, right? Right? Think about that. Well,

I sort of have a feeling that if you said to a person, is it you that you've is it really at your core who you are to play at your full potential? People are either they may, you know, oftentimes they'll tell you what they think is political correct to say. But you know that either resonates with them or it doesn't, you know. And I would say that that does not resonate with 98% of the people, give or take, which is fine, yeah.

And what's interesting is, you know, you said you got frustrated with entrepreneurs. I don't know the statistics on this, of course, but I gotta imagine, it's 98% no matter what demographic exactly I learned, there's probably like an underlying bias to say, because you were an entrepreneur and you are in the 2% then there must be a high more two percenters, so to speak, In the entrepreneurial that are entrepreneurs, but I don't know if that's true. I think if you zoom out far enough and you look at the population as a whole, it's got to normalize right around that same number. And I agree with you, it's going to hit some people. It doesn't matter who they are or what they've done so far, it's going to hit them right away. They're going to know in their in their soul, whether or not this is going to resonate with them well.

And, you know, it's, it's interesting. I've been teaching this for 10 years. So, you know, the essence of it is, I applied it to myself for for 10 years, and created the, you know, blessed life I have. And then I had enough money, so I didn't have to work, have work. And then I, you know, met the president and and Chancellor at the University of Texas, and he says, Hey, come teach us at Texas, and we'll teach it together. So that, that story, that journey, 10 years ago, and you know, the F today, just yesterday. I'm super into this, because I. Finished out my book, and so I wanted to make sure everything is exactly the right. Like, damn. Why did it take 10 freaking years to get to where I am right now and and now, I see it a lot more clearly in that and this will be helpful to you as you share this with the world. You know, the first two or three years was just making it work on other people, you know, it, document it and and all that. And then, you know, for two or three more years, I'm like, okay, how am I going to bring this to the world? I'd sort of like to have a partner with it, because I'm not driven monetarily anymore. It's going to be good if I have a partner. Is this more driven than I am? Because I'm just I'm want to advance my methodology, but I also want to enjoy life. And of course, now the methodology is an obsession that I love. But you know, then it was like, okay, find a partner, and how am I going to bring this to the world? Is it going to be an online course? Is it going to be book? Is, you know, what's it going to be? And that took me a couple of years, and I, I originally got met Kelly, and we created an online course. Okay, great. Here we go. And then we're like, okay, so who's now the target market? We're thinking, Well, you know, logically, it would be entrepreneurs. We're entrepreneurs only, you know, a small handful are making over a million dollars a year, and they all want that. So let's go after that group of, you know, entrepreneurs like in EO as sort of the perfect, you know, grounds for entrepreneurs. And so we do that for a couple of years, and you know, a couple of things come up. One is that most of them are not that driven. We're like, wow, we're driven, but most of them are not. And, you know, we got clients from it. We give them back, money back, guarantee that we'll double their income. And we're like, What is wrong with you? People? Give you a money back guarantee that we're getting double your income, and we're applying the simple concept of thought over the world on success to your life. Me, what's wrong? Well, you know, again, we I didn't understand who the real market was, you know. And so the universe was telling me, Okay, John, you don't get it yet, but keep on being frustrated. And then, you know, it became, Oh, I see has nothing to do, just like what you've said with their occupation, it's who they are as a person. And then, you know, I'm like, Oh, okay. And then I also saw that before I could really get to this place that I feel blessed to be at now, I had to create the AI algorithm for a couple reasons. One is to make it super simple to apply the methodology, but to really take it in a big way to this world, you need, I think that that hook of whatever the the main topic in the world is, and today, that is AI and, and then the puzzle pieces sort of really came together when I saw, Oh, okay, I now see it's a book. It's a podcast with the same name, missing secret. And, you know, then go on the giant podcasts that have a billion plus listeners, and it all sort of feeds together, and, you know, that's how this will unfold to the world. And so now, when I think about that explanation, I'm like, Oh, now I see why it's taking 10 years. You know, it's, yeah,

I think it was a test. And I would say that a lot of people get hung up on this idea of clarity, that they need to have clarity to act. But in fact, clarity is built over time through action. Yeah, like it's almost like you have to take the foggy path. You have to walk into the fog willingly and stumble in there to find your way to eventually come out the other side with clarity, which is what you've just described, but people see others that have clarity, and they think, how can I get from here to there? And they all they see is the fog in between. And so they don't, they don't jump in.

I don't, I don't think you know when I pitch this to people and explain it, I don't expect them to have any understanding of what what I mean by clarity regarding you create the the ideal view that you know exactly the person you want to be, exactly what you want to accomplish and how you're going to achieve your goals. I don't expect you to have any clarity about that. I've been working on that clarity for 20 years. So. So I've got it in the template. All you got to do is answer questions.

So that's the thing. I think when people come into this methodology, I think there's probably initial hesitation that you have to have the clarity before, but most people haven't thought about this before. Yeah, haven't thought this deeply. You had mentioned that being a deep thinker is one of those three core attributes, right? Most people, even if they are a deep thinker, they haven't really thought about this, at least not in a structured way. And so what you've done with the template is you've given a structure that people can operate within. And one thing that I believe is that you can't iterate what you haven't started, yeah, and so when people start, and starting is the daunting part. You have lots of inertia in the comfort zone where you currently are right. Your 95% has put you there your entire life. But then in very rapid sequence, you can learn, if you're listening to this podcast, you have learned, and are learning that 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. So now that you know that forgive yourself for everything that has happened in the past. And even Kelly talked about that about a month ago on the podcast as well, where it was like, for me, it was like a weight was lifted, because all of a sudden, and I'm not saying I was, like, making excuses for myself, but all of a sudden, it helped to explain why I was losing at life in the in weird and inexplicable ways. All of us, I was like, Oh my gosh, there's a very clear scientific reason why? Then I had to forgive myself. But then, even once you've done that and now you're staring at that blank canvas, the task of recreating yourself from scratch is very, very daunting, even now that you have this knowledge.

And so why is it daunting? If I tell you that I got a template that all you got to answer is 50 questions.

But that's the thing, it's you have helped to give people the push to break the inertia. People have been stuck in that comfort zone for so long, right? They need an external force to act on them, to push them and get that momentum going right. And the idea that you would So, what I'm saying is the idea that someone would have to create it from scratch would be enough of an external force to keep them in the comfort zone, the fear of even trying to undertake something like that people might and to be clear, going and reading a book about it is still staying in the comfort zone right now, going and taking action and really building this clarity and filling out the template, answering those questions, starting to read it every day. Even, what I would say is, even after completing the questions and getting the template, you are nowhere near complete, but you are 1% of the way there, and now you can iterate, because you have started, and now you have momentum, and by reading it every day, you continue to build that momentum. And maybe those first couple of days, you're just barely slowly creeping along. That second week, you start to pick up a little bit of speed. And then, lo and behold, around that third week, now you have some real speed going, and your brain starts to feed you things, and it has never fed you before. And for me, that's my experience of that was around week four. I think I messaged you, and I said, I gotta rewrite this whole thing. What I have all these thoughts, have all these ideas, they're coming to me. I started keeping notes of all the different things that I thought I might want to change in my visualization. And I started to just try and plug and play them. And then I realized I gotta just start over. And so I kept your framework, but I had to turn it into my own words, yeah, and I would have never been able to get to that point, to get to that level of clarity, if I hadn't just started with all the framework and everything that you had already built.

Yeah, yeah. That's that's a very good point. That's a very good point. Well, you know, either, to wrap this up, I think your comment about your subconscious mind is either your greatest asset or your greatest challenge. And and thing you got overcoming in life is is so true, because you know, once you get that, that fundamental thing that 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious, once you actually get that your life is never the same. And you know, I love your comment about forgiving yourself, you know, I see that I I'm just living my life the best I can, the most enlightened way I can, and if I make mistakes, then that's okay. Evidently, I needed to make that mistake. So I learned, learn another lesson, you know, but, but once you start playing the game the life at a higher level by, you know, feeding the safety articulation of your life to yourself each day, it's a whole new ball game. And that's the thing I would leave us with today. And this is what I would say to you as you you you share this with the world is it's an actual way of doing life. I don't see anything in the success of human achievement field today that is an actual way of doing life, that you step by step do this, and certainly not anything that takes 12 minutes a day, you know, and have. Science and the credibility that this has so something, think about it till next time.

Yeah, can I? Can I say one more thing on this. You had said life is never the same once you learn this, but I would say life is never the same if you choose for it to not be the same. I think that's at the core of all of this, which is that you need to self select right in the 2% because the self selection, choosing to be that type of person, is what makes you the 2%

But if you're in the 2% and you you've got to play at your full potential, and you learn that 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. I don't know that it's a choice. I mean, it's like, Well, I gotta do this. I don't even have a choice. And if, if it feels like a choice, then probably playing at your full potential is, is not who you're at and you're, you're in the 98% and it's not for you. Goodbye there.

Yeah. I guess now that you said it out loud, I felt very much like I had no choice. You're right, so I hadn't considered that. If it feels like you have to force yourself into it, then maybe that makes you in the 98% hadn't thought about it, but I'll think about it some more for our next next conversation. How about that?

Yeah, yeah. I tell you one thing you'll learn. You'll get very comfortable with it being okay if somebody's not, then the 2% you know, you just love those two percenters. So but until next time, we'll see it.