Hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Brandon Epstein on the line and
he is a mental performance coach.
We dive into all things mental performance, cognition, how to
have the right mind state and just overcome obstacles in life,
how to reprogram your brain. He wrote a book called Program
to Fail, How to breakthrough your mental block and achieve
greatness. I'm going to be getting a copy
of that and listen to that as a train.
I am not very good at proactively doing like things
that improve my mental mind, my mind state and just like
relaxation, recharging. I'm just kind of like a go, go,
go non-stop kind of person. So I would totally benefit from
something like this. I enjoyed chatting with them.
We did like a, an in person live moment of meditation here with
myself as the example therapy session on the spot here with
the podcast. That was pretty interesting.
I enjoyed it. So without further delay, sit
back, relax, enjoy our conversation with Brandon
Epstein. We are live Brandon.
How are you, brother? I'm doing excellent.
Happy to be here with you. Very grateful to hopefully share
some Nuggets of wisdom with your audience today and move them
forward towards their goals. I'm excited to be chatting with
you, man. So I, I talk about mindset quite
a bit on the podcast. I feel like everybody that
listens to my show, I mean, it resonates with them, but I, I
can't say that I've had anybody on the podcast that is a
specific mindset coach per SE. So I'd love to kind of dive into
that as a profession. Like what?
What does that entail exactly? Yeah.
And, you know, I'm a a mental performance coach, which, you
know, you ask different mental performance coaches what they do
and they could tell you a lot of different things because it's an
umbrella for a lot of different modalities.
But ultimately, our job is to move you from A to B.
You tell us that you're right here.
We have the baseline from where you're starting.
We want to make sure that you achieve your goals.
So usually the people who would hire a mental performance coach
are high achievers. I work with a fair amount of
professional athletes, business owners, entrepreneurs, artists,
people who are really driven to create specific outcomes in
their life. It's definitely not a passive
thing because Immense performance coach is gonna ask
you to go deep into the depths of what drives you and uncover
what is holding you back so you can reclaim the energy to propel
you forward. I love it.
I would imagine doing that as
profession and working with other people and moving them and
propelling them forward. It would be, it would be
sensible that you would have had to undergo some type of
cognitive transformation yourself in order to not have
this sense of, you know, being hypocritical or imposter
syndrome and working with other people.
So I'm assuming you've got a pretty, pretty cool origin
story, man. Yeah, absolutely, man.
You know, I played football in college and that's really what
brought me down the path of studying the mind and mental
performance because I was struggling with anxiety and low
self esteem and low confidence and I didn't play at all my
freshman year. And so after that season I was
looking for solutions. I was like, I want to get on the
the field. You know, the most fun part is
playing the games, not just going to practice.
So it sent me on a spiritual journey to learn what was
holding me back from playing my best and getting on the field
and thriving and achieving a lot of my goals in my sport.
And so that spiritual journey, if you will, brought me to a
place where I started to learn about meditation, learn about
energy training, learning about hypnosis, learning about neuro
linguistic programming, learning about all different mental
techniques that were helping me on the field.
And then what I enjoyed most about this whole transformation
I was undergoing was sharing these tools with my teammates.
So my athletic trainer called me the, the guru, which I don't
know if it's a great thing for a, a 19 year old kid to be
called a guru, but nonetheless, that was my, my name.
And so I would, guys would come to me and I'd help them move
through their issues physically, emotionally and mentally.
And ever since then, I was 16 years ago, I've been on this
path of bringing these tools to people.
So I did it in the research setting in university.
After that I went out and started meditation app company,
started getting my workout to a lot of people through then.
And then just over the years been able to build out a
clientele base where I built my own business using these tools
actually in the fitness space and and got a lot of traction
there. And then came back and, and
really settled into doing one-on-one work where I work
with guys from the UFC, boxing, NFLMLB, much all the the major
sports and I bring it to them. But I've always been my number
one client and once something works for me, I try to to bring
it to others and make sure they can benefit as well.
I love it, man. Was there a point that you felt
like incredibly down or stuck and then you had to dig your way
out of that? Or was it more so a matter of
you knew you weren't operating at your full capacity, so that
was just a journey to figure out how to improve from where your
current position was and then just the compounding effect of
that quest of improvement over time became what you are now?
Yeah, Now there is definitely a big inflection point.
There was a couple of really big inflection points for me.
One was like, I was never exposed to entrepreneurship or
business owners. And so I started this meditation
app company with my buddy and, you know, it worked OK in the
beginning at 22 years old, like we're making a few $1000 a month
and I just assumed it would keep scaling and that wasn't the
case. And so you know, my spending, I
previously outspent my income and ended up in a massive amount
of debt and actually had to sublet my apartment in the
United States and move down to South America and move down to
managing Colombia to dig myself out of this debt and hit the
reset button on my life. And it took me a number of years
of living down there and building my next business before
I was out of debt and I was able to get back into doing what I
love, which is this one-on-one coaching stuff.
So that was definitely like a period of, of darkness.
But at the same time I had to go through that to put all these
tools I teach to people into practice and say like whether
you're a professional athlete or a business owner or any type of
high achiever with a lot of pressure, these tools work.
And so I was able to build a 7 figure business from being
$80,000 in debt using these tools.
And so I, it gave me some credibility.
So when I started to make my way out to doing the one-on-one
practitioner work again, you know, I had a little bit of that
experience of what it's like to go through the darkness,
overcome it, and come back into the light again.
When you were in Columbia, did you feel like you were a failure
or did you feel like, hey, this was just a chapter that I'm in,
but I know this is not what defines me.
Yeah, I think even at that time, a lot of it was unconscious to
me of like how bad my subconscious beliefs were.
And this is a part of my journey was, you know, I was he's taking
a lot of conscious techniques. Like most people.
You know, you, you meditate, you do affirmations, you journal,
you listen to motivational speeches.
And those things will really only get you so far.
Because what I uncovered later on, and yeah, I definitely felt
terrible about myself, you know, when I had to basically go down
to South America with my tails between my legs and go try to
start my life over again. But I wasn't even conscious of
the suffering that I was undergoing until a few years
later when I came back to the USI went through an awakening
experience. And through this, an awakening
experience, I had an ego death. And in that ego death, it
facilitated me going through all the programming that I hold in
the subconscious level and uncovering everything I believe
to be true about myself, about other people, about the world.
And that's really, really uncovered the core of the
suffering that I had and what was holding me back financially,
emotionally in my career and uncovering all these terrible
things I believe about myself that literally had programmed me
to fail in the 1st place. And once I started to uncover
those and reprogram them, it like a light bulb went off over
my head. It's like, oh shit.
Like I was programmed to fail and I was going to live in these
cycles of suffering until I changed things.
And that was, you know, a huge motivation for me writing this
book was to give this to people. It's literally a playbook for
how they can do this for themselves.
And anyone could do this right now.
Just look at the different buckets of your life.
You know, one to 10, how happy are you?
How peaceful are you, right? Your mental well-being where you
at 1:00 to 10:00, your physical health, how satisfied are you
with that? One to 10, your career, how
satisfied are you with what you actually do?
Not how much money you make, but what you do every day.
One to 10. Your finances, one to 10.
Your relationships, your romantic relationship, one to
10. Your tribe, one to 10.
Your work relationships, one to 10.
I guarantee you that if you give any of those areas those buckets
a low score, it's because you've been programmed to fail in that
area. And so it's not to put yourself
in a victim mode. It's actually for you to become
the victor and take over control of your life and understand
that, OK, these results are a byproduct of poor programming.
So if I want to change my outcomes in my life, I need to
change the core programming to create a different result.
And a lot of that is totally subconscious to us.
And you don't really hear much about, at least I don't, I'm not
in your wheelhouse, but I, I don't seem to hear as much about
the subconscious conditioning as you do, you know, like, like
the, the components that we all hear everyday, like the
journaling, the, the meditation, things of that nature.
So like if you were to line up all the the actual actions one
can take to improve their mind state, I would imagine that
doesn't give you the attention it deserves.
Yeah, I, I think it's, it's coming on stronger over the
years. And of course, you know,
there's, there's nothing new under the sun, right?
This thing's, these can come in cycles.
And so I'm sure for thousands of years people understood that
this is what was necessary to live in a, a clear inner planet.
So my sense they called it, which means that like you have a
clean and clear inner world. So you close your eyes and you
just feel good when you're present.
Like it's obvious, like the Kingdom lives within, so if you
have a bunch of chaos there beneath the surface, it's going
to give you a lot of negative thoughts.
And that's why on average, people have 80% negative
thoughts and 95% of those thoughts are repeated every day.
We're just running the same programming over and over again,
and it's perpetuating suffering. And so that's why we have the
obesity epidemic. It's the same thing, 'cause you
ask anyone who's overweight, they're not going to tell you.
Oh yeah, I just, I want to be overweight.
No, of course not. So you're like, OK, well I'll
tell you exactly what to do, right?
Eat these foods or eat in a calorie deficit or move your
body consistently. It's not that they don't have
the willpower to do. It's 'cause they are programmed
to fail in that area of their life.
Subconsciously, they believe there's more suffering on the
other side of doing the Ellis actions than it is to stay where
they are. Or they subconsciously just
don't believe it's possible, right?
Some people don't believe they can afford to eat healthy.
As long as you believe that you can't afford to eat healthy, you
won't eat healthy because your subconscious deletes de sorts
and generalizes any information. And that's why someone else, you
know, you got someone come up to you and be like, oh, yeah, I
just lost 40 lbs. I did this diet.
Whatever you be like, oh, must be nice.
But you know, I'm a single mom and it's impossible for me to
lose weight. So whatever you believe to be
true, you'll reinforce and make true.
And so if you look at any area of your life, it's like you've
struggled to lose weight. If you struggle to make more
money, if you struggle with romantic relationships, if you
struggle with your own Peace of Mind, it all is going to track
back to your inner programming. And you're right, you don't hear
about this nearly as much as you should.
And it's because what are we doing here?
We're taking back control. And I'm not conspiracy theorist,
but I would say that over the history of humankind, there's
been powers that don't want us to be fully in control and in
ownership, right? That's the whole movement
against masculinity right now. Well, what is a masculine man?
Masculine man is physically dominant and self reliant and
emotionally intelligent. We'd that's not what you want
because that man cannot be easily controlled.
So it's all, in my opinion, it's all constructs of control to
keep us just thinking that in the future we'll get there and
that we can actually have the peace and joy and love in our
life in the present moment 'cause that's what these tools
give you. They give you the opportunity to
create heaven on earth here in the present and the now.
Yeah, no, I love that man. So like if you're if you're
working with somebody and they come to you, like what would be
your ideal, you know, Avatar? Like, are they coming to you
just frustrated with where they're at in their current, you
know, day and age and they're wanting to go?
Do they know where they want to go or do you help them figure
that out? Yeah.
Well, I'm gonna give us an opportunity to take two paths
here. You probably won't want to take
the one path. Don't want to present it to you
anyway. You could tell me right now the
biggest issue you're facing in your life.
I could solve it for you, and I can show people in real time how
to do it. Or we can do a hypothetical and
I could just give you an example what I would do with someone.
Hey man, I like doing hard pass, give it to me.
OK, so close your eyes, take a deep breath in through your nose
and everyone is listening to this.
If you're not driving, I highly recommend you do this as well
because you're going to get a real experience of the coaching
here and now you're going to be able to do it right now just
like Robert is. So go ahead and breathe in and
on the exhale, let your shoulders drop and relax away
from your ears. And I want you to feel, and part
of the magic of what I can do and being a skilled practitioner
is I can feel the energy in your body.
So I'm feeling like there's a little bit of subtle.
There's just like a little subtle anxiety in the upper
stomach, the sloreplex. It's kind of in the background.
It's like, yeah, I'll deal with that later.
Totally like that. Don't have to deal with it.
It's some bullshit. Can you feel that?
You know what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, always.
Yeah, so go ahead and sit in the middle of that.
Feel it in the body because what you guys are going to understand
is this isn't a mental thing, even though I call myself a
mental performance coach. It's a it's a physical body
thing. And so feel into that in the
middle. And I want you to feel that
feeling of anxiety sitting in the middle of it.
And I want you to ask yourself, what am I believing to be true
in this moment? It's making me feel anxious.
There's a lot of things that I'm believing that cause anxiety
right now. The first one that's connected
not from your head, don't go to the head story but stay in the
feeling and the solar Plex of the anxiety there feel that sit
right in the middle of it. It should feel so overwhelming
you have to blurt it out. OK what do you believe in me
true that's make you feel so anxious right now.
Boom, go to it. Man, I'm just juggling so many
things right now, so many things with the business, so many
things with the family, so many things in life.
And I feel like I'm spread so thin that they're they're,
they're not operating at the capacity that I want them to.
And everything I'm doing, I love doing, but I'm just spread too
thin right now. Yeah.
And so there's a two sides of this, right?
Like there's a we can acknowledge like the rational
side and try to chunk down the tactics of your life.
But where I like to go is the irrational side, which is almost
seems too obvious for this to clear the issue for you.
But this is actually it. What's causing the anxiety is
right now you're believing you're not doing enough.
Yeah. Can you feel that?
And rationally like, you know, you're doing so much, but the
feeling of I'm not doing enough actually comes from like you see
all these buckets in your life and you want to fill them all up
10 out of 10 and crush in every area.
But the feeling of not I'm not doing enough is like, well, I'm
spread too thin, so I can't fill all the buckets like I want to
and give them what I know is possible, what I really want for
them. So the visceral feeling in the
body, the body's going, I'm not doing enough.
Can you feel that? All right, so I want you to sit
until solar plexus feel that feeling of I'm not doing enough.
I just want you to accept your way through it.
And so you're just going to feel that feeling in your solar plus
and you're just going to accept it and be like, yeah, fuck it,
I'm not doing enough. And I want you to hear you say
it out loud. I'm not doing enough.
Yeah, let me know when you've
accepted that. I've accepted it.
And I want you to visualize with your eyes closed and anyone
who's doing this with me and whatever's come up for you, I
want you to do this for this as well.
Visualize the time out of your life, stretch out in front of
you. Everything to the rights in the
future. We never get there, right?
The future is always an illusion because the time, the future, we
get to the future, it's the present.
So the future is not real. It's in the future.
So left's the past, it's already dead.
We don't have time machines. Once it goes into the past, it's
gone, has no control over you. So the only thing that's causing
this feeling of anxiety right now is this belief that lives in
the present moment. It's big, it's huge, it's
weighty right in front of you. I want you to see it like a
cloud of energy that says I'm not doing enough.
And everywhere you go, it just follows you around, follows you
around. It's like I have all these
commitments, but I'm not doing enough.
Oh, fucking it hurts and it doesn't feel good in the solar
Plex. I want you to feel it, feel it,
feel it, feel it all the way. Let it almost overwhelm you.
I want you to breathe in deeply through your nose.
Exhale. And a powerful wind is gonna
move from right to left and it's gonna pick up this cloud of
energy that represents I'm not doing enough.
We're gonna move it to the left, to left, to left, the left all
the way into the pass. And the second it goes into the
pass, you're gonna find that you're in the void at the
present moment, just in the nothingness, in the now, in the
eternal now, sitting deep into the now.
Nothing's here, nothing's here, nothing's here, nothing's here.
Just flying through time and space in the present.
What's the opposite of your not doing enough?
I'm doing everything. I'm doing more than enough.
How about that? Yeah, all right.
Not. Necessarily about doing
everything, not doing enough. The opposite, because what we're
doing is we're alchemizing energy.
We're transmitting it to. The opposite is I'm doing more
than enough, right? Not enough becomes more than
enough. So why don't you repeat after
me? I believe I'm doing more than
enough. I believe I'm doing more than
enough. Breathe in deeply through your
nose. Exhale.
Feel this energy move down through your head, your neck,
your shoulders, your upper arms, your lower arms, your hands,
your fingers, down through your upper back, your chest, your
lower back, your stomach, your hips, your thighs, your lower
legs, your feet, and your toes. Stay here with me.
Be present for the process. There's so many people are
listening to this right now going man, I'm moving through
the same thing 'cause I never feel like I'm doing enough.
So you doing this work on yourself is you're actually
giving this medicine to everyone of your listeners who's a high
achiever, who's always pushing, who's now able to process for
themselves as well. So it's a gift for yourself and
it's a gift for your audience. And as your body settles into
this, I believe in doing more than enough.
Feel the energy moved through your body into the timeline of
your life. You remove the old energy, so
it's now replaced with this new energy that takes form there in
front of you. I'm doing more than enough.
And it just takes form there. Surround you and feel yourself
being held in this energetic aura of I'm doing more than
enough and feel yourself grounded in the middle of your
chest. And I just want you to keep
telling yourself I'm doing more than enough.
And what you probably experienced here is this is not
a mental exercise because we're not doing affirmations.
We actually just move the energy in your body.
Can you feel that? Yeah, I feel pretty good.
Can you feel the energy in in the middle of your chest now?
Yeah, I feel pretty relaxed too. Yeah.
So this is what I do for anyone I work with, is what we're doing
is we are unclogging the energy that was living in your solar
plexus called the third chakra, and we released it.
And so it moves up to your chest.
And so once we release any mental blocks we have, the only
thing that's there waiting for us is the present moment.
And we all know whether you're athlete, business over a high
chief, whoever it is parent, you're always going to be your
best in the present moment. The present moment is always
your liberation, your salvation. If you can get there, then
everything's good. There's nowhere else to get.
If you're in the present, you're already there.
And so this is the process. It's basically deprogramming all
the nonsense that creates issues for you.
Because the truth is you are doing more than enough.
And now that you believe that you're doing more than enough,
you're going to have the logical inspiration to move around the
different commitments and things you have in your life to feel an
alignment with being able to do more than enough.
And that maybe means, hey, I'm going to get rid of this.
I'm going to agree with myself. I'm going to put this in the
back burner. I'm going to limit this,
whatever it may be. Now the pathway is open for you
to be in alignment with. I'm doing more than enough.
What kind of everybody calls them, you know, KP is key
performance in the kids, but what what do you put in your
life? What kind of systems do you put
into place to have like a moment of brutal honesty as to, OK,
this is moving in the direction I want it to or it is not and
this is a very objectionable way to view it and then take action
accordingly? Yeah, I like, I like my
spreadsheets. I get in there, I track things
from week to week, month over month.
Like I track all the metrics that I feel like need to be need
to be tracked with numbers. I don't think this is necessary
for everybody, but I'll tell you my my greatest KPI that I track
is every week I give myself one of these coaching sessions.
So I coach myself and the number one number I care about is how
does it feel to be me right now? One is it feels so bad I want to
commit a suicide. And 10 is I feel completely
whole. I'm living this peak experience.
So that's the number one KPI check in with myself every week
on. That's the one I care most
about. And then beyond that, I'm just
living a conscious life. You know, I can feel if my
marriage is going well, It's very it's very obvious.
I know it's going well when there's limited drama and
there's a lot of joy and presence and peace in my
household. Same thing with my my children.
You know, I can feel my body if I feel physically well, I feel
strong. I know what it's like to go to
the gym and feel like if I have strength and I can lift tabby
and computers, right? I don't necessarily need numbers
for that. It's a feeling related for me.
That's it. Main things that I like track
for KPIs is am I doing the work to move my career forward?
So like I said, I have this book program to fail.
So every week I just check in, I see, hey, how many reviews am I
getting my book? How many book sales that I have?
What are my key actions I'm taking to try to get my book out
there? Seeing those and seeing
correlations between the things I'm doing and my ability to get
the book to a broader audience. I'm also checking in on, you
know, I run a coaching practice. So who are the people I've
connected with? Who are the people that I've
gifted coaching sessions this week?
How much, how many invitations that I make to do coaching with
me? Everything is process oriented
with me because I know if I do these things consistently I'm
gonna get to the outcome I want. Yeah, when, when you, you know,
close your eyes and ask yourself what's causing you the anxiety?
What? What's typically the answer?
Usually the only anxiety I'll feel is if I drink too much
coffee, like a real physical one.
That's that's honestly the number one.
I have young kids so it's it's not necessarily excuse, but you
have a one year old, so sometimes sleep is.
They're usually pretty good. I have a three-year old and a
one year old, but anyone knows if you're a parent, like your
sleep is not your sleep anymore. So I definitely supplement with
coffee. And so I'd say anxiety from
probably drinking too much coffee is the main one and then
secondary one, which I feel like I'm I'm just about there.
I've really removed pretty much all fear from my life.
I don't really have fear anymore.
I have discernment, but I don't have fear.
It would be will I, will I have enough?
And those are just some projects I'm working on right now, Like
I'm building a retreat center down in Columbia and it's like,
OK, well, I have enough money to build this, you know, and just,
but those are very subtle at this point.
I wouldn't say they're like big anxiety points are more just
like if there was anything like that is something that's still
in question. Yeah, that's good, man.
That's good. Tell me about this retreat.
What what is the the plans for that?
I really wanted to create a place for refuge, the high
achievers, you know, I work with a lot of, like I said, high
profile people who are very demanding lives.
I want to create a space and I already have some land in, in
the, in the jungle down there. It's just outside the city of
Metagene, but the actual lot backs up onto an eco preserve.
So it's just forest and jungle, and I wanted to have a space for
them to be able to come and disengage from everything and go
through this reprogramming, working intensive with me.
Because all it takes really just one day of digging in and I can
make incredible progress with my clients and really clean up
their inner world, bring them into a state of presence.
So I just want to do that in nature, in a place that's
disconnected from a lot of their normal commitments and
technology. And so that's the primary
reason. Secondary, I might bring groups
down there as well and, and do other retreats potentially
incorporating some plant medicines if if my clients want
to do that. But those are really my thoughts
right now. What do you think the biggest
driver of catalyst for all the noise that we have and the the,
you know, out of whack programming that we currently
face like what what is the driver for that cause?
Like if you rewind the clock back to when people were, you
know, hunter gatherers living off the land in a very tight
knit community setting, Like, sure, they had stressors there,
but not the same kind of stressors that we have now.
But it feels like their why and their presence and just their
ability to hone in on what mattered seemed to become just
more, you know, a, a default, whereas now you don't see that
unless you seek it out. What?
What is the catalyst for all that noise?
Yeah, I mean, there's there's two parts.
I think one is like we've been we've been programmed to live
with so much fear. That's a big one.
And that's just passed on from generation, generation,
generation till someone breaks with generational curses.
But biologically, those people had to deal with things that
really bought brought real fear into their life, right?
Like, are we going to have enough food?
Are we going to survive being hunted by other animals, things
of that sort? Are we going to be able to
survive these conditions? Whereas now that same biological
reflex is occurring, but it's occurring every day because
someone said something mean to you in the Instagram comment or
you saw something in your news feed that makes you feel like,
Oh no, like World War three's about to start.
We just exposed all these things that put us into this fight or
flight state that is so disconnected from a real
visceral threat. Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally. Do you have like any, you know,
like hard rules for yourself as far as you know, not consuming
certain types of content or mediums or just things to remove
that negativity from your life altogether?
Definitely, yeah. And in my book, I have this, the
second part of the book's a playbook and playbook for the
coaching I give everyone. And one of the steps in that
playbook is just to detoxify your life.
So it's just going through the state of awareness because a lot
of times you don't know what is actually driving your emotional
suffering or your lack of focus or lack of clarity.
So you have to really sit into awareness.
So what I have people do is set alarms on their phone every few
hours just to check in with them just to see, hey, how you
feeling? How does it feel to be you and
what are you focused on? You do that for one week, you're
going to notice what your triggers are.
You're going to notice. Oh, you know what, like, like I
say, you know, a lot of people, their anxiety just comes from
consuming too much caffeine and, and I definitely experience that
sometimes as well. So if you're, you might just
notice, you know what, my alarm went off at three PMI just had
my second coffee and I'm feeling super anxious.
I'm focused on, I don't have enough time to get my work done,
but it might have been from just too much simulation, right?
Or you might notice that you're feeling really sad.
And so why am I feeling sad? Oh, because I was just focusing
on something in my news feed about, you know, a genocide
happening somewhere in the world.
And so I'm just sitting here in sadness.
And so just noticing what environments, what inputs you're
putting in, how they're affecting the way you feel like
that's kind of the low hanging fruit that anyone can do very
easily before you even start doing your reprogramming work.
It's like, stop feeding yourself garbage in your in your diet.
You know, not even we're not talking about food.
It's like mental garbage. It's like things that make you
feel bad. Like why?
Why is it advantageous to focus on that?
Just clear it out, stop doing it, remove it from your life.
Yeah, no, totally in work with the people that you have,
they're like common denominators that most people tend to share
that you can just pretty much remove right off the get and go
as low hanging fruit. Even for my professional
athletes, I tell them that they really shouldn't be on social
media 'cause their contracts are so big that any marketing dealer
they're going to get through social media is really minimal.
Like they can just do their job. It's such a luxury.
Just do your job Well, you're never going to have to worry
about money again. So I try to tell them just you
don't need this, You know, there's really not much here for
you. It's just a distraction.
Other people, the average person, I think the big thing is
identifying the relationships in your life and which ones are
filling your cup and which ones are draining them and being OK
with moving some relationships to a maintenance mode.
Meaning like if the relationship is really toxic for you, but you
want to keep these people in your life like they're a
maintenance relationship, Maybe you're checking in with them
here and there, but they're not people that you're exposing
yourself to consistently. And then the people who are
putting you into a more inspired state or making you feel
energized and feeling good, you know, put them in your life more
and put yourself in those situations, those environments.
So the first step is really that awareness, right?
Because this is universal. I can't, I can't tell anyone
like what's going to be best for them.
Different people have different preferences, but if the
individual does these, it's going to be really blatantly
obvious, like what actions, what environments, what people are
serving them and which ones are not.
And then you just have the decision to make like do you
want to take that next step or not and and do something about
it. Yeah, no, totally, man.
What about the as far as like just routines on the front end
and the back end of the day? I feel like that, for me at
least, is pretty profound. If I start the day off right and
end the day right, then the whole day in between seems to go
much smoother. Do you have anything that you
employ on your own personal self that has had a profound impact
on you? Yeah.
I mean, going to sleep early, I think that's the the biggest one
is making sure that not staying up late and I'm going to sleep
as early as I can. And if I do that, then I don't
have to worry about setting as I don't have to worry about the
next morning because if I go to sleep earlier enough, I'm going
to be well rested. So that's the number one.
It's just good sleep hygiene. Going to sleep at an early time
as early as I can. That's a big one.
The mornings, I think getting sunlight to start the day and I
like to go outside and put my feet in the grass and just like
be exposed to the sunlight, set that circadian rhythm.
That's a huge one. So those are kind of things in
the morning for me in the evening.
The thing about the work I do is, you know, I train my
clients. I have trained myself to become
meditation. So a lot of people need to
meditate and I think meditation's a great tool, but
really my goal with my clients and my goal for myself is always
to become meditation. So I used to always meditate to
start the day, but now I am meditation.
I live in and mostly in present, so I don't need that always to
anger me. Instead, I go to meditation,
more so prescriptively. So if there's something that I
need to move through emotionally, then I'll put
myself into meditation and I'll do that work on myself, but I
don't necessarily need it to start the day.
Yeah, no, that makes sense, man. What about Stoicism?
Have you dove into that much? I'm aware of it.
I mean, I don't not a big follower of Stoicism.
It's not like I think there's probably a lot of good values
that come from them, but it's not something that I use as like
a guiding philosophy for my life.
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.
Well, what about you kids, man? Like you've got a three and a
one year old. I've got a 2 year old just
turned 2. And, and knowing what you know
now and kind of working with the high performers that you have
and seeing what, what causes people's stress duress, anxiety,
like how is that shaped how you interact with them from a
parenting standpoint so that they hopefully don't aren't
plagued with that same type of anxiety.
And just like the interactions like that y'all have, What are
you trying to bring into that from a parenting standpoint?
I'm curious. Yeah, first and foremost, you
know, kids don't do what we say. They just model who we are.
So it's always just being aware of of myself.
Like I want to bring a high frequency, good emotional energy
and just not be reactive, just be present for my kids because
that is literally the programming I'm sharing with
them because kids get programmed mostly between zero and seven
years old. Like those are the primary
programming years. So from zero to seven, it's the
absolute most important time to protect and feed them with the
right inputs. And so you know, the number one
way to do that is who you are and, and how you are with them.
So for me, the biggest thing is continue to do my own work.
So I'm not reactive like, and I'm very happy to say that I can
do that. Like my kids don't trigger me.
Like they, they could say or do whatever they want.
Like I'm a whole person. So, you know, my kid calls me a
name or, or whatever. Like I'm not, there's no wound
there that they can, they can hurt, you know, that's going to
make me react a certain way. Or if they act super crazy for
me, it's just a matter of fact. It's like, OK, well, let's not
do that. And I'll enforce whatever
discipline needs to be enforced in that moment, but it's not a
emotional thing for me. So that's a big thing.
Just doing the work on yourself so you don't have to try to be
stoic like you are. It's just who you are.
You just approach life from a present matter of fact conscious
way. That's huge.
And and that way you can create the space for your children for
them to fully express themselves and feeling safe in that.
I think that's huge. Think so many of us in a young
age, we start to self suppress who we really are and how we
want to be in the world because whether you know, it makes a, a,
a parent feel uncomfortable and they want to kind of be like,
hey, quiet, not so much, be less.
You're too much. So I try to allow my kids to be
as much of who they are and not suppress any of it and just
fully allow it to unfold. And of course there's boundaries
and there's discipline there to make sure that they're safe and
they can fit into whatever setting that we're in.
But in general, just letting them express and explore
themselves in a way without making them wrong.
Yeah, I think you're not being reactionary in a negative sense.
Is is key to, I feel like so many kids, they have bad
memories and they're upbringing, you know, spawned from an
overreacted parent. And I feel like if the parent
can just simply explain why they feel a certain way as a result
of their action, and the kid can comprehend that, that would be
monumental. Yeah, and especially at the age
that our kids are at, because, you know, they don't really
appeal to the rational mind yet. So like, if you're being
irrational, like that's the most irrational thing you possibly do
because this human is not like, you know, they're not.
You can't reason with them. You just have to hold.
You have to sit in attention to hold the space of these are the
boundaries. This is what's OK.
This is what's not OK. And I'm not going to try to
convince you of something through my emotion or my
rationality. I'm just going to hold the
presence of These are the boundaries, stay within them.
Yeah, no, 100%, man. It's, it's pretty rewarding.
Like it makes you having kids, at least for me, forces you to
be more present because like you just, I don't know, you have a
deeper understanding and appreciation for how finite time
really is. And as you see them grow older,
like, you just recognize that you're missing out if you aren't
present in those moments. 100%, yeah.
It's a blessing, isn't it? Just grounding and really forces
you, like you said, into the present.
And some of it, I guess actually you asked about like, I think we
talked about fear. The only play other place is
like, yeah, like my oldest, she's a wild kid.
So like she'll do things that could be really physically
unsafe for her. And so sometimes I think that's
another place where fear, fear will come up, right?
Like she'll go up to the top of the monkey bars if you let her
and maybe jump off in a way that could break her arm.
It's like, let's not do that, you know, That could be fearful
for for me as a parent because I wanna protect her.
No, totally man, totally. That's that's the thing.
As parents you just like you're you're called to protect and
like the the fear and anxiety is not your own so much it is those
that you care and protect for. Yeah, no doubt.
You mentioned plant medicine at your potential retreat in the
future. What?
What is what is that until exactly this is a I've had a few
people on the podcast that have dove into that topic and it's
interesting. There seems to be like multiple
points of view as to, you know, using that as a therapy for
recognizing one's current state of mental affairs, how to
breakthrough that, reprogramming things.
Just curious to get your thought, your thoughts on it
all. Yeah, absolutely.
I think that there's so many out there and if you're meant to do
one, it's gonna call to you. It's gonna show up in your life
in a really organic way where you're gonna be like, yeah, I
think this is right for me. It's not gonna be anything that
feels forced. Like, it may sound funny, but
these plants all have spirits. So they're spiritual beings, if
you will, connected to them. And so they're calling you in.
And if you're supposed to do them, you're gonna hear the
call. And so for me, my favorite one
right now, it's called Acacia. And it's from, if you, if
anyone's read the Bible, the the burning Bush, you know, Moses
was tripping out on Acacia. That's the burning Bush that has
DMT in it. And so Acacia gives you an
experience of transcending your normal conscious ways of
thinking by yourself and allows you to just take a microscope
right to the area of your life that you need to deal with in a
real visceral way. And it's very kind.
It's a, it's a sweet, it's a gentle plant.
I think it's going to be one that is getting a lot more
recognition in the in the world in, in the coming years because
there's ones out there right now that, you know, I'm not going to
talk bad about one plant medicine versus another, but
there's just a lot more suffering involved with some
versus other ones. This seems to me to be the most
intelligent plant medicine that I've come across where it it's
calling in a lot of high achievers.
People have done a lot of work on themselves already.
And you don't have to come and just suffer a bunch.
Instead, you can have an experience with this plant
medicines four or five hours where it's you can ask her a
question. You'd be like, Hey, help me deal
with this. I want clarity around this.
I'm dealing with this emotional issue.
I want to move through it. And it's just like the you will.
It's like the most wise coach, therapist, practitioner you
could ever work with because it has interdimensional wisdom to
pull from. And so a lot of these things,
when you start to have these conversational podcasts that
like transcends a rational mind, who, you know, someone who's
never had experience, it'll say interdimensional.
What are you talking about? But yeah, I mean, the fact of
the matter is like, there's not just one dimension.
You know, you can move through our, you know, world that we
live in here and you can go to other spaces and there's other
beings that live there and you can get wisdom from them and,
and bring it back and apply it to your own life in actual ways.
Do you feel like there's a, a downside to seeking exogenous
aid in doing that deep work or is it something that we should
be able to do, you know, solely internally?
I think that probably anything has potential for abuse, right?
But these are things that you don't really feel like doing
compulsively if you're really listening to the call, the ones
that are calling you forward, like there's going to be growth
there on the other side of them. But I would say definitely find
a practitioner that has a lot of experience and can can be a good
guide on your journey. Because, yeah, if you go to
someone who's inexperienced with whatever plant medicine that
you're getting into and they're not holding a good place, they
don't have the right set and setting for you, it could go
down the wrong path. And so just building a lot of
trust with the practitioner and the setting you're going to be
in and a lot of high levels of safety, and I think you'll be
all right. But, you know, like anything,
there's, there's a small degree of risk because you're entering
into the unknown. And so if you have, yeah, if
you're bringing a lot of fear into that experience, then
you're going to have to move through that fear.
And that might not be comfortable, but ultimately it
probably will be best for you. So I can't answer your.
Question. Now that makes sense.
That makes sense, man. Well, apart from the the retreat
in Columbia, what else has got you excited, man?
You got another book coming out? When?
When did this one go live? This one came out back in
October, but I had a little hiccup.
It got taken down off Amazon for a month or so.
So we're kind of building momentum back up around it once
again. That was kind of cut off.
But yeah, this is the main intention because I'm very
blessed now to get to work with some really cool people at the
one-on-one level. But a passion of mine is to get
this out to more people because it's just knowledge should be in
the hands of everyone. I just want everyone to
understand that if you feel like you're stuck, like you keep
running up into this invisible wall or invisible ceiling, there
is a reason. Like it's not random.
This universe is truly divine to where everything has a purpose.
And so if there is a blockage there, it was formed out of
survival. It was formed for your best
interests, as hard as that is for someone to hear.
Because let's take an example of someone who believes, someone
who really wants to be in an an amazing romantic relationship.
But right now they believe that all men or all women are
cheaters. Like, you may think to yourself
like, well, that's a terrible thing to believe to be true, and
they're going to make that true as long as they believe to be
true. But that's a defense mechanism
that came from this person. Probably.
Maybe they saw their mom or dad was a cheater and then when they
were a teenager, they were cheated on.
And then in their early 20s, they were cheated on.
So it's just a defense mechanism that's there to make sure they
don't get cheated on again. And So what people have to
understand is that if you keep running into this invisible wall
and you're having this experience of like, I can't lose
weight, I can't get a good romantic relationship.
I can't make the money I want to make.
I can't get ahead of my career. I can't have Peace of Mind.
There is just a, there are just pieces of code that take the
form of beliefs that are blocking you from seeing the
path forward. Because what our beliefs do is
they delete, they distort or they generalize all the
information that comes in, right?
We see here, smell, taste and touch the world around us.
And then it runs down through our programming.
And our programming is in the form of beliefs.
So these beliefs are filtering all the information.
So you may have all these possibilities that you could
explore and go down, but your subconscious is just deleting
all these possibilities for you because of beliefs you're
holding. So I really want people to grasp
this concept and just start to go down that path of uncovering
like, OK, I have been blocked. I've seen this pattern.
I'm on this hamster wheel of not getting where I want to go.
Let me go deeper. Let me go beneath the conscious
surface and actually uncover what's lying beneath the
surface. And what is that program that's
blocking me and let me remove it so I can flow forward and
ultimately get to a place of peace and flow in the present
moment. And so that's the main thing I'm
doing here. I kind of get the book out to
people so they have these tools and also let people know that I
exist. A lot of people find it hard to
to fathom what I say can do for them and I want people to know
that I can help them with this type of thing.
They feel blocked as well. Like I'm a practitioner that has
a lot of experience, a lot of case studies.
You can go over my Instagram, you can see all the case studies
I have on there. People who have moved through
all types of things in their life.
It is possible. You just got to do the work.
No, I love it, man. I love it.
And what's the name of the book? It's called Program to fail.
Program to fail. You got it on Audible as well.
I do, Yep, it's on audible. It's on Kindle paperback but you
can get it on Amazon. It's the main place.
And were you the the person reading it on Audible?
I was, yeah, nice, nice working myself.
Well I will I will get me a copy man.
I I listen to audiobooks from training so I will listen to
that as my next audiobook while training brother.
Fantastic, bro. I think you'll enjoy it.
I think I'm very vulnerable in the stories that I go through, I
tell. I talk about some of my darkest
moments and so I can give people an idea of, yeah, where does the
program come from? Well, here are these different
things. I lived.
This is the program that came from it and this is a result of
those programming. And this is what happens when I
change the programming. So they can kind of see that
road map because that's Part 2 and part sorry, that's part one
of the book. And in Part 2 it's like, OK, now
we got the buy in. You hear all my case studies.
You hear my story. Do the playbook.
That's good. And I think being vulnerable,
being honest and transparent is the only way to be in life, man.
Like talking about fear and anxiety.
Like I've got things that make me anxious, things that
frustrate me, things that piss me off for sure.
But I don't have to to look over my shoulder now.
Like I don't have fear of that because I've been totally honest
and transparent with everything. So I appreciate others that do
the same. Yeah, absolutely bro.
Living in the truth, that's what it's all about. 100% man.
Every, every lie was born out of fear.
So if we live in the truth, you know, we know that at least
we're free from fear on a daily basis in regards to our
integrity and and who we are and how we're showing up in the
world. Yeah, and that is truly a
priceless thing right there. Like you cannot integrity.
I mean, you don't ever want to sacrifice that, man.
You've only got it once. Yeah, that clear conscious
feels. Feels really good.
I love it.
Well, I will definitely link out to the book.
Like I said, I will get a copy that'll literally, literally be
what I listen to this week as I'm training.
So I will listen to it on Audible and I'll link out to it
on Amazon so people can find it. And what what's your social
profiles? People can find me on Instagram
Brandon Epstein under score. You can also search for me on
YouTube, Brandon Epstein. I've got a ton of recorded
meditations on there. They're kind of like coaching
sessions, like a little bit of like what we did here today, but
apply directly to everything. I help people fall asleep, I
help people stress, anxiety, you name it.
I got meditation for just about everything you could think of on
there. So those are all free resources.
And then if anyone wants to work with me personally, they can
apply on my website, thebrandonepstein.com.
Awesome. And we'll link out to all those.
We'll check out the the guided meditations as well.
Do you still have the the meditation app too?
I don't anymore, honestly, I just didn't renew it and
republish it just because I literally put every meditation
on YouTube. So I'm like, let me just keep
all the resources free. And yeah, you don't even need
the app. It's all free on YouTube, so
there's no ads on it or anything.
It's just the easier way to get to the people.
Totally appreciate that. Well, I'll check out those for
sure, man. I, I really appreciate the time.
Brandon appreciates you being vulnerable and just talking
about the truth, man. So if there's everything I can
do for you, man, you just let me know.
Thank you, Robert. I appreciate you brother.
Appreciate you man, take care. Bye bye.