Awaken Your Greatest Self by Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with Josh Axe

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we'll be breaking down how to awaken your greatest self by overcoming limiting beliefs. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Josh Axe and the EO Fire Studios. Josh is a founder of Ancient Nutrition and Leaders.com, Inc. 5000's third fastest growing health company. He built five multimillion dollar businesses and won over 100 million. He is the author of the new book, Think This, Not That.

0:39And today, Foundation, we'll talk about overcoming a life-threatening disease while running a business, how to experience a mindset shift, three keys to success, and how to live the most meaningful life possible, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Josh and our sponsors. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point. Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions.

1:12Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch. Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts. Josh, say what's up to Fire Nation. And share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. My definite success is very much growing in character and using your skills for the greatest good. And so I think about this, I remember I wrote a book recently and I covered Steve Jobs in it. I think most people would say he is the epitome or one of those people that's the most successful people of the past 100 years.

1:53But I would actually say that one of the things that he talks about in one of his books is he mentions that he got to the end of his life and he felt like he was ostracized from his kids. He didn't have a good relationship with them. It was a big regret. And so for me, I really believe that success is not only creating a successful business, but more so it's having a successful life. And so I think making sure that our priorities are in order. For me, that's really God. And then it's my family. And then it's my health. And then it's my career. And I think also to a degree, they're all interconnected.

2:31So what I would say is when it comes to success, maybe something that not everyone would agree with would be that success is really defined by the other thing is who we become, not what we accomplish. And so most people have a to-do list. Most people are trying to say, hey, I want to go out there and build a million dollar, or$10 million, or$100 million company, but not a lot of people are thinking about who do I want to become in my character? What do I want to define me? And so to me, that really is the epitome of success is who we become. Well, Fire Nation, this is setting the table nicely for our topic today, which is all about awakening your greatest self by overcoming limiting beliefs.

3:11And Josh, you have quite the story of overcoming a life-threatening issue while running a business at the same time? And not just a business, but a really successful business. Give us the full scoop. Yeah, so this was about a year and a half ago. I went in and I run a company called Ancient Nutrition. We do about, I think we did like$150 million last year. And it's a company that myself and another successful entrepreneur, Jordan Rubin, started. And so about a year and a half ago, I went in for just a really routine procedure. I had injured my back weightlifting and it was pretty, yeah, it was, I was still squatting, deadlifting, swimming, running.

3:54But I thought if I got a stem cell injection, it would help get me back to 100%. Well, they went in, they use your body's own cells. It's completely natural. But when they went in, they made some sort of mistake and the needle must have gotten infected. And I ended up getting an infection in my disc and then it got into my bone and my vertebra run my spine and then an abscess around my spinal cord, an infection there. And I went into a doctor and he said, hey, you've got a spinal infection. And he said, best case scenario, you have pain every time bad weather rolls through. So you have permanent pain.

4:28And he said, worst case scenario, you're permanently disabled. This was a year and a half ago. And I went from being in really great shape, like I said, into that, which was so shocking. And I just decided, I said, you know what? I'm not going to receive that. I'm going to do everything I can. Just like John, you and I are entrepreneurial-minded in this way. I said, I'm going to do everything I possibly can, lay out a very specific strategy to heal. So I got in a hyperbaric chamber for two hours a day. I did several hours of IVs a day to fight infection. I ate perfectly, pretty much just meat, vegetables, and herbs and berries.

5:02And I did this protocol for quite some time. And I was able to heal from the infection. And now I don't really have any, let me say this, I have a little bit of pain, but it's almost completely gone. It should be gone by in a few months. And I did that while having a company and writing a book and actually running three companies. And I had one person tell me, asked me, he said, Hey, what did you do when you were, and by the way, I didn't walk for a year, a full year. I didn't walk. Uh, well, I didn't walk for 10 months. And then for two months, I had to be on a walker, but, but for that, for a full year.

5:38And he said, what did you do? He said, I would have just been drinking Mountain Dew and eating Cheetos. I said, well, I wrote a book. I actually went back and I said, I wanted to get a leadership degree from Johns Hopkins, went and got that and ran three businesses. All that to being said, you know, I think I've got a lot of purpose. And so I think when we're wired to know that, hey, we've got one life to live, we want to leave it all in the field, we want to do the most with the time we have. That was really my mindset. So whether I couldn't walk or I could walk, I just was very, very much wired to saying, I want to use my God-given gifts to help improve the world in some way.

6:11And I still was able to do that during that time. So anyways, that's kind of the short of the story. Now, real quick, I know that everything you did definitely did contribute to you getting to where you are today. It had benefits. But what would you say was the main ingredient? Was it the hyperbaric chamber? Was it eating clean? Was it the IV? What was the one thing if you could pick it out and say, you know, if I couldn't have had that, none of it would have been possible? Well, I'll say for me, and actually this answer might surprise some people, but it was actually my mindset. You know, I went from my whole career teaching people how to use food as medicine to realizing is I think I went through this whole process that mindset medicine is the most powerful form of medicine.

6:55You know, I started reading a lot of medical journals where it talked about how many people, the people that, you know, we all read those stories about people who went into doctors. I'm thinking about a guy like Ryan Shazier, like some of these professional players who go and have like broken backs or spinal cord injuries. And they go into their doctor, their doctor will say, you'll never walk again. And then yet they do. They beat the odds. And it's like, what's the difference between the person that does and doesn't? As I started reading these studies, there's this process called neuroplasticity where your brain can rewire nerve signals and get signals to your body in different ways and will send growth factors and stem cells and things to actually help your body heal.

7:38So what I started realizing was if you believe you're going to heal, your body will subconsciously start working out ways for it to heal, sending blood and nerve signals and creating new nerve tissue and things in order for your body to regenerate and heal. Versus if somebody doesn't do that, your body won't start moving towards that healing process. And it's not this specifically, but it's very similar to if we've heard of the placebo effect or nocebo. placebo is where you take a sugar pill you believe it's going to help something like lower cholesterol or reduce pain and it does there are many studies proving the effects of placebo effect the nocebo effect works in the same way that's where you believe there's going to be a negative outcome for instance there's this man there's a case study on this where a man was told he had liver cancer uh and he had three months to live the guy died three months later well they went into the autopsy and they realized oh we misdiagnosed him there's a little a benign tumor by his liver, but it actually wasn't going to cause any issues at all.

8:40But the man died because of it. So all that being said, I started realizing that what I believe about healing, what I believe about my future success, my beliefs impact myself more than anything. And listen, I think that these are scientific principles and you can read the medical literature on neuroplasticity and the placebo effect and your body's ability to heal and overcome many, many issues. But also, you know, this is a principle that's spiritual and supernatural. You know, the Bible talks about, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. So for me, my biggest lesson, it wasn't, now listen, I think hyperbaric chamber is amazing.

9:15I think vitamin IVs are amazing. I think cold plunging and red light bed, infrared therapy, I did all those things. I think those are all important and helpful. But I really do believe that that mindset of believing and knowing I'm going to heal. And there's a way to actually amplify the placebo effect. And that is, one, visualize that future outcome you want, the exact outcome. And by the way, this works for your health, but it also works for your business. Picture very clearly what you want. Like, John, for you and I, it's like, okay, our home is in Puerto Rico, right? We see ourselves in the beach with our families.

9:50Like, just we picture it so clearly. And then one study found that if you can really get in touch with that vision and feel the emotions, the real emotions with that, for instance, I visualize myself throwing my two-year-old daughter up in the air in the pool and having a sense of joy and just happiness and things with that. That actually helps amplify that placebo effect. And the third part of the study said, one, visualize it. Two, as I mentioned, feel the emotions. Number three, then lay out a very specific strategy on how to get there. And so that's sort of the process that I went through.

10:27Fire Nation, I hope that you're having a mindset shift right now around the power of having mindset shifts. Because Josh, again, he could have done all the right things, but had the wrong attitude, the wrong mindset. And who knows what the outcome would have been. And we're going to be talking about the three keys to success, living the most meaningful life possible when we get back from thanking our sponsors. I remember searching for the perfect CRM when I first launched Entrepreneurs on Fire. And it's tough to know which platform is going to be right for you and your business. Being in major startup mode, I wanted to choose a CRM that could keep up with my big growth goals.

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11:46Josh, we're back and you have three keys to success. Let's talk about them now. Limiting beliefs, purpose, and vision. Tell us more. I realized this. One of my biggest life lessons early on was if somebody has just literally, John, one single limiting belief, it can totally alter or even destroy their future. I'll give you an example of this. So when I was in high school, I was in freshman English class. And I had a teacher. Her name was Miss Noble. She asked me to stay after class. And so I stayed after. And she said, Josh, what do you want to do when you get older as a career? Do you plan on going to college?

12:27And I said, yeah. I said, actually, I'd like to be a doctor. And she laughed out loud at me. And she said, listen, with your current grades, you'd never get into med school. And I said, okay. She said, you know, my daughter's at Ohio State. She barely got in with a 3.8 GPA and this whole thing. And I said, okay. And she said, by the way, you got an F on this paper. You're getting a D in the class right now. And that was it. And I walked out of there. So I left that room thinking, wow, I'm not smart was part of what I took away from that. And by the way, like I wanted to be a doctor at that time because my mom had just gone through, my mom was diagnosed with cancer the year before, breast cancer, went through chemotherapy, lost her hair, was very emotionally traumatizing and thinking I wanted to help people like my mom.

13:12And so anyways, I walked out of there feeling like, well, gosh, maybe I should throw that dream away. And I'm just not smart. And then two weeks later, my mom brought me into a doctor who said, your son has ADHD. And he's talking about me while I'm in the room, like I'm not there. And I remember thinking, wow, not only am I not smart, but I'm like medically not smart. I'm not good at learning or something. So throughout high school, I barely graduated high school. I graduated with a C minus GPA. And I only graduated because I just knew my dad would be just irate if I didn't graduate high school.

13:47So I eventually went on to college. And then freshman year college, first class, I have... Actually, so here's the deal. In order for me to get into college, outside of the local community college, the school I wanted to go to, which is University of Kentucky, they had a program where they just started that year. They said, if you come and take, I think it was like three or four classes and average above a 3.0 GPA, we will admit you into the college. And so I went into school. I I went there and took summer classes. And this time I said, okay, whether I'm smart or not, I'm just going to try because I don't want to be the kid staying back at the community college.

14:30I want to go off to school. And so I went in and I tried English 101, okay, in college. And I wrote my first paper and I really tried. And then I had the teacher, literally same thing happened. She said, Josh, can you stay after class? And I thought, oh no. Okay. And she said, hey, have you thought about being an English major? And I said, no, why? She said, well, I just want to let you know you got the highest grade in the whole class on this paper. She said, you got an A. And she said, you're a really talented writer. I think you may want to consider being an English major. And I said, okay.

15:05And I literally had John what I call some sort of memory or mindset transplant in that moment because I was walking around for four years believing that I wasn't smart, I wasn't capable. And I had just one teacher then later on tell me, hey, you're a good writer. And I literally embraced that with my whole heart. And then from then on, it was like, no, I am smart. I just need to try. And so all that being said, I found that there's a lot of people who have limiting beliefs in their life that keep them from ever being successful. And just for people, so people can understand this, like if I wouldn't have overcome that limiting belief that I wasn't smart, I probably wouldn't have started.

15:46Like I've started five multimillion dollar businesses. is one, like I said, doing over 100 million a year. I graduated Johns Hopkins University, a top 10 institution with a 3.9 GPA. I went on again to become a doctor. I've written 10 books. I don't say any of this to brag. I only say those things to say, if I would have held on to that one single limiting belief and wouldn't have changed it, I wouldn't have done any of that, none of it. And so for the people listening, you've got to identify what is that thing that you believe that's incorrect about yourself maybe it's you're not smart maybe it's that you don't have the right resources maybe the world is against you maybe you believe that you know there's only so you have a scarcity mentality and believe there's only so much money you got to fight and claw and and fight everybody for it all that being said identify what that limiting belief is replace it with a new empowering belief and that will help you then experience a breakthrough.

16:43I cover this in my new book called Think This, Not That. I really go through how to overcome limiting beliefs in the step-by-step process. And then, John, the second thing you asked about was purpose. I think that for most of us, there was a study that came out pretty recently that was done by a major institution, and they found that only 25 % of people know what their purpose is. And purpose really fuels our business life and what we should be doing as entrepreneurs. And so I think in order to find your purpose, there are really a few things you want to do. One is you want to determine what you're good at.

17:18What are those gifts and talents you have? So that's the first thing you need to identify. The next thing you need to identify is what are you passionate about? What are the things you love to do? The next thing you want to figure out is what can you make money doing? That's an important part. What can you make money doing? What are the opportunities? And that's really what you want to be able to embrace is those three things. So what you're good at, what you love and what you can make money doing. And that really can help define your purpose. And I'll say this too, it's always when you find your purpose, it should be very in line with making the world a better place.

17:53Thinking about what's going to do the greatest good of making earth a heavenly place, loving others and aligning it with those things. And remind me what the third thing there was, John, I know we hit the first two. Vision, brother. That's right, vision. So this is an important process. By the way, along with the limiting beliefs, I think that every entrepreneur that's listening, I think that this is really going to resonate with you. There's a process, and I call it from visualization to realization. And here's how this process works. And by the way, all of the most successful minds follow the exact process I'm going to share with you.

18:29Elon Musk follows it. Steve Jobs followed it. in terms of their business and career success. And it's reverse engineering success really from going from the end in mind all the way back to the beginning. But I am gonna start with the very beginning. And actually it doesn't start with visualization. Before you visualize, you should actually prioritize. Because I see this a lot, John, by the way, now people might disagree with me on this as well. But I think generally most people, what's going to fulfill them is not getting the Lamborghini. It's not buying the$10 million home and it's not building the$100 million business.

19:08I think for most people, the thing that's truly going to bring them a sense of fulfillment, meaning and significance in life is getting to the end of their life and knowing I really added value to other people. Like I made this world a better place. Like I was a great dad. I was a great husband or spouse. I was a great friend and leader, you know, so, so going back to this, like when I prioritize, I say, okay, number one, by the way, everyone's gonna be different. But for me, it's God. Number one is my faith. Number two is my family, I want to make sure I'm a 10 out of 10, dad and husband, number three, I want to make sure that I am prioritizing my health so I can take care of these other things.

19:49And the next in line is, okay, I want to have a really successful career and mission in life where I do good things in the world. So that's it. And then the next step then is visualizing that. Okay. So I'm visualizing myself, as I mentioned, in Puerto Rico with my family. I'm raising up virtuous kids that also are loving and kind and generous. And I just have a really, really deep connected family. I watched this video recently with this billionaire and they asked him, they said, hey, what does success look like for you? And everybody in this interview you thought he was going to say, you know, building a billion dollar company because he was a billionaire and he built two of them.

20:30And what he said was that my kids want to come home and spend time with me over the holidays. And I thought, wow, he gets it. Like that's a really powerful why to me, a really powerful definition of success. And so all that being said, you want to make sure you're visualizing that thing that you truly know is going to fulfill you. And so listen, now having a great home, like we have a second home we've had in Florida and other places as well. So anyways, I get that. And that should be visualized, but that's not the only thing. So visualize very specifically, very clearly what you want. The next step after visualization is breaking those down into goals, very, very specific goals and those different areas of your life.

21:13Let's use family for an example. That's one of the areas. you know the next step after visualization is strategy okay and so when you stretch and so i i say uh prioritize visualize visualize strategize systematize and then you'll realize your goals and so the next step as i mentioned here is is the strategy and part of the strategy is what i do is is use first principles thinking this is something i learned from elon musk socrates taught this as well, but basics where you say, okay, if I want to have a great family life, let's say that's one of your goals. Well, what are all the essential components of a great family life?

21:52Well, I started doing a lot of research on this and saying, okay, well, the best families, according to Pew Research and Gallup Studies, what are the essential components? Well, they found things like family dinners, okay, so or family meals. That was one component that people found created close family bonds. So that's one strategy that we'll do. Sending kids to get a good education. So that was another one. Actually, religious attendance. So families having some sort of spiritual connection or doing that, actually, families tended to be closer. Not to say these are all rules, right? But these were statistically based on the studies, showed families were tended to be closer together.

22:29When parents, when the mom and dad went on a date night weekly, that typically showed that those created closer family bonds. And there's more than that, by the way, but all that being said, the other thing actually to say, what a growth mindset that you're teaching your kids, they're great based on their effort, not based on their performance. And so it's all about work ethic for kids. So all that being said, so then I strategize and I say, these are essential components for creating a great family. And then the systematized, That's really your habits. Well, what are the habits we have to have in place in order to make this a reality?

23:05So then it was, okay, my wife and I, we're going to do date nights every Thursday night. That's in the schedule. We're going to do family dinners this night and a family brunch on Sunday. Okay, that's in there. And then you realize your goals. But that really, to me, is so important. By the way, I do this with everything. It's business. It's with family. It's with spiritual life. It's with my health. I have a very, very detailed strategy in order to make it a reality. And I don't think if entrepreneurs really go through that kind of obsessiveness of going through every last detail of the strategy in order to see that success that they want to have.

23:41And so to me, John, I think that those three things are really important. Overcoming limiting beliefs, defining your purpose, and going through that process of visualization to realization. And also, if people want to learn more and really dive in deeper, I cover this in my new book, Think This, Not That, and really get into details of exactly how to do that as well. But yeah, I think those three things have been critically important to my own success. Fire Nation, you can tell that Josh has the experience, has the track record, and just has the understanding of creating the most meaningful life possible.

24:17And I know a lot of you listening are looking to take steps in that direction for very obvious reasons. And Josh, you did mention your new book, Think This, Not That. So let's end on this note. Where can Fire Nation go to pick up this book to get more of this great content that you shared here today? Yeah, you know, the book's going to be in bookstores nationwide. Also, it's on Amazon. So you can simply go to Amazon.com, just search Think This, Not That, Dr. Josh Axe. And I really think this book is going to transform lives. I've written 10 books. It's by far the best book I've written. By the way, on the audio book, we've got a lot of incredible guests like Jamie Kern-Lima.

24:56Oh, nice. And Michael Hyatt, Don Miller, just some really great people too. So, but yeah, you can go to Amazon.com, probably the best place. And by the way, if you go to joshax.com, I actually have a free mindset masterclass. We're giving away$1 ,000 in free, just free content. If you buy the book for like, I think$29, you'll get$1 ,000 in free trainings and educational material if you go to joshax.com and actually get the book there. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. and you've been hanging out with JA and JLD today. So keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, go to eofire.com.

25:37Just type Josh in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And again, joshax.com is a direct URL to go check out. Buy the book, get all the bonuses. And Josh, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much.