How to Rewire Your Brain, Let Go of Old Wounds, and Become Who You Were Meant to Be | Nick Ortner - EP 790

24:26And I had one of these moments during it and then lost my complete train of thought. And it turned into a complete train wreck. and I felt so bad because the head of sales was a personal friend of mine. I felt like I was letting him down. And man, that event caused me to stop speaking for about 18 months because I could not get it out of my head. Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about it right now, what are the emotions that you feel? Man, it was really, the emotions I feel are all the people who were just staring at me in that room and how I just wished I was anywhere else. So that DC conference room that I was in, because it felt like I had 200 sets of eyes just going right into my soul.

25:16Yeah. And what if there was an emotion? Is it shame? Is it fear? I guess it was shame, because I had prepared for this for so long. And I had this great speech. I was delivering and then the whole thing went sideways. And then I would anger at myself for letting it happen and not having a better recovery strategy. Yeah. Okay. So think about everything we did and we're going to work through this. And I took extra time to set it up because it just shows the breadth of these experiences. And look at what happened. You didn't speak for 18 months. And then I'm sure you just powered your way through, right?

25:53Just like the grit inside you. and it probably was difficult and it's obviously still around. But for a lot of people, they'll just stop. They won't have that grit. And they'll say, well, I'm never doing that again. So then just shut off this part of your life. What if you didn't have to sweat and grit and fight your way through? What if we could let it go? So let's have an experience. And for everyone watching at home, this might be triggering some things within you where you just go, okay, just because John's talking about this event, I'm thinking about that event. And if not, just think about something else that's going on in your life that you want to let go.

26:31We'll all just tap together. We'll have an experience. You'll get an experience at home. And then we'll see if we can clear out some of the intensity for you, John, so you don't have to have it weighing down on you. How's that sound? Sounds great. Okay. You've already brought it up. We have a number that's a nine. We're going to start by tapping on the side of the hand. And if you're listening in the car, don't tap in the car, pull over. And you're just taking four fingers of one hand and you're doing it on the outside of the other hand. And we call it the karate chop point if you're breaking boards.

27:05Show me, John, on the outside of the other hand. I know. Sorry. Yeah. So below your pinky. Below the pinky. Below the pinky. Yep. And now up a little bit higher. All right. There we go. You got it. So this is the side of the hand. Okay. We're just tapping gently. and we want to think about the thing that we experience. So sometimes we say things out loud. Other times we just think about them. For now, John, either repeat after me, either in your mind or out loud. Even though this thing happened, you can just think it. Even though this thing happened. Yeah, perfect. I choose to relax now. I choose to relax now.

27:49— and then still on the side of the hand, even though everyone was looking at me,

27:59and I was so embarrassed, and choose to feel safe now.

28:10And one more time, we're still on the side of the hand, even though that was so overwhelming, moment. And I've been carrying it in my body. And I've been carrying it in my body. I choose to let it go now. I choose to let it go now. Now we'll tap through the points. I'll take you through it the first time. It'll be nice and easy. And then we'll go through it again inside of the eyebrow. So right where the hair ends and it meets the nose. So yeah, go. There we go. A little further in and you can tap with one hand or both hands. These meridians, these mechanoreceptors run down both sides of the body and just tapping gently and just tune in to this thing that you're working on.

28:52So if you're at home, we're saying different words, but just tune in to the thing that's bothering you, the pain, the stress, the overwhelm, whatever's going on. And John, I'm sure you can get there fast when you can see 200 people staring at you. Can you see that now? I can see it. Okay. And now moving to the side of the eye. It's not at the temple. It's next to the eye on the bone. Again, one side or both sides, whatever's comfortable for you. And just see those people staring at you and just notice how your body feels.

29:31Perfect. We're not doing this to make you suffer. We are bringing up this memory, this thing that is there already, that's running underneath everything. And we're sending this calming signal to the brain under the eye, seeing if we can change the tone and tenor of this memory. And John, just move under the eye, tapping gently. Perfect. And you can do eyes opened or closed, and we're bringing up the stress, the anxiety, the overwhelm, and just tune in to everyone looking at you, the shame that you felt. And we're just tapping gently and we're breathing gently. You're doing great. Under the nose, right under the nose, above the lip, in that little crease there.

30:26Perfect.

30:33you're doing great tuning in to that stressor the thing that is in your way noticing your body noticing what you're feeling what emotions are coming up noticing a tightness in your chest or your shoulders noticing everything that comes with just a thought just this thing that happened underneath the mouth It's above the chin, below the lip, and that little crease there. There we go. Perfect. And, John, keep tapping, and tell me what's coming up for you right now.

31:10On the other side of the event. So see those people again looking at you. How does it feel when they look at you? It doesn't feel as penetrating anymore. Collarbone. And tell me more about that event. So they looked at you and didn't go well. What else do you remember around it? Let me be clear. For the collarbone, you feel for the two little bones of the collarbone, and you can go right below it, all 10 fingers of both hands. Perfect. Just tapping gently. I just remember afterwards the embarrassment I felt talking to my friend who had hired me and realizing that he had brought me in to serve his people and to deliver a message that he wanted to build the whole conference that he had done, the whole offsite with the team around.

32:02And I was supposed to drive that home. And so that's what I felt worse about was letting him down. Yeah. And what's the emotion around that? For me, it was a shame like we talked about, but just a huge impact to my pride. Yeah. Because I knew I was exceptionally good at delivering these messages and I had failed to live up to my expectations of myself. Yeah. Say out loud, I let him down. I let him down. How does that feel when you say that?

32:36I said it to him. Yeah. It feels like relief. Yeah. Relief. and release. Yeah. All right, now let's move under the arm. It's three inches underneath the armpit, either side of the body, right on the bra line for women. Just tapping gently, breathing gently. Now, right at the top of the head, right on the crown, tapping gently, breathing gently. Okay, we'll do one more round. Now, you know the points. I want you to just move back to the eyebrow, inside of the eyebrow. and John let's run it again so we're bringing up these memories see yourself on stage notice when you notice that things are not going well

33:26notice the tension in your body notice the 200 people staring at you and so many of these things when that amygdala is firing when you're noticing these things when you're stressed out, it's easy for it to cascade. Now the blood is flowing away from your brain into your arms and legs. You're in fight or flight response. It's hard to come back from that. And just see that happening. Moving to the side of the eye. And just notice that in this moment now, you are safe. See that happening. The eye's looking at you.

34:08you realizing it's not going well, and just notice your body letting it go.

34:17Under the eye. Notice your body just releasing the charge of this memory. It still happened. That doesn't change anything. But now you start to realize all the good that came from it, all the pride in how you got back on your feet and how you powered through and how you didn't let this define you. Certainly wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. Sure wouldn't, right? So tune into that pride, that courage, and just let it build within you. Under the nose. See those 200 people staring at you, and the reality is that's not a memory of failure. that's a turning point

35:11tune into that pride now you see the 200 people and you feel pride about what you made of that moment

35:22feel that deeply now

35:27under the mouth

35:32feel that strength and courage and everything you learned and how many people you've been able to help from that pain. From that moment of pain, everything you've built from that. Feel that pride.

35:49Collarbone. And now maybe it's time to release the shame fully from your body.

36:02just opening up to that possibility

36:08underneath the arm letting go even more feeling strong, grounded and safe

36:19top of the head feeling strong, grounded and safe and you can gently stop tapping and take a breath in and let it go. So we did a couple of tapping rounds there. Experimental, seeing where we are. Tell me, you had that nine before of intensity, of the shame, of what you felt. Think about that memory again, and let's tune in and see if you can give it a new number. yeah it's reduced till three or four beautiful so we did maybe five or ten minutes and we took a core memory a defining memory a painful memory from a nine to a three or a four and you'll often find that it'll continue to fade we're checking in 30 seconds after we stopped tapping or you might find oh there's some other things something else came up tomorrow you might remember that oh there's this part of this event that I hadn't thought about and I'm still holding on to that.

37:20Maybe I can let it go. And then tell me how it felt when we tuned into the pride of what you made of this event. What feelings were you feeling then?

37:33You mean fast forward to now? Yeah, just no, in that last round of tapping, it felt like it, I felt that pride from you that you were able to really feel proud of yourself for what you made of that experience. I think those experiences are training grounds for things you don't want to repeat. And I think it makes you be more intentional to make sure that those patterns don't happen again. Yeah. And what we're trying to do here, this isn't, these are growth opportunities and this isn't erase anything from the past or not learn from it. It's, Can we reduce the intensity? Can we, if we had happened to chat the day after this happened, could you reduce the 18 months down to a month of not speaking, right?

38:21And then still learn and grow from it and not have it be so painful.

38:31I wish I would have done it a long time ago. Well, all in good time. You have it now. Yeah. Yeah. So Nick, I think this is a really good segue in the introduction of the book. You write, you don't have to be who you've always been. And when I think about that experience I went through, you don't have to have the experiences that have caused you to have the emotions that get pent up inside. Why do so many people, so many of my listeners unconsciously believe their emotional patterns like this experience for me are permanent parts of who they are? Yeah, it's such a great question. I think it's because they can be permanent parts if we don't have a way to change them, right?

39:19To get them out of our nervous system. Some people do it through exercise and some people do it through meditation and some people do it through reading self-help books and those are all paths. Now, I'm very biased here and I believe this is by far the fastest path. And the research is bearing that out, that we can move not only states being like, I'm anxious now and I brought my anxiety down. I'm stressed now and I brought my stress down. But traits. I'm writing a paper right now with one of the top psychiatrists at Harvard that looks at one session that we have in our app. And the session is called You Are Enough.

39:57And I know you just had, I was just listening to your podcast this morning to prep. And I know you had Blake from Tom's on. I don't know, Blake. We have some mutual friends, but his thing is you are enough, like being enough. So I thought that was pretty neat that he's focused on that idea. So I'm writing this paper because we have about 500 ,000 completed sessions of this you are enough session. It's a 16-minute tapping meditation that takes you back in time. The first thing you do, you rate out loud. You say, how true does it feel? I am enough. And so you rate that. Then you do the 16-minute thing, and then you rate it again.

40:34And what we're showing, we have this eight-day challenge that over the eight-day period, we're starting to change not just the state of feeling better, of lower stress, but the trait that people are saying, I am enough and believing it. And that's the key because we can all go around saying I'm enough and you are enough and all those things. But until it's embodied, until you believe it, until you say, yeah, this is true, then what's the point of it? So through this work, through experiences similar to what you and I just went through quickly as a demonstration, which is you could have decided from that experience that you're not enough, that you're not a good public speaker, that like those core experiences will create these things, these beliefs about ourselves.

41:17if we can release a charge from it and if we can rewrite the pattern and if we can learn from it and embody it, not have it be just a logical, well, no, I know I'm enough. Like it has to be embodied. You have to know it deeply. Then we can create that change. And where people get stuck is that they don't have a tool to make those changes. Most people like your listeners, people who listen to podcasts like this, they are likely able to identify the places in their life where they don't feel like they're enough or they procrastinate. They're doing the work. A lot of the general population isn't.

41:52They just think life happens to them and that is what it is and it's fair or unfair. So people listening now know that, but most people are stuck on what to do about it. Okay. I know I have this fear of flying. I know I eat late at night and I can't stop these cravings. I know that I do this, that, the other, what do I do about it? We've got to get into our nervous system. The book is called the rewired because we have to rewire our nervous system. Like what we just did, that was 10 minutes of rewiring. Like your brain, I'm not saying everything was fixed. We said it was a three or a four. It's something to revisit.

42:25Is there something left? But parts of your brain changed that experience and you shared it in bits and pieces. Oh, when I see them now, their gaze isn't as penetrating, I think you said, right? So like that memory changed. And we know memory is pliable. We know memory is not reliable, right? Everyone has a different, oh yeah, that happened 20 years ago. No, John said this. No, John said that. So our memory is pliable. Might as well make it pliable for the good. Might as well have that memory for you of those 200 people looking at you either have no charge or positive charge. And that's what we started to do towards the end too.

43:01Oh, can you link those 200 people looking at you with pride because you're like, oh yeah, that sucked. And I know it did because I don't forget that suck, but look what I did with that suck. And that is rewiring our brain. Yes. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. It's a real thing. And most people lean into it with just the positive, like let me think positive thoughts, which is great. but the positive thoughts need to be embodied that you have to believe them to be true it's really hard like running around saying i'm rich is going to be unlikely to change your behavior it's when you go what's in the way what's the resistance and we don't live there we're not like negative all the time we go what's the resistance what's stopping me right now from doing this thing i keep mentioning this research inside the app because i've been just diving into so deeply we We have 16 million, 16.6 million measured sessions.

43:59We have a motivate me to write session that shows a dramatic drop in this behavioral resistance. So someone wants to write. They know they do. They have this desire. I want to write a book. They have writer's block. Everyone knows about writer's block. And we do this 10 minute tapping thing and something unlocks. So all these different places in our life where we feel resistance. Since there's a past memory, there's a belief, there's a pattern in the nervous system that's getting in the way, what's exciting is we can change that pattern. I love it, Nick. One of the concepts and ideas in the book is a powerful one.

44:41You call it the great forgetting. And I want to bring this up because I have a book coming out in October, and I have a concept in there called the great erasure. And we're talking about the same thing from two different angles. You write that many people have forgotten what it feels like to wake up rested, move through life calmly, and feel truly at home in their own skin. And my concept of it is I kind of go through the underlying research that I did on why it's happening, which is what I call it systematic unmattering. Our feeling of mattering is being erased by the systems that we interact with every day.

45:21When you think of your concept, the great forgetting, why do you think humanity has forgotten how we were actually meant to live? That's such a great question. Well, I think you answered it because you're so right about the systems of things we interact with. So whether it be what we deal with daily, social media, the news, the things, the people around us, what we're interacting with, and also for a lot of us, what we grew up with. If you grew up in a house where Tony Robbins was playing through Alexa, like 24-7, that'd be a little much. I think even Tony would agree. But let's just say it's on in the morning, right?

46:00Or you're in the car. And if you're in that environment, that is going to give you a certain experience. Oh, I can change how I think. Oh, I have a choice to be happy today. Like beginning to fill ourselves up with this information. If you're not in that environment, and for some people it's the complete opposite. it. And thankfully I had a great childhood. It wasn't my experience, but if you have an abusive childhood, if there was tremendous financial scarcity, if there was pressures on the family, that's going to completely change the systems that you're interacting with that are telling you the world is dangerous.

46:34Everything around you is dangerous. Your nervous system has to be on high alert all the time. And then what happens is, and I'm sure this research comes out in your book, that like it becomes the new normal. That's what's so hard about it for people that they don't know any different. And even when we're in this space, how many times have I had the experience where like, oh, wow, my shoulders were up by my ears. I ran around stressed today because I was interacting with all these different things that were stressful. And I had to remember that this isn't my baseline, that I don't have to feel this way, that I can change my state.

47:11So we're so disconnected from even that idea. Our body gets used to it. We get addicted to these chemicals. We get addicted to cortisol. We get addicted to stress. We get addicted to running a certain way. Some people feel very uncomfortable, relaxing, which is crazy when you think about it. If you tell someone who runs 24-7 and they have a crazy life, okay, just sit gently for 30 seconds. It's like the panic kicks in, right? Oh, this feels weird. With our phones now, I've heard from a couple of people recently who are trying social media diets and stopping the addiction, putting the phone away, this, that, and the other.

47:53And they've described how uncomfortable they feel without the phone close to them. which is great insight and awareness and crazy that we become this attached to this device that when it's not around us, we physically feel uncomfortable, that it's causing anxiety. Now, the good news is that when people power through that or tap through, ideally, would be to like lower that resistance, then they go, oh, okay, this is what I was supposed to feel. This is the systems that we're interacting with that are telling us we don't matter. I love what you just brought up and I'm going to share just a short story.

48:31A friend of ours, I was texting with him about a baseball game and asking him if he was going about a week and a half ago and he didn't respond to me. He responded to my wife. Miles doesn't answer quick enough. And the truth of the matter is I am very difficult to get a hold of during the day because I purposely put my phone away from me because I don't want the distraction. And so I will check it a couple of times, but hours can go by because I found there was a period in my life where it had been attached to me and it was causing me too many interruptions. And I know for me, when I get interrupted, it takes me like 10, 15, 20 minutes to get back into my work process.

49:18So when I am in the peak moments of my day, which for me is my morning period, When I'm most vibrant, I tend to put it away so I can concentrate on and try to get into the flow zone so I can get done what I need to get done. But it has become an expectation that we need to be available all the time. We need to answer in split seconds. And my answer to that is, no, we don't. Yeah. And it's like, think about, it's almost like a negative character trait of yours that you're not, yeah, he doesn't get back to me as if you are doing something wrong because the expectation, like you said, is the immediate response.

49:57So yeah, these phones are difficult and a lot to work through. They have amazing superpowers and it's great and for so many ways, but something that we need to work through. I don't think we have these craving busters in the app. So we've got sugar and alcohol and all these things to help with cravings. The effect size on it, meaning just how well it works is really strong. It's actually, for whatever reason, I have to try to figure it out. It's the highest effect size of anything we have in the app is actually for cravings. So there's something happening, meaning if someone's at a seven and maybe for pain relief, they drop to a four.

50:33For cravings, they'll drop to a three. So it's doing something with the brain to reduce cravings fast. And I think I need to get a phone craving up there ASAP because a lot of people are struggling with it and need something to calm the nervous system when it's feeling that itch. Nick, you have a line in the book, we spend more time managing our fears than chasing our dreams. And I want to tell you a story about this and then have you respond. But one of my long-term mentors is a woman named Wendy Lawrence. And Wendy was my physics teacher at the Naval Academy and went on to become the first female astronaut from the Naval Academy in space.

51:17And she tells this message all the time that you're talking about here to kids today, is we let our fears all the time get in the way of us chasing our dreams. And she talks about how when she was growing up, there wasn't an opportunity for females to be astronauts, because there weren't any examples of that. And as she was going down this path, there were so many times that she had to overcome her fears and obstacles to end up achieving the dream that she always wanted. But she said today, what she finds is so many people unwillingly, unknowingly really build their lives around avoiding fear instead of pursuing the possibility.

52:03Why do you think that is happening so much? And do you think it's something that's changing or Or do you think it's always been there? It's probably always been there. I think it is a biological impulse for safety that we are scanning for danger and that fight or flight mode gets activated. We have something called the negativity bias. We all know it. If someone says, John, I could say one mean thing to you today and you will remember it for three years and the next thousand people that talk to you could say nice things and And they'll be right. They'll be gone. They'll be like, well, Nick said that one thing.

52:40So our brain does latch on to these things. It's in order to keep us safe. I talked to a lot of authors and I joke that you haven't made it as an author until you get a one-star review because it means your book hasn't gone out far enough. All right. You're guaranteed to get a one-star review if you sell it off books. Someone's going to get mad at you for something. My favorite are when the first one is Amazon shipped it in a bad box. Why are you rating my book? when Amazon had a bad shipping experience. My point being, we get stuck on these things. We get stuck on these one-star reviews. We have this bias in our brain and we have to acknowledge that bias, go, this, my brain is holding onto this.

53:18There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. Your brain is holding onto it for a reason in order to keep you safe, in order to see the danger because there's a saber-toothed tiger around the corner. Once you see one, then every corner you look around, you're going to make sure there's not another saber tooth tiger, but we can change that. We're in control of that. And I think the key thing about the fears versus the dream, it's the word managing the fears. We do so much managing of how do I build my life in a way that I don't have to face these fears. We've been talking a lot about phobias today and fear of public speaking or flying because it's the most visceral showing of that, right?

53:58Where it's if someone has a fear of public speaking, they will manage. So that's a fear. They will manage their life to make sure they don't have to public speak. If they, you have a fear of public speaking and you have a desire to have a successful career. Now you have to manage what having a successful business career is like without speaking in public or with speaking in the right situation. So then you might go, okay, well, I'm going to try to do it more by sending emails. I don't want to speak in front of groups. I'm okay. One-on-one. So I'm going to really work. I'm going to manage these fears to try to have the career I want, but it's going to be limited by all these little rules and boxes.

54:37It's difficult. It's uncomfortable. It's not fun. And then it's often limiting. Okay, fine. You manage your way there, but if you had just been willing to talk to the eight people in the conference room and felt confident enough to share your ideas, then your career would have skyrocketed. So clearly these are the places that we get stuck. clearly they're the places that stop us from living the lives that we want. And that's been my experience. When I first made the documentary film, I told you when we started, $40 ,000 worth of camera equipment, no idea what we were doing. We must have filmed 100 hours of footage that was just complete garbage.

55:14I didn't know where it is now. It was terrible. We didn't know what we were doing. We couldn't use it. And then time and again through the process, I'm a couple months in going, I've spent$40 ,000, 50 now, flying. What am I doing here? I could have so easily locked up in that moment that I'm a 29-year-old kid. I have no experience. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm giving up now. But during those moments, I would tap. And I would say, even though I don't know what I'm doing, I choose to relax now. Even though just speaking my fears out loud, even though this is going terribly and it's a disaster, I love and accept myself.

55:52I would calm my nervous system, move away from that fight-or-flight mode. the blood literally physically flows back into your brain you can think clearly and always it would be from fear from i don't know what i'm doing from wanting to give up to oh you know what not only is that feeling gone but i've got an idea and that's the exciting part that when we bring our resources back online it's not about from fear to negative emotion or no or flat emotion. It's from fear to, I've got an idea. I've got the passion. I've got the energy. I know what to do next. So it opens up vistas for us that aren't possible if we're in these stuck, resistant, negative states.

56:36Unfortunately, when I was a young boy, seven or eight years old, I physically watched a DC-10 crash right in front of me. And it created a huge fear of flying for me for many years that I was able to get over through therapy. But recently seeing that cargo plane crash last year, sent the same thing triggered me again, because both of them had to deal with an engine falling off on takeoff. So these things are real. And what I realized as I was reading your book is the book is really a lot more than tapping. It's a book about how so many of us become trapped in versions of ourselves that we never consciously choose.

57:22Yeah. When did you first realize that your work wasn't about tapping, but it's so much more than stress relief? It's so much more than stress relief. I think I have to go back to Tony again with his influence of everything I learned from him on human psychology, on creating change, on how we define who we are in our lives. And then just working with, at this point, thousands or tens of thousands of people and seeing the patterns and seeing what they go through and seeing the places that they define themselves and they get stuck and they believe this is who I am and they don't have a way out. And this is the way out.

58:03Tapping is just the vehicle. It happens to shockingly be a vehicle that does, it's almost as if we could type on the computer and edit our brain, well, we would do that. Great. Hey, delete that memory, change this, change that. Somehow, I don't know who decided it came packaged in this physically tapping on ourselves. But yes, everything around it, the you are enough session, the tapping is the vehicle to implant that belief. The tapping is also the vehicle to bring up the old memories, to try to learn about ourselves, to understand why we are the way we are, to have insights. And one of the other beautiful things about the process is that it we don't go from fear to erasing something we go from i see it a lot with anger someone's really angry at someone so they start at anger we do some tapping and then naturally on their own they go to sadness every single time anger just lets go and it goes to sadness and then the sadness lets go and it goes to wisdom.

59:07So this isn't a erase everything. This is, can we process the things that help us become stronger and heal and grow from, but does it not have to be 18 months that you don't get on stage? You probably went through various stages of emotional processing for it, right? Like along the way, can we condense that time period and get you back on stage 12 months, six months, a year? Can we learn from it? Can we take that anger and feel that sadness and then from that sadness, build that wisdom. And now it's the base of wisdom. Yes, that thing happened. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was sad. Now there's wisdom.

59:49Yeah, even to this day, when I know I'm going to go back into high gear, into public speaking, I go back to Toastmasters where I'll do improv classes because I find the best way you've got to deal with it is to keep putting yourself in the situation. So you build back that confidence that it's not going to happen. But I'm definitely going to incorporate tapping as well going forward. And that's a great strategy going back into Toastmasters. Oh, sorry. What are you trying to do there? You're trying to have positive emotions, positive experiences that you can build up. So now when you go and do it, you have a better experience.

1:00:27Yeah, because one of the things you write about in the book that I think applies to what we did for 10 minutes, 10 minutes is it isn't about faking it till you make it. Yeah. What, what was happening to me, cause I could feel it as we were doing it is I could sense a biological, biological change in my nervous system. Yes. And to me, that is what triggers lasting emotional change. And the weird thing for people who might not have done this is I was actually feeling an emotional shift in my body as I was doing the exercise and talking about the feelings. And that shift, honestly, was that nine going to a three or four, because I felt the weight coming out of my body, the energy coming out of me, which it's crazy that it can do that.

1:01:22It reminds me of going through EMDR therapy. Yeah. It's very similar. Yeah, people often ask about EMDR and tapping, and I would say they're cousins. They're in the same family of that emotional process thing. The big difference is that tapping you can do on your own and read the book, use the app, have that experience. And EMDR usually takes a therapist to do, but they both are just wonderful tools. One of the things, Nick, I want to make sure I talk about because it's one of the reasons I started this podcast. I had reached a period in my life where emotional numbness had become my reality. And you describe people living in what you call frosted glass.

1:02:07And I would say that is what it felt like to me. It's like I was developing cataracts. And the world just kept getting more shaded and more shaded. and I could not figure out what was going on, except that my vitality and aliveness and joy and connections were fading. And I didn't know how to describe it, but I've come to realize that it's this emotional numbness. Does that resonate with you as you have talked to many people and worked with them? Yeah, I hear it all the time. It's almost the more activated emotions like anxiety and anger. I don't want to say one thing is easier than the other, but it's easier to quantify because it is so physical and visceral.

1:02:55I'm really anxious. I'm really angry. The low mood depression, frosted glass thing that you're talking about is more subtle. And maybe you had the experience of not really knowing what was happening, when it was happening, how you got there. For a lot of people, it's not an overnight thing. It's not that they wake up one morning and, oh my gosh, they're just depressed. It certainly can happen if you go through a traumatic experience. The loss of a loved one can put you in those states. But so many people just slowly, it's like you said about the cataracts building. Like you didn't wake up one morning with cataracts.

1:03:31It just, a little particle after a little particle built in and everything was closing down on you. what's you know oftentimes that is just the world being too stimulating too many negative experiences too many negative emotions and the body just shuts down right so the body the brain the nervous system just shuts down it's overwhelmed loss of energy that all goes together tapping is can be quite in the same way that it's relaxing and stress relieving it can be activating in a positive of way, right? You have this physical, and a lot of people will feel this physical surge of energy just by going through the points.

1:04:10It's if I want to get some energy, if it's two in the afternoon and, you know, too late to have my coffee and just feeling that brain fog and that slump, just one round, like activating. So it can be really powerful for people struggling with those states to activate slowly and safely. And in the same way that those cataracts close down and that frosted glass moved in on the life, we just started, just start cleaning the glass a little bit. It's not going to get clear overnight, but can we activate some energy? Can we do one round of tapping? Cause that's what happens too. Certainly with depression, low mood.

1:04:47If I said, okay, go see a therapist for an hour or go do this tapping thing for 20 minutes. It's like the, oh my gosh, the energy just isn't there. It's just too much. So start slow. Can you just do one round of tapping today and find a little energy and take one step forward, just building that muscle back up to open up to life. And when we calm the nervous system that is in that shutdown state, there's natural positive consequences from it. Okay. The nervous system feels safe. We start igniting some energy around it and then we can take those steps forward. yeah I like how you describe that because to me what was happening is I was experiencing thousands of microbes over a long period of time and the only way you can build it back is it's you don't get there in one fell swoop and you can't build it back in one fell swoop and what I love about tapping is there micro practices that you can use on a daily basis to restore for those erasures and take your freedom back.

1:05:53Maybe it's a longer story, but how you did it then, what were the steps for you to come out of that? And I wrote my first book about it, PassionStruck. It was six mindset shifts and six behavior shifts that I implemented. And it took me about two years to do it when I'm still working on it. But it started out with, I had to go back to, which is always difficult in therapy. They always want you to go to what is the most traumatic memory that you ever have. And unfortunately I have a lot of them, you know, seeing a plane crash isn't even come close to that. That's not number one. There's other stuff in there, but to me, it was going through CBT and then prolonged exposure therapy and dealing with those.

1:06:38And when I started to deal with those and finding coping mechanisms for them, And I realized if I would have done this decades ago, how much different my life would have been. So that's the advice I always give to people is don't delay. Deal with the stuff earlier in your life. But once I dealt with that, that's what I try to tell people when I work with them is you got to find a starting point. And from there, it starts opening up other areas of your life that you never expect. And I always describe it that you have to think of your life as many different pillars holding you up. And once you start working on the one that needs the help the most, you'll naturally start working on the others.

1:07:20And then it eventually allows you to rebuild the whole structure. And from there, you take back what you've lost. So that's what I ended up doing. That's beautiful. And you mentioned CBT, which is amazing. We have thousands of therapists now who are CBT trained who just bring tapping in. It's not one or another. So they'll take all the framework from CBT and just add the tool. Add the tool to like you did some EMDR to process that trauma. Add the tool to CBT is great until it's two in the morning and you're ruminating about a thought or you can't sleep and your cognitive brain is offline, right?

1:07:57What is CBT? Cognitive behavioral therapy, right? So your brain is offline. So that's why some of the leading CBT therapists in the world go, okay, well, we need something when the cognitive brain is offline. So this is where the physical tapping comes in, brings the cognitive brain back online. So you have those resources available. I love it. Nick, the last thing I wanted to ask you about, because I thought this section of the book was incredibly powerful, is you have seven freedoms of a rewired life. Things like self-trust, energy, authenticity, feeling at home in your body. I wanted to ask out of the seven, what freedom do you think people are starving for most right now?

1:08:37Or does depend on the person? Yeah, that's the thing about them. So I tried to write them to be all encompassing of what a well-lived life could look like. And then also aspirations, because we do a lot of work in tapping to just let go, right? Okay, I have this thing. I have this anger I want to let go. I have this anxiety I want to let go. And we can, it's easy to get stuck into, or these traumas. I have to clear out every trauma from my body before I can live a good life. That's not the case. There's an in-between thing where you're healing, when you're letting go, when you're reducing anxiety.

1:09:16And you're actually going towards something. You're having positive emotions. You're creating things in your life. So the seven freedoms was just trying to paint that picture of what it all could be. probably on a daily basis because I see so many people struggling with this. It's the freedom to react from wisdom instead of old wounds, right? Like that reaction piece. Someone says something and it's like old wound is kicking up. Something happens in your life, old wound kicking up. And that goes to the rewire process of interrupting that thought, recognizing the thought, okay, old wound, interrupting it with tapping and then rewiring it.

1:09:56So when you do that enough times, now someone says something and it used to trigger you and send you down a spiral or whatever it was. And now you react with wisdom. So yeah, that's one of my favorites. And I think something a lot of people struggle with. And then lastly, if a listener or a viewer understood that they didn't have to remain who they've always been, how would their lives change after they read rewire? I can only point to the experience that I've had in doing this work for 20 years, certainly seen thousands and hundreds of thousands or millions of other people do this in our community and who we've worked with in the last 20 years.

1:10:36But for me, it's waking up happy. It's going to bed at peace. It's following work that I'm passionate about. It is not reacting from old wounds. It's recognizing when I do react from an old wound because I'm still doing the work every single day and I'm still get the triggers, but it's feeling in control of my destiny. And I think that positive control piece is something that just about everyone's missing. We just think we have all these things that happened to us. We have all these stories. it's who I am. It's what life is. It's the hand that I've been dealt, right? How often do we say, well, that's the hand you've been dealt.

1:11:17Okay, well, maybe you can trade in a couple cards here, right? Where maybe we're playing regular poker and you get to get a new hand and hopefully it's better. And actually not hopefully it's better. How about you actually get to look through the deck and pick the cards you want? You're cheating at the game, but this is what it is. It's a good cheat. You get to pick the cards you want. You get to be who you want to be. You get to make decisions about who you are and you get to know yourself. I know I've talked about Tony so much, but he really is so influential in my life and the work that we've done.

1:11:50And something that I learned about myself was in relationship to him. So when I first went to these events, when I was first 22, 23 years old, actually 25 was my first event. You get so excited, so passionate. The energy is great. He teaches you all these things. And it's very easy to fall into. I want to be just like Tony, right? I he's the leader, right? Oh my gosh, he's up there doing it. He's so charismatic. I want to be just like him. And then what happened for me time and again would happen to any other human who tries to be someone else. I failed over and over again. Oh, I didn't do my RPM planning the way I said to, or I procrastinated.

1:12:32I bet you Tony doesn't procrastinate, you know? So there was this desire to be like this person who is on another planet to start with, but whatever. The point is you can't be like someone else. So I was trying to be like him. And it wasn't until I let go of that, got enough clarity about myself, decided who I wanted to be. What are the things that I want to do? What do I enjoy doing? And I can say yes to, and then say no to other things. And again, full circle moment, I was at his house probably about 2014 when we were sitting out in this beautiful house overlooking the ocean and we're talking about things that we might do together with some charity work, with spreading tapping.

1:13:16And he's sitting there and he is, as we're talking, he is furiously taking notes, just writing. And I'm looking around and I'm going, I didn't even bring a notebook. This is embarrassing. He's writing like crazy. I'm just talking. I'm not taking notes. And then I had that moment and I thought to myself, I've never taken notes in my life. In class, I didn't take notes. I'm not a note taker. I'm a lefty. My handwriting, I can't read it half the time after I've written it. I am not a note taker. Tony is a note taker. We're each doing who we are. Be comfortable with it. Enjoy the moment. Who cares about?

1:13:55He's not thinking anything about you. Stop thinking about all these judgments over yourself. Be who you are. and that was a moment when I was able to say, okay, yeah, this work is paying off. I'm here with my mentor, someone that I always admired. We're working together on something and that all happened not because I was trying to be him or trying to be anyone else on the planet. It's because I cleared up all this crap from my past. I got centered. I got clear on my mission. I did the tapping. I let go of these things and I could feel in the depth of my soul comfortable with who I was in that moment.

1:14:29Thank you for sharing that. And I want to end here. The final note of the manuscript to me was deeply empowering and talks to what you were just referencing. You and your siblings write your current wiring isn't your destiny. And what I want listeners to know is that the book really argues that lasting transformation is not only possible, it's far simpler, more embodied and more accessible than we've been taught to believe. And I think it's a perfect message and why I wanted to have you on the show. Nick, you talked a lot about your other books, your videos, the app. Where's the best place listeners can learn more about all those different things?

1:15:14Great. Thank you, John. Yeah, thetappingsolution.com is our main website. I've mentioned the app. It's free to download. If you just search the tapping solution on any app store, it'll pop up. And I think we have 50 plus free tapping meditations in there. And then there's a premium version that has 1000 more, but there's plenty to experience for free. The tapping solution.com app stores and then rewired is wherever books were sold. We were delighted to hit the New York Times bestseller list. And the first week we were released and the book was released and it's already touching lives around the world.

1:15:46I'm grateful to you for having me on and for everyone listening to this message. What you just said is true. You don't have to be who you've always been. We can change our wiring. I think just knowing that, just that as a possibility is so exciting and so empowering. Now you just have to walk through the door and actually create that change. Awesome. Nick, thank you so much for joining. It was such an honor to have you. Thank you, John. That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Nick Ortner. One thing that stayed with me is how quickly we turn experiences into identities. We have a painful moment, a setback, or a disappointment.

1:16:21And over time, the story shifts from that happened to me to that's just who I am. I'm not a good speaker. I'm always anxious. I procrastinate. I can't change. What I appreciated about Nick's work is that he reminds us that our brains and nervous systems are always learning. The patterns we've practiced for years are powerful, but they aren't permanent. And sometimes the work isn't about trying harder. It's about finding a different way to process what we've been carrying all along. As we continue our flourishing series, Thursday's conversation builds naturally on what Nick shared today. I'll be joined by John Corden.

1:16:55Many of you know John from his books like The Energy Bus, The Carpenter, and The Power of Positive Leadership. He's one of the most influential leadership thinkers working today, and his newest book is called The Power of Positive Habits. In our conversation, we talk about why so many people settle for what's comfortable instead of pursuing what they truly want, how a single word can bring clarity and direction to an entire year, and why comparing yourself to someone else's path almost always leaves you discouraged. We also discuss purpose statements, reverse bucket lists, the habits that have shaped John's own life, and the lesson that ultimately changed everything for him.

1:17:33It's a conversation about becoming the person you're called to be instead of spending your life wishing you were someone else. So here's the thing. Negative thoughts are always coming in. And when they come in, they will tell you things about yourself and your future that just aren't true. Negative thoughts are lies. And so many of us have them. Actually, we all have them. But are those negative thoughts coming from you? And I ask that knowing the answer is no. Who would ever choose to have a negative thought? Would anyone ever choose a negative thought? You wouldn't, but it comes in. And so When it comes in, you don't have to listen to it.

1:18:07Instead, you have to speak truth to it. You don't have the power of the first thought, but you have the power of the second thought. And this is really key to understand. And you're not the thoughts you think, you're the thoughts you believe. If today's conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who's been trying to make a change, break an old pattern, or move beyond a story they've carried for too long. Don't forget to download today's companion workbook and reflection guide at theignitedlife.net. Until next time, keep asking yourself, what am I practicing every day that my future self will one day call a habit?

1:18:40I'm John Miles, and you've been PassionStruck.