How to Achieve Your Peak Performance by Living Your Truth w/ Dr. Patrick Wanis

0:00Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. Cutting edge conversations on business and personal success, as well as how to level up. Here's your host, number one business coach in the world, Brad Shoghers. You know, changing behavior is not something that we all go, yeah, that's what I really want to do. But when you find an expert like Patrick Wanus on this subject, he's going to blow you away. Firstly, his definitions of stuff, infect and affect, that's going to blow you away, just how he sees the world from that perspective. but how he sees success and how he gives you his stuff on finding your why really brilliant but more importantly how to let go of the past and move forward he has four great breakdowns and he has some great formulas that we'll work through during this whole process and give you what it needs to be now he's not only a hypnotherapist he also works with major organizations on peak performance and all that stuff.

0:57I think you're going to love it. Dr. Patrick Wanus. So Patrick, let me start with the big question. What is your definition of success? Success is simply working towards and achieving your goals and objectives that are in alignment with your values. Now, I'd like to also distinguish between success and being successful. So you have an attorney who's recognized as being a successful attorney. But does he himself see himself as a success? And he might say, no, because I have a passion in a completely different area. Or even though I'm a successful attorney, it's not in full alignment with my values.

1:43So we've got to look at the difference between what someone else sees us as being a success and what we see ourselves as being a success. Let's dive in on that values thing, because not many people have ever brought that up on the podcast. How does in alignment with values work? Because that's a real distinction. This is such a powerful teaching point, Brad, that your whole life must be in alignment with your values. Value simply is the standards and principles that are important to you. What matters to you? What makes a difference to you? What do you stand for? What do you believe in? What is critical to you?

2:25What can you not go without other than the obvious food, water, shelter, physical touch? So if you are living in alignment with the things that matter to you, then you can get a sense of fulfillment. then your day has real meaning for you. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's... So let's go back in your life then. At what point in your life did you see yourself as choosing success? Was it as a young boy, as a young man? Where did success become your standard? Now, the reason I'm laughing, Brad, is that I don't believe I ever consciously chose success. Right. I know that you've had extraordinary people on this podcast who've talked about defining moments, turning moments, turning corners.

3:14But I don't believe for me that success is a conscious choice. It's just something that I do, meaning I don't set out thinking about failure. There's something that appeals to me that's in alignment with my values, the things that are important to me, and I go for it. I've never stopped to think, oh, my life is in a terrible shambles. Let me turn around. Let me become a success. I don't have the Eckhart Tolle story. I don't have the Anthony Robbins story. I don't have any of those stories. Yes, of course, I had a difficult childhood like most of us have had. But for whatever reason, whether I was born this way, whether someone blessed me with this gift, I have extraordinary hope, which is something I'm going to talk about later.

3:56Hope is so important because it's something that you can't buy. You know, people talk about gratitude. Gratitude is really powerful and it can turn around people's lives. But I believe hope is the most powerful emotion. And you say, well, why, Patrick? Because when everything goes wrong, when everything fails, if there's been a tsunami, there's been a hurricane, you've gone bankrupt, everything's gone, your wife's left you, your husband's left you, there's an illness, there's a death. What are you left with? Yes, you have your resources, But your resources are useless if you don't have hope. With hope, you say, I can do it.

4:34I can come back. I can rebuild. And hope isn't just an abstract concept. Hope is about seeing a vision, a goal, and believing you have a pathway to get there. So if everything around me is destroyed, but I wake up and I say, I've lost everything that I've had, and yet I can come back. I'm rising from the ashes, as they say. And maybe this is an important thing, but I don't see it as a turning point. When I was 15, I was living in a bungalow in the back because we were renovating the back of the house. I come back one day and it's all burnt down. Not the house, but the bungalow. Everything I had in that bungalow was gone.

5:18I go back to school. I'm only in year nine. And the teachers say to me, we heard about what happened. We're sorry about what happened. But you've got to understand something, Patrick. You still have to sit the exams. You still have to complete all of your work. We're not going to give you any additional advantages, but we expect you to come through with flying colours. Lo and behold, I went, oh, these people believe in me. I should believe in myself. But to come back to your question, for some people, success is a conscious choice. I've never seen it that way, Brad, because I don't think about the failure.

5:56Yes, I evaluate the possibilities. You say to me, Patrick, can you get to Thailand on this day to do this presentation for Action Coach? And I say, yes, I don't know how, but yes, I will. And there's hope that I'm going to do it. So I would encourage everyone listening, everyone watching right now to focus on hope. It's such a powerful emotion. It's also one of four things that we refer to as psychological capital. Hope, optimism, resiliency, self-efficacy. Optimism is the belief that I can create good things in my life and there are things that go wrong in my life that are outside of my control.

6:39Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from setbacks, disappointments, failures, and to do so not just with renewed energy, but with renewed wisdom and knowledge. And then self-efficacy is the belief in your own capabilities in unexplored territories. Now, I don't know if I was born this way. I don't know if it's a gift, but I believe I have these four pillars. And that's what keeps me going. That I always have hope, no matter how bad things are. I believe I can come back. I believe that I can turn things around, which ties to optimism. that I keep bouncing back from failures, mistakes. And I do believe in the word failure because if I'm a heart surgeon and I'm working on you and the surgery doesn't work and you die, that is a failure.

7:27So there's nothing wrong with using the word failure. It's how you respond to it. But the ability to come back from these failures when you've really fallen down and you're flat, and maybe I might lay flat for a day or two and think I'm totally paralyzed, but I know I'm going to come back and then self-efficacy is, I've never done this before. I've never, and I'll tell you this briefly, I think you might know from my background that I was also a stage hypnotist doing comedy shows before I did hypnotherapy. I'm going to share this with you to give you an example of a belief in one's capabilities, hope, resiliency and optimism.

8:03When I was living in Spain, there was a guy that used to do these hypnosis shows and I learned that they were all plans. He wasn't actually doing any hypnosis. So I started doing the same thing that he did. And I was doing these comedy shows that were full of plants. But wanting to look authentic, I started reading all these different hypnosis books so that as I was pretending I'm hypnotizing these people, the audience would go, wow, this guy is really good. So I would bring up 15 people from the audience. Four of them were plants and the other 11 were random people. and I would get them to do this exercise, holding their hands and say, okay, see how tight you can hold them, et cetera, et cetera.

8:46And when I went, and I would go to the ones that were not plants and I'd say, oh, I'm sorry, I don't think you can be hypnotized tonight. Please go back to the audience. And this one lady looked at me like I was committing murder. And I went, maybe I should just leave her on the stage. So the next week I left more people on stage thinking, if a certain amount don't get hypnotized, it will look more authentic. Lo and behold, I actually hypnotized a couple of people that weren't plants. Progressively, I stopped doing plants and I did real hypnosis. But why? Because I believed I could do it and I was willing to say, what have I got to lose?

9:27Let's try this. And there's an actual gene that sensation seekers and risk takers have. I don't know if I have that gene, but I'm willing to lay it out on the table and say, let's do it. So if you were to add to that, what is the Patrick Wann's formula for success? Like how do you ensure success or how do you teach people to ensure they can be successful at what they're doing? Step number one, what the heck do you want? You can't hit a target if you don't have a target. And people might come to me sometimes for therapy and they don't know what they want. So I ask them the question, what is it that you want that you don't yet have?

10:12What is it that you want that you don't yet have? So number one, what's the target? And then I'm implying that you can actually have it. You just don't have it yet. So number one, what is it you want? Let's get clear. Where are you going? The second most important question is the why. Why do you want this? Why is it important to you? Now, here is why the why is important. Things are going to get tough. Things are going to go wrong. They're not going to go the way you thought. There's going to be obstacles. There's going to be hurdles. What is going to keep you going? The why, the reason, the motivation, the drive.

10:50Now, here's another aspect why it's important. Why the why is important. When I was teaching at a college, and these were certain specific night classes and I was brought in as a guest lecturer, tutor. There was a number of kids who had these dreams. So I'd say, okay, come up to the front and I'd say, so what's your dream? And one kid says, you know, he wants to be a baseball star. And I said, why? Why is that important to you? He gave me a couple of different reasons, but I kept asking why, like he said, you know, the audience, the game, but why? This is Socrates in action. Yeah. But why? And so eventually what he says that's important is, my father will be proud of me, that my father doesn't take notice of me.

11:39This is with more questions. So now we've gotten to the core issue. This is not about becoming a famous baseball or basketball player. What he really is craving is the attention of his father, the relationship, the connection. Aha, let's talk about that. Because even when you get to become a famous baseball player, and you have, and in other people's eyes, you are a successful baseball player, inside you're not a success because you didn't get what you really wanted. The attention, the connection, the validation, the recognition, the praise, the honor from your father. So why is important? So again, you ask me, what's the pathway to success?

12:22Number one, what do you want? Number two, why do you want it? In case you realize what you thought you wanted isn't what you really wanted and you redesign, redirect your objective. Number three, what are you willing to give? What are you willing to give to get this? Because some people say, oh, I know what I want. I know why I want it, but really I'm not willing to give too much for it. I want it to come easily. Maybe it'll come easily, but most likely it won't. So there are three things. And the third, which is what you're willing to give, is really about commitment. So the energy is going to come from the motivation, but the grit is also going to come from the commitment.

13:03I think they're the three most important things. Number four, if you're willing to be focused, this is going to sound strange. Are you willing to be focused yet flexible? You're focused on a goal, but you realize this is not going the way I thought. What do I go here? Do I go there? Which way do I go? I think they're the four keys for me. Love it. You're on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. We're going to be back. Dr. Patrick Wanus is going to talk to us about relationships, letting go, moving on, how to do those things, how to get rid of the stuff that's stopping you getting what you really want.

13:35Start living your life on purpose and with a plan. As Brad Sugars teaches, you only get 4 ,000 weeks. So learn the principles of success and make the most of your life. Join Brad's Purpose event now and create the life that you deserve. Visit bradsugars.com to attend this program as a standalone or as part of Brad Sugars' Entrepreneurial University. And we're back. Big success. Patrick, I got to ask. One of the biggest keys to success that you teach is about how to free ourselves from the past. What are some of the things we can learn to do today to move in that direction? when i when i say that my mission is to set people free from the past it's to identify the emotions the subconscious emotions and the subconscious beliefs that you took on in the early years which is in the past that affects or infects your present the way that you interact with yourself with other people and the world around you so let's find out what is your current subconscious belief what what do you believe about yourself and the world around you do you believe you're good enough do you believe that life is easy do you believe that life is painful because all of those beliefs are going to co-create your reality i say co-create because there are always things outside of our control whether it's the weather politics whatever it is there's something outside of our control.

15:03So I want to find out what do you actually believe about yourself? And here is a little pearl. Unfortunately, we all have this belief to some extent, to some level. It's a subconscious belief that says there's something wrong with me. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable. I don't deserve that. I'm an outsider. I don't belong. wrong. There's something off about me. Babies don't have that. We get programmed through our experiences, through our teachings to believe certain things about ourself. Am I safe? Can I trust the world? Do I deserve this? Or did I experience abandonment, rejection, inadequacy, or not feeling loved?

15:48It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how driven you are. Those things are going to affect or infect your drive, your desire for success. And one other one too, Brad. And that is, will you enjoy the success that you actually get? And this is something that I sort of started teaching in 2006. I call it the law of deservedness. It's not a physics law, but it's definitely a psychological law. Meaning you only get what you subconsciously feel and believe you deserve and no more. Because if you get more than what you subconsciously feel and believe you deserve, you'll find a way to sabotage it, push it away, or you simply won't enjoy it.

16:32So to set you free from the past, we've got to find out what beliefs do you have? What emotion are you carrying in your body that hasn't yet been released? Now, this is not an airy fairy concept. We store emotions even at a cellular level. We know that our thoughts create our emotions when our emotions lead us to action, but our emotions also affect our physical body. You know, Brad, that I also specialize in trauma healing and trauma recovery. Those people, and it's a high percentage, those people that have experienced trauma as children have a completely different physiology. The architecture of the brain is changed based on what they experienced as children.

17:18If your nervous system is on constant hyper alert, we've tracked through decades of research that people that experience trauma will have problems with heart attacks, with strokes, with liver, all sorts of physiological problems. So we want to find out what are the emotions that you need to let go of. What is the subconscious belief we need to neutralize? What new beliefs do we need to create? In other words, it's like being reprogrammed. But the way that I do it, Brad, is not to relive the pain or the trauma. This is a process that can be done, contrary to what other people teach, without reliving the pain, without reliving the trauma.

18:01You look at it from a distance and you're reprogramming yourself with my help. Yeah. I want to just talk about two words you threw in there, affect or infect. Tell me why you use both words. What's the distinction there? So if we think about you say, oh, you've really affected me. Now I use that in the positive sense. you've done something that has created a change within me that is a positive change you've encouraged me you've moved me you've pushed me to do something that is for my betterment or the betterment of everyone around me in fact means that there's something that you're putting inside me or some way that you have influenced me that is really bad for me and potentially the people around.

18:52So I say, when you show up, are you going to positively affect people or are you going to infect them with some poison, something toxic, something that's unhealthy? How are you approaching people? It's a very clear delineation, isn't it? I want to talk about self-confidence and peak performance. There's the getting away from the negative, but then there's the whole positive side of what you teach as well. How do we get into that self-confidence peak performance place? Let's look at what confidence is. And I define confidence quite simply. I've done it before, so I can do it again. That's competency.

19:33And the second part relates to resiliency and also self-efficacy. So the second component of confidence is I will be okay no matter what happened. So I already believe in myself because I've had this much success. I've got some competency. But over here, I'm going into unexplored territory. But I say to myself, Patrick, you will be okay no matter what happens. So therefore, I'm willing to do it. I'm willing to take the risk. Let me add something with self-confidence. It's really important. This is part of the formula for success. To what extent are you willing to learn from the things that don't work out?

20:13To what extent are you willing to learn from the mistakes, from the errors, from the failures, from the disappointments? If you are open and you've been raised with a mindset that says, I can learn from mistakes, but I am not the mistake. The mistake doesn't define me. The mistake isn't me. I'm doing this and I'm willing to learn. And I look, oh, and I remember Damien Hughes said this in your podcast. What a great guy. He described it differently. He talked about being humble enough to say, I don't know everything. Let me learn. I present it differently, but I think that's a beautiful way for him to put it.

20:49The other way I present it is, you're just trying this out and it doesn't work. It's giving you a feedback and it says, it doesn't work that way. What do I need to change? Because the mistake doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. It means there's something wrong with my technique, with my resources, with my tools, with my strategies. If however, you were someone that was raised with constant criticism or you were constantly told you're not good enough or you told you or some way you were told or it was communicated you need to be perfect then you're going to constantly think that you are the mistake yeah but if your parents said to you look you've made a mistake what did you learn from this and at the same time if your parents encourage you to focus on the things you're doing right children 90 of the time know when they're doing something wrong all you have to do is give them that opportunity to see it for themselves.

21:41So you're praising them for what they're doing, right? And you say, where do you think you could have done better? And you let them come up with it. Or maybe you point it out to them. Now, I actually had that with my five-year-old daughter two nights ago. I was like, hey, kiddo, good choice or bad choice? And she's like, it was a bad choice, daddy. What would have been a good choice? And she told me the good choices. Like, excellent. That's good to know. Well done, Brett. Thanks, buddy. It's interesting. There's no better learning than having five kids to help you learn. Can you even apply all this stuff you teach?

22:13It's like there's a difference between teaching it and actually applying it on a day-to-day. I want to jump to that next level though, that peak performance, because ultimately you take people in that journey of let go of all of that, but then move to this amazing place. What is it that brings peak performance to a human in this day and age, or how do you teach that to someone? You've got to look at the person holistically. If you want to experience peak performance, you have to look at yourself holistically. You can't just talk about your thoughts. You can't just talk about your feelings. You can't just talk about routines.

22:48You've got to look at the whole picture. And this is where I also bring in neuroscience. So you want to look at the key factors to longevity. And one of them is sleep. Sleep is medicine. You cannot be a peak performer if you're not getting enough quality sleep and that's seven to nine hours for most of us you have to be in adjustment with your circadian rhythms so here notice I'm talking first about the physical body which affects the mental and emotional body and vice versa so we talk about sleep we talk about sunlight when you wake up are you exposing yourself to sunlight sunlight activates the pituitary gland in the first couple of hours important to get that 10 minutes of sunlight that puts your body in a routine, in balance, the circadian rhythms, because even your organs are in balance in a circadian rhythm.

23:40What are you putting into your body? This is critical. Your food does affect you. What are you putting into your mind that also affects you or infects you, as we talked about earlier? Exercise. You've got to move your body. You've got to engage your lungs. You've got to breathe. I also do yoga almost on a daily basis. When I say almost when I'm traveling, I may not have the opportunity because I make sure that I'm doing a lot of exercise. And the last one, which is tied to all of them, and it's been found all throughout every single study done on longevity and health, the quality of your relationships.

24:22The longest study ever done into health was done by Harvard, and they found that the greatest indicator of health, physical, mental, and emotional health is what? The quality of your relationship. Social connections are important. Look, you already know me, Brad, and I'm a pretty obvious, sometimes I'm a pretty easy guy to read. Here is a guy that's independent. See, I know my values. Fun, freedom, health, independence and experiences. So I already know there are my five values. Am I living according to them? Yes, I am. Good. My point is I love independence, but I recognize the significance of connection.

25:02I've been traveling now for 13 months, 13 months through 10 different countries. And what is the one thing that I noticed was the significance and the impact of positive relationships and this sense of community. I know that unfortunately the word's being distorted and twisted. Community isn't about like-minded people. It's about the people that are in your social circle that offer you support, the people in your social circle that believe in you, the people that are in your social circle that have your back, the people in your social circle that encourage you, the people in your social circle who call you out when you're doing ridiculous things.

25:40the people in your social circle who hold your hand and lift you up because you can't walk and then you lift them up when they can't walk that's the you know footsteps in the sand concept so the physical relationships is critical now there's a great guy if you haven't seen the video it's the video in the book by sean acor on the happiness advantage and he said when your brain is in a happy state versus a neutral, negative, or stress state, you will perform better in every parameter when your brain is in a happy state. What is one of the keys that he teaches regarding a happy brain state? Social connections and gratitude.

26:24Thanking the people in your life. Acknowledging all the great things you have in your life. You still want to say, yes, I know that I can do this, I can be this, but let's start with appreciating what we have and then moving towards what we also desire. So again, peak performance is about looking at yourself holistically, your physical body, your mental body, your emotional body, and your spiritual body. And what I mean by that is I teach that we experience life in four realms, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Spiritual doesn't even necessarily mean you have to believe in God or a higher power.

27:02If you do, excellent. And studies show that faith, again, a religious community can be very, very positive for you. But when I talk about spirituality, I talk about connecting with other people, making a positive difference, living from your heart. My heart tells me when I'm doing the right thing. My heart screams to me when I'm doing the wrong thing. My heart cries in pain when I see suffering. This is part of the human experience. So spirituality is about what can I do to help? What difference can I make? And I know you're going to ask me this question. When we talk about scaling up, how do you go from a million to a billion or whatever number you're looking for?

27:45It's about how much value you can bring. How much value can you bring to the marketplace? How many more people can you help? Because there's always a way to monetize that. If you're talking about Velcro, if you're talking about the credit card reader, think about the person that invented the first credit card machine. It became a multimillionaire because this affected a lot of people. And we can go on and on. The more value you can bring to the marketplace, then the further you can monetize it. But again, my point here is that to become a peak performer, look at every aspect of your life. Don't just think peak performance is about achieving this monetary goal or building this company and then selling it.

28:29It's got to be more. It's got to be all of me. So I teach, and I think you'll appreciate this as a father and as a parent, when I'm working one-on-one with clients, I say, well, what's the role of a parent? And they'll say, oh, to love their children. I say, okay, that's great. What does love mean? And then there's the whole series of descriptions. And I say, but is love enough? And I say, perhaps the actual goal of a parent is to give everything to the child that he or she needs to realize his or her full potential. That's what you're doing. You're not trying to create a mini me. And you're not going to create a mini me if you're a man and you've got a daughter.