Your Comfort Zone Is a Trap. Why Most Never Escape with Peter Sage

0:07We're listening to another episode of the vault unlocked and today we're going to jump right into it because we have the man himself, Peter Sage. Instead of me telling you how great he is, I think he could do a better job than I can ever do. Peter, welcome to the show. For our audiences that maybe not know who you are, just give us a little brief, if we can, of who Peter is and really what you represent. Well, to be honest, I mean, there's always the tendency to people to put you on a pedestal. I'm just a guy, just same as everyone else, trying to put one foot in front of the other as best I can.

0:43But the path that I've led really has centered around being an entrepreneur since I dropped out of school at 16. I've spent 35 years now being unemployable and building multiple different international companies. Some have worked, some have failed majestically, some have been great ideas and should have stayed ideas when I was drunk. All the other stuff. Seen a lot, done a lot, made a lot, lost a lot, had a lot of fun. But what I love to do is I have a passion for personal growth and understanding human behavior in the mind. So that's really what's led me as a parallel career as well as international business to really be an authority on what makes us tick.

1:20How do you get up in the morning and swing the bat with joy rather than with gritted teeth? So really, that's kind of me. And I've been known to throw myself in certain situations to demonstrate that. And that's probably where some of the people come across me. And I've had the privilege of working on and off with yourself as well, Kavon, for quite a few years now. So I think this podcast was a long time coming. It is. And I'm excited to get into it because I know, I mean, we're being humble right now, but we're talking, Peter Stages has been on stages with Tony Robbins, some of the top experts, multiple TEDx speaker.

1:55I mean, there's so much we can do today, but the Vault Unlock is all about coming and discovering the one thing. And that's why I'm really excited because I know for you, your one thing is personal mastery. And if we even went deeper, it's really, it's the mindset mastery of, of that. Uh, so I love the story. I just listened to your last Ted talk. I thought it was amazing. I mean, you can even see the awe in the audience. You never really get an awe in a Ted talk and, uh, you did. So tell us what you just did. Why did you do it? And the pain and everything. I mean, I really want to understand this because I think it's pretty crazy.

2:34I, I'll even say this before we get into it. But when I was listening, I don't even think I'd last 24 hours. Even if I could put my mind and will set to it, I just don't see how I could last more than 24 hours of doing this. Well, I think for the audience listening, thinking, what the hell is this guy doing? Or what do you do? I'll set the scene very briefly. I've done a lot of ultra endurance athlete stuff, you know, from running across the Sahara to just recently, a few weeks ago, completed the North Pole Marathon on there. But all of that pales in comparison to the adventure I took on with my best friend last year, in fact, last December.

3:11And so about a year ago. And we took on something called the World's Toughest Row. And this is what's known as an ocean rowing boat, which imagine a beefed up canoe with a couple of little cabins stuck on the end that you can't really stretch out in. you're sitting six inches off the water and you're rowing unsupported meaning no one's allowed to touch the boat you've got to take everything with you from the canary islands 3 000 miles across the atlantic to antigua in the caribbean and it's the same route that columbus took from the same place it's kind of commemorative that way but you're talking about a rowing boat we're not talking sail.

3:49We're not talking engine. We're talking about arms and oars for 3 ,000 miles. And that took me just under two months. And the impact for that really is understanding that because it's a rowing boat, if somebody's not rowing, you're drifting. And so in order to actually make the boat move where you want it to move, somebody has to be rowing at all times. And the that the best, I guess, schedule that's been discovered really for that is two hours on and two hours recovery. So I row for two hours and then I recover while Lee rows for two hours. And that's 24 seven for just under two months. Yeah.

4:29Like, I mean, it's to me, it's just insanity. I'm not going to be honest with you. It's like, why anybody sign up for such a crazy thing? 20 like two people can't i really want to talk about this because i think it's so important here people can't stay disciplined for a week you had to stay disciplined two hours on two hours off life threatening i mean you're in the middle of the ocean and there is no you there's no i want to quit that you've made that decision you're you have to do it what what first gets you to make wake up and go, what's the hardest thing I can do? And just, I'm going to just go do that today.

5:11Well, as I mentioned in the tag tour, there was two real reasons I wanted to take this on. And the first is that I've been teaching self-mastery for a long time. You know, it's, it's a, just a reality of life. If you can't master your mind, you will never master your life. Yeah. If you can't understand self-discipline, if you can't engineer your own, yeah, kick up the but no one's coming to save you if you go down the wrong spiral. So putting yourself in a situation where there is no choice is usually a great way to find out what you're made of, because there is no choice. And I wanted to, I thought, you know, think of this scenario.

5:48And by the way, this happened a lot. Imagine that you're a thousand miles offshore. The nearest human is in the International Space Station. The nearest land is five miles underneath you. You've not seen another boat or anything for weeks. You are tired, sleep deprived to the point of hallucinating. It's four o 'clock in the morning, pitch black. You're in a raging sea. You've not eaten for 24 hours because you're seasick. You've got salt blisters covering most of the contact points on your body, including your hands and your ass. And your alarm goes off. You've managed to get about 45 to 50 minutes of your downtime actually asleep once the cortisol has gone out of the body from the previous row, and you've got to go out and row backwards in the dark in a bad sea.

6:34At that point, your mind is going to do what it's meant to do, which is to give you every single excuse to pull the plug, open the trap door, say, I don't want to go to school today. And it's in that moment, I wanted to find out where I'm at. Because you can talk about it. You can sit on a podcast and brag about it. But theory does not cover the price of admission to the higher levels of greatness. And that's why we say greatness is thrust upon people. It's not something that's usually chosen. It's thrust upon you because you have to step up. So I wanted to find out in a real situation at that level, did I start to cry and say, I don't want to go to school today or am I going to get out and suck it up?

7:13What would happen if you, did you, was there even a choice when you're in the middle of the ocean, you know, say six weeks in, could you even wave the white flag? It doesn't seem like that's even a possible opportunity. If there was an emergency, and we had a few emergencies, right? I mean, Lee, my rowing partner, best friend from childhood, you know, Royal Marine Commando for 22 years, you know, good mindset, good, strong on the oars like I was. He got knocked out twice while he was rowing just after the about 10 days we're into the row. And we got a rogue wave that slammed the boat. I was in the cabin.

7:50It sent me spinning. but it hit his head on the side of the oar that the power of the wave was that hard. And I look, get out and he's incoherent. He doesn't know who he is, where he is. There's blood all over the boat. I think he's gashed his head. It turned out to be a laceration on his hand but he couldn't row for three and a half days at that point. And so I'm rowing solo and he's not even coming out of the cabin. And they almost, I called it over the satellite phone to the safety team and the safety officer. But the nearest rescue boat is usually about four days away. I mean, you've got to figure this out.

8:30Yeah. And so, you know, is there a way you could quit? They almost went to send somebody for him because if it was a bad concussion, head injury, then he needs medical attention. And we were trained in first aid in basically the space of a large coffin, which is all the boat is. Right? You've got to, you know, it's not a normal first aid scenario. If you've got recovery positions or you're doing this, but he came out of it after three and a half days. He was back on the oars. And then about 10 days from the end, it happened again. And he got slammed, same part of the head. And this time, not only was he unconscious and concussion, he lost the vision in his left eye.

9:11Oh, my God. And so at night, again, three and a half days to four days where he couldn't get on the oar. So I'm rowing solo again. I'm rowing 11, 12 hours a day in daylight. And then what I do is I tie up everything on deck. Yeah, the oars, the water, everything. If you get capsized, it's not tied to the boat. It's gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Including you, by the way. If you're not tied on at all times, if you go overboard, the wind or the current or the waves can move you away from the boat faster than your buddy can row. Absolutely, yeah. Meaning that if you're not tied on, you go overboard.

9:43You're going to see your friend disappear over the horizon. Absolutely. uh and it's it's interesting because you said earlier in the show if you don't stop rowing you're drifting so how did you know you were hopefully drifting in the right direction or like i mean even if you went to sleep three four hours like how much like did that take away from where you're going you set the boat up as best you can with the rudder in the direction you want you hope the current's going to be in your favor but uh i mean first night we lost about 12 miles yeah it's just what it is yeah wow i mean we can talk like this whole episode can be just on this uh but i really want to talk about uh like all like really everything that you stand for i mean i'll say it like even being able to work alongside with you all of that like you know you've even helped me with my mindset and just uh one of the things i want to kind of go back to because it's one that I always remembered.

10:41And I feel like it, you know, this is your content. And it was it was so simple. I still teach people this. And I say, I'm still stuck on this level. And I don't even know how you get to that next level, which is like the to me, the by me, right through me, and I think it's the as me, right. And, and I think it's so important that like, I think that for that level of consciousness. I think it's such a base level of knowledge that I don't think most people are conscious to. They don't even understand that there's levels of consciousness. And it's not actually that hard to understand what these levels are, but it's a whole other world to live them and to become them and to actually be them.

11:23So like, I would love to just deep dive into that a little bit, if that's okay. Sure. And the original model came from Michael Beckwith, when he channeled it through in a class, he told me this personally in the sort of 80s. But I've expanded on it a lot because it does provide a real strong framework of understanding because most people are familiar with the concept of biological maturity. You're going to age. You know somebody who's in their 40s versus someone who's in their 20s. But emotional maturity is different. Emotional maturity is a choice. And most people have never been trained on how to take that on, which is why there's a lot of emotional teenagers out there running around in some pretty old bodies.

12:02But if we look at it through the lens of Albert Einstein, who's a pretty smart guy, never met him, but he said something that was pretty profound. He said, you cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness that created the problem. Now, he didn't say you can't solve a problem at the same level of intellect. He said the same level of consciousness. So looking at it through that lens. If we take this nebulous word, this 13 letter anomaly that science hasn't figured out called consciousness, you know, science in a biological way is still trying to think, right, the brain produces consciousness when the reality is the brain doesn't produce consciousness any more than a radio writes music.

12:40Yeah. So when it comes to... Isn't that interesting? Like, here we go. Okay. I'll let you keep going, but wow. Yeah. Okay. So four levels, the first level, the lowest level of consciousness in humanity right now, which is very ubiquitous, it's quite prevalent along about 70 % of the world by design. That's a different podcast, one that you'd probably had more with Kevin and Katie previously. But yeah, the level is called to me. And it's called to me because the mantra of that says, I would have the life I want. I would have the car I want, the body I want, the guile I want, whatever, but everything happens to me.

13:17And it is the, or if only this hadn't happened to me, then I would be this, that, the other. If you had my parents, then you'd understand. Or if you had my boss, you'd understand. All this kind of BS. So it's the quintessential level of victimhood. And the challenge with victim is that nowhere in the universe is the role of victim ever supported. You doubt that, go to the Savannah in Africa and see what victims are about. you know yeah so most people in our sphere especially people listening to this podcast are kind of past that they get that you know being a victim doesn't work they don't want to be a victim they want to take personal responsibility they want to go out and try to create a better life they are seeking answers whether that's online through podcasts like this or whatever they want to open the vault to find out what they got to do yeah and that gets us to the next level of consciousness called buy me.

14:14And buy me is the mantra of if it is going to happen, it's going to happen by me because to me ain't working. So I'm going to set some goals. I'm going to go out of the market. I'm going to go hustle. I'm going to do what I can. I'm going to work on self-improvement because if I am going to get my goals, it's going to happen by me. And rather than stand on the shore of the river of life, complaining about the temperature or the current, you dive in and you start fighting the current, swimming upstream towards your goal. That's kind of the achiever mentality versus the victim mentality. And the vast majority of personal growth, Kayvon, initially, if we go back to the Tony Robbins in his early days, it was catering for what I call the to me, to buy me crowd.

14:58In other words, stop watching infomercials at two in the morning, you sad sod, pull your thumb out of your ass, go set some goals, go get them, cowboy, I'll show you how get motivated. And it was like, how do you get people from complaining at life to creating a life? Yeah. And that was how personal development for the masses kind of entered the market, certainly in Tony's side. The challenge with that is that personal growth as an industry pretty much realized that there isn't a lot of money in that because there's more people in to me are committed to keeping their problems than outgrowing them.

15:33They have what's called secondary gain. They have a way to validate their own significance by the size of their problem. They get their connection through connecting with other people that are victims, groups or blaming the government or blaming this or blaming that or whatever. So a lot of people are more happy being unhappy than you realize. It's crazy. But those that are ready to go are the ones that would pull up their credit card and say, I'll buy that program because I'm looking for a way out. But it's a small number of that pyramid. So the vast majority of personal growth today is what I call the low buy me to high buy me.

16:17It's somebody that's committed to wanting to do better, but they want to... What's the hack? What's the hustle? How do I 10x this? How do I get the Lambo instead of the Beamer? It's the low buy me to high buy me crowd, right? Low achiever to high achiever. and that's your typical you know tony robbins more in that space these days your grant cardones your gary v's your dan pennies you know you pick one that that's the vast majority of personal growth in the industry on instagram with your muppet standing next to your fake lambo profile picture trying to sell somebody a course on how you can make more money right you get the idea yeah my market is different my market speaks to crossing the bridge to the next level of consciousness.

16:57And the next level of consciousness, what we call through me. Through me is where you're no longer swimming upstream, fighting the current, but you're actually aligning with the current and allowing life to take you to where you should go. Not passively. If you're in a boat in a river and you're not, trust me, if you're not in control of your rudder, you're going to drift to where you don't want to go. But rather than using your energy to fight the current, if you use your energy to position yourself better in the current, that's a better use of energy. And most people in By Me start off as Alan the Achiever.

17:31They move into stressed out Simon, get to burnt out Barry, hopefully avoid heart attack Harry, drop into two meter catch their breath when their next hustle doesn't work, realize that's not who they are, get back on the horse and start galloping again in By Me. And they rinse and repeat. There's like a glass ceiling. There's like, what's the code I'm not cracking. And code you're not cracking is understanding that, as Einstein said, you can't solve a to me problem at a to me level of consciousness, right? Victim is not going to be solved by victim. Victim will be solved by achiever. But you can't solve an achiever level of problem at an achiever level of consciousness.

18:10You have to rise above. And when you start aligning with the natural flow of the river, when you start understanding the rules of the road, when it comes to the non-physical rule set. See, by me is outer world centric. To me is outer world centric from a victim reactive perspective. By me is outer world centric from how do I control my reality and how do I get it to fit my pictures with force? Yeah. Through me taps into a power. Through me is different. Through me is where you give up the need for control because you understand a fundamental truth that has been taught to the elites for centuries.

18:47and that is outer world follows in a world, not the other way around. You've got chaos in your outer world, check your thinking. You're chasing money. And here's a great question for people listening in because the answer to this question becomes self-evident when you hear the question, but most people have never asked themselves the question. And the question is this, would you rather make money or build wealth? Which one? Well, I mean, personally build wealth. Of course. Once you ask the question that way, the answer is self-evident. So why aren't people building wealth? I'll tell you. Because they're too busy trying to make money.

19:27So when you realize that if you are trying to make money, most people are coming at it from a scarcity mentality. Well, outer world follows inner world. The biggest number one law in personal growth that I've discovered in 36 now years of doing this, I can sum up in one phrase. You will never rise above the opinion of yourself. It's interesting. I say to my sales guys, you will never outsell your identity. Yeah, same thing. It's the same, yeah. So if you've got a financial comfort zone around 50 grand a year, and that's how you identify yourself, and all of a sudden you start getting involved in an opportunity that could bring you 150 grand, A, you're either going to self-sabotage it, or you're going to find a way to get rid of that other 100 grand when it shows up in your bank account, because you'll never rise above the opinion of yourself.

20:18What you want to be doing is, how do I raise my financial comfort zone? How do I raise my financial thermostat? And a great example of this, you go back into my side of town in terms of England 400 years ago when it was a feudal system, meaning that you didn't have the gift or the ability to be an entrepreneur. You were either born in the Lucky Sperm Gang or you weren't. You were a landowner, a baron, a landlord, and your family was set for life. Or you were a peasant. You worked on the land that the landlord owned, picking stuff out of the fields. That's the game. So imagine that you're a servant in the landlord's house.

21:01They had servants. They had maids. They had butlers, what have you. And the landlord is having, the land baron is having a party for some of his wealthy landowner friends. and you're serving the meal with the other servants. So you're dressed in your servant's gear, you walk in, you place the plates down, you lift the dome off, you disappear quietly. And let's say that you'd made friends with the land baron's daughter, who was six, seven years old, because you were her maid, you helped her get dressed in the morning, you made her bed, you played with her toys, what have you. That was part of your job.

21:39and the daughter sees you bringing the food to the table. And she says, oh, daddy, daddy. Let's say that the servant's name is Jane. Can Jane join us? Right? Jane, please come sit next to us at the table. What's Jane's immediate thought? No, like, oh, I'm not good enough. I'm not one of them. I'm not supposed to be at this table. I'm not allowed at this table. And then the worst one, I just want to, I'm not worthy enough of being. Absolutely. Of course, it's not her place. And even if the daughter insisted and the land baron says, all right, put her a seat there. How is she going to feel sitting at the table with all the other wealthy people?

22:27Oh, good. Uncomfortable. All that. A hundred percent. Now, the question I have for your audience is simple. What table are you sitting at? Because Jane's very happy at the servants table downstairs. That's where she belongs. There is no difference in physiology. Same two arms, two legs, same nervous system. Same, you know, the difference is where do you feel comfortable sitting? And you get to decide that. You know, if you're in a village like that a few hundred years ago, and the king rides into town with his people, the whole village is astir. I said, oh my God, like there's a, it's the, it's a human being on a horse.

23:10Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The difference is mental. Would you agree that it's easier than like easier said than actually practiced or, or, or. If it was easy to practice, we'd all be sitting there with the massive paper. Yeah. Because it's actually what you're saying too, it kind of goes along with a quote I heard in your, in your, your TED talk. You said something about comfort versus growth-centric experiences. Yeah. It's coming back to what I said about my role in this industry is helping frustrated people in by me cross over into through me. Yeah. The invitations to the table feel natural. How do you engineer that from an inside-out perspective rather than hunt for it from an outside-in perspective, which is never going to work?

23:58And so, and the fourth level, by the way, which I'm not qualified to talk about, it's called as me. That's kind of your non-denominational oneness, you know, non-duality. I love, you know, Peter, as much as you're the expert, right? And, you know, one of the leading experts in this space, this is what I love about you and what the difference between the real and the fakes are is called humility. And for you to know that there are four levels of this highest level of consciousness and that the fourth level is, it's not that it's unattainable. It's a different world like that. Like I call that. It's funny.

24:32I tell people when I teach it, the monk level, like that's like monk. And I don't even know personally if I even aspire to be even at that highest level. But I sure as hell know I want to aspire to be as the through me level. So for those people like me, I mean, full on honesty, who's at the top of through me um uh by me at the top level sitting on the cusp understanding uh that there's that there is this this little um there's this this thing called surrender where you still have to trust yourself but also let go and trust the outer world and and and be able to flow and I call it flow like water um how does someone cross that chasm uh when they're when they want it so when they want it they they understand it but they find themselves like they're they're just sitting there and and maybe it's the fear maybe it's just the unknown but they're sitting there paralyzed of of of actually taking that last little leap that probably changes everything.

25:41It's the one thing that gets you into the through me. What would you say to that person? A.K.A. Kayvon. So, I mean, you're pointing in the right direction. Surrender can be heard from different levels of consciousness. You hear the word surrender as a victim into me, and you hear the world be dominated by, right? If you hear the word surrender in by me, you hear it as failure. You hear the word surrender in through me, and you're surrendering, letting go of the need for control. Now, I didn't say control itself. I'm saying the need for control. And again, there's different levels of consciousness that people will hear this from.

26:20I'll give you another insight. The real starting point of power, the genesis of true power is the second you recognize you don't need it. There is a letting go at that level. There is a point where people will look at you because you're no longer craving significance or external validation and think, wow, I want what they have. In other words, you're getting it by osmosis because you don't really need it. So when you give up the need for control, you actually get more control over the situation because now you're working with unseen forces, if you like, that are conspiring in your favor. And let's go back to Einstein.

27:02He said, the most powerful question you could ask or answer in your lifetime is do you live in a friendly or a hostile universe? Now think about it. You think you live in a friendly universe and things are happening for you. If something goes wrong, you're excited to find out why it didn't fit your pictures and what's going to come good of it. You're looking for the silver lining in the cloud. It's like, okay, so that wasn't my outcome, but I'm excited to see how it turns out because I live in a friendly universe. Therefore, it must be happening in my favor. I just don't see it from this level yet.