Podcast Episode 83 Transcript

Episode 83: Creating An Extraordinary Life Without Regret With Dr. Jamil Sayegh

Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of PreReal. And over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate. Each week, a meeting with outstanding investors, investors, highperforming individuals and visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now. Getting it Done this podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the Prereal Podcast welcome everyone, to The Prereal Podcast. We're joined today by Doctor Jamil Sayegh. Normally, we do a bit of brief bantering back and forth. I wanted to read the bio word for word because I think it's critical the audience understands who we have on the other side of the table or the virtual table, if you will hear. We focus so much on this podcast, and I think in general, talking about how to get to the next level and unlocking your potential and becoming a more masterful deal maker. And all of those things are amazing, but they don't work if there's not balance, they don't work if there's not harmony. And that's what Dr. Jamil Sayegh focuses on. So I'm just going to read for a moment, if I can. Dr. Jamil Sayegh is an international life, business and relationship coach, integrative nature pathetic physician, master NLP practitioner, and the author of 20 Steps to Your Next Breakthrough. He works with leaders and high performers from all walks of life, including world champion athletes, best selling authors, entrepreneurs, business professionals, and more, to create an extraordinary life without regret. Dr. Jamil has a deep passion to end suffering for as many people as possible by reconnecting to them what's real and challenging them to live and love fully. He is a true healer at heart who loves to motivate, empower, and inspire others to take responsibility and action in their lives so they can influence more effectively, expand their contribution, embody their greatness, and make this world a better place. Because that's where we are, folks, with that. Dr. Jamil, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today. Really excited to talk with you. Thank you so much, James, for having me and for this opportunity to be with your community and for everyone who's tuning in. Thank you so much for being with us today. It's my pleasure and honor. We have a common associate, Mark, who runs the podcast for us that has connected us. And we talk so often, folks, about, as I had noted earlier, performing and getting to the next level and crushing that next deal and how to grow your portfolio and how to ten X this and 100 X that. And if we're not careful, I found that we end up with a pile of systems, and the systems don't work if there's not that balance that we talked about. So I was wondering, Doc, if you could just spend a few minutes talking to the audience about I know there were some really impactful moments in your life early on that I think probably set the stage for you in life and in your pursuit of this passion. Could you give the audience a little bit of context for that? Absolutely, James. Yes. So I think what you're referring to. When I was 19 years old, I was an undergraduate in University in the Bronx. I was at Forum University. For anyone listening who's been there too. And my father was 49 years old and he had a brain aneurysm. And for anyone who's not familiar with what that is, imagine one of the blood vessels in your brain. Think of it like a tube starts to balloon out. And if you're fortunate, you have one of the worst headaches of your life. You go to the hospital, they take care of it, and hopefully you walk away and you're okay. My father wasn't as fortunate and his aneurysm ruptured. And so now imagine it bursts in the middle of your head. And for 4 hours he was under brain surgery fighting for his life. And we were told it was the worst aneurysm a neurosurgeon had ever seen. And the chances of survival were less than 5%. And you can imagine those 4 hours felt like 40 years as I was trying to get through that be strong for my family while I was also being told by people, hey, just to prepare you, he's probably not going to make it. And all these kind of things which I didn't want to hear, obviously in the moment. And we were very fortunate that 4 hours later we spoke to the surgeon and he had survived. He was in a coma. He may never wake up and he could die at any moment. And I walked into that room after his surgery and here was this guy. My dad was a family practice physician and he was also one of the top three Elvis impersonators in the world. Music was his life. He was a drummer in high school, like all county, all state love music. He's toured with Elvis's actual band around the world. And he was like a ball of life. So much life and love in this human being. And here he was in this hospital bed and I'd never seen somebody that vulnerable. And I felt in that moment two profound experiences. One was a sense of helplessness other than prayer and hope really felt I couldn't do anything. I was just waiting and I kind of felt like I was waiting for him to die because I was told it was that critical. And the second sense of emotion was this really deep sense of regret. And there was this emotion of I had taken my dad for granted. I didn't know him the way that I could have, the way that I would have liked to. And I was 19 at the time. Like I said, he was 49. And I was buying into this belief I have time. And so I was thinking, oh, he'll have another 30, 40, 50 years. And at the time, at 19, my priorities were my friends. It was school. I was a track athlete, athletics, video games, movies, things like that. It wasn't let me get to know my dad on a soul level like man to man. It wasn't that. And so I had felt that I messed up and then I blew it because I wasn't going to have another shot, given what I was seeing going on right in front of my eyes. And fortunately, we had three more years before he passed away. And in those three years, we helped him make almost a full recovery. And I got my prayers answered in the sense that I took two years off after I graduated College to be one of his primary caregivers. And I got to spend ten to 15 hours a day with him. And he became one of my best friends. We got to play music together. We got to work out together. We got to go for walks and talk and all these things. I really got to know him. And at the same time, I had some of my lowest lows. There were moments where he was prone to seizures and short term memory loss. After his aneurysm, he forgot who I was multiple times. He almost died in my arms several times. And throughout that first year and a half, I remember going to sleep every night wondering, is that the last time I'm going to see my dad? And then I would wake up in the morning and there would be almost like a little bit of a fog for a few moments of was that all a dream? Did that actually happen? Am I going to go downstairs? And life is like normal, like it was before? And throughout those three years, one of the primary lessons, if you'd call it that, I learned the value of today, the value of this moment. Every day, statistically, 150,000 people don't wake up. Every single person listening right now was not one of those people. And if you're even extra fortunate than that, you've got some people that you really love and care about. And they woke up too, some or all of them. And in a way, we've all hit the Lotto right from the get go when we wake up. And yet so many of us think something out of the ordinary has to happen in order for us to feel happy, in order for us to feel excited or fulfilled. And every day that I woke up and dad was there, it's like, wow, I got one more day. And taking it a step before that, every day I woke up, it's like, wow, I got another day. In the three years while my dad was alive, two of my cousins passed away, and one was 21, was 21, and both were sudden. And if you had asked either guy when they were 18, tell me about the life you're going to be living. I promise you, neither one would say, I'd be dead in three years. Ish. And so after the three years, my dad passed away, and I remember being at his wake. And over 7000 people came to shake my hand in a five hour period. And almost every single person said, Your dad saved my life. And there was this profound sense of being humbled by, wow, like, what an impact this man had. And it was people from every culture, every country, every walk of life dress, all the differences, all the religions, and people asking if they can pray over the casket, show respects in their own way. And it was so beautiful because every one of these people, what they had in common was they felt a deep level of care for this man who loved and respected them so much, not just said it, but embodied it, showed it through his action. And I had an awakening in that moment of realization. I had been playing small, that I had carried way too much about what other people thought about me, that I was afraid of rejection and that I was robbing the world of that spark, that light that I am, and that each of us are one of my favorite. I have three top favorite words, and one of them is enthusiasm. And enthusiasm means it comes from ante, Theos, or entheus, and it means the God within. And when you radiate enthusiastically, you're radiating that divine spark that you are that makes you uniquely you. And what I find most of us do is we wear a mask, and our mask is, who do I need to be to be enough for you to love me, to be normal, to be special, to be accepted, to be validated in the eyes of society, to be popular? Right. And when we wear that mask, we're living the life other people expect us to live, not our own version of the life we would like to live, not the life that our heart, our spirit is like, yes, that's you. We're ignoring that out of fear of, what if I can't do it? What if I'm not good enough? What if other people don't like it? And I find that when you play that game and you love the wearing the mask, even when you win, you lose. Because when you think you won. Oh, they finally like me. No, they like the mask. Oh, I finally am successful, maybe in the eyes of society, but do you feel successful? And then people find. No. The things that matter most to me. I'm not doing. I'm ignoring. I sacrificed to get what I thought was important. And so after that moment, that light switch, AHA moment, it was like, never again. I'm going to live my life fully. I'm going to play all out. I'm going to remind other people who they truly are, what they're capable of, how they're getting in their own way and help them overcome that so they can have the happiness, the peace and the fulfillment that they so rightly want and deserve. And that's where it comes to this idea of creating an extraordinary life without regret. An extraordinary life is a life on your terms. It's a life that is extraordinary by your own definition, not societies or your families or whatever. And without regret. I never want anyone to feel what I have felt in that hospital, thinking that my dad would die at any moment. And I was really fortunate that I had those three years after. And many people don't have that who've experienced similar situations. But there's a quote that I remember hearing. It's not where I heard it, but learn from the mistakes of others, because you're never going to live long enough to make them all yourself. And I'm hoping that every single person who has heard this story can take a look at your own life and say, is there something I'm not doing that I would like to do? Is there an area of my life I'm playing small? Are there people in my life that I really care about that maybe I don't show it? Am I getting into fights and holding grudges and being bitter about things in the grand scheme of things really don't matter? And if something were to happen to that person, I might have some regret about that. Am I living the life that at night when my head hits the pillow, if I wasn't going to wake up tomorrow, can I be at peace with that? Or would I have all these regrets of what I didn't do? I find most people are afraid to die because they recognize at some level that they haven't really lived. And when you really feel that you're truly living, your fullest expression of you now life becomes less about the quantity how many years, and it becomes more about the quality of those years. And so that is the driving force behind why I do what I do. And I will pause there and throw it back to you, James. So thank you for sharing the story. It's remarkable in many ways, but I think what is perhaps the most remarkable piece of the story is while not all or even many of us have had an instance like that, that was so profound and hit so close to home, but we have all had those moments, all of us, where we are shaken to our core. Right. And we have that internal dialogue of, I'm not doing this anymore. My goodness, look at what happened here. That's it. I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm going to change. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do so few of us ever act on 1% of what that new path looks like. Why? What is the difference for you? And what is it that you're able to do to take those of us that are suffering, those of us who are feeling pain, those of us who feel so damaged that there is no pathway other than the path that we're currently on that have experienced so much distraction throughout the course of the day that it just feels almost impossible to change course to the extent where we don't even acknowledge it anymore. I'm finding more and more and more high performers sharing those types of experiences both on and off air on the show. What was it or what is it for you that actually you actually did it, right? I hate this expression. And I said it recently on a podcast, but living your best life, you're doing it. And why are you doing it? So few of us that are performing at a very high level are not. Yeah. So I think it's a really powerful question. And I think that there's probably like ten sub questions in that. And so I'll answer it to the way I've heard it, that you shared it, and then we can go back and forth if I didn't answer it fully. And so I think a big aspect of it as it relates to me, but also as it relates to the people that I've worked with is first and foremost, if you haven't already done it, cultivating a level of self awareness that is not too common in society that I have seen. Do you know who you really are? Do you know what's important to you? Do you know what you value? Do you know what kind of impact you'd love to have in this world? Have you actually connected to that and felt into it to the point where tears can form just by you sitting here and thinking about 20 years from now, five years from now, 50 years from now, whatever the time frame is of when you've accomplished the mission, the goal, the vision that you have and the impact that would have on the world, on your community, on a specific group of people, whatever that would be. And when you can connect to it emotionally, not just logically, that creates motivation, that creates a drive, that creates an ambition, it fuels a fire that might instead of being like a little flame, like a candle flame or something, it becomes like a raging inferno in you, right. Driving you forward. So I think for me that feeling of I've been playing small at my dad's wake and realizing that I was coaching at that time as well. And I just had noticed that, wow, I'm helping people. And yet there are areas of my own life that I'm playing small. There are areas of my own life I'm holding back now. Why am I doing that? And big picture that applies to pretty much everybody. There's some variation of fear. But then when you realize there really isn't anything for you to be afraid of, by following the path that's on your heart to follow, by getting clear on what's really exciting me. Oftentimes when I'm working with people, one of the primary things I'm doing is I'm helping them navigate their thinking because our thoughts get us in trouble. Our thoughts create our experiences, our thoughts create our emotions when we believe them. And most of the time, you're believing things that aren't true. So you're believing things about the world, you're believing things about yourself. You're believing things about other people. And because it's not true, your foundation is a lie. And so you're building on top of that excuses and reasons and rationale and story why you can't live the life you want to live. And it's not true. But like you said, if we get kind of accustomed to living that way, thinking that way for a period of time, there's an expression, it's kind of the opposite of this, but it is this. A lie told frequently enough becomes the truth. It's not that it is the truth, but it's perceived to be the truth. So in that same way, most of us are living a lie, not intentionally, but we're living a lie. It's keeping us stuck where we are. And it reminds me of there's a quote from Rumi. He was a Sufi poet from like 800 years ago. And he said, Why do you remain in prison when the door is wide open? You have the key to the jail cell in your pocket, but you've forgotten it's there. And I'm outside the cage saying, hey, check your pocket. And you're like, no, no, it can't be that easy. And you're not checking your pocket. That's the way so many of us I find live. And so I'm going to pause there so I can hear kind of what you heard, I said, and then we can go back and forth if that resonates. Yeah, of course it does, in more ways than one. So the analogy of being in a prison, but the door is open or being in a prison and the key is in your pocket. For many of us, myself included, I did not even recognize genuinely that I was in prison and that I had the key. I genuinely did not recognize it. And it was on this show I had a coach on, and we had gone through the show. And at the end of the show, when we stopped recording, he looked up at me and he said these exact words, part of me being crude. But he said, Are you going to stop fucking lying to me and everybody else? And I said, excuse me. And boy, oh, boy, did he dress me down like he saw pain. He saw fear. He saw all of these different things that, good Lord, it was hard to hear. But until he started calling me out on those things. They genuinely weren't there. Like something was obviously off. I was obviously stressed all the time. I was not nearly nor am I still in the condition I want to be physically, certainly not mentally. But it had become so buried and it became so normalized, right. You do it every day and you normalize these things and the behavior becomes normalized, and you rationalize this behavior that you don't even recognize genuinely. You don't even recognize the damage you're doing to yourself. And the trigger for me, that began a profound change. And I'm in the process of this change. I've got a long way to go, but I am changing and I am taking the steps was

when it started to come to the surface, how many people I was hurting around me who I cared about very deeply. That's when it hit home for me. When we started to have this discussion and these truths start to come to the surface, that's when it was okay. You're not just doing this to yourself anymore because you don't value yourself the way you should. You're damaging everybody else around you. So the question really is for those who were where I was and where I am, because it's baby steps, Doc. It's three steps forward, four steps back, three steps forward, one step back. How do you reach that person that initial way, that first trigger? What are things that we can do at home? What are things we can do on our own time to start that exploration and to really start evaluating? Are we as selfaware as we really think we are? Are there exercises, books, first steps that we can take before we end up at your doorstep, if you will? Yeah, man. First of all, I want to acknowledge what you shared. I felt the heart and the emotion behind it, and there's a bunch of questions that come up for me to share with the listeners that they can write down. Think of it like you could Journal on it. It might be something really useful, but prior to those and this also kind of counts as a two. It goes to what you were just saying. Who's counting on you? Who would you be letting down if you didn't do what it is you think you should do? In my situation, not only was it family, but I was thinking about the impact that I wanted to have. I was thinking about the clients and the audiences that I would never reach if I continued playing small. I've had people reach out to me several times over the last ten or twelve years saying I didn't commit suicide because of the support you gave. And I only spoke to them once or it's like this happened or that happened or that happened. And I realized, wow, if I chose to stay playing small, potentially, if it wasn't somebody else that would have stepped in this person wouldn't be here right now. And I keep that in my mind prior to it happening. So I can sit there and say, alright, wow, I'm not doing this just for me. All of the training, all the studies, all the work, all the whatever. This is going to help save hundreds, thousands, millions of lives. This is going to improve the world. This is going to have a ripple effect. And every single one of us can step into that. So here are some questions that I'd like people to sit with. Number 01:00 a.m. I happy. And it's interesting that such a simple question can be so polarizing or jarring. Like, whatever you write down, please know that nobody has to see it. So respectfully, don't bullshit yourself. Am I happy? Am I living the life that I believe I should be living? Does my life right now represent the fullest expression of who I am? There's an expression that I learned from Dr. Wayne Dyer and he said, don't die with your music still in you in that same kind of way. Am I singing my song? Am I playing my music? Is that what I'm doing on a daily basis or no? If the answer is no, why not? What are the stories? What are the reasons that you give yourself about why it's not the right time, why you can't? What are all the justifications you have for not being the real you? And with each one of those question them, is that really true? Is there another way I could look at this? And this is oftentimes kind of where people come to see me because they think, yeah, it's really true, but it's because they're so locked into seeing their world in a certain way. There's an expression. We don't see life the way that it is. We see life the way we are because everything that you experience in life is coming from you. It's coming from your five senses and it's coming from your thoughts and all that's in you. So life is expressing something right now, you and I are speaking. I'm seeing you over Zoom right now, but I'm not really seeing you. I'm just seeing like, lights hitting my eye. And then there's a picture of you in my head and my eyes projected out, right. And not to be too technical about it, but then let's say you're really happy. Someone else is really depressed, someone else is really excited. Why not? Because of what's happening around them, but because of how they're representing it to themselves and the meaning they're creating about the situation in their head. Because if somebody says, hey, James, I am so sad right now. And you say, why is that? And they say, cause it's raining. There's someone else down the street who says, James, I'm so happy right now. I'm so excited. And you say, Why? And they go, because it's raining. It's not the rain. It's how we relate to the rain. It's not covet. It's not the person passed away. If this is true, it has to apply in every situation, and it does. It's not. The economy collapsed. What are we making that mean? Am I making it mean? We're screwed? I'm hopeless. I'll never recover from this. This is the end for me, or is it an opportunity? Is it a learning experience? Is it an experience to challenge myself, to grow? Is it, hey, I lost my job, but I really didn't like this job to begin with. And I've been afraid to start my own thing. And now I can kind of do that. Very often. I find that we look at our lives, and right now, there's certain things in our lives that we're really happy about. Maybe it's your job, maybe it's your business, maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a spouse. It's a child. There's something that you have in your world right now that brings a lot of joy to you. And potentially, if you look back on your journey from birth to now, there's a lot of hardships that you experienced along the way, and you wouldn't be who you are now. And you wouldn't have what you have now if you didn't go through those hardships and some of those hardships, for example, making this up. You live in New York City, something challenging happens. You end up moving to Dallas, and you didn't want to do that, but you move. You end up falling in love with the love of your life in Dallas and the rest of your life, you're there and you're really happy. And you think about that hardship in New York City that you had, and you go, wow, if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have moved to Dallas. I wouldn't have met my partner. And so I just share all that. We look at your past, and there's one way of finding peace with that by a recognizing that it's over, it's not happening anymore. So often, I find the past let us go a long time ago. It's not happening anymore. And yet we kind of drag it back into our present moment experience. And we keep reliving the trauma, we relive the hardship. But if we were to let that go, learn from it so it doesn't happen again. Learn from it so you can be a smarter, wiser, excuse me stronger version of you. But if you can, first and foremost, let the past be the past, ask yourself right now, in this moment, am I happy? Am I living the life that I believe I should be living? What needs to change in order for me to be happy? And those answers are going to really get the kind of the wheels going in your mind. And then you might say, well, what's one step I could take towards that happiness? Is there a person I could call? Is there an action that I could take? And whatever the respect might be that begins that process. And so I think those questions to start with. And in addition, you might say, what am I doing this for? This being whatever it is that you're doing? There are people that I've met that they're working 100 hours a week and they're really killing themselves. And they think I'm doing it because I have a kid and I grew up poor. I don't want my kid to have that life I'm putting all this time in so that my kid basically has the life that I wish I had. The challenge is your kid is going to be 20 at some point, and your kid is not going to know you. And your kid doesn't really want your presence with a T, your kid wants your presence with a C. It's like, what are you sacrificing? I've heard stories of entrepreneurs that they sacrificed the birth of their child because they needed to be in a different state, like Puerto Rico. You know what I mean? Like Puerto Rico because they need to get a certain amount of days so they can get their tax minimizers. And it's like they've missed the birth of their child. It's like, was that really worth it? It's like, what matters to you? And when you're clear on what you value, what matters, are you happy? What's in the way of your happiness? What is draining you of energy right now? I often ask people, give me a list. What gives you energy and what drains you of energy? What are the people? What are the situations? What are the tasks? What are the things you do? And day by day, one by one, let's eliminate those things that drain you of energy. And then sometimes you're attached to those things. You've got a story about why you can't let it go. It's just a story. It's not true. And so, like you said, baby steps, right? One step at a time. What can I do today to be 1% happier, 1% more fulfilled, 1% more me. Where am I afraid? But notice the definition of courage is not fearless. Courage is you're afraid, but you do it anyway for one of two reasons. It could be both. A, you're more afraid of what will happen if you don't do it right, or B, it's just so compelling to you that it doesn't really matter that you're afraid. It's just what the vision, the dream. The upside is so big that you just know, I got to do this. And so that's where I would encourage people to begin. So I think for some of us, there are events like you referenced, there are things from our past that were so profound, so damaging, so difficult, that we build almost an alter ego. There's almost another persona that emerges. Like, legitimately. That persona served you in those difficult times. But then that persona kind of just takes over, and that's the shoes that you walk in, because that's how you got through another very challenging time or moment or whatever it may be for the individual. And then before you know it literally a decade or two comes off the calendar, and that's the path that you've walked. If I can just jump in, there two things. That's why it's so important, these kind of questions that I posed to the audience, to the listeners to think about these things on a daily and weekly basis, because if a decade goes by and you didn't notice that it's because you were just in the rat race, you were going through the motions, you were in a hurry, you were in a rush, and you weren't slowing down enough to hear your heart and your soul screaming, what are you doing? This isn't me. This isn't us. Like what's going on here? There's no shame about that. There's no blame, there's no guilt. It's just the realization I am where I am right now. Am I happy with that? Am I okay with that? Whether it's a relationship problem, a weight problem, a financial problem, whatever the challenge is in your life, is this what I want? And if the answer is no, well, what do I want? First of all, that's a really important question because so often I'll ask people before they even hire me, we'll have a conversation, and I might say, so tell me what you want, what it is, what would you love to experience? What would you love to have? And they answer it by telling me what they don't want. And when that's your focus, you typically get more of that because that's where your energy is going. If all of your energy is going into defense, you can't win. You got to go on offense. What do you want? And so first and foremost, that's important. The second thing to what you shared, one aspect of the work that I do with people go with what you were saying, that it's called mental and emotional release. And it's a process I take people through of helping them kind of uncouple from and release the stuck emotional energy that charge around traumatic moments in their past. That like you said, that alter ego gets created. And I'm going to take that literally for the basis of this conversation. And I want you to imagine that it's almost like you have multiple personality disorder in a way. Imagine there's like 20 versions of you in a way. There's like thousands of versions of you. There's seven year old you, there's twelve year old you, there's 25 year old you, and each one is in there, he or she is in there. And let's say something traumatic happened when you were seven, and your subconscious mind is trying to protect you. So your subconscious mind goes, okay, what wall can I put up to block that out? Or who do I need to be right now to be? Okay? I've had clients that were foster kids or they were homeless. So this happened or that happened, and they had to be a certain way in order to survive that. And in a way that was really helpful because that version of them kept them alive. But then it gets to a point where that version of you is no longer helpful. That version of you now is sabotaging you, and yet you've been that version of you for so long that you kind of don't know how to turn it off, because there's this fear of if I stop being this version of me, will all those problems come back? Will that happen again? Maybe I got taken advantage of in the past, or maybe something happened that I don't want that to happen again. And so that's kind of that all or nothing of if I change, if I revert back, all these negative things will come with it. And so I do think a big aspect of it is we kind of carry the past around with us. And there's this metaphor that comes to mind that I heard again from Wayne Dyer where he said, each of us has a giant, like a bag of manure that we carry around with us, and that bag is our pest. And every now and then we put the bag down, we reach in there, and then we grab some manure, and we smear it all over our face. And we say, I don't understand, why does my life smell so bad? And it's like, well, what would happen if we put the bag down and we tell ourselves, I can't, like, I need this because we think holding onto it keeps us safe, but it's not necessarily the truth. And so I do think for some of us, it's easier than others in the sense that some of us have a lot more than we've experienced and been through, that is not necessarily processed and released than other people. But I do think in my experience doing this for 17 years now, there is not anybody that is hopeless. There is not anybody who can't be helped. Everybody can get where they want to be. It's just they have to have the willingness, they have to have enough desire to say, you know what? I'm ready. I'm ready for a change. Enough is enough. I've been doing this for so long, and I can't go on living this way. Yeah. At least for me, the bag got heavy, right? You carry that bag around. And again, it's very relevant and accurate analogy. You carry the bag around, and eventually some of us get to a point where we just say, I just want to put it down. I just don't want to carry this bag anymore, this burden anymore. And that's just the awakening, if you will. But then there's a really difficult path, right? There's a really challenging path that you have to walk. And I was wondering, in your position, is there must be a heavy burden. Do you carry this incredible level of responsibility? You're advising people, I would assume in instances to make drastic life changes and choices based on what they're communicating to you, toxic people in their lives, toxic situations that they're in, where they're crying out for help, they're looking to break through or they're performing well. I'm a good example. We've had a lot of success. We've been blessed. We've done really well, but not nearly where I know I can and should be. So for me, a lot of it was about, hey, I'm playing small ball. I've been playing small ball. Only small ball. You're doing $50 million deals. It's small ball. There's other things in places where I should be and where I want to participate, but they come with tough decisions. Does that weigh on you? Do you have that sense of responsibility as you're advising people through this? There are two things I want to share about that. So the first thing is I want you to notice and this is for everyone listening. This isn't just calling you out, James, because we all do this. Notice how we take things as a given. So you said once they make that decision, now they have this really challenging path ahead of them. And so notice how we just say that as if that's true. There is no such thing as a challenging path. There is a path. And you can have a challenging experience of that path. Right? There's no such thing as a stressful job. There's a job, and you can have an extremely stressful experience of that job. But not everybody experiences that job the same. And so when we recognize that we make it challenging, it isn't challenging. That is a game changer because that changes the whole thing. We look at it and go, oh, wow, how am I creating? This is challenging, not just assuming it's challenging and living into it. It becomes that selffulfilling prophecy. And so that was the first thing just went off in my head. I wanted to bring that up because a lot of people that are listening and I probably do at a time, too. But now I practice it for so long, I catch myself like a second after, but we say something, we don't question it, and then we live into it as if it's real. So it becomes real for us. Like that quote I used earlier, a lie spoken and allowed enough times, becomes the truth. Excuse me to the second aspect of what you shared. So I think that first we have to get clear on the role I think that I play. And so for anyone listening, there is a distinction to be made between coaching and consulting and therapy and all these kinds of things. Consulting is more along the lines of advising. Consulting is like, hey, I've already done what it is that you want to do. Like you want to do the $100 million deals. I've done the billion dollar deals. Right. And so it's like I can help you kind of navigate that path, because I've already done that. I'm the coach for the Olympians, but I was a gold medalist in the Olympics. So it's like I can help my clients get there because I've done it. That's the idea of a consultant. That's me telling you what to do. When I think of therapy, that's along the lines of something's happened, let's say, in the past, that is preventing you from being and doing the things you want to do now. And talking about it, releasing it is helpful. Now, in addition to my coaching training, I also have some therapy background as well. And so that's why I spoke about what I did. But as it relates to the advising part, coaching is less about advising, and it's more about helping people understand how they see their world, how they create their world, helping them navigating their thinking and helping them find the answers within themselves. Because I can give a perspective of what I think you should do. But it's your life. I could be wrong, right. So it's less helpful for me to say, James, I think you should do this. And it's more helpful for me to ask certain questions, to guide you to that answer that you'll come up with. And now you're fully bought into it because it came from you. If I tell you what to do, you might be resistant to that at some level because it didn't come from you. Right. And so first and foremost, I think that needs to be spoken out. Second of all, it doesn't weigh on me, but I definitely understand the magnitude of the circumstances that people bring to me in their own lives and how important it is for them. And every person that I work with is a 100% commitment from me. They get my full body, mind and soul. They get everything that I have whenever we're together. And even in between, if they need me. And I'm usually thinking about them and I might send them some messages, nail them, some things that I think would really serve them, because when somebody's in my world, they're there to stay, and I want to do everything I can to help them get where they want to be. And so it doesn't weigh on me in a heavy sense. But you could say it weighs on me in the sense that I'm deeply aware of it. So you mentioned a few different components there of our overall well being and our ability to excel, because at the end of the day, a lot of the folks who come on the show, again, they're top performers, and there's a lot to balance, there's a lot to juggle. What is the correlation between physical health, nutrition and mental health performance on the other platform? Whatever it may be, wherever it is that you're performing. What is the correlation between the two? Oh, yeah, there's massive correlation. And so one of the ways I represent this is I think about the work that I do as a triangle, and there are three sides to it. The base of it is success, which is your own definition, whatever that would look like. The other two sides are health and relationships. And when you have the health, the relationships and the success, you have an extraordinary life without regret. And when I think about the health component, to give an example, I've had many of Mike, I know your background is in real estate. My understanding and a lot of your listeners probably are in the real estate space. And I've worked with real estate investors, brokers, loan officers, agents from around the world. And oftentimes I find that they ignore their health physically in pursuit of whatever their goal is. And so they're pushing, they're pushing maybe they're not sleeping well. They're burning the candle on both ends, and they're eating whatever they can eat or they're not eating. And they hire me and they hire me with the intention of they want to grow the business. They want to make more money. They want to do all that. And I figure out shortly into the work that they have brain fog and they're bloated and they're not sleeping well, and their energy is always low. And they're asking, like, is there a supplement I can take or what can I do? And I asked some basic questions about their nutrition, their hydration, their sleep, their environment, all these other I have twelve pillars for help that I take people through when appropriate. And for me, it's like you optimize these twelve areas, 80% of what you've got going on is probably going to either drastically improve or eliminate, like, go away. And when we balance out the energy, the nutrition, the hydration, the sleep, and the others, they go, wow. Two weeks later, three weeks later, a month later, I feel so much better. My energy is back. My brain fog is gone. I can actually think clearly. But there's evidence to show as an example that if you're dehydrated and you took one of these neurological assessments, you would show up as a result, as if you were functionally drunk. So now imagine you're dehydrated, which most of us are on a functional level. And the same applies when you're sleeping less than 6 hours a night. You're also functionally drunk. So I can't say most a large amount of these listeners are not sleeping enough. They're dehydrated, they're malnourished and they're driving. They're taking care of children. They're working on maybe multi million dollar deals, not realizing the deck is stacked against them. But they're the dealer. They're the ones doing it to themselves, not maliciously. They usually just don't realize how important it is. And so one of my friends actually told me not too long ago, he's like, I hate sleeping and I said, Why? And he goes, It's a third of my life. Like, what a waste. And I said, yeah, but if you do it right, it makes the other two thirds way better. But if you do it wrong, the other two thirds are not as great as they could be and your life won't be as long. And so just recognizing that, going back to Am I happy and things like that, how do I feel after I eat? Do I feel energetic or do I feel like I just like the stereotypical Thanksgiving kind of vibe where I feel bloated and tired, I got to take a nap and brain fog trouble thinking when I wake up in the morning, am I rested, do I have energy or am I tired? There's people who wake up tired and then am I consuming energy? Drinks, a lot of coffee, Red Bull, whatever you're drinking, these are crutches. I don't say that with any judgment. I just say that from the perspective of in order for you to actually change anything, it goes back to what I said in the beginning. The first thing I said about self awareness. Take an honest look at yourself and get an assessment. Am I sleeping my seven to 9 hours? And keep in mind that sleeping isn't the same thing as being in bed. You could be in bed for 7 hours, but you only slept 5 hours and 30 minutes because you woke up four times, you couldn't get comfortable. It took you an hour to fall asleep. Not the same thing. You might need to be in bed for 10 hours to sleep for 8 hours. So the point is, am I getting to sleep? Am I taking care of myself? From a nutrition perspective, it's like your body lets you know. People say like, oh, what should I eat? Well, prior to me giving you anything specific, let's focus on what not to eat, what's all the junk that we're putting in that your body is using to rebuild you. Your body is brand new. Every three to seven years, depending on the research you look at, you have a new skeleton, you have new skin, you have new everything. All your cells die and get turned over. What do you think they're being made of? They're being made of what you put in. And so if you're putting in what I would call garbage or suboptimal food, that's what you're building your body with. So what happens when you take that and you try to compete with that in the world? You try to compete with that in whatever market you're in. You try to compete with that against the people that are doing what you're doing. If they're not doing that, if they're optimizing their health, they're going to win. And so I look at it from the perspective of how do I optimize my health? How do I optimize my relationships from the perspective of, like, how do I communicate my relationship with myself and my relationship with my intimate partner if I have one and my relationship with my personal and professional life? And then the success component, what do I want? What life would actually be fulfilling for me at the end of my life? There's a quote I heard not too long ago that sent chills down my spine. And the definition of hell is on your last day on this Earth, the person that you became meets the person you could have been. And now imagine the visual of there you are, the end of your life, whatever the ages. Maybe you only have like an hour left and you did everything by your own estimation, wrong. You lived in fear. You played small, you never took a chance. And you're kind of miserable at this point. But you buy into the story. It's because of the way I grew up. It's my parents fault. It's like the economy, all the things that the ego is using to almost like cushion the blow and take care of itself and not own like what it did because that's painful to own that. And then you meet this version of you who walks in when you got five minutes left and they're just radiating in every possible way like they're living the dream now. You don't really have an excuse at this point because that's you. So it's like, how did they do that? And you ask them and they tell you, oh, you know, all those times when you want it to go right, but you went left, I went right. And you do that. It compounds over time. You start eating healthier today, you're not really going to see a massive difference tomorrow. But you do that every day for the next five years. Your whole body and your energy and how you feel in your body will be night and day difference. You think about your relationship if you're in one and you think about, am I being the partner that I'm capable of being? Am I being the best version of me that I could be for this person and for myself? And if the answer is no, start doing that again. You won't necessarily see massive change tomorrow, but you will if you keep doing it. Same thing with success in every way. It's one day at a time. It's baby steps, like you said, but I love to hike. And as an example, I've done the tallest mountain in Arizona and a bunch of mountains in the Southwest area. And if you were to look at these mountains from the bottom, you're looking up, going, oh, my gosh, how am I going to get up this thing? And you're thinking it'll take me 4 hours, 6 hours to get up. But that's not ideally what you do. Ideally, you go 1ft in front of the other, and you just focus on that next step, and you look at the scenery. Maybe you're with someone, you have a great conversation, and next thing you realize you're at what they call the saddle. You're like halfway up and you look at the view and you're like, oh, my gosh, we made such progress. And it went by so quick. And then you get all the way to the top and you go like, we did it. But if you're on the bottom looking up, thinking, oh my God, that's so far away, then you discourage yourself. And courage comes from court, which is Latin for heart. And so when you're discouraged, you're disheartened. And when you're disheartened, you think, what's the point? And you give up. That's why there was a Steve Jobs talk that I saw that he gave with Bill Gates on YouTube a long time ago. And he basically said, people say it's really important to have passion for what you do. And Steve Jobs says and they're right, because if you don't have passion, you'll quit because you're sane and it's hard. And so it's going to be challenging. There's going to be roadblocks, there's going to be stumbles along the way. If you're not doing you, if you're not living your version of life, if you're not happy with what you're doing, if you're not hopeful of what you're going to create, what you're going to build, the impact that it's going to have that's meaningful for you, then you're probably either not going to stick with it or you'll stick with it and kind of muscle through it, but you'll be miserable along the way. And so to me, it's like, I don't believe it's worth it. I know I expanded on you ask just about health, but ultimately massive correlation because you're not just a brain, you're the whole system. It's interconnected, everything, feeds everything else. And I look at it as like MINDBODY and spirit, and you want to optimize all three of those. And if you're living on one of them or two of them, you're going to notice it's almost like a car. I think it's drag racing, those cars that they shoot out and then like a parachute shoots out in the back and they need that. Otherwise the brakes can't do it by themselves. It's like the same thing. You're like trying to run, you're trying to fly, and you've got the parachute behind you holding you back, or you've got like anchors changing your legs and you're wondering why you can't really get airtime. And it's because you're not optimizing all three sides of that triangle. So I think the exercise of envisioning, like you said, the last hour of your life and having to confront, if you're being honest with yourself, the person that you could have been, that's pretty powerful stuff. You have a free ebook and an audio version as well. 20 steps to your next breakthrough that I want to point the audience to, and the information will be below. Folks, could you just give us a couple of minutes on what they can expect in that book. Absolutely. One last thing before that. When you talk about you, imagine that version of you if anyone has read or seen A Christmas Carol, the book or the movie right there's, that story of Scrooge, Ebony's Scrooge, and he has the three spirits that visit him. And long story short, starts as a pretty miserable dude, finishes overnight as the most joyful, loving, happy guy you can imagine with the biggest heart, like, in the whole city. And it's like, well, what the hell happened? He got confronted by these three spirits of what his past was like, that was pretty happy to a certain degree until the girl left him. A traumatic experience happened that he kind of latched on to and then used this kind of justification to be miserable. And then he partnered with somebody, continued being miserable. No one around him liked him. And then the clutch on it, the straw that broke the camel's back, metaphorically speaking, he sees that spirit from the future who shows him life after he dies. And everyone's like, happy about it and everyone's like, robbing his stuff. And he sees his tombstone and you realize that his life didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. And he's begging this spirit, depending on what version you watch, but he's begging this spirit of, Please give me another shot. This can't be. And he thinks he's done. The spirit can take him to the afterlife or something. And then he wakes up and he's in bed and it's been like 8 hours. And now he's like the happiest dude ever because he realized I have another shot, bringing it full circle. Every day I woke up, my dad was still alive. I've got another shot. Now he might not even be alive the whole day. And on his last day, he wasn't. But he's alive right now. What am I going to do about that? I'm alive right now. What am I going to do about that? Like, every day is your Christmas morning as Scrooge waking up, if you let it. And so with the book, I wanted to create something that would be practical, powerful, and very easily accessible for people. There are books that I've read that are 400 pages, 800 pages, 1000 pages. There's a lot of people that won't pick something like that up because it's kind of intimidating in the size of it. And so I purposely made this very small. It's like 74 pages or something like that. Every chapter is one to three pages. Every chapter has something actionable. It's got an exercise. It's got something that you can do to get you from feeling stuck to feeling in momentum. And so at the start of our call, when you were asking me, what can people do? And I shared with you a bunch of questions to kind of Journal on. Absolutely do those. And if you're open to it, read the book. I do think that that book can really help, because I wouldn't call it the end all be all. It's definitely not everything that you need, but it's absolutely if you're at level one, it gets you to level two, it gets you to that next level of I'm in momentum and I'm not just sitting on the couch. And I do think that for a lot of people have been very helpful, has been very helpful. And I can share one exercise from that book for the listeners, if you'd permit it. Sure. Yeah. Something that I found to be very useful. I think it's in chapter one, maybe chapter two, and it's this exercise of oftentimes we get held back because of the phrase or the thought, what if it doesn't work? Right? And so what I put together was a really simple exercise where it's called goal challenge, solution. The goal is what you want, you write down the goal, maybe you have one, maybe you have 50, it doesn't really matter. You write down all of them for the challenge. The question is, what could get in the way? What could happen that would either stop me or slow me down? And then you'd write down for each goal, maybe you have one challenge, maybe you have three, maybe you have twelve. And so the goal is, I want to put muscle on and I want to lose £12 and I'm going to go to the gym. That's how I'm going to do it. What's the challenge? The gym closed or the gym is not open that day or I broke my leg or what else, anything that you could possibly imagine that would be a challenge to you getting what you say you want. And the solution is, if that were to happen, what would I do about it? To still get what I want? What can I do about it to still win? The beauty of the process is if you really be with it again, you come up with multiple challenges for each goal and then you come up with a solution for each challenge. Now, you're not going to think about everything, but the more you do this, the better you get at predicting what could potentially get in your way, because there's only so many kind of patterns of things that are going to show up. And eventually it gets to a point where life typically doesn't go the way you expect it to and the way you plan it to the T. Exactly right. And so if you can count on anything, count on life not going exactly the way you think it should. But if you can anticipate it and then you can plan ahead of then when it does happen, you go, oh, yeah, I figured that might happen. And then you know what to do. So there's no discouragement, there's no loss of heart, because when the challenge presents itself, you go, oh, that's already part of my plan. And in a way, it makes you unstoppable no matter what's going on. And there's so much power in the exercise. It sounds really simple. But again, what holds us back, what stops us to such a large degree is, oh, I'm going to do this and it's going to work out like this and it's going to be great. And then you do this. It doesn't work out like that. And then you get discouraged and you stop. But if that was already part of your plan, you stick with it, right? And so I definitely recommend everyone to pick that up. Again, as James said, you can get it for free. It's on the website JamilSayegh.com. And James has all the links and there's an audiobook version as well for I think like $7. And so you can get it on there as well if you choose. And so that is what I'd like to share about the book. So, Doc, incredibly powerful stuff. And folks, if you're feeling stuck or if you're not even feeling stuck, but you're looking to take the next step, I went ahead and picked the book up. It's got a lot of powerful, simple, but powerful actionable things that you can do today, no excuses, things you can do today to start taking that next step. I highly recommend it. Doc, what's the best way for folks to reach out? Thank you, James. I appreciate you picking it up and giving it a read. I hope it serves. And so for anyone who's listened, anyone who's sitting there thinking this is great either. If you're looking for other content, I have probably 500 something videos that have been on social media now for a couple of years. And I just like the book. I purposely make them short. So most of them are a minute because I wanted it to be what's one thing I can share with you in this moment that you can take with you today and it can change the whole course of your day. And I've been really fortunate and blessed to have people tell me that it's done that for them. Hopefully it does it for you. You can find that on my social media account. So Instagram is just at Doctor JamilSayegh. And then my name, Facebook is just Jamil Sayegh. Feel free to check out the content. Shoot me a friend request, message me. I'd love to hear if something stood out to you in this podcast and or if you check out my other stuff, if it stood out, I'd love to hear what that was like for you. And if this has resonated and you're thinking, like James said, either I'm not as happy, fulfilled or at peace as I'd like to be, or maybe my life is going pretty great and I have a goal that instead of ten years down the line, I'd like to get that in ten months. Then let's have a conversation in that conversation like I mentioned earlier, we get really clear what do you want? We get really clear on what's in the way, what holds you back. Why don't you already have it and that's going to bring up a lot of stories that you're going to be sharing with me about, oh, for this reason, this reason and this reason and then at the end of that conversation and it feels like a good fit for both of us. We move forward together and we make some magic happen for you. And if it doesn't feel like a good fit, at least you have some more clarity around what's going on for you. And then if I can point you in the right direction, I do that too. And so you can book that on the website as well and James has the link for that, folks. All the information, as always will be below. Dr. Jamil Sayegh, thank you so much for the time today really powerful hour we spent together. Thank you again for the time really appreciate you. Thank you, James. As always folks, please stay safe.