Jon Gordon On Being Positive, Getting Rid of Negative Thoughts & Fixing Loneliness | DSH #154

The brain is literally an antenna.

Not like an antenna, it is an antenna.

And every day you're either tuning into a positive or a negative frequency.

You know the two wolves story?

There are two wolves inside of us and they fight all the time, a positive wolf and a negative wolf.

And they fight.

Who's gonna win the fight?

The one you feed the most.

Love is the highest frequency in the universe.

Fear.

Yeah, overe.

Oh, yeah.

It's the ultimate frequency.

It's why everything comes down to love.

It's why you will run into a burning building to save someone else's life.

I would do that for my girl, for my dogs.

Yeah.

For my best friend.

Yep.

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour, guys.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

Here are my co-host Charlie Cavalier.

And our guest today, John Gordon.

How's it going, man?

Going great.

Man, I can't wait to dive into your story.

Your energy is just, it's already on me, man.

I love it.

I love it.

So, can you tell people what you've done?

Sure, yeah.

Well, I started out as a bartender right after college and then opened up a bar when I was 24 years old.

Put everything into it, every dime I had.

I didn't have much of 24, but I basically put it in and we made it successful.

And then I'm 29, 30 years old.

I go work for the dot-com and any device company, a technology company.

I got 100,000 shares.

I'm going to make my fortune.

Like, this is my dream come true.

It's happening.

Little kids, my wife, and the dot-com crashes.

And so it was a, it was a terrifying time.

And I was being negative.

I was fearful.

I was stressed.

And my wife had enough of my negativity.

She said, I love you, but I'm not going to spend my life with someone who makes me so miserable.

Like, you need to change.

And I wasn't a great husband.

I wasn't a great father.

And I need to change.

So I remember saying, like, what am I born to do?

Like, why am I here?

Like, it's a great opportunity.

I'm about to go bankrupt.

I'm about to lose everything.

What do I truly want to do?

And writing and speaking came to me in that moment.

I'm going to write and speak.

But about what?

Like, what do you write and speak about?

So I wanted to be more positive.

So I started to research all the ways I could be more positive.

And this was, you know, during the emerging field of positive psychology.

So now I'm like researching like these ideas and strategies.

I start doing them.

And I start a weekly positive tip because I'm practicing these ideas and I start sharing them.

No one was doing an e-newsletter back then.

This was like 2002.

And so I'm sending out this e-newsletter every week about these tips and people start to share them.

I had five subscribers initially, though.

My mother, my brother,

best friend from college.

And

they like it, though.

They start sharing it.

And then it starts getting out there.

And that led me to then start to start writing books.

Nice.

And then to start speaking and doing this work.

And now I just had my 28th book

just came out.

I've worked with the greatest leaders on the planet, the greatest sports teams greatest companies work with the miami heat the dodgers and dave roberts sean mcvay with the rams mike smith when he when he was a rookie coach with the falcons

and uh matt ryan was a rookie quarterback this is how long ago this was i remember jack do rio was my first client he reached out to me and i read the energy bus the book just came out my book the energy bus that was my first book and read it and then brought me in to actually talk to me.

He's like, I'd love for you to speak to my team.

Wow.

I said, I will.

I said, I'll speak.

i said i'll do it for nothing but you get every guy a copy of the book and i'll do it he goes done

he got everyone in the organization a copy he got the custodial staff the food service workers he wanted every guy who was touching those athletes and impacting those athletes to share positivity positive energy which the book is 10 rules to fuel your life work and team with positive energy that book was rejected by over 30 publishers so that's part of my story too right you have this dream you want to write and speak but it doesn't happen overnight overnight.

And so this book gets rejected by all these publishers, kept believing, kept hoping, kept dreaming.

And then one day, John Wally and sons agreed to publish the book.

Insane.

Yeah, book comes out.

No bookstores would carry it.

I think it's a great lesson for listeners.

Like, you know, you have a dream, you have a goal, but no one will even carry the book, even after it gets published.

So no bookstores, nothing.

So I go on a 28-city tour.

paid for by myself.

Publisher wouldn't even pay for it.

So wrap up a vehicle like an energy bus, and I started driving around the country.

I got one friend calling up all these different radio stations, TV stations.

There was no social media back then.

There was no podcast.

There was nothing.

So all there was was TV and radio.

And so I'm going city to city and he's reaching out.

Hey, John Gordon's coming.

He's internationally known.

I had one friend in London, but I was internationally known.

It counts.

Hey, it counted.

And actually, the book came out and it was a huge hit.

in South Korea.

Nice.

Not one bookstore in the United States carries the book, but in South Korea, it's like this massive,

top five bestseller.

Can't explain it.

Yeah, that's to this day, right?

Don't know why, but I go on this tour, and it's not very successful, right?

Because, you know, the most people that showed up were 100 people in Des Moines, Iowa.

They thought Jeff Gordon was coming, the race car driver.

That's why they showed up.

They saw Jay Gordon.

Yeah, yeah, Jay Gordon, John Gordon, Jeff Gordon.

They really, that's not a joke.

That's actually a true story.

So I remember I get home, and I don't know what the future holds, but I know that this is my vision and this is my mission.

And it was this, to encourage and inspire as many people as possible one person at a time and so I just knew I just had to live the vision and mission every single day I call it telescope microscope right telescope big picture vision microscope zoom focus actions like what actions do you need to take to realize the big picture vision that you have and and your purpose like you have to know your why because we don't get burned out because of what we do we get burned out because we forget why we do it right and so when you know your why you'll you'll know the why and you're not gonna let obstacles get in the way and that was me like back then so i remember just doing that day in and day out.

And then Jack Del Rio, literally a few months later, calls.

And then I go speak to the team.

Wow.

They have a great season.

Mike Smith is the defensive coordinator of that staff.

He gets the job at the Falcons, brings me to the Falcons.

Then Texas calls.

I go work with Texas.

Colt McCoy is a senior then.

Then I go work with UGA.

Mark Richt is the head coach.

That team starts 0-2 after I spoke to the team.

I thought I ruined them.

Coach had them all read the energy bus.

But they went on a winning streak of like 10 games in a row, making it to the SEC championship game.

And one of their big things was from the Energy Bus, no energy vampires allowed.

And so Coach actually put a huge picture of an energy vampire in the team meeting room.

And anytime one of the players was being an energy vampire, they took the picture from the Media guide and they put it on the wall.

No one wanted to be on the wall.

But guys will tell me to this day, like guys on that team who are now really successful, some in business, someone, like I said, it was a defining moment in their life.

Like, all right, I'm not going to be negative.

I'm going to be a positive member of this team and have a positive attitude and not allow negativity to sabotage this team and the work that we're here to do.

And so that was a huge success.

And again, there was a lot of newspaper articles written on that team and so forth.

And then I go work with Clemson, which was like really a big deal for me.

And just a big moment in 2012.

And that was pretty much a defining moment starting to work with that team.

And I've worked with them since 2012.

And you're still doing that?

Every year.

Wow.

Every year I go back to training.

You're something right for them.

Yeah, Daba Sweeney and I have become great friends.

I always speak to the team.

So you met Trevor Lawrence?

Oh, I've known Trevor for years.

Deshaun Watson was there as a freshman.

I remember being on the sidelines, watching him practice, and Daba goes, hey, we got this guy coming in, Deshaun Watson.

He's real special.

He's a good player.

He's going to be pretty good.

And then Trevor, yeah, we got this guy, Trevor, coming.

He's going to be awesome.

Taj Boyd was sitting in the

front seat right there when I spoke.

And every guy since, like,

you've known him, you talk to him and then you see them what they do in the NFL It's cool But then you know, I've worked with now so many different You know NFL NBA major league baseball teams and and it's some I love to do it right awesome culture leadership teamwork and mindset in those kind of areas So how do you view energy?

Do you think we have a finite amount and there's vampires that could take it and you can also give it willingly?

There's not a finite amount.

It's actually what are you connected to and if you're connected to that power source you will always be replenished with energy I think we have a finite in a certain amount of a day like we need to sleep we need to eat well we need to exercise positivity actually increases your energy whereas negativity will drain your energy we know that and so but the more you're you're connected to that power source like you could be a resistor or a conductor like in the world of electronics the resistor holds on to its electrons so it only has so much power it relies on its own power a conductor is connected to a greater power source.

So it actually gets its power and energy from the power that moves through it.

And so it's always giving and receiving.

So I find like the more I'm giving actually, the more I'm putting out there, I actually seem to get more energy and feel replenished.

But it's also our state of mind, which is my new book, The One Truth, is what it's all about.

Like when your state of mind is low, the circumstance happens and it bothers you.

When your state of mind is high, the same circumstance can happen and it doesn't.

You rise above, you move forward so people often blame the circumstance the job the work they're doing they'll blame the pandemic they'll blame situations going on in their life but yet if you're in a high state of mind that wouldn't affect you like all right let's go right i mean you just had an nba guy on right when you're in a game low state of mind you make a mistake and you're like oh man and you get bothered and you feel more drained during the game high state of mind you might make the same mistake and you're like all right let's go let's next play yeah so it's always our state of mind that will determine how we respond to the circumstances when your state of mind is low the circumstance has power over you.

When your state of mind is high, you have power over your circumstance.

And so it's actually very much in our mind how much energy we actually really have.

So how can people raise their state of mind?

Because a lot of people are dealing with anxiety, depression, mental disorders.

How can people raise it?

Yeah.

Well, one, it's to know that there is an ebb and float of thought.

So you're going to have these ebbs and flows.

It's like a roller coaster, right?

And so when you're on the downward cycle of that roller coaster going down, and it's normal to be that way, by the way, we're going to have highs and lows.

So often we're in that low state of mind.

We start to think something's wrong with us.

We start to think something is broken.

And we start to have a lot more negative thoughts as a result of that.

We have revved up thinking because we're trying to fix something that we think is broken.

But actually the key is to realize nothing is broken.

There's nothing wrong with you.

It's actually a natural ebb and flow.

And when you're in that understanding, you'll be able to ride the wave right back up to a higher state of mind.

It's like, okay, this is normal.

This is natural.

natural.

Now, so often there are things going on that are causing the anxiety, causing the fear, causing all of the insecurity and doubt.

And a lot of times, again, it's revved up thinking and a ton of negative thoughts that you're having.

So you have to understand how negative thoughts work.

Five Ds that will sabotage you and your mindset that will cause the anxiety we're talking about.

First D is doubt.

Then you got distortion.

Distortions are lies.

Negative thoughts are lies and distortions of the truth that will tell you things about yourself and your future that just aren't true right you're not good enough you're not smart enough you'll never get through this the future is hopeless I talked to a young man who was suicidal and he was in the ER two nights before and he had all these thoughts going in I said you have a lot of thoughts in your head he said ah so many I said do they bombard you he said yeah all the time I said they make me want to give up so I told him your negative thoughts come from you He's like, yeah, they're in my head.

I said, here's the next question.

If you believe your negative thoughts come from you, who would ever choose to have a negative thought?

Would you ever choose a negative thought?

No.

This blows everyone's mind.

When I work with NBA guys, NFL guys, they're like, no, I wouldn't.

Regular people, like, no, I wouldn't.

Right now, you would never choose one.

No one has ever found a thought inside of a brain.

I've asked neuroscientists.

No one.

I believe thoughts exist in consciousness.

They come from the internet cloud of consciousness.

The brain is the hardware.

It's where activation happens.

And so the thoughts are always coming in.

They often come in the form of lies and in the form of negativity that will sabotage you.

It really is a battle.

There's a battle of the mind going on all the time.

Wow.

And so we got doubt, we got distortion, we got discouragement.

So the distortions, the doubts, what happens is it leads to discouragement.

It makes you want to give up.

We don't give up because it's hard.

We give up because we get discouraged.

Fourthly, distraction.

Distractions are the enemy of greatness.

And they're all forms of distractions.

Like you can listen to this and grow, these kind of podcasts.

Yours are awesome and grow and get better.

Or you could be tuning into something very mindless or negative that doesn't help you get better what will you choose wow distractions are the enemy of greatness and then that 50 this is really kick 50 the the root for the greek word of anxious means to separate and divide

interesting so when you're anxious you feel separate and divided what does fear do divides think about the pandemic people felt isolated alone disconnected.

They felt divided.

When you move from oneness to separateness, you move from positive to negative in the mindset.

All mental health disorders report feelings of being alone, isolated, disconnected, and separate.

So now you can see what's going on here.

These negative thoughts actually weaken you.

They make you feel powerless.

They make you want to give up.

So what's the key?

To recognize what's the answer to that.

It's oneness.

Instead of separateness, it's oneness.

So instead of doubt, there's trust.

I call it tune.

T-U-N-E is a great acronym for people.

It's in the one truth.

And I wrote this book because so many people are struggling with their mental health.

so many people are losing the battle of their mind, and they have no idea what's going on, right?

And the mental health paradigm right now doesn't understand really what's going on, yeah.

And so, they're trying to solve it with more and more medication, and that's not necessarily the answer.

For some, it is, but for most, and talking to a lot of experts, for most,

it's really not.

And once you understand, this is revolutionary, by the way, this is really key.

I haven't shared this a lot of places, but the brain is literally an antenna.

Not like an antenna, it is an antenna.

And every day, you're either tuning into a positive or a negative frequency.

You know the two wolves story?

You know, two wolves, there are two wolves inside of us, and they fight all the time, a positive wolf and a negative wolf.

And they fight, who's going to win the fight?

The one you feed the most.

Feed the positive wolf.

It's an ancient Cherokee story.

Wow.

So the truth is woven into that story.

Two frequencies, positive or negative.

In pop culture, we have all these movies where you see the angel on one side and you see the devil on the other talking to you.

Two frequencies, positive or negative.

Why does everything come down to positive and negative?

Because that's the ultimate battle in the universe.

Wow.

What is Harry Potter about?

Good versus evil.

What is Superman about?

Good versus evil.

Black Panther, good versus evil.

Star Wars.

Everything is about good versus evil.

Because I had this young man say, where do negative thoughts come in the first place?

Why would you ever have a negative thought in the first place?

Really think about that.

And people say, well, for evolutionary purposes.

Yeah, but those negative thoughts for evolutionary purposes are actually know or go thoughts, fight or flight.

They're actually give you, they give you clarity.

Run.

Survive.

They're not like, oh, what's my identity?

What am I here for?

Life is meaningless.

The future is hopeless.

Those thoughts are not evolutionary.

Those thoughts go to the battle of your identity

and who you are, meaning and purpose, and what you're here to do.

Those are not evolutionary.

Those are higher ideals.

That's like the human journey, the spiritual human journey that we're all on.

And once you understand this, and this is why I teach this now, you'll be like a Jedi.

Like that young man who I helped, he literally, the next day, he was like, he was great.

Wow.

Hell yeah.

Overnight currently.

Overnight.

This has happened so many times for young people I've talked to who are struggling.

One conversation.

Wow.

Tons, like tons now.

And with the cool thing is, like, I could tell when the light bulb's going off and they see it because what's happening is they're blaming themselves.

They're beating themselves up for the thoughts in their head.

They're feeling guilt and shame and they think think something's wrong.

They don't realize there's a battle going on.

So now they understand, oh, there's a battle.

These negative thoughts are my enemy.

And I now have to armor myself and I now have to learn how to win the battle.

And then you give them the tools to how to do that.

And the key is T-U-N-E.

If it's an antenna, the brain, how can we tune more into the positive?

Negative thoughts divide and separate.

Positive thoughts unite and uplift.

That's why when you are thinking positive thoughts, you feel better.

And we're talking real positive thoughts, right?

Not fake positivity, but real optimism and belief and hope.

And so trust and truth is the T.

You is unite with love because fear divides and love unites.

So I've been sharing this a lot with athletes recently, and it's a game changer.

Because what are they worried about?

Fearful of the outcome, messing up, their contract, social media.

So the minute you talk about love, I'm going to love the battle.

I'm going to love the moment.

I'm going to love competing.

This is not love is weak.

This is love is powerful and strong because love casts casts out fear.

And so the minute you focus on love, fear dissipates.

Because love is the highest frequency in the universe.

Fear.

Yeah, oh, very, oh, yeah.

It's the ultimate frequency.

It's why everything comes down to love.

It's why you will run into a burning building to save someone else's life.

I would do that for my girl, for my dogs.

Yeah, for my best friend.

Yeah,

that is love.

It's the highest power.

It's the ultimate frequency.

It's love.

Because that is ultimately the driving narrative of the universe.

It's actually love and what's trying to come against love.

And what is against love, but hate.

what does love do unites what is what divides fear divides so unite with love is a big part of the tune frequency so the more you're actually focusing loving what you do loving your job loving the moment even though there are things that you don't love like you don't love traffic but traffic gets you where you got to go I had a fly to come here I don't love flying at all, but I get to go do this and speak with you.

So I love this.

And so knowing that that love drives you, you start to operate a higher level, a higher frequency.

You actually have more positive thoughts and you also have less clutter.

The fear that creates the clutter and the anxiety, when you have love, you have more clarity.

Why?

Love creates connection, right?

When you love someone, there's a greater connection.

And then from that connection, you have more clarity.

When you're in the zone, you've ever been in the zone.

At work, you've been in the zone.

On this podcast, there's been a zone moment.

In sports, there's a zone moment where you just feel one with everybody and everything.

That's connection.

That connection then creates that clarity.

So now I see things very clear.

And then once I have clarity, there's so much more confidence.

You know, that when that rim looks like it's a huge garbage can, you think you'll hit it, right?

When the ball looks like a grapefruit,

you're crushing it.

And so that's the confidence you have now because of the clarity.

And then from confidence, you have courage.

And so love creates all of that.

So the more you're focused on love, you have more courage to go after it.

Don't worry about failure.

Love the moment, love the battle, go after it.

And I've shared this with, again, athletes, but even a lot of teenagers recently.

And it's so cool to see them embrace it.

And then they start to live that way.

And now they're going through life like a Jedi instead of being someone who's so fearful of the world and everything going on.

And so love is key.

Then there's N, which is neutralizing negativity.

Because that negativity will come at you.

Gandhi said, I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

And that's part of neutralizing the negativity.

We got to neutralize it.

When those negative thoughts come in, No, I'm not going to listen to those lies.

I'm not going to believe the lies.

So what I recommend is on the left side of a piece of paper, you write down a lot of your negative thoughts.

On the right side, you write down the words of encouragement that you will speak when those negative thoughts come in.

And the more we do that, actually, and we speak truth to the lies, we start walking in that truth and that power.

I've done this in my life.

This is how I turn my life around.

I guess I should tell people I'm naturally negative.

Probably important.

Like, I go towards the negative.

Growing up in Long Island, New York, right?

Right.

Jewish Italian family, a lot of food, a lot of guilt, a lot of wine, a lot of whining.

My dad was a New York City police officer.

Okay.

Undercover narcotics.

Wow.

Yeah.

Shot a few times.

Wow.

Won the combat cross, battling the drug cartels on the streets of New York.

So

he would come home and he wasn't always positive.

He was a loving dad, loving, but one of the most negative guys on the planet.

You'd get, good morning, dad.

He'd say, what's so good about it?

And when I started speaking, my dad said, I can't believe people pay you to speak.

When you were a kid, we paid you to shut up.

This is what he said.

And so that's what I grew up with, right?

So I had to learn how to be positive over the years.

And I literally, when I was struggling with fear anxiety and depression I was there like I was that guy that I'm now helping I was I was that kid that was struggling I struggled with depression as a teenager as an adult in my 20s really struggled so much so that my wife almost left me and as a result of that like I know what they're thinking I know what they're feeling but at the same time I also did things every day to tune my brain to a positive frequency not knowing that that's what I was doing years later 28 books later I now know okay that's what I was doing all my research all my new ideas and thoughts that have been coming to me.

Oh, I was tuning into the positive.

So what I did every day to neutralize the negativity, I took a walk of gratitude every day.

Because the research shows you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time.

Really?

Yep.

So when you're practicing gratitude, you can't feel stress in that moment.

Some leftover stress, perhaps, but the more you do it, the mind is like a garden.

Feed the positive, weed the negative.

Over time, literally that garden of your mind starts to look amazing.

It looks incredible.

And that's what I was doing every single day, a gratitude walk.

Within a week, my wife noticed a little bit.

Within a month, she's like, wow, you're really changing.

I'm like, yeah, I'm feeling so much better.

When you do this, you create a fertile mind that is ready for great things to happen.

Because what's happening is you're flooding your brain and body with these positive emotions and chemicals that uplift you rather than the stress hormones that solely kill you over time and drain you, right?

Negative thoughts, emotions drain you.

Positive thoughts energize you.

Now, again, fear in the short term will be an energy booster.

Remember that, but it's not sustaining.

Eventually, it will be draining.

The love in the battle, love in the moment, I challenge anyone, think positive, loving thoughts when you're lifting weights.

You'll actually be more powerful when you're thinking those thoughts.

And they've done studies on this that you're more powerful.

So neutralizing the negativity is key, and that leads to the E, which is elevating your thinking.

So what was I doing every day in those walks?

Elevating my thinking.

What is optimism?

Belief, positivity.

elevating your thinking.

What is vision and mission and purpose and positivity?

All of that is elevating your thinking in positive ways to overcome the negativity.

I've seen you say on another show that you should have a five-to-one ratio with your significant other.

Why not five to zero?

That's a great question.

That's a John Gottman's research on couples.

And my wife and I wrote a book called Relationship Grit, and it's about sticking together.

And I used to be in the one-to-one ratio, which is not a good thing, or some more negative than positive.

Why not five to zero?

Because you have to have some constructive conversations.

A team that goes 13,

13 to 1 or 14 to 1 actually starts to underperform and doesn't do as well because no one's dealing with the real issues.

Everything is fake.

You're glossing over things.

Wow.

And my big thing is this is not fake positivity.

This is not toxic positivity.

This is the real stuff that makes great leaders, great teams, great relationships great.

So if you want a great relationship with your significant other, the essence of it all is to make sure you're having positive communication, but also have difficult conversations along the way.

And so there are things that we have to address.

Let's talk about our vision.

Let's talk about what we disagree on.

My wife, who's here with us today, she came up to me one day and she's like, okay, you need to be a better dad.

Our kids, we're young.

I'm like, what do you mean?

So you need a better dad.

Like, there are things that you could do to be a better dad.

I wanted to say, oh, yeah, you need to be a better mom.

But

I said, okay, fine.

I'm open.

Make me better.

Five hours later, she was done telling me what I can do better.

Whoa.

No, no, it's like probably

30 minutes.

30 minutes, but I listened.

And I actually applied some of those ideas.

And you know what?

I got better.

So that would be considered a one there of a sort of more of a negative conversation that we had to have.

But when I work with teams and organizations, I'm huge on Love Tough.

Like this is key with your friendships as well.

Like Love Tough.

Every day you show up, guess what?

I got to love you first to earn the right.

to be able to challenge you.

So it's about having a great relationship first.

Support, love, guidance, mentorship.

You're there for them.

Great friendship.

But then if I'm really a great friend, if I'm really a great significant other, if I'm really a great team member, I'm going to challenge you to get better.

Because if I know you have more potential, I'm not going to let you settle for anything but your best.

So it's the combination of the two.

You got to have love tough, but love must come first.

Talking to Doc Rivers, I've worked with Doc for years and we have a lot of conversations and

Doc's like, hey, when I played in the NBA, man, he's like, you just trusted your coach.

You just respected your coach.

That was it.

Like, he could be a jerk, but you just respect your coach.

He goes, now, he goes, my players got to know that I love him.

I'm there for him.

I've got to earn their trust.

And once I earn their trust, then I can call them up to greatness.

Don't call them out, but call them up.

Wow.

What did you learn from Eric Spolstra on working for the Heat?

Man,

I love Eric.

Here's a really cool thing about Eric Spolstra.

Like, Eric Spolstra reaches out to me.

Hey, John, come and speak to my staff.

Help me with my staff.

Help us become a more connected and committed and united staff so we can better serve our players.

He was about serving the players because he knew if they were a stronger leadership team and staff, they would better communicate with each other so they can better take care of their players and address their needs and concerns.

And that's all they talked about in our staff meeting.

How can we serve our players?

That guy is about the culture.

He's about leadership.

He's about making sure that the players are the best they can be.

They're going to challenge you with the heat culture.

They're about toughness.

And you got to be the right guy to play for the heat.

If you're not the right guy, if you're not their guy, you will not fit with their culture, which I love.

Your culture should be so strong that it weaves out the people who don't fit your culture.

And Eric.

and Pat Riley, it comes from them.

They create this incredible culture.

And also, he's just so humble.

Like

his road, his journey, as you know, being a video guy and then an assistant coach under Pat Riley.

And he'll tell you, like,

his goal is not to be an NBA head coach.

It was never his goal.

His goal is to serve the organization, to steward the organization, to be the best he can be for that Miami Heat organization, to lead them, if that's what's necessary.

and now lead his players and help them be their best.

Wow, that's baller.

What was your catalyst moment?

Because you've spoken to, obviously, the list goes on and on and helps people turn things around massively.

You mentioned your period of, you know, anxiety, depression, post.com crash.

What was the catalyst moment that allowed you to turn that corner to at least begin the journey of where you are now?

Yeah.

The catalyst moment was definitely my wife coming up to me and saying, if you don't change, we're over.

Because I wanted to stay married.

So I had no choice.

Like, all right, change or get divorced.

You know, so I really wanted to stay married.

I loved her.

I had two little kids.

And I wanted to be a better man myself.

Like, I looked in the mirror and I didn't like who was looking back.

I didn't like what I'd become.

I was a young athlete growing up, went to Cornell University, played lacrosse.

I always had this hope and optimism and belief.

Like I said, mover and shaker in my 20s in Atlanta, opened up a bar, started a nonprofit organization, walk.

door to door to 7,000 houses when I ran for city council of Atlanta at 26 years old.

So I did that.

So I had all these goals and ambitions, but now it was all about success it was all about driving to be successful because I was really focused on me the catalyst moment was when she said that and threatened to leave threatened to be you know our marriage to be over I knew in that moment I had to change and focus more on them and focus more on others and I remember saying like why am I so miserable and one of the reasons was I wasn't focused on anyone else but myself

And that goes back to the one truth.

When you are one and feel connected, you actually want to focus more on others, believe it or not.

Oneness brings forth purpose, love, and joy that you then want to share.

The more separate you feel, you actually focus more on yourself because you go into protective mode.

Narcissists actually believe they are separate and feel separate, and that's why they're narcissists.

What happened was when they were young, there was some kind of trauma.

and there was some kind of experience that actually created almost like a split within their brain because research shows they actually cut off other parts of the brain to protect itself.

So even at the neurological level, study this, even at the neurological level, there's actually a separation that has occurred with a narcissist.

So they're so focused on self, they don't care about anyone else.

Wow.

They don't care about you.

It's about me.

And they become a black hole as a result of that, focusing on self.

And so you can easily spot a narcissist when you realize that.

Same thing with ego.

Everyone says ego is the enemy.

My good friend Ryan Holiday wrote

such a book.

And guess what?

Ego is not necessarily the enemy.

it's separation that's the enemy because you feel separate you now feel powerless yeah and that gives rise to the ego because you need to feel a sense of power and because of that you now feel powerful but it's actually false power it's connected to self not something greater and so it's actually weak power strong power is actually humility Humility connects you to others, right?

And it connects you, believe it or not, spiritually.

Okay, there's a God and I know it's not me.

And when you actually don't have any connection or greater connection, you actually, then what happens is you focus on yourself and you try to be God.

But we make horrible gods because we are flawed.

And the more we try to be that way, it actually drains us and affects us and all sorts of issues come from that.

The other thing is this.

This is really cool.

The word integrity comes from the word integer, which means whole and complete.

Wow.

So a leader with integrity has what?

Oneness.

Wholeness, completeness.

There's a connection.

There's no gap between who they are and what they say and what they do.

There's no gap in their character.

There's wholeness and completeness, and that gives them power and strength.

And that's why integrity over time makes you successful.

Not in the short run, necessarily.

Sometimes integrity takes a little while, but on proof of that, 28 books later, millions of copies sold, doing the work, building trust, building relationship, not having immediate success.

But now I'm on your amazing show.

I am the line.

It took me a while to get here.

But yeah, I'm a little

older now, and it's so funny i wish i would have got here when i was 35 37 right even my early 40s the energy bus took five years to be a bestseller has now sold over three million copies geez so but i have i play the long game i don't think enough people play the long game not at all we see we see the clips we see the highlights we see the success and we want immediate yeah right we want immediate gratification immediate like dopamine hits.

So we're trying to get these dopamine hits, gratification.

We want success now, but it's actually over the long term that anything that's worthwhile will actually take time to build and create success.

I bet this show didn't happen like a success immediately, right?

No, it took years to build a personal brand.

Right.

And if you think about your brand, the show, and now you're really hitting your tipping point, you're hitting your stride.

We're just getting started.

Yeah, you're just getting started, but you know how long it took you to get here.

People see it now and they don't realize all the reps all the time, all the interviews, and what you had to do to get here in this moment.

And I think people need to understand the journey more and more about what it really takes.

I saw a comment on the YouTube the other day.

It was like, who are these guys and how are they getting these guests on the podcast so quickly?

I'm like, dude, it took a year.

So quickly.

And we've been doing for at least a couple of years before this, just like the NFT crypto speaking conference.

You used to go on Twitter spaces.

Twitter spaces.

We did, you know, we used to do Instagram shows about everything going on.

So it's been a journey.

It was not overnight.

Yeah, John, it's been a blast, man.

Where can people find you?

And what message do you want to close off with?

So great talking to you guys.

Hey, you can go to johngordon.com, j-o-n-gordon.com, or Twitter, Instagram at j-o-n-gordon11.

I guess I should say threads as well now.

Yeah.

J-O-N-Gordon11.

And I guess in closing, you know, we're not meant to go through life feeling fearful and anxious and worried and chronically stressed.

I think so many people are dealing with that right now that it's almost become like normalized that we expect it as normal.

Now, I'm not saying anything's wrong with it, but to be in that state, on a constant state, temporary state, yes, but constant state that's not normal not healthy no it's not healthy either what is normal peace right and joy

and love and purpose and power and you're meant to go through life with this power of oneness instead of this feeling of separateness and when you understand these concepts we're talking about you really will go through life like a jedi and take on this world in a much more powerful place and then you're gonna have a huge impact as a result of that So instead of the world being more powerful than you, full circle moment from the beginning of the conversation, you will be more powerful in this world to make an impact.

Love it.

Get out there and love some people, guys.

Thanks for watching.

I'll see you next time.