Welcome back to another episode of Inside personal growth. All of you know me, we're over 1100+ podcasts and 17 and a half years. Dave, Good day to you. Dave, how you doing up there in San Rafael, California. What's happening today? Well,

it's just a great day today, and so much fun talking to you, Greg, because we've known each other for a long time. I am well over two decades and and to be able to continue to learn from you, not only personal growth ideas, but technology, which is one of my favorite parts of my life, is staying up on the latest technology.

Well, look, your daughter can teach you a lot about technology. She's lot younger than I. You and I are closer to the same age group. So for my listeners out there, this is Dave Ellis San Rafael, California. If you're watching on video, you obviously see both of us. If you're listening on SoundCloud or Apple, you obviously don't see us. But I've known Dave since prior to August 8, 2007 we did an interview way back then about his book called Falling awake. Today we're going to do a revisit of that book. Let's just call it 17 years later, almost 18 years later, because Dave's had an unusual journey and an unusual path. And I think as you age and you become wiser, you have a lot more to share, but I'm going to let them know a little about falling awake. You your background, because some of these listeners today, they don't know you, and some listening don't even know me, because this is the first time they've popped into the podcast. So Dave has been over 40 years being a workshop facilitator, author. He has written seven books, including falling awake, life coaching, creating your future and becoming a master student, which was the best selling college textbook in America for over two decades. He's coached nationally and internationally, non profit leaders, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, an NBA coach and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dave developed variety of powerful programs assisting people to realize their full potential. He and the 1000s of teachers and coaches he has trained challenge people to think what they have never thought and empowered them to take action that they have never taken through his workshops, books, coaching, video and interactive online classes of Dave Ellis, leadership, he's helped over 6 million people realize a more wonderful life. Now, the key you probably want to know is, where do I go to learn more about Dave and Dave, do you want to tell them? What the best places to go I just have falling awake.com.

Yeah, that's the spot to go. Now, what I did, Greg is, when we talked a while ago, I had six different websites. Just thought I consolidated them all. I took all of that information. I had one called Dave ellis.tv and I had a lot of video. There had one on Dave Ellis leadership, took all that material, consolidated to falling awake. And the thing that I most love about falling awake.com is not only can you get all my audio programs, all my past webinars, the videos workshops, but also the seven books I've written, and they're all there for free, just go there. It looks download any of those books. They're

pro bono, and I'm sure that Dave is going to tell us why during this interview. But if you do go there, you'll see home, books, videos, audios, coaching, webinars and inventory. You can do a search of this website. There's a plethora of there. I remember getting his human being booked. By the way, that book is loaded, and I will tell people, it's what it the time I got it, it was in like a comb binder, because it was so thick, and that was years of work and working with another gentleman. Well, let's dive in, because I think these listeners, they want to know what's going on. They want to know falling awake. What does that mean? So if you would what inspired you originally to write that book, and how does this reflect on your personal journey court toward creating a life of purpose and a life of joy, of which now you don't take any money into your life, which most listeners are probably going to find that crazy. But the reality is, as a philanthropist, you've done this, and you're giving it all away. So you've come to a spot where you don't need it. One and two, you want to help as many people as you can transform their lives, correct? Yeah,

that's right, Greg, and actually, I started that journey 30 years ago, when I was a young man. Well, actually it was more than 30 years ago, but I became independently wealthy. And I became independently wealthy because, like you, I started as a businessman when I was a youngster, I understand you started what when you were nine years old, or something. I started when I was 15. I had my own ice cream parlor and had seven employees and did all the work. Then I went to college, use that money for that graduated from college with no debt but no money. Became a teacher, and I was so inspired as a teacher in computer science that I wanted to help students program themselves as well as they programmed a computer, so I began a course on how to be successful in college. Now I'll get to your question a second, but that's the root of it. Is this book called becoming a master student, and it was a workbook and it was a text for a class. It wasn't a standalone book. Well, it really caught on, and within 10 years, it had sold so many copies that it became the number one best selling college text of any discipline in the United States. It Out sold any math or psychology book, outsold any English text. The next best seller was a economics book required economics it out sold all of those. I then sold the publishing rights of that book and had enough money to not have to work again. Now, of course, I could have continued to make money, and I decided, as a as an experiment, really a spiritual experiment, to see what I would do with my life without putting any attention on making any more money for myself or my family. So I put my money into an investment managed by someone else, and then started a nonprofit and a for profit. I did the for profit business because I still wanted to charge people to pay for my co workers anyway. So since then, over 40 or 35 years, I had been working for no royalty, no stock growth, no salary, I get a benefit. I get the benefit of working, and I get the benefit of having an office and all the gadgets I can buy that are promote my work. But well, you know, that brings

me to this next question, you know, because you mentioned that life can be lived with ease instead of struggle. Now, on a spiritual from spiritual standpoint, you know, I think a lot of my listeners, Eastern philosophy, Western philosophy, whatever it might be, the whole concept of kind of letting go and let be right, we can say, oh, because I even still have this from sing Delaney, which came from Ram Dass, who I interviewed around the same time as you be here now, right? And so when you get to this, you said, I think my listeners will want to know, Oh, that's great for Dave. He sold this book, and he did whatever, and he isn't struggling. But how can someone shift the mindset? This is where you've really spent most of your time, from effort to ease. Because, wait a second, they're all going well, this guy can say that he's got his bank accounts full of money and he doesn't have to worry about money.

Well, for four years. I taught for the last 45 years, but after I stopped teaching teachers how to teach The Book becoming a master student, I began to teach other areas. I taught four years. I taught leadership for four years. I taught coaches how to be great coaches. I wrote a book called life coaching, and then did a program for life coaches so they could get certified through ICF. And then I taught a course on money. I did this for four years, each year, different students. Some did it again, but mostly different, a nine month course with three in person, webinars or workshops rather, three webinars a week, three one on one coaching sessions a week. No, the

creating your was that the creating your future book? No,

this, this was based on the principle the falling away. But another book written by Lynn twist, yeah, a wonderful woman, and she wrote a book called The soul of money. She and I, with another woman, Tammy white, taught this course. The part of the course that was most powerful was what you're talking about, and that is living a abundant life with very little money. I learned this, this strategy, from a woman who wrote a book your money or your life, became a friend of mine, Vicky Robbins. And the point of that book was living a phenomenal life, stress free, full of contribution. Love relationship on $7,000 a year, and she practiced what she taught. She lived a very modest life. Now I don't recommend it. First of all, the books 20 was 20 years ago or more so now we talk in 20,000 a year. But the point is not the number, of course, it's the principle of living in abundance, living in sufficiency, no matter what your checkbook shows or your your financial statement. We did this course, Greg and listeners, primarily for people who had achieved financial comfort, people. The course was directed at people who made somewhere over 150,000 a year. But we had millionaires take the course, because I know a lot of millionaires. Actually, I coached two billionaire and they are not financially sufficient. Lots of wealthy people they are, well, trading with ease.

I think when you look at scarcity versus abundance, whatever the formula was that you you were referring to, you know, I've had Marshall Goldsmith on here with Ken's people, you know, and he is, he always says, win is enough you know, it's, it's like, you get people with three or four master's degrees and a doctorate, and they have five or six cars in their driveway and three or four houses, and they own a company that's worth a billion dollars or whatever. And he coaches these kind of people, right? That's who he's known for. And he would say to them, you know, well, do you have any regrets, right? Any, any, any would say to me in this podcast, it's like, it's not so much about that. It's about, when do you really feel like you have enough, right? Right? And I think we were brought up and conditioned. A lot of us, I won't say everybody, either by our parents or society that said, hey, well, you weren't the a plus student. You weren't the this or the that or the whatever. So based on what I just said, What are these 12 success strategies? And if you were to lay and lay them out. You don't have to do them all, but which ones are they and what ones would you pick on to say, Hey, this is inside falling awake, and this would be something for you to pay attention to. Listening audience.

Well, I want to come to the one we're just talking about, and I've written about it in several different books with different titles, but in falling awake, the chapter is called, lighten your load. Lighten Your Load. In other words, lighten up. Quit taking yourself and this world and your life so seriously. My friend Neil Rogan, who wrote a wonderful book called The lightenment, not enlightenment but delightment, said we forget that we're not going to make it out alive, and we're not. And some people think, well, that's terrible. Well, I don't think so. I think it's laughable that we act as if we're going to somehow. We think we're going to evade the end, and we're not. And every spiritual book tells us to enjoy the journey. And I say, enjoy.

Have you heard this one? Dave, I'm sure you have. And I had Sycamore Rao on here, which is the Rao Institute. You probably know him. And he said, but you know, you don't see the hearse going down the road with a U ha trailer behind it, right? And I love the analogy, because, you know, all these possessions that you and I and everybody we know have, you know we love, and we've got them, the reality is, they're just possessions. They aren't going with us. And I think as you reach now, I'm 70 years old, I don't know what your age is, but you look at your finitude and you go, there's way more to this life than what I've given emphasis to. So if the one is lightening your load, what are some of the others that you'd want to give our listening audience that would say, Okay, guys, lighten up. Let's laugh a little bit and enjoy it.

Well, yeah, okay, now let's start with laughter, and then go to the fourth, fifth strategy called take responsibility. Now, I know that kind of sounds like dad or mom telling you to Hey, be responsible, but I want to take this way bigger. I'm recommending that you look around life, and I do this all the time and say, Well, what's happening, what's happening in my life, and then, how did I create it? How did I create that circumstance? And more importantly, how am I currently creating my response to that circumstance? I want, I want to give you a very personal example. Well, I'm going to give you two ones about money, because we talked about it after I had really done well selling a college textbook, and I started with nothing. Started that company with $10,000 and I became a multi millionaire. I decided, since I knew so much about education, that I would buy a college. Now there was only, at the time 27 regionally accredited degree granting four year colleges in the United States that could be bought and sold.

I bought one of them. All right. Fast forward, I lost my shirt, I I failed miserably, and I lost all my money, and I went $2 million in debt.

Wow. Now, how can you be light about that? Well, first of all, it was the only way I could handle it, because I sure couldn't cry about it. Didn't have enough tears. Pause. Then I said, Well, how did I create that? How did I create a $2 million hole that I had to climb out of? Well, I made a long, long list, and at first, it's a hard list to create. Then, more importantly, I said, Now, how am I creating my response? In other words, how I'm feeling, how I react to this circumstance. Am I feeling terrible about myself? Or can I feel like, wow, what a great opportunity to learn. All right, I want to give one more that's current and much more intimate. That is that last year, my wife got has Alzheimer's, and it developed to the point where it's in the final stages of that disease.

Now, how can one be light about that? And how can I say I created that? Well, of course, I didn't create her disease, but I did create and I started to notice how I created my response to her disease. And in the beginning, I'll tell you I did not do well. I did. I responded terribly. You know, I was mad at everything, everybody, every cause of every situation. I I was even got mad at her. Fortunately, I kept my mouth shut, but I got internally mad, frustrated, of course, terribly upset. And over time, and it only took a few months, actually, was hard work, got to the point where, for months now, it's just been really we're enjoying our life together, and I enjoy her, and we've got a full time caregiver, because we need one. She can't do most of what people can do, and it's, you know, if I've waved a magic wand, I'd have it different. And I mean, we're in great shape, we're in love, we're in communication, even though she can only speak a few sentences a day. And I'm just thrilled to be married to that woman? Well, that's a I appreciate you sharing that intimate story about what you're going through with your wife, because I think for the listeners, it's really one of, how do they create a better understanding about life's lessons? And in your case, you've come to peace with her Alzheimer's, and you know that ultimately it will end in her demise. The reality for you now is to be as much with her, to be presence with her, because I noticed, even with me at my age, like, I'll tell a personal story too real quick. I tore a meniscus in my knee. It's progressively gotten worse. I'm having a hard time. I'm struggling, you know, walking around on the leg. I'm angry. I'm like, Oh, my God, this isn't me. I've really never had this kind of challenge. And I've gotten to a point now where it's like, okay, surgery is next. I know it's coming next month. Okay? It's going to get better. I have to be at peace with it. And, you know, I look at all the other people that have stuff way worse than me, and that's when you can start giving gratitude they don't have a leg and maybe don't have two legs, at least I can still walk around. So this brings me to this, this question, you write about the importance of telling the truth. Sometimes I think we tell ourselves lies. I say we live in the world of making stuff up, making shit up, and then we believe what we made up. But you said, Hey, let's move toward love, which, in your case, right now, you move from anger to love in a very short period of time, because you were angry at everything. You're angry at her, your anger outside world. You anger for this happening. How do these, I won't even call them strategies, but how does this work for you? How did it work for you? And how did you bring this together practically, so that it made sense and that you felt good about yourself and your wife? How did you ultimately come to peace with that, whether it was spiritually or through logical thinking or it was through whatever it was you did, what did you do? Well,

I started with what you just mentioned, which is to tell the truth. So often, when we as humans are faced with a tragic situation, we try to use positive thinking. We whistle a happy tune, we avoid the stench, we avoid looking at the trouble and what tell the truth. Strategy in that chapter of falling awake, it's about really examining whatever is occurring and examining it in detail with nothing held back the idea being that we as humans are only as sick as our secrets, and the secrets as you mentioned. First of all, what do we tell ourselves, and if you tell it to others, long enough, you'll start to believe it yourself. Yeah. So what? What lies are we telling to ourselves? So come back to the truth. What's the truth? Well, the truth was, and I started there. I'm upset. I'm I'm worried. I am in I'm in fear, mad. Okay, now, how do you get beyond that? I love the ideas that Harvey Jenkins jackins developed in CO counseling, which is the way to get past a feeling like because that's what I was telling the truth about, is to fully experience it that the the psychological mechanism that holds in anger and grief,

an embarrassment even, is the same mechanism that holds in love, creativity, acceptance, Joy. So we got to when I was mad, I expressed the anger not to Mimi, of course, not to my wife, not even to her children or my children, but to people that could hold my anger and let me be angry, not forever, but to get it out, hold my tears so I could cry it out,

and pretty soon after telling the truth, those things began to disappear and I could move toward love. Now, of course, I don't love Alzheimer's, but I love my wife, and I even have grown to love the idiosyncrasies that that occur with degenerative brain disease, and we still laugh. Greg, oh my gosh, we laugh so much. And

that's really cool that you, the two of you, can still laugh. And look this, there's a lesson in this podcast for everybody listening. And the lesson is to, as Dave just said, embrace that, tell that anger and fear and frustration to someone who can help you. Hold it and then let go of it, which I think you cited the gentleman who wrote the book, but I want to, I want to address something with you, because I think it's important in the time remaining, you know, we're, we're living in some pretty unusual times right now, and I think there's a lot of listeners out there that are looking at the uncertainty of not Only their personal lives, but the world at large, they're angry about what's going on. They're upset, they're frustrated. And many of them, as I can see, because they're expressing themselves on social media like crazy, are taking this anger to a whole new level. Right now, I'm not saying that it's bad to get angry. I'm asking you, if they're stuck in this, how would you as a great coach, get them to rise above it and look at it from a different angle, a different perspective than what they're looking at it right now, tough question, but

Oh, it's a great question, Greg, and it's and I practice it a lot, and I practice it with people in my life who are as aware of political I think we're talking political turmoil right now as I am. I watch the news a lot. I'm really up and so so Mimi and I, it's kind of our sport and and we watch and we're aware. And I would ask people who want to see change to start to believe that they will be able to affect change far more likely if they give up their anger. So I like to talk about it is activism without antagonism, because antagonism is just a win lose. It's we push against the other. And when you push against something, as we all know, it grows. It's it gets bigger. So how can we drop the antagonism and still keep the activism? So we're going to still be out there doing everything we can to change whatever situation is there, including political situations, while dropping the antagonism, the hatred, anger, the vitriol, it doesn't do anybody any good, and it rots you as a human being. So I say, Yeah, tell the truth, but tell the truth about your feelings in order to get beyond them, to move toward love. Yeah, even in the political arena, I love to talk to people who have political views totally different from mine, and then see where I can learn from them and be responsible for my own antagonistic response.

It's a great way that you put that. And what I'll do is I'll wrap this interview up, because I think that gave people enough perspective, just right there about a question that's very current, which is on a lot of people's minds these days, and I don't think it's immediately going away. So you know, instead of taking to be an activist, as you said, Dave, is fine. To be a protagonist might be a little bit different, a way to look at it a little bit differently, but your book invites the readers to be co authors of their life story. Everything we've talked about up till now is been about our life story, your personal stories, mine. What's the most exciting or surprising story you've heard from either one of your coaching clients, people you work with, who took the challenge that you provided to them to heart. I think it's always good to tell stories, and it's good to tell success and or failure stories. Maybe not everybody took it to heart.

Well, here's a quick here's a quick one. I know where I short time. Every two weeks I offer a webinar of observed coaching, and they can go to falling wake.com sign up for these webinars. And what observed coaching is is that during the hour, I take one volunteer and I coach that person on a particular subject, and then everybody else listens, reports what they learn, and I coach them about what they learned. Well, what was so inspiring to me was two weeks ago. It's up. It's on video. Now this woman, her issue that she brought I coached her for about 20 minutes was her fear of her house burning down. It's right in the middle of the major fires that are going on in Southern California. Her home is in Northern California, but in a fire zone, and in that 20 minutes, what was so inspiring to me is that she reported that she let go of the fear and got into action. Because what was happening, what was the fear was so great that it was debilitating. Now, the transformation was almost uncanny in 20 minutes. Even though I think I'm a great coach, I could hardly believe it. It was so inspiring. I called her later and communicated with her and did a little bit of follow up coaching, maybe just, you know, less than 20 minutes and he changed, and that's my goal in those webinars, is to assist people to significantly and permanently improve the quality of their life in just one hour. So that inspired me.

Well, I just want to tell the listeners out there, go to fallingawake.com here. You'll actually be able to see some of these webinars. You'll be able to get the books that we've been talking about for free, especially the falling awake book. And again, it's falling awake.com as he said, he consolidated all of his everything into one website. He's doing a lot, so there's a lot of changes. So I encourage you to go back again and again and again and look at the kind of things that he's going you now can do responses on the side, and you can type in your responses, and you can then send a message to Dave himself as well. Dave Always a pleasure having you on. We certainly should do a round two of this, because I'm sure there's a lot more that we could speak about that's relevant and important and valuable for people in their own personal transformations, but we don't. We've run out of time today. Thank you. Thank you. Namaste to you. Thank you for being on my show again after 14 years or whatever it's been, no 15 years. And blessings to you and to Mimi and you guys for a blessed journey toward an easy transition. Thanks, Greg.