Narrator
Join us now for the Dr. Joe Show with Mike styles of styles law. Thomas McCoy. And your host, Dr. Joe strand. Oh, gum show

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Applause Applause like it was a real nice one look good one especially. I mean, you're not winded. I mean, you're practicing for, for a pan mass. I mean,

Mark Stiles
practicing. Yes. I'm constantly practicing. I'm working, working towards the goal of not being tired out there. Yeah. So we went out there and a little heat heatwave today to see how we're doing on our hydration skills today.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Crazy. When is the the actual race?

Mark Stiles
Two weeks? Well, it's not a race, not not a race. Let's be careful with our words, right. Technically, it starts two weeks from Saturday. But as I've mentioned here before, we are doing what's called day zero, the day before pan mass, we're gonna go out to the border of New York and and right into the beginning for the day before.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
And how can people donate to this cause

Mark Stiles
pmc.org And then you can search for your favorite writer, one named Mark Stiles would be honored to to accept your donations. But yeah, pmc.org very, very, very great. Organization. One weekend, a year raises more money than any other event in the nation. One event.

One,

Greg Voisen
what are you writing for Mark?

Mark Stiles
We are writing for Dana Farber Cancer Institute. So we're writing to eliminate cancer from from the planet. And they raise around $60 million last year. So I think their goal is is north of that. And we're really excited. So I've got a $20,000 goal this year, scratching the surface right now. But we've got a big push. So we've been doing some social media campaigns and doing some fun things. We're doing an event next week. And we're going I mean, the goal is is to eliminate cancer from from the vocabulary. Well get

Greg Voisen
get your writing gear on because I used to do it. And I did it extensively. I raised hundreds of 1000s for leukemia, lymphoma society, and I was a trainer and trained people and I did 18 events. Wow. 100 mile rides, so but you know how many miles you ride before you actually ride? So the reality is 26 weeks to training to get tuned up. You got lots of road time. Oh, yeah. My eldest son has chronic myelogenous leukemia, so Oh, I know. I know what it's like to do that. So congratulations to you. Good luck with your ride. Stay cool. And don't overheat.

Mark Stiles
Yeah, we're doing our best. We're doing our best.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Who? The listeners may not recognize that voice. Let me pitch it over to you. And can you introduce our guest?

Thomas McKoy
Oh, that wasn't Larry. Larry. Oh, nevermind. Dr. Joe, I got a little memo here. Talk to Joe is the creator and host of inside personal growth. He's an author, creative consultant and thought leader in the human potential movement. Inside personal growth was born out of his passion for personal growth and mastery. He continually strives to improve his own life spiritually, emotionally and physically, as he learns from the hundreds of authors interviewed on his website. Welcome to the doc Joe Show. Greg Voisin.

Welcome, Greg.

Greg Voisen
All of you. Thank you very much, and all of the listeners in Boston and surrounding areas. Thank you for listening to me and wanting to learn more about my show me and my book.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Well, let's get right into it. Let's start with you. Greg, you have a remarkable background. I've read your book, the opening, is it. It's just so powerful. Can you want to tell folks a little bit first of all about opening up hacking the gap?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, the book is called hacking the gap, a journey from intuition to innovation. And I think where the journey starts with me, and I'll be brief with this is, you know, as you're growing up all these life experiences, Dr. Joe, as you know, which goes along with you as a psychologist, kind of getting even worse, psychiatrists,

Greg Voisen
of course. But I think what happens is, you know, we start to set up these limiting beliefs and the reason that I act actually started this show is I used to be in that I'm speeding forward here. But for a long time, I was a top producer in the financial services industry. And I was just burned out. And my son came to me and he says, you know, Dad, you go to all those million dollar roundtable meetings, and you get to hear all those great speakers. How about if you brought them on your show? Greg, how will you know how old were

Dr. Joseph Shrand
you when your son came up to you? How old was yours? Not how old are you? How old was your son, when he came up here to give you that?

Greg Voisen
Advice? Yeah, how old was he was about 14 at the time, because he built the first website.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
That's incredible. 14 years old with wisdom. Go ahead. So what happened next?

Greg Voisen
So I started this podcast show 15 years ago, inside personal growth as a means to help educate people and inform them and inspire them about what they could do about. And I'm not just going to say limiting release, because we cover business, personal growth, wellness, mastery, and spirituality. So what I find is that the spirituality side of things is a big issue. But we you know, and I both know that some of the issues are, you know, you've got the subconscious and the conscious. And the subconscious mind gets programmed. And literally, it's very hard to unwind. And I believe that as as human species, walking the face of the earth, that I was speaking with a social biologist, the other day on a podcast, her book was watchman's rattle, and the other one was on the verge. And she said, You know, it's really great, you, we do all this, we have all these analytics, we can tell what's going on. But the reality is, and her name is Rebecca Costa, and she says, As a social biologist, looking at our species for millions of years, we literally wait till almost disaster to make a change. We're really programmed that way, we're rewired that way. And I what I wanted to let people know is that you can choose to make a change before that, in the hacking the gap, part of it is finding the fastest way between point A and point B. Really, and doing that through learning versus you having to have all these difficult learning experiences. Now, just yesterday, I had a beautiful guest on the show Sterling Hawking. And his book is called hunting discomfort. And he's basically saying the only way through is the discomfort that you have to go through to basically and you should be haunting it, you shouldn't be waiting for discomfort to come because different discomfort is going to come. So my show is really around everybody who's discomfortable, uncomfortable, uncertain, looking for solutions with inside themselves, and has the ability, obviously, then to take action on that. In other words, you can take the action when you choose to take that action. So that's a little bit about me, but more about, you know, the book, the process and how I got there.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
But But what was it that was going on in your world that inspired you to do this for so many other people?

Greg Voisen
I would say that I had a lot of you know, as the Buddha says, there's pain and suffering, and then there's getting out of pain and suffering, right. And I think there was a tremendous amount of pain and suffering from me on not being enough. And I think I see so many people out there who don't believe there enough. And whether it was your parents who said, Hey, you needed to get A's in high school and college, and you believe that or you wouldn't be or you need to be on the Dean's list or whatever the story was, or you needed to marry this XYZ person because it was going to be great. It's all about you know, self doubt. doubting ourselves and doubting our ability and from a personal growth standpoint, the 957 interviews with authors on really these topics. And what I find is a broad range of approaches to I wouldn't say solving the problems either really analyzing the problems analyzing the problems and you defining your own solution.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
You defined yours.

Greg Voisen
Well, mine was the pain and suffering of a family. You know, I you go back to this. I was brought up with a little Jewish mother and a Catholic father, he never He never practiced Catholicism. So my mother's was a dominant in the field. In light, and her message was the Groundhog's Day that, what did you do for me today? She didn't mean for her. She meant what did you do today? There was never about being it was always about doing. Right. And so I think what happens is we get caught in this kind of rat trap of not really thinking about who we are what we want to become, but what we need to do to look good in the eyes of other people, and especially your parents, who you're living up to who've put a pretty high put you on a pretty high pedestal in most cases, right? I think, and I don't, and I don't think Joe from generation to generation, this isn't anything against my mother's generation or the generation prior to her. But I think this is perpetuated, you know, if I did a histogram of my family, I could see all of that. There, I did a history grant. So I saw what happened with inside the family. And I'm not blaming anybody, I'm so blessed to have had a family like this. But I'm even more blessed for what I just said, having figured it out on my own, and worked my way through it to get to the other side. Now that meant, you know, Dr. Joe, going through anxiety attacks, not being able to get on an elevator not being able to go into a restaurant, being afraid, thought I was having a heart attack being hooked up to stuff on my head so that they could look at the electrodes and see what I was doing. When I actually saw what I was doing myself to debilitate myself physically, that it wasn't, you know, something that somebody on the outside world did? I can't blame them. Nope. For what's going on. I created it all

Dr. Joseph Shrand
tribal, if it's always someone else's fault, you're never in control. Right? And if you're not in control, you're always going to be anxious. So great. Open, where do you want to go? Now? Do you want to go into the book, you want to go deeper into your spirituality, your life?

Greg Voisen
It's kind of leave that up to you, you can go either way. Because the book, you know, it's kind of a memoir. You know, it isn't? It isn't. It's really a lot of instructional design of what you can do. But, but for the most part, there's things that I advocate doing that I believe will help people out of pain and suffering.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Yeah, yeah. I was wanting to write a book like that called a self help book, a memoir, you know, it's like, it's because that's what you've done is you really have taken the examples of your life, and really shown how you then move with that to another position. But you know, you and I were on the same page with this.

Greg Voisen
But you know, what writers always say is if, you know if Mark was sitting next to me in a movie theater, He'd want me he'd want to hear the story that, like, we're friends, we just sit there and we talk to one another. Right? And I believe podcast show is the same. Every time I dress dress my audiences. I'm saying, you know, you're with me. I'm, I don't put me on a pedestal. I'm equal with you. Yes, I've gone through some things. Maybe you can learn from these. Maybe you can't. I'm happy to share it with you. Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
But this is this is, you know, what we're talking about now with lived experience. You know, that's everyone has it. There's just some people who've had more trauma during it. We've all we all have lived experience. This is our law. And all fair. We were talking about a new book that you're working on, Greg. So tell me about that.

Greg Voisen
I'm working. I'm really excited about it. Actually, I've been so blessed to meet so many authors along the way. A lot of them have said, Hey, Greg, will you help me write my next book. And this one is life on the precipice. And it's a story of a gentleman who has done climbed the highest Seven Summits. And I think that all of these peaks that we we re we get to his people come with challenges, right. So he's climbed Everest twice, he's climbed all the highest seven summits in the world. But in the process of writing this book, I got the pleasure and the honor of interviewing in excess of 20 mountain climbers who've climbed most of these peaks, okay. And some of you might some of the listeners might know memes. That's the the guy from Tibet did the story. You probably know the guy that did the face and Yosemite. We had, you know, so you look at these people. And I said, it's interesting how they look at life, Dr. Joe, they're not intentionally going out after death. They're intentionally going out because they're curious and they're explorers. But they say you only live life when you face death. So in other words, when you get to that precipice when you get to that peak for me to make it up there, and you'll hear this again and again, and again, they're say, We're not saying we're advocating the death, but we're so drawn to the mountains, that the mountains call us to keep getting to the top and exploring. And I think that's about personal growth as well. The journey that you take from birth to death is your journey. And every step along the way, you get an opportunity to make choices, do I go this way? Do I go that way? Is there going to be an avalanche? And there's gonna be a rockslide? You know, what am I gonna fall, whatever it might be. But you know, it's, in the end, you'll hear this from them too, because their lives are so rattled with trying to find balance and harmony. They're away from their families for long periods of time. Lots of divorces, lots of challenges. Not really being able to manage that, well, because this calling from the mountains is so strong, that they just leave, they just go, it's almost like they blank out and go, Well, I'm gonna leave you again, where you did take care of the family, I'm off to go climb the mountain, right, another six month expedition. So I found it fascinating and finding the whole thing fascinating. Because the insights that are being received as a result of this gift, I was given by a gentleman by the name of Beau Parfit. It, it just correlates so much to personal growth. And to my book, hacking the gap. Everybody on that mountain, is trying to find the shortest distance between two points, with the least amount of pain and suffering along the way to get to the peak,

Dr. Joseph Shrand
it's an incredible metaphor. But it's interesting, given your interview with the socio biologist, socio biologist who's saying that that many human beings are incredibly cautious, and they don't want to make a change until they absolutely have to adapt to a new environment. And yet that can absolutely cripple us. If we are waiting for the environment, to influence the changes that we make.

Greg Voisen
Well, the juxtaposition is, you get a lot of people that sit on their butt, and you get a lot of people that mountain climb. So you have to say it physiologically, if the endorphins are being released chemically with inside of me as a result of the activity. So here you have Mark, he's gonna go to a bike ride, you can't tell me that bike riding doesn't release tons of endorphins, because it does, because what happens is you get out you have nothing else to think about, you're on the road, and you're literally one with yourself. It's a meditation beyond any meditation in the world, you can go dou Chen, you can tell me everything about meditation, I've spent more time on a cushion as much as anybody. And I will tell you riding my bike is more meditative than sitting on the cushion. Okay. And the reason is sitting on the cushion is not providing me with the same endorphin. Not that it couldn't. Because look, I just watched the Netflix deal with Michael Poland, on all the psychosocial ovens and, you know, micro dosing, LSD and taking ayahuasca and all these things to attempt to get to a certain level within Sinai. Now, I believe that all these these plant based drugs are wonderful. It's curing OCD, it's curing PTSD, it's doing all kinds of things that people out there on pain with, and they can really shorten the cycle of that pain. by actually taking or administering one of those drugs, I would highly advocate it.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
One has to be quite cautious. So who endorsed this

Greg Voisen
indoors of the show? I understand.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
But Mark, let me ask you, you know, do you relate to what Greg is talking about? What's the best bang for cycling?

Mark Stiles
Yeah, so I mean, the reason I'm there is, I'm more of a I always say I'm a fundraiser not a cyclist. I'm a fundraiser, who happens to ride a bike, but over the years, I'm totally engaged with what Greg is talking about, because there's something about riding you, you see things that you would never see, in a car, you'll never see jogging, right? Jogging, you run three miles and you run a circle and you see the same things. Every time maybe you run five, seven miles, but here you're writing over the course of training hundreds and hundreds of miles in random random places and it's your Really, it's splendid, because you, you really realize what is out there and it is meditative. There's no question about it, if you're in that zone and simply pedaling and looking around, it's, it's quite relaxing.

Greg Voisen
It is. Even Even Dr. Joe, the CANS that have been thrown out on the side of the roads become interesting little obstacles for you, because you only have one. And you can chime in Mark, you only have one objective. And your objective is, every time your foot moves around the pedal, to make sure you stay upright, stay focused, and you'd stay diligent on the road and make sure you don't get hit, or whatever it might be. And at the same time, you get the opportunity to enjoy that scenery off to the right or the left. I happen to be blessed, I get to ride up and down the coast of California. So every time I ride to the right, I look out into the ocean and I can see whales I can see seals. If it's on a great day, I can see some really nice bikinis too, right? So the reality is, is that you do this and it but it isn't something that if you drove your car, like he just said, that you would take notice of but because the bike doesn't go as fast, and you're exerting energy, lots of energy to make this happen, whether you're climbing a hill or you're doing whatever, it becomes extremely meditative.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Great. And then how do you use that? Exercise that meditative ability and translate it into your workday? How do you take that? What sounds like peace and calm and awareness and vigilance? And, you know, just being tuned in? How do you then take that and use it and work? Is that part of hacking the gap as well?

Greg Voisen
Yeah, well, there's, there's prescriptive, and there's takeaways in the chapter, anyone who gets the book will can read that. There's a lot on meditation, there's a lot on salience, there's a lot on contemplation. When I say a lot, I mean, there's much written about the, the things you can do. So if we are going to be doing beings, let's do doing beings, which is helping take us to the highest level of consciousness as a soul, we could to transmute whatever level of pain, it also allows you to get tremendous focus. I mean, you know, Steven Kotler has been on here the art of impossible, all these books that he's written and done studies on this? And you'll say, Look, you know, Mark, does it? I'll bet for two reasons. One, he's out there raising money. And that's a cause beyond himself. So he has a purpose. But he's also curious, when you start with curiosity leads through a series of things to purpose, and I believe that it does. And most people have high levels of curiosity. So I'm doing an interview with Seth Goldberg is in actually is in Nantucket. And the book is called Radical curiosity. Right? And you know, we've lost, we've lost this radical curiosity, to help solve problems. And I think he's absolutely right. And Dr. Joe, what I would say is, when you get out on a bike, and you use this now to come in, you're more engaged to want to focus on doing something good and solving somebody's problem.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Well, that radical curiosity, it would be nice if we could regain that. But what is really terrific is many of our sponsors are radically curious about their thing and how they can help you. So Tom, what about you? What's what's, what's your meditative state? What do you do?

I like really long walks. So in my town in martial, which we all live, as I have about, I think it's about a 10 mile walk between my house and this area called Green Harbor. And I actually lost 80 pounds over the first winter, the winter of 2021. Mostly by walking like two and a half hours every night. And it's like, especially in the winter, it's super peaceful.

And I got a lot of thinking done, or that time, a lot of thinking here. Did

Dr. Joseph Shrand
you know I think somehow Oh Xamarin is gaming meditative? Or are you just too tuned in?

Thomas McKoy
Oh sure can be. I think if it's like a game you're familiar with that you can play to relax. You can really, you can really tune out. Sometimes some games, you'll play like Minecraft, for example, it's a great game to like, listen to podcasts to. There are some that are very story driven. But yeah, I think I think games like Tetris or something, I think, like people will play that explosively to relax and clear

Greg Voisen
the head. So yeah. And I think, Dr. Joe, he's absolutely right, you know that walking through these 80 pounds was a tremendous thing to do. But more importantly, the time he got to think about everything else, because you actually get to change your actions as a result of that deep contemplative thinking, you know, where you may want to go with this is the intuition. Yeah, I that might be a good place after this commercials done to like, plug off into, you know, well, you have a way to help people get from intuition to innovation, how do they do that? And we could kind of maybe do a little round robin on that.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
I think that'd be great. And I think I wrote to, you know, one of the things that I teach all my students is, intuition is the precursor to technique.

Mark Stiles
And we are back. We are back with the Dr. Joe Show with author, Greg voice. And who is hacking the gap that we're going to talk about going from intuition to innovation? Isn't that what we're going to be talking about? Dr. John, let's

Dr. Joseph Shrand
jump right into it.

Greg Voisen
Okay. Well, so this book, while it is written for individuals who are entrepreneurs, everybody's abroad entrepreneur in my mind, like I agree, or can be, okay. And I tested this because I went to the universities, and I did a lot of studies, and I, and I interviewed a software engineers and all kinds of other people. And you know, somebody who was radically curious, like we said, last time, when Steven Jobs probably couldn't have been anybody more radically curious than Steven Jobs. But you'll find that a lot of the architects of our software, there's many gentlemen and women who are radically curious, they want to solve a problem. And so I said to myself, well, I want to ask you guys something. And I started out with this survey, Dr. Tau around intuition. Well, do you believe that use intuition to create the software do you believe use intuition? Where did this intuition come from? And I'd get some people that would just light up and go, Yeah, I got into it, and I get other people. Now it's too scientific. There's no intuition. I don't believe in intuition. It's like, well, really? So did you ever have a feeling? Did you ever get a sense? Did you ever go down? Well, yeah, I did. But I don't believe that's intuition. Because I believe what happened is I programmed my brain enough through college and enough meetings that I connected the dots. And I said, Yeah, I believe you did connect the dots. But sometimes you connect the dots. And it's, you're missing a dot. Where did the dot come from? Well, I had this epiphany. Oh. So you did have some little epiphany about how you might redesign something to make it. So here's for the listeners. And there's a little graph and chart in the book, Dr. Joe dosis. You know, I believe it starts with intuition. It's listening deeply. We just talked about that, you know, Mark's going on a bike ride. Thomas is doing long walks. He's listening deeply. Right. And there is a voice that speaks to you. People that say, oh, voice and you're crazy. And you know, you get you hear these voices.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Was that upon? Yeah,

Greg Voisen
exactly. And then the second thing is, I think from that, you get an insight. And the Insight is really, it's the I call it the aha moment. There's a lot written about insights. There's a lot written about intuition. But when that insight now is like, Whoa, I have an idea. I have an idea for that. iPhone, Steve Jobs. Right. How many of you know he used to use the tone on the phone? Probably Thomas does. And he used to go in payphones and he used to hit those numbers. And he started with the tones that the phone would make, you know, you'd get that not not not, you know when you're hitting it, so, and he used to scam the phone company because he knew how to do it. He was that smart. That's how he was making all kinds of calls without ever paying for them. So you had this idea. And here's the point. You get inspired then because knowing it's right, here's, here's what it is. Is it a knowing for you It doesn't have to be a knowing for somebody else. All right. So, you know, your, your people argue points with you about your idea. And they tell you, as I just said, you're crazy, you're a lunatic, that idea is never going to work. And then you read in the newspaper, six months later, some guy had the same idea and went for it. And you're like, shoot, I had that great idea. And I'm saying, everybody's got great ideas. You just didn't take action on what we were just talking about, at the beginning of the show, we waited around forever, before we ever implemented anything. Then after inspiration, you incubate, we all incubate for a period of time, we got to think about it, cogitate on it, think it over. After that, here's one of the hardest steps. And it's the ignition step. All right. And that's where you manage the energy associated with launching any good idea. Because a lot of entrepreneurs will burn out before the idea ever takes hold, because they don't know how to manage their own personal energies. So whether you take runs, or you ride your bike, or you meditate or whatever it might be. And I found this to be the case, because for me, I got in many positions where I ended up getting anxiety attacks, because I was so much there that I couldn't deal with it. It was like, I didn't know how to manage the energy. I was like overboard, right? And then you're going to the innovation. And people say, well, that's innovation stage. Oh, yeah, you have to innovate the idea. And you got to take it, you got to make prototypes, you got to make models, you got to, you know, you got to work it up, right. And last one is implementation. So the step from innovation, the implementation is, for most people, that's the marketing part. That's the part well, I got my prototype, it works. I sent it to China, it all came back. It's all working, Let's now put it to market, we're going to put it on the internet, we're going to shove it up at Amazon, we're gonna we're gonna get it work, we're gonna get people to buy it. So that little cycle, I went out, and then I went to people in innovation departments actually very famous one in Massachusetts, actually, a gouge, can't think of her name right now. And I asked her, I said, Hey, you know, this was my theory. I just kind of tested it. She said, You know, you have every step that is actually almost 100%. Correct. I might put it in a different order. But the reality is, anybody who's studied innovation, every one of those steps is part of the process about okay, well, I thought that was my idea. It really wasn't actually an RFP been out there. But the reality is, is that I think everybody needs to know that, with inside of you, resides a person who has a great idea that if you act on it, could do something that could change the world. So act on it.

Mark Stiles
So what do you say to the folks that say, Yeah, but if I say it out loud, someone might steal it from me?

Greg Voisen
Well, I think Dr. Joe would probably attest to this is they have enough self self doubt in themselves, that they aren't willing to say it out loud. And they have fear, they have so much fear themselves. So we could talk about fear all day long. But I remember a long time ago going to talks. And I think it was Zig Ziglar used to say it's false expectations Appearing Real. Right. And I always could remember that acronym. Right. And again, I come from more of a Eastern philosophy. I think the biggest challenge in managing that and energy mark, and Joe and Tom, is you get attached to something, and you think it's going to happen a certain way. But if you have attachment to the cola goal occurring a certain way, it doesn't always happen that way. And that burns you out and that was me. I was like, oh, it's gonna go just this way. You're step one, step two, step three, step four. That's bullshit. It never ever happens that way. The other part is, you know, Marshall, Goldsmith was on here, the the biggest coach in the United States coaching people that achieve a ton and he said, you know, you move on a continuum from regret, to fulfillment. And here's the reality is that when you don't know that all of this is impermanent, and you're a high achiever, you don't even know as a high achiever. What impermanence is, you don't even know what not being attached to something as if you're I achiever. And why are you a high achiever? Because you're trying to solve something for yourself or prove something to yourself or to someone else and most likely somebody else?

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Yeah. Does that get back to the philosophy of your mom to do?

Greg Voisen
Oh, yeah, my mom, she ingrained into me. What did you do today? Are you saving your money? You know, it doesn't matter what it was, but hers was all around. I'm not gonna just say doing it was all about you achieving because the only way you could be recognized was to achieve something.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
I think, you know, that. That also haunts a lot of people doesn't make Greg that some people, they feel they're imposters they feel that their achievements are just Shams to other people. And yet, we're all at an I Am, we're all doing the best we can at every moment in time, the potential to change. And to back to intuition, one of the things that that I like to say is, intuition is a precursor to technique. You know, we have these intuitive things to do, we just sort of instinctively do something, it's our intuition with this. But once you know why you're doing it, you can do it at any time. You can make it a technique. And to go back to some of your other things about the innovation and and be able to see this this intuition this picture, there was this guy could Cooley none of you ever know, but this guy is in organic chemistry people still awake, I'm sorry. But in organic chemistry, there was this problem with this, this molecule, these carbon six carbons, that didn't make sense at all. And Cooley was working on this working on it. He had a dream. He literally, I'm talking about he had a dream like a vision. He was asleep. And in sleep, he had this dream about six snakes that were in a circle biting each other's tails. That is the structure of the carbon benzene ring. That's what changed our understanding of organic chemistry. And it was a dream he he had this intuition. He put it together.

Greg Voisen
And what you say there about the snake biting its tail is literally in the dove Qin philosophy. That's awareness of your awareness. So you know, when you're aware nests of your awareness, right? Then there's no thing. Yeah, then the mind is empty. You know? So So I think that, because that symbolism of that, you know, that snake that you just said, I have a feeling there might have been more to that than just solving the problem, right? Because when you can get that to that a state, you can then find this. I'm not gonna say nirvana. But we I talked a few minutes ago about, and you said, this isn't endorsed by the show. But if people are going to take psychosocial, or, you know, any of these LSD or whatever, microdose. You know, they're actually seeking some kind of state like that to get through. Now, in this gentleman's case, as a scientist, he was trying to break through the problem. Yes. Right. And I didn't mean it. He didn't microdose something to get there. Maybe he did before he went to sleep. But my point was, is that he came up with a solution, you don't have to microdose anything to do now. You know, what you have to do? You have to do a hell of a lot more bike riding like what Mark's doing, and I'm doing, and you will get there.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Yeah, you will. Because when you can be connected to the world in that way, when we realize that, that the air that we breathe doesn't separate us, but connects us. Right? That is a powerful, powerful thing. And I think it's very comforting. I think, you know, we're one group where humanity is not this group, and that group in this group and that group separated all the time. We don't have to be, but it's in that separation, that we get the anxiety. Because if I'm separate from you, then you may want to compete with me. But what's nice is we don't have that competition here. We're not separate. We are endorsed and supported by so many people, including our sponsors.

Mark Stiles
So Greg, you were a financial adviser? Is that what your initial career

was?

Greg Voisen
actually went? Do? You want me to distill it down? Yeah, I did that. But I was in the top 3% of all life insurance salesman in the world. So I was selling a product which people never even knew they could collect on.

Mark Stiles
What was it a

Greg Voisen
life insurance? Yeah. Life insurance. You don't think that that's not the hardest in tangible in the world to sell, right? Guy says I'm gonna give you money and I have to die.

Mark Stiles
Right? What were you selling it as an investment vehicle with some of the cash value and I sold whatever

Greg Voisen
was important I think what you realize is that a lot of people in the million dollar roundtable what we realized is that there was nothing less expensive to leverage your ability, should you pre decease your heirs, right? And if you get that, and you say, hey, look, I have a wife, five kids, they're gonna have to carry on if a bus hits me tomorrow or whatever, I paid on a lot of death claims where they were really grateful. But it's a tough business.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Yeah. What makes it so tough, but

Greg Voisen
I think what makes it tough is the amount of rejection, tons of rejection. Nine out of 10 people fail at it to be a success at it. I remember, they did an ego test on me at the time, because I was in my late 20s, early 30s. And the guy said, You're off the chart on the ego test. What? So that meant that I had the ability to sustain large amounts of rejection and succeed. And I did you know, I mean, you're gonna get eight people say no, and two people say, yes, if you're lucky, you know. So that was a really good training ground.

And at what point did you say that this is not fulfilling

Greg Voisen
the part when it always became financial, and there was nothing spiritually because I was speaking to my clients about spiritual things. And if I got clients and understood the spiritual element of it, I was happy. But most clients started as you said, buying it as an investment, and it's got cash value. I'm never gonna see it.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Before he I won't say before you had this insight, but But there must have been some moment when your your 14 year old son comes up to you and says, Dad, you know, maybe it's time to do something else. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know, he, my son, was very observant. And he saw that I was in pain, like I said, and the pain was attributed to. And now I realized that at time I didn't, my belief system about what I was doing. I think anything is transmittable when you shift the lens focus. And but I didn't know how to shift that lens of focus, and my perspective. So to me, it was brave. And so he and I actually grew a little older. But during that time, I started the show. And then he became a teen. And then I started a consulting company for business owners. And through a company called illuminate consulting, Inc. And our job was really transforming the culture of the organizations with inside it. And we would go around and do meditation retreats when they weren't very cool. And it was amazing. I remember, Joe, when URI and I went down to this big conference were invited to for logistics. So this is fat X. It's It's It's ups, it's all these guys, right management. And we said, our program is called Nevermind the noise thriving in a world of ever increasing complexity come to this workshop. Well, when the management companies put that up, there were 1000s it sold out, they were waiting out the door. My my son and I were like, How in the world is this happening? These guys that are out there doing logistics, driving trucks and whatever, want to come in and figure out how to get some peace. So we did this Nevermind the noise workshop for quite some time, all around the country, and for the insurance industry that I had been in. And the reality was, it wasn't just meditation, we we taught more than that about releasing, how to release themselves from the confines of that concise construct in the mind. But they all walked away. And honestly, we would do an hour long workshop, we'd put 15 to 20 minutes and meditation and they'd all be leaving floating going because they've never actually done breathing, deep breathing or meditating ever. And they're like, cool, because we would have this for three days at this workshop, Joe, and we'd see the same people come back again. So they were coming back into the workshop more than once. So I thought that was very fulfilling.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
You know, it is wonderful to hear Greg because, you know, one of the things that we've talked about with the aim is, you know, when you remind someone else or their value, you increase your own value. And in part is this also what Mark was talking about with with his bicycle riding he'll use it with gratitude and how How it's amazing. Well, maybe you can talk about mark when when you're writing, you know, and people are handing you water or just on the side of the road.

Mark Stiles
The event itself. Yeah, it's it's 48 hours of pure gratitude volunteers. Thanking, thank you. No, thank you. And then there's people on the side showing signs I'm, you know, 12 years old because of you. And you know those things. It's it's spiritual, it's, it's very, very fulfilling. And it's

Greg Voisen
plus there's a big community mark that yeah, that you want to talk about community support, and what you do with young people who've had addiction and bringing them in this community of writers and support, and administrators for the organization's Dana Farber in this case, it's just you can't, I don't know of anywhere else I've gone, where it found that deep connectedness in the community. That's why you keep coming back year and year and people say, Oh, you've done like, 13 events, you're coming back again, what are you a masochist? And I was like, you know, yeah, I am.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Something there really? Is something about service about doing something for somebody else. Yeah. You know, one of the things we talked about with the aim is we all want the same thing, which is just to feel valued by somebody else. But for millennia, human beings have increased their value by decreasing somebody else's, and then are astonished that the other person does the same. That's why we have the wars, the conflict, the separations. But we don't need to do that anymore. We actually never needed to do that. You can always remind someone of their value, you become more valuable, you increase your group, which means you're then safer. And when you feel safer, you can shift your brain from that, well, you talk about the cortisol response and in your book about the stress and how cortisol will interfere with that you can then actually do more. When you give, one of the things we say in the addiction world that I've talked with my my folks about is contribute to society to help with your sobriety. When you contribute, it increases oxytocin in your brain, not Oxycontin, oxytocin, can you just feel trusted? That's what we really want. So, what do you think, Greg?

Greg Voisen
I think it's, uh, you know, you're speaking about your group, and addiction. I just did an interview with Pamela Brinkley, she wrote a book called Conscious bravery, how to care for people with addiction. I just I it was really, really fascinating. Because, you know, the caregivers of people with addiction, her case, two sons that gone on methamphetamines, and created a very hellish life for her. Plus, she had just lost her husband to brain cancer, as these kids were growing up. So she kind of compounded. But what you said what she did, to transmute the pain was to learn how to be okay with who she was as a mother, that she didn't blame herself. She used meditation. And again, I don't want to harp on meditation, but I do want to say that I'm an advocate for whatever it is that you do, that can calm your mind and get the monkey out of the brain, because it's in there all the time repeating and talking. So whether you do walks like Thomas did, or you get on a bike, or you go surf for, it doesn't matter. I think anything in nature, is a great prescriptive tool. And if you read my book, you're gonna see I give lots of nature prescriptive elements associated with it. Because we have, and I'm not saying everybody, but as a society, I think we've lost touch with nature. You know, Mother Earth is calling out right now, global warming is calling out, you guys are sitting in Boston at 97 degrees tonight. We're seeing fires all around Spain and other places in the world. And you can't tell me that there isn't a revolt as a result of this from the earth saying, Enough is enough, right? And so I hope as a society, we all can come together and find solutions for these problems. And in the process, I hope we all learn how peaceful we can be as a society along the way, because we do not have to have this insane conflict in Ukraine and Russia and what's going on? Not that it's the only one like I can go back in history and we can name hundreds of these stupid wars that have occurred,

Dr. Joseph Shrand
but I couldn't agree more and you know, that's what I also hope People read the book. Because intuition to innovation and beyond, it's more than just your business, it really is how we approach the world. Right now is the time, you know, the I Am approach, we talked about the four domains were doing the best we can in response to your home domain, your social domain, the biological domain of your brain and body and the eye see how I see myself? How I think other people see me, because these domains interact, a small change, any domain can have a big effect, you don't have to change everything. So great. Given what we're talking about tonight. What small change can you recommend to our listeners?

Greg Voisen
I think one of them is intention, setting your intention to do something for yourself and someone else, you know, my show, you know, you made a contribution, I decided that every dollar that came in from the author's it's gonna go to the homeless. And so I walked the street with gift cards, and I gave it out to the homeless. And when it gets cold enough, I give them socks and hats, and they do whatever. Now, I couldn't tell you how many of those people are drug addicted, or how many of them are just bad on luck. But I have interviews that I've done with them, I will tell you 80% of them are not drug addicted. They're literally just there because of some bad luck. Some some some circumstances and events that they don't didn't know how to deal with. And they didn't have what you and I are talking about right now. The I Am. Yeah. Okay. And if they did, they probably wouldn't be there. So give me an opportunity to give them a chance. Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
And it's so it's not about morality, it's about mortality is just the way the brain works. This isn't a moral issue. But the second truth of the I Am, everyone is interested in what you think or feel about them to that ice domain. And that has effect on their biological domain. Because you know, it feels different when you feel respected or disrespected. You're part of someone's home or social domain. So the second truth you control no one, you influence everyone, you get to choose the kind of influence you want to be. Greg voice, what kind of influence do you want to be?

Greg Voisen
I would say that I would, the influence that I want to have his compassion spread to everybody that I live work with. I understand I'm not perfect. There are times like you got to look at yourself. You get angry, you get upset at things. But underneath all that compassion, and I was not just the Dalai Lama, and not just Steven Kotler. But in the end, if we're going to solve all these other problems, one of the biggest thing that needs to happen is there needs to be everybody needs to have a big dose of compassion for the other souls walking the planet. And with that, that's, that's really what I say. I mean, my my foundation is compassionate communications foundation

Dr. Joseph Shrand
of a gap, Greg voice and you can get it on Amazon, Amazon and his website. Please, folks, get it TV is terrific. Greg, thank you so much for being on.

Greg Voisen
Thanks for having me. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Tom.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
We're now off WAP live, but we're still on Facebook. Greg, that was fantastic. Yeah, so fast. Anything else that, you know, you would have liked to cover that? You think we can send a message out to our Facebook Live folks, and all of this will be a podcast next week as well. So

Greg Voisen
okay. You know, I would just say like, if, if somebody out there is hurting for some reason, whatever that pain and suffering is that they're going through, a lot to offer up, you know, they can reach out to me, they can reach out to you. They really can reach out to a lot of people. But don't feel like you have to walk this journey and path alone. You know, I reflect and I think I told you this story before, but I used to study a lot of Alan Watts and I had the the pleasure and knowledge of actually I had pleasure of going into George Leonard's living room, the guys that actually started Escalon and Dorje sat there and talk to me about mastery, the practice of something, something you have to practice. And what I would say is one of the things you need to practice is being kind to yourself. We don't frequently look at that as something that we're going to practice. We just think, Okay, that's great. But awareness of the fact that you're probably not being kind to yourself Have doesn't just pop up. You know, it's nice that like, just there isn't just this big awareness all of a sudden, hey, I'm not treating myself very well. So I would say look at take some time, for self compassion, for self awareness, to treat yourself better. And when you treat yourself better, you're going to treat all the people around you so much better. Because you're going to release a lot of anger and frustration that you have as a result of that. Because you normally are beating yourself up for something you should have could have done that you didn't do. And the reality is Dr. Joe, like you said, I am okay. Just the way I am right now. That's right. And I know I'm echoing the same message that you talk about, but but it is so healing, it could heal everybody on the show. Yeah, it can. You really have to practice it.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
The I agree, you have to be aware of it. So even when you're beating yourself up, that's your ai n. For at that moment in time, that's the best you can do. But you can now step back and wonder, why am I doing this? What's happening in my four domains, my home is social, my biological my I see that the best I can do right now is not cared for myself. And instead of judging yourself about that, step back. wonder about it, it is much more rewarding to be reflective and reflexive and much more important to wonder than to worry, we have to be able to do this. And Greg, your, your book gives us these guidelines how to do it. I mean, we're so simpatico it's no, it's we have different words for the same thing, which is we're one group where we're doing okay, but if we don't like what's happening, we can change it. And honestly, at this point, we really have to, we really have

Greg Voisen
well, it's like the tapestry you know, Mark, it's not coincidence that Mark rides bikes are Thomas lost 60 pounds walking and confrontations and 8080 pounds. Yeah. But but you know, when you look at the the tapestry of life and the interconnectedness you just look what happened on the show over the last hour. You know, we have four individuals that really only person I ever met, here was you Dr. Joe first and again on on Zoom, I just want to thank you and your team for having me on this afternoon. And for us to be able to speak so openly and honestly about topics which, you know, I love speaking about. But more importantly, I hope the listeners really have an opportunity to take away one nugget, whatever it might be. And if that one nugget tonight was, hey, I need to have more self compassion and love with me. That to me is so healing to be able to then walk the face of the earth with this, what I'm going to call the tapestry, the web, the 1000s of people that you've that you've met and talked to and spoken to, and gone down the street and seen a guy play a flute and throw $1 in his hat. You know, just take out your wallet and throw $1 in the hat and just have zero expectation of what you're supposed to get in return. And please don't be afraid of those people. Those people are just like you and me. They had moms and dads, when I go out to the people on the street, and I hand him a card I recognize, you know what, it's another soul walking the face of the earth. I need to be compassionate. And the reality is when you understand the story, no matter what it is, you're practicing I am.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Yeah. Well said, Greg, and so appreciate it. It's it's really wonderful having you on the show. When the next book comes out. Come on back and talk about that as well. You're welcome back any time.

Greg Voisen
Any Well, the next book, I'm gonna write with my son and it will be coming out probably within a year. And it's called the the guru in the mirror. The guru and the mayor, the guru in the mirror.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Oh, the guru in the mirror. That sounds a lot better actually. Yes,

Greg Voisen
yes. Well, because there's only one person when you look at it. You're your own guru.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Greg Voisen
You guys are all great. I really enjoyed it. Hey, Mark, send me that link. I want to make a donation. So you know, Oh, yeah. When are you doing it next weekend? If two weekends, two more weeks. Okay, send me Joe's got my email address or you do? Make sure you send me the link so I can make a donation to the cars and how many miles are you riding?

Mark Stiles
So the actual ride is 192

Greg Voisen
Okay, so two days about 100 miles a day?

Mark Stiles
Yeah, I'm we're throwing an extra 100 on the beginning. That's basically 300 miles in three days.

Greg Voisen
So yeah, that's, that's hot damn man. Yeah, who's throwing the 300 on.

Mark Stiles
So we're throwing an extra 100. On the day zero we were talking about so so there's day one and two, it's 100 and 100. And then Day Zero actually gets us to the true border. So it's pan mass. And we always thought we're not really doing the whole state. So we're going back to the border and going to do the whole state.

Greg Voisen
Well, it doesn't surprise me you're doing it. My blessings to you. My energy will go with you as you pedal each pedal, and stroke. I know what it's like. Enjoy the ride, my friend, and more importantly, enjoy what it is that you're doing for others.

Mark Stiles
Yeah. And thank you for that. I appreciate that very much. Hey, welcome.

Dr. Joseph Shrand
Back trail. All right, we'll be we'll be chatting soon.

Greg Voisen
Thank you for listening to this podcast on inside personal growth. We appreciate your support. And for more information about new podcast, please go to inside personal growth.com or any of your favorite channels to listen to our podcast. Thanks again. And have a wonderful day.