Just Between Coaches – Episode 130
Transitioning to “Through Me” Living (Peter Sage)
Peter Sage: If you believe life is a comfort centric experience, you’re going to have a tough time. You’re going to be upset by adversity. You’re going to spend your life trying to avoid it. But when you realize one of the greatest days in a human being’s life on their journey of emotional maturity is the day you wake up to the realization that life is a growth centric experience, not a comfort centric experience.
Melinda Cohan: Ladies and gentlemen, it is my absolute pleasure to talk to a true luminary in the world of personal development and mentorship today. Imagine a man who, against all odds, overcame an adversity and nightmare of a lifetime to grace stages alongside global leaders such as Bill Clinton and Richard Branson.
I’m Melinda Cohan and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. I run a business called the Coaches Console and we’re proud to have helped tens of thousands of coaches create profitable and thriving businesses. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experienced coach.
My guest is said to be the best of the best in the world of personal development, an inspiration for all those seeking to overcome adversity and unlock their true potential. He is a sought-after mentor and coach and my hope is that his fresh perspective will reshape your coaching approach. It doesn’t matter if you’re new or a seasoned coach, we will all learn from him today, so keep listening.
I’m thrilled to have Peter Sage join me today for this conversation. Peter’s journey is nothing short of awe inspiring. He’s a globally renowned serial entrepreneur, a high-performance coach, an expert in human behavior and self-mastery. He’s a six-time TEDx speaker and number one bestselling author. Peter’s recognized with the esteemed Brand Laureate award, positioning him alongside icons like Nelson Mandela and Steve Jobs.
Welcome, Peter.
Peter: What an amazing opportunity to be able to get together and share and help some people, Melinda. I’m really, really gracious for the invite. Thank you so much.
Melinda: Well, I’m gracious that you’re joining us and excited to have you on the show. And before we dive in, would you mind sharing just a little bit of your background with our listeners?
Peter: Well, one of the things listening to introductions like that always makes me smile in a way because I encourage people to really understand that I’m just a guy. I’m no special. I’m no more gifted than anybody else. But I dropped out of school at 16. I’ve got no formal qualifications. I got a PhD in results and essentially went out and spent the first part of my career more focused on entrepreneurship and business. I was desperate to prove to the world that I was good enough to get over the insecurities as a young man that I wasn’t.
And I had upsides and downsides. It made me financially successful, but it nearly cost me everything else. And that really started asking the questions in my mid-twenties as to what are the deeper meanings here. But I guess my passion for the last, now three and a half decades of being unemployable has really been about understanding why we do what we do, what makes us tick, what makes us get up in the morning excited or not excited. You know, we’re not taught this in school. We have to figure it out. And most people don’t know how to solve the puzzle.
So I’m a guy who’s walked a specific path and I’ve managed to pick up a few things along the way that anyone who focuses three decades of their life on something is going to become an authority on it at some level, just the amount of time they’re spend. So that’s hopefully what I bring to the table for the next 45 minutes or so in a way that can help other people get some of the value of the mistakes I’ve made.
Melinda: Now, we’re going to dive in to talk about overcoming adversity. And I love what you said in what you were just describing there. I have a PhD in results. We work with newer coaches a lot and they discount their lived experiences, the results that they’ve created and cultivated. They just scuff it off as, oh no, that doesn’t matter, I have to go get. And then there’s something that they have to pursue. And I really love that you, I’ve never heard it that way, PhD in results, because that is often our greatest teacher.
Now, you also had another unique experience. You were incarcerated in a pretty violent prison in the UK. Can you talk just a bit about that experience?
Peter: Absolutely. It’s actually six years ago now when it happened, and I was actually the only non-criminal that was in the entire prison. And I’ve never been arrested, never been accused of a crime, never been found guilty of anything, no criminal record. And all of that came about based upon litigation. I was arguing a multimillion-dollar business deal with a multibillion-dollar company that we’d done years before over some fine print I thought they were wrong over, and they issued a contempt of courts application to pressure me into a settlement. And I saw it as a chess move. I didn’t really give it much credence.
And any entrepreneur or anyone that’s self-employed will really start to understand that when it comes to litigation, it’s a tool. It’s not about who’s right or wrong. It’s a tool, and it could happen to anyone. It’s not like, oh, well, I’m a good person. I’ve got good values. I’ll never end up in prison. I’ve got pretty good values. I’ve not done anything wrong. But they sold this contempt of court application to the judge, and he gave me six months inside what was statistically the most violent prison in England because it was the closest to the court. That’s where I was put.
And that became an incredible opportunity to demonstrate what we as coaches teach. One thing I’m very big with Melinda is the fact that theory doesn’t cover the price of admission to the higher levels of greatness. Theory does not cover the price of admission to the high levels of greatness. It’s great to talk or read all the books, do all the courses, get all the certificates, do all the stuff you think you need to do. But as Bruce Lee said, you can’t learn to swim on dry land. At some point, you’ve got to demonstrate what you’re teaching. And I call it a graduation event.
We’re here in Earth school. We’re here to learn how to grow. And this was an opportunity for me to go one or two ways. I talk about the power of identity and how we see ourselves governs a huge amount about what we do, consciously and otherwise. And so when the judge sent me away, I mean, I lost everything. I went from 50 staff on a thriving coaching company to three staff in three days. They froze my accounts. I was on a state appointed attorney. They had a quarter of a million-dollar legal team in the room, from $100 million firm, and I was essentially left with all of the legal costs on their side.
So not only I lose my business, I’m plunged into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and sent away for six months in handcuffs where I can’t do anything, at least I can’t do anything on the outside. But coaching is not about what we do on the outside. It’s about what we do on the inside. And at that point, I knew I had a decision to make. And the first decision I needed to make was, who am I going to be in this experience? Not what am I going to do? We’re human beings, not human doings. Who am I going to be? Because that identity is going to be critical.
If you choose the identity of a vegetarian, it’s going to govern what you eat off the menu, not because you’ve got different teeth or a different digestive system, but because how you see yourself governs your behavior. And if I chose the identity, as most people do in that scenario, as a prisoner, it’s kind of a fast track to victimhood. It’s a fast track to being upset. It’s a fast track to depression. It’s a fast track to kicking back against the system. It’s a fast track to the wrong side of the game you want to play. So instead, I knew that the last thing I needed to do was see myself as a prisoner. Instead, I saw myself as a secret agent of change.
I’ve been doing this work, as you have, Melinda, for a long time. And, yeah, we help a lot of people, but sometimes the people we could help the most never get access to the kind of resources or sessions or courses or information that we’re able to provide, especially those that are in jail. So I thought, wow, if the universe wants to send me in on a secret mission to help people that would never normally get access to this kind of information, that’s where I’m at. I’m an undercover Jedi. I’m getting in there. I’m going to do my work. And that started at what became an incredible six-month adventure, and I wasn’t treated any separately. Even though I wasn’t a criminal, I was non segregated. I was with all of the people in this high category prison. If you’ve actually seen prison breakers, it was just pretty similar style prison.
So I go in there to help people. I go in there to serve, and as a result of that, I never felt in danger. And I’ll cut a long story short. I ended up getting a lot of the people off drugs. I was stopping suicides. I redesigned the intake system to reduce violence between the wings that’s now being used in prisons all over the world. I won a national award for the work that I did after I came out, and it really became one of the greatest awe-inspiring adventures I’ve ever had the privilege of living.
And it comes back to one of the primary tenants that we teach. It’s never what happens to you that makes the difference. Control the controllables. You control what you do with what happens that makes the difference. I’m not saying you have to go to prison to keep your competitive advantage as a coach. What I’m saying is that my prison experience could be somebody else’s one star review because of their own issues. Whatever your adversity is, there’s always a way to be able to frame that in a positive. And that’s kind of my message.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that question. It continues to come up in different guests that I’ve had on the show in my own personal journey that who do I need to become? Who am I going to be in this experience? And that moment right there is when you go from this is happening to me, that victim you were talking about, seeing yourself as a prisoner when the evidence around you clearly supported it, to turning that around, getting into agreement with the situation you’re in and saying, no, who am I going to be? I’m going to be a secret agent of change.
Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty of that decision, because that right there, you chose the path. And I want to just zoom way in on that. So when you had this thought that said, okay, who am I going to be in this experience? Was it like, poof, oh, I’m a secret agent of change, let’s go. Like, did it happen immediately? Or what was that process for you?
Peter: It starts with a backdrop. Now, we talk about local beliefs and global beliefs. A global belief is something that has cascading levels of impact. Now, if you believe that all men are a certain way, that’s a globally projected belief. A local belief is this person is a certain way. Now, Einstein said one of the most powerful questions you could ask or answer in your lifetime is, do you live in a friendly or a hostile universe?
And the answer to those two questions lead to two very different corridors and two very different destinations and experiences of life. If you believe you live in a hostile universe, you’re looking at life through a fear-based lens. Everything with teeth can eat you, and you’ve got to fight your way through the crowd to carve out the life you want. It’s very materialistic, it’s based in the physical world. And if you believe you live in a friendly universe, then your relationship to everything that happens is going to have a very different backdrop.
Now, the reality is, we don’t live in a friendly universe. We don’t live in a hostile universe. We live in a self-reflective universe. And as a result of that, whichever one you choose, as Henry Ford said, you’re right. So I choose to live in a friendly universe. That’s my model of the world. And if I’m living in a friendly universe, then there’s got to be a reason I’m going to prison that serves me, not punishes me, because I’m not going to be punished in a friendly universe. So I’ve had a lot of years of conditioning and training to make this automatic.
So as soon as it looked like it was going south and I suddenly went away, the first question I ask is, okay, what’s great about this? I’ve not noticed yet. Why is this happening for me? If I live in a friendly universe and my higher self has decided that this is one of the workouts in the gym of life that I need to go do because it believes I’m an Olympic level athlete, then am I going to rise to this or am I going to quit? It’s a no brain decision.
So I’m now starting to ask better questions. And I believe one of the greatest skills anybody, even our clients, can master is the ability to ask better questions. When we realize our brain is a loop closing machine, the brain does not like open loops. It’s part of our biological history with needing certainty to survive. But that’s why if you’re watching a series on TV, the best ones leave cliffhangers. Why? Because it makes our brain go nuts. We want to know what the answer is. If you’re reading a good book, if it’s a page turner, it’s because the end of the chapters are cliffhangers and you want to go to the next one, because the brain is programmed to close loops.
And so if you ask your brain a question like a faithful Labrador, if you throw the stick, it’s going to bring it back. Now it doesn’t care what kind of quality stick. And most people learn how to throw lousy sticks. They ask lousy questions, why does my life suck? Why is this happening to me? You throw the stick, the Labrador bounds off, and it’s going to come for most people. And drop this manky, soggy stick on your brand-new carpet. Hey, it’s because you’re a schmuck. Oh, it’s because your parents said you’d never bounce on anything. Oh, it’s because your big brother’s always better than you. It’s going to find you the answer.
So if you learn to do anything, that’s going to make an immediate improvement, learn to throw better sticks, and especially in prison. So the first thing I do is I throw a better stick. Who am I going to become here? We know that as a mammal, if we see an external situation as a threat, we will lose up to 30% of our muscle strength. It’s a biological impulse. We will go weak. If you go and see the same external situation as a challenge, you will gain up to 30% of your muscle strength. It’s just different biochemistry that floods the body. One will take you down the tube into a one-way ticket to Prozac. The other one’s going to make you a hero with a cape. And that’s down at what kind of questions are we asking ourselves?
Melinda: I love the nuance. I want to pick up on the nuance that you just said. A lot of times when I’ve heard that question, I’ve heard it as, who do I need to be for my XYZ to become a reality, whatever that is that you’re looking for? And the way you phrased it, who am I going to be in this experience? And the nuance, the who do I need to be? All of a sudden, there’s a fear of, oh, gosh, what if I get it wrong? But the who am I going to be is you are in control and you get to choose whatever answer you have. So I just, I love that distinction there.
And when it comes to the core principles of overcoming adversity, you just talked about ability to ask better questions, what are some other principles that helps individuals that may not be like you and I? We’ve been doing this work for ourselves. And so it’s habit, right? But I can think 20 some years ago, adversity would come up, and it might take me two or three years to get through something, and now it takes me two or three minutes to get through maybe that same type of thing. What are some other core principles that might help our listeners?
Peter: If we relate that that then to the prisoners because most of these prisoners had not had careers in personal growth, right? They wouldn’t have made the choices they chose. And prison is not full of bad people. It’s full of some good people that made bad choices, but they still don’t have that backdrop. And there’s a lot, especially in that level of prison, which is violent. I mean, there was a guy stabbed to death just before I got there. Attempted murders were pretty much weekly. Blood on the floor was a daily occurrence. This is not a holiday camp. That’s not camp, cupcake.
Pentonville is a 200-year-old Victorian prison that was made to house 800 men. I was number 1300 and something when I was there. It’s overcrowded. It’s never been modernized, apart from 20 years ago. I think they put in toilets. And so the quality of consciousness there was very low. And one of the biggest things that made the difference with the people I was working with is getting them to acceptance. I’m not talking about either the apathetic level of acceptance, which is almost like giving up. That’s like the mammal facing the threat. Nor is it the gritted teeth level of acceptance, which is kind of a reluctance. No.
It comes to a place of saying, becoming okay with where I’m at. Conscious non-resistance is what I call it. And the reason for that is because if you’re in jail, you’ve just been given a six-month sentence. If you’re resisting that, you’re putting energy into complaining to being upset, being angry, being going through despondency, whatever it may be, that energy is wasted completely, because unless you find a magic key under your mat, you ain’t walking out of there. Unless there’s a tunnel in your cell, there’s nothing you can do. So resisting what is is futile. And getting them to accept, I’m in jail, I made a mistake, or something happened, or if it was unfettered, doesn’t matter. I’m here, it’s done.
Bitching about it ain’t going to help. At which point you can free up the energy of resistance and channel it into what is your next best move. And whether that’s making a decision to learn some new skills in jail, whether that’s making a decision to write a letter to somebody you aggrieved, or whether it’s deciding to be an example of who you can become inside, whether that’s to put your head around getting an appeal together without clouding it with judgment, free up the energy you’re resisting right now, whether that’s with your bank account, whether that’s with your client list or lack of it, whether that’s with your own health issues, stop resisting. Accept where you are, and use the energy that you were using to resist to make the next best move.
Melinda: I love it. Any other core principles that you found helpful when you were that secret agent of change?
Peter: Contrast frames. It is very powerful. Most people use contrast frames negatively because they’re always having unmet expectations. So, for example, if you go to work one day and your boss pulls you in and says, hey, listen, we’ve been watching your performance for a while, and we kind of like what you’re doing. We’re going to give you a 10% pay rise, you’re like, wow, you feel pretty good. And at lunchtime, you’re chatting with one of your co-workers who kind of does the same job, and they said, hulk, how’s it going? Oh, great. And I said, you look happy, too. And they say, yeah, no, I got called into a meeting today. And my boss said they’re really happy with me, everything else. And they gave me a 20% pay rise.
Now all of a sudden, you don’t feel so good? I only got ten. I mean, you had nothing before, so you were contrasting the ten with zero and feeling good. Now you’re contrasting ten with 20 and feel bad. Same 10%. So if you learn to use contrast frames to your advantage. And one of the ways I did this in prison was getting several copies of Viktor Frankl’s great man’s search for meaning sent into the jail. And I would hand it to prisoners and I would give them a test to read that and challenge them not to cry with tears of gratitude for being in Pentonville rather than Auschwitz.
See, they were contrasting it with wanting to be home, in which case, Pentonville sucks. You contrast that with Auschwitz, you know which coin you want to put in your pocket, right? Easy. Done. So people can. Oh, I got a six-month sentence. Well, what if you got a twelve-month sentence and then at the last minute the judge dropped it to six? How would you feel? Oh, wow. Better. Using contrast frames is such a powerful tool because so many people use them unconsciously against themselves. There’s always something to be grateful for, and that’s a great reminder for people to constantly check or benchmark themselves as to how they’re using that.
Melinda: I love it. Putting it in perspective and remembering a healthy perspective.
Peter: Yeah.
Melinda: Now, you mentioned something earlier about gritting teeth. It made me think of this, you know, resilience, grit. How do these traits, from your perspective, how do these traits contribute to overcoming adversity?
Peter: It depends where you are on your own journey. And I’m going to share a model that I’ve been teaching now for 20 plus years. It’s essentially the four levels of consciousness. Most people don’t know how to break it down. Now, on one side, the left brain is. You’ve got the model that they think the brain produces consciousness, which we know doesn’t produce consciousness any more than a television produces movies. Then you got the other side, which is more the right brain, a little bit too esoteric. Let’s sing to the divine and doesn’t pay the mortgage.
So how do you break consciousness down and hold it in a way that gives you practical understanding and benefit? And I use these four levels because it’s so easy for people to understand, but it also answers the question in different ways. The first level, the base level, victimhood. Everything happens to me. It’s the to me level of consciousness. I would have the job, I would have the car, I would have the career, I would have the body. But everything happens to me. And if you had my boss or my parents or my background or it’s like, yeah, if only this had happened, then I would have got the lucky break. Same mentality.
Most people figure out that victimhood is not rewarded by life and they tend to evolve. They mature emotionally to the next level of consciousness, which is why I call by me. You figured out life isn’t going to pay you a living sitting on your backside. So what do you do? You say, you know something? I’m going to set some goals. I’m going to go out, I’m going to be the best version of me. I’m going to go get them, cowboy. Because if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen by me. So rather than sitting on the bank of the river hoping a ship comes in, I’m going to dive in and swim to my goal.
That’s where most of personal development is. Either getting people from to me to by me, victim to achiever. That was Tony Robbins opening career. Stop being a lemon and watching infomercials at 02:00 in the morning, you sad idiot. Pull your thumb out of your ass. Go set some goals. I’ll teach you how to do it. That was Tony’s market.
Most of personal growth has evolved right now because we realize that most people in victimhood aren’t willing to write checks for their own self-improvement unless they hit rock bottom. So the by me mentality is where most of personal development sits. It’s the low by me to high by me. It’s like, well, we’ll teach you how to work harder, smarter, faster, hustle more, get the life you want by doing more of what you’re doing now, smart, that’s kind of their gig. It’s exhausting. If you raise your consciousness one more level, you get to what I call through me, through me is where you’re actually not trying to control reality anymore. You’re working with a rule set. But the rule set is non-physical.
We know there is a physical rule set. Three predominant sciences articulate it very well. Physics, chemistry, biology. And we figured that out so effectively we can repair the human body or put a person in orbit. But the non-physical has a rule set. And if you’re not aware of that, just like the physical rule set, it doesn’t care if you’re aware or not, it’s not playing favorites. So when you realize that one of the first laws of the non-physical is outer world follows inner world, not the other way around. You start to realize that there is a flow to the river of life.
And if I stop fighting the current, if I stop swimming upstream, if I stop trying to control the current, but rather control myself better in the current, I learn how to sail the river of life. I’m not sweating the small stuff. I’m starting to ask questions. I go to prison, there’s got to be a better reason for it. Why? Because I’m flowing with the bends. Life is nonlinear now. They’re all available. Yeah. Victim hoodie is available if you want it, by me is available, but by me tends to have a pattern.
You start off as stressed-out Simon. You get into burnt out Barry. Hopefully you start quit before you go to heart attack, Harry. And most people then go drop down into victimhood, catch their breath, realize it’s not with the art, and get back on the horse and start hustling and run the same cycle. My entire focus, the part of the market that I am in, I don’t do victims. There’s enough counselors and therapists out there for those guys. I don’t teach people how to hustle more, to get more. Frustrated by me, to through me is the market I serve.
Now, you can’t get people in low by me because they’ve not hit their head hard enough against the wall long enough yet. But there’s a lot of people that have played that game for a long time, and they’re just like, there’s got to be a better way. I don’t have ten x more hours. I don’t have ten x more energy. I’m doing all the right things. I’m just stuck at a certain level, and that’s kind of where I tend to help people across the river.
Melinda: Now, is the fourth one that threw me so low by me, is one level high by me, is the next level through me, or is there another level?
Peter: No, they’re gradients. So, to me, victim. Yeah. Achiever mode, which is by me. Yeah, yeah. Flow state, which is through me. And then the fourth level, which is above my pay grade, is as me. That is what the spiritual world would call oneness non duality. And it’s where a lot of the spiritual masters arrived at and taught from and is part of the ultimate destination of humanity, if you extrapolate out, I believe that the role of consciousness is.
But I’ve got a lot more movies in the slow learning club, tits a star other than this one, before I get anywhere close to that and if you get to as me, then, hey, great, expect a boss to come and knock you out of earth school because you graduate. I’m very happy where I’m at.
Melinda: Yeah.
Peter: I help people that are frustrated because there’s not enough hours in the day. They’ve got a dysfunctional relationship to time. They’re doing the right things, but the internal game is missing in terms of fulfillment because there is a massive difference. And it’s what I call the entrepreneurial joke, Melinda, is like, people spend decades sacrificing under the by me model.
Yeah, they work all the hours. They sacrifice their health. They sacrifice their relationship. They miss their kids growing up. Also. They could get to this golden nirvana, end of the rainbow, which very, very, very few make. But even the ones that do, the 1%, the 1% that hit their number and cash in, what do they do with their money? Well, I’ll tell you. They pay for their divorce, right? They hire a personal trainer or a surgeon, at worst, to get their health back, and they by their kids loads of crap so they think they love them again.
I mean, it’s the wrong rabbit hole to run down. And that’s why through me as so much more effective as a way of living. You may not get all of your high numbers, but when you realize you’re chasing it predominantly for significance anyway, you start to realize and reevaluate what’s really meaningful in life.
Melinda: It’s interesting. My personal journey over the last several months has been moving from that high by me to the through me. And so the phrase that came to me is, you know, for 22 years, I created from doing. Now I believe, and I brag, that I did the do me very well. I didn’t have the sacrifice. I found a way to navigate that. And with having an amazing lifestyle, an incredible business, reaching that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you’re right. It’s exhausting.
And now my spirit is whispering a different don’t create from doing, create from being. And it is new territory. And my brain is like, I don’t get it. And my spirit is like, that’s okay. You’re not supposed to. Take a break. Go have a vacation. It’s my turn now. And so for me, what I’m really learning is the role of intuition to overcome adversity. So talk a little bit about that. The role of intuition in all this.
Peter: You see, as human beings, we are the perfect encapsulation of the physical and non-physical in one beautiful package. We have a physicality, a body, and the body has a rule set and that nervous system is hardwired for comfort, which is very useful if we’re going to sit on an ant’s nest or walk on sharp stones. But our soul, the non-physical, what really makes us us is non-physical. It’s our personality, our values, our hopes, our dreams, our goals, our wishes, our sense of humor, all of that makes us us.
You take that out of you and put it in somebody else and it’s still you with a different body. So the non-physical is where the meat and potatoes are. And so if you really are looking at being guided by two different guidance systems, if you are more associated with the physical body, you are going to be leaning towards your left brain trying to figure things out. You’re isolated, you’re on your own, and you are doing the best you can. And the left brain is an amazing problem solving, crunching number machine, but it’s exhausting because you are looking at life through a material-based lens. I don’t mean materialism as in toys, I’m talking about physical matter, reality.
As I said earlier, when it comes to living in a hostile universe, you’re always going to be on edge, trying to solve problems from an unconscious need for survival rather than fulfillment. But if you identify more with your, let’s call it inner world, the non-physical, the essence of who you are, you’re going to be able to do that in one physical state. And that is what we call sub beta, that comes under 12 Hz if you get into an alpha state. And the fastest way to get into an alpha state that I found as a bio hack, starts with 6 seconds of breathing. When you breathe in a circular fashion, 6 seconds in, 6 seconds out, with a smile on your face, so you’re not trying to get stuck in your left brain, it’ll bring you more into a being level than an intellect level if you smile
6 seconds in, 6 seconds out, no pause in between. So it’s a circular breath. You do that ten times, 120 seconds, two minutes, you will drop cortisol out of the bloodstream, you will reregulate CO2 and oxygen levels in the body. You will drop your brain into a minimum alpha state. And at that point, your inner world becomes more real than your outer world and you are able to start listening to non-physical data.
You see, your mind has access, Melinda, to some incredible tools, language being the primary one. Reasoning, deduction, metaphor, volume. The heart doesn’t have any of that. The heart only knows two things. Feels good, doesn’t feel good. Move towards, move away. Engage, disengage, positive, negative truth, not truth, occasionally neutral. The reason if the heart and the mind sit around a debate table, the mind hijacked by by me, because it wants to be right, in control. But the intuition, the through me aspect of the heart leading the mind, usually wins not because it has its basis in truth, because it has access to more tools at the debate table, and it out volumes the heart.
You need to be quiet; you need to be an alpha. And then you’ll get messages. But the challenge is they won’t come in language, they come in downloads, paragraphs. You all of a sudden get the idea and you can’t stop writing fast enough, because it’s all coming in. Those nudges, those insights, those ideas are delivered sub beta and you can’t listen to them or hear them or get access to them. If you are in by me, so moving into through me, you’re starting to trust now as a little hack for the left brain, one of the best things you can do to help placate the left brain, treat it as an experiment, but capture or amass evidence.
Because if you amass evidence, which is what the left brain is addicted to, let’s say it’s easy when the stakes are low, but let’s say there’s a high-pressure state, you need to close a client, because you’ve got to make the payroll. If your brain is now trying to control things, and you said, no, I need to trust my gut, I need to trust my intuition. If you can pick up your journal of positive confirmation and show the left brain the last 15 times you trusted, and it works out, it’ll relax. If you don’t have that in the moment, it won’t find it. And therefore it’ll encourage you, using higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol, to focus more on the outer world, and you’ll override your heart’s intuition, go try to control it again. Is that helpful?
Melinda: Very helpful. Very helpful. And there are so many directions we could go with this. But let me ask you, what haven’t we talked about with, regarding to the topic of overcoming adversity that would be important for our listeners to know?
Peter: Tying it into emotional maturity. If you believe life is a comfort centric experience, you’re going to have a tough time. You’re going to be upset by adversity, you’re going to spend your life trying to avoid it. But when you realize one of the greatest days in a human being’s life on their journey of emotional maturity, is the day you wake up to the realization that life is a growth centric experience, not a comfort centric experience. And if you look at it as an athlete that wants to become an Olympic gold medalist, that athlete shows up at the gym, they have the best personal trainer.
Now just imagine for a second you didn’t know you were an athlete and you were forced to go to the gym. You’d have this person, this personal trainer, this psychopath that’s trying to make you do press ups till your arms hurt, put you on the treadmill till you throw up. You’re going to do everything you can to hide from them. You’re going to hide behind the weights, that you’re going to do just enough in the workout to tick the box to say you’ve done it to get out of there. But it will take you one step further when it comes to adversity.
If you’re in the gym and you take the mindset of the muscle fiber and you’re on that burning last rep, what is the muscle fiber doing? Is sending messages to the brain. Stop. What the hell are you doing? You’re breaking me down. You’re destroying me here. Help. Quit. Pain. But if you’ve got the mindset of the athlete, you’re proud. You can bust out two more reps and not lift your arms for ten minutes and get a personal best when adversity shows up. The biggest challenge with adversity is people think it’s adversity, not a gold star workout, that’s helping them become an Olympian.
Which perspective do you want? Because both are available. You just forgot you were an athlete. You just thought life was comfort centric. No. And not every day is the last burning rep. Athletes aren’t miserable all the time. They relish the workout. At the end of this year, I’m going to be getting in a little rowing boat and I’m going to be rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in the world’s toughest row. And I’m doing that where I’m doing it as a pair and I’m in the pairs race. 2 hours sleeping, 2 hours rowing 24/7 unsupported for two months.
And why am I doing that? I’m doing that because I teach self-mastery. I want to know where I sit on the totem pole. It’s been four years plus since the jail experience. Well, the Olympics is every four years. That was a graduation event. I’m doing the next one on my terms. But I know that, let’s say halfway across the ocean, the nearest land is 4 kilometers beneath me. It’s 02:00 in the morning. I’ve not eaten for 24 hours because I’m seasick. The swells are at 3 meters. The boat is like a toothpick in a jacuzzi, and I’ve got to get out of there with sores on my hands and my butt, and I’ve got to sit there and row for 2 hours backwards in the dark in a raging seat.
That’s when my mind is going to give me every excuse as to why I shouldn’t be there and why I should quit. That’s where I want to find out where I’m at. Why? Because I know life is growth centric. I know. I’m not saying you have to go and do crazy stuff like that. Leave that to idiots like me. But if coaches can’t walk their talk, they shouldn’t be bloody coaches. And I want to find out where I’m at on the totem pole, because if I can’t demonstrate self-mastery, I shouldn’t teach it.
Melinda: So let’s summarize some of the things that we’ve talked about today. First of all, right out of the gate, you led with the reminder, the PhD in results and how critical that is and to not take that for granted. And we talked about making sure that we control the controllable. Asking that very important question, who am I going to be in this experience? And I love the other questions when you talked about learning how to ask better questions, you know what’s great about this that I haven’t noticed? Why is this happening for me? Who am I going to be?
You talked about some of the core principles to overcome adversity, not just asking better questions, but getting to that state of acceptance, that conscious non-resistance, getting into the reframing, where we use contrast frames to our advantage in positive, healthy ways. We talked about resilience and grit, and you went through the four levels of consciousness, which was so incredible. We talked about the role of intuition, which I really loved, and I have never heard anybody give a greater explanation that my brain could understand what the intuition was doing. So thank you for bridging that gap.
We talked about the emotional maturity, the distinction between, are you committed to the comfort centric experience or the growth centric experience and gave us some phenomenal analogies that we can use. And what I love about this is while this is something that we can take to our clients, it’s certainly something that we can take for ourselves, first and foremost. That’s where it begins. And I have learned so much from you as I navigate this next chapter of getting to that through me state and beyond, so greatly appreciate it. And Peter, do you have any parting words?
Peter: Well, one of the greatest things that I was able to do inside was to actually write down my journal as I was going that captured all of the techniques, I was using to help the prisoners and I was sending them to my private clients. And when I came out, they said they’d learn more from those eleven letters than following me around the world for the last two years on stage. And it would help a lot of people if we made them public. And so I did.
We published just the eleven letters. It’s part journal, part tradecraft, part you couldn’t make it up, but it’s real. And we put it together in a book called the Inside Track, and it’s pretty much changed the lives of everybody that’s read the book. And I was so touched by the impact of that book that I’m committed to giving it away. And I would love to give a whole bunch of copies away to your audience because I think if coaches go through that book, it will empower them and also empower them to help their clients at a higher level as well with the techniques that I describe in there.
I’d love to be able to give that away. And I want to do that so we can help more people, especially with the platform you have. And it’ll be a pleasure to be able to do that for your tribe as well.
Melinda: Yeah, we’ll certainly make that happen. And people can learn more about you at petersage.com. And if you go to petersage, that’s P-E-T-E-R-S-A-G-E dot com forward slash Melinda, you’ll be able to get his book for free. And I want to thank everybody for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches and a giant thank you to Peter for this incredible conversation. You’ll also find out in the show notes, links to his website. You’ll find free masterclasses and resources to his great work that he does. Also a link to his YouTube channel, the real Peter Sage. Amazing content there as well. So, Peter, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Peter: Melinda, it’s been my absolute pleasure. You are a stalwart in this industry. You are pioneering for so many people and facilitating us to be able to raise global consciousness in a way that I’m just in awe of. So thank you for being who you are, too.
Melinda: My pleasure and thank you so much. I’m Melinda Cohan and you’ve been listening to Just Between Coaches. Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Making It and Course Lab. To catch the great episodes on Just Between Coaches, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It is the best way to help us get these ideas to even more people. Thank you and see you next time.