--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Ron Stotz, an executive coach, a three-time New York Times best-selling author. He has a PhD in psychology. He has a doctorate in chiropractic medicine.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): What I love about this conversation is how Ron ties—I'm going to say the spiritual, and we actually talk about this not necessarily in the religious sense—but he brings in an emotional, a spiritual, and in the words that Ron uses, a consciousness to leadership that I think is going to open your mind to the way we talk, we act, we think, how we show up in our business.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): This episode is all about leadership, both of an organization and taking leadership of our own lives. You're going to love it. Let's get on to this tremendous guest, Ron Stotts.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Ron, I appreciate you being on the show. I'm excited because one of the topics that we talk about the most and I focus on the most with this show—and you don't know this because we're just getting to know each other—about six months ago, I changed the title of this podcast from my name, *The Ryan Hanley Show*, which is super creative and egotistical, to *Finding Peak*, which is the podcast title today.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It was a big change. It was a brand change. And really, it was a directional change for what we're going to talk about today, which is these ideas of leadership, growth, and what I call peak performance—becoming the best versions of ourselves. Because as you said, and this is where I want to start: it's time for a quantum leap forward in leadership. So what does that mean to you? And why in particular now do we need that quantum leap forward? What's going on in the marketplace today that this is an incredibly important time to evolve our leadership?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Yeah. I think it started back in the 80s. I was working with AT&T during their divestiture. I was running a corporation called Inner Game, and they had hired us to manage their shift from the mindset of being a monopoly to one of being five for-profit organizations. I really saw how stuck they were in that old way of thinking.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Even though they saw and fully agreed with what I was suggesting needed to be done—in terms of really supporting everybody, cooperating, bringing in and sharing—everybody in the organization kept their head down, nose to the grindstone, and was looking more at retirement than anything else. It was just that monopoly mindset that limited everybody.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): But today, we're in a place where we have to be much more conscious. We can't be this old, ego-centered, top-down, arrogant leader that's just telling everybody what to do. First of all, people just aren't accepting that any longer. It's just not working. Gen Z is going to walk out on that sort of mentality immediately.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): But you're also seeing there's 50 years of leadership research that clearly shows that a more conscious, cooperative, collaborative organization is more profitable—literally by at least 40%. I see it all the time in my clients. They're seeing increases in profit and productivity by well over 40%, all because we get our own life in alignment with our highest intention, our greatest aspiration, and we really develop our life and become who we need to be to reach that highest aspiration.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): An organization that has a meaningful purpose—even if it's making widgets, but they're also contributing to the world in some way—all their people come together. Just as an individual comes together and their life becomes more successful, fulfilling, and joyful, in an organization, as they come together with a single-pointed focus, collaborating, cooperating, bringing out the best in everyone, you give people meaning. You give people a sense of purpose and validation in their life.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The truth is, they go home happier. They go home feeling more fulfilled. They treat their family better. They treat their spouses better. They contribute to the world in a different way. And we create—which is kind of my hidden agenda—a more conscious and caring world. If we don't do it now, we're in trouble.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): For a point of reference for the audience, when you say "conscious," maybe just define that term a little bit and how it relates particularly to leadership so everyone can be on the same terms.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Good. Conscious—really the definition of it is, how aware are you of what you're thinking? How aware are you of what you're feeling? Even on a subconscious level. I realize people think, "Oh, subconscious, that's not conscious." But actually, if you quiet your mind, if you're focused and present enough, you really are aware of subconscious thoughts that go through—supportive or unsupportive, that type of thing.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): It's really a matter of healing the past, from my experience, so that you don't have all that subconscious limiting chatter from unhealed issues of your past. And really quieting the mind, and then neurologically rewiring the brain for integrated whole brain thinking, which makes the brain a much more potent receiver. You immediately start accessing higher levels of creativity, imagination, intuition, but also higher levels of thinking.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): As you move up in consciousness, you become more aware—not just of yourself, but of other and otherness. In that level of awareness, that's where you find the answers you're looking for. My clients, as they move through their different levels of evolving, begin to recognize, "Oh, if I don't have the answer here and I'm feeling resistance and struggle here, that just means there's something ready to be healed."
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): They breathe into that, do whatever is necessary because they have the skills to heal whatever is in the way. In healing whatever they're struggling against, they access the very part they need to allow them to go up into an even more aware, more conscious state where they can find the answers they're looking for. That takes them into what I call "big mind"—the capability of rather than struggling and trying to find answers, to just quiet the mind, put out what you're looking for, and receive that.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I was talking to a friend of mine. We meet every Monday morning. We're peers and both entrepreneurs. It is a true kind of "shoot the shit" session. There's no agenda. We check in on each other. "How was your week? How are you doing? Are you hitting your goals?" But then for the next—sometimes our technical stop is a half hour, but sometimes we go an hour—it's really just a safe space, even though I don't like the "woke" connotation of that term, but it is a safe space to just talk about different things on our mind related to business.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It's difficult. What you just discussed is a very heady topic. I feel like in today's world, people are so bombarded with life. There's so much. I'm 43, so I remember a world without the internet. I'm the last generation that will remember a world without the internet. Before the internet, life was just slower. There was more space built into life. You had to walk places and not know if the person was going to be there on time.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I was explaining to my kids—and I promise this is going somewhere—I was explaining the idea that you used to say to your friend, "Hey, meet me at the ballpark at 3 p.m." And then you just hoped that they were there at three. Maybe they were 2:30, maybe they didn't get there until four. You didn't know. You just had to trust that eventually they were going to show up to play. They said, "Well, did you text this person? If you're going to be three minutes late, you have to text them and say, 'Hey, I'm three minutes late.'" All of that takes space and time.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): This is kind of what we were discussing. I said to my friend, "Today it feels like everyone needs to become a philosopher." It comes back to the idea of stoicism having such a resurgence and huge impact on our culture. Now I'm reading half the books I read—I'm a big reader—and half of them are philosophy books. When I was growing up, if you read philosophy, it was like you were not going to do anything with your life. Now I feel like if I didn't have these concepts as an entrepreneur, as a leader, I couldn't operate in the world without these ideas.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): There's a quote I've been using all the time from Bruce Lee and some of his writings: "The value of the cup is its emptiness." I've been saying that to some of the people I mentor and some of my executive coaching clients. They'll be talking, talking, talking—kind of like I'm doing right now—and I'll say, "Let's empty the cup on this topic. You're telling me you don't have the answer. The reason you don't have the answer might be because your head is already full. Maybe we need to empty it."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Coming back to my question with that huge, long contextual diatribe: Do you think that with the pace of the world or other factors—and I'd be interested in that philosophy and philosophical concepts—is this why these things are making such a resurgence into our life? Do we actually need these topics now more than ever to deal with our teams, with ourselves, with our spouses, with our children, with our friends?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Yeah, I do. I come from a strong spiritual background. I've studied all the various religions and meditation quite fully. That was another part of my life that never came into my work in a sense, and now it's an integral part of my work. Just as creativity—if you had a creativity group in your organization, they had a little closet in the basement. Now the CEO is all about creativity; that has to be their highest ability almost.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): If you're not present, if your mind's not quiet, if you're not accessing higher levels of consciousness, you're not functioning as an optimum leader.
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--:-- [Discussion resumes]
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): It really is a complete shift. I think it's wonderful because that shift in awareness, self-awareness, other awareness, caring, becoming more cooperative, collaborative, supporting others is what we need to not only take care of each other and take care of the human, but also take care of the rest of the world. Become aware of the oneness of it all rather than the duality, separateness—"Whatever's good for me is all that matters."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): You've said "quiet your mind" multiple times. I am positive that knowing the audience as well as I do, there are many people out there going, "Oh my gosh, I would love for my mind to be quiet." So how do we do that? If you're a leader, how do you quiet your mind? When you're working with a client or an executive, how do you coach them to actually build some quiet into their mind?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): First, I try and logically get them to understand what all the noise is about. As they begin to recognize—and this is just science—that most people have the same thoughts every day. They might say them differently, but it's really just this noise that goes through their head. A lot of people even embrace that and raise that level of chatter because they feel safer being up in their head rather than really being in the wholeness of what their brain's really made of, which also includes the heart and the gut.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): People are starting to recognize, "Oh, the gut has neurological circuits. The heart has neurological circuits." The brain isn't really just in the cavity up top; it's all through us. A lot of people I work with are very brilliant—they have that high IQ—but they don't have the emotional intelligence. That's because they hide in their head.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The only way to get them out of their head is to help them recognize that the challenges they're dealing with are all really the result of them stopping breathing. They ran into something they didn't know how to emotionally handle. They ran into something they didn't feel comfortable with. So they went up in their head and tried to see what they could do, but they quit breathing when they did that.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The way to heal all of the things they were unable to heal as a child, or even earlier in their adult life, is really to learn to breathe. As you learn to breathe and look deeper, you learn to recognize, "Oh, there's a lot of emotional baggage in there." You have to learn to acknowledge, express, and release that emotional baggage.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Your analogy of hanging out with your friend and having an open sharing conversation—those can even go deeper. One of my mentors, Joseph Campbell, talks about how you've got to enter that cave that you fear to enter to find the treasure that you seek. That treasure you're seeking is that unconditional love that every child wants. You need to discover the wholeness of who and what you are.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): As a child grows up, they discard a lot of the different aspects of who they are to get acceptance from their family, from others. All of those parts that we discarded are really necessary for us to become whole, for us to become authentic, for us to become capable of accessing who and what we truly are.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): What I do is help people go on that inner journey—the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell talked about, that *Star Wars* was written about. In that inner journey, they become more self-aware, more aware of others, more compassionate, empathetic, more sensitive and supportive of others. All of a sudden, they create a more trusting, supportive environment where people are willing to contribute and explore answers and share their insights around the work environment or social structures they're involved in.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): In that, you get people who are more committed and more involved. All of a sudden, your organization is more cooperative, more collaborative, more successful. It's all tied together, but it all starts with healing yourself. It all starts with healing all the different aspects of yourself that you left behind. That creates a platform or foundation.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The higher you want to build your life, the more you want to do with your life, the stronger that foundation has to be. Just like if you're building a one-story building, maybe a foot deep of concrete will do it. But if you're going to build towers, you're going to have a huge hole filled with concrete and structural support. Healing the past gives you that foundation to build your life on.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I think that's what took me in this direction. So often I'd see people—spiritual teachers, politicians, business people—who did really well and rose to a certain level in their life. All of a sudden, they felt like they were running into something, a limitation they couldn't understand. They'd try harder, use the old tools they'd used, rather than shifting to a higher state of consciousness, becoming more self-aware and emotionally intelligent. Their life falls apart. I've seen people die. I've seen people lose everything, all because they weren't willing to let go and grow. They were so caught in that fixed, limited mindset that they weren't able to evolve.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): My clients—who are really very successful C-suites, entrepreneurs, founders—as they heal themselves and become more self-aware, they're really looking at, "How do I not go from one comfort zone to another? I want to continue to evolve." That can only be done by quieting the mind ever more fully so that you're accessing the very best of what your brain has to share with you.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): As you quiet your mind and it becomes more integrated whole brain thinking, that forebrain—which everybody uses, but it doesn't really blossom until the brain gets quiet—as it blossoms, it becomes the conscious CEO of your life. You see everything differently. You respond to everything differently. You react to everything differently. As that begins to happen, you begin to trust your higher capabilities. You begin to understand, "Oh, consciousness is key."
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): If I understand what my highest aspiration is—what's my highest intention? What do I need to breathe into? What's going to be a little more difficult? That's your aspiration. As your life has that deeper purpose, that deeper meaning, and you're moving towards that aspiration, you're becoming more self-aware. It reflects in your relationships with others. Your relationship with yourself is always reflected in your relationship with others. The more conscious, caring, self-accepting, and self-loving you become, the more that is expressed in all of who and what you are and what you do.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): It really is key to quiet the mind. The thing that makes a huge difference in my people who stay around for a while is they start accessing what I call "big mind." Big mind is where you have a challenge, and rather than sitting down and trying to look up what you did before or how you could handle this, trying harder and exhausting yourself, you just sit there, quiet the mind completely, and say, "This is what I'm looking for. This is what I want." And you trust that it will come in. And it does.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I was just talking to a fellow I hadn't worked with for about a year. He's blown away by what big mind is capable of. He said, "I've got six patents and I've got six more coming." This guy's not an engineer; he's just a business guy who's got ideas that he needs for what he's developing. You have to be that mentally agile. You have to be that mentally capable of accessing the best of who and what you are without running down dead-end roads and wasting time and effort. The rapidly increasing complexity of our business world—there's no time for that. You have to be able to respond from a very present, conscious place. Most people don't. They haven't healed stuff, so they respond from a more contracted, fear-based, ego-controlled place.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I want to go back to something you said that I feel like especially earlier in my life I could really relate to, before I started doing a lot of work on myself back in 2017, 2018. You said many people feel safer in the noise—that may be paraphrasing, but that was pretty close. I could very much relate to that. I have a fairly strong case of ADHD, which I got diagnosed with at 40. I just thought I was crazy and different for a long time and didn't necessarily understand.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): When you said that, I thought, "Oh my." I had never thought about it that way. When I really look at 2017, it was a sea change moment in my life when I started taking a conscious effort towards being a better version of myself versus just existing. Before then, I feel like that's what I would do. In moments where I felt lost, unanchored, depressed, or whatever, it was like, "More. Give me more. Put more in my head. More thoughts. More activity." Somehow that—even though nothing more productive came out, relationships were not getting better, I wasn't getting happier—it was like an excuse or a distraction from actually getting better. It was just more, more, more.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I can completely relate to that. My question to you is for those who are listening who are still there. I feel like today I have a much better handle on it. Six years of really good counseling and lots of personal work have done that. But for that person who isn't there yet, who may hear that and go, "Man, I think I might do that"—how do you start to recognize that you are that person, that instead of quieting, you rush into more noise as a way to escape? How do we start to recognize that? And what are some 101 level ways of starting to pull back into the quiet? If we're starting at a baseline of most people who have none of these tools, how do you recognize it? And what is maybe your number one, 101 basic first thing for starting to quiet that brain?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): To recognize it, all you have to do is say to yourself, "Okay, I want to stop thought." If you can't stop thought, you're not in control of your mind. The journey then becomes, "Okay, how do I stop thought?" That is the journey of meditation. That's the journey where you begin and find a single-pointed focus. I would suggest breathing, because it's always there and handy.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): You start breathing into that noise. You give your mind something to focus on. As you breathe in, say inwardly "in." As you breathe out, say inwardly "out." Just continue that. Maybe you begin to extend the in and the out by counting—one up to 20 while you hold the breath in, and 20 as you hold the breath out. That can keep going up to 50 or 60. You're working through your fears of life and death as you do that.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): What you're going to recognize—everybody does—is, "Oh, what's all that noise about?" That noise is always about your unhealed, unacknowledged, undealt-with childhood issues. The beauty of it is you learn that when you're struggling with something in your life, that's really just an indicator that something's ready to be healed. Something's saying, "We can figure that out, but we need access to more of who and what we are. We need to heal that part so we can become more whole and conscious and access that wisdom, that knowledge, that awareness."
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): It only takes a couple of months to really heal our emotional backlog sufficiently so that you can monitor and deal with it on your own. Things will continue to come up throughout your life, but you have the tools, you have the ability to take care of those as they come up. When they come up, you don't see them as, "Oh my God, I've got to deal with this now." No, they're opportunities to learn and grow and develop. They're opportunities to become whole.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): You were talking about when you were with your friend at lunch, you were open and honest with each other. If you heal that past, if you really have gotten to that point of openness, those cave doors are wide open. You put up party lights, you have music on, you invite your friends in. If they see anything, they're going to point that out to you, and you to them as you go into their caves. Those caves, rather than something you hid yourself and hid away from others hoping nobody would recognize that those aspects of yourself existed so you avoid rejection and being hurt—those cave doors are open.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): That wholeness of who you are brings out the uniqueness, the character of who you are, which allows you to be unique enough to actually live your life fully and be successful. Otherwise, you're just meandering in the noise, and fear of success, fear of failure, fear of everything runs your life.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): This year—2023, I guess in the last year—I had the opportunity to see Jordan Peterson live in Utah talk. I'd heard him talk about this topic on his podcast before, but it was the first time I got to see it live. It was the idea, and it's very simple, of "tell the truth." People hear that and they're like, "Yeah, of course, tell the truth." But the way he dives into this concept is exactly what you're discussing in terms of letting people into the party and letting them see the things.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): He goes into this thought experiment on why it's important. Ultimately, he comes out with the conclusion that the only way to live in reality is to tell the truth. The first time I heard him say that was probably five years ago. Hearing it again live and watching him actually work through the thought process in real time hit me even harder. I said to myself, "This needs to be a core value in my life."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): One, I guess lying is immoral for sure, especially if you're religious. However, the concept was this idea: if I'm not telling the people in my life the truth, I'm not living in reality. If I say something to you that is untrue, you, Ron, are going to respond to that as if it is. So now I'm getting a response to an untruth. You're giving me an honest response to something that was untrue to begin with. Now we have a relationship based on concepts that don't actually exist. I feel like that relationship debt builds over time.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So many of the poor relationships I've had, I could almost pull back to this idea. Listening to you describe it here, I really like that visual of letting your friends come in and party and see everything with the lights on. They can point out, "Hey man, you might want to dust that corner off." I think that's a really good visual because everyone can imagine someone coming into their house.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Now your friends are actually living in reality with you. The hard part—and I think this is a really good place for you to jump in—is the hesitation: "What if Ron doesn't like me? What if I tell Ron exactly who I am, and I would love for Ron to like me, and Ron hears exactly who I am and goes, 'You're not somebody I want in my life,' or 'I think you're okay, but I don't want the type of relationship you want to have'? Now I'm hurt because you rejected me. If I had just lied to you about who I was or massaged pieces of me, this person who I wanted in my life would be in my life." How do we get past that concept?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Because maybe not just in relationships or marriage or whatever, but in business. This is just as true in business. We do it with our best employees. We do it with our business partners, our vendors, our board members, our investors. We create these false realities and then we're surprised when they react to the false reality or that they buck when they actually figure out what the truth is. But we do it over and over and over again.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So how do we stop this cycle? One, I guess, do you agree with this little monologue that I went on? And two—I think you absolutely do, no—how do we buck the cycle? Or how do we have enough confidence in ourselves to say, even if Ron is someone that I would love to have as a dear part of my life, I have to show him myself. And if he decides that that's not what he wants, I need to be okay with that. How do we do that?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Well, you've hit the nail on the head. Most of us grow up—I've asked all over the world, what does a child want more than anything else? And everybody shouts out love. Do you want conditional love? Unconditional love. So a child wants unconditional love. I'm just confident of that. So what will they do to get it? And everybody shouts out, whatever they need to, anything. So the question is, what did you do to get love? What parts of you did you give up? What parts of you did you develop? Who did you become? You learned who to be, what to feel, what to say, what not to say, who not to be, all so that you would fit in because you were looking for love outside of yourself.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The beauty of healing the inner child, of doing that inner work and becoming more self-aware, is a big shift that I see even within two months. They begin to look within themselves for that acceptance and love. That paradigm shift—their program for getting love—rather than being a nice person, an achiever, whatever they think they need to be to get love from others—becomes: to get love, I need to love and accept myself. That becomes their journey. So they're not worried about what other people think. They aren't in the big game of being a rescuer, a persecutor, a victim. They're outside of that game completely. They're in a game of recognizing everything is an opportunity to learn and grow and to recognize a part of themselves that's ready to be healed and accepted and loved. It becomes a journey of becoming whole, a journey of being authentic.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): From that integral place of wholeness and self-acceptance and love, you move through the world. So if somebody's doing that with somebody like myself, I'm not judging. I'm not even really listening to what they're saying. I'm listening to what's behind it. They're revealing a great deal to me, which doesn't always make them comfortable. But it's what they're not saying that tells me as much as what they are. So I ask questions. My wife jokes—I'll go to lunch with somebody and she'll joke when I get home, "Did you make them cry?" But the truth is, I ask questions and I love rabbit holes. It's like, what's down that rabbit hole? What's that thing you just avoided? I want to see what's down there because that's who you truly are.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): You live your life differently. You're not looking for people who are playing that outside game. You're looking for people who are more open and connected and exploring, so you can unpack your back. I had lunch with a fellow—a master, grandmaster in martial arts, been teaching it for 60 years. We had lunch every day for years until he moved out of the country. Every day we would talk about everything and anything, not just business. In that, you're exploring what is left behind that needs to be healed. Why would I ever leave any part of myself behind? If one of my sons—we were at a picnic and I couldn't find him, and two years later he finally comes to the door and I can see that he's gone through hell—am I going to slam the door in his face? Or am I going to open that door and invite him in and support him through all the healing he needs, all the anger he has for me abandoning him? I'm going to give that to him unconditionally without waiver because I love him.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): If we can't do that with ourselves—if we can't go in and help heal that inner child, that little boy within—then we're lost in the noise. We don't want to be responsible for ourselves, our life, or anything else. We just get lost in the noise and aren't brave enough to respond appropriately on all levels to what's coming into our life.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It seems to me—and this is anecdotal, I don't have any numbers in front of me—that there's been a resurgence in openness around people talking about their faith, about God, about whatever that status is for them. I felt like for a while people were hesitant to be public about those topics. Assuming that's true—and if you have evidence I'd be interested—it seems like a counter move to what has been a very secular few decades in our society. I've seen my own sister go through this. I've seen many friends who have pulled away from faith, away from God. No judgment on which version you choose. I have my thoughts—God comes to us all in the way that works. I think there's about 300-some gods.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Even though I'm technically a Christian and follow Christian practices, I get in arguments with my mother. She's a saint, but she's also a Bible literalist. We have a lot of fun arguments because I'm of the opinion that all the religions are God. He comes to you in the time and in the way that he needs to present himself to you. I said to her, "So everyone in Japan pre-1557, whenever the first Christians got there, is just screwed? Because they didn't have Christianity? That entire part of the world is all screwed? I don't understand. Explain that to me."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): My point is, it feels like our society made this very secular, materialistic, narcissistic move the last two decades. Maybe that's to do with the internet. There's a lot of reasons. And now there seems to be this counter move back to these ideas of mindfulness. If maybe God is beyond where you want to be right now and you want to be more in a meditative, non-religious mindset, or you're going down a faith-based path—do you see this move coming back? Does my anecdotal observation make sense to you? And do you think it's from this self-oriented last few decades?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I'm okay with that.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Okay. So that being the case—
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Sorry, keep going.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Well, people talking about religion isn't talking about themselves. A lot of people hide behind their religion and let their religion define who they are. So there's some fairness in that comment. I'll accept that.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I've studied a lot of religions. I started when I was about 12 as a Christian and started going to other churches, synagogues, wherever. That branched out into Hinduism, Buddhism, and a lot of other things. I'll be really bold here—I think your religious choice is determined by your level of fear. When you get to a certain point, when you meditate and dissolve in the infinite and recognize the oneness—is that God? Certainly, most certainly. But when you study physics and recognize the perfection of the world, the perfection of existence, it's like—did God really spend that much time creating this earth and us in this huge vastness? Or is God something more than what I'm contributing or saying that he or she is?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The one thing you can rely on—if you and I were walking on a dirt road and there was a dirt bank off to our right, and I saw a gold pocket watch at the bottom of that dirt hill, if I said to you, "Oh my god, the rocks fell down and turned into a gold watch," you would say, "Well, maybe somebody dropped it there." The reason you would do that is because the complexity is too sophisticated to just be accidentally happening. And so is the world, and so is the universe. There's an intimate perfection that goes through all of it. I find myself going, "I don't know about a god," because I grew up with the god sitting in a big chair kind of thing initially. But I do recognize that there's a consciousness behind it all.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): It's like the Hindu story where there are five blind men hiking through the jungle and they run into an elephant. One is holding the tail, one the leg, one the ear, one the trunk, one the side of the elephant. They all describe this beast in completely different ways. I think that's really what's happening. We're in this jungle, lost, looking for something—meaning, an anchor that gives us a feeling of safety and confidence. We find this elephant, and all these blind men go off and create religions. There's the tail religion, the trunk religion, the leg religion, the ear religion. That works for certain people.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): But the truth is, what if you are really willing to quiet your mind and let yourself experience the oneness with God? What if you're really willing to let go of your attachment to this physical form and experience the connectedness with that vast consciousness that is existence? Then you begin to recognize that religion is a workable tool for people. It helps them feel more comfortable, gives them focus in their life, and perhaps creates a bit of sanity—although millions of people have been killed because of it. So it's really a matter of what level you want to play on.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): In Mythea, the king said, "We're going to throw out this part of the Bible and bring in this part." So one guy for political reasons—so that the Christians and other people would like him and he could stay in power—really defined what the Bible is all about. Yet I have people come to my door going, "Well, it's in the Bible." And I say, "Yeah, this is the struggle." I talk to my mom about this. We have amazingly productive yet combative conversations. I tend to skew more towards you. I said, "Take King James, right? Didn't change too much other than the definition of words literally changed how we define certain terms, which drastically changes our interpretation."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I'm not knocking my mom. She's a saint and is probably on a deeper plane than even myself. She wouldn't be upset with me saying this. My point is, and I think this is what you're getting at, I wholly agree with what you're saying. I see all the religions and meditation and varying other things as different handrails on the steps leading to the same place. If you see them as that—not as the actual laws of the world, but as a guide to this higher place—then which physics gets you to... I was a math major in college. Math gets you to all these things if you allow them to, and you don't get caught in the ideology of the thing, but see it as a handrail. They all take you to the same place. String theory is built on the concept that literally everything in the universe is connected. How you could believe that's true and not believe in a oneness or God—whatever you want to name it—I don't know how that's possible.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Here's my actual question for you that we can go back to a tactical usage for someone from a business context. I believe whether they are embracing religion for all the right reasons or not, or depending on how deep they are, meditation, mindfulness, et cetera—and regardless of it being Christian or Hindi, et cetera—I believe the resurgence of these topics is a counter move from two decades of selfishness, narcissism, secularism. Let's say someone listening to this is still caught in—do I still have you, Ron?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Yep.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Okay, good. Your screen froze for a second. I'll cut that part out.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The internet probably knows we're talking about religion and is starting to knock us down a little bit.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So let's say someone is listening to this and they can feel that sense. I've seen this and talked to some of my friends about it. They feel that little bit of, "Man, my life has been a little bit all about me, even though I have a spouse or a partner or kids." How do you—what are some initial steps that someone could take that don't feel too overwhelming? Some people get a little overwhelmed with some of the stuff we're talking about. What are some initial steps to break free of the cage of self-orientation and start thinking about some of the things we're talking about? Obviously you're farther down the path than me, and I'm farther down the path than most. For those who are towards the beginning of this path but they understand it, they feel it, they want it—what are some things you would recommend for those initial steps to get a little momentum?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I would share what I do. I've studied and learned, and I've gone through a thousand different tools and practices in my life. The one that is always there for me is breathing. What I'm recommending is become responsible for your life to the point where you can respond appropriately on all levels to what's coming into your life. You have to breathe. You have to heal that backlog. You have to quiet your mind. The only way to quiet your mind is to give your mind something to focus on. You can't tell your mind, "Quiet down," because that's the mind talking to the mind, which only raises the level of confusion. You have to breathe because that connects you to your feelings and that connects you to your heart. That's when you go, "Oh, those feelings are getting in the way—maybe I should heal those. Oh, that heart is in the way—maybe I should open that."
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): People are going to choose how deep they are interested in going. That depth will determine their depth of consciousness, which will determine their depth of ability to recognize the perfection of the world. For me, everything that comes into my life is perfectly designed to support me and open up my heart and live more fully. For most people, most of what comes into their life scares the bejesus out of them and they shut down and hide from it.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The truth is, I was given a gift very early on—probably the worst best gift I've ever received. I was in the Marine Corps during Vietnam. It was not a happy place for me. I went in all athletic and ready to go and realized what a nightmare it was. When I got out, I was a mess. I got divorced, lost custody of my boys, lost everything. In a moment in the middle of the woods, I had chosen to take my life. I was a big guy and I had a big hunting knife and it was coming towards my heart at full speed. I wasn't looking for excuses or haphazard ways of doing it. Somehow in that moment, I dissolved in a white ball of light. At 21 or 22, I had no idea what that was. No awareness of myself, no awareness of the world around me. But what I did experience was the perfection of existence, the beauty, the oneness of life, the meaning that my life had within all of that. It gave me purpose and direction. I wondered, "How do I live with an awareness of that oneness rather than the duality? How do I rely on that oneness to bring out the best in me?" As I later learned, how do I live from a place of consciousness that allows me to really enjoy the oneness rather than struggle with the duality and be limited in my little comfort zone?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Have you ever read *The Untethered Soul* by Michael Singer?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I probably have. I'm certainly familiar with the title. I'm a voracious reader.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Me too. I'm with you. I'm also very draconian—my library is books that pass a cut. I will throw a book one chapter in the garbage and move on if it feels contrived. I love all different stuff. But to Michael Singer—the whole book is a non-religious breakdown of the concept that we are not our mind and we are not our body. He refers to it as a soul. Insert whatever word makes you most comfortable. This concept that our mind and our body are physical manifestations in this plane meant solely to keep us alive. The narrative we hear day-to-day is not us. That is our mind just projecting thoughts, most of which are fear-based because fear is what keeps us alive and has evolved to keep us alive. You are essentially being pounded all day long with fear-based thoughts, and you can hear them.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): He goes to this idea that you talked about—by quieting our mind, by listening, by being able to find what you call a big mind, you can actually start to dissolve that narrative that is just an onslaught. When you do, it's like the first time you ever get to experience who you actually are and what you actually believe, because you're just having this narrative hit you in the face all day that you think is you. Most of us are never taught that that's not us. It's our mind or our body sending signals to say, "This is how you keep us alive." Fear, fear, fear—avoid this, don't do this, be scared of this, don't say this, fit in here. Those are all the things that keep us alive, yet none of which is who we actually are. It relates closely to what you're saying. I try to push that book as much as I can because it was so meaningful. It's a very quick read, very easy read, but the concepts in it are very deep. To me, it's another data point to support exactly what you are saying—that unless we understand who we truly are, and the only way to do that is to be quiet.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): However you can get there—I've used meditation. Sometimes the Our Father prayer works for me. I'll just repeat it like a mantra, repeat it and repeat it, and then it will get quiet in my mind. All of a sudden I'll be in this state of peace. That's just how I get there. I think everyone uses different ways.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Think in terms of the noisier mind, the noisier meditation has to be. You might want to have music on. You might have to stare at something. You might have to be saying something. You might have to be breathing. All of that together—you need that level of noise to quiet and focus the mind. That's fine. But at some point, as the mind gets quieter, you begin to realize, "Okay, I don't need the music. Okay, I don't need that visual. Okay, I don't need that." Pretty soon it comes down to, "My single-pointed focus is my breath. I'm going to use my breath in various ways to extend that single-pointed focus so that I can quiet the mind completely." It's in quieting that mind that you empower yourself ultimately to discover who and what you really are. Otherwise, you're just not able to take responsibility for your life because you don't even know who and what you're capable of.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I just finished Bruce Lee's *Striking Thoughts*, which is a wonderful look into a very dynamic and interesting human being. Some of it is just the ramblings of an individual. Some of it is really intriguing. He talks a lot about the Confucian idea of knownness. I've said this on the podcast many times—it's a slightly different cut from the same part of the book. He expands on that idea of knownness and describes it as the value of the cup is in its emptiness. We cannot be who we are unless we enter all situations as an empty cup would—open to the world, devoid of these incessant thoughts that are constantly filling our mind, devoid of ego and all these kinds of things. It's a really interesting concept.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): My second-to-last question—I have two questions for you. Then I will try to be respectful of your time, although I know we're close.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): I'm doing fine.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): You just told an amazing story, and I want people to dig into it further. My last question will be where they can find out more about you and your work. I just have one question about that experience. You're standing in the woods, driving this knife towards your heart. You're enveloped by this white ball of light. The experience happens. It ends. You have not killed yourself. You're standing there with a knife in your hand.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Actually, the knife is about 20 feet away.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): The knife is about 20 feet away. What is your next thought? This just happened to you—something that will forever define a moment in your life and obviously change the course of your life. What is the first thing that hits you? What is the first thought that hits you when that happens? I'm just interested in that.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): How do I reconnect with that? I literally went to a little cabin on an island—outhouse, wood stove, water pump type of cabin. I read and studied and breathed and quieted and began to explore, began to heal all that. When I went into the Marine Corps, I was a U.S. champion rower. I was married or engaged to Miss Teenage California. I'm thinking, "This is my life. I'm doing all right." I came out and within a year or two, everything was gone. I had no direction, no sense of anything. When I had that experience and really realized the perfection of my life—which I had no sense of before—I realized the oneness. I realized that's my religion. So what's my church? My church is probably nature. How do I get to that place in my church so that I can recreate that whenever I want? That became my journey.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The breath has taken me into that. I can quiet my mind. I can go into any state of consciousness I want. I see the perfection of life constantly, even in the worst of times. I'm not coming from that place of fear. Why would you when you recognize how limiting it is? If you're in the middle of a crisis, do you want to contract and decrease your ability to handle that crisis? Or do you want to be present and expand your ability to handle that crisis? Reasonably speaking, you're going to want to expand. You're going to want to have the best perception and reaction that you can have. That's how the people I work with begin to live. That's the art of high-level leadership.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): The one thing I saw when I first started studying leadership is the higher their level of consciousness, the higher level of their leadership. The more connected they are with others, the more able they are to relate and really create an environment. I've spent my whole life helping people move into higher states of consciousness, focusing on living and working in the world. You make up your highest intention. Mine is to create a more conscious and caring world. The best way to do that—because high-level leaders can have the greatest impact on an organizational or societal level—since I have this unique ability to take people into those levels of leadership, that's what I'll do. That's the process I'm in the middle of.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I love it. This has been a tremendous conversation. I've enjoyed it immensely. If you saw my crazy notes, you'd think I was either planning some sort of attack or that I was completely manic. I've written down so many ideas that I'm going to think on more after this. I appreciate so much of your time. For those who've listened that want to learn more about you, about your work, about where they can dive in—where's the best place for them to go?
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Just my website, ronstotts.com. There's information on free stuff if they're looking for ways to begin their journey. But if they're ready to have a conversation and look at what they really want, what they're at the effect of, then they'd go to nextleveldiscoverycall.com. That's not a sales call. It's really, "Where are you? What's your biggest challenge? What's your biggest dream? Let's figure out what you need to do, who you need to become, so you can create that dream."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): For everyone listening, I will have Ron's contacts, his website, and the website he just mentioned—nextleveldiscoverycall.com—in the show notes, whether you're listening on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever. If you forget, just go to the show notes and you can find all that. Ron, I appreciate your time so much. I have enjoyed this conversation thoroughly, and I hope that this isn't the last time that we connect.
--:-- Guest (Ron Stotts): Anytime. We know. Make it look good.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Thank you.
--:-- [Music plays: "Hey, stand up guy, boom, ten toes. Big body pull up in a range roll. I can chase the whole game when I say so. I pull up, shut it down, yeah, they know. Running this game ain't a game for me. I never switched up, no change in me. The only thing changing this season, you go against me, then you know that you tweaking, okay?"]
--:-- Narrator: [Music plays: "Cause baby, I'm him. I be on 10. Two stepping in the party. I do not dance. Watch how I move. Make it look easy. Counting up wins. That's part of the plan. Black man taking off my head as a CC. That can't fail. I'm not get the reason. Repeat. I'm knee deep. Need a dub. Best that you see me. I'm too sick. Yeah, I know. I make it look easy. Easy, easy, easy. Yeah. Tell them don't try to play me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm drippy on the dali. They can never count me out. They can never count me out. I know. They can never count me out. They can never count me out. I know I make it look cheesy. Make it look, make it look cheesy."]
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