“The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognize there is nothing wrong with you.”
Todd Sylvester brings his infectious energy and joins us from Wasatch Recovery and Todd Sylvester Inspires. He is with us to talk about addictive voice recognition and belief systems. Recognizing your irrational beliefs, using your thoughts to adjust your emotions, and starting with the fours pillars of honesty, integrity, accountability, and helping someone else. Enjoy.
ToddSylvesterInspires.com
The Illuminate Recovery Podcast is about Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Addiction Recovery. Shining light on ways to cope, manage, and inspire. Beyond the self care we discuss, you may need the help of a licensed professional. Curt Neider and Shelley Mangum are a part of Illuminate Billing Advocates. They are committed to helping better the industry and adding value to the lives of listeners by sharing tools, insights, and success stories of those who are working on their mental health.
Transcript (no grammar): the most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly realize there is nothing wrong with you todd sylvester brings his infectious energy and joins us from wasatch recovery and todd sylvester inspires he's with us to talk about addictive voice recognition and belief systems recognizing your irrational beliefs using your thoughts to adjust your emotions and starting with the four pillars of honesty integrity accountability and helping someone else enjoy welcome to the illuminate recovery podcast we shed light on mental health issues mental illness and addiction recovery ways to cope manage and inspire beyond the self-care we will discuss you may need the help of a licensed professional my name is kurt neider i'm a husband father entrepreneur a handyman and a student of life i avoid conflict i deflect with humor and i'm fascinated by the human experience and i'm shelley mangum i am a clinical mental health counselor and my favorite role of all times is grandma i am a seeker of truth and i feel like life should be approached with tremendous curiosity i ask the dumb questions i fill in the gaps we are so excited and privileged to have todd sylvester with us today todd is a podcast host himself he's also a mentor a personal development coach and um an addictive voice recognition counselor um one of todd's passions his belief systems and todd we're super excited to get to have a conversation with you today yeah thanks for having me it's uh i'm glad you guys are doing this i think it's great and i'm just glad to be a part of it and hopefully i can share some things today that your listeners will gain some things from and you know we can all leave here a little edified right yeah that's the that's the goal i'm curious um how did you end up you know kind of give a little bit of background where you came from to get you to a place of really focusing on belief systems so that's a great question i mean it really starts with when i was younger i i took my first drink of alcohol when i was 11 years old and that led to you know if we jump forward just a full blown addiction with alcohol and cocaine were my drugs of choice i struggled with just being you know most kids at that age struggle with their self-esteem and trying to fit in and and i had this belief system when i was younger that i had something wrong with me that i looked funny no one ever no one's gonna want to be with me and you know and i would i would put on this persona i was a basketball player that was my passion and that was my love and life actually i practiced two or three hours every day and i eventually earned a college scholarship which was amazing but i lost it because i'd rather i was i was a mess honestly i would rather get high and but you know looking back i realized how behaviors dictate the way we behave so you know like when i sit with a client here i can say well hey you need to quit stop you know stop shooting up heroin well duh they know that what's the belief that leads to that behavior and so i try to get down to and it typically comes down to these three that i found over the last 31 years i'm not good enough something's wrong with me i'm different so i can't connect and my problems are too big to fix so almost like giving up kind of thing and so those beliefs dictate some very unhealthy behaviors and whether someone's addicted or not if they have those kind of beliefs they're going to be doing some very unhealthy behaviors and so i love seeing people change those beliefs and watch their life change completely that's why i love doing what i do is to get to see that that's very cool yeah i'm curious do you see um people's belief systems i mean because we all kind of suffer with some sort of negative belief system about ourselves absolutely do you see it on a spectrum yeah i mean some yeah there's there's a spectrum to it for sure i mean for me i'll share this because this will make sense when i was i was a very skinny kid i mean i was so skinny and i didn't care i knew i was getting no big deal but when i was in seventh grade i was up in my bedroom and i overheard my mom in the kitchen with her friends laughing on how skinny i was they weren't being mean they were just like oh yeah but for some reason that crushed me and it was in that moment i'm like i told myself i look funny and from that point forward i was insecure i walked with my head down and someone was laughing in the hallway and so it went from one extreme to the next so so one end of the spectrum to the next four i knew i was skinny and you know and i i dreamed of having muscles and things like that but when i heard that it literally crushed me and i just thought yep i look funny no one's going to ever want to be with me and so and i think with my clients too i see that too some are worse than others depending on what they've been through you know some some as you guys know some of these clients we deal with have been through some horrific things and you know they're at that end of the spectrum where the the intensity of those irrational beliefs are strong yeah well and they have been through incredible stories i i started out my counseling at um an uh halfway house for women coming out of prison oh wow that changed my life right that changed the way i saw people and and the perspective that i have on the struggles that people really have and i'm grateful for that because it was huge but these are not small things and the traumas are sometimes ginormous right yeah absolutely eleven's what a neat uh yeah you did there yeah it was very cool eleven's pretty young age to start drinking yeah i didn't get drunk at 11 i want to make that clear so my dad had a wet bar in our house and both my parents worked full time me and my little brother just being kids my dad you know he'd have a drink a rum and coke before you go to bed every night i mean he's to this day i think he still does that he was never an alcoholic you just would have a drink anyway as a kid you're curious so we would go behind that web bar when the parents run around and we'd take sips of that stuff and i didn't get like i said i didn't get drunk or anything but i fell in love with like the rush i knew i was doing something wrong but something and there was a rush to it and i started and that just kind of opened up things to a couple years later i started smoking pot and i fell in love with that and i started smoking pot every day at that point at age 13 and drinking every weekend and so and that just led you know to blowing up my life eventually you know wow so so tell me um i love your stories tell me um what an addictive voice recognition counselor is because i've never heard of that and i'm curious yeah there's a technique that uh that there's a a modality out there called rational recovery and he teaches a technique called the addictive voice recognition technique and basically it's really simple it's actually a technique that olympic athletes use as part of their training and what it is is it just allows you that that um you know that animal instinct that animal voice you know the lizard brain or whatever all that stuff it's that voice that tells us i need a drink i want to drink i want to get high and so what what it does is this technique trains you on how to separate from that voice and then tell yourself something different in the moment so it's a simple technique and so i've kind of refined it i actually call it you know you know you recognize refuse replace so when a negative thought comes into my mind i recognize it okay let's say i have a thought coming to my mind i want to drink well that's just because i had the thought doesn't mean that that's actually me i call it well you know rational recovery calls it the beast i call it the bully you know you call it cinderella it doesn't matter but what you do is you objectify it by calling it something else other than you so i recognize it then i refuse it like no that's not me and then i replace it by adding my name i'll say i taught him clean and nothing's going to change my mind that's the technique and what's beautiful about it is you can use it in every area of your life and it's why olympians use it because they use that as part of their training and what it does is it helps you change your self-image on a subconscious mid-brain level when you do that it's permanent lasting change and so if an athlete is fearful of doing maybe you know a triple backflip or whatever and that's part of what they need to do in order to make the olympics they use this part of their training to drown out and and separate from that negative voice that tells you can't do this you're gonna break your neck you'll never make it you know that kind of thing and so it's a it's so simple that people think it can't be that simple but it really is and and anyway and i build onto that where you know there's some affirmations that are involved and things like that repetitions and things like that so super powerful and yeah and i don't think any of us are excluded from those voices in our head that and if we don't know if we're never taught that those are not us that those those thoughts are outside of us and they just you know they show up and we get to choose what to do with them exactly then we feel a little bit lost and hopeless of what am i supposed to do with this yeah and you said it perfectly shelly because people feel lost and hopeless but you teach them this simple little tool and if they just start practicing it they will notice a difference like almost like within the first week they're gonna go man i'm feeling a big difference here and it's beautiful so um so that's really where that title comes from and you know but it's it's it's a simple yet powerful technique i like it yeah very cool how often do you um how do you integrate that i'm sure that everybody you work with you integrate that with what are some of the other tools that you use that are really effective you know i so i'm of the mindset in the belief that we're not powerless um and i know in the the recovery world that's a big word because you know you have to admit you're powerless over alcohol and i get that i'm not saying that that's faulty but what happens is a lot of clients that i see they buy into that they're i'm just this powerless hopeless victim and so basically i teach these three principles right here on my wall here i teach them that they're powerful beyond measure they're masterful creators and they have the dignity to choose because every time they choose they create and in that process they're very powerful good or bad and so i teach him how powerful that gift of choice is not saying that uh there's times when we're addicted obviously that we do things we normally would never do right but again when you teach them that hey you've got this gift and i think we take it for granted i really do believe choice is the ultimate power and then i i work them through an exercise of showing them how powerful that really is and along with other stuff that they're working on as well so so these are kind of like the foundational principles that i teach well i agree i think but so often i hear i hear a client that'll give up they give up the option of having choice of being able to make a different decision than what they have right and it's like well how or the blame piece right that giving up they're discharging that pain and discomfort onto someone else yeah and it's like well what are you going to how are you going to do anything with it if you just gave it to someone else right exactly so that ownership yeah and even when i was in the height of my addiction i could still make a decision to get help i could even though i was a total mess total train wreck i could still make the decision to go i need help and i'm going to walk into a facility or to a therapist or to a coaching session i could i have the power to do that i made that decision and so i really point this out to these guys here and it's really fascinating like you'll love this so i was doing a group the other day and we had a new guy come in he had been detoxing he's a new client and he's in my group this is first time here at wasatch right and he's sitting in the group and i said hey so so why are you here and he goes i can't stop doing drugs and i said oh did you use today he goes no how did you use yesterday no the day before no day before it hit four day before no no well it sounds like he already figured that out and it was so cool this light bulb clicks now it doesn't mean he doesn't have a lot of work to do because he did but it clicked he goes i've never thought of it that way i go i get it you've been a train wreck with your alcohol and your drugs because that's why you're here but think about it you stopped now you got a lot of work to do we got a lot of things to get through but look look what you're doing and i'm not kidding you this kid took it and ran with it he's like and he'll tell you to this day i think that was four years ago he's been clean for years he said todd that was the one thing that really opened up my eyes that i have that power to do what i'm doing now you know among all the other things that you do here at wasatch so it was really cool that's incredible yeah i would say that we i sat with ryan decker who you work with oh yeah and ryan was telling his story sharing his experience with addiction and and he shared with me that he was a narcissist and i'm like what how how in the world did you end up in therapy and even getting healing and success from that as a narcissist and he's like he attributed that to todd todd's like you know he said todd asked me the questions he sat me down and you know he asked some really hard questions that made sense and did some of the things the very things that you do to get people to think differently about their lives i thank you for bringing that up and ryan's an amazing man i love him and i think what i and i'm grateful that i'm in this position because i think and i'm not saying i take credit i had a lot of mentors in my life that kind of showed me the way that's why i why i'm here today and i'm just giving back to the client of what someone taught me but i think one of the things i do really well is i i let this client know that they're loved there's no judgment here we're the same like that guy who had been clean for three days i've been clean 31 years and i would tell him we're the same you're clean right now i'm clean right now we're the exact same i'm not better than you i'm just maybe a little further down the road that's it but i'm you you're me we're the same and i think when people especially these clients who have come in and they that are hopeless and i think that's one of the things i help them do that they feel loved they're not judged and that there's so much hope and when i when i show these little techniques of changing their belief systems and watching it unfold it's it's a miracle it's remarkable well and it's so interesting that love you know and and you know we talk about it but it hasn't always been it hasn't always been a piece of recovery you know sometimes it's that hard love right and we're going to be really brutal and it's like if somebody doesn't know they're loved how in the world are they supposed to change because they're always pushing against you know what everybody's expectations are of them right i love you just the way you are and we can make changes yeah because again when i show that to the client like with ryan decker it's a perfect example he he let down the guard he finally just let it down and he goes okay i can trust todd and he did we had him and to this day i mean we still talk and we still i still at times we have a good little therapeutic session and things like that and it's it's awesome but yeah i think love is a very important part yeah but but again we can be tough and still love at the same time right we got to do both we have to have good boundaries because boundaries say we love ourselves too right absolutely and we deserve to be safe that's important yeah all right so you're also a personal development coach talk about what you do there and what that looks like yeah so i have a private practice i've been doing that for 31 years i have my daughter she keeps track for me i just did i just i'm over 17 000 sessions in the last 31 years it's crazy i sit there and pinch myself and go man i get to do this this is crazy and so really you know titles i don't know i have a hard time with titles because i don't know what i am i mean i've called myself a mindset coach a life coach development i don't know i think i'm all of the above and really my outside clients typically don't need residential you know there are people who are struggling with anxiety and depression probably low self-esteem and i have clients as young as a fifth grader all the way up to i have a six-year-old i'm working with right now and i've come up with this program and when i say i shouldn't say that my doing all these sessions over these years i have formulated this program so i give credit to the clients and it's a very simple simplistic program and so what i help people do again it's the same thing i can i'm teaching healthy belief systems and how to cultivate them whether it's a fifth grader or a six-year-old whether you have a drug problem or if it's just you're struggling with anxiety or depression it's the same thing that's what's so beautiful it's so universal and so that's really what i do i'm doing the same thing with them and but you know a little different circumstances but it's the same thing and the type of clients you have a five to sixty-year-old do you do you work with a lot of professionals you know i do um more so on my outside yeah i have you know professionals that come see me and people in high you know pro you would call high profile positions in their lives you know so but then again i also have people who i'll meet with and i'll realize they need something like wasatch recovery like yeah i want to help you but you know what you need you need to go get regulated and get this taken care of on a much more intense scale you know that kind of thing so yeah it's a wide range of of individuals and it's been fun how long have you been here at wasatch seven gold over seven and a half years i think and it seems to be a really valuable piece of what you do absolutely yeah i love it here i i to be honest with you i don't need to be here i've i could be full-time 100 percent of my outside practice but i love it here i love mark richards he i mean i've been in this business 31 years and i've never seen an owner like that guy yeah like how he cares for the people he gets to know the clients here the clients know that he cares about him that guy scholarships people like no other i mean this guy opens up his checkbook and helps people who can't afford it it's amazing and that's the kind of person i want to work for and just the atmosphere here at wasatch it's just a good vibe we got probably the best therapist in my opinion out there and we do a really good job here so i just i love it awesome yeah and i agree i i think the whole team here is just incredible i've got to spend you know the last several years integrating you know working with them and yeah and you know even one time got to go out on mark's boat and watch you know watch uh corey and decker skiing back there it was really fun yeah but but uh but he does that kind of stuff because he does love love the love people he loves everybody he does and he you feel that that's the cool thing you can't fake that you know what i mean you can't fake it and the residents will tell you oh man mark what i can't believe he's the owner and he comes here every day and he's talking to us and you know he did family night last night and he's just he's that guy yeah it's amazing that's cool you guys got a good program i have like 50 questions but i'm not very good at interrupting so we'll just have to see if we can glance at a couple of those right one of the things statements that you said that i think is really cool is you said the statement one of the things i do really well right you didn't say that in an egotistical way you said it in a humble way talking about principles i think that's a lot harder sentence to say than we give it credit for right right you're 31 years into this yeah hopefully there's some things you can do really well right i would imagine i would imagine that that sentence would have been a lot harder to say the day you walked in for sure to treatment right yeah a lot of the things that you've talked about these individual little principles kind of compound right little individual successes turn into big successes right i think that's when you talk about not having hope as a drug addict right when you when you were 11 right this skinny little kid yeah tasty and alcohol probably wasn't that big of a deal right right and being skinny probably wasn't that big exactly yeah that those are growing pains the irony of your your mom you know joking about you being skinny is they were probably at a point in life where skinniness was something that they valued right right they probably wanted to be skinnier yeah so to tease you about it would have never been a negative thing in their mind which is super interesting yeah but that you know that one kind of lash on the back and one negative thought about drinking or whatever those those bad decisions then compound until the point where you think looking backwards i don't have a lot of great decisions right on my scoreboard right just a lot of negative ones so you've got to start with some of those small wins which is awesome yeah the each of these little things that you've talked about right you're powerful beyond measure you're a masterful creator you have the dignity to choose all are kind of hard for somebody who doesn't have hope to really grasp right and it just comes down to that first success right you mentioned the one individual how do you find that for each individual who walks through the door because for each one of them it's all going to be different right yeah all the different story yeah how do you help them wrap their head around that yeah very well said kurt yeah and a great question you know everyone is a little different that's for sure but it's it's i really i think the other thing i do really well is that i simplify this i think in the addiction recovery world we've over complicated this thing i'm just going to be honest that's and that's just been my experience and i used to over complicate it too and like when let's talk about the dignity to choose dignity means we're worthy we have the gift to choose that we all have it every single one of us we have the right and the gift to do it and so when i have a client who's sitting here who's struggling who feels hopeless i'll say how did you get here like how did you get here just sitting on my couch today like how did that even happen and they'll go back and i go no seriously walk me through this series and i'll see look you chose that you chose that and you chose to actually show up to this appointment today you didn't have to see i put my schedule out there on my on my door and i don't go track people down they don't show up they don't show up and i said you you showed up and i go and they get that and i go and this isn't a lockdown facility did you go did you leave and go drink last night and they're like no they go who did that i did i go exactly see that you're you're utilizing that power even without you realizing it and so to answer that question i just try to simplify it for any client look what you're doing and it is those are little baby progressions right to where they when they start going yeah wow i realize that and then you know when they show up to group on time and they did everything good in the day look look you did it all day long today that's amazing whereas before you weren't doing that so i just tried to simplify it hopefully that answers your question no it's powerful it's powerful that we we had somebody else on the podcast a week or two ago who talked about and we got into this kind of concept of when you're sick you go to the hospital yeah when you're not sick you don't go to the hospital you need a different kind of a coach you go to the gym right nutritionist or whatever yeah so it's awesome to hear that you do both sides of that you kind of you kind of joked that there's these different needs and it's kind of a completely different set of right needs especially somebody who's an executive type we're all humans right we all deal with kind of the same basic thoughts but at that level there's this expectation that they don't have those problems entry level or something like that it's much easier to ask for help right when i work with as i've worked with people clients that deal with addiction or you know mental health or whatever that is i find it really fascinating that these are some of the most some of the highest functioning people i know especially when it's addiction they've had to figure out how to survive they've had to figure out how to make money in their addiction right they figure out how to survive while they do their addiction and how to make the money and how to take care of things they're really really capable people yeah and so being able to switch that for them like you talked about and go oh let's look at all the things you can do yeah well again goes back to their powerful beyond measure they're using their power in the wrong direction yeah just shift that power over here you know and one of the other things i really point out is they've been through hell and back right and they're they feel hopeless but you know what i tell them i said your your addiction all this adversity is your wake-up call to your greatness it's the wake-up call and you're here to learn that and once you wake up to that you're going to change the world and i'm with you they're the most intuitive the most feeling people on the planet and and they're going to change the world because they are powerful but they've just been using it in the wrong direction just shift it in this direction and you watch out world here they come right you know and that's where i'm sitting here today i mean i had a mentor she helped me shift my power in this direction i haven't looked back and i can't believe i'm sitting here talking to you two today i mean honestly this is amazing well it is incredible to see where life goes when you're following following that dream or that course right it just takes us places and i feel the same it's like how the world did i get here because i didn't choose it so much right i just followed the course yeah it's just amazing it's amazing when you do good good happens it just does yeah it's amazing to me it's hard to hard to define but there is so much good out there it sure is okay you talked about the belief systems in the lizard brain right not being good enough be different having things that are insurmountable that's kind of an obvious concept that would be would be valuable in the addiction recovery world but i think there's also on the coaching side there's an element of that absolutely right and and how do you pinpoint not just the thoughts but emotions because that's one of the things that i think easily side tracks people it's just an emotion that logically we ought to be able to say this is irrational right yeah i love it okay i don't even ask you a question then you said this is my favorite yeah i love it so so when i'm sitting with a client whether in the recovery or they're an outside client or whoever it is i'll always ask hey how you doing they'll say good i'll say how come and they they look at me uh what do you mean i go no how come how how come you're doing good and sometimes they'll say well i'm really not feeling very good it was just what i was saying so a lot of times i challenge them there but i'll say what creates the feeling of good how you say you feel good today like yeah i feel good how does that happen and it's fun to watch him just go where are you going with this right and i share this principle we think and then we feel that i would say when someone's doing good i said i guarantee you since you've woken up you've had good thoughts going through your mind you're thinking good things right and they'll say absolutely i go so it doesn't surprise me you feel good but if you are feeling bad today i'll be like what what are you thinking what are those thoughts well i'm thinking that i'm hurting because i'm detoxing or i'm thinking that um i screwed up this morning i got an argument with my friend or whatever it might be right well the reason why you feel that way is because of the way you're thinking and i'll say this a lot you don't have a necessarily a drug or an alcohol problem you have a thinking problem and it does it causes all kinds of emotions so if we can learn to control the way we think we can control our emotions now i'll say this too if i walk up to a depressed person and say happiness is a choice they're going to flip me off and kick me and want to punch me right but if i go up to that depressed person and say i'm going to teach you what creates those type of feelings and i'm going to give you a tool that will help you cultivate these kind of thoughts that will start creating the feelings of happiness you'll realize it really is a choice but there's a lot of work involved in order to get there but i will walk the walk with you that's when they go thank you i to what i got to get out of this place i'm in okay we're going to walk you through that so yeah and the same in the same that it's it's really easy to have a good job right it's really easy to have a home right or a family right but just deciding that that's what you're going to have doesn't give it to you exactly you still got to go step out and so so i really again we think and then we feel every time every feeling we're feeling it's because of our thoughts if my like i say this all the time my wife gives me a hard time about it i've been married 28 years and i'll say i'll say this in a large group i love doing it getting people's you know kind of shock i'll say i've been married 28 years to my wife and she does not make me happy [Laughter] and i go she doesn't make me sad either i said that's an inside job it's my thoughts about my wife that make me feel so if she's having a bad day which i'll have compassion for but it doesn't have to ruin my day i can keep my thoughts still good but i'm here to help you sweetheart i'm here to you know help you get there instead of whereas before when i was first married oh man i i let her control my emotions all day long and vice versa and not that i was her fault because it's not her fault that was mine so learning to control those things i can now learn to control the way my emotions affect the way i act and feel and all that stuff so yeah and happiness is kind of a misconception it's right the quest to be happy all the time is a fool's errand right happiness is an emotion it's fleeting it comes and goes so why we're sold yeah right yeah for sure so but i do believe consistently we can wake up in a good mood i really do when we have the right tools in place we're doing the right thing we're not blowing up our lives with drugs or alcohol or criminal behavior or whatever i really do believe we can get there and i've seen it with i mean i've been doing this a long time i've seen it with thousands of clients where they have just done these little things and they wake up consistently in a good mood which by the way is the definition of success you can have the house the home the wife the kids this money if you're waking up in a bad mood what's the point what's the point so something obviously is wrong if this external stuff isn't working because it doesn't but when you can help that client realize happiness comes from within that joy comes from within right and if you can do certain things throughout your day to help you wake up in a good mood tomorrow morning that's success that's success very cool um i'm curious you use these these tools to work with people um and and to help them change their thinking and i heard you say that if we can control our thinking it changes our emotion and our emotional patterns do you find the same success with people that have really really deep trauma yes but it's a much longer process for sure and that's a great i get that question a lot um because again you know that that trauma experience created a bunch of belief systems that are ingrained they're there right and i can give you an example of my own trauma so i was in seventh grade same year that happened when i got laughed at i was babysitting my little brother and my parents usually would stay out kind of late it's like one in the morning and someone broke into our house while we were downstairs watching tv they had broken in through our sliding glass door right above us and the only way someone could get up there is that they climbed the side of the house and they were up there rummaging through stuff we grabbed i grabbed the phone and my little brother i'm you know he's three years younger than me and i grab this phone and we go underneath my sister's bed which is down in the basement and we're under the bed but i look out there and the phone cord goes from out there and i go if this guy comes down um he's going to see the cord underneath and we're toast and i literally was so scared i peed my pants i just peed myself and i get on there call the cops call 9-1-1 and i'm just you know whispering and the lady's like i can't hear you and i'm like i'm like there's someone in our house right now and anyway long story short that was a very traumatic event so it formed this belief system that people can break into my house and they'll do this to this day like i'll just go lock my doors in the middle of the day my kids are always like why are you locking the door dad and i don't even realize i'm doing it half the time but it's formed this belief system that that is really hard to go away but i've had to learn to like okay no we're safe i'm safe the doors are locked everything's gonna be okay you know but for years it really affected me in such a negative way i mean i would be scared if i heard a noise i'm like what was that i would panic but again i'd have to learn to control those kind of thoughts like hey the house is just creaking deep breath we're visual animals so what do i do i go up there yep see it's nothing everything's fine todd go to bed and so that just took a lot of practice well and you're still practicing it sounds like absolutely i mean at this point i'm good but you know i do i lock my doors during the day because of that experience since seventh grade it's interesting how we do things it's amazing yeah so belief systems are powerful and uh good or bad and it's an interesting dynamic as we talk about the hard things in our lives and how we're gonna you know overcome or you know um grow from those hard things but we really don't grow unless we're sitting in a hard thing and so being able i love the way you do that is you switch it to being a positive thing with them right you've helped them find the good in what they are doing and the positive parts of what they're doing towards what they want what their goals are um but without those challenges without those struggles we don't ever become the person that we are exactly and so i mean i can look back and go man i'm so grateful for that hard stuff and and if i had it to do over it sucked but i think i would do it over again if i could get what i have now exactly yeah life happens for us it all happens for us all the good the bad everything it's happening for us and again that's why i say addiction is your wake-up call to your greatness you know and they look at me like i'm they're like what i've just been blowing up my life and your stuff yeah when you figure this out i promise you you will wake up to this and when you wake up watch out world you're going to go do you know and i use a lot of examples there and i don't know how much time we got here but anyway life happens for us it truly does that's very cool i um i've been i've been digesting over the last year and a half or so a book by stephen r covey called the eighth habit are you familiar with that and i really love because i hear you talk about some of the things he talks about and what i really like is he says we have three birth gifts he calls them birth gifts and one of them the very first one is we have choice we get to choose oh yeah and the second one is these natural laws or principles which i've heard you talk about and then and the fourth or the third one is um our iqs so our intelligence our emotions our physical and our spiritual iqs yeah and he talks about those and and develops a whole personal development and then into business talks about the business development and and um anyway i just love that what you talk about really goes hand in hand with that and correlates with that oh that's great because it's powerful it's powerful information and um knowledge to know we get to choose yeah we absolutely get to choose what's the choice going to be yeah exactly and in everything i try and do i try to base it off a principle because principles are true and constant all the time in any walk of life anywhere everywhere on earth on jupiter in the universe it's all the same it's just true and so that's what i when i'm meeting with a client we i always start with a principle that we can stand on okay we're going to stand on that because it goes nowhere it's it is what it is so let's build you up based on you standing on that principle whether it's honesty whether it's integrity whether it's accountability whether it's helping other people you know those are those are four things i talk a lot about as well um and so we are what we repeatedly do and so going back to simplifying this for my clients you know you got here you got these clients who have blown up their lives in so many different directions right and what i do is i bring it back let's just let's focus on four things honesty integrity accountability and help someone because i believe this when we're honest honesty kills bad behavior integrity if you have integrity nothing else matters if you don't have integrity nothing else matters right and integrity is doing the right thing when no one's looking and then accountability if we're accountable we take accountability for our lives see i used to blame my my family for my alcoholism it was my family's fault right no it wasn't they didn't shove alcohol down my throat now there was dynamics that you know maybe led to that but the moment i started taking accountability no todd this is your this is on you dude this is on you my suffering stopped you can't be the victim and be accountable at the same time it's beautiful it doesn't mean we don't still have days where we struggle and suffer but accountability man it's amazing and then help someone give it away if i want to be happy go give away happiness and then i get it back it's an amazing concept and so those four things you are what you repeatedly do you do those four things you'll wake up in a good mood the next day and it's true right i mean reasonable we all we do it and it it pans out it just does it does it just does and that's what that's what i do with the clients here or any of my clients i just simplify it you know and some of these you know more intellectual people struggle with that it's like todd it's got to be more difficult than this and i'm like no it's not it's this is it if you're doing those four things you will wake up in a good mood and you'll be doing the right thing what else do you need to do what else do we need to do nothing yeah there's nothing else everything else is tied to that it just ties to it so when you get the client to start doing this i'm telling you they'll come in here and go they're like blown away i mean i've had car clients do cartwheels out of here they're so damn happy they're like todd thanks for simplifying this for me you know i'm like isn't it so great that it's that simple you know so well it has to be because otherwise i mean we've got so much coming at us every day that if it's not simple it's hard to wrap our heads around it's like i can't do that it feels hopeless well especially someone who's detoxing and they're cloudy still and they're not seeing straight you know the last thing they want me to do is show a video on how you know this affects your brain they already know this they know it better than i do yeah let's just slow it down and let's just simplify just start here and they just do it over and over because we are what we repeatedly do right therefore excellence isn't an act it's a habit so let's create the habit of excellence you do those four things you're doing it and you got it and then you show them how they are yeah it's pretty cool well todd this has been super fun to talk with you i can talk with you for hours and hours and i know we don't have it but thank you but we'll definitely have to catch up um later let's do it if um if you had one thing and i'm sure you have more than one but one thing that you would share with with our listeners what would it be it's on my wall the most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognize there's nothing wrong with you i love it yes our behaviors may be wrong but ultimately we scrape away those behaviors we look at your core there's nothing wrong with you and people struggle with that because we tell ourselves a different story so you're listeners there's nothing wrong with you despite your struggles despite what you're going through i know that might sound like almost like pie in the sky stuff no i'm dead serious and when i walk a client through this man it's life-changing it is life-changing and so i would that's what i would say to him is there's nothing wrong with you it's a delightful surprise you're enough i mean you're just absolutely enough exactly the way you are you just are and we people like oh i've heard that before well it's because you don't believe it that's why you keep fighting that's why you think it's stupid or that's why you think it's weird or what it's because you fight it it really comes down to that so well i think one of your recent guests on your podcast jeff olson i think he said it really well when he was talking about his near-death experience and and did he say it was christ that came and wrapped his arms around him and he just he felt like he was going to be in trouble right that he was he you know his this this accident to his family and i won't share the whole story it was all his fault he was a screw-up right and is all he felt was love if we can send that message to people then there's a ton of healing right yeah so much beautiful yeah well i have a feeling that some of our listeners are going to want to get a hold of you as well what's the best way for them to do that no thank you um you know you can look me up on social media it's uh my handle is ts inspires and then you know you can go to my website which is todd sylvester inspires.com and you can shoot me an email from there and you you know you can you know reach out to you too and you guys can get you know send them my way whatever whatever you want to do there but you can reach me there you can direct message me on social media that's a really quick and easy way too so sweet yep thanks for your time thanks for inspiring us today oh thanks for having me and i love what you guys are doing so thanks for letting me be a part of it i appreciate it