Wealthy AF Podcast
Welcome to Wealthy AF, the ultimate podcast for ambitious individuals ready to transform their lives. Hosted by Martin Perdomo, The Elite Strategist, this show dives deep into the powerful pillars of personal growth, entrepreneurship, and building wealth.
Each week, we bring you actionable insights, inspiring interviews with industry leaders, and proven strategies to help you break free from the 9-to-5 grind, unleash your entrepreneurial potential, and create lasting financial freedom. Whether you’re scaling your business, investing for wealth, or leveling up your mindset, this podcast equips you with the tools to design the life you deserve.
Because let’s face it—being broke was never the plan. Ready to join a community of go-getters? Subscribe now and start your journey to becoming Wealthy AF today!
Wealthy AF Podcast
Mastering Happiness: From Negativity to Joy (w/ Matt O'Neill)
Can happiness truly be mastered? Hear from Matt O'Neill, an expert in the science of happiness, who shares his incredible transformation from a life overshadowed by negativity to one brimming with joy and fulfillment. Unlock the secret to making happiness a choice and a skill, and discover how adopting positive habits can turn your life around. Matt's personal anecdotes shed light on how he recognized and overcame his own negative patterns, offering practical advice that can help you do the same.
Experience the power of reframing adversity as Matt and I discuss how to turn life's challenges into opportunities for growth. From a harrowing car accident to overcoming a turbulent upbringing, we explore how cultivating a mindset of gratitude can significantly impact your happiness. My own story of focusing on gratitude rather than victimhood during a tough time provides a real-life example of how shifting perspectives can foster resilience and joy.
Dive into the transformative practices that can rewire your brain for positivity and lasting happiness. We discuss daily rituals like morning gratitude exercises, journaling, and goal-setting that create a foundation for a joyful life. Tune in to hear how embracing personal growth and setting goals beyond business endeavors can lead to genuine happiness. This episode is packed with inspiring stories and actionable insights to help you on your journey to true wealth and fulfillment.
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Building wealth isn't just about personal gain. It's about empowering yourself and your community. This is Wealthy AF, your ultimate guide to understand what it truly means to be Wealthy AF. And today's guest is Matt O'Neill. Matt's a leading expert in the science of happiness, with a proven track record of transforming lives. Matt has helped over 100,000 people worldwide discover the joy of living a conscious happiness lifestyle. From conquering negative thoughts to building habits that stick, matt's practical advice has revolutionized how we approach our well-being. And guess what? He's not just a theorist, he's a real-world success story, balancing family, business, personal happiness with incredible results. Matt, welcome to the podcast brothers, my pleasure to have you on here.
Speaker 2:I am so freaking, fired up and happy to be on Wealthy AF Dude. You bring a lot of energy to your show and I love people that are out there doing big things, man.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brother, really, really happy to have you. Man. This is one of my favorite topics, you know. Talk about happiness, fulfillment. Like I said, we were talking a little bit of air about. What does it truly mean to be wealthy? Right, it's not just money, right. We were just talking about how I know some wealthy people that are miserable. However, most of the wealthy people I know are not, are happy.
Speaker 2:Most of the wealthy people. You, you are happy because you're happy and look happy. People attract happy people back to them and your, your emotional signature, is like a magnet and whatever you put out, you get back from the universe. So we want to. We have to figure out how to conquer the negative emotions that keep us down and make us dark and make us feel bad, because when we have those negative emotions, the universe is going to send back to us negative friends and negative people and negative circumstances that we're going to have to deal with until we figure out how to stop hurting ourselves with these bad mood thoughts.
Speaker 1:What does it mean to say happiness by choice?
Speaker 2:Most people don't know that happiness is a choice. Most of us are living on autopilot and sure we know that if we eat ice cream we get some pleasure. We know that if we binge watch some Netflix show, that we get to distract ourselves and that might feel good for a little while. We know that if we go drink alcohol we're going to forget our problems, or if we use some drugs or or take some pills, that that might feel better, but then we're going to go back into what our normal state is. So anything pleasure is short-lived and it just distracts from what our natural state of being is. Most of us don't know that we are in control of what that natural state of being is, but we don't even know that we have a natural state. It's like a fish that's surrounded by water. It doesn't know that it's all around water when we're in a negative state of being and we don't know that this isn't just a norm for everybody. We just think that's the way life is.
Speaker 2:When I was growing up, man, people had bumper stickers that said life sucks and then you die. I remember those. That was a mantra, right, that was a mantra. People would live it and they believed it and they said it and I believed it and I said it right, and so I didn't know that I was suffering from bad moods and negative emotions. I just kind of thought that that's the way life was bad moods and negative emotions. I just kind of thought that that's the way life was.
Speaker 2:However, happiness is a skill. It's a skill that we can practice, that we can be bad at for a while, that then we can get better at and then finally we can master and we can raise our emotional state of being so that we're happy if we're eating ice cream we're happy. If we're not, we're happy. If we're watching Netflix, we're happy. If we're going to work, we're happy. If we're not, we're happy. If we're watching Netflix, we're happy. If we're going to work, we're happy. If we're crushing it in the gym, we're happy if we took the day off. Like we truly can choose to be happy every single day once we learn the skill.
Speaker 1:So if you're that fish in the water and you don't know that you're living in this state of mind, how does one uncover that? How do you know you're the fish in the water? How do you know that? You know, is there a strategy? Is there some sort of skill, or is there some sort of a something that you recommend to people to figure out? You know, we've all been around those people, matt. You know them, I know the bad mood guy.
Speaker 2:Dude, I didn't have to learn how to be a happiness expert because I was happy all the time. I became a happiness expert because I was not happy all the time and I had to figure my way out of that stuff, dude. And once I figured my way out, I'm like oh okay, I can teach other people who were suffering the way that I suffered how to get out of this. How do you?
Speaker 1:know. I want to know your story. Why don't you share your story with us? Tell us how you figured it out. How did you, how did you know you was? Because when you're the bad mood guy, you don't know you're the bad mood guy, everyone around you knows it and everyone around you is repelled by you. No one wants to be around you because that's what happens, but oftentimes, I would imagine, you don't know that. So how did what was your story? Tell story? Tell us how you figured it out.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was at dinner. I took a girlfriend to dinner and in the dinner I start like shouting and she's like what are you doing? And I said I'm just really passionate about this. She said you're really embarrassing me, you're yelling at me in a in a restaurant. And for me this was just a normal behavior. She got up and left. She left me in the restaurant.
Speaker 2:We get these kind of wake-up moments that, hey, maybe the way I'm acting isn't an appropriate way to act. Up until that point, my whole family I grew up in a family that shouted at each other. That was just normal. That's how we talked to each other. We screamed at each other and I just thought that was normal. It wasn't normal for her.
Speaker 2:I had a college roommate and he said hey, my parents never fought. He said I can tell you two fights my parents have had their whole life. I'm like dude, you're joking. He's like no, and he names the two fights and one of them was at a bowling alley. I still remember it. And I'm like you're telling me your parents only had two fights their whole life. He's like yes, and I'm like man.
Speaker 2:I wonder if I could live in harmonious relationships where I don't fight with people, you know. So we get these kind of like little breadcrumbs. All of us get these little breadcrumbs that may be harmony and peace and joy and happiness and ease. Maybe these are accessible states of being and if, if Brian Elbing's parents can figure it out, I can figure it out Right.
Speaker 2:So what happened to me is I had an awakening. It came in the form of a movie and I was watching the movie the Secret. The Secret said your thoughts are things, your emotions are things. Your thoughts and your emotions bend reality and that, whatever you think, the universe brings back to you like a magnet. So if you're thinking negative thoughts, you're going to get back negative situations in people. If you're thinking positive thoughts and you have positive emotions that are really high vibration, you're going to get back a really beautiful life all the time. Everywhere you go is going to look beautiful and people are going to treat you with kindness.
Speaker 2:And I'm like is this true? Is this true? I'm not a victim Like. All of a sudden I started to like, question everything. Are you saying that everybody that's been mean to me my whole life, all the bad situations I've been in, all of that stuff is because of me, like my thoughts. My thoughts and my emotions have attracted every bad situation to me. The car crash, like the person that T-boned me that I didn't see coming. Is that something that I created with my thoughts? I started to question it all and that was an awakening moment for me and I said I'm going to dedicate myself to figuring out how to have positive, happy thoughts so that I start to attract positive, happy people and situations and circumstances to me and my entire life change. This podcast right now you and me, martin this could be somebody's awakening 100%.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:They could hear this and they could say oh, I sometimes get in fights with my significant other, sometimes my friendships. We say things that we didn't want to say and then I don't talk to them for a few months. I've had conflicts with bosses before I've been fired for being mean. This is my story, and maybe there's other people out there that don't have conflicts with their friends, that don't have conflicts with their significant other, that have harmony in every relationship that they encounter. That's my story. Now, man, I don't have a single non-harmonious relationship in my life. You may not believe it, and when I was talking to Brian about his parents, I didn't believe that that was possible, but it's possible.
Speaker 1:How does one do that? How does one have only harmonious relationship in their life?
Speaker 2:It takes a tremendous amount of compassion and understanding for the human condition. So I wrote a book called the Good Mood Revolution and in that book, the human condition. So I wrote a book called the Good Mood Revolution and in that book I identify the eight bad moods that we all suffer as human beings. I still have and experience these eight bad moods. They're signature emotions of being human. They're universal.
Speaker 2:Those bad moods come on, they're predictable. We know exactly when we're feeling angry, what we're going to do, how we're going to act, what we're going to say, what we're going to think, how we're going to see other people. And the emotion of anger is a universal emotion. It is very predictable the way we're going to behave. Well, if you could recognize the eight bad moods in yourself and notice, oh, I'm in the bad mood of anger right now, you can then say do I want to stay here? Now, there's a way out.
Speaker 2:And my book talks about how to get out of each of these eight bad moods. And then you can leave that emotion of anger and get back to an emotion of happiness or joy, or inspiration, or love or compassion or peace, and you can choose those emotions too. The second half of my book talks about how to stay in those states for longer. But once you can recognize yourself being lost in anger, then you see someone in your life that comes at you with anger and you have compassion for them and you say, oh man, you're experiencing anger.
Speaker 2:I definitely have experienced that emotion. I know exactly what you're going to say, what you're going to think, how you're going to behave. I don't have to take offense to any of it. It's not personal, it's not about me. It is just a human program. That happens when you get into the emotion of anger. And so, rather than getting defensive, and they bring the anger and I bring the anger and we fight, instead they bring the anger and I bring the love and compassion and I say, man, I can tell you're suffering, how can I ease it? And there's no more. There's no more conflict.
Speaker 1:That's. That's a great strategy. Can you explain how to think positively when things are tough? So we talked about you mentioned and I don't know if that was your part of your story you said that car accident. You mentioned that in passing that car accident that happened. Was that all my fault? Right, that's part of being completely accountable. Right, that's part of accepting responsibility for everything in your life. Some people think that's a bit extreme. Hey, things didn't go my way, that wasn't my fault. I'm of the camp that likes to accept responsibility for everything in my life, with separate possibilities for everything in my life, and I don't see things as failures, I see things as lessons and I always look for the opportunity to learn right, even in my failed businesses and my this and my that. What did I learn and how can I get better and how can I be better in the future?
Speaker 2:So, martin, this is why you're in a good mood. One of the eight good moods I talk about is exactly what you're describing. It's complete accountability and responsibility. I was just T-boned. My wife and I were taking another couple to dinner. I was driving. Somebody, looking at her phone, blows straight through a stop sign 40 miles an hour, hits us in our car so hard that we go up on two wheels.
Speaker 2:Literally nothing I could have done to prevent that accident other than be paranoid that every single stop sign, other people are coming to, that maybe they won't stop. We have to drive with a certain amount of trust that other people behave the rules of traffic and don't blow through red lights and stop signs. And so you could say I was a victim and that everyone in that car was a victim, because she hit us and she could have done something and we couldn't have. However, choosing to think thoughts of being a victim will create suffering. Instead, I can take response ability. I have the ability to respond to that situation.
Speaker 2:Thankfully, she wasn't hurt. Her daughter wasn't hurt. No one in my car was significantly hurt. Sure, we had some sore necks and some headaches, and that's part of the thing that we said. Hey, my ability to respond here is to say thank you, god. Thank you for sparing all of us in a scary situation. To go over to her, her daughter's having an anxiety attack. She's so distraught and beating herself up that she blew through that stop sign To go over to her and say no big deal.
Speaker 2:I've hit cars before too. Everybody's fine, they can fix cars and nobody's body needs to be fixed. And then to go to my family and to go to our friends and say, hey, we're not going to make that dinner reservation, we need to wait for the police and all that stuff. But we can choose to respond and have a great night tonight anyway. Do you guys want to just hang around while we wait for the police and do what we have to do and then walk to dinner from here? And so we walked to a new restaurant and got on the waiting list and ended up having a great time.
Speaker 2:So I could have, though, been bent out of shape. What an amazing reframe, man. What a beautiful reframe. I love it. We all have that choice right. We all have that choice to say maybe I was a true victim, but I don't need to sit here and wallow in that. How can I respond to this situation in a positive way and create the most positive future for myself, given the circumstances I'm dealt right now? That's a happiness mindset. That's how you're going to have a happy life.
Speaker 1:That's a great reframe and I love that. That's a great story. By the way, that's an amazing story.
Speaker 2:This was two weeks ago. I was still driving the rental car, and so I just got in touch with the dealership this week and I said, hey, I'm just curious about an ETA. And they said, oh yeah, we're waiting on parts. And then we found we need more parts and now we got to have the insurance company come out and take more time. I said what do you think? Another month? And he said, yeah, maybe another month and I've got like a beautiful Land Rover Defender. It was only a couple months old. I was so excited about this car. Now I'm driving some car that I really don't enjoy driving around and I can't fit all my kids in it.
Speaker 2:Again, I could be totally bent on a shape about this that, hey, my brand new car that I was so excited to get, I don't get to drive and I don't get it for another month. Or I can say that's out of my control. But what's in my control today? What's in my control today is to have the best fricking day I possibly can in a car that gets me to where I need to go safely and soundly, and and that's totally my choice, and this is how happiness can be a choice. But we can get lost in being mad at the dealership or then going all into the victim story again, if we choose to 100%, man, um and I and I don't.
Speaker 1:I haven't read your book yet. I took notes. I'm going to check it out. Actually, I have a book club and I'm going to. We'll invite you over. We'll invite you to come here. That'd be awesome. Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2:I spent four years writing this book. I wrote it probably four times and I truly wanted this book to be my work of art, my masterpiece. I didn't want to write a book out of theory. I wanted to write it with real, practical knowledge. So I had to live, I had to get into every one of these bad moods in a deep way to find my way out, so that I could actually tell the reader this is how you get out of depression and hopelessness. I didn't just want to have like theory behind it. So the book is the truth. Like you will walk away with things that'll say oh man, I can now handle life's events in a better way. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and to the point I was making. I haven't read your book yet, but I have a funny suspicion, so this is why I'm going to ask this question how much does gratitude have to do with one's happiness?
Speaker 2:Dude man. Martin, you and me are like I'm just running up from another mother man. We're like, we're so in sync. So you've hit on two of the eight positive emotions that I describe in the book Gratitude. You cannot overdo gratitude. Gratitude is the gateway to all positivity. We can't go from a bad mood or a tough situation to like just instantly be happy. You know, sometimes, sometimes things are just tough right, like getting into a car accident that you didn't cause. That can be tough, but you can go from a bad situation to gratitude and then, once you're starting to feel grateful, now, from that moment, now, you can choose positive emotions like joy or peace or love, and then this is how we can truly live a happy life. But yeah, gratitude is the gateway to all good moods. It's the way out of bad moods in many situations.
Speaker 1:Do you have a strategy or do you teach people in your book some sort of strategy to create gratitude in their life, or some sort of system?
Speaker 2:I have a system.
Speaker 1:I have a system I use, but I love to hear what you teach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, man, I do so. I just teach them what I do. I use gratitude. It's so many different spots in the day, but it starts as the very first thing I do when I wake up. So when I wake up, I've got a sign on the floor next to my bed. It's just a little tiny piece of paper I taped to the floor and it has two words on it and it says thank you. And when my left foot hits the ground, I say thank and my right foot hits the ground, I say you and I walk through the house saying thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Who am I thinking, man? I'm thinking something bigger than me that I got to wake up today. So we all wake up sometimes with, you know, fearful thoughts or anxious thoughts. Maybe we had a bad dream, you know, last night. I'm watching Deadpool because we're going to go see Deadpool Wolverine. It's a super violent movie, you know. So maybe I'm waking up this morning with some anxiety or whatever, just from the input that I put into my mind last night.
Speaker 2:But as soon as my feet hit the ground, I go from whatever emotions are there to emotions of gratitude, because my first words and my first thoughts of the day are thank you, thank you, thank you. That's how I start the day. I have a journal practice and of course we all know we should hey write down new things we're grateful for every day. Not just things we're grateful for, but new things we're grateful for. So every day I think of three new things I've never written down before that I'm grateful for. And what's interesting is when you have to come up with new things every day and I've been doing this for 15 years- Ah, you've been doing it for a long time, brother.
Speaker 1:It's a long time.
Speaker 2:You run out of things. You're like I've already been thankful for my family, for our health, for our house, for my car, for my dog, everyone I work with. You're like what else is there? And then you start to notice, oh man, I could actually be grateful for every single experience I ever have. We just said the car crash. I'm grateful for that car crash. That car crash taught me how to choose to be grateful that we're alive rather than to be frustrated. So I write in my gratitude journal. I say thank you, god, for sparing our lives yesterday, you know. And every single day I just write down three new things I'm grateful for. And then the other system I have is I pray to God gratitude before I eat every meal, and we do that out loud as a family at night, so it's just multiple times. It's like these are like little systems that on a consistent basis, throughout the day, I'm always saying thank you. What happens is you totally reprogram your brain.
Speaker 1:Rewire your brain. You took the words out of my brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you start to like, as something happens that could be construed as negative, you say, instead of oh man, I'm so angry about that, you say, oh man, I'm so grateful that this is the way it is, because you can be grateful for absolutely everything. You can be grateful for your problems, because they turn into opportunities.
Speaker 1:Yes, they do If you look for them, but that's a muscle. You know, matt, that's a muscle that you must develop.
Speaker 2:So I'd love to hear your gratitude practice. I know you said you got a, you got a system, so I have a journal that one of my mentors created.
Speaker 1:He sells it on Amazon and and it's every morning. You write the top three things you're grateful for. You write your top three goals for the year and then the top three things you're going to do to get you closer to your goals, and then you work from there on any other task or anything else I need to delegate to my team.
Speaker 2:Man, that sounds like my journal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whose journal, is it? It's called the Elite Journal. I use the same one.
Speaker 2:Oh, you do, okay, so you so you, so I use, I use the same one. Yeah, that's Don Werner Don.
Speaker 1:Don yeah. I know, I know, don yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I use that, that journal is off fire.
Speaker 1:man, that thing is amazing. But before I hit that journal, when I'm up in the morning, you probably read the Miracle Morning by Al Rod. I met Al. I'll tell you a story. I was at an event with Don. It's a real funny story. I was at an event that Don was holding for his company because I used to do a lot of business with them and he had Hal Elrod as his speaker. So I was there with my business partner. I had a couple of drinks, I had maybe two drinks. So I go to the bathroom really quick and I run into Hal.
Speaker 1:By this point I had read Hal Elrod's book maybe two or three times and have recommended it hundreds of times, right, hundreds of times, to people to read the book. He had already spoken on stage. I've never seen him. I've only either heard him or read his book. And so I'm like, hey, hal man, thank you, bro. You know I practice your miracle morning. We're in the bathroom, we're in the stalls, right. So I tell him I look at him when we're walking away. I was like dude. I'm sorry, man, I just acted like the weird dude you see in the movies, asking, asking the author some questions while we're in the bathroom and we just totally laughed about it and you know we took a couple pictures afterwards, but it was a. It was a really cool, cool experience. I thought it was a funny experience, but yeah and that that was awesome.
Speaker 2:You know he's changed so many lives and I and I wonder if that's a positive thing for him.
Speaker 1:I would think it would be yeah, he did, that's what he said. He said thank you. That's exactly what he said. Thank you, man. That's you know. That's just what fuels me and keeps me going. And he's written another. He wrote another book the miracle vision yes, yes, that one.
Speaker 2:I haven't read that one, um, I think it's not, it's not, it is is not as good, it's good, it's not as good as the first one, huh. It's good. I like everything that that man puts out. Man, he's got a happiness mindset.
Speaker 1:He shared his story with cancer and stuff. I don't know if you know his story.
Speaker 2:If you haven't seen that documentary that he created about his cancer journey, it's called the Miracle Morning Movie.
Speaker 1:Is that good? Yeah, I don't know. Is that what?
Speaker 2:you're talking. Yeah, I don't know where it was. I just I don't yeah. Miracle Morning Movie. I cried he's in the hospital getting the diagnosis on camera.
Speaker 1:He shared some of that. Well, because he was a keynote at that event, he shared some of that on stage when he was there, which I was super impressed with this guy, I mean you know this.
Speaker 2:This is what's interesting. So talk about reframe. You know this. We've been talking about this. Happiness is a choice it. You saw his. You saw part of that documentary. He said to his wife the day he gets the diagnosis and they say you got a 90 chance that this is terminal and you can't come back. There's only 10% of people that get this rare kind of cancer that you have make it. And he looks at his wife that day and he says this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm going to learn how to overcome this, just like I've overcome everything in my life, and it will define how great I really am with my mindset and my fortitude and my resilience, and I'm going to beat this thing. That day, that freaking day, he said this is going to be a great thing for me.
Speaker 2:That's insane, yeah, of course. And then there's hard days and there's chemo and the chemo he talks about, that Like this, is a drug that makes you depressed, and the chemo really affected his brain and so you know, we got to have compassion. Sometimes people have got some chemical things going on in their brain and happiness is not accessible to them and then sometimes we need some help and we need some professional help. Hal definitely was going through that. This is one of the happiest guys on the planet and the drugs affected his ability to be happy. And yet that was a struggle for him. But he beat it, man. His mind, his mindset, is why he beat it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he shared it from the stage. He said he would before chemo, while he was in the hospital bed he would cause he does the visual. I forget what he called it, the acronym, but the visual right. So I do that in the morning before I'm in my journal, I'm meditating, praying, and then I'm coming in my my stuff. Yeah, you talked about savers, savers, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he said he would visualize, um, he would visualize, he would have a visualization. And he he said he YouTube. This is going to be helpful for someone listening. This could be very valuable for someone that might be listening to us right now. He said he Googled what healthy body cells were, what they looked like visually on YouTube. Right, he Googled, he YouTube that and he saw what they looked like. And then in his meditations in the morning he would visualize his body, right, Having all of those healthy cells, because now he had a visual of what they look like. Man, what a powerful the mind is, so powerful and that's part of how he he claims he beat it I've heard.
Speaker 2:I've heard that healing story, uh, from so many different people. You know, uh, joe dispenza put his backpack together by visualizing a healthy spine and he, just every day he would in his mind his spine. He was paralyzed. He got hit in a bicycle accident, he was never going to walk again, but every day he would meditate and visualize his spine going into perfect alignment and he had a healthy spine that sat on his table and he would look at it. And he said one day, as he's doing his meditation, he feels his spine go back into right alignment and he goes into his doctor's office walking and they're like, what are you doing? And he said, oh, I fixed my spine with my mind and then they x-rayed and MRI'd and they said it's perfect, it's anatomically perfect. So we don't you know once this.
Speaker 2:This goes back to the secret and I'm talking about how whatever we think about our thoughts are tangible things and then the universe responds to however we think. Well, if I can visualize myself achieving a million dollars a year, and then I achieve a million dollars a year, I can visualize myself having my dream wife and then three months later my dream wife shows, shows up. Or I can visualize myself having a son and then, two years later, we have a son. All of these are my story. How can I create these things out of thin air? Well then, why couldn't we visualize ourself with healthy cells or a perfect spine? We certainly can. Our thoughts change the fabric of material world. Everything starts in our thoughts. This is what this is the secret to like. Living a beautiful life is that we don't realize that we're actually creating all of it with our, with our thoughts and our emotions, but every single thing in our life we are creating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I look at my life today and I was talking to my wife last night and I'm like babe, so we're going to, we're going to be celebrating our 23rd anniversary next week yeah, thank you. So I was last night. I mean, it's only as we record, this is only August, right, but I'm always so intentional in my in what's really important in my life my marriage, my family, my kids, my business, just what's really important. I'm really intentional. So last night I'm like babe, um, I want us to go to this resort. So I booked the resort last night and paid for the flight, and that's in March, right, that's all the way out in March. So I sent her the invitation, right, I sent her the Google invitation. Put in your schedule, this is when we leave, and all of that, so it's all done.
Speaker 1:And I got to thinking and I was like babe, you know, if you think back, you know 27 years ago, when we had nothing and we were struggling and things were just, look at the life we live. We live exactly what we envisioned and we wanted Like, look like we are exactly where we wanted to be. You know, if you're honest with yourself, you are exactly. You get out of life exactly what you think you want and I know this sounds what you think you want and I know this sounds. What do you think you deserve? What you think you deserve, yeah.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, like for me, I didn't think I deserved loving, harmonious relationships, and we talked about that in the beginning, and so we get whatever we think we deserve, and I ended up getting a lot of tumultuous relationships and some people that didn't treat me the way that I now want to be treated, but I was treated the way I felt like I deserved to be treated. So if you're listening to this episode and you're hearing what Martin's saying about his beautiful life, his life is absolutely something that you can create yourself, but it starts with going inside and finding the things that hold us back from success, and these are usually wounds that we adopted in childhood that say I don't deserve love, I'm unlovable, I'm unworthy. These are just thought programs. All of us deal with it. Martin, I don't know if you had to get rid of demons.
Speaker 1:Of course man. I've done a lot of work myself man. Of course man. I grew up in poverty and drug-invested neighborhood Alcoholism in my house. Me too, you know, not a positive male figure in my life.
Speaker 2:Me neither. It was crazy. So you have every reason to feel like a victim. I have every reason to feel like a victim. We started out like we both came to the same conclusion I will not be a victim.
Speaker 1:I refuse it, man. I refuse it, I'm totally wrong.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid and I was five and my dad was crazy emotionally abusive, I was a victim. I couldn't do anything about it. I was too little and too powerless. I needed him to take care of me because I wouldn't have survived unless I had food to eat, right. So, as a kid I was a victim. But once I turned 18 and I became a man, I was no longer a victim. I was no longer five. Sure, I had a tough upbringing. We didn't have much money, it was hard for us, but I was 18 and I was alive and we live in a country of opportunity and I said I can, at at this moment, take responsibility for how the rest of my life will look. And then I started to take control of it. Well, not right away. Right away I ended up having my own problems with alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 1:But God has a way of taking us in our journey. And then you and I are both lucky enough to have found that right and have found a positive way and turned all of those experiences into something right, and have found a positive way and turned all of those experiences into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's that's what I want the person listening to this episode If there's things that you struggle with right now, um, one, my heart is with you and uh, and the struggle is real I'm not going to say it's not real Like, like those, the, the things that are challenging to you, those are real challenges. They like they are real. The things that are challenging to you, those are real challenges, they are real. And it all starts with your emotional and mental makeup. And so, as soon as you start to do the hard work and it could take years, for me it took 15 years, yes Soon as you start, the faster you're going to get to the life that you really want, which is your dream life. And it really is just starting to understand how does the brain work, what are these emotions? What are the root programs I've been believing about myself? And then how do I change those beliefs about myself? And then, all of a sudden, you can start to create what you want.
Speaker 1:I want to touch on that a little bit. As you said, about taking years In life and business. I mean, I'm 46 years old today. I've lived long enough to have already have a lot of reference points to look back. And one of the things that I've, I made a decision.
Speaker 1:I had a failed business many years ago. I had a restaurant that was a failed, failed restaurant and I and I made a decision to go back into real estate development and investing and, um, I realized that time is going to pass anyways. No matter what, regardless of what I do, time is going to pass anyway. So I started meditating. I was like you know what If the really successful people Hal Elrod, all these successful people I finally have in common? They meditate? I'm going to meditate five minutes every day. I'm going to start. Time is going to pass anyways. That's going to compound over time and I should see some results over Time is going pass anyways. Start working on yourself. Even if you improve just a little bit, you're at least making improvement. In 10 years, you would be surprised. Or five years, you would be surprised.
Speaker 1:There's a business deal I'm working on right now. Matt and I use this for all areas of my life with my family. It's always a big picture, the long picture, it's always the horizon of time. There's a deal we're working on. We're revitalizing a city and we're buying. We're considering buying a lot to put a car wash in there. And I spoke to my attorney yesterday. He's like, well, this is an opportunity zone and the way it works is, if you sell these assets and you put the money here, you have to sell, hold the property for 10 years, you have to hold the business for 10 years, but all of your capital gains on the sale of that asset, if you put $500,000 and then in 10 years it's worth $2 million or $3 million, all of it is tax-free. And I'm like, dude, that's a no-brainer for me because I've already trained my brain to just I just need to improve a little bit every day over time. So I was like, yeah, we can put this deal together, we're going to put this deal together, I can wait 10 years.
Speaker 2:Congratulations, and we can put it together. You know, this is a beautiful thing we're talking about and it's. You know, if you plant a seed you can grow a tree. But in the beginning it's just this little tiny seed and then it grows into a giant oak tree in 20 years. And right now you're, you're planting a seed and it, you know it's, it's hard, it's, you know, coming up with 500,000 to do a deal Like that's a lot of money. There's other things you could do with that money. But you're, you're recognizing oh, man down the line, yeah, this is a big picture. This is going to be a giant oak tree for me and my family. In fact, this could. To plant this seed right now, yeah, that's a mindset, brother.
Speaker 1:That's a mindset that needs to be cultivated. That's a lot of the differences between and I talk about this with poor people and wealthy people is wealthy people have that ability to sacrifice now, to continue to think in the future. And as it pertains to happiness, it's the same thing Like, hey, what are the sacrifices I'm doing to better my mental health, to better myself, to be happy, to be at better moods?
Speaker 2:Well, I want to, I want to challenge the word sacrifice and I used it, so I'm not. This isn't on you, martin, I said it. I said it first. Um, in my, in my book, I talk about how we actually don't ever have to sacrifice our joy. So, um, and I don't think you are, but a lot of times like this thought about how we become wealthy is we have to sacrifice, and it's, um, like we have to sacrifice and that's a good thing, and and and then you kind of you think, you kind of have to suffer, because with sacrifice, you think, suffer.
Speaker 1:I receive that. I receive that. Yeah, the language matters, absolutely Language matters.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, and I and I talk about how we actually never have to sacrifice our joy. Now, the word sacrifice can have many meanings. So, yeah, I got to sacrifice this $500,000 from what I could do with something else to put into this deal. So that's one way, but I can do it completely with joy today. Today, and a lot of times we don't think we can. We think, oh, I just have to grind it out. I got to do these things I don't want to do and I got to not enjoy my today so that I can enjoy my tomorrow.
Speaker 2:People will live their whole life thinking that they're going to be happy down the line and never be happy in the moment, thinking that I just have to. I have a family member like this. When her kids were young, she said, oh, these years when they're young and it's so hard, they need everything. I got to do the diapers and the bath time. They can't put their clothes on. And then, when her kids were teenagers, they're like oh, these teen years, they're so hard. The kids are like, they're so angry and mean. And then and then, when our kids were going to college, she's like oh, this college is so hard, I have to spend all this money to put my kids through college. And I'm like man, you, just you just sacrificed your joy for the last 25 years. Waiting for the time that your kids would would no longer be challenging for you, and then you could finally be happy. I'm happy to report that she is finally happy, and then you could finally be happy I'm happy to report that she is finally happy.
Speaker 2:However, 25 years of telling me how hard it was. And now I won't allow it. So people tell me you know, I've got three daughters and one son, and my daughters are like preteen, so they're about to be teenagers. And people are like, oh, just wait till they're teenagers. And I say I cannot wait until they're teenagers. I loved it when they were one, I loved it when they were two. They say terrible twos and I'm like, oh, I call them the terrific twos. They're like, yeah, but wait for the terrible threes. And I'm like, man, they're the fantastic threes. And like I just love every single moment of all of it because, again, this is happiness, is the choice. So we don't ever want to have this illusion that we need to sacrifice our happiness to have happiness later. Investing. We may need to hold back what we could spend on today to have money later, like bigger money later, but it I just. I know, I know you don't feel this way, martin I just wanted to make a real clear.
Speaker 1:That's a really, really good. I'm glad you are saying it, because words matter, right. Words have an impact on how we feel and how it makes others feel, and the words we use determine the actions, our feelings, and then those feelings determine the actions that we take.
Speaker 2:I'm doing a real estate deal today as well. I live in Charleston, south Carolina. There is a transitioning neighborhood that's five minutes from historic downtown and these two lots came up for 90,000 each residential lots in this neighborhood and the neighborhood's a little rough right now, but I'm like man in 20 years, being five minutes from downtown, these lots might be worth like 800,000, a million each. So I bought these two lots and then today I'm picking out two 2000 square foot four bedroom houses to put on them. And yeah, this is you know it's a stretch for us to build both these houses at put on them. And yeah, this is this is you know it's it's a stretch for us to build both these houses at once right now.
Speaker 2:What I am so excited like I'm having so much fun picking out the floor plan and deciding if we're going to have an extra bathroom here or if I'm going to make the ceilings a little bit taller. It's really fun for me to develop this. Even though it's a stretch for us financially. It can be really exciting at the same time.
Speaker 1:That's right. I want to go back really quick to you know, for you to speak to those that say focusing on happiness isn't helpful for those with mental health issues. Right, because you say, hey, I have mental health issues, you can't mental health issues, it's genetic. I can't be happy. What do you think about that and what are you saying to that audience?
Speaker 2:It really troubles me when people label themselves Like I have this disorder, or like when we got in that accident, the girl was, you know the, the daughter of the driver was having a real hard time. And then she she says to me I have anxiety disorder and um, and you know I'm not a doctor I do know, as we've been saying this whole podcast, that words really matter, and so if she says to herself I am anxiety, she is anxiety.
Speaker 1:And I reject that for you and for me and for our listeners.
Speaker 2:I would never label one of my children as any label. We are at our soul. We are limitless beings. If Hal Elrod can change his cells with his thoughts, if Joe Dispenza can change his spine with his thoughts, we can change our emotional signature with our thoughts. So, you know, if you have a brain injury and maybe we've got like we're missing part of our brain, that maybe that's a different scenario. I just would be really really careful labeling yourself as anything. Now, I understand there's neurodiversity. I understand there's autism and it's real, and there's ADHD and these are real things. I'm not going to downplay it. I would just say that what you want to do is you want to say I have the ability to be the happiest me, and what is that happiest version of you? Look like Somebody who's inspired and joyful and in love with yourself, exactly as you are, without any labels. I don't think I can label myself anything, but I do label myself happy and that's a label I want to live with.
Speaker 1:I label myself a lot of positive things. I'm very intentional on what I label myself, again, because words matter and the conversations you have in your head with yourself matter. And I just want to go back really quick to that aunt of yours or not aunt, but you said a family member. So I'm sorry, I don't know why I thought out, but that family member of yours has kept thinking that and I, you know, I had my wife and I had our children very young and I know kind of what that's like. You got four kids and you're you're 20, you're 18, 20, and you have a 26,. We have four kids all two years apart. And man, you're right on. On there, you're right on.
Speaker 1:I think the antidote, the antidote to that mindset as I've had to learn it over the years with experience is gratitude, if you can. You know, like yourself, you kind of run out of things to be grateful for. I wake up some days and I'm just what I'm writing in my journal is I'm grateful for my bed, I'm grism for my lungs. I'm grateful for my bed. I'm grism for my lungs. I'm grateful for my eyes, right, I'm just grateful that God allows me to just be able to sit here, and this is not about just what you're, it's just really it comes from the heart. Just, you're just grateful for, just grateful for being here talking to you today, Dude eyes, eyes, eyes are so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your teeth right, Everything right. We get to see our loved ones. Some people don't have feet, man, but our feet get to help us walk Like man. Some people don't have a bed. There are people who don't have a bed. I mean, this is a real thing. Many, many people, like millions of people in the world, don't have a bed. Yeah, If we start to be grateful, like you, our life, our life is beautiful.
Speaker 1:I have one final question, because we're running out of time. What's the connection between being happy and having a purpose in life?
Speaker 2:This is a. This is a really important question and one of the keys to happiness is growth. In fact, one of my definitions of happiness is happiness equals progress. So to give you a real life example of this if your marriage is declining, is going backwards or it's just kind of staying still, you're probably not super happy in your marriage. But if your marriage is growing and you're growing more grateful for your spouse and you guys are doing things together and learning things together perhaps taking salsa, dancing or something like this together and you're growing in new ways together, you are going to be so happy in your marriage.
Speaker 2:So for me, I do set goals in the seven major categories of life. I do this a couple of times a year. I'm constantly wanting to be growing in my physical body and my health. Right now I'm putting on muscle and so last fall I said, hey, I really want to grow my strength and I hired a personal trainer that trains like the US Olympic soccer team and then I consulted with the most jacked guy I know and he gave me his exact protein he takes and creatine and supplements and I started doing all that and I put 10 pounds of muscle on in the last eight months and now my wife is saying, man, you look freaking incredible. Well, now I'm really happy with my physical body.
Speaker 2:This was from a goal, right, and so usually we just set goals in business. But I have goals for how I want to be as a father, I have goals for how I want to be as a friend, and I have goals for how I want my intellectual and emotional growth to grow, and it's really, really important that we continue to progress. Their happiness and progress are linked so purpose and happiness are definitely.
Speaker 1:Its purpose is important to your happiness, right, knowing you know it's like they say, if you that he who aims at nothing hits it every time. I heard someone, I heard someone on I don't remember what it was on the internet, an Instagram or one of those places, saying that you know, a lot of men are depressed because they don't. They're just sitting at home watching TV or scrolling, and a lot of people are depressed because they're just scrolling and looking at everyone else's life and not working on themselves and on their goals and moving towards the direction that they want. And that's a thing you know.
Speaker 1:Before this meeting, before our call, I was in a mastermind meeting.
Speaker 1:I belong to a couple of different masterminds.
Speaker 1:I was in a mastermind meeting, I lead one, and then I'm in a couple and in this meeting, man, it's real easy to be like to look around and you got guys with businesses, huge businesses, you know 10, $15 million businesses, and this guy's got international businesses, and it's easy to look at those guys and say, man, I'm no one here, right, I'm a little guy here and I was. It's interesting because I was in this, I was on this call and I'm hearing all these guys talk about you know what they're doing and some of the things they're working on and I'm like, yeah, that's so awesome, and I felt genuinely happy for them in my heart. And I'm like, yeah, and my race is this and I'm I'm 30% over last year and I'm you know what I mean? And I'm I'm running my own race. Right, I'm running my own race and my business and while it's not at their pace, it's at my pace and I'm happy and I'm fulfilled because I'm growing with my purpose and my intention is my plan and where I'm going.
Speaker 2:Well, this is. This is hard right I'm. I'm a member of masterminds as well, and when I go and I start to compare myself to other people, and so you know there's always someone who's who's having more success. I don't care how successful you are. Yes, sir, you can always hang out in a in a room with somebody who's having more success than you, and then you can start to feel inadequate when you compare yourself to them. However, I'm not them, that's right.
Speaker 2:The only person to compare yourself to and this is something that man I work at this, because when I go like I'm really intentional now, before I go hang out with other people that are really successful Is that I'll tell myself this same thing every single time.
Speaker 2:I'll say the only person that's appropriate for me to compare myself to is who I was a year ago, and if I'm comparing myself to my best version of me, I'm going to be very content going into this meeting and I'll have actually something to share, rather than trying to impress these guys and be prideful and boastful and then guess what? I've got things to share and you know a lot of them. You know, sometimes people are having huge success in this area and we're like super jealous, but you don't understand that they're struggling in other areas and so when we show up authentic, we can show up and maybe they've got bigger business success today, but maybe they're they need some help, as how do I be a great father right now and you know I've got something to offer in this area. But, yeah, good on you that you could show up to those meetings and be happy for them and like celebrate them and happy for yourself at the same time, because you should be so proud man who grows 30% in a year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 30%. That's crazy. We're blessed man, I'm lucky and blessed.
Speaker 2:That's for sure, brother, who's developing a freaking car wash and an opportunity zone that's going to be worth millions of dollars, like like dude, you know it's. It's you just want we always just want to compare ourselves to what's the greatest I can be doing right now and and I every day I'm like man, I'm doing pretty freaking amazing. I'm so happy with who I am right now.
Speaker 1:The future is so bright, man, I'm super excited. I'm, you know, super excited for the future and everything that's. Uh, I'm just happy, man. Life, life is good. Life is good. Brother. If people wanted to connect with you cause we're out of time, my friend, how do people find you? Where do they find your book, matt? How do they connect with you on social? Where are you? We'll make sure we put all of this stuff in the show notes, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the best thing, you know, the best way to plug in is to go to the Good Mood Revolution podcast. You know, I just talk about how to be happy. It's, it's, it is a skill. Every single week we talk about how to find joy. On that podcast you can get the books on Barnes and Noble's online or Amazon. It's called Good Mood Revolution as well. And then, if someone is like man, I really want to go to the next step and I want some help guiding myself to happiness. Every day, I do one-on-one coaching and you can find that at mattonealcom.
Speaker 1:Perfect, my friend. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing your insights and your wisdom brother Really really appreciate for coming on. Thank you for sharing your insights and your wisdom. Brother Really really appreciate you coming on. This was a really great conversation, enlightened conversation for me and I'm sure that the listeners got the same impact that I got from your stories and everything you shared on today's podcast. My friend, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Martin.
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