163. Dean Graziosi: The ‘7 Levels Deep’ Exercise That Transformed His Life And It Can Transform Yours!

Most people just start their success journey expecting results to flow naturally, but they’re missing a critical first step, understanding their deepest “why.” In this captivating episode, New York Times Bestselling author and Tony Robbins’ business partner, Dean Graziosi, reveals his powerful “7 Levels Deep” exercise that unlocked his true driving force, not money or fame, but a profound need for control stemming from childhood instability. When you understand your deep motivations, you’ll run toward challenges instead of retreating. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community and gain exclusive access to Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols today!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Join the free 3-day live event, “Thrive in 2025,” by registering here: https://thrive900.com/ Thank you to our partners: H2TABS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - USE CODE "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE - THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP - GET 1 FREE MONTH WHEN YOU JOIN!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD HAPBEE - FEEL BETTER & PERFORM AT YOUR BEST: https://bit.ly/4a6glfo CARAWAY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF - GET 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GENETIC TEST: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Connect with Gary Brecka: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo YouTube: ⁠https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8⁠ X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:51 Dean Graziosi’s Journey 09:02 Having the Right Mindset to be Successful 12:36 Why Do You Work So Hard? 16:15 “7 Levels Deep” 20:30 Finding One’s Purpose and Taking Action 25:30 Definition of Courage for Dean 30:17 Shifting Your Inner Monologue 35:15 What’s Holding You Back? 39:02 What Drives Dean? 47:15 Overcoming Setbacks 53:30 Shifting Perspectives and Building Resilience 01:01:51 Dean’s Fitness Routine 1:08:50 Follow Dean’s Works 1:10:40 What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When you face rejection, conflict, when you face problems, instead of retreating, you might not love it, but you run into the fire to fix it. And people say, find your purpose, find your passion job. Sometimes you gotta get dirty, fail and be in it enough to go, damn, this is worth fighting for.

• 0:15Gary Brecka?

  My dad used to say, life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else. Get in there, roll your sleeves up, fail a little bit, because I think we all crave that safety. We don't want to leave the nest unless we have a fully baked plan.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  So if you don't have a strong enough purpose and why, the outside world will control you, you'll play small, you'll sit on your hands rather than saying, now is the time, not tomorrow, not next week. This purpose is so strong, nothing in my way, I gotta go.

• 0:40Gary Brecka?

  When you find something that you would otherwise do for free, that you love to do, you really don't feel like you work a day in your life. If you look from the outside in, it seems like I'm working my ass off, but that's what I love to do. Like when I'm on vacation, I want to do this.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  If you think about it, most of us get hit with stuff. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility to do something about it.

• 0:59Gary Brecka?

  If someone's listening to this right now and they just feel sort of stuck and maybe overwhelmed, what's a shift that they could make that could change that direction?

• 1:07Speaker 00

  I would love for you to take nothing else in this podcast is every time you think you have the answer.

• 1:25Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today's guest is a very special guest. I've actually stalked him from afar on social media. I've been to a number of events that he's spoken at. He's an impactful speaker, an entrepreneur, multiple New York Times bestselling author, and he has recently become a very good friend of mine. Welcome to the podcast, Dean Graziosi.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  So good to be here, Gary.

• 1:56Gary Brecka?

  Dude, I'm so, I'm so excited that you're here. And, and you know what happens to me so many times when I have guests over? And I should have a rule that you have to go from the elevator to the podcast room, because we end up doing a podcast.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  We did a podcast just now.

• 2:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, for two hours off camera. And finally, we both stood up and we're like, we should probably go in the podcast room.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 2:15Gary Brecka?

  The whole reason why we came. But, and we were talking about everything, regenerative farming, stem cells.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  We covered it all in about hour and 45 minutes.

• 2:23Gary Brecka?

  I think we solved the Russia-Ukraine crisis. I mean, we, we covered it all. But I'm so excited to have you sitting in this chair.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Thanks, Gary. Good to be here.

• 2:30Gary Brecka?

  And I think my audience is going to get so much value out of this because there, there's a common theme that seems to run through the majority of my podcast guests. And that's that they are where they are and they're making such an impact. And they're so passionate and so purposeful because they solved the problem in their life. And when I, you know, I obviously knew who you were and, and your work with Tony Robbins and, you know, what an, what an icon you are for so many entrepreneurs. But when I started to peel back the layers of like, who is Dean Graziosi?

• 3:05Gary Brecka?

  You didn't really have like a privileged upbringing by any means, right?

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Probably as privileged as yours.

• 3:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:13Gary Brecka?

  And, you know, it's, it's, it's always exciting for me to talk about, you know, what was the problem that you solved? I've, I've had so many people sit in that chair that they were a soccer mom and they were plagued by Lyme disease and they became a citizen scientist and they solved their Lyme disease. And now they're one of the most impactful speakers or, or, or they were a drug addict or an alcoholic and they overcame the addiction and now they're one of the biggest voices in that, in that industry. So what was your journey like that set you on the path to where you are now?

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Really great question. And first off, before I get started, I just want to say, I have same for you. I've been watching you. My wife fell in love with how you speak and how clear you are and how you give. Transferable information so freely, like, meaning, when I say transferable, there's a lot of great people, doctors, physicians, and people out there that are helping. Sometimes it feels so out of reach.

• 4:09Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  And what you're so good at is taking complicated things and making it simple for all of us to go, hey, I could get healthier doing that.

• 4:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  I just want to say, watching you grow has been a privilege and a pleasure. And we had passed each other a million times, so I was glad we finally got to meet.

• 4:21Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I mean, some of the same events on the stage, a lot of the same events.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Amazing stuff, and it's a privilege to be here. You know, if I think about it, not to go too deep on my story, I'm here for you guys that are listening and watching right now. But if you think about this, there's a philosophy that I didn't say this for the last 40 years of my life, but it's something that hit me a couple of years ago. And if you're watching right now, listening right now, you know you're someone that's meant for more, you want to do more, you want to be healthy, you want to live into your full potential, live longer, impact more, just do more, right?

• 4:49Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  But if you think about it, most of us get hit with stuff.

• 4:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Right? Whatever that stuff is. And there's a philosophy that I've been living by, and I probably have lived by it for a long time, but now I say it, is it's not your fault. It might not be your fault that your parents didn't tell you they loved you. It might not be your fault that you got Lyme's disease. It might not be your fault that no one believed in your dreams. It's not your fault that the economy could go a certain way, or tariffs, or inflation, or, but it is your responsibility to do something about it.

• 5:22Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  And I think those that have the opportunity to live into their healthiest self, their most successful self, to live into where they're meant to be, not settling to be, realize it's on them. Right? It's not your fault those things happen.

• 5:34Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  But how do you take that and make that into fuel in your life, rather than the anchor? Now, I know this is a made up story, and then I'll get to my story really quick. But did you ever hear that it's probably a made up story about twins?

• 5:45Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  And so, one twin is a drug addict in and out of jail. And they say, how did this happen to you? And he said, my father was physically abusive. And drank too much and he was so mean to me. How else could I turn out? And they went to the other brother who was massively successful, happily married with kids. And they said, hey, how did you become so successful? He said, my father was a drug addict in and out of prison. What else could I be?

• 6:11Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Right?

• 6:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  So one found a way to use it as fuel, as the wind behind their sail.

• 6:17Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  And the other is an anchor. And I think that's our job in life. How do we, how do we take what happened to us and make it the inspiration, not the anchor?

• 6:26Gary Brecka?

  Do you think it's a difference between a victim mentality? And I've heard Victor and victim, but you know, very often we start to repeat patterns in our life because we feel like things are happening to us, like they're out of our control.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you know, I think I, I probably would have said victim are the opposite side mentality years ago, but what I realized now, some people just aren't taught how to think differently. How that they can actually change their childhood. They could change their past. They could change the meaning of things. So, so you asked me a little bit about me, what was that thing? If I go back to my earliest memory, I mean, for you, there has to be, there has to be a new compelling future that you create for yourself every year. You've already passed, I guarantee you far surpassed anything you thought was possible.

• 7:10Gary Brecka?

  Oh, no question.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Right? So if you don't have a new compelling future, then you're just the good old days and you're not a good old days guy.

• 7:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Right?

• 7:17Gary Brecka?

  No, definitely not.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  It's like, you know, for a fact, next year's gonna be better than this year. True?

• 7:21Gary Brecka?

  That's so true.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  But not everybody has that. And, and it's one of the things my partner, Tony Robbins does so well and I try to do. He does it in the personal development world. I do it in business and crafting a business and making it successful. You do it in health, is it's a bigger future. So if I think about when you asked me that question, I don't think it was one moment. At, at seven years old, I realized my dad and mom split when I was three. And I realized probably seven, eight, that my mom was working three jobs. You don't know the difference. She was cleaning houses. She was cutting hair. She was painting houses, come home nine, 10 o'clock every night.

• 7:53Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  To make nothing. I mean, Gary, we lived in the only trailer park.

• 7:56Gary Brecka?

  Trailer park, yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  I lived in a trailer park and the only trailer park in our town. We lived in that until my mom couldn't afford it. We moved in with grandma, right?

• 8:03Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  So I remember, I don't know if I was seven, 10, 15. I just remember thinking, I need to get insanely successful for a couple of reasons. One, Money controlled my mom. She didn't control it. She wanted to be there for our baseball games and, and try to take us to school and all that, but she couldn't. My grandmother ended up doing all of it because my mom was working her tail off.

• 8:23Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  So I realized money controlled my mom. She didn't control her own life.

• 8:27Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  And secondly, I just wanted to retire her. I mean, I remember, I remember being 10 years old.

• 8:32Gary Brecka?

  I want to retire.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Like, I wanted my mom, like, I remember my Uncle Larry, who is very college oriented, asked me at like 12 years old, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to be rich. And the first thing I'm going to do is make it so my mom never has to work again. And I remember him saying to me, I remember him saying to me, well, that's a great dream, but what, what's, what college you want to do? What's your profession? Right?

• 8:50Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  And, and I think the, the why behind you want something is way more profound and important than the how.

• 8:58Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree with you. I mean, I really, really agree with you. So if someone's listening to this right now and they, they just feel sort of stuck.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:07Gary Brecka?

  And maybe overwhelmed or like they don't know how to make that switch. Like they know that they're capable of more and they know that what they're doing is not working. What's a shift that they could make?

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, great question.

• 9:21Gary Brecka?

  That could sort of change that direction.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Right. And whether this is leading into the healthiest version of you or the most prof, you know, the most wealthy version of you, right? It's all the same. Right? So if you think about it, sometimes we don't realize it's the questions we ask ourselves. It's like, how come I could never get healthy? Right? I've heard Tony do this so well. Or saying, the question is, who do I need to model to become the healthiest version of myself? So sometimes you've just got to watch the questions we ask ourselves because we can give ourselves bad questions, therefore we get a bad answer. Right? In my twenties, I would say, as long as you do what the best in the world do and you model proven practices, how could you not be successful? But the problem is, you could give a business on how to sell $20 bills for 10 bucks to a lot of people and they'll

• 10:07Speaker 00

  still mess it up.

• 10:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  And nobody wants $20 bills anymore. You know, they're kind of old. These are kind of crinkled. I didn't get a good batch. They showed up late. My wife thinks it's a dream. I don't think.

• 10:20Gary Brecka?

  You know, I saw you and Ed Mylett talking one day. I think it was out on a bluff in California. Yeah, yeah. I recognize the background and, um, and you were just, it was a very simple story that you told. You're like, if I'm in a restaurant and I order, you know, well done steak and some guy, somebody brings me chicken. I just eat the chicken.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  I got bigger problems to solve.

• 10:42Gary Brecka?

  I got bigger problems and it reminded me, you're like, I don't get all wound up and, you know, and fire up the waiter and then bring the conversation down at the table. Look at this. They screwed up.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  I want to get fired up over, in your terms would be, I want to get fired up and upset about if I can't live to 110.

• 10:57Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  I want to get fired up about a hundred million dollar business or a billion dollar, like, and I'm not, I'm just saying, I, you just realize all problems can feel the same weight.

• 11:06Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  But they aren't. Solve bigger problems, get bigger results.

• 11:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Right? It's, it's what you do so well. So at this phase of my life, I realize that if the mindset isn't right, then it doesn't matter about the opportunity.

• 11:20Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  So, so I want to share a little something with you. I, I, about 15 years ago, I had something so profound shift my life. I hired a consultant. His name was Joe Stump and I hired him and said, I want my students, people who follow me, like yours. You would want more of your people to actually do the stuff you teach so they can actually get healthy.

• 11:39Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Join your VIP, buy your supplements, not because, I mean, I know the passion you have for people. I see it when the cameras are off and you talk about how to, like, you're on this earth to change lives. Like, that's someone you follow. That's someone you model, right? So I hired him to come in and said, how do I get more of my students' results? Because like, I know this thing works.

• 11:58Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Because I spent 15 years figuring it out. And people say yes, but then they actually don't do it and they still are upset that they're not getting results. So I hired him and said, how do I get more results? And he said to me, I want to do this seven levels deep exercise on you. I'm like, no, you don't have to do it on me. Just give it to me. If it's, I paid you 10 grand for half a day. Just give it to me. He's like, no, I can't give it to you. I gotta do it with you. And it's shifting my life, Garrett. Like, I would ask you, why? Okay, you still work. Like you broke. I said that to you.

• 12:26Gary Brecka?

  So true.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  You like you work. So do I.

• 12:28Gary Brecka?

  I literally just landed after a 15 hour flight.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  I know. I said, do you want me to come back? You're like, no, I feel amazing.

• 12:33Gary Brecka?

  Well, I just wanted a cold plunge, but I'm now back to life.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, but yeah, let me say you work so hard. If I said to you, why do you work so hard? What would your answer be?

• 12:43Gary Brecka?

  Two, two, two reasons. One, because I believe that my, my purpose is way bigger than the problems that I have in my life. And secondly, I know that I'm on God's plan for me because I feel that. And it sounds so cliche. I used to think that this saying was just something you put on a sign. You sort of hung it on your office because it was sort of supposed to be there like a, like an Ansel Adams picture or something. And, um, uh, you know, when, when you find something that you would otherwise do for free, that you love to do, you really don't feel like you work a day in your life. So if you look from the outside in, it seems like I'm working my ass off because I travel so much and I keep an insane schedule and I speak so frequently and I read incessantly.

• 13:26Gary Brecka?

  But that's what I love to do. Like when I'm on vacation, I want to do this.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get it. I get it.

• 13:32Gary Brecka?

  I don't like to sleep and I don't like to go on vacation.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  I can't wait to wake up every morning and then I stretch it. So I'm like, how can I get up a half hour earlier? So there's more of the day. I only say that because for you to work the way you work, have the success that you have, the depth of caring, congratulations on this podcast being one of the top podcasts in the world.

• 13:48Gary Brecka?

  Thank you so much.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Well deserved.

• 13:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it's because of the people that are listening right now.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, well deserved and you're listening to the right guy. But there is something in your soul bigger than the fear, bigger than what's going on in politics, bigger than inflation, bigger than tariffs, bigger than politics, bigger than the news being negative or what it is. So they have clickbait. There has to be something bigger in your, your, your reason for doing it has to be greater than the reason not to. I don't want to oversimplify it. And what Joe Stump gave me that day was such a profound shift. I'd already, I was already successful, already had a great company. And but it shifted everything for me because I understood with clarity, why the heck I did what I did. So I want to tell you, you just gave me a great reason why.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Your purpose, God, healing. I know you want to impact people. I know you want to make this world a healthy place. I know you're doing it bigger than most people realize behind the scenes. I know what you're doing behind the scenes to make this country a healthier place. It's amazing what you're doing. I see it.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  But that comes along with something that when you face rejection, when you face conflict, when you face problems, instead of retreating, you might not love it, but you run into the fire.

• 15:00Gary Brecka?

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• 15:37Speaker 00

  So I want to, I'd love to give everybody listening, if you, if you take nothing else from this podcast, take this. Joe Stump, this guy Joe, I'm sitting in front of my team. I got about six of my team members and I'm waiting for him to give us gold to get more of our people to do the things that we know will change their life.

• 15:52Gary Brecka?

  You're leaning for like step one, two, three.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, what's one thing everybody should do right now to be healthier if they're not doing it?

• 15:58Gary Brecka?

  Sleep.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Sleep, right? So it's like you, you give them this process to sleep. You know, if they sleep, you know, all the benefits of it, but they still don't sleep.

• 16:06Gary Brecka?

  So true.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  It's like, what can I do to get your butt in bed and do the thing, right?

• 16:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so true.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  So I'm just waiting for the, ah, this will help me. And he said, Dean, why did you spend 10 grand for me to come here today? And I gotta tell you, when you start, he calls it seven levels deep because you ask yourself the reason why seven times. And I have to tell you, it's crazy. Five's not enough, eight's too many. He's right on point because the first five or so questions come from your head. So he asked me, he's like, well, I said, well, I want, I want more of my students, my clients to have the results I got to have. I was, great, that's such a noble reason. Why do you want them to have success? I said something like, I want to leave a legacy. I want this industry to step up. You know, I, it's like, it's either do better, right? I'm sure you hate when somebody's just hocking a vitamin that they don't even know what it is. It's built with horrible products.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  It's got worse ingredients in it. It's got to drive you crazy.

• 16:59Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Well, now, I mean, Tony's my partner now, but I look at Tony as grade A and, and there were so many people, it was just like, step up or step out, right? So I said some things like that that came out of my head. I don't even know what I said for the first four or five times. But man, when he got to the fifth time, he goes, why is that important? Something shifted. And this is the part everybody should hear. Something shifted from my head to my heart. It was like, like, I physically changed. I felt like, you know, you get the goosebumps. Goosebumps, yeah. And I said something I had never said. I said, I don't ever want to go backwards. I'm sitting in front of my team, they're probably like, and I'm like, I remember being broke as a kid. I remember not being able to go to restaurants. I remember my mom struggling for money. And in this moment, talking about why I hired a consultant with my team around, I'm like, I don't want to go backwards. And he's like, thanks, Dean, you're in your heart, I feel that.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  He goes, that's real, I really appreciate it. And he answered it, just, this is what he did, really, in this soothing voice, like, he was like Matthew McConaughey. He's the guru, yeah. You know what I mean? He's like, but why would it be important for you not to go backwards? And I said, I want my kids to have choices. Now, as a dad, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now I'm emotional, I had a tear running down my eye, and all I remember is, I didn't feel like I had choices as a kid, right? I wanted my kids not to be entitled, the world doesn't need more entitled children, but I wanted them to have more choices in the world. Now I'm in my heart, I got tears running down my eyes, he goes, Dean, that's only number six. And you were a hustler before you had kids, so I gotta ask you the final time, why is it important that your kids have choices? And I said the thing that shifted my life. I said, I need to be in control.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  And for me, not a control freak, what I realized at that moment, I'm an adult with children, sitting around a team, I realized the reason I worked so hard is because my parents were married nine times, between the two of them, five and four. Wow. I moved 20 times by the time I was 19 years old, right? I never felt in control. I had a step-grandfather, Leo Rizzo, he was the greatest guy in the world, he taught me how to hunt, took me fishing, come home from school one day, our stuff's on the front yard in a moving truck, never seen Leo again. Really? Right, stepsister, stepbrother, Gus Valentino was a stepbrother of mine, we were like buddies, we shared bunks. Dad got divorced, never saw Gus again. And I, all these things come racing in my soul, and I realize, I work so hard because I want to be in control of my decisions. I want to raise my kids in a different way.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  I want to be the husband to my wife in a different way. I dress in a black t-shirt every day in my life. I want those choices. Yeah. And that day, so again, I just shared about me, I'm not trying to make it about me. But I would love for you, if take nothing else in this podcast, is find someone to do it with or do it on your own. And every time you think you have the answer, you've got to go deeper into your heart, and it's usually seven times. And when it clicks, you feel this, you feel it through your body. So to this day, I mean, we all face adversity. People think as you get more successful, it gets less, that you just deal with bigger problems. When I hit adversity, hundreds and hundreds of employees, the things we get to do around the world, partner, like all this great stuff, I literally go back to, hey, if I just wanted to make more money,

• 19:57Speaker 00

  I'd quit. If I just wanted to make my students, even though I want them to be more successful, I'd quit. But I'm never going to go backwards. I am never going to let my kids down. And no one is ever going to tell me what I'm going to do with my time. Like, I still take my kids to school. I still get to ballet. I still get to jiu jitsu. I still go to tennis practice. Imagine if someone said, no, sorry, Gary, you got to finish that project. You can't go watch that ballet session of your daughter. That would, like, to me, I'd choose death before that. So get out of my way. Right? So just, all I know is in times, and I mean to keep going, but I'll share this, in times of uncertainty that we have right now, we don't know where the world's going. There's lots of stuff could go amazing. Who knows? Anything that's negative in your body is compounded.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  So if you don't have a strong enough purpose and why, the outside world will control you. You'll play small, you'll sit on your hands, you'll do what most people do, you'll wait to see what happens, rather than saying, now is the time, not tomorrow, not next week. This purpose is so strong, nothing in my way, I got to go.

• 20:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. And how do people find that purpose? Like, you know, because for me, it took until I was in my, like, mid 40s, you know, I was, I was making decent money. I had a nice, decent house. My kids were, you know, all in school, a great family life, you know, we didn't want for a lot of things.

• 21:17Gary Brecka?

  But I think very similar to the transitions that you made, I felt like I wasn't on the path to anything great and I wasn't fulfilling any kind of purpose.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  You were living a life that wasn't yours.

• 21:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it wasn't mine. And now I'm twice as busy and I am a hundred more, times more things on my plate and I am as content and satisfied as I've ever been. I think from the outside in, it might look like chaos, but to me, it's, it's the, I wouldn't give it up for, you know, a moment because it's purpose driven. But I think a lot of people identify with that, but don't know how to find that purpose.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think if you separate, one is the reason why you want to live into who you're meant to be, whatever that is. And the second is the vehicle to get there, right? So I think, I think they're, they're not the same. Like, one is, like, you found your purpose and then your why kind of creeped in.

• 22:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Right? But imagine if you did the exercise first and you're like, I'm supposed to have more time. I'm supposed to impact people. I want to change lives for a living, or whatever it is that you want to do, and I want more freedom. Then it's time to go research and find the vehicle. And it doesn't mean they're going to hit it out of the park on the first one.

• 22:27Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Right? But

• 22:27Gary Brecka?

  It's supposed to suck in the beginning.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  And the other thing I'd love to say to people is, when people say, find your purpose, find your passion job, you're like, I think you're waiting for like clouds to open, sunshine pop out of the box, heaven's part.

• 22:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and it'd be written, like, this is

• 22:41Speaker 00

  This is, ah, like, sometimes you gotta get dirty, fail, and be in it enough to go, damn, this is worth fighting for.

• 22:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  So, so you really just line your ship up in the direction you think you want to go? Do the research on it, model people who've already been there? Like, don't try to figure it out on your own. Somebody's already done what you want to do.

• 22:58Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  So just find somebody who's already done what you want to do, model what they do, and roll up your sleeves, get dirty a little bit, get in it, fail a little, right?

• 23:05Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Confidence comes after courage.

• 23:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Right?

• 23:09Gary Brecka?

  My dad used to say, life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else, which I thought was

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Well, that's such a, that's

• 23:15Gary Brecka?

  He's a very simple

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Oh my God, it's so good.

• 23:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, he's a very simple, like, Captain John Breck, a big shout out, Dad. He's, you know, my mom and dad are still with us by the grace of God.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 23:24Gary Brecka?

  And he was, you know, like, a simple guy, very disciplined, military guy.

• 23:30Gary Brecka?

  But he, he would say, life is what happens to you when you're on your way to doing something else. And I was like, I didn't realize how profound that was until I was an adult.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  Beyond profound, yeah.

• 23:38Gary Brecka?

  But it's so true. Cause don't you hate it when you're like in high school and your, and your parents are like, well, what do you want to make your life? What do you want to go to college for?

• 23:44Speaker 00

  I don't even know what I want for lunch.

• 23:45Gary Brecka?

  I don't have a freaking idea. I don't know. I don't know what I want to have for dinner. Exactly, exactly. So sometimes those, those sayings just, they just go right through you.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Until you get to a certain age. It's like, do you ever hear the saying, when you have kids, you wait about six months and you call your parents and say, thank you, and I'm sorry. I had no idea. I had no idea what you went through to keep us alive, right? It's funny, your dad's saying, there's a, there's a saying, Og Mandino, there was a section in his book. It's kind of old school, um, therapy. The old school therapy is, don't let your emotions dictate your actions. Let your actions dictate your emotions.

• 24:23Gary Brecka?

  So true.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Right? How can you be depressed and sad when you're on the move? So sometimes we gotta get on the move and then we find the thing we should be doing along the journey. Just what your father said, beautifully said by your dad.

• 24:34Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, no, it was beautifully said and it was very simple and like in simplicity, there was, it was really profound. And it's so true because, well, I, I actually went to undergrad and grad school for human bio, your biology and human biology. I never really realized how much of an impact that that was going to have because it was, you know, years later that it came around and I found it to be, you know, really very useful. But I think it's like you were saying, you know, get in there, roll your sleeves up, fail a little bit. Because I think we all crave that safety, right? We don't want to leave the nest unless we have a fully baked plan, you know?

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Did you ever see that meme where it shows, be careful what you wish for? And it shows three meals a day, safe, protected, all this stuff. And then it shows a lion in a cage. Right? He's safe, he's protected, he gets three meals a day, can't be hunted, can't be killed. And he's in a cage.

• 25:26Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  You know?

• 25:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so true. You gotta get out of that comfort zone. And so what, what are the exercises that somebody could go through? I mean, how, how do you start putting yourself and putting one foot in front of the other and taking that path towards success? You, you talk about courage, not the definition of courage that we find in Webster's dictionary, but I've heard you talk about your own version of courage before. And what does that mean to you? What is, what is the, what does courage really mean to you? Well, how does somebody find the courage to do that?

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, really great question, you know? Courage is not moving forward in the absence of fear. Courage is moving forward even though you're scared to death. Right? And how they all stack up, if you've got a good enough purpose, then that pushes you to be courageous. Right? And people say, I need confidence. Confidence to me doesn't really come until you're actually in the game. Right? You have the courage to start the game.

• 26:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  You learn how to play the game when you're on the field. Like the Theodore Roosevelt quote, the man in the arena, right? And you're on the field, bloody and marred. You don't, you don't want to be in the stands with someone else's name on your jersey.

• 26:26Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Cheering for them. You're horrible, you suck, but you're sitting in your chair doing nothing. I want to be on the field, even if I fail.

• 26:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  You're learning, right? So courage is that thing that you need to move forward so you can see if you like it. Right? And so there's a, there's a couple of reasons you need courage. So I'll try to answer both the questions, like how do you, what are some steps you should take? One thing you ought to realize now, and I know we're on a pod, you have the absolute best podcast in the world on health and longevity. And we're talking about success. I get that's a little.

• 26:55Gary Brecka?

  No, I love this.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  But it all goes, yeah, at the end of our lives, we want to be successful and healthy.

• 26:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Right?

• 26:59Gary Brecka?

  The first course module that I, I built for my VIP community was mindset. Because I think a lot of people struggle with mindset, meaning they, they struggle with just the simple ability to put themselves first. Especially women, you know, without putting the needs of other people before theirs. And eventually what happens is this act of being so selfless

• 27:22Gary Brecka?

  comes back to haunt them. They believe that self-care is being selfish, when really self-care is being very selfless.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:28Gary Brecka?

  You know, it's the old.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  You're a better version of yourself for everybody.

• 27:30Gary Brecka?

  Oxygen mask on before you assist your own child. You know, if the plane depressurizes, which isn't, you know, a mother's first instinct. It's to try, right? Not to help themselves. But I think there's a lot of truth in that, you know, you're a much better person and can show up better for your spouse, for your career, for your kids. You know, for your coworkers, for your peers.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  So what I, what I would start, if I, again, if I could answer both those questions, like how would you start? One thing, we, we don't realize it, but we fall in a hypnotic rhythm. We fall in a routine. Right? What's probably the biggest thing to get somebody healthier is to get out of the current routine that they have. Even if it's not a good routine, I, I wake up, I have my first cup of coffee, I eat this certain thing, I do this certain thing. And you got to shift that morning routine is hard enough. Not even your whole life, just shift the first thing you do in the first 45 minutes of waking up is hard, right? But if you can get them to shift that little bit. Then you go, oh, you got that. How about you doing this once a week? Oh, how about three times a week? Right? So it's these, so first off, it's like kaizen. All shifts start with micro shifts that lead to bigger shifts that lead to bigger shifts. Everybody who starts in New Year's resolutions, I'm gonna do all this stuff. Never gonna eat bread, no more sodas, no more things.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  By January 1st, it's all, January 15th, it's all gone, right? Cause it's, it's too big.

• 28:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  So one thing to realize, say you're in a career and it's unfulfilling. And you know you're meant for more. I love using that term. Like you, you're enough, you know enough, you could do more, you could impact more. You're just not quite sure where to go. But without realizing it, in a career, sometimes we start that career thinking, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this career, I'm gonna get promotions, I'm gonna get raises, I'm gonna knock it out of the park. And, and in a, in a, in a, you know, hierarchy of, of a business, sometimes you don't get recognized. Your lessons aren't heard, your ideas are, are passed over. And over time, you start shrinking on the inside. Like, hey, nobody listens anyway. The heck with it. It's a safe spot.

• 29:18Gary Brecka?

  That's that inner monologue, right?

• 29:19Speaker 00

  I get my check. Everybody in my family tells me I should be lucky to have this job. It's okay. But then there's one day, right? We all wake up and say, I'm like, I watched a Steve Harvey interview just this morning. I was on the treadmill this morning. I thought it was so good. There's a day you wake up and go, enough, I, I need to be healthy today. I'm, he, he heard about you on a Friday, he was here on a Monday. I love that urge.

• 29:39Gary Brecka?

  He flew down to see me.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Right? Because we all get to a moment where you go, I'm not doing it. I'm living someone else's life. And, and whether it's because you're let go, or AI replaces you, or you decide, there's gotta be that definitive line and say, today, enough is enough. I'm getting healthy. I'm starting my own thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna shift my financial future. Right? When that happens, what you don't realize is the years of maybe a career mindset made you turn down your innovation, turn down your drive a little bit. And you gotta find a way to wake it up and you gotta be courageous to do that.

• 30:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Right? And you gotta realize that maybe the guardrails go away, but you were meant to drive with no guardrails. You were meant not to be in that cage, right?

• 30:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, but what are some of the ways that, that people can shift that, that inner monologue? Right? Like that, that dialogue? Because I think that, you know, I talk about, for example, um, keeping little promises to yourself.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Love that.

• 30:32Gary Brecka?

  Okay, so you, you, you know, and, and when I say, The promises that you break are the promises that nobody else knows about because you know, you don't tell your spouse, "Hey, I told myself I'm gonna go to bed at 10 o'clock tonight," and then you go to bed at midnight. You just made that promise to yourself. You know, you got home from work that day and you're like, "Tonight, I'm going to bed at 10 o'clock." And you only shared that with yourself, and you go to bed at 11:30. You know, tomorrow morning, I'm getting out for a 30-minute walk first thing in the morning. You don't really go for the walk. Nobody else notices but you. And what I believe happens is that you keep breaking these little promises to yourself, and you actually lose trust in yourself. It's so true. And you actually truly don't believe yourself because your actions don't fall in line.

• 31:18Gary Brecka?

  And I- You lose faith in your own- Yeah, so I'm like- We're not this collection of goals and this collection of priorities. We're really a collection of habits. And, you know, if you want to lose weight and you don't develop the habits of somebody who's going to lose weight, the goal of losing weight, or the priority of losing weight, is you're never going to get there. So if you don't get into the habits, so if you don't have the habits of someone who's successful, or the habits of someone who wants to lose weight, or the habits of a champion, or the habits of somebody who wants to be financially successful, I don't know any other way that you get there, right, without developing those habits. But it has to start in, you know, like in my course, I always start with the mindset shift. You have to. So how do people begin that shift?

• 32:02Gary Brecka?

  How do they start to change that monologue? Because the older we are- The harder it gets. The stronger that monologue is. It's like the calcium, it gets harder. Yeah. Right? And then I think it's sort of a double-edged sword for younger people. And I noticed this in my son and my daughter's generation, not with my son and my daughter particularly, but in their generation, is that they truly want instantaneous gratification. Like, they're willing to try jujitsu for three classes, and if they're not a black belt, by the fourth class- They're out. You know, they're kind of out. And I think that's, society has set that framework up. Or, you know, they're looking at Instagram and they're like, "Well, this kid is making millions of dollars a year doing stupid videos and gambling, so maybe I just want to do stupid videos and gamble." You don't realize that's the one in the million- Yeah.

• 32:47Gary Brecka?

  -that broke through.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  I love this question. First off, I tell my kids that all the time. I'm like, don't say you're gonna make your bed every day and then you don't because you're lying to yourself and then you'll get in that habit. Right? And even though that's a little thing.

• 32:59Gary Brecka?

  Just accepting. No, it's very true.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  I like to think about it is, here's three things, then I'll give you a tool that I use, like a tool in the toolbox, right? The more tools you have, the more further you can go, right? Is, and we could talk about this later, but first, if you're gonna, you wanna do your own thing, then you need to spend the time understanding the industries that are gonna be here and grow in the future, right? You might say, I would never invest in a taxi cab business. It's over, right? But would you even invest in an Uber business right now when they say within two years, 90% of the cars are gonna be autonomous? Right? So you have to, you gotta make sure you could be the best in the world, best Uber driver in the world if it's replaced by a machine. And there's driverless Teslas and Waymos all over the country.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  It doesn't matter how good you get. So you gotta spend the time to find an industry that's growing and that, we could talk about that a little bit. Number two is you gotta model proven practices. Don't, we don't have time in today's world. Everything's moving exponentially. Nothing's linear anymore. AI has changed everything. There's no like, oh, in three, it's like, no, we can figure out what took three years in three seconds, right?

• 34:05Gary Brecka?

  It's so true.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  So you have to find somebody who's already done what you've done and do what they've done so you could start off where they left off. And the third thing is, you gotta have that purpose strong enough that you take uncomfortable action because it is uncomfortable to do something new. If you do something you've never done before, it's gonna be uncomfortable. Most people retreat. If you don't wanna be the person that retreats, you gotta take uncomfortable action. So I don't wanna oversimplify success, but if you're an emerging company, you model someone's already done it and you keep persisting. I don't think there's any way you don't succeed, whether that's with your health or the business you wanna start. So if I add a tool in our toolbox, like courage is a big thing to me. It's a word I use often with my kids. I use it in my own vocabulary to myself. Is I wanna have the courage to move forward.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  And one thing I think about, I shared this once, I'll always ask, we're doing an event. I'm so glad you're coming.

• 34:54Gary Brecka?

  Oh, no, I'm so excited for this. I'm so excited for the end of the year this year, you know, working with you and Tony. I'm so excited for it.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Oh, me too. And we'll talk about that in a minute, but you'll see there's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people live. And I love, because we got this big chat wall where the chats come in.

• 35:10Gary Brecka?

  Oh, in the, on these events.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, and these, on these virtual events, right? You're gonna freak out when you see, because you get instant feedback, right? So I'll say, hey,

• 35:19Speaker 00

  What is the thing holding you back from living into your full potential? In your world, you might say, being your optimal health. In me, it's like, most people there will have 800,000 people that are all saying, I want to do my own thing. And I say, what's holding you back? It'll be things like, my family doesn't believe in me, it's kind of embarrassing, it's hard to start small. My husband thinks I'm crazy, I want to wait till we have a different president. Like, it'll come in, but you'll see it, like, like our data, and then we take that and run it through AI, and I know the top things. You know, one of the top things is the fear of looking small. The fear of starting over, the fear of failing, like, all these things. So, I've taken them through an exercise, and I'll, not an exercise, I'll do it in two minutes here. But I say, okay, so think about that fear. And what is that fear on a scale of one to 10?

• 36:03Speaker 00

  That your husband doesn't believe in you, your friends will think you're crazy for starting your own thing. You already paid for college, so why should I do, right? All these things, I'm like, what is that story? Because that's the story holding you back. Like, there's, there's nothing else, there's, that's the story. I'm not good enough, I'm too old, I'm too young, my husband, but, that's the story. So, on a scale of one to 10, how strong is that holding you back? And everybody will do a seven to 10, seven to 10. Like, okay, great, now stop for a minute. Now, it's the end of your life. You lived 90 years, 95 years, and you're sitting next to your maker, you're sitting next to God. God pulls out his iPhone and plays you a video of the woman or the man you could have been. And you see this life of living into what, it scared you, but you did it. And you had a breakthrough, then you failed three times, then you had a bigger breakthrough,

• 36:46Speaker 00

  and you watch this version of you that you didn't even, you knew it existed, but you let that story of your mom, your sister, the age, stop you.

• 36:53Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  I said, now, I want to tell you, tell me what that feels like on a scale of one to 10. And it's like 100, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000. I'm like, and what is the only thing you would say to your maker? And everybody writes, go back, go back, go back, start over, start over, go back, go back, go back.

• 37:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  And I look at the camera, and I say, wish granted. You're here today. Today's the day you could start over. Today's the day you don't let that story stop you anymore because your family doesn't believe in you. You're gonna show them what you're made of. Because you're older, you have wisdom, not just information. Because, because you could shift that story and that motivation because then I sometimes go back and I say, "Okay, now rate the first story." And it's like, "One, one, one, one." That stupid thing, right?

• 37:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that stupid little thing. My family doesn't believe in me. Who gives a shit?

• 37:41Speaker 00

  And that might sound like, "Yeah, yeah, but Dean, how do you actually make the money?" This is the foundation to have the leverage, right? It's the leverage to go, "I'm freaking doing this no matter what. I fail, I'm getting up." My parents criticize me, I'm getting up. My family thinks I'm not, I'm getting up, I'm going. Because when you have that, you can give a person with that much, like, reason to do it. A B opportunity, a C opportunity, and they'll make it work. Give somebody without that passion an A-plus opportunity, they fail every time.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  One of my favorite biohacks outside of breath work by far is mineral salts. Baja Gold Sea Salt. It's got all of the trace minerals that the body needs. You know, most of us are not just protein deficient, meaning amino acid deficient, or fatty acid deficient, we are mineral deficient. So a quarter teaspoon of this in water, first thing in the morning will make sure that you get all of the essential minerals that you need. It tastes amazing. In fact, I made a steak today. I actually made a grass-fed steak with grass-fed butter, and I put just mushrooms and a little bit of rosemary, and I sprinkled Baja Gold Sea Salt all over the top. Try it, it'll be your new favorite for cooking, too. It's the cheapest and one of my favorite biohacks. I don't know, a fifteen or twenty dollar bag of this will probably last you five years. It's literally the world's best biohacking secret.

• 38:51Gary Brecka?

  Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. That's so true. Gosh, it's so true. And, and you know, for someone like you, that's, that's, you've impacted millions and you've made millions. Now that you've achieved that level of socioeconomic success, for you, what's, what's on the other side of that? Like, what's, what's, what's next for you? Like, what, what's still getting you out of bed?

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Impact at this space.

• 39:15Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 39:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and somebody could say-

• 39:17Gary Brecka?

  I hear Tony talk about that a lot. I think about it a lot, too.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  He's my dearest friend, right? I just, I was with him till midnight last night. I just, I'm in Florida because I spent the last three days with him and I get to hang out with you two. So what a great, what a great couple of days, right? And I'm gonna biohack like a madman.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  But if this phase is, you always need that compelling future, right? So Tony and I co-founded, we own multiple companies together, but we co-founded a company called Mastermind. And we started Mastermind, we were on a golf course. We just talked about it yesterday, we were on a golf course seven years ago. We were already friends for five years and I watched so many people.

• 39:49Gary Brecka?

  Before you had any business together.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Before you had any business. You know why? Cause we started to become friends and every time I'm with them, we have a meeting, everybody's pitching them. And you, you see this, especially with your podcast, but you're gonna have a hundred times more in the next, you know?

• 40:01Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  So I'm like, you know what? I don't want to do business with this guy. He's becoming my dearest friend. Let's just be friends, cause I was doing well, he was doing extremely well. But then about seven, eight years ago, we're on a golf course and we said, if we were gonna start a business, what would we start?

• 40:13Gary Brecka?

  That's how the conversation.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Literally like that.

• 40:15Gary Brecka?

  We were gonna start a business.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  And he said, you know, he went to a Jim Rohn event, old school personal development. Jim Rohn event when he was 17 with his last 40 bucks fundamentally shifted his life. He started teaching Jim Rohn stuff and then he became Tony Robbins.

• 40:29Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:30Gary Brecka?

  I didn't know that.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  For me, I was already, I had a car business, a collision shop and auto sales. I buy Tony Robbins stuff 27 years ago. I jumped into this industry. So we just decided, why not show people how to do what we do? How to take your life experience, what you do right now with your VIP program, with all the things you're doing all over the world. This podcast, you're delivering value to people so they can condense time. If you model proven practices, it could take you 10 years to figure it out on your own, or I'd do what Gary did. I could do it in a year.

• 40:58Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Right? I could do it.

• 40:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Tony took 40 years to do it.

• 41:00Gary Brecka?

  And I could teach people to do it.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Right? So, so we decided, why not create a company that pulls back the curtain and shows people that their life experience might be the most valuable asset you own. So then, so then we said, this will be our passion project. We'll show people what we learned. I have 28 years, he has 48 years. We had 76 years of combined in this industry. We're like, we'll show people, you don't realize it, but the skill you have at work, it's valuable. The mess you went through and you're on the other side, it's valuable. The passion you have that you learned so much about somebody starting day one on the passion.

• 41:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  It's valuable, cause they want to condense time.

• 41:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  So we started a company called Mastermind. Now it started, we launched it and it became, it became a movement, right? We've, this is gonna be our seventh event that averages almost a million people event.

• 41:44Gary Brecka?

  That is incredible.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  Right? We're getting people all over the world.

• 41:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I'm speaking at your.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I can't wait for you to be there. It's gonna be amazing. But the cool part about it is it's so mission driven because now Tony's got a really good way about him. He's like, brother. You know, he got to invent this industry in so many ways and create it and has been a legacy for all of us to model, right? I get to, I've been doing it probably second longest to him, almost 30 years. But he's like, hey, when we're gone, we can't help people anymore. So if we show people how to do what we do, we can make millions of people armed with the tools to live a fulfilled life, to live into their full potential, an industry that's always gonna keep growing. And we're going, like, he, he found a way to make it about a legacy, about impact. And the byproduct is the company's growing exponentially.

• 42:28Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  But we get up every day, we, again, we, I'd say that to you, you work like you're broke. Tony and I were joking, we both work like we're broke.

• 42:34Gary Brecka?

  Same here.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Because now he's like, we got more things to do. And, and the byproduct, you know, he's, he fed a billion people in eight years. One billion people, provided one billion meals through Feeding America. He wanted to do it in 10, he did it in eight.

• 42:45Gary Brecka?

  You were telling me that, I mean, a billion.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  A billion meals.

• 42:48Gary Brecka?

  I mean, that's, you wanna talk about making an impact? I don't know another.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  Somebody fed, somebody fed him when he was a kid at Thanksgiving when he had nothing and just left this lasting impression on him. But the things that he gets to do, right? You ask what drives me.

• 43:02Gary Brecka?

  Those are chicken soup for the soul things.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  Oh, I know.

• 43:05Gary Brecka?

  Those are gratifying.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  He does those on a regular basis, a, a, like regularly, he's doing things like that without telling anybody. I'll, I'll give you an example, when, when the fires happened in California, he calls me, like disturbed by it. Brother, there's a lot of people with money, they go wherever they want. There's a lot of people without money, they lost their houses, they lost everything. They can't even afford an Airbnb.

• 43:25Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  He's like, what are we gonna do? We, like, he takes, he's like, what are we gonna do?

• 43:29Gary Brecka?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  I don't know, what can I do?

• 43:30Gary Brecka?

  It's an injustice, he can't, he can't live with it.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, you know, he donated millions of bucks, then he calls me back and he says, hey, let's, let's put another million and buy Airbnbs and just give open tickets to people who can't afford it. I'm like, tell me where to wire the money. Right? And having that ability to send money like that in a moment, or build schools in Africa, or help kids out of slavery, all these things you get to do in the invisible, goes right back to why I get up every morning, I'm like, because our business, Mastermind, gets to show people how to start, scale, live into their full potential, and the byproduct, we do this cool stuff for people. I get to meet awesome people like you, we're building a friendship, we're not just doing a podcast, which is totally awesome.

• 44:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Right? It's like, man, I want everybody to experience that. And, and I'm 56, like, I don't have a lot, I gotta, I gotta go fast, I want, you know what I mean? I gotta get more people.

• 44:18Gary Brecka?

  I'm gonna give you another 30 years.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you, I'll take an extra 30, so, and I'm so excited you're speaking at this event, people are gonna absolutely love you.

• 44:25Gary Brecka?

  You know, I think it's so powerful for people to hear ways to quiet that voice of fear and doubt. Because I think, you know, there's a famous story about Oprah Winfrey. And when she, she tried all of these diets and tried all of these different ways to lose weight. I guess she tried Weight Watchers and she might be a shareholder now, but she tried Weight Watchers. She tried all of these different exercise regimens and she just couldn't lose weight. And she met this philosopher named Gary Zukoff. And who wrote the book Seed of the Soul, and I think he wrote another book called Soul Stories.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Seed of Soul was great.

• 44:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. And so he was credited with getting her to, for the first time, to getting Oprah Winfrey to lose weight. And I remember reading this story and someone asked Gary, like, what, what was it that you did to get her to lose weight? And he said, it was very simple. I had her stop seeing herself as a fat person. And I was like, wow, that's, that's really profound. You know, I mean, you're a smoker, you see yourself as a smoker, you never stop smoking. And I think sometimes the subconscious way that we see ourselves is what manifests itself in the, in the real world.

• 45:38Gary Brecka?

  And when you do these things, like break little promises to yourself, it just, it sort of reiterates and gives, gives a voice to those kinds of things. And I think a lot of people, yourself included, doesn't sound like you were surrounded by, by a lot of mentors.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  No.

• 45:53Gary Brecka?

  Right? You didn't have like the rich uncle that had figured it all out. That was your mom's brother that was driving a nice car and built a business and was like, hey Dean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna teach you, I'm gonna teach you how to do it. So I think, you know, very often people fall back on that crutch too, is, is like, well, I don't have anybody to show me. But what you're saying is, it really is within you.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  It is. And, and, and once you find it within you, then the mentors appear. You didn't even know there was a, and the mentor could be the book, could be the podcast, could be the interview that you listen to, right? Because it's like when you, when you buy a car, you think nobody has it, right? I bought, I bought a white Ford pickup truck. I love it.

• 46:32Gary Brecka?

  Oh, then you see white Ford pickup trucks.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Everywhere. There's 200 of them in my neighborhood, like, you know? And it's the same way. Sometimes when you shift, when you go, I don't want to get to the end of my life and realize I missed it. Oof, I gotta take action today, right? I do have a purpose. I want to be in control of my time or whatever that is. All of a sudden, you get hungry. Like, if you look at the common thread for the people who get healthier.

• 46:54Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  That finally do their own thing, it's a depth of hunger. Where does that hunger come from? It comes from a purpose, it comes from running away from something, whatever it is. You use it to get that momentum and all of a sudden, I believe the white Ford pickup trucks start showing up all over the place. Right? There's a mentor, there's an event I should go to, there's a speech I should listen to, this is a book I should download, right?

• 47:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, but along this journey of yours, because it seems to me like you've really developed a very conscious mindset. Like, you're very present, you're very in touch with how you feel, who you are, where you want to go. But along your journey somewhere, there had to be some setbacks. Even success had to bring a whole new set of...

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Without a doubt.

• 47:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, of setbacks.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:42Gary Brecka?

  Are there any that particularly stand out to you, tipping points that you recall?

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:48Gary Brecka?

  What did you do in those moments?

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Everybody's like, "Thanks, Gary Dean, you make me feel so good about success."

• 47:56Gary Brecka?

  I just want to remind you, you're human, buddy. We'll bring you right back down to earth here.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Not only do they continue to come, they get bigger. Yeah.

• 48:06Gary Brecka?

  They get more complex.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  The one that I thought I couldn't get through is so, you got to figure, I did own a collision shop. I owned Dean Collision Center at 19 years old.

• 48:16Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 48:17Speaker 00

  It wasn't a monster, but in my little town, I had Dean Collision Center. I had about 15 apartments. I would buy rundown apartment houses. So I would work on cars during the day and I'd go home and eat and I'd work on my houses. I learned how to be a plumber, a carpenter. So I had 19 apartments and a little collision shop and I bought a tow truck. So, long story short, and I watched Tony Robbins on an infomercial. And I was already doing well, but when I listened to Tony, I bought his whole course. And I remember listening to "Life Happens For Me, Not To Me." Like, I could use my past as the wind, not the anchor, all the stuff we've been talking about today. Foundationally, I got a lot of that from him 27, 28 years ago, right?

• 48:52Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Long story short, not only profoundly shifts some things in me, I was already having success, but I knew I was meant for more, just like what you said. There was something, I was living someone else's life. I wasn't supposed to be painting fenders, I'm not knocking that, but that wasn't where I felt I belonged. But the second thing that happened by buying this course is I said, "Wow, I gave Tony Robbins money for information." Like, think about it. It's, it's inflation proof. You don't have to store it. You don't have to warehouse it. He just, he just shared with me stuff to be better and it worked.

• 49:23Gary Brecka?

  You don't have to pay a tariff.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So I went in that, so I decided to go in that business. So the two things shifted. I decided to go in that business and create a course. I did an infomercial. People like, why'd you do an infomercial? It's because there was no internet when I started.

• 49:34Gary Brecka?

  Right, right.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Sorry, I'm just older, right? But long story short, picture this blue collar guy in a little town. I have two desks in my collision shop. One is my new business, creating an infomercial and a product. I had no clue what I was doing. Look back now.

• 49:49Gary Brecka?

  But that was your favorite desk, guy? Because I know, I know what you mean. Yeah.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like.

• 49:52Gary Brecka?

  I have a desk with all my.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like, somebody come in for an estimate on their car and then the other phone, I'm like, oh my God, I gotta, like, this is my future, right? So, long story short, I start getting momentum. I produce a product. I produce an infomercial. I put way, back then, to do an infomercial and iMedia, it was a couple hundred grand, which I didn't have. I put a lot of it on credit cards. So I'm launching this. And then I find a company out in Arizona who knows more than me about this space. So now, picture, I go about two years, working in New York, upstate, my collision shop, I sold cars, apartment houses, flipping houses. I'd go back to New York, three weeks being that guy. I'd make money. I'd take it with me to Arizona and I'd dump it what seemed like this bottomless pit of this infomercial product company. Like, I'd put 25 grand. I'm like, oh, we're good.

• 50:38Gary Brecka?

  That's back when you sent out mailers, actual mailers.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's like, two days later, they're like, it's gone. I'm like, ah! You know, so I'm hustling back and forth and I'm finally getting momentum, Gary. I'm like, I finally, you know, you remember, you know the breakthrough? You've been there a million times when you're like, it's the moment before you quit, that you just say, one more go. And that's the thing I wish everybody could have, is like, sometimes we quit inches from the touchdown, the field goal, or whatever it is you want to say, right? I'm about like, can I really do this? In my mind, the story my sister told me, I'm not Tony Robbins, you're 5'7", he's 6'7", he's got friends, he's got money.

• 51:12Gary Brecka?

  You're 5'7", he's 6'7".

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Like, I remember all these things, right? Of them trying to protect me. And, and right before it's quitting, Gary, I'm starting to get momentum. And I see it. I see how people are starting to say, thank you for the product. And, and we're getting momentum. And me going back and forth, I hire someone who's, at this time, is probably the age I am now. I thought, older, wiser. I hire him as like, CFO, help me. Much as I could afford, help me run this when I'm not here because I gotta go back to New York and actually make money to fund this, this hole, right?

• 51:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  I start getting momentum, there's a little money in the bank, we're getting the success, the infomercial is starting to rank like I'm the fourth infomercial in the country. Tony's number one.

• 51:51Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  My mentor, that he didn't even know it back then, I'm like number four or five. And this guy at 56 years old, never gambled a day in his life, he gambled his wife's retirement money away. And when he lost that, he drained all my bank accounts, went to the casino, put it all on a color.

• 52:08Gary Brecka?

  Who is this?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  It was a CFO, it wasn't CFO, back then it was an accountant.

• 52:11Gary Brecka?

  Accountant.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  So, I wasn't.

• 52:12Gary Brecka?

  For you.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  For me.

• 52:13Gary Brecka?

  Oh my gosh.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  He took all the money out of all my accounts, went and gambled to try to get his wife's money back and he lost mine. So I'm just barely afloat, right? You gotta think, and I got people saying, "You're a dreamer out there in Arizona, infomercial guy." And back then it wasn't, it was like you were called the infomercial guy, like you wanna be the infomercial guy? And I go out there one day thinking we're doing good and he calls me and he just, he says, "Can I talk to you?" He says, "It's all gone." I'm like, "What do you, what do you mean it's all gone?" He said to me, "We don't have one dollar, we can't make payroll on Friday." Like, "We finally put a cushion away, go get the cushion money." And he told me the story, crying.

• 52:46Gary Brecka?

  He told you the story?

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, crying like a baby.

• 52:48Gary Brecka?

  He just threw himself at the mercy of the court, oh my gosh.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  And, and I just remember leaving there again, I remember, it was back when cell phones were those, not cellphone, a, a home cordless phone, the big.

• 52:57Gary Brecka?

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Antenna that you pull out?

• 52:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  I threw it so hard against the wall, it stuck in, it went straight in and stuck. I went to the floor and cried. And this is the part I want everybody to hear, the human part, is all of it came back. I said, "My sister was right, I didn't go to college, I don't have a business degree, I don't know how to run businesses, this is for people way smarter than me, this is for people who have money backing, this is for people who weren't blue collar, I'm a damn car guy." Like, I remember just saying, "You should have never left Marlboro, you should," like all these things, no matter how much, I didn't work on myself as much back then, but I remember all of those things, a- and I thank God that something shifted, I don't know if it was a day, three days or five days, something shifted. And I just said, if I can get through this, I bet you I can get through anything.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  That was, that was honestly a shift. I'd love to say it was miraculous. It was praying and I probably did all of that. But I just got this thing in my head. I'm like, well, what if I could get through this? Like, I bet you if I got through this, nothing will ever stop me again. And just the switch of the thought, Gary, went from crying in my soup. I woke up the next morning like, how do I fix this? How do I fix this? I mean, I did things like applied for 10 credit cards at once so they wouldn't all see my credit card, the credit check.

• 54:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you used to be able to do that.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  Right. You can't do it anymore. Right. AI, they can find it. So I applied for all these credit cards. Soon as I got them, I went to the bank and got cash advance on all of them. Made payroll. My, my dad had a, had a house with no mortgage on it from years prior that I helped him get. I'm like, Dad, can I do a home equity line of credit on your house? But I need to do it right now. I'll pay the whole thing. Please. He's like, do it, do it. He got me a hundred grand off his house. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I got 80 grand here. I got a hundred grand here. What about this? I sold the house I was living in.

• 54:43Gary Brecka?

  You did.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  I sold the house I was living. I moved into a $1,200 a month house rented down the street. I got 400, 300 grand in equity or 200 grand in equity in the house. I put all that in and all I kept saying is, imagine if I get through this.

• 54:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  And, and, and that's, that's the gift I, I, I hope we inspired other people to see.

• 55:00Gary Brecka?

  You know what I think too? I think that a lot of the best things in life come from perspective. And I think that when you have that perspective and then you succeed, even if you marginally succeed.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, even if you just don't die.

• 55:14Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You just stay alive. So, you know, I look at a lot of the negative things that have, you know, looking back, you would consider to be negative things. You know, litigation, divorce, bankruptcy, you know, all, all of these things. I walked out of Louis Vuitton store one time with a pair of sunglasses on my head and. And I ended up actually calling the store to report it, but I got arrested the next day for walking out of Louis Vuitton has a zero tolerance policy and they actually arrested me and my mugshot was in the paper and

• 55:45Speaker 00

  Gosh, I'm sorry.

• 55:47Gary Brecka?

  The case got thrown out and it was, you know, it was, it was, it was a no low process and I got a lawful denial letter from the court and everything else. As soon as the state attorney down got it, she was like, you didn't actually steal these. You reported them before they found out. But, but I'm just saying, I look back at a lot of these things, you know, divorce or bankruptcy or, and God help you if you've ever been arrested. It's the worst feeling in the world. But, and the shift, the momentous shift that, that happened in me because of that event, because if you just don't stop and you get beyond that.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  And you get more tolerance.

• 56:20Gary Brecka?

  You get, you, you build this resilience, right?

• 56:23Speaker 00

  And then, then if you start thinking, what if God, I know your beliefs.

• 56:27Gary Brecka?

  I'm a huge believer.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  What if you had to experience that to be the Gary you are today?

• 56:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  I see the relationship you have with your wife and I feel blessed to say that I have that with mine.

• 56:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  And I, I'm not saying, not critical, but I know a lot of people that it looks like that, but behind the curtain, it's not.

• 56:44Gary Brecka?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  What if you had to go through all that?

• 56:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  To be the man you are to your wife? What if you had to go through all that to have the resilience to impact so many lives? What if you had to do that to do this podcast?

• 56:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it's all worth it.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Right? Then, then you look, you have an ability, I know this sounds crazy, especially if you're younger, you might think I'm nuts, but you have ability to change your past. Everybody says you, you can change your future, can't change your past. Not really true. You could give a different perspective to the things that happened.

• 57:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Like, why the hell, I forgot the damn sunglasses on my head. I walked out, it wasn't my fault.

• 57:18Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  But I guarantee if you had a way to look at the dots, when you get to your maker at the end of your life and say, why did that happen? He's like, oh, wait, let me pull out page 47.

• 57:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  And you're like, oh my gosh.

• 57:29Gary Brecka?

  I needed you to bang a right.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was trying to tell you to make the left Gary. You weren't. So I made a hard right for you, right?

• 57:35Gary Brecka?

  Exactly.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  And you're like, oh my gosh, right?

• 57:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  Whether it's true or not. If you believe it's true, it feels just the same.

• 57:43Gary Brecka?

  Like many of you, the hardest thing for me is to shut off my mind at night when I want to sleep. And it's funny because sometimes I'll wake up tired already thinking of when I'll get back to bed again. But exactly the moment that I lay my head on the pillow, it feels like the machine of crazy what-if-thoughts has turned back on. Does this happen to you? Let me tell you my new secret to deal with this. You may have heard of magnesium breakthrough by BiOptimizers and how great it is for sleep and promoting calmness and relaxation. What I found out is that the brains behind magnesium breakthrough have taken it to the next level with a product specifically designed for sleep. It's called Sleep Breakthrough, and it's been a total game changer for me. Sleep Breakthrough combines the power of magnesium with other natural ingredients to help us

• 58:26Gary Brecka?

  fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and actually wake up feeling refreshed. Since I started taking Sleep Breakthrough, I've been waking up feeling rested, energized, and ready to tackle the day ahead. I highly recommend giving Sleep Breakthrough a try. Trust me. Visit BiOptimizers, that's B-I-Optimizers.com/ultimate and order now. Oh, and in addition to the discount you'll get by using the promo code ULTIMATE, there are always amazing free gifts with your purchase. That's also why I love shopping at BiOptimizers. Go now to BiOptimizers.com/ultimate to get your Sleep Breakthrough and find out this month's gift with your purchase. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Yeah.

• 59:08Gary Brecka?

  You know, but I think there's so much power in, and this is so off my normal topic that I usually talk about, but I don't want to get back to health here in a minute, but you know, I think there's so much power in just the ability to reframe things, you know, to, like you're talking about, you know, going back into the past and just reframing that.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 59:29Gary Brecka?

  I have a friend, they call him Dr. Rewire, and I actually watched him one night. We went to one of his events at St. Regis in Salt Lake City. And he, he brought all these people out around the fire and people were disclosing their, some very dark things that had happened in their life, you know, and it had to do with very tough breakups or tough relationships, tough emotional journeys that they bet on, different forms of abuse. And I watched him actually go into that moment with them and reframe the way that they talked about it. And I actually walked them from that moment to where they were now.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  I would love to watch somebody as a skilled master at that.

• 1:00:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, he's, he's, his, his name is Dr. Luke Trevoti and I'm calling Dr. Rewire. But it was Sage and I were sitting around this fire. I'll never forget. And I was watching these people go through what seemed like a torture session, right? Because they were deep in this traumatic period of their life. I remember one girl in particular, her, her boyfriend had actually put a pistol in her mouth and he had cocked the handle of the pistol back and he was threatening to kill her. And, you know, this massively traumatic event, but what it caused her to do was take her kid and leave and finally leave him and stop with the trial of abuse. And that's a really intense story. But my whole point

• 1:00:59Gary Brecka?

  is that I watched him rewire these people from, from some of the darkest moments in their life into these very positive launching pads where they were almost like, thank God that happened.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Right, exactly.

• 1:01:11Gary Brecka?

  Thank God that moment.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  It's just a different rewind.

• 1:01:13Gary Brecka?

  Actually happened to me. And, you know, not consciously doing it, but sometimes I, now that I look back on some of these other little tipping points in my life, like, you know, you losing everything with your partner stealing from you. I mean, a lot of people would have gotten really pissed off and they would have gotten really angry and they would have diverted all of their energy towards holding that person accountable.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  You know, it's like, it's like focusing on the spilt milk. It's already spilled. Doesn't matter whose fault it is. Doesn't matter if it's going to stay in the carpet. It's already spilled. Might as well get a towel and a new glass of milk and try to fix it.

• 1:01:45Gary Brecka?

  Exactly. A new glass of milk. I love it.

• 1:01:50Gary Brecka?

  Dean, this is amazing. I want to, I want to shift gears a little bit because I know that you're in good shape. You're, you're in really good condition. Obviously you're taking care of yourself. What's kind of role for you? Does fitness wellness, you know, we talked about your diet a little bit beforehand because I think, I think the fuel that obviously goes into our bodies matters.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:10Gary Brecka?

  And I think that your mindset has a lot to do with how you feel physically. And you know, sick, fat, tired people don't build empires.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  True story.

• 1:02:18Gary Brecka?

  And what did you, what did your routine look like? What are, what are some things that you do? And then this is not a biohacking question. You have to be super insightful.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  The thing is to be the father I want to be, I have an 18 year old, 16 year old, five year old, and a two year old, right? So I got a big, big spread there. And my two year old, I gotta be, I want to be here for a while. But how can I impact the world at the level I want? Or just impact the world might sound like a big, how do I live into the best version of me? The only thing I can do is be, I want to be better today than I was last week, last year, last month. Right? So that it's a culture of progress, not perfection or comparison, right? If you just compare yourself to who you were last year and you're better, you're, you're moving. So for me, I don't feel I could be the man, the husband. I want my wife to look at me a certain way. I want my kids, but my kids, my, my older kids just work out.

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  I never asked them to. I just see dad working out. They started working out. They're both in great shape. Right? So I don't get to be the, have the energy, be the man I want to be, the husband, the leader I want to be. And I need the energy at this age to go at the pace I go. I run hard. So therefore I need to have my body as optimized as possible. Like my next year, I want to work with you to, I want to go from being in good, good shape to the best of my life. Right? To be, you know, the ultimate human.

• 1:03:35Gary Brecka?

  You're my next superhuman project.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I say that. So therefore it pushes me to take care of myself. And one thing I want to share, I know this is, I guarantee you got the psychology on a way different level than me. And then I'll tell you my routine.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  But everybody says, you know, I do work out seven days a week. I don't miss it. I, I, there's nothing, I could be up all night. I could fly. Like I don't miss it. Right?

• 1:03:57Gary Brecka?

  Same.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  And that's just a routine for 30 years. Right? And when people say, God, you must love to work out. The fact is I don't love working out.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  And, and, and people say, it must be nice to have your own business and have your own world. Here's what I know. Nothing great comes easy. But if we focus on the task, if I focus on, I gotta get up at five again so I can make everything work. Then I gotta, you know, I gotta get ready, I gotta go out in the gym, oh, I gotta, today's leg day, I don't love legs the best, but I should do that. Like, if you think about the doing it, it's hard. When I have days that I don't want to do it, all I can think about is, I want my kids to see by example. I want my wife to still look at me with the eyes that she looks at me that way. I want to live a long time. My two-year-old, I had her when I was 54. Like, I want to be here when she gets married.

• 1:04:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  So all I do, and I think about how much better I feel, my clarity is there, I feel more alive. When I'm done working out, I'm like, ready to rip something open, right? So all I do is think about how I feel at the end, how my kids are gonna be, how my wife will look at me better. And if I think about the outcome, then therefore I'll do the work.

• 1:05:08Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  So, it's like, starting your own business. It's like, oh, man, I gotta figure out the first step, and the next step, and do I do an LLC? And it's kind of a lot. But are you gonna leave yourself in a job that's slowly killing you? Think about the two years from now, when your business is thriving, when you're in control of your decisions, you're in control, like, all the things you wanted to happen. I need to focus on where I'm gonna be, so the moment doesn't seem so hard. So if you ask me why I, how I work out consistently, is I'll focus on how I'll feel and the things that'll come after. And therefore, it gets me to do it. My routine is, I do the same thing. I get up about 4:30 every day. I get up, I do a green drink, and some fish oil, and some other stuff that you're gonna make better for me.

• 1:05:47Gary Brecka?

  Yep, I am.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  And then, and then, um, I do about a half hour of catching up on creative stuff that I like. I don't look at stuff that brings me down a rabbit hole. So my 4:30 to 5:15-ish is my creative stuff, thinking about the day, having fun, like, looking through those ones, and then I go work out about 5:50 every day. So three days a week is, three or four days a week is-

• 1:06:08Gary Brecka?

  So you have like, an hour-

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  An hour.

• 1:06:10Gary Brecka?

  Easing into the morning.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  I do.

• 1:06:11Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  And then.

• 1:06:12Gary Brecka?

  And is this like an hour? Do you, do you, do you reflect? Do you practice gratitude?

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  I do. I do.

• 1:06:16Gary Brecka?

  Okay, meditation?

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Not meditation. I would love to say I meditate.

• 1:06:19Gary Brecka?

  I can't meditate either.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  I don't. I don't. But I, but I'll think about, I'll think about three things. So in the morning, I try to think about one thing I'm grateful for. I know, but it's like, practice gratitude. Sometimes you run out of things to be grateful for. Like, if you ever tried to do a gratitude, gratitude journal?

• 1:06:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  Like, I think I wrote everything down.

• 1:06:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  So I, I've, I try to like, lower the bar of gratitude.

• 1:06:37Gary Brecka?

  Lower the bar.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  Like, I will, some mornings, I'm like, 170,000 people a day die if you Google it.

• 1:06:43Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  Like, some days, I'm like, hey, I woke up today. Golden. It's all I need. If I'm in the right mood, that's enough. Or, or I slept good, or my pillow felt good. Right? Like, you gotta just lower it, right?

• 1:06:54Gary Brecka?

  Way down the gratitude chart.

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  My kids didn't get up last night. Damn, this is good.

• 1:06:57Gary Brecka?

  Hey, if you got a two-year-old, that's good.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And then, and then I think of one win from the day before, because a lot of times, as someone listening, if you're still listening right now, you're a hustler, you never give yourself credit for the things you accomplish. You'll beat yourself up for what you miss.

• 1:07:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  So I just say, what's one thing I accomplished yesterday that's cool? And sometimes it's business, and sometimes it's monster deals. And sometimes it's, I made it to jujitsu, and when my son did good, he looked up and saw him, I was there, and he smiled. That, that's enough of a win from the day before.

• 1:07:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  And then I'll think of one win I want that day. Right? So that's, that's the little routine, as soon as my eyes open up, is a little gratitude, lower the bar of it. A win from yesterday, a win I want today. Sometimes I'll also, like, send love to maybe my mom, or send somebody, like, appreciation in the air, right? Of like,

• 1:07:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Speaker 00

  thank you for that. And it just, it sets the clock a little different for me. It puts me in more of an offensive way to approach the day, rather than defensive. Like, I think a defensive, if I, if I woke up and looked at all my emails and I found the one bad one, I'm like, oh.

• 1:07:58Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  I gotta, it puts me in a different state.

• 1:08:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  So I want to avoid that in the morning.

• 1:08:02Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  And then, I do, you know, I, I drink this concoction in the morning that I can't wait for you to make better. And then, and then I move.

• 1:08:09Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  Right? Then I move, then I go exercise. Rather, and if I do that, which I do most days, I start the day ready, like,

• 1:08:17Gary Brecka?

  Oh, you're just stacking good habits.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  Bring it.

• 1:08:19Gary Brecka?

  That alone is a great habit. You're, you're in the, you're in the 1% of 1%.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  And I just make, I, I never diet, I just make smart choices with my food for, for years.

• 1:08:29Gary Brecka?

  I do the same.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  I went, I went probably two decades with barely eating anything bad. No, I, I didn't eat a dessert for two decades. Then I met my wife.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  And she always has issues like, we don't do dessert a lot, but when it's the right, like, I'm like, babe, it's always the right time for you.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  So last year, I probably cheated a little bit on desserts, but other than that, yeah, that's the routine.

• 1:08:50Gary Brecka?

  That's amazing, man. Dean, we're gonna do a series of these, first of all, because I'm definitely gonna have you back. For my audience that is not familiar with you, how do they find you? Where can they find you online? And which of your books do you think they should start with?

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  So Millionaire Success Habits, a great book. It's over a million copies. It was from years ago, and it just consistently sells on a regular basis. It's a great book. I'd love to invite everybody to come to the event you're gonna speak at.

• 1:09:21Gary Brecka?

  That'd be great.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  It's on May 15th through the 17th. If you liked anything we shared today, if you like my partner, Tony Robbins, Gary Brecka is gonna be speaking, Jay Shetty, Matthew McConaughey, some other amazing, some amazing guests are coming, and everybody's there is gonna be talking about how they took a life experience and turned it into a product.

• 1:09:39Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Turned it into impact. So Tony and I believe with the company we founded, Mastermind, that every single person listening has an experience, a skill, or a mess they can turn into the message that is valuable in the marketplace. And once you realize that that could be a side business or the full-time business, and you realize the leverage of a business, an industry that's at a billion dollars a day right now, heading towards a trillion a year, they predict. So this is one of those industries that's growing. If you're intrigued or ever thought about doing that or being a creator, May 15th through the 17th, we're calling it Thrive in 2025. It's our seventh one. We'll probably have about 800,000 to a million people joining from over 100 countries.

• 1:10:17Gary Brecka?

  And they can log in, they can do it remote.

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  So thrive900.com, thrive900.com. I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes as well. But go register, reserve a spot. If you, if you, if you, if anything I said today was intriguing, you'll really enjoy it. It's the only time of year we do three days for free.

• 1:10:33Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  No charge. So that, and, and at Dean Graziosi on Instagram.

• 1:10:38Gary Brecka?

  On Dean Graziosi on Instagram. Amazing. Well, I wind down every podcast by asking my guests the exact same question. So if you've watched my podcast and made it to the end, you know this question's coming. And there's no right or wrong answer to this question. But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  It's so funny, of course, I've seen you ask that question, but when it's asked to you,

• 1:10:56Gary Brecka?

  I know, you put you on the spot.

• 1:10:58Speaker 00

  I'm not prepared for this, though.

• 1:10:59Gary Brecka?

  And you know what, honestly, some of the best answers weren't like the most wildly philosophical.

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  Well, I'll tell you what, the first thing came to me is, at the end of my life, I could close my eyes and if my wife's still with me, which I'm sure she will be, and my kids, I can feel like I did everything in my power to be an example, to show them how to be contributing humans and live a fulfilled life. Like, literally, when you said it, the first thing that came to my mind is, if my kids are like, "Man, my dad set us up," not money, but set us up to be good humans, and live a resourceful kind of life.

• 1:11:38Gary Brecka?

  That's amazing. Well, I also have a VIP community, so we're gonna head over to my VIP community now. I let them know before the podcast who's coming on.

• 1:11:46Speaker 00

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:11:47Gary Brecka?

  They've got some questions waiting for you. If you're interested in becoming an Ultimate Human VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com/vip. You can sign up to be a VIP for 97 bucks a month. I pour myself into this community. In fact, today, I have a two-hour live Q and A with them right after this podcast, answering any question that you have on health, on diet, lifestyle.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  What a great opportunity.

• 1:12:07Gary Brecka?

  Spiritual wellbeing, biohacking tools, supplements.

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  It's the exact thing that we teach. You should be doing it. You took all these years to... You've failed on so many things that made you win. There's no reason other people should fail.

• 1:12:18Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so true.

• 1:12:19Speaker 00

  So, go jump on that.

• 1:12:20Gary Brecka?

  I'll shortcut it for you guys. So, go over to theultimatehuman.com/vip, and until next time, that's just science.