Bending Time with Ray Brehm

• [01:52]Stephan and Ray Brehm discuss abstainers vs. moderators. They also identify which type they belong to.
• [06:45]Ray emphasizes how important it is to invest in ourselves for others to invest in us.
• [10:41]Ray shares his Hoffman Institute week-long retreat experience and how it helped him get through the worst moments.
• [16:06]Ray and Stephan discuss the soul contract and living in the matrix.
• [24:55]Stephan talks about the willing suspension of disbelief.
• [28:08]Ray explains the essence of communicating to our future selves, prompting Stephan to share about Dr. Benjamin Hardy, his experience with network spinal analysis, and his oneness trip to India.
• [45:13]Ray discusses intuition code.
• [50:45]What is the Ben Franklin effect?

Jump to Links and Resources

Ray, it’s so great to have you on the show.

I panicked, drank some coffee, and choked on it as you gave the intro. That’s how nervous I am about this. I appreciate it. Thanks.

You know, maybe it’s time to stop drinking it all day long. They’re no coincidences.

That’s probably true. We should address that first.

Yeah. You said before we started recording that you’re here to get coached, so here is my first coaching tip: stop the coffee.

This is instant results here.

There are two types of people: moderators and abstainers. I’m an abstainer. I’ll have to delete apps I spend most of my time on. Moderating doesn’t work for me. Are you a moderator?

I think I’m a moderator, except for coffee. We’ll see how that plays out because that’s my vice, my enjoyment. My doctor said it was okay. Every year on my annual checkup, I ask, “Is coffee okay?” I don’t drink much. I’ll make commitments for most things I do to get things done. I’ll make financial commitments and invest in something I know will get done. So I think that would fit the moderator category.

In that case, I’m either committing to getting in or committing to giddy up by deleting it. And you’re right. One of my habits is to close every window except the one task we’re working on the computer because there are so many distractions let alone. I dropped social media a couple of years ago. I’m a moderator, I guess. 

Okay. I learned from Kabbalah a few years ago that there’s the body consciousness, and there’s the soul consciousness. You might have heard something similar but with different terminology. Who’s driving the bus? Is it your body or your soul?

If you’re craving snacks, sugar, or coffee, your body consciousness is driving the bus, not your soul consciousness. It’s not so good to have your body consciousness driving the bus. Much better for your soul to be doing it. That’s just my personal experience.

That makes sense. Just ask yourself who’s driving the bus when taking uncertain actions.

One thing I’ve done that helps to get off of a bad habit, especially if it’s consuming something like sugar. Have a glass of water first. If I’m still craving the thing after I have an entire huge glass of water, I’ll probably still do it. But if I feel satisfied now after the water, I will abstain. That works for me too.

That sounds good. I will try that. Before you do anything, do ten push-ups or go for a walk. I think I heard Brendon Burchard say that. If you’re tired, your body needs to get moving and not lay down. Go for a walk and then decide if you’re still tired.

Just ask yourself who’s driving the bus when taking uncertain actions — your soul or body consciousness?

Yeah. That’s good advice. Are you into Brendon Burchard? Do you go to a lot of his events or anything?

I did years ago. I haven’t been to anything lately. I’ve got a lot of courses from certain people, and he’s one of them. They say something that sticks with me. One of his quotes in many of my books is, “Be your best avatar.” I run into this a lot. Even with my clients, let’s say they’re starting authors or want to host a summit, and they’re not always willing to invest in themselves, but they want others to invest in them.

I try to make sure I’m living that mantra myself. I’m a sales guy that loves buying. I invest in a lot of things.

I’m a seminar, online course and book junkie.

Yeah. There shouldn’t be anything too wrong with that. You want to learn. If you don’t want to learn, it’s because you don’t want to spend money. I want to learn from people that are lifelong learners.

Be your best avatar.

Tony Robbins would say that either you’re learning, you’re growing, or you’re dying. If I’m not out there improving myself, I’m shrinking. That’s not a good way to be.

It feels like a car with a gas pedal, and you can either push or lead off, but there’s no cruise control, especially for entrepreneurs. If I feel stagnant for a month or two, I’m bored or questioning whether I’m doing the right thing. I’m always hitting the gas pedal, but in doing that, sometimes you’re going in the wrong direction, but that’s okay. At least you figured that out.

It reminds me of another Brendon Burchard quote that I’ve found helpful: “Be your own power plant.” or something along those lines like, “You’re a power generator.” Do you remember this?

I recall it, but I’m trying to think of where I heard it.

You’re not depleting energy by doing the thing or whatever. You’re gaining energy, and he gave this example of a world-renowned martial artist. He was a Westerner, competing against people who had grown up in that culture of martial arts in China and wherever learning from the time they were maybe three years old.

His energy levels were off the charts. He didn’t get tired and shared his secret in an interview. “I don’t use energy. I generate energy. As I’m doing my kickboxing, I know that I’m generating more and more energy like a power plant.” That is a mind shift that changes the physics of your body because you do it through your mindset and beliefs. Start generating energy instead of depleting it.

Now that you mentioned it, I did hear that from him. That may have been where the follow-up quote was: “If you’re tired, do something.” Sometimes it’s hard to follow. You’re like, “I’m exhausted. Let’s go.” But it’s true.

Then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We did a little breathing exercise before starting, and I felt much more energized and energetic after that. This is my third interview this morning. In the other two, I didn’t do that. But for whatever reason, I’m like, “Let’s do this non-breathing exercise.”

It creates energy, but it relaxes you at the same time.

Yeah. It’s grounding. It’s really good. It’s very simple. I probably went over this a couple of times on this podcast, but I’ll briefly fill in the listener who isn’t aware of it.

Either you’re learning, you’re growing, or you’re dying. – Tony Robbins.

Breathe in. And then a little more, a little more, and keep holding it. And then tap your fingertips on your upper chest. Keep tapping. Keep holding and let it all out of your mouth. And if you want, do it one more time. It’s really cool.

That’s amazing that that little thing can do that.

It’s so cool. We’re here for the hacks. Okay, so I had to have you on the show to tell your story. I was just blown away by it. I’m so excited to finally do this because I’ve told at least ten people what happened to you. It is just mind-blowing.

It’s one of those glitches in the Matrix moments like, “Is this reality real?” And so, can you share the story you shared with me when we first met in a Zoom breakout at JVMM, Joint Venture Mastermind, which we’re both members of?

Yeah. It was 2015 or 2016. I went to Hoffman Institute, a week-long retreat where you cannot turn on phones or communicate with the outside world. It’s just you, and you’re there to try to eliminate the negative love habits you received as a child. There are all kinds of different exercises there. It was incredible.

People come in anonymously and use nicknames. We had some major stars in our group. There are about 40 people there. It was interesting. I grew up in a pseudo-normal family, but my dad was always hard on me. I was the oldest one. I got spanked sometimes. It was mostly mental. You could argue it was abuse. It was a mental difficulty growing up.

We explored a lot of that stuff at this event. I highly recommend it. Most people will never spend a week like that without their phones or communication. I thought at the time that it was crazy. There were times when we exercised until late at night. During some meals, they’d say it’s a silent meal. You can’t talk to anybody. So you got to absorb what you just did in the exercises.

By Tuesday, we’d done a lot of guided meditations, exercises, and so forth. And they said to go back to when you were around eight when you felt trauma in your childhood. And I probably had suppressed this memory for a long time. And then that night, I wrote it all down. I was in our living room. I could see myself. I could see my mom still living in the house.

I popped off in the living room by myself. It was either in the family room, kitchen, or outside, different places. I’m the oldest of three. And I had gotten another consistent tongue-lashing for whatever. I sat at that table, thinking, “Oh my god, what will I do? I can’t live like this. This is just miserable. I get blamed for everything. I get yelled at. I’m constantly on edge.” You never knew if my dad would be mad when he came home. It was always going to be yelling at me for something.

At that moment, I was just crying and just beside myself. This whole exercise let me let those emotions out, which was the exercise’s point.

It probably was a 30-minute sit. “What are my options? I can’t live like this. Can I run away? How would I even survive?” I was a super logical person, and I still am. That didn’t make any sense. I went back to that two or three times. It doesn’t work.

“I could commit suicide, right?” And I’m like, “Screw that. He would win. There’s not even a chance I’m doing that. That’s not happening.” So I kept going through these options. The third option is maybe I will go live with my cousins. I had all these friends that I loved in my neighborhood. I’m like, “I would lose all those friends because I’d be gone. That doesn’t seem to work.”

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And there might have been one or two others in there. But I kept going through this rotation just like there was no answer. “Can somebody help me?” And at that moment, a voice came into my head and said, “Everything’s going to be alright. I love you.” At that time, I’m trying to think about it. “Did I manufacture this?” I said, “Who are you?” And the voice said, “I am you.” So I dwelled on that, thinking, “Is this enough for me to get through?” And then, I decided to go about my day and play.

And I hadn’t thought about that once or twice since then, but this exercise did that. That night, I wrote it out.

What do you mean? This exercise did that to the instructor.

They just said, “Go back to a time.” You don’t have to say it out loud or anything. We were in this guided meditation, and he had brought this up. I hadn’t thought about that moment in my life, maybe once or twice since it happened, but I recalled it vividly at this moment.

That was a point in my life when something happened two days later. I remember the instructor’s name. It was Steve, and he said, “Okay, everybody. Shut your eyes.” And we’ve done all these different things. It was nothing like progressive. We had tabled all these exercises and put them in a certain order. And he said, “Shut your eyes, and I want you to go back to when you were eight years old and you were in distress.” And I’m like, “That’s easy because the one identified a couple of days ago was this particular incident.” And he said, “Now I want you to just look at your childhood self there and observe what’s happening.”

We got our eyes shut. I’m visualizing that I’m looking down at the table at my eight-year-old self, who’s in distress and sitting beside himself. From my view, I can see the tears, whether that’s inside my eight-year-old self or not.

This instructor says, “Okay. You’ve observed all that. Now, here’s what I want you to do, tell your eight-year-old self everything will be okay and that you love them.” My eyes are lighting up with my eyelids shut. I’m thinking, “Did anybody else just experience what I experienced?” Then he says, “Okay. Now tell your childhood self who you are.” And, in my story, that was like, “Well, who are you?” And I said, “I am you.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh. What was that?”

Now, here’s where my logical side takes in. I went back through this sequence of events trying to figure out if I planted or somehow it was caused, or they could have created this anomaly, this coincidence, and there was no way I could figure it out.

I had recalled the story on my own, told nobody about it, went through it vividly in this exercise, and even wrote about it and journaled that night. Then, two days later, he told me to return to my childhood self. I didn’t know he would ask us to say that, but he told us to say, “Everything will be all right, and I love you.”

Even one of those alone, it might have been generic. If they reverse the order of these events, you would say he fed me that info, and that’s how I remembered it, but I remembered it first.

And then he fed me the lines to deliver to my eight-year-old self two days later when I had already recalled what the lines were, that blew me away.

I think I started by sharing some of my stories when we had the question and answer. I said, “I’m working on a book about living in the matrix, and everything is an illusion.” And you’re like, “Well, here’s a crazy story you’ll like.” I liked it very much. It gave me goosebumps and everything. So that’s the confirmation from the angels or angel bumps. That’s real. I love that.

That’s how it would have to be delivered to me to take that step into believing the matrix. I’ve got this balance, but I’ve always been the super logical guy. If there was any way that I could misinterpret that or that it could have been caused by something they did or something I did, then I was going to find that, and I could not find that. Then, of course, we talked to you, and your next comment was, “Where did you learn that your relationship with your dad was part of a soul contract?” Of course, I listened to some of your episodes. There was one specific episode on soul contracts. I had another one before that now I look back on, and I’m like, “That’s not so strange and probably not an anomaly.” And this one’s easier to say he made it up in his head.

My son was born in 2011, and we were about two and a half months out before he was born. And I was already having nightmares and fearfulness for him. But we knew he was going to be Ray IV. We knew that he was a boy. I had a dream one night. We were at my mom’s house, where I grew up. I came out of the front door and was like, “Oh, my God, where’s Ray?” And I’m looking around for him. I couldn’t find him. Just the fear of a father already starting before he’s born.

He crawled out from under a car in the driveway where we would normally park a car, and he said, “I’m okay, Papa.” he just walked. He’s supposed to be a baby. I didn’t. I hadn’t met him yet, at least in the physical world. That’s how he talks now. That same voice I heard and how he calls me Papa is exactly how he talks.

The concept of soul contracts is more comforting than discombobulating.

We could have subconsciously taught him to talk that way, but that was a weird one for me, too, because I didn’t think much of it when I talked to him. And then, when he was about a year old, he spoke exactly like I had heard in that dream.

Those are the two events for me that made me realize that there’s way more of all this than everybody thinks.

Thank you for sharing that. What a powerful story. And do you find that the concept of soul contracts or everything is precisely divinely orchestrated? Do you find that to be comforting? Do you find it to be discombobulating or some other emotion?

It’s more comforting than discombobulating. It’s surprising at first. The first story is definitely in a good way. That second story didn’t manifest for a few years from when I had the dream, but I always remembered it. In my dream, he was just a tiny baby. He had just been born, and we couldn’t find him. He wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t crawl but crawled out from under a car, stood up, and said, “I’m right here. I’m okay, Papa.”

I always remember the dream. I didn’t put two and two together until he started talking.  Obviously, it is harder to prove to the audience that that’s something that happened. For me, it’s comforting that there’s more there. I’ve been lucky enough to discover it or witness it for myself.

You can only go so far when you hear somebody else’s story. Whether I want something to be true or not, I do my best to disprove it just to test it, and I couldn’t do that for myself with either of those.

Yeah. I’ve found that many more miracles happen in my life when I have the willing suspension of disbelief. If I’ve put on that skeptic’s cap, then I’ve blocked my connection with the upper worlds and started to manifest the lack of miracles. The willing suspension of disbelief has been an incredible hack in my life that has opened the floodgates to lots of miracles, lots of without-a-doubt signs and crazy coincidences that you can’t kind of reason away.

For me, just being a logical person, I’m not trying intentionally to disbelieve something, but one of my ways of convincing myself that it is real is by saying, “Okay, well, what if I was the devil’s advocate? So what are the things I could poke holes in this with?”

And I do that. If I buy a course, what are the failure points for me as the person taking this course? A better question, and maybe this is more of a positive one. Now I measure everything. If I’m going to do a program, how many days will it take me to make my money back? If this program works as it says, it can be because I know my audience and skill sets. Can I get this money back? The same with these events, it’s like, if I can logically not poke any holes in this, then I know it’s true.

Really cool. And as I’ve said, I’ve told other people the story of your eight-year-old self getting a message from the future. Many people get goosebumps when I’m telling, especially the key line in the story. The instructor said, “Everything will be okay. I love you. I’m you in the future.”

I think if that one piece did not happen, I would probably be like, “Well, I somehow manifested all this in my head, in my brain, logic,” and yet recalling the exact words that the instructor said two days later, hearing them when I was a child.

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After this, you get one follow-up call with a coach and see how you’re doing, so I did it about a month later. And I was selling a business at that time and having trouble. Unfortunately, I sold it to a lawyer playing games and was frustrated. And the coach is like, “Well, I want you to shut your eyes. Your 85-year-old self is visiting you now. What is he saying?” And I said, “This is nothing. It’s a blip. It’s a bump in the road. You’re not going to care about this month from now.”

That was the truth. Even if it’s logically in my head, I’m like, “he’s right. At some point when I’m 85, somebody will say go visit your younger self when you were selling that business.” I know that will happen. I don’t know how, but it will. 

That is awesome. I love that. That reminds me of a book I’ve just started reading recently. It’s called Be Your Future Self Now. That’s by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. He’s the author of Willpower Doesn’t Work, and Personality Isn’t Permanent. He’s also co-authors of Who Not How and The Gap and The Gain. Super smart guy.

To be your future self now isn’t about how to be your future self now, not just channeling your future self and like what would my future self do in this situation or let’s fast forward into the future. What would be the response from that future self-version of me? You telepathically communicate with your future self.

I got it right here. I’m going on a lunch appointment and giving a copy to somebody. Back in the day, he was always trying to teach me that, and I said, “I got to get him a copy of this book,” but I learned about the book, I think, from that meeting in the spring.

Yeah. And one thing I want to share that’s a fun story related to what you were sharing was from early 2013. I was at a seminar run by Donny Epstein. It’s called Ultimatum. He’s an energy healer or worker. He’s amazing. He’s also the founder of NetworkSpinal. There’s a whole branch of chiropractic that’s more kind of energy work than cracking and adjusting.

I’m lying on the chiropractic table, getting entertainment from Donny. I’m blissed out. I’m in another dimension or something. And after the entertainment is finished, I can’t get up. I’m too out of it. I get picked up by attendees and laid on the carpet.

I’m just flying high, and I decided to start blessing people. I get the intuitive message that the thing I learned how to do in India five months earlier turned me from an agnostic to a believer in God and connected to him. Everything was getting touched on the head by a monk and then having a psychedelic trip from that, just getting a blessing from a monk.

I’ve never done drugs, and so this was quite an unusual experience to see everything in technicolor like a cartoon and have this deep sense of connection and peace. It was heavenly. It was otherworldly. And I learned later at that seminar it was a Tony Robbins’ event in India where his high-level platinum partners paid a lot of money, and I paid a lot to Tony for being part of that program. That was the trip. It was called the oneness trip. And it changed my life.

I got the download while blissed out on the floor after getting an entrainment five months later at Donny’s event that I could give a remote Deeksha or Oneness Blessing. I don’t have to touch a person on the head, so I started blessing people. And one of the people that I blessed was a guy I hadn’t thought of for 15 years who used to work for me. I fired him on the spot after I heard that he was talking smack about me behind my back, and I was very butthurt over it because I was full of ego, and I didn’t like that he did that, and I wanted to make an example of him. I packed up his stuff and walked them off the property, and everybody’s jaws were down on the ground watching this unfold.

Then he filed a frivolous lawsuit against me. That wasn’t the nicer right thing to do. It was perfectly legal. But as it turns out, it’s cheaper to settle a lawsuit that you’re going to win a lot of times than it is to win it. I eventually gave in and settled after my lawyers told me, “You’re just wasting money here. Okay, you’ll win but to what end? Just settle and move on.”

Then the guy disappears from my life for 15 years. I never hear his name or see him again, even though we have lived in the same town for many years. Completely gone off the face of the earth. Until that moment, more and more blissed out on the floor 15 years later, and I think of him and send him a blessing. And guess who calls me on my cell phone to apologize four days later?

This stuff is so fun. It’s like a game. Our life is like an incredible, beautiful, miraculous video game.

I had my guy interviewed for a summit two weeks ago now. A friend of mine. We’ve been in a coaching group together for years. I didn’t even know what he did. And I said, “Let’s get on a call.” And he does, I guess, putting people in trances and hypnosis to help their mental barriers, all that kind of stuff.

He did a little session on me, and it was just kind of shutting your eyes, trying to get your vibration right in your body. He did it during the actual summit. People watched that interview. It’s in there. And I got done with the interview, but it was about just getting your mindset around. He said, “You could take the slow route, the law of attraction. Or get your body and vibration. You can force your way to get where you want to be.”

In all this stuff, this could all be coincidences. He said, “Shut your eyes, feel the inside of your hand, inside your right foot, left hand, right hand, left foot.” We did all these things for about eighteen minutes, and I’m driving to my annual doctor’s appointment because I don’t get out much anymore. I’m working from home. I get there, and there are three emails with money in them coming in. And I’m like, “I got to explore this more too. I mean, this stuff works.”

When we first started talking about my story and intuition, I had some epiphanies like my goals were all wrong, and my goals were really to be working from home and spending time with my kids while they still liked me before their teenagers. They’re eleven and eight. And then I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I’m in the perfect business. I’m in the perfect world. I don’t need these other goals. Everything else will just happen if I’m doing what I want to be doing.”

It reminds me of Kabbalistic teaching. The white light contains all the colors. If you imagine a prism and the white light is flowing into or shining into the prism, and then all the different colors are broken out on the other side, many people chase individual colors, health, relationships, career, business, wealth, etc.

Get closer to God.

And when they chase after the individual colors, they tend to let the other areas of their life slip or become less awesome. Instead, the secret isn’t to try and balance all of them. It’s chasing after the white light because it contains all the colors. And when you do that, everything comes along for the ride. Every miracle, opportunity, or benefit is built-in to chasing after the white light, which is simply another way of saying get closer to God.

All right. That was his first hack, too. A couple of weeks ago, I said to start us off with a hack for success in your business or attracting wealth. And he said to get closer to God. That’s a really interesting response. I feel like I just dipped my toe in the pond, and this conversation takes me another step forward.

Speaking of which, this relates to what you were saying about getting closer to God. Another one of my guests is a breathwork expert. I know him from another Mastermind, and his name is Kurtis Lee Thomas.

He mentioned just in passing in the interview something that just jumped out at me. And it changed my life like this was meant for me. He said, “I did something recently where I made God my business partner, and all these amazing things have happened.” I’m like, “What? You made God your business partner. Tell me more about that.” And he said that another friend did it, and it inspired him, so he gave it a try, which changed everything for him.

You’re not assuming that God will be your business partner. You ask Him, but he’ll say yes if it’s not like running a crack house or something. And everything gets easier. The synchronicities just accelerated and just increased. It’s incredible. I did that, and it was the best year ever. My previous business that I sold was back in 2010. But for this business, the last 12 years of running it, this is the best year ever revenue-wise.

That’s just a small testament to the power of letting go and letting God but also of seeing yourself as a collaborator and co-creator, and not like this is just me hustling and hard slogging it. Gary Vee is all about the hustle, but that’s not how you have a 10x or 100x breakthrough. It’s by making God your business partner, life partner, and co-collaborator.

Is there a manual on how to do that?

It’s very simple. You just ask Him. You feel like you’re getting a yes, and it’s done.

A simple exercise I learned from listening to God is asking if he’s there. You can do it out loud, or you can do it in your head. Either way, he hears you. There are no private thoughts, by the way. I mentioned that to somebody in a Zoom breakout. I mentioned it to a group, and one guy got defensive about it. He’s like, that’s terrifying.

I’m learning how to do this by just listening to God, and it’s simply this. Ask God, “Are you there? God, are you there?” And chances are you have the connection, at least even a crack open. You’ll feel a yes, hear a yes in your inner voice, or get a sense of a yes because he’s always there even if we’re completely disconnected and we hear nothing, feel nothing, see nothing. In our mind’s eye, he’s still there. He’s still answering yes. We are just blocking the reception of it.

Suppose we can hear that in some sense, like I just heard a yes. There’s no way that’s God. That’s just my head. Set that aside. That’s the disbelief. Set that aside for a second and then be in awe that I just got confirmation from God. Maybe I made it up, but I will set that aside for a minute, the willing suspension of disbelief. I’m going to set that aside.

And if you want to get confirmation because you’re not sure that was God, one thing I’ve learned as part of discernment is to ask a follow-up question if you’re getting information like, “Oh, I’m supposed to bring this book up or recommend a particular seminar to this person,” or in your case, recommend the soul contracts episode. I ask for confirmation. And the simple truth test is, “Are you of the light?” And if you don’t hear anything back, it wasn’t on the light. They’re not going to say no. You got me. It will just be crickets and silence. I almost got fooled. And that’s happened where they almost got me, whoever was trying to fool me. I dodged it.

You could take the slow route, the law of attraction. Or get your body and vibration. Then, you can force your way to get where you want to be.

That’s a very powerful exercise. I’ve done that with some people who say, “Wow, I had no idea I could speak to God and hear him, feel him, sense him, and get an answer. Amazing!” And that dovetails with your intuition. “I felt like I shouldn’t go to work today. This is really weird. I don’t feel weird. I don’t feel sick. Why am I against logic trying to figure out a way not to go to work today? What’s going on with that?” And then some terrible accident happens or something. Either you listened to your intuition and avoided that accident, or you went anyway and got in the accident.  “I need to listen to my intuition more.”

This is a way to confirm that. It’s like, “I’m going to ask God about this. I feel like I’m supposed to turn right today instead of left.” Normally, I follow my intuition, but this will make me late for a very important meeting. “Can you please confirm that this is what I’m supposed to do?”

Eye-opening stuff, I tell you. I got a lot of walkaway exercises here and started implementing them.

Let’s talk a little bit about The Intuition Code because you got a whole book about intuition which might, for some folks, before they knew your stories and stuff might, think about how was that related to being The Summit Guy all about online summits and all about doing anthologies and getting business books on to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and stuff like that. How does that relate to a book about intuition?

Good question. Something told me to do it. My first book was published in 2015. I was walking by a book booth at Infusionsoft and saw a booth that said, “You can write a chapter and be in a book with Jack Canfield.” And I said, “I am never going to get this done. Unless I commit to it, it will always be on my to-do list.”

Committing financially, I said I would go ahead and get it. It was $7000 or something to write a chapter in that book. And I said, “That would make me finish it because I’m not wasting that money.” And I did that, and the experience was so rewarding because it gave me enough confidence to start doing it on my own. A year or so later, people are just by word of mouth. I’m helping them launch books by just taking that chance and saying I’ve always wanted to write a book. 

That stuck with me because that was a great way for others to learn. I’m a Summit Guy, but my list is pretty strongly influenced by authors, who want to be authors or aspiring authors, and this was an easy way to do it. When you write your book, and everybody should, you have to find a cover artist and figure out how to evaluate if the cover looks good and what you want.

Many people started out doing their cover, interior editing, formatting, publishing, marketing, writing descriptions, and all that stuff. Any one of those can stop someone from in the tracks. We do it just to help people get their first book out. We got a lot of repeat clients that come back in there that add books to their portfolios, and they could say they’re an author of multiple books.

Our life is like an incredible, beautiful, miraculous video game.

We got a code series, so there’s The Success Code, The Happiness Code, The Wealth Code, and The Entrepreneur Code. We had four there. We’ve also got one coming out after The Intuition Code called The Habits Code. I was just a mastermind that I ran, and we were talking about things, and somebody brought up something along these lines, like what happened with you and me. And then I said, “Here’s the story that happened to me.” It all happened within probably a month to six weeks before you and I had the conversation on Zoom.

I told the story. And I said I’ve been thinking of an offshoot of The Intuition Code to this series because that would include more authors from my audience. If you’re into success, you can be on The Success Code. If you’re into happiness, if you’re into wealth building, and so forth, you could be in The Wealth Code, so why not have one that’s more spiritual?

I thought about it, but the reaction was one or two people immediately: “I want to be in that book.” And I said, let’s do it. It’s okay to me if it’s smaller than our normal books. I don’t think it turned out that way. I think it’s about average. You and I are talking offline, and I had somebody yesterday saying, “Oh, I should be in that book.”

There are more people out there when you just kind of present the idea to the universe that they’ll come out of the woodwork, and you’ll hear more stories. I’m looking forward to that. 

And what I did was I recorded the story that I just told you, and that was my sales video to get people to contribute to a chapter in a book. Just having the book allowed me to tell my story. Two, share it on the sales page. It’s great.

I just sent a book to my old track coach from high school. Yet, last night we had another series called The Inc series. We got Author Inc. and Coaching Inc. In Coaching Inc., I wrote a story about my senior year in a track meet where I became good friends with my rival and kept losing to him. He told me to quit hugging that guy before the race. I talked about that.

My chapter is about the internal strife of doing that because I’m not confrontational. I don’t like conflict. Have you ever hugged somebody mad at you, and they keep their arms at their side? I mean, I hugged him before this meet and then I ate his lunch at the conference meet, and finally beat him twice in the relay in the regular 800 meters because I followed the coach’s advice and I was coachable.

But anyway, I wanted to document that story.

And then you became lifelong enemies or something, right?

Right. I haven’t talked to him since. He threw a water bottle at me just after the meet because I beat him handily. But I wanted my coach to know that I think of that to this day. That was like the dominance story in my head. I’m like, “This is a great way to get it out.” That’s why it’s great having you and your wife there.

The amazing thing about these books is that everybody crushes them when writing one chapter and one story. I love doing it; that’s why we do it.

I’m so grateful to be in that book with a chapter and for my wife, Orion, to be there, too. It’s really cool. Thank you. And when you were talking about your track coach, it reminded me of a corollary, or maybe it’s the opposite of that, like stop bugging your buddy and beat him.

There’s something called The Ben Franklin Effect, where Ben Franklin had a mortal enemy, somebody who just wanted Ben to die. It was like a political rival, and he was making Ben’s life hard. What Ben did is he borrowed a book from this guy. He knows that this guy has a very expensive book collection. He asks to borrow one of his most expensive books, the rare books, and he and the guy agree. Ben returns it promptly, like three days later, with a thank you note. The anger or the bitterness, or whatever it was from this other guy, started dissipating, and they eventually became friends.

It’s a cognitive dissonance to say I hate this person, but I will loan them something valuable. To get rid of that cognitive dissonance, one of those two things needs to be untrue, and that’s, well, this guy’s my enemy. You wouldn’t loan your treasured possessions to your enemy. Have you heard this before?

No, but it makes complete sense.

Yeah. That’s good. Good stuff. I know we’re out of time here, but I wanted to share two quick things with you and get your thoughts on them.

One of my very early episodes on the show was Bill Donius. He is an expert on non-dominant handwriting. I never heard of this before, but I attended a Mastermind event, and he was one of the speakers. And it’s to use your non-dominant hands. If you’re right-handed, use your left hand, which accesses the right hemisphere of your brain, which you don’t normally do when you’re writing normally in the same way you would if you’re using your non-dominant hand. It still works to be left-handed and then use your right hand in this exercise.

In this session, he taught first, we write like a totem animal or an animal that we connect with. I wrote Zebra down. That was just normal. And then he said, “Okay. Close your eyes. Move your pen to your non-dominant hand. Squeezing the pen in your hand feels like resetting things in your brain, quieting your mind. And whenever you’re ready, don’t worry about penmanship or anything just answer this question and don’t speak it in your head or anything. Just let your hand do what it’s going to do.” The question, of course, again, ater totem animal or what’s the animal you most relate to?

I wrote something completely different. I wrote about a humpback whale or a blue whale. And it just felt true on a much deeper level to me after I looked at those two scribbles, one much more like my handwriting and the other not so. And I’m like the non-dominant hand that knows my true nature much better than my normal egoic self.

I like to show off, be different, and stand out in a crowd, so the Zebra made a lot of sense on a superficial level, but my heart and soul are much more aligned with the humpback whale. 

He would have been a great contributor to the Intuition Code. Layer in that exercise or that technique is another way to access your intuition. Oh well, the book’s already done.

Well, when you host the summit.

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Oh, yeah. We’re going to have it. I want to host a summit on intuition. 

That’ll be great. You got all these in your library anyway, but showcasing some of these ideas is a great way. I don’t know if I can try the exercise myself now that I’ve heard it, but I started doing it while you were talking.

Why don’t you try it? Did you write down an animal just normally?

Yeah.

You didn’t do the other hand yet, though?

Well, I was starting to write about the same animal, to be honest.

Well, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s totally fine. Try it again. But this time, close your eyes and squeeze the pen in your non-dominant hand. On your left hand, squeeze and ask that that resets your brain not to have any preconceived notions, and you’re just inflow and let your right brain take control of the hand and write whatever it’s going to write. Whenever you’re ready, you can keep your eyes closed for this.

I did it as you were talking.

What did you write? 

No. I went from lion to dolphin. Dolphin popped into my head. Usually, if you tell me to pick an animal, it’s a lion. I’m Leo, born in late July. That was odd because as you’re saying it, I’m like, “If it’s a lion, it’s a lion,” and that popped in.

I like it. You’re a badass dolphin.

I’m going to have to read about dolphins. I like to be with smart people and kind of laid back. I don’t know. I’ve seen different shows on dolphins where they’re battling sharks.

They’re so smart. They’re very kind. I remember the story of a guy who jumped off a bridge, maybe at the Brooklyn Bridge or San Francisco Bay Bridge. It was a common spot for people to commit suicide. He didn’t die immediately. He actually lived. It was the dolphin that saved him.

Once he hit the water and probably broke many bones, he’s like, “I want to live. I changed my mind.” And then a dolphin just swoops up from under him and pushes him up to be able to breathe because he didn’t have any means to support himself up above the water to get air. The dolphin kept him up above the waterline to breathe for however many minutes it took until rescue came. Dolphins are plugged in.

Now, there’s one thing I want to coach you on. When I heard it, I was like, “I’m writing this one down, and I’m not letting them get away with that. You said, will my kids still like me?” And I’m like, no. Stop manifesting a crappy future for yourself. I didn’t challenge you at the moment. I just let you finish your thought, but I had to come back to that one.

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I would say that’s slang. I don’t usually describe it that way. Right now, they still want to hug and kiss me. I think they’ll always like me.

They will but don’t say something that’s against that because your thoughts and your words are very powerful. Your words manifest your reality, and your subconscious mind does not have a sense of humor. You think, “Oh, I’m being flippant or self-deprecating. Isn’t that funny?” No, you’re speaking it into existence? Yeah, don’t do that.

Good tip.

I have a feeling, and I have a really strong intuition on this, that your kids are still going to want to hug and kiss you when you’re old and curmudgeon.

Well, I’m mostly thinking about their teen years, but I still don’t see any signs of it yet. But, you know, we’re homeschooling, doing some things differently.

You also chose them, and they chose you, right? So if you buy into the soul contract thing we discussed at the beginning of the episode, you guys made a contract like Ray IV chose you, and you chose him.

I’ve thought about that a lot since we first had the very first conversation. I believe my contract with my dad was so that I could have this contract with my son and daughter. That’s what it feels like. That’s my dream to have the relationship I have now, and it’s happened. There’s some reason for that.

Well, Ray, I know we’re way over time, but I love talking with you, and you’re just such a bright light in the world.

You too, man. I’m so blessed that we met. I could have easily just passed and said you’re an SEO guy, and I’m with the smaller business author types. Just a single kind of exchange made this big connection.

You’re one of the people that I’m most happy to see on our group calls and, of course, co-authoring a book and podcast together. It’s been great. Believe me, and I take note of all the advice you’ve given. That was the goal too. You asked me offline. I said it’s to learn as much as possible from you, so thank you very much.

Well, thank you. And thank you for everything that you do for others. You are heart-centered and other-focused, and that shows, and the universe rewards that, so thank you.

Thank you.

Speaking of being an other-focused listener, do something out of character for you outside your comfort zone that will make somebody feel so loved, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. I’m your host Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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About Ray Brehm

Ray, aka The Summit Guy, is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author and entrepreneur. He helps entrepreneurs build their platforms via books and virtual summits. He is a member of the National Academy of Best-Selling Authors™ and The National Association of Experts, Writers & Speakers®. He has been featured on America’s Top Authors™, CNN, CNBC, FOX News and USA Today.

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