29 May, 2022

Pete Cohen  0:00

Happy beautiful. Day. It's Pete Cohen. It's the Future Self podcast. Today's podcast is called How To Be An Outlier. I will see you after the theme tune

Pete Cohen  0:37

Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good evening wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for joining me for the Future Self Podcast. today's podcast is called what it's all about outliers. Does anyone know what an outlier is? I didn't know what one was. Until a couple of years ago. But in my epic quest for finding solutions to problems, challenges that people face. You come across words, and you hear a word and you think, Oh, I never heard that word before. does it actually mean? And for me, the word outlier is just someone who's looking outside of where perhaps most people are looking. And it's really interesting to me around what are we all looking for? And if we come across a problem, where do we find the solution to the problem? And I was really lucky because I was brought up by two incredible parents, who both sadly are not with us anymore. I say sadly, they're still with me. They're still with me all the time. Their words of wisdom, what they gave to me what they shared with me, it's always with me and for a father that always said, Son, it is not what you know, it is who you know. So I'll tell you what, I was programmed so well, that I'm obsessed. With getting to know people, especially if someone's doing something that I think is, is awesome. But then even in saying that for years with having worked in the field of fear for many years and being a specialist with people that would come to see me from all over the world, with some incredible fears. I got a pretty good name for myself, because of being on television, and doing things called House of fear, where we took people away who had severe fears and phobias. The book that I was written that's published in multiple languages called fear busting, you know, I work with people with anorexia, bulimia, obsessive compulsive disorder, people with agoraphobic people, you know, people wouldn't leave their house or work with one woman who hadn't been outside our house for 25 years. I didn't even know really know exactly what I was doing. But I studied psychology. I didn't really learn very much from studying psychology, specifically about fear. I knew what fear was, I knew, you know, some of the reasons as to why people had fear. But I really didn't know about how to stop people being frightened, especially people with fears and specifically phobias. I worked with 100 people that all had a flying phobia and we got them on an aeroplane. I had one day they gave me 20 People with a spider spider phobias. And I had to show them try it with me event eventually got them with having Holding, holding tarantulas, taking spiders at a bath, work with a whole load of women, not when we're mainly women who had phobias of birds. And I just became really interested in but I was experimenting. I was literally just experimenting. I kind of knew some of what I was doing. But you know what, I just got better. I just got better at working with these people. And especially when you're on national television with millions of people watching you, you've got to you've got to kind of believe in yourself and believe there is a solution. And for me, I knew that fear in Melee, maybe maybe in all cases is just an illusion. It's not real, it just feels real. So I became pretty good at that. And I literally had worked with people with some of the most strangest fears that you could ever possibly think about people with I worked with a woman who had a phobia of her own surname. I worked with people who had fears of things like bridges and but there's only two natural fears that we're born with. And one of them is mouth noises and the other is a fear of falling. You know, but we that fear of falling isn't really activated. Until we get to a certain age where we realize that we can't fly. But we can just not for very long. You know, you can jump off a building and you're flying, but you're not going to fly for long. So I'm someone who's literally just spent his life looking for solutions. And I've been very successful in doing that. That's why I've been able to write 20 books, but I don't have the answers to everything. You know, I don't I don't have the answers to everything. But I believe there is an answer to everything which is what I learned from my mum. So if someone comes to me, and whatever has happened to them in their life, whatever trauma they've been through, I always whatever they've been through whatever they want. I always think there is a solution. There's always an answer. And if that's what I choose to believe, then I also think that life is going to test me how many of you think that as well, you genuinely think that if that's the path that you choose to take, you're going to be tested. So I think everyone is listened to this podcast, but maybe this is the first time you've ever listened to it, you know, part of the story, but the story hasn't ended. I

kind of thought that chapter had been closed, which was 11 years ago. The lady I was with at the time who is now my wife had a massive epileptic fit we were together for a year. I didn't think that this was the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I really I really didn't. I didn't think I'd spend the rest of my life with anybody apart from myself. I wasn't that interested in commitment and marriage. I just didn't think it was for me. But you know what? I've changed. We've all changed right? All of our personalities have changed. We are not the same people as we were. As I'm recording this right now in disel. Dorf, I was here in 1987. I could easily have drunk eight Pints of Lager at 17 years old, not even legally allowed to drink, and I'd be fine the next day. I remember that's what we did when we were here. We were students. I couldn't do that anymore. I wouldn't want to do any more. I'm not the same person. I've changed. I've evolved. And I think it's one of the greatest things we can ever do in life is recognize greater things that are stuck in SAM bye

the greatest things the great things that are stuck inside your head. I mean, I don't know what is stuck, but I think people often are stuck. They're stuck where they are in a way that they're not moving forwards you know, there's they know that there's things they want to do and it just so sad that it seems to take a disaster or crisis or a prognosis to push people away from where they are. We have we have a world where so many people are just accepting what is. And I've met so many people who I would call them outliers and I'm surrounded by some of those guys right now here in Germany. But 11 years ago, when my wife was in this situation, if it wasn't for me, I don't think she would she would be here because I don't know she whether she had the capacity at that time. Where she didn't just start looking for solutions for a brain tumor. Because even 11 years on now, and seeing what's advanced it doesn't seem to be much has changed. And I think there's many reasons for that. And one reason is, well you know, this is where you can kind of get yourself into a little bit of hot water. Why? Why why why have we not found a solution to some of these big problems. Again, we're opening Pandora's box. It could be many reasons how we live our lives and is obviously one of those things and but however you look at it 11 years on So 11 years back I my coach who was alive at the time who my coach was a complete outlier or worked with him for 16 years. He was from the Philippines. He traveled the world. He lived with indigenous people. He worked with world hunger. I spent 16 years of my life with this person 16 years, learning from him traveling around the world, and he lived with indigenous people and when you live with people who have a very simple way of moving through the world, you start to see patterns you see patterns in and one of the patterns you see is they they would believe that there were answers for everything and the answers were in nature, right. That's what they would put believe that nature was so powerful that you could find a solution within taking something in nature and using it and it would be it would cure people and people would move on looking for solutions looking for answers. Is there an answer to the challenges that you face right now? I don't know. I don't know what those challenges are. But I suppose one of them is the challenge that we all have inside our head that a part of us that wants us to stay where we are. And if we stay where we are, and we don't evolve, then we keep recreating, in many cases, the problems that we've already experienced. You might have heard this this saying that lessons in life are repeated until they are learned so people keep repeating the same. But until when I would say until they become someone different to the person they were before. Would you not agree that until you become someone different? What happens? I think we sit we tend to see the same old things that you become the change that you want to see in this world. You become a gigantic Andy was an outlier. For someone to say be the change that you want to see in this world and if you can't be that change, then support support the person financially who can. That's what he said. All these people are outliers. Do you want to be an outlier? Do you want to outperform your previous self? Do you want to make a big difference in this world you want to grow? Do you want to contribute? And the reason I'm saying all of this is because I'm in Germany right now and I take my hat off to my wife to coming over here. I took my hat off to my wife going to Germany sorry going to Houston Texas 11 years ago because she didn't want to Originally she didn't have the headspace she just had surgery eight and a half hour operation on her brain. Radiotherapy and there's me saying Hannah, this is not the this is this, isn't it? This isn't right we I didn't tell her what they had told me that basically it wasn't good. But when she was ready, I showed her this documentary. She wouldn't watch it for a while. But then she did watch it about this doctor in America. She watched it twice. She then called me up and said right let's go. So we went to Houston and she started this treatment and the brain tumor basically disappeared and she has been fine. But you know what? You close a chapter on your life and you think well, it's time to move on. And then all of a sudden it comes back and haunts you. And that's what we weren't expecting. You know your worst fears come true, right? Something come and many people can relate to this. But then what do you do if you find yourself in that situation? Well, we weren't able to go back and do what we did before. But I've never stopped looking but now I've decided to look even deeper into Okay, well where are we with brain tumors right now and what has advanced and who's doing who's doing the work who's doing the really great work in this field at this moment in time? Who are the outliers?

So I was on a train maybe seven years ago, and I was coming back from London and I was talking to some people, you know, I just love to talk to people and my wife came into the conversation and I told the story like I'm telling you now and I got off the train and this guy comes up to me in the German voice and says Do you know much about cancer? I said I know a little bit. And he said, Oh, okay. And he told me who he was. And he's a private doctor. And he didn't live too far away from me and we've become friends and for the last six, seven years, we've been talking to each other and we've been exchanging ideas and being just being good people. And when he knows how he's he's met her a few times. And when it came back, it's not what you know, it's who you know, so I reached out to him. And he went away and did some research and he said, Look, you know, I'm working with these other doctors and even though I was still like, okay, right, was probably the best decision we've ever made in working with these doctors. Some of them are in Germany. They're outliers. There are people who are looking outside the box, and I've got to know them. We've been here for a few days. I'm the sort of person like I've said, right in the beginning. If I meet someone, and they're doing groundbreaking work, I want to know I want to I want to help them. I want to support them. I want to be in their lives. And I've just feel like we're so lucky to be where we are right now with some of the greatest human beings I've ever met in my life. Because there are people that aren't accepting. They know that there's something in what they're doing and they won't stop. They have what Napoleon Hill would call that burning desire to make a difference. A burning desire to do what makes them come alive to give life to people. And I admire these guys so much, but I admire anybody that wants to be an outlier. Someone who's you know, like when people say it can't be done. I remember. I mean, I had a lot of issues with my mom growing up arguing with her because she was trying to always try to protect me. Or you don't want to do that could that could happen and I was like, No, I'll show you. I'll show you what I can do. And I have been driven in the past to prove myself to other people. But that doesn't cut it. I want to prove to myself what I'm capable of becoming. And I just want to wrap this up. And I want to thank everyone because we've been so lucky to be so supported by so many people on this journey. And there's a whole world out there for all of us that is different to the world that I think most of us live in. That's why people love the matrix so much. They love the idea. I haven't seen the fourth matrix yet but they love the idea of there. Is another world that is they're out there for us. And different people have different ideas about this. That I believe you have a future self that is out there waiting for you where you'll be able to look back and look look what I did. Look at who I became. So when we look at outliers, I believe that whether they know this or not, they recognize that there's more and they fundamentally believe they can change their personality. Right. They believe they can create a new personality. But what is a personality? Really, what does it mean? Well, it has a few different meanings. But for me Your personality is just your consistent attitudes and behaviors. It's what you do on a consistent basis is what you say yes to and I think a lot of people get stuck because they think they are are their personality. When you look back in your life, you realize this look how far you've come. Why? Why have you come so far? Well, how much of that was conscious? See, a lot of it happens because we the way that we react to what happens we just react to situations and then we see greatness in people but when we go deeper, because behind your personality is your identity. Right and your identity is how you see and feel and describe and define yourself. And I was been talking about this recently about a book called Homo prosperous, which has been a collaboration of a few great minds in the field of psychology railed by really by most Martin Seligman and they talk about Homo sapiens, which is what we are, which means why is being that's what a homo sapien is. But how wise are we really? I think we should aspire to be wise. The greatest virtue of virtues of wisdom and justice and courage and kindness and self control. We can be wise I Aspies I aspire to be WIAA inspired to be wiser

through the power of possibility, the power of prospection we all have the ability to imagine multiple different futures. And I know how challenging it was a few weeks ago even for me to to wake up to a better future to what my wife and I were going through at that time. But how's your future looking? Well, wouldn't it be great if we could all just get up and tell people this is the future that we're creating. We wake up to the fact that we are all governed by a force called teleology. teleology is comes from the Greek word Tilos. Which means targets. Everything that exists exists for an end, everything we do is for an end everything we do, we are goal driven people. That's who we are. And there is this term now which I've been thinking about and talking about, which is the final cause what is the ultimate end what is the ultimate goal you're striving for? I'd love to know. I would love to know you can tell me because I'll tell you there's probably few better people on Earth than me. If you told me not only would I love to hear but I could probably help you and if I couldn't help you find someone who can. Because ultimately, as the bells ring on this beautiful church that I'm looking at, they just rang once. They're a growth mindset. I think people are living in cloud cuckoo land when they really think that they have a growth mindset because a growth mindset is knowing your future self as a different person. That to me is what it is if someone said what is a growth mindset, so it's knowing that my future self isn't me. It's who I'm becoming. There are parts of me but ultimately, I see my future self as a different person. And when you're fixed in your mindset, you're trapped in the tyranny of now, Carol Dweck talks about that, trapped in the tyranny of now. That's what a growth mindset is. I am who I am. And this is how I'll always be. And when you when you really have a growth mindset, you don't really care about how you feel right now you care about what you're doing your relentless drive, and that's why and part of the reason I'm making this podcast is I want the doctors here to listen to this because I want to say thank you to them. And when they're ready to go even more public with what they're doing, whenever that is I want to be a massive part of helping them that I even want to be in their team in helping people with their psychology of when they are finding themselves in a situation where the future looks bleak because of the situation that they find themselves in. I want to add tools and techniques and strategies and support to help in those people change the way they think and this is what I'm going to finish on. So my wife has been having a lot of scans and she had a scan in April and then she and then had another scan when she arrived here. And they looked at the scans and they came back to me and said you know what? There's already some some positive changes. There. There's significant changes, which is great and what Okay, well, what has she actually done since April and May? Because she hadn't even started the treatment that she's now started here. Or what did she do? Well, she had been taking a Chinese mushroom called Ganoderma or Reishi which is probably the most powerful superfood in the world. That's why there's over 3000 medical studies. It was actually one study that was done with people with the type of brain tumor white My wife has, and people taking chemotherapy and this mushroom and showing how the mushroom helps with the side effects of the chemotherapy and other studies which had been done on it. You know, there's over 600 on cancer alone, and she'd been taking it before. We've been taking it every day for pretty much 10 years but she's quadrupled the amount that she was taking. That's one thing. She had one dose of chemotherapy five days, five days. So that was one another thing. And another thing is people praying for her. Right some people believe in the power of prayer. But some people will just been focusing on sending her healing energy and vibration and just focusing on her. So it wasn't necessarily one modality. But can we change things by changing the way that we think about them?

I'd like to think so. Do I know so it doesn't really matter. It's just keep doing it. Because our futures are unwritten. And I believe we do have the power to change and there are people out there that are doing some incredible work. And then there's you. There's doing some incredible work right now just by listening to this. Who do you want to become? We know that our relationship to the future is fascinating. And when you're given a prognosis or diagnosis, it's unlikely that you're going to think very far ahead into the future. You probably imagine a future that you don't want. Like most people today who are living a future they don't want they'll end up in the place going How did I get here? I don't want to be here. I wish I'd made some different decisions. But people today who have been given a diagnosis or prognosis with 97.5% of American 97.3% of Americans unhealthy by four basic measures. Disease is everywhere. But we can change that we can we can work towards a future we want to manifest and bring that future to us by chipping away every single day. We know our relationship to the future. We know everything we do as human beings is governed by our relationship to the future. It's just most people don't see very far. They see a day a week a month. And if you don't see beyond that you won't have empathy for that person. You won't behave like the person that you could become we don't have to wait for these disasters to happen. They can be blessings, they can be the greatest turning points in our life. That you could make a great turning point in your life right here right now by deciding who you want to become. Are you ready to be an outlier? I want to thank you for listening to the podcast. I really, really appreciate you and I wish you a happy, happy, beautiful day. Take care and we'll see you soon.