Rob
Today, my guest is doctor Doug Brackman. After achieving a dual PhD in 2002 in both industrial and organizational psychology and clinical psychology, Doctor. Doug struck out to research the components of powerful thought and action, culminating in a very successful practice of highly driven leaders. Doctor. Doug has used an integrated approach of meditation, biohacking, and applied real world coaching to help thousands of people. He has been naturally drawn to the highly driven, often ADD and ADHD spectrum CEOs, business owners, and entrepreneurs, and for the last 10 years has worked exclusively with these amazing clients. Doctor. Doug is a 20 plus year meditation practitioner and a continuous student of the rapid advances in science, explaining the benefits of specific types of meditation.
He describes himself as a functional MRI geek and student of all spiritual practices and religions. He has authored a book, Understanding and Harnessing the Genetic Gifts of Entrepreneurs, Navy Self, and professional athletes, and maybe you. Our conversation is filled with thought provoking nuggets of wisdom, so please enjoy my chat with doctor Doug Brackman. Doug, great to see you. Welcome to the Shed and Shine podcast.
Doug
It's fantastic to be here, Rob. It's good to see you. You look good.
Rob
Thank you. You I'm so I've been very much looking forward to talking to you. It's been a while. It
Doug
has been.
Rob
We were together in Arizona, but you might not remember we didn't have much time to connect. But this is a very impactful day because you are our first official guest on the Shed and Shine podcast.
Doug
I I am honored. I am honored.
Rob
Yes. I am too.
Doug
I mean, it's, yeah. I mean, the impostor syndrome and all my True to stay invisible for most of my life. It, it seems that, that is coming to an end.
Rob
What's hap first of all, talk a little bit about that. What this impostor syndrome, staying invisible, where did that come from for you?
Doug
I have 2 PhDs. That's ridiculous. I mean, that is stupid. True to get rid of this feeling that I'm that I'm not enough, that, you know, that people are gonna found that find out about really my inner world of of feeling like I'm like I'm not enough. And it, it it it used to be a plague for me. And now that if now when I'm not feeling it, I'm not pushing myself hard enough. And so it's something that, it's it's a measure of actually me pushing the envelope on my comfort zone.
And so it is a good thing. And, you know, really it's core of my content is all about not not being your feelings, not identifying and having your identity be your feelings. And because we only have, we don't have an executive function in our brain. Most of the people listening to this, we don't have, if you know, the the monkey elephant metaphor, and all my new research, and I'm coming out with a whole bunch of new research here in the next couple of months. But it's most people on this planet have only one monkey. They only have one rider up on top of this elephant. And I can't imagine what that would be like.
You know, I got a circus going on in my head of all of them wrestling for control. And so Drivens, we tend to rather than using the single writer as the core of our identity, which is most of the world. That's why we we can't go into a psychologist's office. We look crazy because we have this competing narrative bouncing from narrative to narrative in our head where most of the world is living by a single narrative. We step back and look at, you know, how can they believe, you know, that narrative they're living by and, you know, we don't have that luxury. So until you get into my content or really understand what I teach it is, you know, we by default use this feeling of not enough or this emotional experience of just impending Dube. Like, there's really something wrong with me as the core of identity.
Rob
Yeah. So we when you refer to we, you're referring to the driven people of this world, which are all of you out there listening.
Doug
Yeah. And it it is, what gets people in my office. It's also why 2 thirds of us are completely whacked out in our addictions. And whether it's, you know, anything to make this feeling of something missing or wrong with me go away. And, you know, that's I've got the list of hobbies and I got the list of drugs and I got the list of True to escape this this emotional truth that I thought was true about me. And so it is been the last I didn't, you know, 7 years ago.
It's been 10 years now. When I walked into my first mastermind, I had no idea this world existed. I had no idea there was, you know, hordes of driven people hiding in mastermind. You're experiencing reality in a completely different way than me. And so it was like, welcome home. And so now that I'm, you know, the reluctant messiah coming out of the closet, it it it's still uncomfortable, but it's just it's not me.
Rob
Where did this come from for you? Yeah. I remember reading somewhere, maybe talking to you at some point where you said at 19, you realized you had to help yourself to help others or something like that.
Doug
I was actually sleeping in the back of a car at 17 and living in a van. And that was, it was early eighties, mid eighties. And so I I had embraced the punk rock movement to the fullest. Believe it or not, I had a Mohawk and piercings and I I mean, I was I was full blown, you know, the anarchist. But that awareness and there was some big heavy set woman carrying a trash bag 6:30 in the morning banging on my back window saying you can't sleep here. And it was this wake up moment of what am I doing? What the hell happened?
And so it's that moment, those moments of really, you know, opportunity that, you know, to self reflect, to look at myself in a different way. And it it obviously 2 PhDs later, it it gave me the opportunity to really see myself from a from a different perspective. And that different perspective is this thing that I'm really excited about you and Gino doing because it Selves people the opportunity to to change. So my metaphor, you know, the monkey, the elephant, and the soul, mind, body, soul to really step into the soul for the first time and look at myself. And ever since then, it's trying to put the damn soul in the driver's seat rather than 13 monkeys wrestling True control. And that is the next book I've got coming out, which is really a graduate level course for a lot of the guys I've been working with, you know, meditation practices and the breath work practices and the ice plunges and everything that we do to really get this to take massive advantage of what we are as driven. And being on the other side, it's wonderful, but, you know, catching them where you guys are catching them is just God's work.
I mean, it is fantastic. Mhmm.
Rob
So when you refer to the monkey, you're referring to the mind?
Doug
Yeah. So it's the metaphor is, 25 100 years old and it's classic metaphor is a rider and a horse. And so you have this neo cortex up on top of this elephant or this horse, and they seem to have different agendas. And it is, you know, why January sucks at the gym because the horse is is very much just one state familiar world. But the the the rider up on top, you know, has this ability to imagine 6 pack abs. And so the the January to about January 21st, you see the gym packed, and then it starts to taper where the the elephant or this other operating system starts to take control. And that metaphor is is really the gateway for everything we Dube.
Because once you are able to step out of it and see that, yeah, the elephant wants to set its ass on the couch, and then I've got this gorilla or in my case or most of the driven cases, I got, you know, 2 cheerleaders. I got a lazy one. I got a gorilla, and I got another guy who thinks he's an Seal. Get the hell off the couch. And then, no, maybe not. You need me to hear all that crap, but who's the one watching it. And that is that shift of identity that is the foundational work for everything we do as as a psychologist.
It's called the observing ego. It's what Freud called it and Carl Jung, which I follow much more closely than than Freud is is, you know, it's True the unconscious becoming conscious, you know, expanding consciousness and all the hippie stuff and you guys can pretty tell I'm not a hippie, but, man, I can I have ventured into that world for the last 25 years and there's a lot of truth in it?
Rob
Mhmm. Well, it got a label of hippie, but I don't know these days if it really is thought of in that way. I I don't know about you, and I I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I feel, and maybe it's our bubble, Doug, but I feel people are opening their minds to
Doug
By chance. And so by God's providence, I've had many lucky experiences in this in this world and and how everything, all of my content comes together. One of the luckiest things in the world, my doctoral dissertation chair chair, a man named Jim Spira. His roommate at Berkeley in late seventies, early eighties is a guy named Peter Levine. And so when I first started, this was, you know, 91 when I started my my doctoral work was deep into my med deep, deep, deep into my dissertation in the mid nineties, late nineties and met up with Peter Levine and started True really understanding about how to change the elephant and, you know, trauma healing and it was real hippie back then. I mean, this was coming out of Berkeley and I knew it was like, you know, True oil and and, you know, like, what is this stuff? And the biology and the the science behind it is what I just jumped on.
And we can track now actual genetic physiological changes from trauma healing. And so things that used to, you know, you'd resist, like, going to the gym, you can actually see how that's trauma. And, you know, I could have called True. We are a trauma based personality type. We are designed to live in a trauma filled world. And the transgenerational, you know, impact of trauma on our genetics is really what driven is. And so you see these these adaptations, the neocortex in the brain and the body make to adjust to and adapt to, living in really horrific environments.
I mean, startups are just mad as horrible world. I mean, this is absolute Self, Absolute hell, you know, Elon Musk, you know, it's it's chewing on glass while staring into the abyss of hell. But the thing that I've really focused on in the last few years, and I got, you know, all the my latest work is really, yes, we are designed to live in a world for a little trauma, but we're also designed to heal from all that trauma incredibly fast. And, you know, the guys that I've been working with for 8, 10 years that have gone down that trauma healing path, the freedom that we have to not operate in fear. And I hear it used to hear it a lot more, but now now it's less. And while I think give up my fear, I won't be successful. And the couldn't be anything further from the truth.
You know, you give up your fear and you're not living in this fear based, you know, elephant anymore. The the mental clarity and you can see problems, and then your intuition get launched and you see around corners and and, the truly healed driven is what it's just lightened my candle now. I mean, it it it is awesome.
Rob
Can you talk about trauma? Because I, I work with many of our clients and many are very clear they have had experienced some sort of True, but there are some percentage that say, I don't even, you know, I'm looking for trauma. I just don't think I've had it. You know? So
Doug
True, it the worst thing ever to happen to you is the worst thing ever to happen to you. So True is in the eye of the beholder. And it is, by definition, it is something that happens to you that changes your physiology. You touch a hot Selves, every cell in that nerve pathway remembers that experience, hits the spine, the muscles contract away from it. And it is a reflexive system. This is a hardware system recording things that could kill us or things that, you know, make us in the most common fear of all human beings is abandonment. You know, we're born a ball of meat literally.
So every 2 tiger come and eat us for lunch, and so we are completely dependent on others to to keep us safe. And so attachment is is, you know, what we are and what we are as a as a species. You don't get held as a baby, you die. And, you know, being an entrepreneur is one of the loneliest things in the world, and I work best alone. It's like, well, maybe maybe true, but you're also a freaking asshole and no one wants to work with you. And so that that capacity that actually takes trauma out of this. Well, I was never, you know, dad never hit me, You know, why would I have trauma?
And we all have trauma and you can pin prick babies in Israel only looking at their genetics and their blood type and their, you know, cortisol profiles. Babies, 2 weeks old, 2 months old, and predict with 99% reliability whose great, great, great, great grandparents from the holocaust. And so we are wired for a world that we're, you know, we're gonna go into. And most of this existence on this planet for 200, 250,000 years, however long humans been here, we, you know, we're we're bipeds, we we walked. So if mom was crazy, we're good chance we'd live with mom most of our life. And now it's, you know, just don't answer the phone. And so that residual trauma for generations is in us.
And, you know, it it is it's there. So to say I don't have True, it's not an it's not an understanding what trauma is. You know, I don't have acute True. There's never in a car accident, plane wreck, or whatever. Okay. But, you know, attachment, we all have attachment issues. You know, going back to Julie Suggs in 1st grade, girl I kissed in 1st grade, you know, we and Dube drama.
Missus Fettershall teacher called me out on it, wound up getting a migraine, throwing up, and having to go home. I made it real. It was real deal. And to this day, I can't date for nets. So it's like, what is that?
I just don't like them. Well, that that's my reactions in my body telling me not not safe. Mhmm. And it it it's, you know, going back to really the foundations of everything I teach. It's very simple. That is what my elephant that is what my body is telling me is the True, and feelings are not facts. It react as if it's a snake.
And if you believe those feelings and you see those feeling, you know, we we are living in a constant state of confirmation bias. We see what we feel. So if I'm feeling she's a snake and I'm looking, I will see a snake. And, you know, the narcissistic fantasy of all my entrepreneurs and I got the greatest idea and it can't fail. It's like, yeah. Yeah. I'm issuing, you know, I don't see all you see is sticks. And so it is that ability to reality test your central nervous system, you know, but that only comes from this third, you know, from your soul level of being able to insight, you know, calling bullshit your central nervous system. And so
Rob
So let me ask you this because I wanna come to the 3rd piece to this, but we talk about mine. Talk about how the body shows up and how people are oftentimes not really paying attention to the messages that our bodies are sending us.
Doug
That that is, yeah, the the the client base that you're that you guys are going after and I I love it. Well, let me back up from there. You go to a 2nd grade class, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, you see it the most. Really, 2nd grade is where you see it, where you see a room full of kids studying spelling words. What are they all doing? They all got their head completely caught sideways on the desk. Why? Because they're trying to disconnect themselves from their body.
And it is this yeah. Because I you know, my body wants to go play. My body wants to go to have fun. My body the elephant wants to go do something other than, you know, learn how to be an assembly line worker. And so we have to disconnect our heads from our body. And, you know, the the old Joseph Campbell metaphor is that, you know, is, you know, we all get kicked out of the garden of Eden. Meaning that, you know, we're born into paradise and all we wanna do is play and we don't have any worries and then we eventually we eat from the tree of knowledge and the monkey mind kicks in and good boys and good girls get 100 percent on their spelling.
And so I'm gonna work hard to do this. So I know up here what good from evil is and I don't have to listen to my body. My body's telling me told me really loudly that, you know, memorizing spelling words was stupid and a waste of time. And so that disconnection and then it's always the joke, you know, if you don't listen to your body, you will. And eventually, you know, really 41, 42 after doing 11 years of triathlon, my body said to me, you're done. You go out for a run, you get about, you know, mile into it.
You're like, I'm done. And so the reconnection process with the body and it is it is what meditation and and it was the key to it. Because you will list everybody eventually goes to the dentist. Everybody eventually gets goes to the doctor. And it's it's much better if you learn to listen before you need to. Mhmm. And so but it's normal and, you know, I don't come across it as much anymore, but I have one guy, Scottie, always getting hard.
So where do you feel that in your body? They look at you like cross eyed, you go my elbow, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. What do you mean my body? So take a big breath, hold it and then go real slow. What do you notice? I think you're stupid is what I noticed. It's just pure thinking.
And, you know, it's just what normal is for a lot of people. And, you know, you stub your toe and say, ow, and then 2 minutes later, you know, it's gone. And so the signals from the body, most people are deadened to it and just tuned out from it's called so we have perception looking out and then the big word in trauma healing is interior or interior ception. And, you know, this nerve that runs, the vagal nerve runs down the back and then comes into our stomach and it's it's an efferent nerve, meaning that's a sensory nerve in your gut instincts. You know, but if I'm unaware and I'm scanning the bar and I immediately only looking for blondes, you know, because my gut instinct is don't do that, you know, I am blind to what my body is steering me towards. And so how do I wake up to that is actually really being able to feel the pings to the radar, feel the pings in my body, and that takes practice. And, you know, curiosity curiosity curiosity curiosity.
Rob
Do certain areas of the body indicate certain feelings that you're having?
Doug
We only have 3 basic places to feel. And so think of it. I don't do you like rib eyes? Think of the best looking rib eye in the world. And, oh, you're just about to take a bite. And as you take you feel that wormy gushy in your tummy, you go to take a bite and you see maggots in it. And so the expansion in the stomach is this feeling of, you know, warm fuzzies or whatever you wanna say.
It's safety and security and fullness, and then disgust is the other. And then think of a Labrador puppy. Oh, cutest little Labrador puppy gets hit by a car. And that opening and the closing of the fascia of the heart over all the oxytocin receptors are. And so we have, you know, disgust and warm fuzzies, and then we have warm kind of desire to connect, desire to, you know, and then abandon it. And then fight and flight is the other that's it. So we have this gas pedal of sympathetic arousal and fight as you feel in the shoulders and wanna face and then flight is you drop your shoulders and you feel in your hips you more and more.
And so I, you know, going back to Kristen Brown, different girl in 6th grade. She broke up with me because I had oil pockets in my nose. She said you have oil. Dube you? And so I think about that, you know, and what does that make me feel is I have this little bit of disgust and a little bit of heart hurt and then desire to what, you know, and like we call that abandonment. And so, you know, the same Stephanie Bright, another girl, she cheated on me and that, you know, seeing her kissing another guy made me feel disgusted and made me feel heart hurt and then made me wanna beat this, somebody, call that jealousy. And so emotional intelligence is really the core of why meditation and everything we teach from this observer standpoint is so critical.
But the grounding principle of emotional intelligence is knowing your feelings are not facts. If knowing that your feelings True physiological reactions you're having in your body, they're not True. You know, they're not based in reality, and they're all valid. Everything all their you know, I see, you know, brown haired girl and I feel this disgust and I feel threat. That's valid, but it's just not it's based on some history of mine that's coming through that, Then really being able to feel emotion 1 at a time is the other core thing of emotional intelligence, feel the disgust and feel the heart hurt, and they're so reflexive and fast and the body is just sensation, then it comes up here and we give it labels and meaning and everything else. And so we catch it below the nose. It gives us an opportunity to reality test them.
Rob
When you notice feelings in your body, what do you do with that?
Doug
Notice even more is, there's it it is. There are real snakes in this world and so it's just, oh, just feel it and let it go. No, there's a reason these things are coming up and it is not good nor bad. And it's that opportunity though to to really reality test all of them, you know, and that meditation and the trauma healing world, you know, systematic desensitization, the more you're exposed to something and the more you feel it with an alternative reality happening at the same time. This you automatically start to reprogram this thing and that, you know, things that used to bother me don't bother me anymore. And that that, you know, I have the I do my daughter and I both my eldest daughter. There's a genetic twist that the sound of someone chewing makes me literally wanna, like, vomit, makes me freak out and I god, it was god, how long has it been now?
I've got 24 years ago, 23 years ago now. First meditation retreat where you got 20 people sitting in around in a room eating in silence. It it one of the most horrific freaking feelings I've ever Dube, but my body is lying to me. I'm not in danger, you know, and and that person is more disgusting than that, and I can start to become curious with it and not run from nor, you know, scream at the people around me. And that that concept of bandwidth and the and a sensation turning into an emotion has never gotten me in trouble once ever. You take the e off and turn it into motion. That's when the trouble starts.
And so the capacity to actually be nonreactive but full of sensation. And so I can, you know, boundaries it's the other thing, Peter Levine, brilliant. You know, boundaries are internal. And if you meaning that, you know, my my daughter's pterodactyl screen is one of these. My daughter's got a pterodactyl screen.
17, she still got it. It's amazing. But when she was little, it would literally make my skin crawl And I'd wanna True more react. And if you're gonna do that, you need to go to your room because I couldn't hold the boundary internal. So I had to set external boundaries, but most of us are so, you know, we're just blind asleep to the sensations in the body. And so once you start this process of becoming curious with it, yeah, the floodgates open. And then
Rob
To what's really going on underneath the surface. And then so, like, when you hear the chewing, how do you get to a point where the chewing no longer creates that sensation in your body? In other words, you've let it go. You're free of it.
Doug
Yeah. So it it great question. So trauma healing is all about learning to track and not be trapped in the emotion. And so, you know, I call it the logical container and driven. It's really soul strength for lack of a better word. The capacity to actually stay in this curious observer even though my body is telling me to scream or punch somebody is the capacity to actually become really curious about what in my body is actually reacting this way. And the way the brain works and the neocortex works is the monkeys wanna scream up and down.
Oh my god. You're in danger. You're in danger. And if it goes into thinking land and I start to feed it, then I get into hell loops. Or the monkeys are jumping up and down and the body's freaking out because they're then you get turns into a panic attack. But if I can stay curious and then actually notice that the very small sensation in my body is actually right here in my gut that, you know, the sound of somebody chewing still makes that. But what else is the rest of my body feeling?
And I'm not trapped in it. I can take a breath. I can actually relax the rest of my body, and then what happens to it?
Oh, it gets bigger. Ain't that wild?
Ain't that cool? Maybe I can actually throw up if I do it or not. It but it's not a, you know, I'm I'm changing the relationship I have with my central nervous system. You know, understanding that it's not telling me the True, first and foremost, you know, core of it. And then second, I'm not trapped in the sensation. It's constantly changing. Nothing is permanent.
So I'm able to actually feel these, you know, sense of disgust and then pause and wait, and I get images of somebody making fun of me in kindergarten and 2nd grade and 3rd grades. Oh my god. And I can feel my heart actually feel hurt with it. They used to make fun of me because of this. And rather than, you know, a big fan of Schwartz and I have as internal family systems, I can imagine that little second grader, you know, getting fun, made fun of, and give them a hug. And so now when I actually hear somebody chewing, it actually leads to the sense of gratitude to call it. Mhmm. And so it completely takes apart this this these reactions that we have.
And, you know, IFS, any of those kind of models where you're really looking at how the coupling dynamics between heart hurt and disgust, for example, I can uncouple those and see them as 2 different things. One, you know, this heart hurt collapsing, I can actually do something really different about. I can change this reaction. And then when I get this reaction, this doesn't close my heart and I feel like I'm a Dube it actually opens and I get, like, woah. I actually like it makes me feel warm and fuzzy and love when people choose. Yeah. And so it it completely changes how I walk through the world.
Rob
Yeah.
Doug
Trauma is trauma is one of the only things that, had you never had it, you wouldn't be as good as if you recovered it. And so it it it may set you back. You go down a little bit, but then when you recover, you go way up above baseline where you were before, had you never had the trauma.
Rob
Mhmm. So
Doug
once you get to that side of it, I've been doing this for a long time, you start to dig on your True. It's like, yeah, bring this up because I know there's good on the other side. There's more
Rob
Yeah.
Doug
More freedom from this True central nervous system.
Rob
Yeah. Is the observer that you keep referencing this third thing?
Doug
Yeah. Yeah. It's observer.
Rob
Talk about that. How how do we cultivate the observer, the awareness?
Doug
Personally, for me, the cold plunge has been the best teaching tool I've ever had for did it this morning. I Dube it on a 120 4 days or something in a row now, because the monkey and the elephant want nothing to do with 40 degree water. Nothing. And this observer though is the one that knows it's good for me. It's your knower. I know it in my knower, and it's actually a spot in the body, but I know it might know where I know there's, huge benefit to it. And that capacity to actually get into the cold plunge and then have this it's almost like an impostor syndrome experience inside because, you know, you expect to feel like a badass.
You expect to feel these things and you don't feel that way. You feel cold. I mean, it and curious, like, who the hell is this person under this water that is just? And then I pop back up and it's like, wow. And so embodying that observer, you know, I think that's what we're really doing here on this planet is is embodying our soul. And that's the other joke I always say is really not a joke. If anyone ever tells you they really have that observer thing figured out, run.
I promise it's a cult. It is.
You know, this is Dube is your soul and you're leading, you know, reaching the different layers of, you know, whatever it is. They're just trying to get you to the next course, but, you know, it it is how do you know you're in your observer? I get that question all the time. It's the one waiting for the next thought. And, you know, Carl Jung is really probably one of the first to really conceptualize it. It is this just awareness, pure raw awareness without judgment. It's it's the part of us that is made in the image of God.
And, you know, there's 8,000,000,000 souls on this planet and so this collective, you know, whole spirit or holy spirit, you know, that this thing that is that we can tap into is through that. But most of, you know, most of all the single monkey people don't even know what the hell I'm talking about, but the the the monkey, you know, multi monkey people, all the driven out there, we're so worried about battling our feelings and trying to make us feel safe that we don't have this real opportunity to to take advantage of what it means to be driven.
Rob
Say again, you know, once you kinda conceptualize all this and you say, okay, I get this. I I think this is useful. Now back to your point about your tendency to want to be in fear. How am I gonna be more successful as an entrepreneur now?
Doug
So it's and I I yeah. The book I have coming out after I get a couple of them coming out here in a Selves, but this is driven identity mastery. I sell clarity, confidence, and power. Clarity is what's gonna make you a lot more money. And clarity meaning that you're not fighting your own inner demons and dragons True to make something feel good enough. I mean, good enough is not a feeling. Good enough is based on KPIs and actual outcomes.
And, you know, once you can break that and just like, oh, wait a second. And you then I think we opened with this, you know, you have that, what am I doing? Not shame based, what am I doing? But really a curiosity is like, woah. Woah. What am I doing? And you can start to use our multi thinking brain to really organize the opportunity and then split test it and actually look at reality with it and and driven we are we hate wasting time more than anyone else on this planet, and we are better at wasting time than anyone else on this planet.
And so the clarity that comes from a stable central nervous system and a stable, you know, so I I observer where the observer can actually see, you know, what you are missing because you're not feeling it. And, you know, the the capacity to get in a cold plunge even if you don't feel like it. The capacity to Dube no different than, you know, returning an email. No different than, you know, sitting down and really with the CFO and figuring out where True we making money, where True we losing money. Finding out that you're gonna you you want to know that your idea didn't work and it sucked fast. And the faster you can do that, you know, even though it doesn't feel good, you know, and, you know, just because you want to be right, you're going to miss so much because of that need to to change your feelings. And so Yeah.
Once you get out of the fear, you know, and you start to really see the benefits of this, you know, the results of actually some meditation and you start to get confidence in the practices. Like, if I take a breath, orient, calm my central nervous system, look at the checking account again, see what's really going on. You're gonna see things as you didn't before, But it's not self confidence. It's confidence that I know how to actually get out of my emotional world. And then efficacy that I have the ability to actually change the way I'm interacting with this world. And that becomes this this motivation to really keep the practices going. And once you get over that fear hump and it's relatively quick for most guys, because it's we're wired for an impending Dube feel, you know, fear based world.
And as I teach, it's a total of mine. Makes your head explode really quick that, you know, we're all trying to make safety and feel safe on in the world. Well, where is safety? Right here, right now. And right now in this present moment, you are completely safe. Yeah. But I know they may be practice that a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.
And then it True really quickly you start to see the benefits. I mean, I mean weeks. It's not, you know, couple of weeks of meditation of these practices and then thank God there's there's something called false enlightenment, you know.
Buddha talked about it 25 100 years ago. AA, you know, it's the the pink cloud and, you get, you know, this new tool of meditation and it's like, wow. I can do anything and, oh my god. I everything's gonna be somewhere around, you know, 60, 90 days. It's like, oh, wait a second. This this is hard. The ego structure and everything, it starts to get sneaky again.
And, you know, your work may be better, but all of a sudden, your your relationship with your wife is blowing up. What the hell? And so it it's gonna leak out. And so it it's just practice.
Rob
I can relate to what you're saying about meditation. I've been meditating for 20 years, and I have a daily practice. And I go on 2 silent retreats every single year, and I still feel like a beginner. So, if someone's listening, they might say, why on earth would I do that? So he's been doing it for that long.
Doug, how do you teach this?
Doug
I say it in my meditation course 1st week, and I've been meditating same 20 plus years and just in an earnest practice for 15. And I mean, I probably missed 10 days of meditation in 15 years. I mean, it's just part of my morning routine that it's I I never know nor feel that I'm doing it right. Ever. Okay. That, you know, it it no two breaths are the same. Real challenge when you take a really good breath and you really drop in and then you try to match that breath again.
But it it goes to the core of what this whole thing is about. You know, what got us kicked out of the Garden of Eden was the belief. It's original sin. It's the belief I know good from evil. No. You don't. No one does.
You truly don't. Because why? Because you can't see it all. You know? And and so true humility is that capacity to sit in the in not knowing. And that, you know, when I can sit still in not knowing and know I'm still safe. Yeah. That's why this becomes a very spiritual thing very quickly.
And, you know, spirit True to keep it out of the hippie dippie, but spirit is simply that which we can't see. And gravity is one of the greatest, you know, I can't see gravity, but you can see the effect of gravity. And, you know, I know gravity is real. I know it exists. God is gravity. Yeah. It's a bending of the space time continuum.
So you figure that out. And so that capacity to have a relationship with gravity in the present moment. Another you can't see presence, you can experience it. And so that capacity to actually have those experiences and feel the result, and never really know if you're doing it right. Getting rid of the problem, increasing the the capacity for sitting in faith, that's what we're really talking about. In a perfect perfect faith only exists in the present. And that moment you come out of the present, you start today and then being able to come back to that.
And so it is it is a as a highly driven person that has extreme perfectionism in many of the thing anything I've ever accomplished. Meditation is something that, thank god it's it's it's a never ending pole. You can keep climbing it forever. And if, you know, the moment you think you're making progress, it is you're wasting time on the cushion as Shino Suzuki says.
Rob
You write in your book driven about a retreat that you do where you teach shooting as a way to meditate.
Doug
Yeah. It it it, talking back getting dragged out of the the my impostor syndrome closet. Yeah. Randy and I, buddy of mine who was teaching me Bujinkan, he was a martial arts teacher of mine. Navy seal, retired Navy seal. And I, you know, trying to rebrand myself away from being a psychologist into more cool stuff. So I've been able to partner up with the Navy Seal, and work with entrepreneurs.
And it is the gun is the best teaching tool I've ever had for learning discernment between the neocortex and the, you know, the monkeys and the elephant and the observer. And, you know, very simply, the simplest way to explain it to get it really quickly is there is no recoil in the present moment. And so if you're anticipating the recoil when you're behind the gun and you feel your body tends to inhibit, you start to tense up, pull the flinch, you're not being present. And the observer can feel that letting go and, you know, disinhibition. It's a big thing in the body. We were really just letting the body go, but you're still in the body. And then you can feel just the tip of the trigger and very gently and then, yeah, you feel just these micro moments of not present.
Neuropeptide y and, you know, some of the gifts we have about hyperfocus to where the experience and and then they talk about, you know, where the the identity or the sense of self falls away. And it's the lowercase self where your ego falls away.
It's an ego death moment. Dube beta Christianity, early Christianity is 3 become 1. Where the knower, you know, the father and the son and that this mystery ghost thing and that that experience of actually knowing exactly where the bullets gonna hit, and I shoot crazy guns. I mean, because they're deductible. I built some crazy guns. I'm not kidding. 375 Chitech if there's any weird shooters out there.
It's a 2 mile gun. It can literally put on target at 2 miles. It'll go through it. It'll go through an engine block at a mile. It'll go it'll kill a hammer in a mile. It should True a very big bullet very, very fast. And that capacity to feel the bullet go down the barrel and feel the path of the bullet before it came into your intuition of actually being able to predict the future.
And it's mystical. It's magical.
Randy and I based it on this practice kudos is Japanese and archery, where these guys are shooting, you know, 10 inch little tiny pie plates in the dark at 33 yards. I mean, if you're like, you know, with a candle in the room, but they're feeling the shot. And most entrepreneurs know that experience, you know, when you're you're you're it's flow. It's, you know, flow is where you're in that ultimate experience of really, most people cry behind the gun, which is very surprising because it is such a profound experience of really touching your true potential as a driven. And I've had a lot of single monkey people go through the course and it's just not quite the same, but as driven, so really feel that sense of freedom. Mhmm. It's something we truly crave.
Rob
There's so many things I've really come to love about you, Doug. But one of the things I love about you is that you're about as vulnerable and open and honest of a person that I've ever met.
Doug
Wow.
Rob
You're just you're just open up is exactly what's happening. And, I wonder as a result of your practice, is this what has come for you? That you have no suit of armor up?
Doug
Oh, that is, yeah. It it it's an interesting when you don't have to be scared of your own reactions in your body, Why would I care about your reactions to my reactions in my body? Right? I will work my ass off to not worry about what I think. Why am I worried about what you think? It's that in the punchline to all of it, it's vulnerability is the only thing that works, you know, because human connection is is what what heals trauma is 2 people sharing their
Rob
pain. Yeah.
Doug
And pain is love. It's the other message I have to this world. All pain is love. There's only 2 things in this world, fear and love. And in the present moment, pull in the driveway and my kids are dead and yellow tape across what would happen to my physical body, I would be crushed and I would like stomach would completely turn inside out. I would probably throw up my liver.
My heart would go into a 1000000 pieces. Why? Because I love them. I pull in the driveway and they're not dead. They're paying shit everywhere and every you know? I can feel that warmth. I cut myself and that hurts because it's separating me from life. Why? Because I love life.
Favorite names for God is life and and I love life. That's what we're supposed to do here is love life, but I'm not scared of what's happening in my body. And so being able to demonstrate that and just be be, you know, be spontaneous, you can't be spontaneous.
You know, you are.
Rob
Yes. You you exhibited that in a talk that you gave that I went to, and you lost track of time.
Doug
Yeah. That that I put that up as my that that launched my YouTube channel.
Rob
It did?
Doug
That yeah.
Rob
Is it up there?
Doug
It's up there. You guys
Rob
Please please go watch that. And and just let me say this real quick, but then remark to or, you know, let me know what you're thinking. But you paused a couple different times during that talk, and you said, things you you recognize your body, like, in the middle of it. You said like I'm sweating or or I can't remember specifically what you said, but I just thought, wow. And you were just going and I thought Doug is in another stratosphere right now. What is happening, like, in a beautiful way?
Doug
One of the most reparative experiences I ever had. So I I give a primer on that. Yeah. Go to my YouTube channel and punch it. It it Self, so what happened was there's a it's a 10 minute talk part of, you know, Genius Network and they literally it's a gong show. So it's supposed to stop at 10 minutes. I was sitting on the sidelines with 2 10 minute talks before me, not listening to the 10 minute talks, rehearsing in my head by talk, looking at the timer.
And every time, you know, I'd get to a sentence, I'd look at the timer. Alright. I know where I'm at. I know where I'm at. I get up on stage, they changed the freaking timer. So I'm watching I look at the timer and it's literally supposed to be 5 minutes and counting down.
It's a 2 minutes of 50 so 2 15, 02515, and I went, what? And then I I said, man, I did I started I lost reality. I had a psychotic break. The only thing I could trust in the room was the love that I was feeling from everybody. And so that energetic, you know, sense of containment of just really feeling, you know, this this sense of you guys really are supporting me while I'm completely shitting the bed.
So it was You weren't. Yeah. I did it. My inner experience of that moment, it was one of the most horrific inner experiences I've ever had on edge of panic and I couldn't trust reality. I couldn't trust the timer. I couldn't trust the room. I couldn't but I could trust the emotion in the room.
And so it it was a remarkably reparative, meaning that, you know, every time I get on stage now, it's still really I can trust that energetic connection of the True. And it frees me to be, you know, just just raw.
Rob
Yeah. So It was so great. Everybody was hanging on your every word. That was the thing. It was really an amazing talk. So please
Doug
shit yourself. They have a book that comes out of your mouth.
Rob
What's your YouTube channel? How how could people find that?
Doug
It is I am driven. Yeah. Just everything about me is I am driven,
Rob
I am driven. Okay. So that's a good way for us to Dube because I know you have a hard stop. So the best way to find everything about doctor Doug Brackman is
Doug
I am driven. com. Yeah. That gets the yeah. It gets the shooting retreats and my meditation courses and the next book launches. I've got a couple new titles coming out in the next 6 months and so and then, yeah, YouTube channel literally just launched this past week. So this is perfect timing. Yeah. You want And just you wanna see me losing my literally in a psychotic break.
It was should make some good you should make some good watching.
Rob
I had a different perspective on it than you did. I thought it was beautiful every moment of it. Absolutely real.
Doug
That's cool. So real.
Vulnerability is, I mean, that's what we're doing here with each other. Yeah. If you don't have that, you got nothing.
Rob
Yeah. That's right. That's the connection. And that's why I love you so much, Doug.
Doug
I love you too, Ron. It's fantastic.
Rob
Thank you for
Doug
your time.
Rob
Thank you. Thank you for doing this and coming on the Shed and Shine podcast. I appreciate you so much. Looking forward to catching up again really soon.
Doug
Yeah. We will. Let's go ahead.
Rob
Alright, my man. Take care.
