David Snyder Appearance on MtBS
David Snyder Appearance on MtBS[00:00:00]
Greg Kuhn: Welcome everyone to another episode of Manifest the Big Stuff. I'm very excited to be with you today and to welcome another guest to the show. David Snyder is joining us today. David currently owns and runs a Louisville-based, IT company specializing in computer support and networking. And that company is called Reliable Tek Help.
David also is the host of the Respect the Math podcast, where he goes by the moniker Digital David Snyder. And, uh, David, I believe your first episode was in March of 2022. So
[00:01:00] both of us are, well, relatively new to Pod or Vodcasting. We both got started in 2022.
Wonder if you would take a moment and say hi to the folks that are watching.
Hey, everyone listening, it's an honor to be here. Looking for forward to our conversation. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you very much, David. Uh, David's my guest today, for a number of reasons. Primarily he is a Law of Attraction guy.
He's a manifesting guy. He's got a deep, and profound interest in quantum physics. We share that. And David is also a very successful, businessman, a very successful individual. For example, David, based on our conversation, you do all of the work on your podcast from soup to nuts. Is that correct?
David Snyder: I do indeed, yes.
Greg Kuhn: Well, hats off to you. David, could you tell us a little bit about, your professional success? Anything that you think is [00:02:00] especially important for us to know before we begin this conversation?
David Snyder: Yeah. I've been in business 18 years, starting my company while I had a full-time job. I just thought it was fun to work on computers and, stereo equipment, TVs, that kind of stuff.
I always thought it was interesting and fun. I did it for free for a long time and saw an opportunity to do it and make a little money at it. And was fortunate enough to get fired from that full-time job I had while I was working nights and weekends. And, I just decided to make a go of it. Started the company in 2004, left that job in '07, decided I wanted to make a run at it.
And here I am 18 years later from the inception of the business and 15 years later from actually having it be my sole source of income.
Greg Kuhn: Congratulations.
David Snyder: Thank you. I'm very fortunate. One quote that I love to use, uh, is from Isaac, Sir Isaac Newton. He said, if I've discovered anything new, it's only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. So
Wonderful. I'm the product of all the people that helped me out and all the people I don't even know that made my opportunities possible.
Greg Kuhn: I don't wanna [00:03:00] shortchange the help and the contributions of those giants upon whose shoulders you are standing. But I also wanna point out that it takes intentionality and effort to identify those giants and then ask them to stand on their shoulders. So, hats off to you. I did notice, David, that Reliable Tek Help - the three primary principals, including yourself, are all members of Business Networking International. Which really says a lot because, in my experience, you can't be a part of BNI without being legitimate, authentic, true to your word, and good at what you do. Is that accurate?
David Snyder: That's nice of you to say and thank you. Yeah, they don't, they vet people very closely and the off chance where somebody slips through doesn't have integrity or isn't good at what they do, they won't last long. So that in and of itself is a credential. And, shout out to BNI. It's by far, in a way the best networking dollar I've ever spent [00:04:00] or advertising.
Um, I'm huge proponent of the system and, just grateful to them. Uh, 40% of all of our business directly or indirectly comes from BNI. And our connection, you and I meeting each other, came from BNI, so thank you BNI.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah, I was gonna highlight that as well. That BNI brought us together.
We have a common friend and professional partner in Jay Smith who hooked us up. And although I aman admirer of your work with Reliable Tek Help, uh,I didn't bring you on the podcast to talk solely about that. I've already mentioned your interest in science and quantum physics.
I wanna ask you what led to your, your curiosity have you always been drawn to science? Is this something that happened as an adult? Was there an occurrence in your life that motivated you in this direction? Tell us a little more about that.
David Snyder: Yeah, I'll try to answer that concisely cause that could that, that, that could take a long time. But, briefly put, I've always been [00:05:00] a curious person. Uh, anytime someone explained to me as early as I can remember, even as a young child, I was like, that's cool, that's cool. I mean, I understand that, but I, what I'd really like to know is why.
That great question: Why? You know,why are we here? Why does that work? Why does it have to be a certain way? Why can't it be that way? You know, that kind of thing. So I think it's in my nature. I tell people I'd like to be regarded as three things, when I'm not here anymore in order of importance.
Number one is kind, number two is curious, and number three is persistent. So that's me in a nutshell. I'm always learning something new. I'm always curious. I wasn't a good student until I got to college. I remember, one of the first classes I took, the professor walked in and said this isn't high school anymore.
I'm not gonna babysit you. You can show up to my class or not. You can take the test or not. I don't care. That really intrigued me because prior to that I was coerced into going to school. And, I don't respond well to that. I'm a Type A personality. It's like, well, you know, you're not gonna [00:06:00] manipulate me into doing something, and if I'm forced to do it, it's not gonna be a pleasant experience.
And that led to its own issues and so forth. But when I got to college, I became really serious about, okay, it's up to me to make the best out of this experience. And I had a little bit more control over what direction I take academically and so forth. And so,ended up, majoring in several things.
Business, Economics. Um, finally took a philosophy course. And thank God I didn't get pushed into what at the time was kind of the default. You need a philosophy course as part of your humanities curriculum. Go take Logic. Now, I'm not knocking Logic . Logic's great. Logic's math with words.
It kind of fits into the philosophy department. And so thank God I wasn't pushed into that class. I ended up taking a class called,Ancient Philosophy, and I was hooked from day one. I remember the teacher, Professor Kimball, came in and said, I wanna tell you a story about a guy named Theseus, and he has a boat and it's called the Ship of Theseus.
And one day he went [00:07:00] out and he noticed part of his boat was damaged, so he pulled some wood out and he replaced it. All right. A couple days later, he had to replace something else. A few years later, every original part from that boat was replaced. And so the question is it still the same ship? And if it isn't, when did it stop being that same ship and start being the new ship, right?
And so those kind of questions that philosophy deals with that makes most people either, go to sleep or get disinterested, really intrigue me. You know, what does it mean uh, that something is what it is. What does it mean to be what it is? How do we define that? And so I ultimately ended up getting a degree in Philosophy.
Some people call it the ultimate useless degree. I disagree. For me, it was great because once I started taking philosophy, all my grades went up. I ended up being like a 3.5 student on all the classes I took after that. It gave me that fundamental framework, to think critically and solve problems.
That really helped lay the framework and the groundwork for me to pursue my curiosities and be a good student.[00:08:00]
Greg Kuhn: It's interesting - a couple thoughts. One is that thought experiment about Theseus, we can apply that to ourselves, right? Because all of our atoms are being replaced on a continual basis.
Are we the same person? We certainly don't have the same physical body that we had, six months or a year ago. And also,how inspiring that you started the academic component of your journey with philosophy. Because I'm guessing that as you began to dig more into science, that philosophy background was of great value because of your ability to apply your imagination to it.
David Snyder: Yeah, absolutely. It trained me, it trained my mind. It got me used to experiencing different ideas and different political, positions, different cultures. It really honed my skills. [00:09:00] One parallel I would mention is I'm a huge Albert Einstein fan, and I've read all of his biographies and so forth. And a lot of people don't know this, but he couldn't get into graduate school when he wanted to, because back then it required a personal recommendation from one of your undergraduate professors. And he had pissed off pretty much all of them by proving them wrong, not showing up to their classes, just not being the so-called good student that you were supposed to be.
And so he couldn't get what he wanted, which was to get into graduate school and teach physics eventually, or just be a physicist. Not necessarily he didn't like teaching. But, anyway, so he had a young child and a wife and he needed to make money. So he humbled himself and took a position at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland.
And it was there that he had his miracle year. He wrote, uh, in 1905, he wrote five papers on five completely different subjects, all of which were deemed, later to be Nobel Prize worthy. One of which did win him the Nobel Prize, on the photoelectric effect, many years later. But what people don't know is that every day, day in and day out, he was approving and reviewing all these patent [00:10:00] applications, these great ideas that these inventors and problem solvers were submitting to try to get patents for.
And his job was to analyze all the information there and try to condense it down to its essence. And that trained his mind as a scientist. I don't know if we'd have the Einstein that we know today had he not taken that fateful position reviewing patents. And so for me, my philosophical training prepared me in much the same way for what I ended up doing later on in life.
Greg Kuhn: So the study of philosophy was your patent office job?
David Snyder: It was my, yeah, exactly. My patent office in Bern, Switzerland. Absolutely. Yeah.
Greg Kuhn: So where, how and why did science, and in particular quantum physics, enter the equation for you?
David Snyder: Yeah, I can, you know, we have those experiences in our life that are just encoded so significantly in our brains.
I can view myself right now in the moment where it clicked for me. It was, approximately [00:11:00] 2006 and I was in my apartment and I turned on PBS and Brian Greene came on for an episode of Nova. It was called The Elegant Universe and it was based off a book that he wrote. For those that don't know, Brian Greene is the quintessential philosopher or, excuse me, physicist for the masses.
He's wrote many New York Times number one bestselling books. And his brilliance is in explaining these complex mathematical and physical ideas and formulas to the masses. And so I was hooked like five minutes into that. And that particular episode was about string theory, but to set up string theory, he had to set up, what we call classical physics, which started with Newton. . Well it didn't start with him, but it dates back to Newton and his predecessors.
And then Einstein came along and revised Newton. And then when Einstein was doing his thing, Niels Bohr and some people like, Max Born and Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg came along and they were studying how atoms behaved and how [00:12:00] the particles that make up atoms behave. And they gave us quantum physics. Which is, um, I studied quantum physics for 12 to 13 years before I even felt like I had a very primitive understanding of it.
Greg Kuhn: And it's, I think, Professor,Leonard Susskind said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don't." So that was my introduction to it and it's been a pursuit ever since. Countless books and documentaries and talking to physicists and mathematicians about it since. That's a, a funny juxtaposition. I'm thinking back to your story about being given permission to fail when you got to college, uh, inadvertently unlocked some, latent motivation on your part as a student. Similarly, I am often tempted to introduce myself to folks and tell them that I don't understand quantum physics at all. As a way to let them know that I do a little bit.
David Snyder: That's a good place to start.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah, for sure. I'm, I'm [00:13:00] guessing that your interest in physics, and,and quantum physics in particular, wasn't just academic. That you had some ideas about how it might apply to your life, fairly quickly into your investigation process.
David Snyder: Instantly. Yeah. You know, you can't,you can't help but think, okay, all these strange phenomenon that it did, that are, that it described, you know.The temptation is there. Right?
Well, let's set it up for the listeners who don't know. So I'll try to make this as, approachable and accessible as I can to the person who doesn't really know much about math and physics. So, um, the classical world that Einstein and Newton gave us is very intuitive, right?
Like if I told you if I rolled a ball across the table and it started at point A and it ended at point D, any person would know it passed through points B and C to get there. Right? Linear progression. Linear motion. We see that every day. It's common sense, it's intuitive. It doesn't require much, you know, much scrutiny. Well, when they started [00:14:00] studying the fundamental particles that make up atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons and their more fundamental particles like charms and quarks and leptons, but all that kind of stuff, they found that those rules did not apply.
Um, the term is called locality. In the classical world, if you give me a particle's position and its velocity, I can tell you where it's gonna go and where it's been. That's called determinism. And that's very consistent with our everyday experiences.
Fundamental subatomic particles don't behave that way. Not only can they get from point A to point D without passing through points B and C, at the same time, they can get there instantaneously. It can go from A to D instantaneously. And, even weirder than that, is we have a term called superposition where they can be at A and D at the same time.
Um, And this stuff happens all the time. And so,we have a few otherideas that need to be discussed. I think the most profound scientific experiment ever done is the double slit experiment. [00:15:00] And, uh, imagine if you took a paintball gun and you shot paintballs at a wall. Like a white wall. And the paintballs were, say they were colored red.
Well, if you wanted to and you had enough sophistication and a calculator, you could go and you can point, you could, um, define the point at which the paintball gun sitting on a tripod in a fixed position was shooting those paintballs from. And you could go and analyze all the detections, all those splatter marks on that wall, and you could figure out where they came from and how fast they traveled and what direction they took and all that.
Well imagine if in between where that paintball gun is shooting paintballs and that wall that they splashed on, you put another wall in between them and you put two vertical slits with, um, you know, the paintballs could either get blocked by this, middle wall, or they pass through one of the two slits.
Well, instantaneously, instead of seeing paintballs smeared all the way across that wall, which you would see if there was nothing blocking it, you'd see two vertical lines. The paintballs either passed through one or two of the lines and left a mark [00:16:00] consistent with that trajectory necessary to pass through those lines, or they'd get blocked.
Well, think about shooting an electron gun at a detector wall and doing the exact same thing. You don't see clear vertical lines for where those electrons either pass through one or both of those slits. Um, what you see is a smear of electron impacts across that detector wall. And they quickly determine that smear could be explained by something called an interference pattern, which is very,significant of what's called wave mechanics.
And so the interesting part is if their impacts with the wall give you an interference pattern, then those electrons that we thought of as little balls, must actually be waves. And that's pretty deep. But it gets even weirder if you take a particle detector and put it right at the point where the electron would either pass through one of both of the slits or get blocked by the wall, and you turn it on, instantly on [00:17:00] that back wall, you start seeing vertical lines.
And so what does that tell us? Well, electrons and other subatomic particles are waves until they're observed or interacted with, right? The second you interact with them, they become that little ball, that little point-like particle that we expect them to be. And so that tells us that nature is actually wave-like. And that human beings, by interacting with these wave-like, um, uh, particle - or not particles, they're waves.
Human beings are literally authoring reality. They're literally authoring the fundamental classical universe that we see every day and take for granted. And so that is deep and you can draw a lot of conclusions from that about the power of your mind, how you think, the ideas that you have. Your very existence is authoring the universe.
And it is. And uh,it makes me think of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. Which [00:18:00] my understanding is that, um, many, if not most physicists sort of ignore that question , uh,
What does it mean?
Greg Kuhn: for a variety of reasons.
David Snyder: Yeah. What does it mean to be, uh, you know, what does that mean? Yeah.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah. Is our consciousness collapsing the,the
David Snyder: The wave function.
Greg Kuhn: into permanent particles
David Snyder: Yeah.
Greg Kuhn: and the wave function, of reality? Or creating reality?
David Snyder: Yeah, the Copenhagen Interpretation is very strict. It's named after Copenhagen in Denmark, where Neils Bohr and his guys were,you know, pioneering quantum mechanics.
And they say, look, there, there is no fundamental deterministic reality that we take for granted in every day and see. All there is, is the wave function, right? And let's talk about the wave function. So these, um, uh, Schrodinger, Erwin Schrodinger came along and said, oh, okay, this double slit experiment is interesting.
It taught us that, ev every everyday odd objects, human beings, planets, stars, everything is made of these subatomic particles that are [00:19:00] actually just wavelike. His insight was to say, well, that wave tells us something. And so the wave function itself is a little formula he came up with that actually tells you the likelihood of finding the waves' particle, like, um, point-like particle in space and time if you go looking for it.
And so not only is the fundamental reality of nature wavelike, the wave itself is in encoding the classical universe that we all take for granted. You can take this function and you can apply it and it'll tell you where to find a particle in space and time if you go looking for it. And that is profound.
And, so, t he fact that we can understand nature at that level, with that precision, um, is just, is mind boggling. Just living in existing and being conscious itself is authoring reality and creating the universe.
Um, the Copenhagen Interpretation says, look, all there is are these [00:20:00] waves and there's nothing else. Everything that you think that you see every day, a ball rolling across a table, our star the Sun orbiting a super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. All that stuff is emergent from a wave collapsing due to observation or, or some type of material interaction.
And so those guys are like, look, there is no reality. The only reality is waves. And that's it. And so that's, that's kind of the Copenhagen interpretation in a nutshell.
Uh, Professor Sean Carroll, who used to be at Southern California, he took a new post, I forgot where it is now, but he is somebody you really wanna study if you wanna look into what is called the foundations of quantum physics, which goes further and says, what does it mean to be a human being living in a world where we can collapse a wave function and create reality? That's, uh, that's really fascinating.
Greg Kuhn: Thank you for that recommendation. I am, uh, thinking right now, I, I often say that the universe is not dependent upon [00:21:00] me to exist. But my universe, the one that I manifest and inhabit, is. That's also a very unique juxtaposition. It means that in the grand cosmic scheme of things, I'm less significant than a grain of sand on the planet Earth. However, in my personal universe, in my experiences of material reality, I'm the single most important thing there.
David Snyder: Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that; you and I are kindred spirits. Because one of the most profound realizations I've ever had in my life is how insignificant I am on a cosmic scale, on a social scale, on a time scale. All that.
I am nothing. I'm not even an infinitesimally small fraction of the most fundamental particle out there. I am nothing. You know, if I died tomorrow, yeah. Yes, my family and friends would mourn me and they'd be sad, but life would go on. In that moment when I realized I was taking myself way too seriously, that [00:22:00] I am not, you know, anything more than just another person ultimately. That gave me probably the single most, um, personal insight and significance and meaning and purpose than anything I've ever realized. From insignificance, I discovered my significance. So it sounds like you can relate to that.
Greg Kuhn: Absolutely. to me, there's a lot of freedom and that's very similar to that,you know, unlocking through, uh, perhaps unexpected doorways,some very new understandings. I do want to, I want to ask you, I mentioned when we talked earlier that my interest in quantum physics really stems from my academic studies as a historian andthe way that the first Scientific Revolution, the one that, you know, we all learned about in history class, spurred by Isaac Newton and Principia Mathematica.
Really, the first Scientific Revolution created [00:23:00] all the paradigms that Western Civilization is based upon. And,a paradigm is, uh,it's nothing more than a word to describe the reasons we do things the way we do them. And you mentioned determinism. Uh, determinism is a paradigm that arose from the first Scientific Revolution. From classical physics.
And a good example of the way that paradigm influenced western civilization could be found in Sigmund Freud's use of talk therapy in regressive therapy. Uh, because he took that paradigm of determinism and he applied it to mental health. He said,if someone is experiencing mental distress today, we ought to be able to go back into that person's past and find the root causes of it.
Then treat it in that way and change that person's ongoing future. Uh, obviously we know [00:24:00] that, Western Civilization functions reasonably well, uh, certainly has noticeable flaws that we're all aware of. But what really caught my eye about quantum physics when I first began to read about it, which was in the early 21st century, was the realization that quantum physics is the second Scientific Revolution.
And the paradigms that arise are very different. For example, in quantum physics, we have a paradigm of indeterminism, which you've already spoken to.
David Snyder: Yeah.
Greg Kuhn: Uh, we cannot reliably predict outcomes based on past results. Neither can we go back and look at past behaviors and know that they will, behave or reveal behavior that's linear.
Uh, how does that change the way we do things to have such radically different and new reasons for doing [00:25:00] things the way we do them? And this Scientific Revolution, this second Scientific Revolution, we're in the middle of it right now and we are experientially a part of the changes that are coming forth. The way that we're reimagining how human society works, how humans function, how medicine plays a role in our life, how organizations, flourish, how education works, how economies function, how governments employ their faculties.
Um, I immediately wanted to begin applying that to my life. Did you do likewise as you began to study? Did you begin to experiment and, uh, imagine and then and, you know, begin to try things out?
David Snyder: You can't help but do that, right? Once you figure that out, you're like, oh my gosh, this could, uh, could apply to so many areas of my life.
Um, in the, in the philosophy world, they call it mysticism or [00:26:00] phenomenology. These things that happen that just don't make sense. we have them every day. They're non-linear. Your life can be following a smooth trajectory and all of a sudden it takes one turn and things are radically different, and that's not proportional to the change that you made.
For me, the very thought that just by me being conscious I'm creating reality really changed the way I looked at things. I'll give you an example with my podcast. I pitched the idea to my wife around this time last year and I said, look, I'm always engaging in these interesting conversations with people anyways about a number of topics.
Religion, philosophy, politics, math, science, whatever it might be. Why not document them and get them out there and see if I can build an online following, maybe make some money, andjust do something that I'm already doing anyways? Why not document them? And the number of things that have happened in that process, to get me to where I am now are non-linear, right?
My goals originally were to get revenue positive, pay myself back for my small investment to get it started, and then become profitable. I've done all those. Um, the fact that people like you and I met just through a [00:27:00] random conversation I had with somebody, at an event. We have friends in common with, um, you know, that happened.
Um,you talk about intentionality and that's one thing I wanted to touch on. Before I do, I wanted to point out how great an insight you had about quantum physics being the next paradigm. That's great. I haven't thought about it like that, but it is. It's driving... all of our technological and electronic innovations are because of quantum mechanics.
If they flip the quantum mechanics switch off tomorrow, every computer, every electronic device would stop working. And the key insight to quantum mechanics and electronics is that if you wanna make an electron follow a certain path through a circuit for the electronics to work, classical mechanics won't do it.
You have to, you have to understand how to manipulate it as its wave-like. , um, you know, counterpart is for all that to work. So that's critical. The technological expansion we owe due to quantum mechanics. We had the introduction of the fusion. I dunno if you heard that.
I don't think enough people understand what happened there. Up [00:28:00] until now in human history, you always had this trade off. If you wanna create some energy, you have to put more into it, or at least the same amount to get the same output.
That's a fundamental unbreakable, never proven wrong law of human experience, and science and reality, right? And so if this thing is scalable to the level that we need to create power plants out of it. I heard someone describe the other day, you could source the input energy from renewable sources like solar and wind and turbine and all that kind of stuff, and create more energy out of something that you put into it.
That is profound. That can give us clean, renewable energy for as long as we live on this planet. It can get us to other planets. It can arguably power a spacecraft to get us to another solar system, which we all know if we study science for any period of time, our sun is great, but it's gonna burn out like any other star.
And when it does, if we haven't escaped this solar system, we're [00:29:00] in big trouble. So, um, thinking about...
Greg Kuhn: It's gonna swallow the earth up, isn't it?
David Snyder: Well, it's interesting. There's a, if you're curious, there's a thought experiment about that. Um, so remember how we talked earlier about, uh, uh, time being as physical as space is?Before Einstein gave us his revisions of Newtonian physics and gravity and classical mechanics, the thought was if the sun just disappeared instantly, that the planet, would go dark, and then it would leave its, orbit around the sun instantly. Right? Well, James Clark Maxwell taught us that light, as fast as it is, is not instantaneous. It travels at approximately 670 million miles an hour, always, in a vacuum, of course. But what happens is it would take about eight minutes for the planet to go dark and for the planet to leave its orbit around the sun.
And so that's fascinating. Einstein taught us that it would take about that amount of time. Light is very fast. Gravity acts very quickly, but it's not instantaneous. Um, and so we've got it. It would take about eight minutes, but yeah, [00:30:00] after eight minutes or so, we'd be in big trouble.
Greg Kuhn: You'd have just enough time to find your car keys.
David Snyder: Maybe, maybe turn, put your phone in airplane mode or send that last text or something. Yeah, yeah. But going back to what you've talked about before with intentionality, I, you know, and I'm not being a good scientist by doing this, in the pure sense, but I can't help but think if me existing and observing the world is creating the world, what does that say about my potential, about what I want to manifest? To use one of your words, right?
Um, intentionality is a huge one. We've talked about, we mentioned the Law of Attraction briefly, that that book changed my life. You know, was it Rhonda Byrne? Is that her name? I believe so.
Greg Kuhn: The Secret.
David Snyder: Yeah, The Secret, right. Rhonda Byrne.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah.
David Snyder: Yeah. She said, look, I've reached a point in my life where everything was falling apart around me and my key insight was that I played a role in that, you know?
And if I played a role in my life, crumbling around me, I can also play a role in my life being great and being what I want it to be. You know? I think you can comment on that. Your story is so inspirational, by the way. You wanna talk about that just for a [00:31:00] minute on how you, uh, arrived at a similar insight and turned your life around?
Greg Kuhn: Absolutely. Uh, folks familiar with my background know that I got started on this path, really, from a furnace of personal and professional and financial devastation. I was, uh, riding the real estate bubble in the late 1990s and thinking I had the world, you know, on a string. What I didn't realize was I had a tiger by the tail and, when that tiger turned around, I was left holding the bag to the tune of about a million dollars of debt.
I was facing 14 foreclosures. Uh, bankruptcy was imminent. My marriage dissolved. I became a single father of three. And, just out of pure desperation, I had already been reading and studying quantum physics. As you know, luck, we like to use words like "luck" [00:32:00] because it, it makes the, the seemingly unexplainable seem more mundane.
Uh, I, I certainly had that background and I understood that these new paradigms were flipping, perhaps flipping,our notions of reality and the way that we interact with reality, on its head. Well, the time was drawing nigh, my devastation was about seven months away. Everything was gonna fall apart. And I said, what the heck? What do I have to lose? There's got to be a way, maybe, to influence, based on, very similar things to what you shared that, you learned from Rhonda Byrne. I figured my goodness, what do I have to lose? So I invented a method to authentically raise my beliefs, to authentically grow my beliefs, into alignment with my desires. Which at the time, of course, my desire [00:33:00] was to escape this devastation.
And, uh,I write about that belief raising process and I talk about that belief raising process all the time. Um, essentially, without getting too far into the weeds, what I learned is that we inherit our beliefs as very young children. And, for me, the reason that beliefs play such a central role for me, you and every human being, is because beliefs manifest the form, the function, the meaning, and the value of material reality.
And we have to have beliefs so that we can manifest a version of material reality in which we can live and operate. Um, I developed a way to authentically grow those beliefs, by learning to speak the native tongue of our subconscious. Uh,the native tongue of our [00:34:00] subconscious is emotional honesty, emotional integrity.
So I learned a way to speak the language of my real feelings to my subconscious in a way that grew the beliefs into alignment. Well, a year later, every property had been sold. All my debt had been repaid. I never had to declare bankruptcy. And I was ecstatic, of course, and just was absolutely filled with a certainty that I had to share this with people.
And so I began this part of my life, this journey. And,you know, manifesting reality I found is, uh,it's a dance. Uh, when it comes to manifesting specific things, uh, specific desires, specific outcomes, I find that's possible. But I have learned along the way [00:35:00] to differentiate between nouns and verbs. A noun, of course, is the aiming point or the target of a verb, if you will. A verb is about action, a verb is about performance. And a noun is about being.I'll put it this way. I found that it's much more beneficial, that I have much more agency in my manifesting, when I focus on manifesting wealth versus manifesting a million dollars. Uh, certainly I want the money, but manifesting wealth has many more components to it than manifesting $1 million.
And the more creative allowance that I give to the Quantum Field, whichin, my view and my experience is the source of everything here. Uh, it's a omniscient, omnipresent field of energy from which all material reality arises. [00:36:00] And when material reality arises from the Quantum Field, it doesn't lose its existence as energy.
You and I are still energy right now, even though we're temporarily experiencing this. Uh, I say all this to say that it can be a little tempting for me sometimes to, and, and certainly was in the beginning, but still today to, imagine myself like a genie. , Wow, wouldn't it be nice to snap my fingers or wiggle my nose and make a pot of gold appear?
Now, theoretically, I suppose we can't say that is impossible. If somebody could really come to believe that, certainly hypothetically that's possible. Myself? Uh, I don't know how much effort, time, and energy it would take to come to beliefs like that. Certainly more than I'm willing to put in.
For me, what I'm more [00:37:00] interested in manifesting today is connection and intimacy in my marriage, um, success in my professional life,uh, fulfillment in my fatherhood. I want to manifest a version of reality that goes beyond what I believe is possible, but also capitalizes on what I believe is possible.
David Snyder: Yeah. Well said. Your story is so inspiring and interesting. Um, you said something I wanna make a revision to, if you don't mind. You said you realized that manifesting reality was possible. I would argue that it's inevitable. You're manifesting reality, whether you realize it or not. The question is if you wanna be successful.
And if you wanna be intentional, right, you have to become aware of the fact that you're manifesting it. And then you can kind of, um, you're already on the saddle, you're riding that horse already. You want to grab the reins, you know, first you have to discover that there are reins. And once you do that, then you can do the work to grab those reins and steer reality.
I would argue that manifesting reality is inevitable. Does that make sense?
Greg Kuhn: Yeah. In fact, I'm not exactly sure how I [00:38:00] put it, but I want to echo your sentiments. If I did put it that way, it's a slight ,uh, misspeak on my part because I agree with you.
Human beings manifest a version of reality. Every human being manifests a unique version of reality. There's no opt out. The only choice is how.
David Snyder: Right.
Greg Kuhn: How do we want to do it? As you were just saying. And I call it Intentional Manifesting. There's default manifesting, right? There's the status quo, and, uh, certainly status quo works well for me sometimes, as it does for everybody.
However,
David Snyder: Yeah
Greg Kuhn: life gets painful, frustrating, and for me, those points really come down to when it doesn't seem like it needs to be this painful. You know, when I lose my father, that's painful. It's devastating. And that seems right. You know,I'm not necessarily interested [00:39:00] in, uh, manifesting that differently, in the sense of wanting to chase down the ability to, bring him back to life or, completely reformulate, uh, how death works for me in a physical way.
David Snyder: Yeah.
Greg Kuhn: I'm not interested in that. Uh, but when it comes to, let's say, feeling alone and unappreciated in a marriage, that doesn't seem like that's a fait accompli or something that has to exist in that way. That's the type of stuff that I wanna manifest differently and do it by intentionally manifesting my reality in that part of my life.
David Snyder: Yeah, I think what you meant when you said that was it's possible to man to manifest the life you want. Not just to manifest reality, but to specifically manifest the type of life you want.
Can I share something with you that gave me a lot of perspective?
Greg Kuhn: Please.
David Snyder: Uh, Brian Cox, another, physicist who does some great TV shows and wrote some great books, said, if you wanna know where you stand in the universe, consider this.[00:40:00]
We're orbiting, we're floating through space, which as far as we know, has no limits so it's arguably infinite, at 60,000 miles per hour on this planet. That's a thousand miles per minute and 18 miles per second as we orbit the sun.
Our sun is just one star that our Milky Way Galaxy, which is a collection of solar systems, with planets orbiting their stars. And our Milky Way Galaxy has an estimated 200 million stars like our sun and an estimated 20 billion earth-like planets. And it's one of an estimated 2 billion galaxies.
Greg Kuhn: If that doesn't give you some perspective on where you fit and how truly insignificant you are on a time scale and on a space scale, and so forth, I don't know what is. And it's that theme of from insignificance comes significance. Right?[00:41:00] Yep.
David Snyder: Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you think you cannot, you're always right. I'm sure you've probably heard that.
Greg Kuhn: Yes, for sure. But,as insignificant as I am, as we all are, we're certainly significant enough to be having this experience. Right?So those two go hand in glove. Uh,and we've mentioned a couple times the freedom inherent in taking a dive into sometimes the stuff that we think, maybe I ought to avoid that.
And sometimes that leads us directly to, uh, unlocking or unleashing some latent power. Um, I have come to the understanding in my life through my efforts to intentionally manifest my version of reality that, uh, all of these material objects, all of these time space events. You, me, the computer we're looking at, the microphones we're talking into, on and on.
I believe these things are the Quantum Fields' [00:42:00] way of experiencing itself. Anddoes that make a difference to me, why I'm here? It's an interesting question. Uh, I have a very strong suspicion that I am part and parcel ,uh, I am the Quantum Field and the Quantum Field is me.
David Snyder: Absolutely.
Greg Kuhn: And I am just temporarily having this experience. Uh, I haven't been imbued with the powers of a genie, but I have been imbued with the powers of an architect. If I desire and I'm willing to take the time, I can manifest a version of reality that's more in line with my desires. Tell us a little bit, David, about some of the ways that you've seen that unfold in your life.
David Snyder: Yeah. Can I make one comment and then answer that question? I'd love to.
Greg Kuhn: Please, please.
David Snyder: This is another one that'll give you some real perspective and blow your mind. Are you familiar with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics? It's also called the multiverse.
Greg Kuhn: Yes.
David Snyder: Okay. Well, so the [00:43:00] idea is, and it hasn't been proven yet, but it's the leading flag bearer for a more fundamental understanding of the universe.
And it says basically this: anytime a quantum outcome can occur, it occurs in a universe that was created in that moment for it to occur. And that is mind blowing. Think about that. We have a physical mathematical definition of reality that we think is accurate. That says not only are you authoring your universe just by being and being, conscious that a world where whatever you want to happen is created to happen in that moment.
That is mind blowing. And that is inspiring to me. If the many-world's theory interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, uh, Hugh Everett came up with it a few decades ago. Think about that. Not only are you capable of authoring reality just by being conscious, there's a new universe that's created for everything that you wanna manifest. That is really profound, right?
And so, to answer your [00:44:00] question for me, I manifest every day in my life. I am a big fan of Dave Ramsey. I'm not sure if you follow him from a financial standpoint. He says, don't borrow money. I don't borrow money. I had a mountain of debt when I graduated college cuz I was stupid. And that was nobody else's fault but mine.
I borrowed my way through college, took me 10 years after I graduated to pay all that money back. But I got on his plan,in January of 2005. So I started paying off my debt and haven't borrowed a dime for anything since, except for a mortgage on a house. We have a small mortgage. Um, but for me, I choose every day to live below my means.
To run my business responsibly, I have to pay my team members. I have to withhold taxes, I have to pay our vendors, I have to pay all these other sources before I hopefully have enough money left over to pay myself, right? And that is not an accident. That requires intentionality.
Uh, when I'm mentoring people on how to run a business or how to start a business, I tell 'em, you either A, have to know your numbers [00:45:00] or you have to have quick access to those numbers, whether that's QuickBooks or a bookkeeper or something. You have to know those numbers cuz if you don't, you'll look up in six weeks have passed, you haven't done your numbers, and you owe the IRS $10,000 and you're in a hole, or your vendors aren't paid or your team members are, you know, you're running behind on that kind of stuff. So, I intentionally author my life every single day through, habits.
I run and lift weights. try to do that four days a week. I am, obsessive about checking my spreadsheet from my various businesses and updating the numbers there and becoming or remaining acquainted with the metrics of running businesses and all that. I choose to, uh, one thing I've been working on recently is, I choose to get better at being married.
Uh, well, you get a lot of advice when you tell people you're getting married or you just got married. But one thing I never heard from anybody is marriage is like anything else. You have to practice it and you have to work at it for it to be good. You don't just say, I do and all of a sudden you have a great [00:46:00] marriage.
And so speaking of being insignificant, I've had to really pick and choose what hill I want to die on when it comes to interacting with my wife or my son. Right? Do I want to get pissed off that my wife left some boxes in the hallway and didn't,process them to be returned to Amazon in the same time I would?
Um, am I frustrated that my son doesn't go to sleep at the exact time I expect him to, or, you know, I used to get frustrated with those things and make them worse, and now I'm like, I have to intentionally have a realistic set of expectations that these things are on their own timetables. And I have little to no influence on that ultimately, and I just have to practice and get my reps in at dealing with that in real time and getting better at it and accepting it, if that makes sense.
Greg Kuhn: Interesting. Can I,I want to piggyback
David Snyder: Please.
Greg Kuhn: on what you just said. I'm 55 years old and just in the last couple years, my intentionality in my marriage has brought me to the point where I have... As soon as I say this, I'm gonna violate this because [00:47:00] in no way, shape or form do I do any of this perfectly , uh, of course. But I've largely stopped arguing with my wife. Even when I'm right. Which is all the time, of course.
David Snyder: Naturally.
Greg Kuhn: Or especially when I'm right, because you know what I realized? Even when I'm right, I'm still in an argument
David Snyder: Mm-hmm.
Greg Kuhn: and that's what I don't want to be in. Uh,I hear you. It's,it's funny sometimes,I know I'm, I know you've read, Law of Attraction books.I mean, obviously, you know, you refer to The Secret. I have too. And I think it's very natural. I know for me, I'm sure for most people to indulge in a fantasy, uh, that genie fantasy that I mentioned earlier, that I could snap my fingers and make something happen.
And,I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but I've found it, it's a lot more valuable to roll up the sleeves and, uh, and go to [00:48:00] work in, an inspired downstream way.
David Snyder: Mm-hmm.
Greg Kuhn: Hence the importance of growing my beliefs into alignment with my desires. When my beliefs are aligned with my desires, my actions become inspired and my efforts feel like a downstream paddle. When my beliefs are not aligned, it's the opposite effect.
I spent a lot of years paddling upstream in an effort to hammer things into place and get things the way I wanted them through sheer hard work. And I don't ever wanna poo poo hard work because we as human beings, we are agents who have control over our actions, our ideas, our attitudes, and our focus.
And we also have control over our follow through on those decisions. Nobody else has control over those things. That control can't be taken from us. Uh, we can only hand it over.
Now, [00:49:00] of course, there are circumstances that make exercising control over those things more challenging and I don't wanna minimize that.
Uh, I've had the great privilege of getting to exercise those decisions , um, and I don't take that for granted. Uh, however, it's so important for me to prepare myself every morning to take advantage of my opportunity to exercise my ability to make those decisions.
David Snyder: Yeah. And we could train our minds, right, through discipline and through practice, how to interpret things, right, to help us.
Um, when I'm coaching people on reaching a goal of theirs, whether it be personal or professional, I tell them, you need two things. You need a belief. Don't waste your or my time if you don't believe it's possible. That is the fundamental first step, right? You have to believe it's possible. If you don't work on that first and then come back and see me. And I can help you with that.
But if you, A, don't believe it or you can't get to that point, [00:50:00] all the other stuff is a waste of time.
And then once you get there, it's language, right? I can't tell you during the course of the day, how many times I hear people using self-defeating language. Well, I had to do this. You know, my car broke down so I had to go buy a new car.
Well, I didn't have enough money for a new car, so I took, I had to take out a... No. You chose to go buy a new car. You chose not to repair your car. You chose to spend money you didn't have by taking out a loan or buying a new car. When a good used car,could have got you through, you know? So for me it's about belief.
And then the language that we use and, uh, buzzword people use these days is called life hacks, right? Little changes you can make to your life to get desired results. For me, the easiest one is just start changing your words. Start changing the language that you use to describe your reality. And a funny thing will happen.
There's this two-way process where our thoughts and our beliefs govern our language, but then our language goes right back and governs our [00:51:00] thoughts and our beliefs, right? And so it's hard to change your thoughts and your beliefs in the moment. That can take time and practice. But if you think about it, it's not that hard to change your language, right?
Even if you don't even believe it, you could change, uh, you know, I felt like I had to do this. No, you might have felt like you had to do it, but you always have a choice. And that's empowering. And that's where intentionality and manifestation comes in. You have to change those - I felt like I had to, or I had no other option, or my options were limited and sucked to, well, actually, even if I don't believe it, I'm just gonna choose to fake it until I believe it to believe I had more actions or more options rather.
And I had more, control over my actions and ultimately my thoughts and beliefs than I did.
Greg Kuhn: Wow, that's a mouthful. In fact, you want,two life hacks right now? Uh, two easy language changes to make that will have a huge impact. And you basically said the first one already. Remove the words, [00:52:00] "have to," from your vocabulary and replace them with, "get to."
David Snyder: Hmm.
Greg Kuhn: And, uh, challenge yourself to structure sentences, to utilize, "get to" instead of "have to." That was a,a revelation for me. Another one that's real simple. Remove the word, "but"
David Snyder: Oh, yeah.
Greg Kuhn: and replace it with "and."
David Snyder: Yeah.
Greg Kuhn: What a difference that makes. And, you know, to, to your point too, David, where you say, I chose to do that. You know,you weren't saying this, but I have often heard people, say that or use that lesson to illustrate, the harsh reality of life.
Like, no, you chose that. You made those bad choices. And that's true, right? Sometimes we make choices that don't turn out the way we hoped they would. I also, however, really get inspired [00:53:00] by remembering that I am choosing to do things. Because that also means that when I get up and go to work this morning, I chose to do that.
I didn't have to do that. I chose to do it. When I eat a healthy meal, when I go out and exercise, when I journal for my mental health, when I spend time with my son, when I invest a little time in cleaning the house or mowing the lawn, I'm choosing to do those things. I don't have to do any of them. And I'm a huge believer in curating my life.
I intentionally schedule activities that reinforce and grow, not only me, but my reality and the way that I interact with my reality.
By the way, I know I just said, "but," but that's the one instance when you're actually [00:54:00] using it in that grammatical way.
David Snyder: There's acceptable uses of the word, "but."
Greg Kuhn: Yeah, And you know, that kind of a commitment to curating my life? That extends into the mundane chores as well. You know, I
David Snyder: Sure.
Greg Kuhn: I don't have to go down and clean the kitchen. However, if I don't, it's not gonna be clean.
David Snyder: It's unpleasant.
Greg Kuhn: So, so in that sense, it's a chore and there's, you know, a little bit of a "have to" there. That still doesn't negate my ability to look for and coax out the parts of that activity that also reinforce and grow me, my sense of self, and my ability to manifest and interact with material reality.
David Snyder: And why not go do it with enthusiasm and take pride in it, you know?That reinforces your self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment. When you were talking,thought came to mind I haven't thought of before. Turn an obligation into an opportunity , right?
Greg Kuhn: [00:55:00] Absolutely. You know, the biggest opportunities, the best opportunities, are always found in the biggest problems. And, it's a cliche. Part of the reason things become cliches, of course, is cuz there's a lot of truth to be found in them and that's one. For me, realizing that in every problem is an opportunity. Life's full of problems. Well, that also means life is full of opportunities. And treat myself with some kindness here because seeing the opportunity, doesn't make the problem go away. It just means that I also see the opportunity.
So sometimes great opportunities can be intimidating because there are problems associated with those opportunities that are, you know, just as real and can be just as real in terms of my version of [00:56:00] reality.
David Snyder: Yeah. We mentionedlife hacks. And that's well said , by the way. Thank you for that. Um, you know, one that I made, uh, I think it's made a big difference is, uh, you know, someone will inevitably come along and say, Hey David, did you have time to do that?
And what's the standard answer? No, I didn't have time. Well, I thought about that one day I was. You have time, you chose not to make time for it. Right? No one just walks around with this abundance of time, right? Or this you know, scarcity of time, . Time is something that you make, right?
And so when I'm coaching people, time management's a huge part of that, right? when I'm working with somebody who's completely, uh, late to everything, I asked them a simple question. What if I told you, if I, if you were to meet me at the airport at 6:05 AM on this Thursday, and I was gonna give you a thousand dollars for doing that. I'll bet most people could manufacture the will to get there on time.
So it's possible that there's an incentive to motivate you to be on time. You just haven't found it yet. Right?
Greg Kuhn: Right.
David Snyder: And so, um, if someone asks me if I had time to do something these days, I say, well, yeah, I chose to make the time to do it, [00:57:00] or actually, I'm gonna apologize to you. I failed to choose to make the time to do it. And it kind of takes people, back when I say that. But, I think that's another effective little life hack you can implement pretty quickly.
Greg Kuhn: No doubt. Yeah, every moment that we're alive is a stage that we are given, A, whether we want it or not. As long as we're breathing and, you know, we have our eyes open. Uh, but also it's given to us with no strings attached.
Now, I might not feel so great about quote unquote wasting the opportunity, but as far as my experience, there's no outside agency that's gonna come in and additionally punish me for that. There just might be some natural consequences. So these opportunities that we're given, this stage in this moment upon which we can perform, that's a string-free gift.
And for me, I like to prepare [00:58:00] myself for these opportunities that I'm going to have as long as I stay alive today, by vibrationally aligning myself with those opportunities. So that I'm prepared to make conscious decisions.
For me, you know, I remember, David,I heard a researcher on NPR who studies human emotion. And she said the most difficult human emotion to process is regret.
And she did say that among regrets, the most difficult regret is the regret of what we didn't do and
David Snyder: Absolutely.
Greg Kuhn: that... you know, you mentioned that outside motivation, if you will, you know, we could be tempted to change our habits or make different decisions based on different motivations.
That, for me, is a very powerful one. To say, how can I live my life in this moment so that, A, I won't have regrets [00:59:00] and, B, so that I'm being the best ally of past Greg, present Greg, and future Greg? And I don't do that to put pressure on myself. Although I do feel, I do sometimes, you know,I experience periods of being overwhelmed or feeling pressure, things like that, uh, just like any human being.
I do that so that, uh, , I can make the most conscious and present decision about how I want to employ myself. How I want to expend my time and my energy. So that when I reflect, I know the reasons that I made the choices I did. And I'm comfortable with that to the best of my ability. To the greatest degree possible, if you will.
David Snyder: Yeah. Self-awareness, right?
Greg Kuhn: Yes. You know, you've been really kind to indulge us, uh, in this conversation, David. We've really, I think, opened up a treasure chest [01:00:00] here, for folks that are gonna watch and listen. There's a whole lot to unpack. And before we wrap up or come to a close, I'd like to formally ask you to talk about something that you've been talking about the whole time. And that is, uh,what advice do you have based on your successful practice, as a human being, as a businessman, as a father, as a parent, as an intentional manifestor of your reality? For somebody watching this.
You have desires that you are currently manifesting. That you are currently breathing life into, today and in this moment. So do I and so does everyone else who's watching and listening. What advice do you have for somebody watching and listening who wants to follow in your footsteps and experience more [01:01:00] success? In some important areas of their life where, right now, it's just been a little too painful.
David Snyder: Yeah. And thank you for the opportunity to come on your show. It's been wonderful.
Um, yeah. I'm a pragmatist at this point in my life. You know, I'm an open-minded person. You can try to convince me, the sky is purple and I'll listen to you and consider it. But at the end of the day, if it's blue, it's blue. Right? Um, so my advice would be very practical and pragmatic in nature.
Um, the first thing is, I think, was it Ken Coleman, one of the Ramsey personalities, said, uh, a dream is a wish until you write it down. So allow yourself to dream. if there's things about your life you don't like, write down what they would look like. if they were, you know, acceptable to you or made you happy.
Write down. Just dream. Just say hey. And don't limit your dreams. Just say, hey, I live in a neighborhood that's not safe. I'd like to live in a nicer neighborhood. I'd like to drive a nicer car. I'd like to be able to send my kid to a better school. I'd like tohave more fulfillment from my work.
You know, I might go to work for a person I don't care for and do a job that's boring or doesn't [01:02:00] reward me in any way. Uh, write all those things down. Write them down. Write down your ideal life and don't limit that, right? Uh, at this stage, just dream and write those goals down and what you'd like your life to look like.
And take small organic steps in those directions. Find one person in your orbit that just, regardless of what's going on, always seems to have a smile on their face. Always just seems to have charisma and enthusiasm in what they do. And just get around that person and say, hey man, I don't have a lot of money. Can I buy you some coffee and pick your brain for 30 minutes and just study those people?
Um, I think one of the gifts that I was given at birth, I don't consider myself to be a, especially intelligent person. I know a lot about physics and science, but I couldn't explain the formulas to you and do all the math.
I'm a concept person. And so what I tell people is I've been able to, what I was gifted with at birth was curiosity and then the ability to absorb things from people. And if you're around people that are dragging you down that are examples of the things you don't want to be, [01:03:00] you gotta get away from those people.
It doesn't mean cut them off and I'm not telling you to abandon your friendships and, you know, family members and so forth, but you gotta keep those people at a bit of a distance so that you can free up some time and some energy and some resources to get around people who are more like the way you want to be.
And they're out there, they're already in your life. I like the concept of low-hanging fruit. I tell people within one to two degrees of separation of everybody you know are enough resources and opportunities to manifest the life that you want. So get around those people that seem to be happy, seem to have a purpose, seem to be doing things that they enjoy and that reward them. And take notes.
Buy that person coffee or lunch or something and just, uh, study them and ask them questions. I heard a guy on a podcast recently say, um, it might have been, I'm trying to think. Was it your podcast? Anyways, the guy said, it doesn't matter who it was, but he said, um, you know, I was trying to, I wanted to be, uh, more successful financially. And there was this restaurant I always wanted to eat at, but I could never afford a meal there because just to sit down, it's like [01:04:00] $75.
He said one day the thought occurred to me, well, I can't afford a meal there, but I could walk in and sit down at the bar and order a drink. And that's what he did. Um, and so it wa it was a different podcast. It was actually Anthony O'Neill, but yeah. And that inspired me. I was like, start where you are and there's more opportunities than you know.
And don't limit yourself by saying, I'm never walking in that restaurant until I can afford to sit down and have a full meal. Walk in there and introduce yourself to the hostess. Use the restroom. Order a water, right? Just get your yourself in the proximity of the situations and the people in the places that you want to be more like and you can make it happen.
And I'll, uh, one source of inspiration I wanna leave people with. And this isn't political. We live in the greatest country humanity has ever known. And this country has bad things that have happened. It has bad things that are happening. And it has bad things that will continue to happen. In spite of that, there is more economic and personal liberty and opportunity [01:05:00] in this country than most people realize.
And losers focus on the things that went wrong and the things that are bad and the things they can't do. And winners realize that real quick. In my ongoing lifelong studying of successful and happy people, I've noticed that's a near universal trait. That they see that we are literally drowning in economic opportunity and personal liberty.
There's no more fertile soil in history or on the planet today to make yourself something out of nothing. And I'm an example of that. Um, yeah, so that's my, it's little long-winded, but that's my answer to your question.
Greg Kuhn: Not long-winded at all. You're making me think of, uh,I recently watched a David Bowie interview and he said that, you should always, be in water where you just can't quite touch the bottom.
And if that's where you keep yourself, you're always in a space where, whatever greatness [01:06:00] is possible can come forth. Can be manifest. I really like that. And I like your analogy.
David Snyder: That which is not growing is dying. You have to constantly adapt and evolve.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah.
David Snyder: Or you'll be left behind.
Greg Kuhn: And, you know, circling back to one of the things you said very early on in this conversation, standing on the shoulders of giants, I have a technique in my new book called Use Your Board of Directors. And, the qualifications for being on my Board of Directors, there are three. One, you're trustworthy. Two, you're invested in me. And, three, you know what you're talking about.
And nowhere on that list is proximity to me or relation to me. I have found that I can convey love and respect and appreciation for people that I'm related to and who are in close proximity without having to put them on the Board, [01:07:00] on my Board of Directors,if they don't meet those first three qualifications.
You know the difference when it comes to our lives, when it comes to manifesting our version of reality, that is the one part of our life that we should be the most selfish. Not self-centered, not self-focused, but selfish. You know, similar to the adage when we're flying on an airplane that you gotta put the oxygen mask on yourself first before your child, because if you pass out your child's not gonna get any help, right?
David Snyder: Before we go, can you tell us a little bit, about how do you take care of yourself? You mentioned exercise, you mentioned writing, you mentioned mentoring, coaching. I know you stay busy. Oh, yeah.
Greg Kuhn: You don't let grass grow under your feet. Um, what about that mental, emotional, physical component,as a part of your advice [01:08:00] to folks wanting to follow along?
David Snyder: I'm a routine guy and not everybody's a routine person. For some people routines are limiting and boring and that's fine.
Know who you are. Find out what your ideal operating characteristics are and then implement them, right? But for me, it's the routine of going to bed at the same time every night, especially during the week, trying to get up around the same time, lifting weights, running four days a week.
I'm constantly learning something new. I've recently got back into guitar after 20 years and I have an instructor that I work with and I try to practice that four days a week. I'm constantly doing research for work, whether it's in the tech world or, um,I'm also interested, for research purposes for my podcast, in politics and philosophy and popular culture and technology and all kinds of other things.
I would just tell people take a personal inventory. And if you need help with that, find somebody to help you with that. Uh, a friend who knows you well, a psychologist, anybody that can reflect you back to yourself. Um, and just figure out what makes [01:09:00] you tick. If you're a routine person, get a routine and stick to it. If you're not, that's fine. Find happiness or structure in spontaneity or whatever it might be. But for me it's about routine. It's about going back to, um, belief and language. I mean, those are huge in my life, every day. And you mentioned earlier about, finding intimacy in your relationship and not arguing with your wife. You know, one thing I tell people is I'm aware of my responsibilities. That is in no way an indication that I've mastered them. Right?
But that's the beauty of life. You get up and there's a new challenge every day. If it was stagnant and stale and you figured everything out, what's the point of waking up that morning? You know, self constant, self-discovery.
I had a guy on my podcast a couple days ago who had this eloquent, thing that he had written down that he mentioned on the podcast. And he said, no one is deserving of my judgment, especially me, right? And so that really impacted me. I was like, wow, how much do I judge myself and don't even realize it, much less judging other people? So, you know, Dr. Phil mentions the internal truth, [01:10:00] right? You could interact with somebody who's brilliant and beautiful and successful and famous and all these things on the outside, but inside they feel terrible. And that's their reality.
So,like you said, don't, don't empower someone with the ability to write your internal truth, you know,and just constantly revise it on your own terms. And I can't stress enough how important it is to be around people who reflect your values and the kind of life you wanna author.
I mean, that's critical. And it doesn't mean cutting people off. I'm not telling people to do that. I'm just saying maybe spend a little less time around that person who parties too much or is negative or, you know, whatever it might be.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah. I hear you loud and clear. I always eventually get into trouble when I start evaluating my insides by other people's outsides.
David Snyder: That's a big one.
Greg Kuhn: That's a no-go.
David Snyder: And social media poured gasoline on that fire. There's a life hack for you. Minimize or get completely off of social media for a few days and see how you feel about yourself. [01:11:00]
Greg Kuhn: If you find it necessary. For sure.
David, I can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your day. I will tell you, you know, you you mentioned, um, an impactful thing that someone shared on your podcast recently that really stuck with you. You have left us with a lot of those nuggets today.
I
David Snyder: Well, thank you.
Greg Kuhn: firmly believe that you and I took advantage of this time to create something of great value. And now we've put it out into the universe with our best intention. And I don't have any doubt that it will land with that value among folks that need to hear it when they need to hear it.
And, you know, I can't think of anything more valuable to give to someone than your time. So thank you very much. ,
David Snyder: Likewise. And can I add one more thing?
Greg Kuhn: Absolutely.
David Snyder: You know,once you've climbed that mountain of personal professional success or met some goal that's important to you, the next best thing is to help someone else climb their mountain. Right?
So, I look [01:12:00] forward to having you on my, um, show in the future. And we'll talk way more about you and less about me. And promote you and your ideas, uh, how you can help people too. So looking forward to that. And thank you for this wonderful opportunity.
Greg Kuhn: Yeah, David, I really appreciate it and look forward to talking to you again in the future. Take care.
David Snyder: Likewise. Thanks.