Hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com. Today I've got special guest Brandon Epstein on the line and he is a mental performance coach. We dive into all things mental performance, cognition, how to have the right mind state and just overcome obstacles in life, how to reprogram your brain. He wrote a book called Program to Fail, How to breakthrough your mental block and achieve greatness. I'm going to be getting a copy of that and listen to that as a train.
I am not very good at proactively doing like things that improve my mental mind, my mind state and just like relaxation, recharging. I'm just kind of like a go, go, go non-stop kind of person. So I would totally benefit from something like this. I enjoyed chatting with them. We did like a, an in person live moment of meditation here with myself as the example therapy session on the spot here with the podcast. That was pretty interesting.
I enjoyed it. So without further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy our conversation with Brandon Epstein. We are live Brandon. How are you, brother? I'm doing excellent. Happy to be here with you. Very grateful to hopefully share some Nuggets of wisdom with your audience today and move them forward towards their goals. I'm excited to be chatting with you, man. So I, I talk about mindset quite
a bit on the podcast. I feel like everybody that listens to my show, I mean, it resonates with them, but I, I can't say that I've had anybody on the podcast that is a specific mindset coach per SE. So I'd love to kind of dive into that as a profession. Like what? What does that entail exactly? Yeah.
And, you know, I'm a a mental performance coach, which, you know, you ask different mental performance coaches what they do and they could tell you a lot of different things because it's an umbrella for a lot of different modalities. But ultimately, our job is to move you from A to B. You tell us that you're right here. We have the baseline from where you're starting. We want to make sure that you achieve your goals. So usually the people who would hire a mental performance coach
are high achievers. I work with a fair amount of professional athletes, business owners, entrepreneurs, artists, people who are really driven to create specific outcomes in their life. It's definitely not a passive thing because Immense performance coach is gonna ask you to go deep into the depths of what drives you and uncover what is holding you back so you can reclaim the energy to propel you forward. I love it.
I love it. I would imagine doing that as profession and working with other people and moving them and propelling them forward. It would be, it would be sensible that you would have had to undergo some type of cognitive transformation yourself in order to not have this sense of, you know, being hypocritical or imposter syndrome and working with other people. So I'm assuming you've got a pretty, pretty cool origin story, man. Yeah, absolutely, man.
You know, I played football in college and that's really what brought me down the path of studying the mind and mental performance because I was struggling with anxiety and low self esteem and low confidence and I didn't play at all my freshman year. And so after that season I was looking for solutions. I was like, I want to get on the the field. You know, the most fun part is playing the games, not just going to practice.
So it sent me on a spiritual journey to learn what was holding me back from playing my best and getting on the field and thriving and achieving a lot of my goals in my sport. And so that spiritual journey, if you will, brought me to a place where I started to learn about meditation, learn about energy training, learning about hypnosis, learning about neuro linguistic programming, learning about all different mental techniques that were helping me on the field.
And then what I enjoyed most about this whole transformation I was undergoing was sharing these tools with my teammates. So my athletic trainer called me the, the guru, which I don't know if it's a great thing for a, a 19 year old kid to be called a guru, but nonetheless, that was my, my name. And so I would, guys would come to me and I'd help them move through their issues physically, emotionally and mentally.
And ever since then, I was 16 years ago, I've been on this path of bringing these tools to people. So I did it in the research setting in university. After that I went out and started meditation app company, started getting my workout to a lot of people through then. And then just over the years been able to build out a clientele base where I built my own business using these tools actually in the fitness space and and got a lot of traction
there. And then came back and, and really settled into doing one-on-one work where I work with guys from the UFC, boxing, NFLMLB, much all the the major sports and I bring it to them. But I've always been my number one client and once something works for me, I try to to bring it to others and make sure they can benefit as well. I love it, man. Was there a point that you felt like incredibly down or stuck and then you had to dig your way
out of that? Or was it more so a matter of you knew you weren't operating at your full capacity, so that was just a journey to figure out how to improve from where your current position was and then just the compounding effect of that quest of improvement over time became what you are now? Yeah, Now there is definitely a big inflection point. There was a couple of really big inflection points for me. One was like, I was never exposed to entrepreneurship or
business owners. And so I started this meditation app company with my buddy and, you know, it worked OK in the beginning at 22 years old, like we're making a few $1000 a month and I just assumed it would keep scaling and that wasn't the
case. And so you know, my spending, I previously outspent my income and ended up in a massive amount of debt and actually had to sublet my apartment in the United States and move down to South America and move down to managing Colombia to dig myself out of this debt and hit the
reset button on my life. And it took me a number of years of living down there and building my next business before I was out of debt and I was able to get back into doing what I love, which is this one-on-one coaching stuff. So that was definitely like a period of, of darkness.
But at the same time I had to go through that to put all these tools I teach to people into practice and say like whether you're a professional athlete or a business owner or any type of high achiever with a lot of pressure, these tools work. And so I was able to build a 7 figure business from being $80,000 in debt using these tools. And so I, it gave me some credibility.
So when I started to make my way out to doing the one-on-one practitioner work again, you know, I had a little bit of that experience of what it's like to go through the darkness, overcome it, and come back into the light again. When you were in Columbia, did you feel like you were a failure or did you feel like, hey, this was just a chapter that I'm in, but I know this is not what defines me.
Yeah, I think even at that time, a lot of it was unconscious to me of like how bad my subconscious beliefs were. And this is a part of my journey was, you know, I was he's taking a lot of conscious techniques. Like most people. You know, you, you meditate, you do affirmations, you journal, you listen to motivational speeches. And those things will really only get you so far.
Because what I uncovered later on, and yeah, I definitely felt terrible about myself, you know, when I had to basically go down to South America with my tails between my legs and go try to start my life over again. But I wasn't even conscious of the suffering that I was undergoing until a few years later when I came back to the USI went through an awakening experience. And through this, an awakening
experience, I had an ego death. And in that ego death, it facilitated me going through all the programming that I hold in the subconscious level and uncovering everything I believe to be true about myself, about other people, about the world. And that's really, really uncovered the core of the suffering that I had and what was holding me back financially, emotionally in my career and uncovering all these terrible things I believe about myself that literally had programmed me
to fail in the 1st place. And once I started to uncover those and reprogram them, it like a light bulb went off over my head. It's like, oh shit. Like I was programmed to fail and I was going to live in these cycles of suffering until I changed things. And that was, you know, a huge motivation for me writing this book was to give this to people. It's literally a playbook for how they can do this for themselves. And anyone could do this right now.
Just look at the different buckets of your life. You know, one to 10, how happy are you? How peaceful are you, right? Your mental well-being where you at 1:00 to 10:00, your physical health, how satisfied are you with that? One to 10, your career, how satisfied are you with what you actually do? Not how much money you make, but what you do every day. One to 10. Your finances, one to 10. Your relationships, your romantic relationship, one to 10. Your tribe, one to 10.
Your work relationships, one to 10. I guarantee you that if you give any of those areas those buckets a low score, it's because you've been programmed to fail in that area. And so it's not to put yourself in a victim mode. It's actually for you to become the victor and take over control of your life and understand that, OK, these results are a byproduct of poor programming. So if I want to change my outcomes in my life, I need to change the core programming to create a different result.
And a lot of that is totally subconscious to us. And you don't really hear much about, at least I don't, I'm not in your wheelhouse, but I, I don't seem to hear as much about the subconscious conditioning as you do, you know, like, like the, the components that we all hear everyday, like the journaling, the, the meditation, things of that nature.
So like if you were to line up all the the actual actions one can take to improve their mind state, I would imagine that doesn't give you the attention it deserves. Yeah, I, I think it's, it's coming on stronger over the years. And of course, you know, there's, there's nothing new under the sun, right? This thing's, these can come in cycles. And so I'm sure for thousands of years people understood that this is what was necessary to live in a, a clear inner planet.
So my sense they called it, which means that like you have a clean and clear inner world. So you close your eyes and you just feel good when you're present. Like it's obvious, like the Kingdom lives within, so if you have a bunch of chaos there beneath the surface, it's going to give you a lot of negative thoughts. And that's why on average, people have 80% negative thoughts and 95% of those thoughts are repeated every day. We're just running the same programming over and over again,
and it's perpetuating suffering. And so that's why we have the obesity epidemic. It's the same thing, 'cause you ask anyone who's overweight, they're not going to tell you. Oh yeah, I just, I want to be overweight. No, of course not. So you're like, OK, well I'll tell you exactly what to do, right? Eat these foods or eat in a calorie deficit or move your
body consistently. It's not that they don't have the willpower to do. It's 'cause they are programmed to fail in that area of their life. Subconsciously, they believe there's more suffering on the other side of doing the Ellis actions than it is to stay where they are. Or they subconsciously just don't believe it's possible, right? Some people don't believe they can afford to eat healthy.
As long as you believe that you can't afford to eat healthy, you won't eat healthy because your subconscious deletes de sorts and generalizes any information. And that's why someone else, you know, you got someone come up to you and be like, oh, yeah, I just lost 40 lbs. I did this diet. Whatever you be like, oh, must be nice. But you know, I'm a single mom and it's impossible for me to lose weight. So whatever you believe to be true, you'll reinforce and make true.
And so if you look at any area of your life, it's like you've struggled to lose weight. If you struggle to make more money, if you struggle with romantic relationships, if you struggle with your own Peace of Mind, it all is going to track back to your inner programming. And you're right, you don't hear about this nearly as much as you should. And it's because what are we doing here?
We're taking back control. And I'm not conspiracy theorist, but I would say that over the history of humankind, there's been powers that don't want us to be fully in control and in ownership, right? That's the whole movement against masculinity right now. Well, what is a masculine man? Masculine man is physically dominant and self reliant and emotionally intelligent. We'd that's not what you want because that man cannot be easily controlled.
So it's all, in my opinion, it's all constructs of control to keep us just thinking that in the future we'll get there and that we can actually have the peace and joy and love in our life in the present moment 'cause that's what these tools give you. They give you the opportunity to create heaven on earth here in the present and the now. Yeah, no, I love that man. So like if you're if you're working with somebody and they come to you, like what would be
your ideal, you know, Avatar? Like, are they coming to you just frustrated with where they're at in their current, you know, day and age and they're wanting to go? Do they know where they want to go or do you help them figure that out? Yeah. Well, I'm gonna give us an opportunity to take two paths here. You probably won't want to take the one path. Don't want to present it to you anyway. You could tell me right now the biggest issue you're facing in your life.
I could solve it for you, and I can show people in real time how to do it. Or we can do a hypothetical and I could just give you an example what I would do with someone. Hey man, I like doing hard pass, give it to me. OK, so close your eyes, take a deep breath in through your nose and everyone is listening to this.
If you're not driving, I highly recommend you do this as well because you're going to get a real experience of the coaching here and now you're going to be able to do it right now just like Robert is. So go ahead and breathe in and on the exhale, let your shoulders drop and relax away from your ears. And I want you to feel, and part of the magic of what I can do and being a skilled practitioner is I can feel the energy in your body. So I'm feeling like there's a little bit of subtle.
There's just like a little subtle anxiety in the upper stomach, the sloreplex. It's kind of in the background. It's like, yeah, I'll deal with that later. Totally like that. Don't have to deal with it. It's some bullshit. Can you feel that? You know what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, always. Yeah, so go ahead and sit in the middle of that. Feel it in the body because what you guys are going to understand is this isn't a mental thing, even though I call myself a
mental performance coach. It's a it's a physical body thing. And so feel into that in the middle. And I want you to feel that feeling of anxiety sitting in the middle of it. And I want you to ask yourself, what am I believing to be true in this moment? It's making me feel anxious. There's a lot of things that I'm believing that cause anxiety
right now. The first one that's connected not from your head, don't go to the head story but stay in the feeling and the solar Plex of the anxiety there feel that sit right in the middle of it. It should feel so overwhelming you have to blurt it out. OK what do you believe in me true that's make you feel so anxious right now. Boom, go to it. Man, I'm just juggling so many things right now, so many things with the business, so many things with the family, so many things in life.
And I feel like I'm spread so thin that they're they're, they're not operating at the capacity that I want them to. And everything I'm doing, I love doing, but I'm just spread too thin right now. Yeah. And so there's a two sides of this, right? Like there's a we can acknowledge like the rational side and try to chunk down the tactics of your life. But where I like to go is the irrational side, which is almost seems too obvious for this to clear the issue for you.
But this is actually it. What's causing the anxiety is right now you're believing you're not doing enough. Yeah. Can you feel that? And rationally like, you know, you're doing so much, but the feeling of I'm not doing enough actually comes from like you see all these buckets in your life and you want to fill them all up 10 out of 10 and crush in every area.
But the feeling of not I'm not doing enough is like, well, I'm spread too thin, so I can't fill all the buckets like I want to and give them what I know is possible, what I really want for them. So the visceral feeling in the body, the body's going, I'm not doing enough. Can you feel that? All right, so I want you to sit until solar plexus feel that feeling of I'm not doing enough. I just want you to accept your way through it.
And so you're just going to feel that feeling in your solar plus and you're just going to accept it and be like, yeah, fuck it, I'm not doing enough. And I want you to hear you say it out loud. I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough. Yeah, let me know when you've accepted that. I've accepted it. And I want you to visualize with your eyes closed and anyone who's doing this with me and whatever's come up for you, I want you to do this for this as well.
Visualize the time out of your life, stretch out in front of you. Everything to the rights in the future. We never get there, right? The future is always an illusion because the time, the future, we get to the future, it's the present. So the future is not real. It's in the future. So left's the past, it's already dead. We don't have time machines. Once it goes into the past, it's
gone, has no control over you. So the only thing that's causing this feeling of anxiety right now is this belief that lives in the present moment. It's big, it's huge, it's weighty right in front of you. I want you to see it like a cloud of energy that says I'm not doing enough. And everywhere you go, it just follows you around, follows you around. It's like I have all these commitments, but I'm not doing enough.
Oh, fucking it hurts and it doesn't feel good in the solar Plex. I want you to feel it, feel it, feel it, feel it all the way. Let it almost overwhelm you. I want you to breathe in deeply through your nose. Exhale. And a powerful wind is gonna move from right to left and it's gonna pick up this cloud of energy that represents I'm not doing enough. We're gonna move it to the left, to left, to left, the left all
the way into the pass. And the second it goes into the pass, you're gonna find that you're in the void at the present moment, just in the nothingness, in the now, in the eternal now, sitting deep into the now. Nothing's here, nothing's here, nothing's here, nothing's here. Just flying through time and space in the present. What's the opposite of your not doing enough? I'm doing everything. I'm doing more than enough. How about that? Yeah, all right. Not. Necessarily about doing
everything, not doing enough. The opposite, because what we're doing is we're alchemizing energy. We're transmitting it to. The opposite is I'm doing more than enough, right? Not enough becomes more than enough. So why don't you repeat after me? I believe I'm doing more than enough. I believe I'm doing more than enough. Breathe in deeply through your nose. Exhale.
Feel this energy move down through your head, your neck, your shoulders, your upper arms, your lower arms, your hands, your fingers, down through your upper back, your chest, your lower back, your stomach, your hips, your thighs, your lower legs, your feet, and your toes. Stay here with me. Be present for the process. There's so many people are listening to this right now going man, I'm moving through the same thing 'cause I never feel like I'm doing enough.
So you doing this work on yourself is you're actually giving this medicine to everyone of your listeners who's a high achiever, who's always pushing, who's now able to process for themselves as well. So it's a gift for yourself and it's a gift for your audience. And as your body settles into this, I believe in doing more than enough. Feel the energy moved through your body into the timeline of
your life. You remove the old energy, so it's now replaced with this new energy that takes form there in front of you. I'm doing more than enough. And it just takes form there. Surround you and feel yourself being held in this energetic aura of I'm doing more than enough and feel yourself grounded in the middle of your chest. And I just want you to keep telling yourself I'm doing more than enough.
And what you probably experienced here is this is not a mental exercise because we're not doing affirmations. We actually just move the energy in your body. Can you feel that? Yeah, I feel pretty good. Can you feel the energy in in the middle of your chest now? Yeah, I feel pretty relaxed too. Yeah. So this is what I do for anyone I work with, is what we're doing is we are unclogging the energy that was living in your solar plexus called the third chakra, and we released it.
And so it moves up to your chest. And so once we release any mental blocks we have, the only thing that's there waiting for us is the present moment. And we all know whether you're athlete, business over a high chief, whoever it is parent, you're always going to be your best in the present moment. The present moment is always your liberation, your salvation. If you can get there, then everything's good. There's nowhere else to get. If you're in the present, you're already there.
And so this is the process. It's basically deprogramming all the nonsense that creates issues for you. Because the truth is you are doing more than enough. And now that you believe that you're doing more than enough, you're going to have the logical inspiration to move around the different commitments and things you have in your life to feel an alignment with being able to do more than enough. And that maybe means, hey, I'm going to get rid of this.
I'm going to agree with myself. I'm going to put this in the back burner. I'm going to limit this, whatever it may be. Now the pathway is open for you to be in alignment with. I'm doing more than enough. What kind of everybody calls them, you know, KP is key performance in the kids, but what what do you put in your
life? What kind of systems do you put into place to have like a moment of brutal honesty as to, OK, this is moving in the direction I want it to or it is not and this is a very objectionable way to view it and then take action accordingly? Yeah, I like, I like my spreadsheets. I get in there, I track things from week to week, month over month. Like I track all the metrics that I feel like need to be need
to be tracked with numbers. I don't think this is necessary for everybody, but I'll tell you my my greatest KPI that I track is every week I give myself one of these coaching sessions. So I coach myself and the number one number I care about is how does it feel to be me right now? One is it feels so bad I want to commit a suicide. And 10 is I feel completely whole. I'm living this peak experience. So that's the number one KPI check in with myself every week on. That's the one I care most
about. And then beyond that, I'm just living a conscious life. You know, I can feel if my marriage is going well, It's very it's very obvious. I know it's going well when there's limited drama and there's a lot of joy and presence and peace in my household. Same thing with my my children. You know, I can feel my body if I feel physically well, I feel strong. I know what it's like to go to the gym and feel like if I have strength and I can lift tabby
and computers, right? I don't necessarily need numbers for that. It's a feeling related for me. That's it. Main things that I like track for KPIs is am I doing the work to move my career forward? So like I said, I have this book program to fail. So every week I just check in, I see, hey, how many reviews am I getting my book? How many book sales that I have? What are my key actions I'm taking to try to get my book out
there? Seeing those and seeing correlations between the things I'm doing and my ability to get the book to a broader audience. I'm also checking in on, you know, I run a coaching practice. So who are the people I've connected with? Who are the people that I've gifted coaching sessions this week? How much, how many invitations that I make to do coaching with me? Everything is process oriented with me because I know if I do these things consistently I'm
gonna get to the outcome I want. Yeah, when, when you, you know, close your eyes and ask yourself what's causing you the anxiety? What? What's typically the answer? Usually the only anxiety I'll feel is if I drink too much coffee, like a real physical one. That's that's honestly the number one. I have young kids so it's it's not necessarily excuse, but you have a one year old, so sometimes sleep is.
They're usually pretty good. I have a three-year old and a one year old, but anyone knows if you're a parent, like your sleep is not your sleep anymore. So I definitely supplement with coffee. And so I'd say anxiety from probably drinking too much coffee is the main one and then secondary one, which I feel like I'm I'm just about there. I've really removed pretty much all fear from my life. I don't really have fear anymore. I have discernment, but I don't have fear.
It would be will I, will I have enough? And those are just some projects I'm working on right now, Like I'm building a retreat center down in Columbia and it's like, OK, well, I have enough money to build this, you know, and just, but those are very subtle at this point. I wouldn't say they're like big anxiety points are more just like if there was anything like that is something that's still in question. Yeah, that's good, man. That's good. Tell me about this retreat.
What what is the the plans for that? I really wanted to create a place for refuge, the high achievers, you know, I work with a lot of, like I said, high profile people who are very demanding lives. I want to create a space and I already have some land in, in the, in the jungle down there. It's just outside the city of Metagene, but the actual lot backs up onto an eco preserve.
So it's just forest and jungle, and I wanted to have a space for them to be able to come and disengage from everything and go through this reprogramming, working intensive with me. Because all it takes really just one day of digging in and I can make incredible progress with my clients and really clean up their inner world, bring them into a state of presence. So I just want to do that in nature, in a place that's disconnected from a lot of their normal commitments and
technology. And so that's the primary reason. Secondary, I might bring groups down there as well and, and do other retreats potentially incorporating some plant medicines if if my clients want to do that. But those are really my thoughts right now. What do you think the biggest driver of catalyst for all the noise that we have and the the, you know, out of whack programming that we currently face like what what is the driver for that cause?
Like if you rewind the clock back to when people were, you know, hunter gatherers living off the land in a very tight knit community setting, Like, sure, they had stressors there, but not the same kind of stressors that we have now. But it feels like their why and their presence and just their ability to hone in on what mattered seemed to become just more, you know, a, a default, whereas now you don't see that unless you seek it out. What? What is the catalyst for all that noise?
Yeah, I mean, there's there's two parts. I think one is like we've been we've been programmed to live with so much fear. That's a big one. And that's just passed on from generation, generation, generation till someone breaks with generational curses. But biologically, those people had to deal with things that really bought brought real fear into their life, right? Like, are we going to have enough food? Are we going to survive being hunted by other animals, things
of that sort? Are we going to be able to survive these conditions? Whereas now that same biological reflex is occurring, but it's occurring every day because someone said something mean to you in the Instagram comment or you saw something in your news feed that makes you feel like, Oh no, like World War three's about to start. We just exposed all these things that put us into this fight or flight state that is so disconnected from a real visceral threat. Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally. Do you have like any, you know, like hard rules for yourself as far as you know, not consuming certain types of content or mediums or just things to remove that negativity from your life altogether? Definitely, yeah. And in my book, I have this, the second part of the book's a playbook and playbook for the coaching I give everyone. And one of the steps in that playbook is just to detoxify your life.
So it's just going through the state of awareness because a lot of times you don't know what is actually driving your emotional suffering or your lack of focus or lack of clarity. So you have to really sit into awareness. So what I have people do is set alarms on their phone every few hours just to check in with them just to see, hey, how you feeling? How does it feel to be you and what are you focused on? You do that for one week, you're going to notice what your triggers are.
You're going to notice. Oh, you know what, like, like I say, you know, a lot of people, their anxiety just comes from consuming too much caffeine and, and I definitely experience that sometimes as well. So if you're, you might just notice, you know what, my alarm went off at three PMI just had my second coffee and I'm feeling super anxious. I'm focused on, I don't have enough time to get my work done, but it might have been from just too much simulation, right?
Or you might notice that you're feeling really sad. And so why am I feeling sad? Oh, because I was just focusing on something in my news feed about, you know, a genocide happening somewhere in the world. And so I'm just sitting here in sadness. And so just noticing what environments, what inputs you're putting in, how they're affecting the way you feel like that's kind of the low hanging fruit that anyone can do very easily before you even start doing your reprogramming work.
It's like, stop feeding yourself garbage in your in your diet. You know, not even we're not talking about food. It's like mental garbage. It's like things that make you feel bad. Like why? Why is it advantageous to focus on that? Just clear it out, stop doing it, remove it from your life. Yeah, no, totally in work with the people that you have, they're like common denominators that most people tend to share that you can just pretty much remove right off the get and go
as low hanging fruit. Even for my professional athletes, I tell them that they really shouldn't be on social media 'cause their contracts are so big that any marketing dealer they're going to get through social media is really minimal. Like they can just do their job. It's such a luxury. Just do your job Well, you're never going to have to worry about money again. So I try to tell them just you don't need this, You know, there's really not much here for you. It's just a distraction.
Other people, the average person, I think the big thing is identifying the relationships in your life and which ones are filling your cup and which ones are draining them and being OK with moving some relationships to a maintenance mode. Meaning like if the relationship is really toxic for you, but you want to keep these people in your life like they're a maintenance relationship, Maybe you're checking in with them here and there, but they're not people that you're exposing
yourself to consistently. And then the people who are putting you into a more inspired state or making you feel energized and feeling good, you know, put them in your life more and put yourself in those situations, those environments. So the first step is really that awareness, right? Because this is universal. I can't, I can't tell anyone like what's going to be best for them.
Different people have different preferences, but if the individual does these, it's going to be really blatantly obvious, like what actions, what environments, what people are serving them and which ones are not. And then you just have the decision to make like do you want to take that next step or not and and do something about it. Yeah, no, totally, man. What about the as far as like just routines on the front end and the back end of the day? I feel like that, for me at
least, is pretty profound. If I start the day off right and end the day right, then the whole day in between seems to go much smoother. Do you have anything that you employ on your own personal self that has had a profound impact on you? Yeah. I mean, going to sleep early, I think that's the the biggest one is making sure that not staying up late and I'm going to sleep
as early as I can. And if I do that, then I don't have to worry about setting as I don't have to worry about the next morning because if I go to sleep earlier enough, I'm going to be well rested. So that's the number one. It's just good sleep hygiene. Going to sleep at an early time as early as I can. That's a big one.
The mornings, I think getting sunlight to start the day and I like to go outside and put my feet in the grass and just like be exposed to the sunlight, set that circadian rhythm. That's a huge one. So those are kind of things in the morning for me in the evening. The thing about the work I do is, you know, I train my clients. I have trained myself to become
meditation. So a lot of people need to meditate and I think meditation's a great tool, but really my goal with my clients and my goal for myself is always to become meditation. So I used to always meditate to start the day, but now I am meditation. I live in and mostly in present, so I don't need that always to anger me. Instead, I go to meditation,
more so prescriptively. So if there's something that I need to move through emotionally, then I'll put myself into meditation and I'll do that work on myself, but I don't necessarily need it to start the day. Yeah, no, that makes sense, man. What about Stoicism? Have you dove into that much? I'm aware of it. I mean, I don't not a big follower of Stoicism.
It's not like I think there's probably a lot of good values that come from them, but it's not something that I use as like a guiding philosophy for my life. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Well, what about you kids, man? Like you've got a three and a
one year old. I've got a 2 year old just turned 2. And, and knowing what you know now and kind of working with the high performers that you have and seeing what, what causes people's stress duress, anxiety, like how is that shaped how you interact with them from a parenting standpoint so that they hopefully don't aren't plagued with that same type of anxiety. And just like the interactions like that y'all have, What are you trying to bring into that from a parenting standpoint?
I'm curious. Yeah, first and foremost, you know, kids don't do what we say. They just model who we are. So it's always just being aware of of myself. Like I want to bring a high frequency, good emotional energy and just not be reactive, just be present for my kids because that is literally the programming I'm sharing with them because kids get programmed mostly between zero and seven years old. Like those are the primary
programming years. So from zero to seven, it's the absolute most important time to protect and feed them with the right inputs. And so you know, the number one way to do that is who you are and, and how you are with them. So for me, the biggest thing is continue to do my own work. So I'm not reactive like, and I'm very happy to say that I can do that. Like my kids don't trigger me. Like they, they could say or do whatever they want.
Like I'm a whole person. So, you know, my kid calls me a name or, or whatever. Like I'm not, there's no wound there that they can, they can hurt, you know, that's going to make me react a certain way. Or if they act super crazy for me, it's just a matter of fact. It's like, OK, well, let's not do that. And I'll enforce whatever discipline needs to be enforced in that moment, but it's not a emotional thing for me. So that's a big thing.
Just doing the work on yourself so you don't have to try to be stoic like you are. It's just who you are. You just approach life from a present matter of fact conscious way. That's huge. And and that way you can create the space for your children for them to fully express themselves and feeling safe in that.
I think that's huge. Think so many of us in a young age, we start to self suppress who we really are and how we want to be in the world because whether you know, it makes a, a, a parent feel uncomfortable and they want to kind of be like, hey, quiet, not so much, be less. You're too much. So I try to allow my kids to be as much of who they are and not suppress any of it and just
fully allow it to unfold. And of course there's boundaries and there's discipline there to make sure that they're safe and they can fit into whatever setting that we're in. But in general, just letting them express and explore themselves in a way without making them wrong. Yeah, I think you're not being reactionary in a negative sense. Is is key to, I feel like so many kids, they have bad memories and they're upbringing, you know, spawned from an
overreacted parent. And I feel like if the parent can just simply explain why they feel a certain way as a result of their action, and the kid can comprehend that, that would be monumental. Yeah, and especially at the age that our kids are at, because, you know, they don't really appeal to the rational mind yet. So like, if you're being irrational, like that's the most irrational thing you possibly do because this human is not like, you know, they're not.
You can't reason with them. You just have to hold. You have to sit in attention to hold the space of these are the boundaries. This is what's OK. This is what's not OK. And I'm not going to try to convince you of something through my emotion or my rationality. I'm just going to hold the presence of These are the boundaries, stay within them. Yeah, no, 100%, man. It's, it's pretty rewarding.
Like it makes you having kids, at least for me, forces you to be more present because like you just, I don't know, you have a deeper understanding and appreciation for how finite time really is. And as you see them grow older, like, you just recognize that you're missing out if you aren't present in those moments. 100%, yeah. It's a blessing, isn't it? Just grounding and really forces you, like you said, into the present. And some of it, I guess actually you asked about like, I think we
talked about fear. The only play other place is like, yeah, like my oldest, she's a wild kid. So like she'll do things that could be really physically unsafe for her. And so sometimes I think that's another place where fear, fear will come up, right? Like she'll go up to the top of the monkey bars if you let her and maybe jump off in a way that could break her arm. It's like, let's not do that, you know, That could be fearful for for me as a parent because I wanna protect her.
No, totally man, totally. That's that's the thing. As parents you just like you're you're called to protect and like the the fear and anxiety is not your own so much it is those that you care and protect for. Yeah, no doubt. You mentioned plant medicine at your potential retreat in the future. What? What is what is that until exactly this is a I've had a few people on the podcast that have dove into that topic and it's
interesting. There seems to be like multiple points of view as to, you know, using that as a therapy for recognizing one's current state of mental affairs, how to breakthrough that, reprogramming things. Just curious to get your thought, your thoughts on it all. Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's so many out there and if you're meant to do
one, it's gonna call to you. It's gonna show up in your life in a really organic way where you're gonna be like, yeah, I think this is right for me. It's not gonna be anything that feels forced. Like, it may sound funny, but these plants all have spirits. So they're spiritual beings, if you will, connected to them. And so they're calling you in. And if you're supposed to do them, you're gonna hear the
call. And so for me, my favorite one right now, it's called Acacia. And it's from, if you, if anyone's read the Bible, the the burning Bush, you know, Moses was tripping out on Acacia. That's the burning Bush that has DMT in it. And so Acacia gives you an experience of transcending your normal conscious ways of thinking by yourself and allows you to just take a microscope right to the area of your life that you need to deal with in a real visceral way. And it's very kind.
It's a, it's a sweet, it's a gentle plant. I think it's going to be one that is getting a lot more recognition in the in the world in, in the coming years because there's ones out there right now that, you know, I'm not going to talk bad about one plant medicine versus another, but there's just a lot more suffering involved with some versus other ones. This seems to me to be the most intelligent plant medicine that I've come across where it it's calling in a lot of high achievers.
People have done a lot of work on themselves already. And you don't have to come and just suffer a bunch. Instead, you can have an experience with this plant medicines four or five hours where it's you can ask her a question. You'd be like, Hey, help me deal with this. I want clarity around this. I'm dealing with this emotional issue. I want to move through it. And it's just like the you will.
It's like the most wise coach, therapist, practitioner you could ever work with because it has interdimensional wisdom to pull from. And so a lot of these things, when you start to have these conversational podcasts that like transcends a rational mind, who, you know, someone who's never had experience, it'll say interdimensional. What are you talking about? But yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is like, there's not just one dimension.
You know, you can move through our, you know, world that we live in here and you can go to other spaces and there's other beings that live there and you can get wisdom from them and, and bring it back and apply it to your own life in actual ways. Do you feel like there's a, a downside to seeking exogenous aid in doing that deep work or is it something that we should be able to do, you know, solely internally? I think that probably anything has potential for abuse, right?
But these are things that you don't really feel like doing compulsively if you're really listening to the call, the ones that are calling you forward, like there's going to be growth there on the other side of them. But I would say definitely find a practitioner that has a lot of experience and can can be a good
guide on your journey. Because, yeah, if you go to someone who's inexperienced with whatever plant medicine that you're getting into and they're not holding a good place, they don't have the right set and setting for you, it could go down the wrong path. And so just building a lot of trust with the practitioner and the setting you're going to be in and a lot of high levels of safety, and I think you'll be
all right. But, you know, like anything, there's, there's a small degree of risk because you're entering into the unknown. And so if you have, yeah, if you're bringing a lot of fear into that experience, then you're going to have to move through that fear. And that might not be comfortable, but ultimately it probably will be best for you. So I can't answer your. Question. Now that makes sense.
That makes sense, man. Well, apart from the the retreat in Columbia, what else has got you excited, man? You got another book coming out? When? When did this one go live? This one came out back in October, but I had a little hiccup. It got taken down off Amazon for a month or so. So we're kind of building momentum back up around it once again. That was kind of cut off. But yeah, this is the main intention because I'm very blessed now to get to work with some really cool people at the
one-on-one level. But a passion of mine is to get this out to more people because it's just knowledge should be in the hands of everyone. I just want everyone to understand that if you feel like you're stuck, like you keep running up into this invisible wall or invisible ceiling, there is a reason. Like it's not random. This universe is truly divine to where everything has a purpose. And so if there is a blockage there, it was formed out of
survival. It was formed for your best interests, as hard as that is for someone to hear. Because let's take an example of someone who believes, someone who really wants to be in an an amazing romantic relationship. But right now they believe that all men or all women are cheaters. Like, you may think to yourself like, well, that's a terrible thing to believe to be true, and they're going to make that true as long as they believe to be true. But that's a defense mechanism
that came from this person. Probably. Maybe they saw their mom or dad was a cheater and then when they were a teenager, they were cheated on. And then in their early 20s, they were cheated on. So it's just a defense mechanism that's there to make sure they don't get cheated on again. And So what people have to understand is that if you keep running into this invisible wall and you're having this experience of like, I can't lose weight, I can't get a good romantic relationship.
I can't make the money I want to make. I can't get ahead of my career. I can't have Peace of Mind. There is just a, there are just pieces of code that take the form of beliefs that are blocking you from seeing the path forward. Because what our beliefs do is they delete, they distort or they generalize all the information that comes in, right? We see here, smell, taste and touch the world around us. And then it runs down through our programming.
And our programming is in the form of beliefs. So these beliefs are filtering all the information. So you may have all these possibilities that you could explore and go down, but your subconscious is just deleting all these possibilities for you because of beliefs you're holding. So I really want people to grasp this concept and just start to go down that path of uncovering like, OK, I have been blocked. I've seen this pattern. I'm on this hamster wheel of not getting where I want to go.
Let me go deeper. Let me go beneath the conscious surface and actually uncover what's lying beneath the surface. And what is that program that's blocking me and let me remove it so I can flow forward and ultimately get to a place of peace and flow in the present moment. And so that's the main thing I'm doing here. I kind of get the book out to people so they have these tools and also let people know that I
exist. A lot of people find it hard to to fathom what I say can do for them and I want people to know that I can help them with this type of thing. They feel blocked as well. Like I'm a practitioner that has a lot of experience, a lot of case studies. You can go over my Instagram, you can see all the case studies I have on there. People who have moved through all types of things in their life. It is possible. You just got to do the work. No, I love it, man. I love it.
And what's the name of the book? It's called Program to fail. Program to fail. You got it on Audible as well. I do, Yep, it's on audible. It's on Kindle paperback but you can get it on Amazon. It's the main place. And were you the the person reading it on Audible? I was, yeah, nice, nice working myself. Well I will I will get me a copy man. I I listen to audiobooks from training so I will listen to that as my next audiobook while training brother. Fantastic, bro. I think you'll enjoy it.
I think I'm very vulnerable in the stories that I go through, I tell. I talk about some of my darkest moments and so I can give people an idea of, yeah, where does the program come from? Well, here are these different things. I lived. This is the program that came from it and this is a result of those programming. And this is what happens when I change the programming. So they can kind of see that road map because that's Part 2 and part sorry, that's part one
of the book. And in Part 2 it's like, OK, now we got the buy in. You hear all my case studies. You hear my story. Do the playbook. That's good. And I think being vulnerable, being honest and transparent is the only way to be in life, man. Like talking about fear and anxiety. Like I've got things that make me anxious, things that frustrate me, things that piss me off for sure. But I don't have to to look over my shoulder now.
Like I don't have fear of that because I've been totally honest and transparent with everything. So I appreciate others that do the same. Yeah, absolutely bro. Living in the truth, that's what it's all about. 100% man. Every, every lie was born out of fear. So if we live in the truth, you know, we know that at least we're free from fear on a daily basis in regards to our integrity and and who we are and how we're showing up in the world. Yeah, and that is truly a
priceless thing right there. Like you cannot integrity. I mean, you don't ever want to sacrifice that, man. You've only got it once. Yeah, that clear conscious feels. Feels really good. Feels really good. I love it. Well, I will definitely link out to the book. Like I said, I will get a copy that'll literally, literally be what I listen to this week as I'm training. So I will listen to it on Audible and I'll link out to it on Amazon so people can find it. And what what's your social
profiles? People can find me on Instagram Brandon Epstein under score. You can also search for me on YouTube, Brandon Epstein. I've got a ton of recorded meditations on there. They're kind of like coaching sessions, like a little bit of like what we did here today, but apply directly to everything. I help people fall asleep, I help people stress, anxiety, you name it. I got meditation for just about everything you could think of on there. So those are all free resources.
And then if anyone wants to work with me personally, they can apply on my website, thebrandonepstein.com. Awesome. And we'll link out to all those. We'll check out the the guided meditations as well. Do you still have the the meditation app too? I don't anymore, honestly, I just didn't renew it and republish it just because I literally put every meditation on YouTube. So I'm like, let me just keep all the resources free. And yeah, you don't even need
the app. It's all free on YouTube, so there's no ads on it or anything. It's just the easier way to get to the people. Totally appreciate that. Well, I'll check out those for sure, man. I, I really appreciate the time. Brandon appreciates you being vulnerable and just talking about the truth, man. So if there's everything I can do for you, man, you just let me know. Thank you, Robert. I appreciate you brother. Appreciate you man, take care. Bye bye.