Transcript of Gabby Bernstein: The 4 Step Process To Manifest Anything & Heal Your Deepest Wounds

Happy New Year. Welcome to 2025. You made it. The last five years, it is almost five years since COVID happened, if you can believe it. It was March 16th, on my birthday, 2020, when it seemed like the world shut down. I remember because we were doing a party in my office and we had to send everyone home before they actually came because the world shut down. You have survived and hopefully you have thrived in the last five years. It hasn't been easy for anyone. There have been challenges, there has been health issues. There's been death. There has been death, there has been struggles, there has been so many different challenges. But I am telling you, if you can believe that it's all happening for you, if you can even just put that thought out into the universe right now and say, This all happened for me, even if there was some horrible stuff that happened. If you can start to believe that this all happened for me and it's setting me up for an incredible next year and next five years of this decade, then I'm telling you, magic is going to flood into your life.

But it starts with a belief. It starts with understanding how to believe. I'm so excited that we get to kick off the new year with my good friend, Gabby Bernstein, who is a force of nature when it comes to manifesting your dreams. She's going to be talking about the number one secret to manifesting today, which is going to be exactly what you need to hear, going into 2025 to building out your dream year. If you want to learn how to actually rewire your limiting beliefs right now and saying, I'm drawing a sand in the line, I'm putting my foot down, and everything that was holding me back is staying behind me, and moving forward, I am actually going to be committed and consistent with a new belief, and I'm going to keep reminding myself to live into this belief. It is going to be 12 years of the School of Greatness podcast this month. So many people ask me, Louis, do you learn anything new after 1,500 or 1,700 episodes of be done, whatever, how many number of episodes we've done? Do you still learn new things? I say, yes, I do, but I also hear a lot of the same things over and over again.

I'm okay with that because I need these reminders, guys. I can easily go in my ego and my negativity and my limiting beliefs, I could go back to those places where I felt wounded as a child at any moment. For me, I do this show for myself as a reminder to constantly stay committed to these types of frequencies, to these types of beliefs, to these types of ideas, so that I can stay in a state of goodness, a state of abundance, a state of positivity. And that is the key. I want you to go on this journey with me today and every week this year on the School of Greatness, because I am committed to bringing you the most powerful, valuable, insightful information that I can each and every episode this year. I am going to step up my game. My team is stepping up its game to make sure we are in service at the highest level possible. I want you on this journey more committed than ever because you deserve You deserve to feel the greatness that is inside of you. You deserve to feel the love that you want to receive. You deserve to experience financial peace and freedom.

You deserve to know what your purpose is and how to pursue that purpose. You're also going to experience challenges and obstacles at different seasons of life along the way. These challenges are designed specifically to help you overcome the parts of yourself that have been holding you back. We don't want them to always happen, but when they're happening, just know they're happening for you and they're in your favor if you're willing to lean into them, if you're willing to go into your fears until those fears disappear and transform yourself into something like your greatest self would be proud of. Again, I am pumped. This year is time to fully step in to the best version of review, and that's going to rely on all of you to stay committed when there are adversities and challenges. We have an incredible gift today with the inspiring Gabby Bernstein. Do me a favor. If you've listened to this show for years, or if this is your first time here, we are almost 12 years in the anniversary, it would mean the world to me if you clicked the Follow button on Apple podcast or Spotify right now and left us a review.

If you found any value in this show and in this episode here, follow the show School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, leave us a review and share this episode with one friend that you truly care about. That family member or friend that you care about that you want to see thrive this year, text them this link right now. Just copy and paste, text it to them right now because Gabby Bernstein is about to blow your mind. Let's go ahead and dive in right now. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have my dear friend, my sister, Gabby Bernstein in the house. So good to see you. Thanks for being here in my basement of greatness, in my home.

It's the home of greatness. Yes. It was really... I walked in and I was like, Wow, somebody made your home for you.

Exactly. Martha.

But somebody built your dream home for you.

I saw this online and I was like, There's a whole story around manifesting this. There you go. Which I think is really interesting. We were, Martha and I were looking for homes for a year. Just like, initially just curious. But then we were like, Okay, let's get serious about thinking of buying a home. And I saw this one on Zillow, but it was so expensive. It was absurd. I was like, this would be five years away, seven years away to be able to buy something like this with the price tag that it had on Zillow. But it had everything. I was like, I want a basketball court. I want the salt. I want everything. It had a movie theater. It had basement, which doesn't happen in LA. And I was like, if I'm going to buy a home, I want the home for the next 10, 15 years. I don't want to buy something that's almost what I want. I want to get what I want. Otherwise, I'll just stay in an apartment for the next few years and wait. Then this thing went off the market. And I was like, Oh, it's sold. Okay, I guess it wasn't for us.

Six months later, it comes back, but way cheaper. It was still more than what the budget was, but it was like, Oh, maybe there's a chance. And what if we negotiated and really tried to work through it. We got it exactly the price that I was willing to pay. It all came together. I just had to be patient. I had to keep setting the intention. Also, it was not settling for something that I didn't want.

Three things you just said: patient, setting the intention, and not settling for something that you don't want. Yes. Those are huge- I know. Qualities of a super attractor, which, of course, you embody. But patience is probably the biggest one. Because it's when we're thirsty or we're inserting ourselves or we're controlling, it's just completely the opposite of allowing.

Yes. But I'm an impatient person by nature. It's like, I want this thing now. I want it yesterday. You're probably similar in a sense. We have to teach ourselves how to allow the patience to come into our lives.

I think that as impatient as I am, I'm also really in just tremendous faith. I think as 20 years being a spiritual student, really my whole life, I feel like I've been a spiritual student, I have such a strong ingrained knowing and trust in timing.

You do. Because there are ever a time you get really frustrated where you're like, The thing that I've been intending and wanting and desiring, it's not even coming close to furation?

Only the small things.

Really?

What? Often with work-related things, because much like you, and I think much like many entrepreneurs, we happen to just see things further than maybe or think about the process or see the big picture faster than somebody else might. That doesn't mean that that's better or worse. Then you need the people that are like, Wait, slow it down and let me figure out the plan. One can't exist without the other. But because I have such a visionary way of thinking, I can be so 5, 6, 7, 10 steps ahead. Then other people around me are like, Whoa, peel it back. That's when I'm like, Wait, no, I want to move things faster. I think I have a sense of urgency around knowing that this is... I keep saying lately, it's go time. It's go time, not just for the individual, but also I feel as a teacher, it's go time. I have to make sure that I am able to touch as many people as possible.

Yes.

It's a crucial time right now.

It is. It always seems like it's a go time, but specifically this time, it feels like it's even more with what's happening in the world. This book is really exciting. I'm excited to talk about it. It's called Self-help. This is your chance to change your life. Make sure you guys pick this up. But in the forward, Dick Schwartz, who's the founder of IFS, Internal Family Systems, says that you illustrate the ability to show compassion and love to all parts of you, even the ones that have ruined your life, and to do it in a very specific way that allows them to transform. How do we manifest something that we really want or desire in our life when there are parts of us that have completely traumatized and ruined our lives? Is there an ability to create the life we desire and want without hewing or transforming traumas and pain that ruins us and cripples us still?

We manifest what we believe. So if we are stuck in a core wound, traumatized story, a neural loop of fight, flight, freeze, we're living in a way where we're so afraid or blocked because of those core belief systems. Systems, what ends up happening is that no matter how hard we try to manifest, no matter how much we deepen spiritually or how much we hold the vision, like you said, and have the intention, things This may show up because your focus is redirected, but then it may show up and you can't keep it, or it falls apart, or things just aren't in the flow. That lack of flow is often truly because of the core wounds from are very early, early, early years. It's funny. This is my most therapeutic book. I went and I got trained in internal family systems therapy. It's a therapy that I've used for a decade with my own therapist, it's coming up on a decade, maybe nine years now. Then I got trained in the model, and I was so moved by it that I wrote this more therapeutic book. Now, while this is my most therapeutic Selfhelp book. It's very spiritual, too, but it's probably the most important manifesting book.

Not because it's got lessons on manifesting, but because the secret to truly manifesting what you desire desire is to heal the beliefs that block those desires.

Period. If we believe that we are not worthy of something, what are we saying about ourselves and what's possible for us?

Well, most people, I think, are walking through life with beliefs of being unworthy, unlovable, inadequate, not good enough. Maybe they feel worthy in one area of their life, but they're completely blocked in another. The The areas in our life where we lack that confidence and that clarity and that connection and that calmness that you talked about when you were manifesting the house, just relax, knowing it'll come if it's meant to be. The places in our life where we don't have that are the places where we have the most wounds. If you were to say, Okay, I'm really great at detracting things into my career, but my relationships, I'm just a show. Okay, well, what is the core wound that's tied to those relationships? What happened to you as a child? What do you know about relationships? Was there trauma there? This is self-help 101 or therapy 101. We all understand this in the periphery. We're like, Okay, I get that. This thing happened to me, and then I'm going to hold on to it. But this book is like, No, the life you're experiencing is a result of the roles that you play, the parts that you play each and every single day.

The world is like this theatrical event that we show up for on a day-to-day basis. The parts of us that show up are different characters in our life.

That's interesting.

These extreme parts, these addicted parts, these fearful parts. We're like lots of different actors in the show that is our life.

It sounds like every human being is schizophrenia or has multiple personality types.

In IFS, internal family systems therapy, I'm going to break this down. We're just talk around it. Let's just break it down from the get-go. My gift in this lifetime is to just simplify big ideas. My gift to Dick Schwartz, who's one of my cherished friends, the founder of IFS, is to take his extraordinary body of work that healed my life and to translate it and demystify it from people that- And simplify it. And simplify it and democratize it. Here we are. Internal Family Systems Therapy is not about your external family. It's about an inner family of parts of us. We have these lots of little children inside.

Which sounds crazy to think about.

It does, and it doesn't. Let me keep it simple. Have you ever You said, A part of me gets really outraged when Marta does this, or a part of me flips out when I can't control something? Sure. Yeah. You're familiar with those parts of yourself. You even said it earlier, A part of me is really... I don't even know if you said a part of me, maybe, but you're like, I can be really impatient. Yeah, of course.

That impatience is a part, right?

These parts of us, often the extreme ones, are protection mechanisms. So the controlling aspects, the managing of the day-to-day things that we have to get done, the perfectionism, the overthinking, the playing small, these extreme roles that we All day, in momentary situations in our life, or really, sometimes all day, every day, are protection mechanisms. If you look at your life and you're saying, Okay, there's parts of me that I don't like, or there's parts of me or ways I act out that feel extreme, or there's behaviors that I have that I just can't kick, addiction, over eating, drinking. You see these things that you do, these behaviors that you have that you just don't know how to change. It's because they're very, very young parts of yourself. They've been around for a very long time.

They haven't grown up yet.

They never got a chance to grow up, these parts of you.

Where do these parts of us live?

Okay, so let me get this. Let me keep it simple. I'm going to keep coming back to the simplicity, okay? I'm putting my... Okay, let's keep it simple.

How many parts of us does each individual have?

We can have many parts of us. Let's keep it simple. Very young. We grew up where we come into this world, we're like these perfect little people. We're so happy. Everything's beautiful. Hopefully, we enter the world in a safe, peaceful way. From a very young age, we start to experience the burdens of the world, a parent that doesn't have a strong attachment. In the case for you and myself, having sexual abuse as children. Sometimes it It could be extreme traumas like that, or it could be something along the lines of being bullied in the classroom, or being told that you're stupid by your teacher. These moments in time are so extreme for our child brains to process. We don't have the resources, we don't have the brain capacity, and oftentimes, we don't have the parents or caregivers to help us process these extreme disturbances.

They don't have the tools either to teach Or in the case of you and me, we don't have anyone to tell, or we're too afraid to tell.

Or in my case, I dissociated, didn't even have the memory. What do we do? We build up protection mechanisms. For me, one of those protection mechanisms was straight up dissociation. Like, left my body dissociated from reality. For others, it could be, and this is young, at a young, young age, it could be, okay, this thing happened to you as a child, and all of a sudden you go into this extreme protection mechanism of trying to be perfect because you had this shameful experience. So perfection makes you feel safe. Or, give my son for an example. I have a six-year-old son. When he was three years old, he was in a Montessori program, so it was three to six-year-old. There was a six-year-old in his class, and he was just out of diapers. And that six-year-old was like, Who is this three-year-old? I don't want to make anything with him. It was just bossy to him. At a very young age, all he learned, I got to be the boss because that was so extreme. This kid is bigger. I want to be like him. He hates me. He tells me he hates me. He tells me to leave him alone.

It's just kids are mean. But my little boy has this thing of, I got to be the boss. So he's got this misguided belief, I need to be a boss. So what does he do? He walks around with his Nerf gun, and he walks around with his shooter He's like, I'm the boss. This is like a little innocent six-year-old. But he wants to be the boss because he's protecting himself from that feeling from three years old. I watched this whole part develop in a person. An extreme thing happens, big or small. In the case of Holly, it was a six-year-old. In the case of me, it was something much more extreme. Hopefully, Holly never has to experience that. But whatever it is, we have extreme experiences, and we exile them. We exile them. Those are called exiled parts of us.

X odd parts.

These are the little, young, traumatized children that had nowhere to go, no one to care for them, no one to support them. We said, I'm going to lock that up. I'm going to send them into the basement. Don't ever talk to that person. See that part of me again. At three years old, five years old, whatever it is, we start to decide, I'm going to do this to protect myself from feeling this. So Ollie is the perfect example. I got bullied. I'm going to start to be the boss so that I never have to feel that fear again of that Exactly.

Does everyone build these defense mechanisms up?

Everyone.

They look different for each person. Yeah.

Then lots of different protectors, and there's two types of protectors. You're still tracking with me here. I know you are. I just want to make sure that the audience is still tracking with me. I'm going to take this slow. So exiled parts of the young traumatized little children don't want to feel those feelings. So they're too extreme. Lewis, it's like, you can't understand it. Your brain's not able to process it. Most adult brains don't have the ability to process that. Or most parents would say, You're fine, you're fine. Just get shut down. If you even did bring it to somebody, you'd be shut down. Or in cases of real extreme trauma, you don't feel safe enough to talk about it. Shut it down. Then you build up these protection mechanisms, protector parts. There's two types of protector parts. But in my book, I really just focus on one type, so we'll stay close to that. There's managers and firefighters. The managers are who we talk about in the book because the firefighters are who I want people to go to therapy to work with. But the managers are the control-free. For me, I'm just going to name my managers.

One would be like, Knives Out is another one I named. If you're with me, I'm like, Knives are out. All right. They destroy you.

That's a manager.

Hacker Vigilance was a manager for me. Just like, anxiety was a manager for me. Think about it, anxiety, right? If I'm anxious and I'm moving, moving, moving so fast, like when you first met me, totally out of my body, hadn't remembered the trauma yet, totally scared, when I'm going to cry when I think about that time. That anxiety was actually a form of protection. Of course. Because if I'm in an anxious state, I don't have to feel the horror and this fear and terror of that other state. That's a manager, the parts of us that are with us all day long, managing the big feelings of the exile. Then when the managers don't work anymore, let's say something very big happens in your life, something extreme, and the managing is no longer working, that's when the firefighters come in. The firefighters will do whatever it takes to put out the fire of those impermissible feelings. That's when you pick up the drugs, pick up the workaholism, pick up the alcohol, the sex, the porn, the binging, the extreme addictive parts of ourselves. The most extreme parts of us are the ones that are working the hardest to keep us safe from those feelings.

Then there's good news. You're ready for the good news? Yeah. We all have an inner parent inside of us. Those are all the young children inside, the exiles, the managers, the firefighters, the protectors and the exiles. They're all running our world. We're like, One trigger happens, this protector shows up. Another trigger happens, it's like protector to protector. It's like a boxing match all day long, walking through life.

Exhausting.

Exhausting. Why do people have burnout? Why do people have stress? Why do people have chronic pain? Of Of course. There's a whole chapter in the book called Body Parts, How the Body, like physical pain is a protector. If I have a back pain, I don't have to feel my childhood wounds. We're going to get into that. The good news is that we all have what Dick Schwartz has coined as self with a capital S. Self is our adult, undamaged, resourced part of who we are. It's the truth of who we are. It's the spirit of who we are. It's the God within us. It is an energy. And self has eight C qualities: compassion, calm, connection, creativity, courage, clarity, commitment. I'm missing one. I don't even know what to say. I always miss a C. They're all in there. Connectedness, I think I got to them. We'll find the eight Cs in the book, and we'll get these.

Yes. Curiosity, compassion, calmness, clarity, creativity, connectedness, courage, and confidence.

It's so funny. Confidence is the one I always miss, but it's the one that I often feel we're quite connected to, so I won't forget confidence anymore.

There you go.

So I'm going to really try to keep this simple. Just think about it like you have an inner parent.

Everyone has an inner parent.

We all do. Let's just keep it simple. Let's keep it super simple. You know those times in your life when, let's say, Marta came to you and she was really struggling with something, and your heart was filled up with compassion. No matter how extreme the thing that happened to her, you just connected to her. You were a calm presence for her. You had deep compassion for her experience. You had clarity on how to communicate. You felt like you had the courage to speak up for what was true. That really just it wasn't even what you said, but it was that presence alone that helped her. Yes. You know what I'm talking about?

Yes, of course.

That's self-energy. With a capital S. With a capital S. The adult self. And the thing is- The thing is, it's your It's your true self. It's your essence. There's a really beautiful quote in the book that I share that's about how self is like the sun behind the clouds, and it's there, but the clouds are just in the way. Self has always been there. You feel self in Shivasana. You feel self after a long run. You feel self. We're in self right now. This is our creative force. We're in the flow. We have so much connection. We have so much creativity. We have clarity about what we're talking about. This is self energy right here. If you're watching and you're feeling elevated, excited, calm, soothed, that's because our self-energy is coming through the screen or through the audio. We all have it. It's that we have to release the blocks to the presence of it.

How we release the blocks is how? Is that the core beliefs of understanding core beliefs for- It's a four-step practice that I put in the book. It's a four-step practice. Okay.

The whole book... What I've done is I've taken this huge therapy, internal family systems therapy, super in the zeitgeist right now. God bless, it's the most valuable healing modality, particularly for trauma. It's the thing that I felt only people that were going to find their way to an IFS therapist were going to get this. I was sitting at a dinner with Dick Schwartz. I hosted a dinner for him. Just again, he's the founder of IFS. I started this about 43 years ago, 44 years ago. I was sitting next to Dick, and this was shortly after I'd taken the training and we'd become friends. I looked at him and we're at a dinner. I'm hosting for him. It's like having Lady Gaga at my house. I look at him and I'm like, I I have to tell you something. I'm scared to tell you this, but I want to write a book called Selfhelp. Selfhelp. I want to make IFS Selfhelp. He looked at me, his eyes just widened. He was like, I've always wanted somebody to do that. In the foreword, he says, I've always been looking for that person with the self-help spiritual bonafides, and then Gabby's here.

Wow, that's cool. That's one of the greatest privileges of my life, is to take someone else's body of work and translate it.

You created the four-step process for this.

The four-step is not IFS. It's an IFS-informed self-help practice. That's really important for me to say, Lewis, because if you're going into IFS therapy, you have a therapist with you. You're doing a six-step inquiry, almost like an interview with the parts. It's like an unburdening process. You can work with firefighters and exiles. I am not doing that. I am not a therapist. I'm a spiritual self-help author and teacher. I am trained in internal family systems therapy, but I'm not a therapist. It was really important for me to take this and make it IFS-informed. Yes. There's the four steps.

Ifs-approved.

Ifs-approved. Ifs informed, it's backed with Dick's blessing, and it's the way that you can take this model into your own hands. Safely. Safely is a really important point. Yes. Because I'm not trying to guide you to those exiled parts. The book is not trying to work with firefighters. That would be, and I say all throughout the book, if this happens, if you're with a firefighter, there's an exile, go. Here's an IFS therapist's registry. Go find somebody. But I'm trying to help you access these managers, the extreme parts that are with you all the time, day to day. Through a four-step inquiry, let's self-help.

Okay.

See, let me know when you're ready for it. Yeah, I'm ready to go. I feel like I'm just so excited about this. This is my first real interview about this, so it's very thrilling to me. Questions before I go on.

Well, there's something you said in chapter 3 about core beliefs, because I I think a lot of people hear about their behaviors and beliefs, and that we have this a block based on our beliefs, whether that's a childhood belief or a current belief as an adult. You say that the hard truth is that although we can make surface-level adjustments to our actions, true change can only happen when we heal from within and address the core beliefs that block us from manifesting the life we desire. So I guess with this four-step process, process help us address the core beliefs that are blocking us in manifesting what we want?

Exactly.

If so, then what is that process?

Okay, so first of all, 100%, that's exactly the answer. This is the four-step process. The other thing is, how many personal development programs have we sat in where someone's like, Oh, you have limiting beliefs, and the limiting beliefs are blocking you? Then you're like, How the do I get rid of these limiting beliefs? You never leave and you're like, Okay, I know the playbook for changing. Maybe you have a little tip here or manifesting tool there. Look, I've written this is my 10th book, so I have nine other books with other practices which all work, all are valuable, all have their own purpose, particularly spiritual practices in these other books, and they all are bringing you to self for sure. But this is addressing the actual neural redirection in the brain. Because when you practice this four-step method, what's happening is you're rewiring your experience and your relationship to these parts of who you are.

You're connecting higher self currently to the self that was destructive or harmed or the manager- To the parts. The parts. The manager or firefighter, parts of you. That's correct, baby. That caused stress or anxiety or control or perfectionism or whatever it might be.

You're taking all these little people inside of you that have these belief systems that are holding you back, and you're bringing the internal parent of self to them to help them.

It's almost like we have multiple personalities or memories or people in us, which is weird to say. We don't even have to say.

It's just parts of us, parts of who we are.

Multiple parts of who we are. There are some parts that are wounded that we get to heal. The more of those parts that we can have a higher relationship with, a more...

Self to part connection. Harmonious relationship with. Harmonious is the word.

That's right. If you can create a harmonious relationship from the higher self of you to the wounded self parts of you, then things are going to start to flow better in your life. Oh, well, yeah.

In every area. Well, because think about it like this. My controller part, I've done so much work with her. You can gender these parts of you. They have no gender. They can have the opposite gender. Sort of whatever is intuitive for you. My parts are female. So I have that controller part that you knew for so long or the anxiety part. Even to think about where we were maybe 10 years ago in these conversations to where I am with you right now and how much more self-energy you feel in this moment. It's going to make me cry. It means so much to me that you've been there with me.

It's been like what? Thirteen, 14 years? Fourteen years. Fifteen years, maybe since I've known you. 2008, I met you.

When you first met me, I was parts on fire Right? Like, literally on fire. I was a workaholic. Both of us, yeah. Really extreme. I was sober, but like workaholicism. I was just extreme anxiety. Didn't know that I had trauma, so I was living in hypervigilance. I was so scared all the time. I was so controlled It was just like, I was doing... You can still be going through hard things and do beautiful things in the world.

Yeah, you still get results in life.

Yeah, and do good, but you might be having a lot of struggle. As a result of this model and what I'm going to teach everybody today, and living this, and developing this, and practicing this, and every day checking in with these parts of me, checking with these parts of me, I've unburdened them. It's not that they go away, is that they're not extreme anymore.

Interesting. So the parts that were wounded are still inside of you.

They're no longer wounded. You feel that. They're in their beautifully developed chrysalis. They're new, for instance. The part of me that was a controller I mean, that part did good things. She wrote 10 books in 14 years.

Took action, got things done. Yes.

But now she can be in the flow. Now she can be like, I don't have to force my way to get this thing to there. I'm like, Oh, you know what, Lewis? I'm going to in LA. Does that work? I'll be there. I can show up with an energy. She's on top, but she's trusting.

She's not forcing.

Not forcing anything. She's just relaxed in the presence. So it's a really great quality to have that control part present because she gets things done, but without craziness, right? Yeah, right.

Chaos. So these parts of us that once controlled us or hurt us to try to protect us because they all had an intention to serve us, but they didn't help the self, really at our highest self.

They're blocking self.

They're blocking self, yeah. They're blocking self, but they're an attempt to try to protect us. Totally. These parts of us, when we can have a relationship, a harmonious relationship with them through healing and mending those wounds, then we can use them for good.

That's great. You're so great at digesting and bringing it back. Yeah, it's beautiful. That self right there in action. Clarity. Clarity is one of those quality of self. You have such a good job of listening, thinking, pulling it together, bringing it back.

It sounds like by doing this self-help work and by following this four-step process that we're to cover in a second and just going through the book, it sounds like when we can start to have a different relationship with these parts of us that have caused us pain and suffering, but also try to protect us. If we can start to have a new relationship by mending those relationships, it can get a lot better. But it doesn't mean those things can come back at some point if we don't keep having a relationship with them in a healthy way. So you might be, six months, I feel better, but then something triggers you and you go back to the wounded part of you that says, I don't feel safe. You need to control this. You need to protect this. You need to be a perfectionist in this moment, whatever it is, vigilance. It's a constant relationship and a conversation of checking in, it sounds like.

It's called the check-in process. Okay, cool.

All right, here we go.

And I like that because everybody has a few minutes to check in, or a few seconds to check in throughout the day. The simplicity of it being this four steps of checking in with the part makes it such that you can have this relationship to the part rather than Why are you doing this? It's why the pain? That's what Gabbana Mata always says, not why the addiction, why the pain? By every moment when you notice a trigger or you have this space in your body to see, Oh, I'm out of alignment right now. In those moments checking in are these moment-to-moment experiences of presence with bringing self to these parts. I'll break it down for you.

Give me a specific example in your life that may be a part of you that comes up sometimes that causes you anxiety or stress or- And how I would do the steps. Yeah, your team are like, Oh, Gabby's in I'm, Oh, her part of her is coming out in this moment.

They're watching right now.

They're like, Oh, shoot. You sure? You're being a perfectionist, or she's over controlling, or whatever it is.

Exactly.

Whatever that part is for you that maybe has tended to come up a lot in the past, can you give me an example of how you could use this while you're sharing what these four steps are?

The protector that's freaking out, she's freaking out because something isn't going the way she wants. She's the freaking out protector. I'm actually doing a lot of work with her in therapy right now, so it's nice. I do IFS therapy, so of course. She's having a freak out, like some email isn't good or the things aren't working as fast. It seems not working as fast as possible or if she feels like she has a burden belief, this freak out girl. Her belief is, If I don't do it, nobody else will.

Zang.

She is maybe just like... She also has another, and I'm cursing a lot, but just bleep me, okay? But she has The other phrase that she says. She's like, What the fuck is going on here? When I think about her, I think about... Okay, so let me give you the check-in process. Let's say I notice she's coming in, she's showing up, and I'm like, I notice her. I have enough awareness to be like, She's here. She needs help. I need self to help. Self help me. I'll say that again. I need self to help. Self help me. I have that awareness. I choose to check in. Step one, choose to check in.

Make a choice.

Yes, because remember, parts are like little children. If you try to force something on a little child, if I try to go to Ollie and say to him, Bro, what the hell is going on? You seem upset. Let's talk about it. He's like, No, mommy. Get away, mommy. There has to be some buy-in. There's some buy-in, and I'm going to choose to check in.

Is that the adult Is that the self choosing to check in, or is that the child self choosing to check in?

It's both. Okay. So the choice is- You're both choosing to connect. The choice is a self-quality, but the part has to make the choice.

It's like what you said with your son. If he's not willing to reciprocate, saying, Let's talk about what's going on, and he's like, No, screw you, mommy, or whatever he's saying, then that's not a check-in. Both parts need to check-in.

Yeah. It has to be my presence of self and his willingness.

Willingness to receive or talk.

Openness, yeah. Got it. Okay.

Not that your son would say, Screw you, mommy, but I'm just saying- You never know. Yeah.

You never know. We would say 16. It was 16 years old, they might say things like that. He might say, Screw you, mommy. Who makes you think of Cartman? Do you know that I do a really good Cartman? Skiggy, man. I'm getting hit. That's good. I'm really good at it. That's good. Choose to check in. Choose to check in. Detour from Cartman. Choose to check in. You have this awareness that the part is triggered and you're saying, Okay, I'm going to choose to in right now. Step one, that's it. Choose. If you know that you feel that buy-in, like, Okay, the part is ready to go, we can keep going. Choosing to check in is also just sometimes even having the awareness that you need to check in because that's step one. Step two is curiosity. Become curious. These are all C-qualities, remember, right? It's acting as if. And so the curiosity is start... So I'm in this place where this manager is up and she's like, What the fuck is going on here? Nobody I have to do everything. Nobody else will do it. I choose to check in with her and I become curious, and I start to notice the feelings and the thoughts and the sensations inside as you're asking her questions like, Where do you feel that in your body?

She's like, I'm not breathing, and there's tension in my chest. I start to see what thoughts or sensations. Her thoughts are like, What the fuck is going on here?

Why is this happening?

I ask her for any images or visions. And she shows me my six-year-old self in my dining room with my pigtails, and I'm screaming, No bumps, no bumps. Because the only way that I could find control in this out of control life that I had was to control the bumps in my pigtails.

To make your hair look perfect or. Right.

This girl that's now this adult that's screaming, What the fuck is going on here? Is the little girl... This is the vision she shows me. The little girl screaming, No bumps with the pigtails. I start having all that. I flash out this information about her. You can see I'm like, I could tear up as I think about her. That connection, can you feel that connection I'm having with her right now? Yes. That connection shows me that there's some self-energy here. As soon as you start to feel some connection to that part, the third step happens. By the way, you can spend as much time as you want in curiosity. You could just ask more questions. Let the parts speak. The parts want to speak. Step three compassionate connection. I can look at that little girl and I can ask her, Little Gabby, what do you need right now? Right away, she'll speak back. She'll say... At times, she said things like, I need a mom, or I need to rest, or I need to play, I need to scream. They're just speaking for what they need, right? I need to speak up. I need to be heard.

The little voice gets to speak up and say what they need. Once that response comes through internally, the fourth step is to check for C qualities of self. You scan your inner system and you ask yourself, do I feel any connection? Yes, right now in this moment, I just did the check-in with little Gabby, and I feel connected to her. Do I feel compassion? Holy. Right now, I feel so much compassion for her. Do I feel clarity? Yes. She just showed me. It's a little girl. She showed me exactly where she was. I feel clear what she needs. Do I feel calm? I feel calm, even more calm right now, just having done that check-in process out loud with you. Connect it. Oh, Courageous. Much more courageous. Clarity, I think I said. Confidence.

I got confidence. The one that you're remembering now, confidence.

Creativity. Yes. Check for Cs. Even if you just have one C quality of self show up, you feel a little bit more calm, you feel a little bit more compassionate, you feel a little more connected. You've done the four steps. You've done the four steps even if you just get to check in, to choose to check in. Just even the decision to check in for two seconds is the check-in process.

Because if you're not starting step one, then you're just going to stay in fight or flight, control free, anxiety, or whatever your manager is doing.

Your manager won't have enough of a pause to pivot because the manager is... We can become blended with the managers, which means we believe that we are that. Those times in your life when you get so worked up, that you're like, I am the only one that can do this, or the only way to live life is to fight back and tell everybody else that they're wrong. That's the only way to live. If anybody challenges that, they're gone. We're blended with these parts. The only way to start this check-in process is to slightly unblend choosing to check in.

Interesting. Because otherwise, you are those parts in that moment.

Yeah. There's going to be plenty of times when we're so blended that we can't do the check-in until 2 hours later, 2 days later, even 2 months later.

Until you can reflect, you just take a nap, you sleep.

Yeah, you can check in hours later.

You're out of the environment.

Most of the time when people start this work, they're going to find themselves the next day being like, Oh, what happened there? And then just check in. But you should start with little... That's why I want to work with managers, because this is about a process. It's making it a Do it with the small moments. Just this morning, or yesterday, I arrived in LA. I was overwhelmed by the energy. I didn't love the view out of my hotel. It sounds like a luxury problem, but the energy is really important for me. Of course.

If you're standing on a wall or something.

I'm staring at a Chase bank, and I was just like, Where? I was like, In this... Then you're like, I want to have a good vibe right now. I was seeing I'm seeing that controller come in. She wasn't too bad, but she did ask my assistant to call five other hotels. Very lovingly asked. At night, she's like, I don't want to ever come back to LA. She's like... Instead of Actually, I did fire off an email to my prior team. It was like, Cancel an October trip. And then I was like, She'll help? Yeah, okay. So I came back and I rewrote an email. I was like, Don't cancel the October trip. And then I checked in with her right before that.

Wow. Okay.

And so she wasn't That's just the day-to-day thing that normally we're just acting out in these ways, and we don't actually... Then maybe we come out of it because we just got some logic, but we never tend to it. I was like, Oh, what do you need, honey? I just checked in with her and I heard her and she's like, I just want to feel warm and safe, and I just want to feel like I've got a good energy around me. What do I need right now? I need to find the right place to land when I get here, and I need to just sort those things out. I started to feel calmer as I checked for those seed qualities. This is where the manifesting comes in. She calmed down last night. She slept great.

That's good.

She woke up, She's like, I'm going to see Lewis today. She worked out. It was 5 AM because I'm on East Coast. I was like, Let's go work out. I was feeling great. Sat down, make up done. It was super chill. I'm like, I think my makeup artist, who you met Christina. I was I'm like, Christina, I had this whole drama yesterday. I'm like, All I really want is high vibe energy, super connected. I want to find my hotel in LA. I have to be out here all the time. I want to just make it my home, leave a toothbrush. I want that. Then I'm coming back in October, and I really want to have a retreaty vibe for two days because I need to write when I'm here, and it's a weekend when I'm here. I'm like, This is what I want. I was like, It'll happen. The universe is going to deliver it. I call our mutual friend Jeff Crasno because I was like- He's That's got an amazing voice. Because I got the hit. I was like, You know what? She's called Jeff, right?

He's got the whole comm here. It's a sanctuary.

I wasn't even calling Jeff. I was calling him about something totally different. I called Jeff and I'm like, Hey, what? Then I was like, Oh, you know what? As I'm talking to him, he's calling me about getting on the podcast. I was like, Hey, what, bro? I'm like, Wait, when I come in LA, you're going to be doing a retreat in Topanga. I was like, Wait a second. I'm like, Let me come for two days in Topanga. Is there a place for me to write? Can I come do yoga with Skyler? Can I take your class and eat food with you guys? And he's like, Of course you can. Then I was like, Wait a second. Hold on. So I just found my two days, my little retreat to go write. Then I look at my calendar, I'm like, Wait a second. I have a podcast interview in Topanga on Friday. Somebody is showing up in Topanga. Then I'm on the phone with Jeff, and he's like, You got to call Robin Burns in. She's in LA. Call Burzen right now. She's staying at the Soho house. I was like, Wait a second. I'm a member at the Soho house.

There's a Soho house here? Yeah. All the time, I thought there was no hotel. So I'm like, Hold on a second. So I call Robin. She's like, Get in the hotel. I call the hotel. They I'm like, One room left. Get in the hotel. I was saving so much money going over to this other hotel that I want to be with one of my best friends tonight. I find my hotel that I want. It sounds like a stupid luxury thing, but look how fast the manifesting was. Then boom, I was in the flow. Here I am, and I've got this whole next trip in October totally sorted with the trip to Topanga, the hotel that's going to make me feel safe, the community I want to be with, the creative space to do my writing. Now, did a control rolling, type A person make that happen? No. A creative, calm, connected, curious, right? Compassionate. We keep forgetting curiosity is self-energy. Curiosity.

Compassionate.

It was just curious, right? Curious. He said, Let me call Crasno and see if he can do a podcast. Then let me ask him about Topanga, right? Mm-hmm. Hello? Sounds stupid, but my makeup artist was like, That all just fell into place like a domino in 30 minutes. That feels really weird to me. I was like, this is how. It was this morning? That was right before I came. Wow. But that whole boom, boom, boom, boom, boom You talk about, in one of your books, Becoming a Super Attractor.

How can we become a super attractor by applying this method? Because it sounds like you applied the method, and you wouldn't have been able to figure this out if you were in stress and control and manager freak out, control freak mode. That little part of you is back in that. It needs to be a perfect pigtails or whatever. Can you attract abundantly without managing the parts of us that are wounded?

We wouldn't want to manage the parts of us. We want to bring self. We wouldn't let self help them, right? Just for language purposes.

It's not managing them?

Because managers are managing.

You can't manage the managers.

Yeah, that's correct. Managing the managers is like when the firefighters come in That's right, that's managed. You're really getting it. It's so cool. People might have to listen to this episode twice or read the book. Read the book. It's all there. There's no way that you can manifest effortlessly unless you have tended to these protector parts. Because you might have a lot of things that you can create in your life, but you're up or limiting yourself. You're going to hit glass ceiling.

You won't be able to break through certain levels.

Yeah. Because your sheer will can get you some of the way there, whatever. You may have a little bit of moments where that creative flow comes in, but then you just block it again. But to live in the flow.

Effortless.

To say it, and it will be. This morning, I would like a retreat center and a home base in LA, and 30 seconds later, clarity and curiosity, call Jeff, get curious, because manifesting isn't about just sitting around, nothing happens. You're doing. But to be a super attractor and to be a co creator. You have to dwell in the energy of creativity. You have to be calm. You have to be faithful. You have to be connected. You have to be courageous to take the action with that flow energy. You have to be curious about what's possible. You have to be creative, absolutely creative. Creative, creative, creative. You cannot be judging yourself. You have to be compassionate toward every part of who you are. We are all super attractors. We all have self in us. We all have the ability to live with ease no matter what our circumstances might be. But there are absolutely some of us who have far more privilege than others. Let's be real about that, right? For those of us that are in Western cultures, those of us who can watch this podcast right now, we have privilege. Those of us who have that privilege, it is our responsibility to do the self-help work, to clean up our side of the street, to get more flow in our life, because in that flow, we can serve more people.

Yes, that's true. Isn't it amazing? I'm sure people watching or listening right now have had those moments. I'm sure everyone has had those moments where like, God, I feel just like things aren't working, I'm frustrated, but then you get centered. Maybe you didn't know you were doing some of these steps, but you get recentered and you say, In a world What are the possibilities? What can I create? And you call a friend and you say, I'm struggling with this thing. And it's like, who do we know that could help with this? Let's start brainstorming. You start to get creative. You don't even know you're doing these steps, where you start to say, We need to find a solution. Who do we know? Who can we call? Who can do this for us? Who can support us? You naturally do these things. I feel like everyone watching or listening has probably had those moments where it's like, wow, a synchronicity came up, or the idea to call this person like you did came up, and everything fell into place. I think the goal with this book, which I'm understanding, is to give people the tools on how to do that every single day.

Make that the norm.

The norm, not like this happened twice a year. For most people, it's like once a year maybe.

Because it's an important point. We all have self, we have moments of self, but we live in protectors. Yes. The more self-help that we do, in this case, IFS-informed self-help that we do, that I'm suggesting, the more our protectors start to become unburdened, the more harmonious we feel inside. When we start to feel that inner balance and that inner harmony, and that inner connection, and that inner clarity and calmness, our life just becomes this happy dream.

Here's something that I've realized, which most of my life that you've known me, I was working my butt off to create and to generate results. I was getting them, right? New York Times best seller and all these different things happen just like you. It's like we're able to build businesses and launch stuff and do things. But I remember feeling like I was a six or a seven out of a 10, internally. Me too. Consistently. I was living my... And sometimes it was four, three or four. I was like, I don't know how I'm able to get these results feeling so emotionally drained, feeling disconnected at times, feeling frustrated or anxious or obsessive or whatever the feelings I was feeling, the parts of me that were coming out. I remember just thinking, God, I wonder what life would be like if I was at 8, 9, or 10 consistently internally with self, but also in relationship with an intimate partner, which I never had really a healthy relationship with. I'm not here to talk about previous relationships or blame anyone. It was more my work that I needed to do.

It was your parts, right? Can you see now that really burdened parts were tracking that?

That attracted certain people, that stayed in relationships that was afraid to get out, and then have to carry all these things. But the thing that I've noticed that, man, life has gotten so good when you can create that self-help for self and you can to lend it with another person who's also doing that work. It is magic.

It is like- Yes, full chill right now.

It is like a, I don't know, magical potion that you just... There isn't a day that goes by where Martha and I don't look at each other And where we look at each other, where we say, God, life is incredible. It's almost daily. Now, there is still life that's happening. She's gone through some extreme challenges earlier this year. Family members having some different pains and sicknesses and diseases, and there's still life that's happening. There's still bad things that are happening, and grief, and sadness, and loss, and anxieties. But for the most part, we're able to bring it back to the higher self, even while being in those emotions of sadness, and fear, and anxiety that happen in life, and frustrations in business, or whatever it might be. But we're able to bring it back to self, individually and together. And when you can blend it in a relationship, from my experience, what I've noticed, just your two super attractors that are attracting and manifesting together, it is unbelievable. And life feels like anything is possible. It's also like, anything is possible, and I don't need anything else. That's right. It's like, more is coming, and if it doesn't come, I'm so happy without it.

You're defining the dream scenario, which isn't a dream, let's not call it a dream, the way it's supposed to be, what we all have the capacity of having. What it is, is two humans who have done a tremendous amount of self-help work in whatever form that came, that healed and got to a place of core safety inside. When two safe humans come together, magic can happen.

You can create.

You keep doing the self-help work. It's not like you're still curious every day, What more can How can I help little Louis? What can I do? The part of you that was actually so successful, but at a six or a four, you were living with self-like qualities. It was almost like, you can be- It's there. You can feel creativity here. You can feel that connection there. It's not as flowing, not as consistent. But it's not in a flow. It's not harmonious. But it's still great and it's still there. That's the way many successful people live. It's like, This thing is all great here, but I still feel like she's inside. You know what I mean? That's very common. But I wanted to make people feel seen in this conversation right now, which is that we all have exiles, we all have protectors. We all all have lived, and we'll see them. But the reality, the bottom line is the promise is that the more you tend these young parts of yourself inside and care for them, starting with a book like this, and then maybe taking it to therapy, and then whatever it is, maybe it's not my books and somebody else's, whatever that is, going deep into the inner healing, the more free you are inside, the more free your life becomes, the more free flowing, the more you attract act, the more you manifest, and the more steady, stable, and safe you are when big data.

Consistently. I'll give an example. I had my event, Summit of Greatness, recently. Esther Porel, I'm interviewing Esther on stage at one point. We had a massive mess up in terms of the production. This has never happened to be in seven to eight years of doing this event. We have this whole introduction. You've spoken at my event. It's the best. The intro is so great. We have this whole introduction with the music.

Yeah, it's the best moment.

The fire, the smoke, and the video, the person on screen, and then they were supposed to come out, and we played the video, and Esther wasn't ready. The whole video, people are screaming for her, cheering, and Matt backstage is like, She's not ready.

It's where we have you on stage.

Oh, my God. There was a part of me, I go back and I look at that while everyone's standing ovation, there's no one on stage. I just think to myself, well, it's an opportunity. I go, The show must go on. How can I show up? How can I show up as a higher self and not a frustrated part of me? How can I show up and make the most of this? That's where I go out on stage and I go, Hey, guys, I made a mistake. I'm Mr. Perrell. I made a joke. I go, I'm Mr. Perrell. I made a mistake. Esther's not ready. We're going to do this all over again in a little bit when she comes back. Yeah, exactly. Just to let you guys know that life doesn't always happen perfectly, and there's certain things that are under your control. And you just try to own the moment and make the most of it.

That's the whole thing.

And even though it felt like this massive breakdown, and it was in terms of what we wanted to create, I know that I could go into my wounded part of me that is frustrated that someone on my team didn't get the right cue, or we messed up the timing, or someone wasn't paying attention, or I wasn't doing the right thing, whatever it is. I could have gone right into blame, frustration, anger, perfectionism. It needs to look a certain way. Embarrassment, shame. Like, Oh, no, Esther is going to feel angry at me. I don't know. Whatever these younger parts of me that felt wounded. But quickly, I was just like, How can we manage this the best way possible, and how can I serve people? And so I went back I was on stage and I said, I'm here to serve. We did a 10-minute Q&A until I got the cue that she was ready. We did it all over again. It was fun. Esther on stage when we were doing the interview, she didn't even really know this was happening. She was in her green room, but on stage, she was like, What is a part of you that has evolved or that used to be something that would affect someone in a relationship with you that would be maybe unbearable or something?

I said, Well, this all happened just now. There was also noise happening in the background behind stage was very distracting. I don't know who it was, but people were making noise and things were slamming while we were on stage during this interview. I said the old part of me would have probably stopped this interview in front of 4,000 plus people and screamed at people in the back. They're like, Guys, what are you doing? Shut up. We're in the middle of this. Be quiet. Five, eight years ago, the old me. I would have freaked out on people for messing things up behind the scenes, whatever it The old part of me would have done that. But the new part of me is just managing it in my mind and just saying, It's all going to be okay. There's some disturbance. They're going to handle it. Don't try to control it all. Be as present as I can be. It's not exactly the way I want it to be, but be as present as I can be and serve. It just went back into service. How can I serve even though it's not perfect, even though it's uncomfortable, even though there's disturbances, even though it didn't flow the right way?

How can I get back to service? I felt I felt very calm. I didn't feel angry or frustrated. I was annoyed, but I didn't go back into the wounded part of me that would freak out.

Because you've unburdened that part of yourself. Yeah, because you've brought so much self-energy to him, to That's the part.

It feels, again, in those moments, there's stressful moments that you're like, Oh, I don't like this, but you don't have to react to it.

Well, that's actually one of the benefits of starting to have more access to self, right? Because remember, we all have self. It's not like you're getting something. You're just creating more access to it. Capital self, right? Yes. Self energy, that energy of calm, connection, compassion, curiosity. That calmness that you had there was a result of you having done all this great transformational work on yourself. Now, as this adult, resource, beautiful soul Not just that literal adult, because you are an adult, but there's just this new nature.

Emotional adult, yeah.

Correct. You can care for yourself in different ways. You feel less burdened. You're not as extreme or reactive. When things that used to burden you happen, you can actually be more calm in those experiences. That's because you've established a stronger access to self-energy. Like I said, we never lose self. We've just blocked it. It's been the sun behind the clouds. I want to make sure I quote the right person. I think it was Stephen Crenz, the sun behind the clouds. We start to release those clouds and the sun starts to shine. In that presence of that sun that you live in, that light that you live in now, these annoying situations can happen, and you can actually turn them into magic and gold. Give people an extra Q&A, witness yourself in a transformation, use it as a tool.

A teaching moment or whatever it is.

I also want to point out, this You can do all this work and all this work and still freak out. The other day, we're in your studio, and I was in a studio. I work in New York, and it was in a studio I work in in New York. It was like, the lighting sick. I walked in and the controller was hardcore. I love the people that work there. They're so beautiful. But I was just like, this This lighting is crap. Fix this lighting. It's making me look like a skeleton. I don't like this. I was in that place. I was like, I might as well not even... You're a little girl, right? I might as well not even... Why am I even shooting the video? I should just do the audio. This is bad. We need to fix this. Then I calmed down. I checked in. I went into the back room, I checked in. Came back out, I said, Guys, I'm totally freaking out, and I'm still quite serious about the lighting, and it's something I really want to fix. I'm actually going to move some lights around right now with your permission.

I'm going to send an email, personally and from my producer to the studio because I want to work on this situation. It's a problem, but you guys are great, and I love you. Thank you for bearing with me. About your fault, yeah. Thank you for letting me be controlling in that moment and just being so calm in my presence, even whatever. So you're going to have... It's your comeback rate, right? I walked in and I was in this attitude of like, What the fuck is going on here? The little girl. There, yeah. Yeah. And I checked in, came back new.

Any moment. I think that's really interesting what you said, because we're all human beings. We're going to have human moments. It's when someone is willing to take accountability, that's when you have more respect for that person and trust for that person.

Absolutely.

Hopefully, we can catch ourselves within 5 to 20 minutes or whatever. Listen, I had a freak out moment. That's right. I own it. I apologize. It's not about you guys. I was doing my own stuff. When you can do that, you can mend those relationships faster, too.

They become even more connected. Exactly. That's what they call an IFS. Speak for the part, not as the part.

How does that look?

You had that experience happen on stage. It wasn't what you wanted. It was a little bit of a show. There was noise in the background. It's not like you're so Zen now that you don't give a crap and that you don't say anything or you don't ask your team to do it better. But old Louis might have been like, as the part, What the heck, guys? What's going on here? How could you let me down like this? Why are you doing this? Make everybody leave feeling ashamed and blamed. Of course, we all have. Adult Resource Self Connected, Self with a capital S Connected, Lewis, can maybe next week, we do a postmortem on the event, and you're like, You know what, guys? I'm going to speak for the part of me that was pretty activated. I was on the stage and I was frustrated, and I just want to speak for that because it's real and I really want this team to be the best that we can be. With no blame or shame or all, I just want to really just highlight this area that things could have been a little bit different. I'm curious, do you guys have any ideas of things that we could do differently next time?

I just want to make sure we connect on that. Even use the C words. I'm curious, can we connect on that. Do you have any creative ideas or possibilities for how we could do it differently?

I'm trying to get clarity here.

It's not even about the words, it's the energy. You could say anything to someone, Louis, as long as you're in self. Now, that's That's a tricky thing to say, right? It's not like you can't say a racist comment to somebody in self energy, but you can say far more difficult things in self than you otherwise would ever be able to say. If you don't have self and you're saying all the right things, it won't work.

That's true. It's so interesting you said that because it brought something up for me. I have so many memories from childhood in my teen years where mentors and leaders that I was around, coaches, teachers, speakers, when I went to events. I don't remember a lot of things they said, but I remember the energy. The energy they brought to me. I think Maya Angelos talks about people- You remember how they make you feel.

Exactly.

There's a specific moment. I've said this every time I met with Tony Robbins. My dad bought two tickets to one of his events for me and my mom when I was 16, and I It was a big arena tour. It was like 15,000 people. It wasn't his main UPW. It was like a three-day multi-speaker thing that he used to do. He no longer does. My dad got a seat. Imagine a basketball arena, like a big NBA arena, but we're sitting on the court with seats, tons of rows in the court. I'm sitting in the half-court, and the stage is over by the end of the arena. He gets off stage and walks down, and he's getting closer to me. This is the first time I've ever been to a Tony Robbins event. I really even knew anything about him, 16 years old. He walks down and he stops right next to me in the aisle, and I'm looking up at Tony, and it was this massive presence. Still, to this day, I don't remember what he said, but he spoke to the audience for maybe 60 seconds, and his energy was so magnetic. It was so in self.

He was in the flow.

That's right. He was in his creative force.

He was in his creative shows, thinking about the energy he was bringing, the connectedness he was to each person. It was like he was speaking to everyone, look in your eyes, but to 15,000 people. They were really landing his points. I remember just thinking, I want to have that energy. I want to bring that energy to life in my sports at the time as a high school athlete, and I want to bring that level of service to people. It was like a moment. It was like a memory. It was a moment that if that wanted to happen, maybe I want to be doing what I'm doing. Totally. Maybe I wanted to be creating the way I'm creating to serve and find tools and strategies to help people, and interviewing people like yourself. And I have that with coaches. That was moments where they stopped us in the court and said something, but it wasn't what they said. It's how they connected with us.

That's right.

I remember being like, wow, I really feel that presence, that trust, that respect of that individual, that they care, that they want us to improve, that they're trying to be there for us. They're sacrificing, teaching teachers stepping up for me after class when I'm struggling and being their presence, their energy. Sure, they helped me how to read and write better, but it was like their caringness.

It's so beautiful what you're describing your experience of being in the presence of self. It's not necessarily for the viewer that everyone's going to be the next Lewis house or the next Tony Robbins. In this instance, Tony's presence reflected back to you the presence you were ready to step into.

Absolutely. Something I wanted that I was like, Wow, that's really cool.

But that's everyone. That's for everyone. We can all access our own inner Tony Robbins self, the creativity courage, the compassion, the connection, that laser focus that he has is all self-energy. I just saw a spark of light over you, by the way. That's when I see the angels in the room. Okay, so now I'm channeling. That fluid connection is for every single listener, every single person watching. Because it doesn't matter what you do with it, right? The most important thing you do with it is you bring it to your kids or the children in your life.

The energy, yes.

That presence, it doesn't matter if you're Tony Robbins, you're the next President of the United States, or you're an adult figure in a child's life is equally as important. When we access self and we can bring that self energy to the young people in our world think about how much self-help work we're doing for them. Because if a child has presence of self-energy in their life, their protectors feel safer, they become less burdened adults. That's how we change the world. That's how we change the world. All the political issues that we have, all the wars that we have, that's just protector parts at war with each other. It's all young, wounded children in power.

Isn't that crazy?

In power.

I was I'm thinking about, yeah, and when we bring self-help and start to heal the parts of ourselves, we're not going to have that chaos in the world. If every person is doing this work and tending to the parts of us that feel traumatized or wounded, we don't need managers and our fighters to protect us. We have the courage to communicate differently. We have the courage to love differently and to have compassion for someone else's point of view and say, Okay, that's not what I agree with or believe with, but let's find a way where we can come together somehow, as opposed to let's fight and I'm going to win and you're going to lose on all sides, right?

It's funny that. It's what Dick Schwartz calls self-led leadership. As I access more self, I can lead my team with more self, right? Leaders who have that self-energy, and I can name a few, definitely like a Michelle Obama or Barack Obama, I think. I don't want to be just so political, but there's an Oprah's self-led leader. Not just even famous people, the teachers that you were talking about, or those coaches in those moments. Self-led leaders have such a profound impact. You were just describing it. As a kid, these coaches and teachers in these moments offered self-energy to you, impacted you tremendously, and It created a pathway for you.

It imprinted you. It imprinted upon you. I still remember these moments.

Asking yourself, when I'm with my child or a child, am I calm? Am I connected? Am I curious? Am I courageous? Am I feeling any creative energy or compassion, curiosity? The curiosity is the big one with kids, too. Yes. This year, I'm going to create something new, and it's going to be called Self Impact Training. It's going to teach leaders is predominantly how to master this. But not just leaders, just humans, but people that want to make an impact, not just leaders, anyone that wants to make an impact to come through with this We can't do the big work that we're here to do in the world if our child parts are doing it.

That's true.

You can't run your business like the 10-year-old self. You can't make a movement when you're constantly in your addiction. It doesn't work. So we have to heal ourselves.

In the book, again, we're talking about this book here, Selfhelp. Make sure you guys grab a copy. In this book, you say, Those terrifying moments in life are the catalyst for our greatest awakening and transformation. They are the moments that crack us open to the possibility of believing something new. They are the moments when we surrender enough to let self help. This self-impact training, which I don't know if you knew this, is sit. If it's a.

That's actually quite good.

Sit your ass down. It's essentially you need to sit down and surrender, it sounds like, because a lot of people are in stress and chaos, and they feel like they need to control and take action on something. But sometimes we need to stop taking action. If it's a wounded action, and we need to start sitting, surrendering, and going through these steps in the process.

Absolutely. I think that sometimes the best advice that I can give somebody is to stop. Stop doing what you're doing because you're doing it from a place that's a protector. It's stop and check in, sit and check in. First step of having the choice to check in is that moment when you let that light come in. It's the cracking open to what's possible. I always share this roomy quote. It's my favorite quote. I've shared it here on this podcast before. The wound is the place where the light enters you. Those wounded parts of ourselves are our greatest opportunities for transformational growth and extreme development. Here's what I believe as a spiritual teacher. I believe that before we come into this body in this way, we sit down with our guides, our angels. This is always what I believe. It was reinforced to me recently by this medium. I was like, Yeah, that is exactly what happens. You sit down with your guides and your angels, and you're looking at this list of life that you want to have, and you say, Who do I want to be? What I want to go through? What are the experiences that I want to have so that I can learn the lessons that I am here to learn so that I can pursue whatever it is that this lifetime has meant for me?

I believe that you and I both sat there with our guides and we said, We're going to have this abuse as children, and we're going to have these extreme experiences, and we're going to do, do, do. I'm not going to put that on you. I'll put it on myself. I'm going to have these experiences of trauma and attachment wounds and severe cocaine addiction and physical issues and remembering the trauma, all of it. Check, check, check, check, check, check. As a journey back to self. I recognize that none of it is an accident. There are no bad parts of who I am, as Dick always says, no bad parts. I chose this path so I could unlearn the wounds of the world and remember the light and the self of who I am. No one is different. I mean, everyone take it or leave it. They don't have to have my spiritual faith. Sure. But if you can start to see in which to witness these parts of yourself. Dick says there's no bad parts. As you start to witness these parts of yourself through that lens of compassion. You know, Louis, I was a fellow for a while at this recovery center near my home, and I would go in every month, and each month, it would be a new group of 100 people that were the new...

Because it was a 21-day program, so each month, it was new people.

In the addiction program, in the addiction program.

In the addiction program. The majority of them had one to two days clean because they were new. It was like a wave of people. I'd come in and I would teach them this work. I would suggest to them that the addict was just trying to protect them.

Yes.

I'd offer them the opportunity to consider that. Because when you're deep in your addiction, you're like, No, I hate this part of myself. This part of myself is ruined by life. I'm ashamed. I'm a horrible person. I'm, I'm, I'm. To just even slightly tease that out a little and say, Well, everybody here in this room, what is your addiction protecting you from? Every single one of them would say, This trauma, and that trauma, and this trauma, and that. There's just trauma stories flying through the room. Then we'd say, Okay, well, so if you had this extreme experience that you don't know how to manage, and you've been using this thing to manage those big feelings. You see how it's been trying to protect you? When you look at it through that lens, how do you feel? Everyone in the room would say, Compassion.

Yeah.

Not everyone. Not everybody was ready for the compassion, but it would come It's true.

When someone is going through addiction or someone is addicted to something, you're addicted to drugs, mostly, or cocaine. Cocaine and alcohol. Cocaine and alcohol. But when someone is addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, whatever it is, lying, stealing- Well, work.

I had food, work, love. It was multifaceted.

People, whatever it might be. But if someone is addicted to anything and has an extreme addiction to that thing, what is that saying about them or the parts of them?

What it's saying is they have extreme traumatized little exiles inside, and they've done everything they could to manage those feelings, and that management didn't work anymore, and the firefighter of addiction has stepped in to put out the fire.

Interesting.

They deserve compassion. They deserve connection. Now, if you're someone who's in a relationship with an addict and you've tried your best to do all the things, sometimes the most kind and loving and compassionate thing to do is to cut yourself off. I say that because this is the premise of some of the 12-step work, which is some of the Al-Anon work, which is... Well, let's not say Al-Anon. Some of the codependency recovery work is really that you don't enable the addict. But you have to trust that they have self inside.

How hard is it to end an extreme addiction?

Depends on how much you want it as a cocaine addict. It also depends on the drug of choice, because if you're trying to get off heroin, it's a very different thing getting off cocaine. You get off cocaine, you just feel better right away. You might detox a little bit, but ultimately, you just feel like, you're just like, Whoa, I feel better today. I'm not anxious. I'm not crawling out of my skin. Whereas coming off of heroine or opioids, that's brutal. You deserve detox, you deserve support. Go to an ER and get the detox that you need, get whatever support that you need, because that's a different journey. But if you want it, if you want it, and That's the question. I think all these addicts are going to go, Well, of course I want it, right? But I want to be careful with what I say because everybody would want it, right? They want it. But there might be parts of you still that want to lean and stay, Hold on, right?

Of course, because it makes you feel safer.

It makes them feel safer. Or that's the way that They think that the only way they think they can get ahead or it's still fun or whatever. Sometimes it's when we hit those big bottoms that we really stay clean and get clean oftentimes because it's no longer fun. It's so destructive. We don't want it anymore. For me, that was the case. I just didn't want it anymore. I struggled for several months in and out of this therapy that I was doing. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm just a cocaine out of you. You just kept going back out. Or I'll drink, I won't do coke. And then I always end up doing coke. Then finally, I found my way into a program, into a self-guided program. I got myself clean and sober with the group. I didn't go to treatment, but I did get my program, and I swear it worked for me. Actually, in a week, I'm celebrating 19 years. Well, actually, no, let's say this is January. Actually, a few months ago, I just celebrated 19 years of sobriety, so now I'm 19 years sober.

It's amazing. Keep that.

I wanted it. But also that desire and that willingness is really the whole thing.

It's almost like you have to commit your whole life to being sober, clean, like breaking the addiction. You have to almost commit, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to set myself free. That might be painful to look at the parts of you in other ways.

But it's slow. They say in 12 steps, Keep it simple, stupid. It's slow and steady. People always would say it to me early in recovery, I wish you a slow recovery. Because you don't want to try to be 20 years sober today. It's not going to happen. I can look back almost two decades now and say every part of that journey was exactly as it needed to be. Yes. The thing that's nice about the willingness and the wanting it is that if you do find your way to whatever recovery path you find, it does feel good when you start to get a little bit of it. Absolutely. Then you want to reach for more and reach for more.

Yeah, a bit of that momentum. Speaking of the new year, we're in the new year. If people are watching or listening this now, if you could give people, there's a lot of things that have happened in the last few years, a lot of chaos in the world for people. There's a lot of financial up and down, social up and down, relational up and down, health up and down, political up and down. But if someone is watching or listening right now and they're saying, I just really want to create a new baseline for myself to start manifesting in 2025 in a beautiful way, in a way that I've never done it before. If they're watching this and they're thinking, what's the best way to manifest After all the crap that we've been through in life, them individually or the crap that the world has been through, what's the best way that they can start manifesting in 2025 and beyond?

Those four steps. Choose to check in with the parts of you that are burdened. Become curious about those parts and let them talk to you. Be curious. What do I need to know about these burden beliefs that I've had over the last three years and what I'm carrying? Check in, become curious. Extend compassion by asking, What do you need? And then let those C-qualities emerge. I'm telling you, from now on, for the rest of my life, people are going to be like, Well, what do I do to manifest? I'm just going to be like, Check in. Check in and check in and check in more. Four-step check in. Do it more and more and more. This is the secret. This is the key to manifesting. We manifest what we believe, and that was some of the first words out of my mouth here today. How do you want to change the patterns and burdens, and how do you want to attract more of what you want into your life You tend to the belief systems that are holding you back with this four-step check-in process.

That's it. That's the process. The book is Selfhelp. This is your chance to change your life like every make sure you guys pick up a few copies. I love this because it's simple, it is short. For me, it feels very manageable when I'm reading it. It's easy to read. Make sure you guys check this out. The four-step check-in process to transform the patterns that have held you back. You mentioned this before that we always hear about these limiting beliefs that are blocking us, that are holding us back. But a lot of times, people don't talk about these steps on how to break through those limiting beliefs. I really love the approach to the IFS approach because it's looking within at the parts of us that are holding us back. These parts of us are blocking us and limiting us to break free in what we want, whether it's creating a better relationship or manifesting something in our career or business, whatever it might And so those are the things that are limiting us. The things that have been trying to protect us for so long are actually helpful in certain ways, but not every way.

So we need to have a new relationship from a place of capital self, higher self within us and start tending to those parts of us that have been holding us back, that have been limiting us, and incorporating a new healthy, whole relationship with them so that they can support and elevate all of you. And I think when you can follow Gabby's process, process, it is going to make it seem more relatable. It's going to make it feel more simplified and less confusing and daunting. Because some of these things in therapy can be extremely daunting to just even sitting down with someone for an hour and hearing some terminology, it's like, I'm exhausted already. Let me just get back to my life and being addicted because that's what I know.

Yeah.

And so allow yourself to start sitting, start checking in with yourself, start reflecting and following these four steps in this book. It'll really help you transform your life. Gabby, thank you so much for doing this. This is amazing. I'm excited for everyone to get this. Again, make sure you guys get a few copies. Give it to friends. It's great to start off the year 2025. If you have anyone in your life who maybe feels blocked in any way, give them a copy of the book so that they can be supported as well. Any final thoughts for you guys?

I just wanted to say something to you on behalf of all your listeners and viewers, because I meet people all the time that flip out when they find out I'm friends with you, because you've helped heal them, or helped them, given them the resources to heal. With your wisdom and with your interviews, but most importantly, with your self-energy. As a friend of yours and someone who feels so seen and safe and connected and supported. Right here, right now, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, I want you to feel how grateful I am to have a presence of self like you in my life. And on behalf of all of your beautiful community out there, because I think they're all going to say this in the comments, everyone, tell Louis how much you love him.

I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. You deserve it. I appreciate it. I love you. Love you, too. I appreciate it. Get the book, follow Dear Gabby, everywhere online. You got an amazing podcast as well. What else can we do to support you? How can we support you?

People who like this work, they want more support with it, go to deergabby. Com/app, because there's my Dear Gabby coaching membership, and inside it is a lot more self-help guidance, just extra processes here. But affirmations you can pull, two-minute exercises, long deep dive coaching. It's your coach in your it pretty much. If you're like, I like what she's saying, and I want more of her, that's the place to go.

Gabby, love you. Thanks for being here. I appreciate it.

I love you. Thank you.

I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. If you are looking to create You want more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook. Com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on The School of Greatness. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well.

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