19 Mar 60,000 Thoughts – How to redirect your brain towards success! With Rock Thomas
My Guest is Rock Thomas. He’s a self-made millionaire, bestselling author three times over. He became one of the top 50 realtors in the world. He studied with some of the greats like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Wayne Dyer, one-on-one. But most importantly, he’s taken up a personal mission to help those who have been beaten up by life and he’s helped them to retrain their thinking, find their self worth and also often help them to grow wealth and abundance in the process. He’s definitely living the Dream Think Do life. So it’s about dang time we had him on this show.
Listen To The Podcast:
Resources:
Website: https://rockthomas.com/
Twitter: @rockthomas
Instagram: @rockthomas
Interview:
Mitch Matthews: Rock Thomas, welcome to Dream Think Do, buddy.
Rock Thomas: That’s beautiful, man. Not only do you have a beautiful voice, but you articulate as well. So I’d like you to send me that recording and I’m going to put it on my phone first thing every morning when I wake up.
Mitch Matthews: You got it. You got it. Tell you what I always say a good intro is my gift to my guests. You know, you deserve it for crying out loud. And yours, yours is so easy. I just, I really was blown away and I don’t want to shortchange your story. I want to start with the story that really you covered in that goal cast video. Just so Dream Think Doers can know a little bit more of kind of where you came from. Take us back to your, to your childhood because this was, this was not an easy story.
Rock Thomas: You know, I think we all grew up with a dream and then somewhere along the line often it gets crushed. And if you don’t have the wherewithal or the resources of the guidance or the encouragement to revive it than most people live this life of quiet desperation and just trying to avoid pain, quite frankly. And I, fortunately, somehow, I think maybe through reading, I didn’t grow up with the TV. I was, my parents got divorced at five and funnily enough, my sister and I grew up when I was around one and three, my mom adopted two other kids. So I was actually the youngest of four kids in the house, you know, back in the days when moms were raising kids single and dad worked, you know, till 7:00 at night. Then we got divorced and I lived with my mom for a while and I wanted more attention.
She was a gypsy. So I didn’t get that. I set things on fire and I fought with principals and I was that kid who was skinny but went into the new school and looked for the biggest kid and kicked him in the shins and said, what are you looking at? And-
Mitch Matthews: It was a survival strategy, right? Like something you learn. But-
Rock Thomas: Yeah, it’s like if I can take on the biggest kid, who else is going to take me on? But after a while that got old as we changed, my mom had to relocate me from school to school and she finally shipped me off to my dad, my dad, my dad had remarried and now I was the youngest of seven. So my entire life was this battle of can somebody sees me, I got the hand me downs that are torn. Is there any food left? Can I say something? And my father’s wife had married a guy who ended up in an insane asylum. So they treated her children in a special way because they were afraid that they had some mental issues. So they got away with things while I was always told to toe the line. So there was this separation.
And I think that happiness in my experience comes a lot from connection, from feeling you’re one with other people, you’re around the fireplace at Christmas time and you’re having a good time when you feel safe. And I never really had that. I always felt like I was about to be attacked or bullied or there’d be no food left.
Mitch Matthews: Wow.
Rock Thomas: So somewhere along the line I just started reading the books that were in my dad’s library and I read this one book called, by Vernon Howard, Do What You Fear and It’ll Disappear. And I imagined a thousand Post It notes on my wall and I just thought every time something comes up that I fear, I’m going to attack it. And so I just started saying yes to things. I mean just start doing things that were bigger than me. And I became an entrepreneur at the age of 13 selling coffee and hot dogs to the parents of the children that came out to ride horses at our farm. I started to pocket money and I said, buy some clothes. And I started to be able to get things done. I got my first moped at 14, my first car at 16. I left home at 17.
And when I went into the real world and worked, Mitch, I was a legend. I could do twice as much work as anybody else. I got promotions and raises and people counted on me because I don’t know if you’ve read the book Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins?
Mitch Matthews: Yeah.
Rock Thomas: And I was a mini David Goggins. It’s like you can’t stop that. You can give me too much work. And people were like, give it to him, he’ll do it, you know. And I got my pilot’s license at 17 and I just went on to be this machine of productivity. But of course, my heart was empty. I wasn’t happy. I never felt like I was good enough. And then, you know, I mean, I don’t know where we’ll go with the story but I was 28 and a half, my Dad got cancer. I stopped what I was doing. I was almost a millionaire at the time. I had three properties and all of this, just from working as a taxi driver and a laborer at 16, 18 hours a day and bartending at night. And I was working in the airlines at the time and I came back from visiting my dad and really taking care of him for a year and a half.
I’d lost everything. I went through a divorce. I lost, it was messy. I wasn’t there. I messed it all up. I was confused. I was still trying to get my dad’s approval. I sued the company that fired me because I wasn’t around. I lost all my money there. I paid off my father’s debt that he had accumulated, and by 30 I was back on the couch. I know it’s cliche, but I was back on the couch at my mom’s house. And it was at that time that I was like, “How do you work from 8.5 to 28.5, 30 years old, 22 years of your life and be in debt?”
Mitch Matthews: Right. And especially having amassed almost a million to then have that be gone after you’ve spent time trying to right some wrongs and try to help your dad who still to the end and not show your love or affection or appreciation, all of that. So yeah, those are some low blows.
Rock Thomas: Yeah. And so then I had a turn of fate. You know, it’s like in the movies there was, there was that mentor that walked into my life. I decided to become a real estate agent. And I don’t know if your listeners can relate to this, but usually, when men especially struggle, they isolate themselves. They try to figure it out on their own and I learned it’s the wrong thing to do and women are better at asking for help and not so many men. So I thought, am I going to be a real estate agent for a year and knock on doors alone. I did everything alone cause I was so afraid people would figure out I was a loser.
Mitch Matthews: Sure.
Rock Thomas: If I can just quickly get some sales and then walk in the office, then go to the office meeting, then go to the official training that I so desperately need that I’m not willing to go in case he asks me a question I didn’t know the answer for. And then my mentor spotted me and he said, “You know, you have a level of curiosity. I can see that and you have a work ethic. But you’re running east looking for a sunset. I’m going to put you in the right direction if you’re willing to.” And I kind of looked at him and I went, “Are you talking to me?”
Mitch Matthews: Nobody talks to me like this. Yeah.
Rock Thomas: Nobody tells me they believe in me. So long story short, a year with him. Basically, almost every day I’d fall down. I’d say, what do I do? He goes, that’s not, don’t worry. Do it again. And I made 32 sales that year and then 45 and 65, then 100. The average salesperson selling six, the best next agent in my office was selling 38. I was selling 100. People didn’t know what happened. I was rewriting the books and then he offered to sell me the company. He mentored me through that and I took it from 94 agents to 270 and I sold $1 billion a year. A little farm boy from Canada sold $1 billion a year. I was being jetted around the world like David Linacre, the owner of Re Max. First-class tickets to six-star hotels. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was like a kid at Disneyland and I loved it.
Mitch Matthews: yeah. That is incredible. Now let’s go back to that mentor because obviously that initial mentor was really important and I know that now you’ve invested heavily in finding, tracking down the best mentors in the world, but you also turn around and mentor a lot of people. So let’s talk about that mentor because I couldn’t agree more that those mentors, finding a mentor and being a mentor or two of the most important things we can do in life. And when you know, was that person a mentor to many? Or was he a mentor to few? And how did, how did you cultivate that relationship?
Rock Thomas: Well, I’m a big Brady fan, Belichick fan. I don’t know if you know the names. I think that a great coach can see the talent and a great coach can bring out the right part of you that can be developed. And Belichick is legendary for that, is turning, you know, a quarterback into a wide receiver and a lineman, whatever. So I really think that’s become my talent because it happened upon me and the revelation and relief that I felt from somebody finally seeing me were so profound that I get emotional talking about it, is when I can see somebody’s potential, I must pour into them. It’s my duty. It’s my God-given talent that I must see them and I will endlessly remind them of what they have possible until they either succeed or leave the room because they can’t face their own inability to take action on it.
Mitch Matthews: Isn’t that one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is actually seeing them? I think that’s always been like a timeless thing, but I think in our day and age, actually seeing someone, taking a moment to see them or taking time to see them as just one of the greatest gifts we can give.
Rock Thomas: So think about it. What I craved more than anything else in my life was to be seen by my father. Yet the gift that I got was to be able to see other people. Because I experienced the pain of what it’s like to not be seen. So everything in life, it’s like pain breeds passion and people are like, you know, your mess is your message. Find out what is going on in your life that breaks you apart and has broken you down. And within that is the seed for your greatness.
You just got to be willing to dig and keep at it. And that’s what excites me because I know I have this mastermind group where I’ve created in the last three years, 40 whole life millionaires. I’ve gotten people that were stuck in nine to fives to finally leave and do something and be a digital nomad. I have people that thought about being a life coach that are now public speakers. I believe that I can discover talent, I can nurture it and grow it. Just like a great agent. And to me, it’s selfishly rewarding because every time, cathartically, I’m processing what I didn’t build.
Mitch Matthews: Yeah. Now I love so many elements of your story and I think, I don’t know about you, but it’s like, I think the orphan spirit is probably one of the biggest challenges that our world faces today. There are so many people out there that have parents, that are basically functional orphans and you, I mean, you’ve experienced that literally, but also spiritually as well. So, to help people through that, they recognize that push through it. Now, I know for you a big part of that was retraining your thinking. You know, really reshaping the way you saw the world and I’m guessing people are leaning in whether they had similar challenges at the levels you faced or not. I think everybody can identify with that thought of we have what, 60,000 thoughts a day. Like what are we doing with those thoughts? Right? So what are some of the strategies that you learned initially, but also maybe even more importantly, what do you use today to keep your thinking pointed in the right direction?
Rock Thomas: Yeah, great point, Mitch. The training’s always in the gravitational pull to go back to negative thinking is, you know, relentless by the mind because its job is to protect you. It’s 60,000 thoughts that you have every day. What I suggest you do is you dilute them every day with new empowering thoughts. In my book, Your Epic Life Blueprint, I say that you should spend at least 30 minutes a day and ideally way more, but at least 30 minutes a day, just like you would exercising, exercising and adding in new thoughts. So it could be a podcast like this. It could be a book, it could be, today with Audible, it’s really awesome. You can be standing in line at the airport and listening and digesting some amazing new thoughts. Going to a seminar, getting coaching, being part of a mastermind or peer group where people are discussing thoughts that are richer than the current programming you’ve experienced so far in your life.
Everything that you and I have created in our real world today was based on something that came in as programming or a suggestion and then we believe it. And we thought, yeah, eating carrots is really good. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Having one glass of red wine is okay. We learned it somewhere and we thought it was a good idea and we took it on and as we take it on and own it, we often then start to defend it because we become emotionally attached to it. Then somebody else comes along and says, no, smoking isn’t good. I think 30 years ago it was cool. 40 years ago it was cool. No, it’s not cool. And then the data comes in, you make a shift. So I think what I do is I purposefully gather the thoughts that not whether they’re true or not, whether they’re empowering.
Just believe what serves you. If you believe that getting up and doing 57 pushups first thing when you get up in the morning like I do, cause I’m 56 and I believe that if I do that, I continue to remind myself that I can do more and more even as I age. It’s a useful thought for me. Does that make sense?
Mitch Matthews: Yeah. For sure.
Rock Thomas: So I’m looking for useful, effective thoughts. Not thoughts that somebody else has because I’m not working for them. Is doing a budget a useful thing. Yes. I’ve just proven that people that are wealthy actually know what’s going on with their money and people that are broke think that that’s difficult to do and it’s a pain in the butt. What I say is that is it useful and it is, then I’m going to have the discipline to do it by focusing on the reward and I’m really good at using my imagination, which is by the way, more important according to, I think it was Einstein than knowledge.
So your ability to imagine the reward of doing a budget will get you to do it. Your ability to imagine the reward of doing a workout will get you to do it. My father died of cancer at the age of 62. He didn’t exercise. He was stressed out most of the time. He comes from a German background who was very, very serious and he ate poorly. So I looked at that data and I go, is that a path I want to go on? I thought, probably not very effective. So I did research. I went to see Tony Robbins. I went to his life mastery course. I went to a seven-day cleanse and I learned from people that are incredibly healthy and energetic, that eating a plant-based diet primarily is better than eating the traditional diet of beige food that you see on most people’s plates.
So I made a shift and I looked at hydration. I made a shift. I looked at exercising and made a shift. We talked about drumming and doing things that make you feel young and free and move your body. I move my body in the way of a 25-year-old because I choose to be playful. So all of these things have contributed to me having a better result called success, ability to command and demand things of my life because I’ve made choices based on my mentors who have made better choices than the original programmers of my brain, which were my parents. Who weren’t necessarily, you know, educated in the best possible way.
Mitch Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. And you’ve been intentional with that. I mean, it’s one of those things to be able to say, all right, because I think most people, the majority of people, it says they’re not happy, right? But a lot of the reason why is because they’re not being intentional with the thoughts with what they’re doing with their life. All of that. Now what I love is that you’re really combining thought life and action. Right? So like before we hit record, one of the things you said before we hopped on this call together. You were doing what? I know you just mentioned it, but let’s go ahead and tell the audience what were you doing.
Rock Thomas: So I have called all day long today and I had a 15-minute break and I went out and I played drums for 15 minutes and I just laughed and enjoyed myself and pretended I was eight years old and gave myself life and love.
Mitch Matthews: Right? And you came on with this big ass goofy grin on your face. Like, Ooh, you’re just like, you’ve just gotten off a roller coaster, which is fantastic, right? As opposed to hopping on and just doing the same old thing or whatever. So I do believe that it is a combination of what are we doing in our brain, but also what are we doing with our hands, right? To give yourself, you know, your body that wakes up call to say, okay, this is, this is the life I’m choosing. This is the thought process I’m choosing, so I love that.
Now, what is some of the other specific things you found are most helpful for you with redirecting that thinking? Because I think for a lot of folks, even people like yourself that are wildly successful on the outside, but maybe living that life of quiet desperation on the inside, right? A lot of the negative thoughts happen under our radar that’s happening at a subconscious level. Kind of like you said, your body is doing a lot of things to try to keep you safe and sometimes that you know, drives negative thinking, all of that. What are some of those things that you do to help stay aware of your thoughts and then redirect them? What are some of those things that you do to really stay on top of that?
Rock Thomas: There’s a bunch of things, but I would say firstly, I would encourage people to look at their environment. A lot of people don’t realize … So I just moved into a new house and it’s really great because I don’t have much in my fridge or in my cupboards because I don’t have eight years of junk that’s accumulated. So when I go to eat something now, it’s basically I’m going to have a salad, some fish and chicken, or you know, the worst thing might be some almonds or something. So environment, what happens, unfortunately, is we live in such a toxic, negative world that wherever you go, you have to resist. And it’s been proven in a book written by my buddy Ben about willpower doesn’t work. But as the day goes on. Willpower is like a muscle. Your willpower diminishes. You use it to get things done. You get cut off, you miss a parking spot, you get delayed stress. But can you get to the end of the evening? It’s so easy to have a chocolate bar or a piece of cake, a glass of wine, some comfort food. And before you know and you’re like, “Man, I just, tomorrow I’ll be better, tomorrow will be better.” And you lie to yourself.
So the first thing that will change and make people’s lives better is the environment, and I always say people, places and things. So if you’re not conscious of the people you’re hanging out with, you become, you’ve heard this from Jim Roan, you become the average of the five people you hang out with. But what people don’t talk about as you become the average of the five people they hang out with as well. Because if your best friend and you get together every Thursday night and you have three beers together, and I don’t know this because you and I only get together on Monday nights and we play chess, every once in a while you might be tempted to say, “Hey Rock, what don’t we have a beer tonight?” And I’m going to go like, “But what’s wrong with the tea we’re having?” You’re like, “I just feel like a beer.” It’ll eventually seep in. Does that make sense?
Mitch Matthews: Yeah. For sure.
Rock Thomas: Or you’ll gain weight, or rather we’ll say I’m the guy having a beer and gaining weight and you’re the one, right? I won’t make you the bad guy.
Mitch Matthews: Throw me under the bus, Rock. Come on.
Rock Thomas: But if I had hair like you. So, environment people, I’m very, very particular who I spend time with. More particular with as I’ve aged because I realized the power. It’s funny, you know we say this is growing up as careful who you hang out with, kids, you’re not hanging out with that little Johnny boy are you. He’s a bad influence. And then we go out and hang out with anybody from the office, our neighbor. We happen to be best friends with their neighbor just cause he’s across the street. So people.
Places are purposeful and intentional with the places you’re going to go. You can go to an all-inclusive club because it costs you $1300 for a week where everybody sits in the pool at nine o’clock in the morning with their Pina Colada all day long. Or you can go like I do to Thailand, where you can, it’s less expensive. And I go and I swim with Olympic athletes and I work out with them and I have intensive tennis lessons because I liked to perform at a high level. So be intentional with the places that you go.
And then the things, I mean, what are the things that support you? Well, you can have an iPhone with Audible, great podcasts on it, or you can have your TV with trashy programs. So the environment’s very powerful. But at the end of the day, it’s the choice of what you’re going to focus on. And focus comes, what I’ve learned. And here’s a tool for people that’s practical is the questions you asked yourself. The most successful people are asking quality questions. Jim Carey, what was the question he asked all the time? What’s funny about this? Constantly asking that. And if you ask, seek and you shall find. So, and if you don’t believe that, don’t answer this, Mitch. No matter what I say, don’t even answer it in your mind. Two plus two, the brain has to answer it. The brain is. You’re the conductor. So if somebody is in a bad state, feeling sorry for themselves, feeling annoyed, frustrated, it’s because they’ve said, I wish, you know, how come things didn’t get easier?
How come they weren’t better? Instead of saying, how do I utilize this situation? So I say, what’s great about this often. Your flight’s delayed two hours. What’s great about this? Who am I going to meet? I’ve got to obviously meet somebody. God wouldn’t have delayed the flight for two hours and just have me sit here and do nothing. So I get up and start looking around. And it’s true. Six months ago this happened and I started walking down and I see this guy named John Assaraf. Does that ring a bell?
Mitch Matthews: Yeah.
Rock Thomas: Yeah. He was an author-
Mitch Matthews: We haven’t met yet. But yeah.
Rock Thomas: So I set the intention and I’m walking and I see him and so I was ready and geared for it instead of my voice going like, Oh my God, what is it? I don’t want to bother him.” He was walking with two other men. I just walked right up to him. “John Assaraf. I was supposed to meet you.” And he’s like, “you were?” And I’m like, “Yes, my flight was delayed for hours and I knew something great was going to happen and now I see you. It makes sense.” And he was like, “That’s awesome. That’s great.” And immediately we had rapport. I ended up getting him on my podcast about three months later, connection. He introduced me to his two sons. They were on their way to Tahoe to go skiing, but it was like this. So rather than me playing the victim, feeling terrible, wasting time, pissed off and upset, I turned it into how do I utilize what is? And that’s because I ask myself great questions and I think people could benefit from that.
Mitch Matthews: I love that. I think, I mean, that’s just the example you talked about earlier, that as as men, but I think also as people, as we start to get anxious, as we start to get overwhelmed, we start to shut down, right? We start to get smaller. Whereas you did the, you know, that question is like, what’s great about this? You physically, I mean, you were doing it with your arms, right? You’re physically getting bigger and say what’s great about this and to be able to then go walk around and be open is huge. I love that. What’s one other, what’s that? One other question you ask yourself. Because Dream Think Doers, man. We are fans of questions. What’s one that works well for you?
Rock Thomas: Oh my gosh, I could. In my book I list a whole bunch of them, so I could give any one. But here’s one that people have heard before, but I’m going to give you a little twist on it because people are like, well, one day you’ll be grateful for that. No. One day you broke up, you lost the contract and somebody turns to you and goes, “Yeah, one day you’ll be grateful.” You have a few choice words.
Mitch Matthews: Right. Why is one of my fingers extending, right now? Weird. Yeah.
Rock Thomas: So what I found as more effective is one day what might I’d be grateful for. And the mind loves creative problems. The mind loves to go to work for you. So when you offer it a little bit of a creative challenge, it gets excited and it goes, “Well, what might I be grateful? I might be great for that that person was actually a drain in my relationship. I may be grateful for the fact that I actually was hanging on to that relationship when I know that there’s something better and nature abhors a vacuum. So now that I’ve got this open space, something great’s going to come into it. What might be?” And it’ll go on a rant. I lost all my hair to alopecia when I was 40 years old and I went into a mini depression because I was used to my look. You know, I’m Dutch and I’m blonde, blue-eyed and ruggedly handsome. And I had that whole thing going for me and now, poof, taken away and I remembered my question of, “Well, what’s great about this?” And I looked in the mirror and I thought, “Well, I’m never going to have a bad hair day again in my life.”
Mitch Matthews: I am a hat guy. I never have to worry about hats again. Awesome. You do wear bald well, man. If I was that good looking, I’d bald myself. That’s, but that is so … I love that. And let’s go back to that might question cause I think what I love about asking yourself questions is you have to be careful with that because your brain is also a fantastic BS detector. Right? So like that’s, that’s where I kind of pushed back somewhat on some kind of those statements where it’s like, I am rich. I am wealthy. When you know your bank account is not that. Right? So to be able to say, all right, what will it feel like? And I’m moving towards that. I’m wealthier today than I was yesterday. How am I going to get even wealthier tomorrow? Right? It’s asking those questions. So the BS detector doesn’t go off going no, don’t believe that.
Right? And more so, like you said creates a vacuum, where your creativity kicks in and says, I’m answering that question. Well what could I be? What might I be grateful for for this situation? That’s awesome. Because that gets over and around the BS detector because like you said, you, you lose a contract. It’s like, no, this sucks today. This is rough. But you’d go, no, this is great. Your mind’s going to go … What are you, nuts? Being able to say, all right, what might I be grateful for it? That’s gold people. I love it. That is fantastic.
Rock Thomas: That’s a great distinction, Mitch. Obviously shows you got a lot of experience in personal development because a lot of people like, oh, do affirmations. I am rich, I am rich. And your brain is like bullshit. You’re broke.
Mitch Matthews: That’s right. Eh. Wrong answer. Exactly. You can do those affirmations all day long. And it’s just, it’s actually building up tension where to be able to go walk in truth, right?
And to be able to say, Hey, I can do anything. You know, like God put me on this planet to do amazing things and although I may not be well funded today, I’m going to be well funded tomorrow. So I’m moving on it, right? Like to be able to say, all right, what are those things that you could walk in that truth? And still like you’re saying, allow your brain to fill in those gaps. You know, pray about it, focus on those things. It’s amazing what can happen with that, but it’s that you got to be careful with just straight up affirmations that don’t line up with truth.
Rock Thomas: So I say what you do is you romance them. You kind of like, you know, what would it be like if I was a millionaire? Yeah. How would that feel? That could feel pretty good. Yeah. What would I have to do to be a millionaire? Who would I have to know? What kind of people would I have to meet and what situations would I be willing to go up to people and introduce myself? Maybe I’m not right now, but it’s a millionaire and you can get into the gun to the act as if I was that kind of a person. How would I behave?
Mitch Matthews: Yeah. I love even going further and just saying like, what will it feel like? It’s a foregone conclusion. What will it feel like? How will I walk? I’m practice that now. How will I walk when I’m a billionaire? Right. Like that whole thing of like, what’s that going to feel like? That will be cool. So let’s just practice, right? So it’s that you’re still walking in truth, but it allows you, again, allows your body to get into it. Your thinking to get into it. Man, that’s awesome. We could talk for hours, man.
Rock Thomas: I know.
Mitch Matthews: This is great. So I’ll tell you what, I want to leave people hungry, so I want to point people to where they can find more out about you. But I’m also going to ask for one last piece of wisdom. We always love to ask for that wisdom a week to send people out. Say, all right, what’s that piece of advice? What’s that thing you want to leave people with? So as you think about that, I’m going to point people to a couple of different things.
You guys can find out about Rock at rockthomas.com. It’s loaded with lots of great resources. You can find out about his podcast, all that. Find him on Instagram as well. Just search his name, Rock Thomas, or he’s got Instagram march to your one … or march to your million. March.to.your.million. Lots of good stuff. You can find them on Facebook as well. Check out his page. It’s going to be huge. We’ll have all these links on the site associated with this episode, but you’re going to want to spend more time with him. I know I want to, so rock. What’s one last piece of advice, especially for that Dream Think Doer, they’re like, all right, I’m going to stay curious. I’m going to ask myself better questions. I’m in. What’s that one last shove we want to give them as we’re sending them off?
Rock Thomas: You know, I think that a lot of people, the moment they set a goal, they start to get excited initially, but then they also start to unconsciously get into a bit of fear. Because now there’s a gap that’s created. The energy that we put ourselves into, that vibrational thing, the secret and all that. It’s the same thing you talked about with the affirmations is if you say, I’m a millionaire, but I’m not. There’s a disconnect between how you actually feel about it and how, what you want to attract. So I think that people, if they set a goal and realize that a goal is actually a choice to choose the obstacles on a pre-determined path.
So what I mean by that is if you’re going to walk up Mount Everest, you know it’s not going to be easy, but you’ve accepted, you’re going to have to camp seven times. You accepted is going to be snow and cold and minimal shelter and you can’t watch TV and you’ve looked at that and you said that journey is worth it for me. So when people set their goal, I would say stay in excitement about the fact that yes, there will be obstacles and some of them you won’t know about, but relish them instead of trying to avoid them. Step into them, lean into them, embrace them, enjoy them like a great gladiator going to battle and enjoy your way to that goal. Because guess what? Getting that goal isn’t going to make you happy. I’ve done it a million times. I bought the book, the motorcycle, the house, the country home, and all those things and then give them all back. You know, it’s like a good country-western song.
Mitch Matthews: And my dog.
Rock Thomas: So it’s who you become in the process. And the enjoyment of sculpting yourself against the chosen preset obstacles. Don’t complain that you said, Hey, I want to get whatever you want to get. I want to get out of the country. I want to get a holiday home in Florida and then complain about all the paperwork you have to go to the humidity. You chose that goal. Relish each step of it. Enjoy the journey. I know it’s cliche, but I just enjoy also the challenges and struggles. Kind of what’s great about this. Look for the great banker you’re going to meet because that first banker was a pain in the butt. Kind of smile through the challenges, if that makes sense.
Mitch Matthews: That is gold, my friend. That’s so true because it is that whole thing of we set out to achieve, well not the whole world, but Dream Think Doers are right with you, like that whole thing of being able to say, we set goals. We start to go after them and then we get a little ticked when it’s tough. It’s like, wait for a second, this is … We’re having these challenges because we’re going after something intentionally. Most people don’t face these kinds of challenges because they’re not stretching themselves. They’re not going for something new. Right? I’m facing this challenge because I picked this, I’m going after it and my life’s going to be better because of it, but we miss, we can so miss out on the journey, at least I’m speaking for me now, right? It’s easy to put the grumpy pants on and miss it, but you’re exactly right. We’ve got to be intentional about that too, to be able to say, all right, what am I going to do to enjoy even the challenges that come today and not some rainbows, butterflies, and little ponies kind of way, but say, no, really? What am I going to do? So I love it. Rock, keep bringing the awesome, my friend. I really appreciate it. We’ll look forward to having you back on the show soon.
Rock Thomas: Hey, it was my pleasure. I just love your energy. I just love looking at you actually. It’s so enjoyable to see a soul that’s lit up on fire like you are, so God bless.
Mitch Matthews: Thanks, brother. I appreciate it. God bless you too. All right, Dream Think Doer. Phew. That was a hum-dinger. I love that conversation. Man, so many things that Rock said stood out to me and so many aspects and isn’t it sometimes where you just hear something and it just … it just sticks with you. And I know for me, you know, just that thought of, we have 60,000 thoughts a day on average, which is, it speaks to the power of our brain, right? But the importance of how we’re directing those thoughts and just revisiting the concept of asking yourself the right questions, being intentional with that makes all the difference. We’ve talked about that kind of concept before, but it was just a great reminder for me and I love the wisdom that Rock shared on that as well. So what stood out to you?
I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment and let me know which idea is sticking with you and/or something specific you’re going to try!
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