Heart-Based Thinking Creates Compassion with Daniel Gutierrez
Actions may speak louder than words, but staying still and thinking before acting is even more impactful. Once a coach for presidential candidates, Daniel Gutierrez believes that making the heart and ego work together isn’t enough. Heart-based thinking is better because it will create love and compassion that will let you connect to people. Daniel shares how being mindful of your surroundings and being radical can make for meaningful experiences. Get the newest Conscious PIVOT Podcast episodes delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here
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Heart-Based Thinking Creates Compassion with Daniel Gutierrez
I am very excited for what is about to happen, it’s going to be special. Before we get there, I want to remind us all just in this moment to take a deep breath and realize how blessed we are. Could we be any more blessed? I get to be speaking on a podcast and spending time with a beautiful soul. We get to be alive and we get to be together, connected in this way, which is beautiful. In case we need a reminder, I’ll remind us that at this very moment, as we’re taking our deep conscious breath together, there are people everywhere who are taking their very last breath on this Earth. It is a sacred moment. This is a holy moment. I can’t say it enough. I can’t feel it enough. I can’t be reminded of it enough. It is a blessing and an honor to be able to remind everybody else, as often as I get to, of the same thing. I’m so happy to be here. I feel so grateful. I also feel so blessed to have Daniel Gutierrez with us. I love to ask this question. Daniel, what are you jazzed up about? What are you excited about in your life? Don’t worry about whether it sounds like you’re bragging. You’ve had some incredible experiences in your life. You’ve done some amazing things. I would love it if you’d share something about yourself, what you’re excited about and where you’ve been. I’ll start with I’m a speaker, I’m a best-selling author. Those things I think that you can find on my bio if you want to look it up. I think what’s most important is that what I’m jazzed up about being able to do what I love and do it every day. What I mean by that is that I’m not going to work and doing something that I’m getting paid for, for just the finance. I’m not doing what that bumper says, “I owe, I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.” I always thought that was funny. When you’re in LA, that’s all you can do is read bumpers, so I remember that one. [Tweet “What’s most important is being able to do what I love and do it every day.”] I’m jazzed up about the opportunity. I love what you said and I want to go back to that because that’s the essence of the way I live. That is, I am blessed to be alive in this moment. I am blessed to have an opportunity to breathe. When you said that in this moment there’s someone taking their last breath, I got chills because in February, I watched my mother die. I experienced that moment. It’s radically changed my whole life to recognize the importance of loving what we do and doing what we love. I know that sounds really crazy maybe to some of you, but if you’re going, “How am I going to get paid?” You start doing what you love and love what you do. At the end of the day, I felt the same way. I come from a corporate background, you know the little company, Best Buy electronics. I helped build that company. I started with them when they had 50 stores. I ended when they had 1,700. I think they have 4,000-something now. That was my grind. If you can imagine a brand new company like that opening hundreds and hundreds of stores all the time, we were constantly moving eighteen, nineteen hours a day, flying around, just craziness. What was your role with the company? You were an executive? Yeah and I was helping them open markets. I was the only one willing to come to LA. I lived in Texas. They’re from the Midwest, Minnesota. They’re in the tundra. They were like, “We can’t get anyone to go to LA.” I go, “That’s because it’s crazy out there.” It’s dangerous. I live in Texas. We leave our windows open. I hear over there people are getting killed. That’s all I knew. They fly me into LA, pick me up in a limousine. It’s dark, and I know they did this on purpose, and they take me down to Laguna Beach, to a place called Las Brisas. Las Brisas is probably one of the sexiest restaurants on a bluff overlooking the ocean. They wine me and dine me and they tell me how they’re going to do this and that. They tell me that that’s LA. I believed them. I said, “I can live in this,” and my office was in Compton. I said, “What happened to the ocean? Where’s the ocean?”” My life has been crazy like that, like all of us, busy. I just sent out a Facebook video recently because I had another friend commit suicide. I really felt bad about that because I did something that I wish I hadn’t done, and that was I sent out a text to this woman and she didn’t respond, so I didn’t think anything about it. I thought that she was busy or I’m busy and I’ll get back to her. I’m in the grocery store and someone says, “Did you hear about so and so?” I said, “No.” They said, “She hung herself.” I went, “What?” I said, “When did that happen?” She told me and I looked back at my text. It was around that same timeframe. I realized that we live in a world where we’re not present and we’re texting each other and not answering each other and not connecting to each other. It broke my heart because we’re too quick to say, “I’m busy.” What does that mean, “I’m busy?” I even said on the video, I said, “Quit saying, “I’m busy.” Why don’t you just say, “I don’t want to talk to you?” I would feel better about that. I would feel better because “I’m busy” means you’re brushing me off. I was saying, “Don’t do what I did.” I gave an “I’m busy signal and I lost a friend in the process. It wasn’t my fault. I don’t hold that guilt but maybe I could have picked up the phone, I don’t know. At the end of the day, I got into that busyness because I was busy at Best Buy. I woke up one day and I was not fulfilled anymore. I was at the height of my career. I was just invited to be promoted again. The thousands of employees, I had stock at $1. This is Best Buy stock at $1. I was one of the good old boys. I didn’t have to go anywhere. I woke up one day and I said, “This is not my path.” I gave all the stock back and I kept what I had in my 401(k) and I walked away. I gave them a two-week notice. That’s it. I walked away. There are two things I realized: One, I needed to follow my path and two, that I was just a number to a big corporation. I wasn’t as important as I thought I was because they had a replacement for me by the time I left. That was an eye-awakening thing for me. It’s a business. I can’t take it personal. I had put my heart, blood, sweat and tears into it. To me, it was personal. To see someone replace me in two weeks and be there to shake my hand and say, “I heard you did a good job. Have a good life,” it really made me realize that we need to live our lives for ourselves, not for others.

Heart-Based Thinking: We live in a world where we’re not present and we’re texting each other and not answering each other and not connecting to each other.
I can only imagine how many people who have already made that choice, because we get a lot of people that are pivoters. They’re side hustlers, side entrepreneurs, they’re pivoting and are doing something on the side of doing something brand new and becoming business owners, many of them. There are a lot of people who are still working a job, are in that place and for good reasons, I don’t deny that they’re good reasons to stay, to be there because that job provides safety and security in an uncertain world, uncertain times. By the way, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having a job. If that’s your purpose and you’re happy, great. I’m talking about when you get there and your eyes are red, you’re drinking your coffee, you’re in traffic and you see that bumper, “I owe, I owe, I owe, so off to work I go,” it’s emptiness. If it’s emptiness, there’s something wrong. That’s the picture we’ve got to fix. If you’re going to work and you’re fulfilled and it’s something that just brightens you up every time, which does happen by the way, then great. Then the practice of what we’re going to be talking about is finding peace and tranquility in that spot. It’s almost hypnotic. I commuted to Manhattan. I was a lawyer for eighteen years and also came upon a day when I just couldn’t tolerate it anymore. I couldn’t tolerate myself anymore, who I was. It was too painful to look in the mirror and to look away. Ultimately, it just got to that place where it said, “I won’t trade my soul for money anymore.” I had traded a lot of my soul away for dollars in the process, which is my dirty little secret. That liberation moment is powerful. Like Henry David Thoreau wrote years ago, “Everywhere, people lead lives of quiet desperation.” I was just, “Let’s not be quiet about it.” That’s why we do this podcast. That’s why we got involved with the book and trainings and things. I know you’re committed to very similar things. You and I are so practical in so many levels. I just don’t want to be quiet about it. If you want to be desperate, be desperate. Be loud about it. Say, “I am desperate. I’m desperately attached to security, to what is known, to safety.” At least then we’re being honest about it, “I am not happy. I’m not as happy as I could be. I am on, some level, suffering but I’m not blind to it. I’m not going quietly.” Because you get that choice to go along quietly or to be loud and obstreperous about it. I feel like if you are loud and obstreperous, at some point, your own true self, that courageous warrior that’s inside of you will not take that shit anymore. You just go, “I’m done. Hello, I’m done.” You did the same thing. You’ve been involved in politics. You’ve had a very varied career of experiences. I’ve gone from coaching presidential candidates to recently finishing out with the Obama Administration as an advisor to the Department of White House Personnel, to working with the President of Mexico to get elected, from reaching out to Mexican nationals in the US to help the Mexican President become elected, and he did. I was there when he was elected. That was President Felipe Calderón and the current president. I’ve had a little bit of dabble here and there. It’s fun to be alive. People say, “How could you have done that in your life?” I said, “I said yes when I felt that my heart was saying, ‘Do it.’” This is really important right here, this part. Will you tell us what’s that common thread that’s helped you to continue to follow something, to follow some guidance so that it’s led you toward interesting experiences? Forget all the pomp and circumstance that are impressive and all that, but these are fun. You described that you’ve got a fun life. You’ve got an interesting life. You’ve got a prosperous and a productive life. A couple of things: One is I said yes just about to every opportunity that showed up. It goes way back. I remember the first time that I think I was thirteen and I lived in a little country town, Midlothian, Texas, I grew up there. This guy hired me because I was trying to make some money. He said, “Would you clean out my barn?” What he meant was to shovel out all the manure. I took it as literally shoving out all the manure, not get in the tractor and move it. I literally shoveled out all the manure by hand. He was like, “You did that by hand?” I said, “Wasn’t that what you asked me to do?” A lot of times, I didn’t know how and it didn’t matter. I just said yes. Another time, let’s move a few years ahead, I was in college and I was studying Industrial Technology. I wanted to work for this interior design firm so I could get to know their clients and see how they were doing business. She says to me, “I have this table that a client needs with this Egyptian motif but it’s on a special glass. The glass is very expensive so you can’t mess it up and you can’t break it. Could you do it?” I didn’t even know what she was talking about. I said, “Yes.” I didn’t get to go home for the holidays because my whole holidays I literally painted that on this glass. When she got it, she said, “Nobody was willing to do this and you did it.” I didn’t know how. I researched it. I researched and I literally painted it. It was like a little Egyptian thing all the way around this eight-sided glass. I never really worried about did I know how. I just decided to say yes and I figured it out. Because of that, I got to do things. I’ll give you another funny one. I remember I had left Best Buy and there was this award ceremony in LA called the Sol Awards. The Sol Awards were like this big to-do, 4,000, 5,000 people show up. I had been to it a year before and remember watching the Sol Awards and going, “Wow.” They honored business people in the community and whatever. I just remember sitting there and at the very beginning, all you could see is the big side screens, the big ones so everybody could see who was on stage. I hear this, “Welcome, your master of ceremonies.” I went, “I want to be that guy,” and everybody’s like, “Shut up and watch the show.” I remember I said to the people that were around me, “The next time I step in here, I’m going to be the master of ceremonies.” They’re going, “You’re in Hollywood. Shut up. It isn’t going to happen.” Fast-forward four years, I get a call from the chairman of the board. He says, “Daniel, we really love what you’ve been doing in the community. We want to know if you might be available to be the master of ceremonies for the Sol Awards.” This was at the Kodak Theater, the whole nine yards. It was beautiful. I said yes and we made it through the whole conversation. I could barely stand. He says, “Daniel, before you go, have you ever used a teleprompter?” I said, “A tele what?” “A teleprompter.” I thought, “I’m about to blow it.” I said sure many times, “No worries.” Fast-forward, I am on set. We’re about to start this huge show and you hear, “Welcome, your master of ceremonies, Mr. Daniel Gutierrez,” and I walked out and I was like, “Yeah,” and then the teleprompter. I get to the teleprompter and I see it and I know I’m supposed to read it but what I don’t know is that it goes at my speed. It started moving and I started speaking faster and faster and faster. All of a sudden, I hear in my ear, “Take a break. Take a break. Take a break.” Eventually, they got me and said, “Daniel, it goes at your pace. Slow down.” I said, “I didn’t know that.” I’ve never used one. I didn’t even know what it was. [Tweet “No matter what the day holds, this breath I’m taking right now is sacred.”] Having those experiences were because I said, “Yes.” The other thing I want to make note of, and this came later in life. My father was killed when I was five years old in a car accident so I never knew him. I always tell my son very often, he’s sixteen now, I said, “Son, don’t worry about your dad. Your dad has lived an incredible life. No matter what happens and when it happens, I’m good. I’m really good. If tomorrow was my last day on Earth, I would be absolutely excited that I’ve got to do what I did because for all practical purposes, I shouldn’t have even had the opportunities. Don’t worry about dad.” The reason I say that is because I’ve made peace with death and I’ve made peace with life. I’m good with both of them. I can live every day knowing that no matter what the day holds that this breath I’m taking right now is sacred and I’m good with that. There’s one thing that we definitely know, that everything comes to an end either by death or separation. If we know that through death or separation everything comes to an end, what do we have to worry about? I think that’s where my willingness to say yes came from, is that I was just willing to say, “What have I got to lose?” How has that informed your current work? I know you have a writing project. I’d love to hear more about that, as well as mindfulness. There are a lot of people interested in mindfulness these days. It’s gotten into fad, it seems like. I just picked up a copy of Time Magazine. Mindfulness is on the cover. I’m looking at this and a little bit of a concern about that. I’m writing a book and the working title of the book is Radical Mindfulness. Let me share with you what I mean by that. For those of you that maybe have a practice already, you might say, “I already know that.” That’s fine. Here’s my concern with the flavor of the month mindfulness that we’re seeing out in the world today. We’re seeing it on TV. We’re seeing it in commercials. We’re even seeing it in sitcoms. People are talking about it, which I think is a beautiful thing because it awakens a level of consciousness in our human that we need to wake up. It started with Avatar, the movie, and now we’re into mindfulness. People don’t know what Avatar was about. That was all about mindfulness. That was all about spirituality. That was all about the corporate giant. That was all about Pachamama. It was all about Mother Nature and how we play in that whole thing and how we treat each other. Now, we come today and it’s mindfulness.
My work today is around mindfulness, what I do today. This is what, when you said earlier, “Why am I excited? What excites me?” It’s everything I do. I don’t go to work at Best Buy and I work on mindfulness. That’s what I used to do. Today, I work as a practitioner of mindfulness and I am what I teach. That’s what makes this so exciting. I don’t have to put on a veil and become someone else because that’s what I’m getting paid to do, ”Between 9 to 5, this is who I am.” Mindfulness is the practice of being still, being present. There are many ways to get there. Some say yoga, some say meditation, some say taking a walk. You could be mindful eating. Mindfulness is a broad range of things. It’s a practice. The problem with it is that if I go do yoga for 30 minutes to an hour, and I leave there and I get on the freeway and I’m also now flipping off the guy next to me, that’s not very mindful. It’s not even a practice. I thought about it, “I flipped him off on purpose. There was nothing that wasn’t conscious about it. I was entirely conscious when I flipped that dude a bird. He caught me off for crying out loud.” He had it coming. This is what I’m talking about. We’re all human, we all fall into that. Sometimes I get on the LA Freeway and before I know it, I’m laughing at myself. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m perfect. Radical mindfulness is the practice of mindfulness on a moment by moment basis, set toward an intentionality, followed by commitment. If the practice of mindfulness is to get present and you call whatever you do a practice, and you get stressed out for whatever reason, the boss comes in, the wife comes in, the traffic, the kids and you lose it, you have no practice. The practice of mindfulness is to be radically mindful and be still before you act. It can be seconds. I’m not talking about you’ve got to get in a white robe, you don’t have to hang, you don’t have to do like me and you and have my head shaved. You don’t have to join the ashram. You don’t have to go sit on a mountainside. You don’t have to do any of these things. It’s just about being mindful and being present in the moment. I call it radical because radical is what it takes to do it moment by moment. Even if let’s say throughout your day you’ve got 50% of it done, the benefits are crazy. The benefits of being able to stay centered is bigger, which is what I’m teaching corporate today. I’m not going to ask you to go sit on a mountain, do what I did or do what I do, which I do three, four times a year. I want you to learn to be mindful. You know this being in Manhattan, in the middle of Manhattan I want you to take 60 seconds and take that stressed out cubicle and make it a sanctuary of peace and tranquility just by closing your eyes. That’s what gets me excited. Today, I’m the same person. I have a beautiful spiritual practice. I take people on spiritual journeys around the world. I’m speaking at Carnegie Hall on mindfulness. I’m working with corporate on mindfulness. I’m teaching people in the mountains mindfulness. Isn’t that beautiful? Everything is in alignment. Let me say this before any gets all crazy and thinks, “He’s perfect.” No, I’m not perfect. I’m far from perfect. I would say that the percentage of time I stay in that space is just a little bit higher than the average person, not because I’m better but because I practice it. That’s it. I’m just a little bit ahead not a lot. It’s just like any other skill. We did an event at our home where we were talking about the 10,000-plus hours it takes to be able to speak authentically and all that kind of thing, and deliver content in a way that is very empowering and real. That’s not something you learn overnight. That’s not a seminar. That’s not a three-day thing. It’s a commitment to practice and you can’t get around that. It is a practice that is accessible to all of us. If you wanted to be a great golfer, you’d have to spend ten hours on the golf course everyday and a lot of money. That’s not accessible to everybody. We talked about somebody that I spoke to who had a thing come up and got all twisted in a bit of a knot about something and I said, “Do you have a grounding practice?” I didn’t use mindfulness, I said grounding. She understood what that was and she said, “Yeah, of course I do.” I said, “Do you teach that to other people?” She said, “Yeah, that’s a big part of what I do with people is help them to get grounded, get centered, get present.” I said, “What happened to your practice?” There was a big pregnant pause. She didn’t have anything to say. She goes, “I didn’t use it.” It’s not practice if you don’t use it. It becomes a thing where you’re teaching something or sharing something that you’re not actually embodying or living. That doesn’t feel good either. We all want to feel congruent. I don’t think that we all have to be perfect. I hold myself to a higher standard because I am a teacher. Because that makes you a leader. Teachers are leaders. You’re not asking me to. I’m doing it because I want to be in authentic alignment with my message. I’m going to share some dirty secrets because I think it’s important to understand that I’ve not always been this way. I’ve been a powerful speaker for a long time. I used to speak on diversity. Whatever they paid me for, I was willing to do it. Sold my soul to the devil just like you did. They’d say, “Do you know anything about marketing?” I’d go in there, “Yeah, here are three points. Let me talk about it.” $10,000, I got it. I didn’t care. I would speak and I would get that whole thing, “You’re awesome,” and “Thank you very much.” They would find me in a bar three sheets to the wind because that’s why I went. I went there to have a drink. I remember this one time I was speaking on Wall Street and I left there and in my $1,500 suit, I’m doing the whole thing. I’m at a bar and I’m doing tequila shots. That was my thing. Not shots but sipping on tequila but sipped a lot of them. The group that I was speaking to on leadership walks in. I did not get a good review. The power that I had in that room and what I did so well was thrown out the window. I just came back from a four or five-year break because those things made an impact on me. I’m not saying at all that drinking is bad. I’m talking about me and nothing else. If you take this personal, maybe you should look at it. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. At the end of the day, for me it was how can I get out there, especially when you’re talking about spirituality or mindfulness, and live the talk? Even if I’m not cool, even if people are uncomfortable because I’m drinking water, that’s just the way it is and it’s okay. For me, I needed to get really cool and really right about what I wanted to do if this was the path I was going to choose, which is why I say that mindfulness is a slippery slope right now because right now, you can go to any university or online university and get a diploma and you can even get a Master’s and a Doctorate in mindfulness. I just have to ask, “How can you do that?” Mindfulness is not an intellectual process. As a matter of fact, the mind and the ego work together and the mind and the heart work together. The mind and the heart is where mindfulness lives. That is where we get that beautiful, juicy connection to life. If we’re going to intellectualize this, then we’ve totally missed the boat again.

Heart-Based Thinking: Radical mindfulness is the practice of mindfulness on a moment by moment basis, set toward an intentionality, followed by commitment.
When you say the mind and the heart work together, say a little bit more, if you could, about that. If the mind and the ego work together, that’s competition. That’s one word that would fit there. If the mind and the heart work together, it’s cooperation. It’s still the mind working but it’s being inspired by a different space. When we’re mindful of our actions, we learn to come from compassion. I had this conversation with a corporation. We have been told in the corporate space, and I don’t care if it’s lawyers or retail or whatever, that soft skills are not needed. Soft skills, by the way, for those of you who don’t know what that means, is anything to do with emotions, feelings, intuition. That stuff was not accepted in the corporate space. Peace, love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, forget it. That’s not useful. They’re changing their mind now because they’re recognizing that those things, those soft skills which live in the heart need to be brought to the forefront in order for the human experience to be able to validate itself and to prosper and produce. That’s the way we’re designed. We’ve done the mechanical thing and we’ve got nowhere. We almost destroyed ourselves. At the end of the day, that’s what I mean the mind and the heart. When the mind and the heart get together, then your intuition, your thought process, your conscious mind and your super-subconscious mind are trying to come from peace, love, compassion and understanding, not competition. Not to say competition is bad, but when competition is at the price of your own soul, at the price of your own beingness, you’ll eventually pay the price. Someone have to pay the price. We end up paying the price eventually. They did that study at Yale of 100 rich people, crazy, stupid rich on their death bed. There was one person or two that disagreed. The study showed that they asked them, “What would you like? What would you want more of?” “Time, love, family, friends.” It wasn’t money. It wasn’t more prestige. It wasn’t another thing on the wall, none of that. Like you, I’m well-accomplished, I’ve got plaques of the yin yang, I got awards. If you look at all that stuff and you sold your soul to get it, it doesn’t feel good. As a matter of fact, in my office, it’s not even hanging anymore because I said, “Let’s put new stuff up.” Let’s see if you can do the same thing but from a heart-based thinking rather than how you got there. That’s a challenge for me until the day I die. For me, it’s about how much good can you do. If someone does recognize you, not that I’m looking for it, then you can be proud that they acknowledge the work you did. Until then, just keep doing your work. We refer to it sometimes as working in heart space. I’m working on a book on that topic, heart space. It is a path and it’s a minute to minute, moment by moment. I was delivering an online training and I was quoting from a book by Osho from years and years ago. It was a book on courage and living courageously. He said in that book, “You can forgive every moment.” Forgiveness is so important, letting go and forgiveness. The idea that you can forgive every moment, every moment has the opportunity for forgiveness. That is a mindfulness moment. It’s a practice. Even with the woman I was talking about earlier where she had a tool available to her and didn’t use it, great because now she has a keener understanding having felt the pain, having felt the suffering of not utilizing a tool that was available. Now or next time, she gets to make a different choice. Sometimes we make the same choices again and again until we get it, until we suffered enough on some level. Daniel, it’s so fascinating this topic. I think when things become popular, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword because we want the consciousness to be there. We want people to be hipped to it and want to do it and want to get into it. Yet, we don’t want it to become like a Disney version of it or something. I don’t want to throw Disney under the bus because they do such a beautiful job, but this franchised version of it. [Tweet “The mind and the heart is where mindfulness lives.”] I think that is what my work is all about because I’m not looking to evangelize the world. It’s not proselytizing to tell people or share with people the benefits of being present and giving yourself access to your heart, to think in a moment before you flip somebody the bird or you allow your mind to go to the dark side of all the what-ifs or the fears or the doubts and worries, or the regret from yesterday or fear about tomorrow. Let’s go back to the car thing, flipping someone off or getting upset or they deserve it, they cut out in front of me, damn their whole family. Someone asked me, “Daniel, what do I do when that happens? Do you expect me to start meditating?” I said, “No. Quite honestly, try this next that is about to happen.” They go, “Okay.” “Let off the gas. If you let them in, they’re not cutting you off. Does that resonate?” I saw the look on his face, he was like, “Huh?” They’ll quit cutting you off when you let them in. It’s you who are disturbed that someone is getting ahead of you. It’s you that’s disturbed that you might be a second late. What if you just allow a car or two to come in? If all of us did that, we wouldn’t have a problem with the traffic because we wouldn’t be stopping every five seconds. For us, if we want to practice mindfulness, let off the gas. What’s the big hurry? You know in traffic you’re not going anywhere. That’s what causes the problem, is that somebody decides, “Not me, not today, not this time.” We rev it, we go forward, we hit our brakes, whatever we do. Let them in. What a practice, let them in. Daniel, I have enjoyed this talk so much. I really appreciate you on so many levels. We’re new friends, so this is really wonderful. A beautiful lady, Teresa De Grosbois, introduced us. She’s spectacular. Any final thoughts or things that would just help you to bring this conversation to completion for you? I think the biggest thing is we’re all human. That’s why I try to explain to people, don’t put me on a pedestal. I’m just like you. I’m one step ahead of you, that’s it. Not a bunch, just one step. Just by the grace of the Divine, I get another day to try to do it right. This is not something that you get right. All we’re advocating is peace and tranquility. I remember an executive called me from corporate and he was like, “Daniel, really, peace and tranquility? Really?” I remember saying to him, “I didn’t call you. You called me. Yes, peace and tranquility.” We can all have it. You don’t have to go away. As a matter of fact, you can find it right now. In the moment that we shared that he opened the show, if that’s the only thing you did today, your life got better because of it. That’s all we’re saying. We’re not advocating that we’re perfect and that we’re angels and whatever. I think that people make a mistake of correlating that with, “I have to be that good.” I choose for my life to do things the way I do them because it makes me feel better.

Heart-Based Thinking: I choose for my life to do things the way I do them because it makes me feel better.
Whatever that is for you, never let someone make you feel less than or more than because of their actions. It doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad. That’s the beauty of life. Enjoy life, have fun. You can have fun. It’s permitted. Go fly a kite, ride a bike. Go out with your kids and get muddy. Don’t worry about the expensive clothes they have on. Let them get muddy. Jump in the water. We live in a stressful world. We do. I’m not going to deny that. It is crazy. Just give yourself some peace and tranquility. If we end on the note that we started with, someone is taking their last breath and that will be you someday. Everything comes to an end, either through separation or death. We’re not here forever. Just make sure your forever is not tomorrow. Daniel, thank you. I really believe in the power of rituals. The mindfulness rituals have been a big benefit in my life. I am a recovering anger management guy. I’m a recovering attorney, litigator, flipper offer, all of that. I love what you said at the beginning. I’m working on certain things in my life and I get to teach those things as well. That’s the beauty of it. I use this process for myself. If I clean my karma in the process too then it’s a bonus. Thank you so much. I want to remind everybody that the Conscious PIVOT Podcast of course is an ongoing process, ongoing discussions about this topic. If you dig this, if this is something you’re interested in on a regular basis so you can be reminded and can practice, then go ahead and subscribe. You can check us out on the community on Facebook, Start My PIVOT, or you can go to pivotfb.com. That will get you right into the group, right into the community. We vet that group so don’t expect to be in right away. For the most part, everybody that wants to be in is usually the right person to be in. I love the time that we’ve spent together. I’ll give you one final ritual practice as a reminder to book in how we began this podcast, which is in gratitude. Tomorrow, I wish for all of you, if I take out my magic wand, I’m going to wave my magic wand, it would be that you will wake up tomorrow. That you will wake up, that we will wake up just a little bit more even than we are today, so both literally and figuratively that we wake ourselves up. Wake up our consciousness. In that moment where we are taking our first breath, our first sacred breath of the day, the acknowledgment that there will be people in that moment taking their last breath, that you can be grateful for whatever it is that you’ve got in your life, whether it’s stuff that’s challenging or it’s things that are really a blessing, you can be grateful right then; grateful for anything and everything in that moment. Wake up, that’s part one. Be grateful, that’s part two. If you’re inclined to stand up, put your feet on the floor or just declare from your bed even, arms up in the air, hands on your heart, however you want to do it, “I love my life. I love my live. I love my life.” Blessings to all of you. Until we chat again or get to spend this time again, I wish you every one of your heart’s desires. Ciao for now. We decided we’re going to do an addendum. You guys are so lucky right now because we’re going to tee up a meditation. Daniel, it’s in your hands. This meditation is to show you how you can release energy and how releasing energy brings you into peace and tranquility. I’m going to ask you to do something you do every day maybe, maybe not, but I want you to join us. It’s called the laughing meditation. What I’m going to do is I’m going to laugh hysterically, and what you’re going to do is you’re going to laugh hysterically for 30 seconds. Trust me, it’s like sitting in a red light. You’re going to think it’s forever, but it’s all right. When we’re done with that 30 seconds, we’re going to be in silence for 30 seconds. Just one minute. Normally it’s two, but we’re going to do one minute. Then I want you to just tell me how you feel. When we hit the bell, we’re going to laugh. Ready? Go. Just take a deep breath and exhale and be still. One more breath. Deep in and exhale. Notice the energy is different. Most of us in our lives don’t know how to get to this space. Laughing, which is something we all can do, can get us in this space that we’re in now. Thank you, Daniel. Namaste. Namaste.