Testing Spirituality with Science | Mastin Kipp on Impact Theory

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Mastin: So I'd say 99% of personal development is just behavior change and changing your mindset. This is kind of what we hear. The problem is, it doesn't work. Or it works long term or it brings what looks like success, but I can't telly you how many successful people I've met that if you get real with them, are miserable, and that's not success either. So you have to change at an emotional level, and the emotion is what produces the story. Tom: Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You are here, my friends, because you believe [00:00:30] that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it, so our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. Alright, today's guest is a bestselling author who has built a highly success international personal development company. His incredibly insightful and action oriented approach to self improvement has allowed him to reach over two million people in over 100 countries through his writing, [00:01:00] online courses, seminars, and retreats, but oh, my friends, that is not where he started. At 21, he was a drug fueled record executive living the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle, until it not only got him fired, but almost landed him in jail, during a near miss where he was pulled over for suspicion of driving while intoxicated, he dodged a bullet when the cop failed to find the eight ball of cocaine sitting under his driver's seat. During the ordeal, he promised himself that if he avoided getting caught, he'd get clean, and a few [00:01:30] days later, he did exactly that, flushing the coke and beginning the long process of finding out who he was without the drugs and what he'd been avoiding by using them. The man who would come out the other side of that journey not only found sobriety, but found himself becoming one of the most sought after transformation artists on the planet. His dedication, fresh, raw style, and effectiveness, saw him named to Oprah's Super Soul Sunday list, Ink Magazine called him the next Tony Robbins, and Arianna Huffington said, "He's [00:02:00] a leader for those who long to live lives that are more passionate and soulful." Now, more than a decade into his life's mission, he's created a whole new approach to life intervention that he calls functional life coaching. It is a no BS, almost scientific approach to helping people work through trauma and find their real purpose in life. Please, help me in welcoming the man that Oprah called, "An up and coming thought leader for the next generation of spiritual thinkers," the author of the new book, Claim Your Power, which at the time of this recording, is already in positions [00:02:30] one, two, and three in its respective category on Amazon, the hard hitting, Mastin Kipp. Mastin: [inaudible 00:02:37] Tom: Awesome, thank you. Welcome to the show. Mastin: Thank you so much. That was very well said. You described me better than I can describe me. That was fantastic. Tom: I'm not so sure about that, I've- Mastin: That was awesome. Tom: Seen you do your thing man, and it is ... incredible. Mastin: Thank you, that means a lot. Tom: I was really, really sucked into your universe, I won't lie. It was a lot of fun researching. You've got a really ... [00:03:00] hard hitting to me is the right word, and what I mean by that is, you take sort of the really esoteric notions of spirituality and what's going on in self improvement and you bring it right down to earth and you mention what you call the meat sack. And you said, like a lot of these series are great, like on paper and the spiritual realm, but you live a life where you have an amygdala. And I thought that was pretty fascinating. What do you mean by that? Mastin: I think the thing that frustrates me the most is, there's two [00:03:30] worlds that are missing each other completely. All of these incredible spiritual truths, that have been well documented for tens of thousands of years, in many different traditions ... and then there are the people who are very practical. And they kind of miss each other. So, one of the things I've done, because both my parents are scientists, so growing up I was very well learned in the scientific method and model, was to understand, "How can I test this stuff out so that I can actually prove it one way or another, and what does it actually mean and how [00:04:00] do we take it, something very vague, and make it super specific?" 'Cause that's ultimately the name of the game, in any area, is you have sort of a general idea for a business and you find out your niche. Same thing's true in these larger ideas, because we talk about, for example, love your neighbors yourself. What does that mean, how could you boil that down? And what I found was, most people had no clue. Like, you read all these personal development books and there's all these words, abundance, purpose, love joy, passion, excitement, greatness. Like, everyone aspires to these ideals that have no common definition or understanding. [inaudible 00:04:30] [00:04:30] scientific community, a centimeter is a centimeter in China, in the United States, in Japan, in the UK. We have certain things where we weigh and measure things. In personal growth, it's kind of soft, if you will, you know? So it's been frustrating to realize that the most important information on the planet, which is what informs our values and our beliefs, is the most confusing. It should be the other way around, it should be the simplest to understand. So, part of my drive has been to take these things that are [00:05:00] very sort of complicated and esoteric and sort of, at this point almost Hallmark cards, and make it extremely actionable, as it relates to today. Because even the advice that we got five or 10 years ago or 30 years ago, the same principles are true, but how we apply it today is very different. Tom: I love what you just said about things becoming like Hallmark cards. One of my biggest frustrations ... this used to drive me nuts ... so, back in [inaudible 00:05:22], I had a huge team, we have 1,400 employees. And so you have to shorten things to like codifications, right? Like where you've boiled things down to a nice [00:05:30] simple sentence. And the simple sentence is like really powerful, if you meditate on it, right? But if you just hear the words, they become trite. And so then people aren't getting past that into something deeper. What are some really powerful concepts, you think, right now, that people just are missing completely? Mastin: Well, I think a business is a great analogy. So, because people can understand a business, because most people are either in corporate or they want to start a business, that I know, and you think about the team, right? So what runs a team? Values ... but then, processes. [00:06:00] So if all you know is the process, and you don't have context for why you're doing it, then it's just, checking off stuff. If you have values but no process, you're scaling a mess, right, and that never works, either. So I think that the most important thing is to have a crystal clear understanding of what's the next step by step for you, but most importantly, the most important thing is, what's the driver, why are you doing this? And most people have no clue why they want their goal. Why do I want a billion followers on Instagram, why do I want to become [00:06:30] a multi millionaire, billionaire, why do I want to, you know ... harvest the moon for, what was it, platinum or titanium or whatever it was, [inaudible 00:06:38]. Like, what's the driving force behind that? Some people are conscious of that, most people are unconscious of that. And so if we're unconscious of what's driving us, the first practical step is understanding what's driving you. And what drives ever human being to produce any goal or go for anything is the desire to hit a certain emotional target. So what's so ironic and to me seems so obvious but it's something that [00:07:00] every time I say it, there's an, "Aha!" moment, like, "Wow, that's so true," is that we pursue external goals to hit an internal emotional target, which is sort of like eating a carrot and you think it's pizza or the other way around. You're never going to actually make it. This is why, no matter how successful you become, unless you understand the emotions that you want to cultivate, you'll just be an empty shell, you won't actually have that success, and [inaudible 00:07:24] has a great quote, he says, "People who think money will make you happy don't have any." Right? So [00:07:30] at some point you hit a threshold where you realize, "Oh my God, I'm making all this money, have all this success, and I'm still frustrated." And then there's this idea that even if I'm successful, that's when I'm supposed to be the most happy because there's this idea or mindset that success is what brings happiness, and nothing could be further from the truth. So the most important thing for someone to focus on is what drives you, and the answer is emotions. The next question then becomes, "Well, what emotions are driving me?" And the answer to that question takes you down a really deep rabbit hole into all your past [00:08:00] hurt, all your unprocessed traumas, all your limiting beliefs, because your nervous system is going to fight you like crazy not to bring those emotions to life in a positive sense, because the nervous system associates positive emotion with threat or vulnerability. And it's designed to keep you safe and out of vulnerability. So, that's why you feel like you're your own worst enemy or you, quote, self sabotage right before something major happens. It's never self sabotage, that's a ... I think people who self sabotage, panic attacks, these are the worst names you could label these things. Self sabotage is really self protection. [00:08:30] You know, your nervous system's trying to protect you from this uncertain threat. Typically, a panic attack is a response to something ... like, your intuition's screaming at you and you haven't been listening for 30 years. Of course you're gonna have a panic attack. Typically, especially with functional life coaching, the main assumption is this. Whatever the behavior is that you want to change, your current behavior, that's not working, is the appropriate response to the underlying condition. It's your best efforts. So- Tom: That's really interesting. Mastin: Yeah. So the first thing you have to do is figure out, "Well, what's going on here?" So, [00:09:00] it's not necessarily a one, two step forward, it's more like, "How can I go inside and try to figure out how am I starting to participate in my reality? How am I a part of the problem that I'm seeing?" And that's pretty much all I spend my time helping people do. I don't think people need to become `great. I think people are great and they have a lot of impediments to greatness, you know? It's a [inaudible 00:09:19] process for project development, agile development. The scrum master's job is to not make the team great, it's to remove impediments, right? And so, as a coach, that's pretty much what I try to do, too, is not make [00:09:30] somebody great, 'cause I think God or the universe did a pretty awesome job with your soul. The meat sack is the neurotransmitters, it's the neuro pathways, it's the myelin, it's the repetition, it's the building of the emotional fitness, that's what I help people with. So, the core assumption is, you're not broken, let's just remove impediments. And so, we gotta go inside to understand why you're stuck, first and foremost. And most people are terrified to go there. Tom: Yeah, dude, so, one ... I'm sure you know how fresh a vision that is, but as I was reading ... So that's long [00:10:00] been my big frustration, is people are sort of in one lane or the other, right? And so they can't talk about the realities of living today in a brain, in a body where ... Do you know the story of Phineas Gage? Mastin: No. Tom: Alright, so Phineas Gage was a railroad worker. He was one of the people ... and this happened either in the early 1900s or late 1800s ... working on the railroad, hits a tamping rod, which is like a three foot metal spike. It shoots up through his chin, out through the top of his head, he loses a teacup, not teaspoon, teacup, worth of brain [00:10:30] matter, never loses consciousness, and it fundamentally changes his personality. And so, that was where sort of neuroscience started with, "Okay, clearly, you damage a certain part of the brain and the fundamental behaviors of that person change forever." So, when I was reading your stuff and you were like, everything from, "You can't put something on a vision board and hope that it's just going to come true without doing the hard work," to, "Understand ego serves you, here's why. Understand that fear can be a compass, here's why." [00:11:00] Understanding myelination ... You talked about the gut and the microbiome ... I'm like, "Who is this guy?" Like, this is madness. So, what has driven that connection and how have you seen it serve people to really understand the physicality of being a human? Mastin: I blame my father, who's a scientist. He's a PhD in biology and he's also a medic in Vietnam. Tom: Whoa. Mastin: And so he's seen some stuff. And I would put him on the scale of optimist to skeptic, like over here towards skeptic. [00:11:30] He was like, "I can't come see you in Asheville, because Trump's gonna shut down the government and I don't want to be in North Carolina when he does." Like that's where his mindset is right now. Tom: Wow. Mastin: Right? Like, "Dad, we need to talk." Right? But what's interesting is he's hardcore science. And so I was raised like almost blowing up carabineers as a kid, in the lab. You know, like when you light the carabineers underneath, I was obsessed with mixing stuff together that probably shouldn't have been mixed together. So I grew up, do you have a hypothesis, and then testing it, and it if continues [00:12:00] to work out, that's what a theory is. Like, E=MC2 is a theory until it's proven wrong. And if you can prove something wrong once, it's not a theory, right, it's a hypothesis. So, that's kind of my training, but the older I've gotten, like the woo woo side of me has emerged and I definitely have a deep woo woo side of me, whether it's because of the mushrooms and the ayahuasca ... But I also had a near death experience when I was about 15, 16 years old, I almost died, which completely shifted. I also saw my best friend's father pass away in the ICU from cancer, I was [00:12:30] there when it happened. That fundamentally shifted my life. So, I've had a hard time reconciling these two sides, and I'm convinced, like in my gut, now, that science is studying the after effect of spirit or science is studying the after effect of the quantum universe or the Creator or God or however you want ... whatever word you want to use, it doesn't matter. And essentially at some point, we're gonna basically have a God algorithm, like we'll kind of figure it out. 'Cause all the universe is is a bunch of patterns that we don't recognize yet, just all pattern recognition, right? Tom: Oh, God, [00:13:00] can we go down that rabbit hole? I know we risk like- Mastin: Sure. Tom: So there's a friend of mine, a burgeoning friendship I will say, with a Cal Tech quantum physicist who is so much fun to talk to because of the way he looks at things. And so he talks about that, that what you're looking at literally are just patterns that arise out of what he calls ... that basically we live in a curve of possibilities. And if you think of any bell curve, that what we experience as reality is really just the [00:13:30] most probably things to rise out of the quantum realm. Which is why there's no ... you can't, yet, make a theory that connects what we see at the Newtonian level and the Einsteinian level with what we see and can measure at the quantum level. And so his theory, and I'm gonna do a horrible job, but it's so fascinating that ... I pray we'll all bear with me while I indulge this fascination- Mastin: I love this stuff. Tom: but what he talked about is that at the most base level, in the quantum realm, [00:14:00] it really is chaos. And as you pull back and you're looking at the macro level, then you begin to see these patterns that emerge, but they're emerging on a bell curve of just the most likely, which is really, really interesting. So tell me more about your concept of patterns, what we can ... what does it mean to have a God algorithm? Like, how does that ... because you're so practical, like how does that feed back into what we should do on a daily basis? Mastin: Sure. So you just asked me to define a God algorithm while being practical, [00:14:30] so I'll do my best, okay? Tom: Yes, please. Thank you. Mastin: No big deal, that's not a tall order at all. So I always love it when scientists use the word chaos. Such arrogance, because chaos to one person is order to another perspective. So if I'm an ant on the street on New York City, that looks like chaos, but to the bird, it looks a like a completely normal pattern, right? So, I really disagree with the assumption that it's chaos. It's probably a pattern we haven't recognized yet, I would assume, because from every perspective there's a larger pattern that's happening, I believe. [00:15:00] So, the core assumption it's chaos I would disagree with until he can prove it which he can't, so therefore, I could be right. But, when you look at like, for example, the Ten Commandments, right, or the sermon on the mount, or like the [inaudible 00:15:13] with the Buddha, there are certain things that they say. For example, Jesus, above all the other commandments he says, "Love God with all your heart, might, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself." He didn't say, "Be a Christian, be a Jew, be a Muslim, be a Sikh." He just said, "Love God, love your creator," that's all he said. [00:15:30] And it's an emotional state, by the way. He didn't say think about God, he said love, which is an active emotion. And then love your neighbor as yourself. Not your Christian neighbor, your White neighbor, your Black neighbor, your gay neighbor, your straight ... it's just, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and he didn't mean just your neighbor next to you. What he means is, every other human being, and plant and animal on the planet. So, that's a law. So, there's something to the order of the universe where there is law, there are cause and effect, there is karma, "If I do this, then this will happen." And eventually, [00:16:00] like if you look at what's happening right now with artificial intelligence, you know, the big fear is what will happen when it becomes sort of super intelligent, if you will. But the issues is, it's not really artificial intelligence. What we're actually creating is algorithms to be able to weigh and measure, beyond our own capacity, what's really happening. That's all it is. So, it's an extension of our own intelligence. Everything that's happening on this planet came from the earth, so there's nothing artificial about it, it's actually very organic. We've come to a place where ... we've always outsourced [00:16:30] the brain, right? From the second we realized there was money, we started writing down one on the rock with chalk. Like, that was the first upload to the cloud, right, just a very primitive version of it. So there's nothing artificial about what's happening, but the question is, how much data can we take in, how much can we weigh and measure? And then, how many different correlations can we come to? And my assumption is, if we could take in all the data that's happening all at once, in the entire universe, then that's pretty much what God does. So it's basically [00:17:00] a set of patterns and ... And you know, you look at like any 12 step process, any healing process, there's a pattern for hitting rock bottom, there's a pattern for how you are going to get better. Everything is a pattern and a process. And then you put in the free will and that's where things get really interesting with quantum physics, because you know, every quantum scientist will tell you, "Well, we can kind of think what's going on is going on but the problem is, when we observe something, we don't know what's someone's gonna chose." And so that's kind of like the part of quantum physics where it's like not [00:17:30] quite a perfect algorithm and that's where things get very interesting, and I think that's where probability comes in. Because there's something about our own ability to choose that throws ... It's almost like God's playing with dice but then there's even more dice because we're being able to chose. What the hell does that have to do with your every day life? Very simply put is this. I think that there are common patterns of success and failure. And what most people do is they take a patten that may have been a failure pattern, which [00:18:00] by the way, failure only leads to more lessons, right? So, they take this idea of what failure is and they don't just say, "That was a result I produced," they take it personally. And they take the pattern personally. It's like taking winter personally. Could you imagine? Like, "Oh, my God, [inaudible 00:18:13] such a cold person right now." Like it makes no sense. It's just a predictable pattern. So with what's happening with the quantified self world and what's happening with all the things that are happening with AI ... What I love about AI is it's not just quantitative analysis, it's qualitative analysis is starting to emerge. And that's where I think the real cool stuff is going to start to happen, [00:18:30] because ... with Apple, Apple X just got announced. Like, facial recognition. Like, I guarantee you one day you'll be able to send ads to people that have sad faces. I guarantee you that will happen. Tom: Wow. Mastin: Right? Tom: Absolutely. Mastin: You know what I mean? It's gonna be amazing. Tom: You're absolutely right. Mastin: But it's just patter recognitions, right? And that's exactly what ... I mean, if you think about synchronicity and all that law of attraction stuff, which is true, just not a complete thought. There's a lot more to it than just hoping for stuff. But you know, the universe [00:19:00] responds to you and we're building out that model for ourselves, essentially is what's happening. If we're made in God's image, then we're sort of recreating this in our own image and we're being able to identify all these different patterns and there's all kinds of patterns. There's health patterns, relationship patterns, purpose patterns. There's- Tom: What are some of the patterns that people get into that get them in trouble? Mastin: Oh, man. Well, I call them survival patterns. That's what I call them, because most people's nervous system is their enemy. And it should be their ally. Tom: Because it's feeding, like, [00:19:30] anxiety, and fear that they don't know how to respond to or in what way is it their enemy? Mastin: Well, if you look at the evolution of the human nervous system, literally from the beginning of when we started to evolve, it's millions of years old, right? So it needs a software upgrade, a little bit, because the problem is, back when it was just like lion and tiger days, you'd see something orange that kind of looks like a lion that ate dad 10 years ago, you're gonna get out of there, right? You're not gonna question whether it's something different. Today, we go through some type of traumatic event when we're [00:20:00] a child that either significant or something simple, like, "My father was five minutes late picking me up from school." It doesn't have to be some huge trauma. We make up a meaning and we make up some interpretation of that event and then we continue to recreate it because anything outside of that seems like a threat. And so, the nervous system says, "You know what? John, when I was 21 cheated on me." So a wise person or a smart person would say, "Well, John in a cheater." But the nervous system says, "All men are cheaters." It generalizes to keep you safe. So from a survival perspective, totally [00:20:30] fine. Problem is, if you want to crush it, you have to thrive and you have to start to question, "Is this a real fear or is this an irrational fear?" The psychologists and psychiatrists call irrational fear neurosis. I don't think that's a ... See, the problem with that field is that they pathologize everything. It's not an irrational pattern at all if you look at the underlying trauma, the procrastination, you know, the fear of failure, the perfectionism, the distraction, the confusion, however it's manifesting, is [00:21:00] an appropriate response to the underlying trauma that has not been healed. Tom: That's something really interesting in the way you teach, is that all of these things are trying to wake you up, right? You take people through this whole it's trying to wake you up out of something or ... You do an awesome analogy, I love this one about, the pattern you were just talking about, it's like stepping on a nail and thinking that you don't need to take the nail out, and then, clean it and [crosstalk 00:21:27] heal, right? So, walk us through like [00:21:30] what is the body trying to tell us? How do people get out of those patterns? Mastin: Sure. So the way that you do it is the same way that you would clean a cut. It's exactly the same. So let's just say that ... we're using the analogy of the nail. You're walking down the street and you step on a nail, but you don't know it. You just experience pain the foot. Well, you don't just keep walking and you say, "Well, you know what, I'm experiencing perfect health right now. Namaste." Like, you don't do that, no one does that, right? You look down at the nail and you go, "Holy shit, there's a nail in my foot." [00:22:00] And you think to yourself, "Do I need to go to the hospital or can I handle this?" If it's a significant enough wound, you've got to get quite some support or help or mentorship or the ER, whatever it might be. If it's not, what do you do?well, first of all you bring your attention to it. Then you remove the nail. Then you would clean it out, then you would bandage it, and then, you wouldn't stress about whether the body's gonna heal or not, you just let the body heal and when it's healed, you wouldn't harp on what happened ten years ago when you stepped on that nail, you'd forget about it. But what we do is we go through [00:22:30] the wounding, emotionally, it's invisible, you can't see it, yet. That'd be cool one day, when you can. And what we do is we say, "Oh, no, no, no, not there." And so instead of looking at it, we don't even look at it. And then we start to feel the pain. Instead of going, "Why is that there?" We go, "Oh, no, pain. These negative thoughts are like Voldemort's going to show up if I think negative thoughts, so I'm going to think only positive thoughts," but you're keeping down all these negative thoughts, making yourself raw and pathologizing it. And that's kind of like shooting lidocaine into your foot to make the pain go away temporarily. [00:23:00] And then eventually, you go to the doctor and the doctor says, "Your whole leg has gangrene." And you're thinking to yourself, "How is that possible?" What do you mean how is that possible? Ten years ago, when you got the nail in your foot, you just shot pain killer into it and you didn't look, right? So it's the exact same thing emotionally. There's wounds or traumas that we have and we stuff them down, we don't look at them, we don't clear them, right? Most doctors, if you come in for high cholesterol, will just give you a statin, which lowers the cholesterol artificially. Functional doctors say, "Why [00:23:30] is your cholesterol high? Oh my God, you eat cinnamon rolls ten times a day. Let's stop that and give you kale and see what happens, right? And to which you say, "Fuck you, I'm not eating kale." But, you know, you can change that stuff with lifestyle and if you're suppressing it with medicine, which is not necessarily bad, but if you're suppressing it with medicine, you'll never discover the root cause. Well, that's true emotionally and mentally. And what I kind of stumbled on was, like, "Hey, there's kind of a root cause and there's kind of a process for that," and when you clear it, what's amazing is ... When you clear the underlying emotional issues, the thinking [00:24:00] changes. So this idea that change your thoughts, change your life, is complete, it's just not deep enough, because it's the emotional states that produce the thoughts. So if you have an unclear trauma and you're trying to meditate at a retreat for 10 days, like, God bless you, you're gonna be living in hell. You know, it has nothing to do with your inability to calm your mind down, your body is trying to wake you up and pay attention and you're trying to push it down. It's never a good idea. Tom: You have a really fun quote about that, which is, "You can't just chant your [00:24:30] pain away. You have to do the hard work." And yeah, that makes a lot, a lot of sense, and the analogy between medicine and what's going on spiritually I found really effective to reframe the problem. And that brings me to, so, the name of functional life coaching. So, hearing you talk about functional medicine, hearing you talk about the microbiome that you actually have a deep understanding of neurology and brain chemistry. I was really, really impressed with that and how you could talk [00:25:00] about the deeply spiritual stuff or brain science as easily as the other. What is it about functional medicine that got you interested, and do you have that ... So you've alluded to that process of getting people [inaudible 00:25:17], but how do you help them find the root cause and what do they don once they find it? I know in your book you cover this, but what does that look like? Mastin: Sure. So I've been doing this work more or less my whole life. I was [00:25:30] kind of born this way, unfortunately for my parents. But you know, the last 10 years where I decided to get into this type of work, I just started working with people. So the last two years, I've been [inaudible 00:25:41] sort of like trying to really figure out, "What do I do, how do I describe it a concrete way?" And I was actually at a meeting with Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who created functional medicine and- Tom: Really fast, just tell people what functional medicine is. Mastin: Oh, okay. So functional medicine, what they do is instead of just having a symptom based diagnosis, they try to figure out [00:26:00] why is it there in the first place. So, for example, if you have high cholesterol, which is very common or if you have pre-diabetes, which is super common, you know, most doctors will just give you [inaudible 00:26:09] insulin for the pre-diabetes or statin for the cholesterol and say, "You're good." Functional medicine doctors say, "Why do you have high cholesterol, why do you have pre-diabetes?" And they say, "Look at blood sugar levels, A1C levels," they start to look at fatty liver, they start to look at your microbiome, they start to look at you know, how much ... are you producing neurotransmitters, do you even have good bacteria in your gut? [00:26:30] Do you have heavy metals, are you eating enough fat to fuel the hormones that are necessary to live a healthy body? Like, there's integrative medicine, functional medicine, these are sort of the same names for the same idea. And what they do is they find out why is your body having this chronic issue and then they give you a prescriptive method that will help you identify and heal the root cause rather than just suppress the actual symptoms. Tom: And one of the things I found so interesting about functional medicine is the way that it looks like, to me, logically, it should be called holistic [00:27:00] medicine, which has already been consumed and so that obviously would be misleading. But they're looking at diet, they're looking at the human as a super organism, they're looking at environmental toxins, they're looking at everything in conjunction, which is one of the things that ... and I'm sure this is where you're headed ... one of the things that I liked about your approach is it takes a much more all encompassing approach to where you are and how get [crosstalk 00:27:25]- Mastin: 100%. Well, the thing about ... I'm not against allopathic medicine, 'cause functional medicine is a part [00:27:30] of allopathic medicine, it's just the sort of innovation on it. And you look at a lot of allopathic doctors only and they look at just one area in isolation, as if that's the only problem. But that's just never the case, 'cause the body's a system. And so, functional medicine just helps people understand why they're sick in the first place and gives prescriptive medications for the root cause, which is different. I know you've had Naveen Jane on the show, and by the way, I love him so much, he is like a huge inspiration for me. I love that he calls Branson [00:28:00] and all those guys small thinkers because [crosstalk 00:28:02] kind of orbit the Earth, he's going to the moon, you know? I just think it's awesome. Tom: Yeah, only Naveen would say that. Mastin: I know, it's amazing. And I'm quoting him, I didn't say that myself. But you know, he talks about with all the biome work. It's a different mindset and we're evolving into this, and the reason why it's gonna have to happen is because these are the people that are getting the results. And normal doctors would call what functional medicine does almost miraculous, but functional doctors are like, "It's obvious." You know, so it's a big [00:28:30] mindset shift. There's more solutions available now than possible, and so as I watch that field emerge and I started to understand the thinking behind it, I said, "Oh my God, I do that with the invisible, emotional stuff." And so the process is actually very simple, but getting there is a journey. So I'd say 99% of personal development is just behavior change and changing your mindset. This is kind of what we hear. The problem is, it doesn't work. Or, it works long term or it brings what looks like success, but I can't tell you how many successful people I've [00:29:00] met that if you get real with them, are miserable and that's not success either. So you have to change at an emotional level, and the emotion is what produces the story. It's also very uncomfortable so the natural thing that we want to do is soothe. So it's kind of like addiction, right? Addiction is just a coping mechanism for the underlying trauma. Whatever you're addicted to, it's a really bad solution to the problem. And so people don't have an awareness of like, "Oh, my God, it's not that something's wrong with me, I just have an underlying trauma I haven't cleared." Let's go figure that out. [00:29:30] And so, that emotional layer is also scary, because when you descend into the emotional layer, you're not gonna meet the good emotions first. You're gonna meet all the stuff you pushed down first. And people want to run from that, but the latest research shows that when the emotion is triggered in the body, it only takes 90 seconds for all of the juice of that emotion to run through the body before it stops. The problem is, it keeps getting re triggered over and over and over and over and over again, so you can be 90 seconds away from a breakthrough for 10, 30 years. If you're not living your purpose, [00:30:00] if you're not giving what you're meant to give to the world, and you're anxious, don't take a pill. You're gonna numb yourself. Negative emotion is a call for awareness just like pain is. There's something that needs your attention. That's why when people say they have a panic attack, it's really a wake up call. That's what a panic attack really is, something is trying to get your attention. Last thing you wanna do chronically is numb it with drugs, alcohol, or prescription medication. You want to understand why it's there and that you know what, maybe you didn't make the right [00:30:30] interpretation, maybe you didn't see it fully or properly, back when you were five and you realize there's just a scared five year old running your life, even if you're 45, 55, or 65, that's what claiming your power is. Is you can say, "I can make a different choice." And when you start to make a different choice- Tom: So when you say, in the book, "Claim your power," that's what you're talking about, that moment right here when you get to ... And are we going to tie that to ... You've talked very eloquently about Victor Frankel. Is that that connection? Mastin: Yeah. So basically, if I had to oversimplify [inaudible 00:30:57] therapy, Victor Frankel, he wrote Man's Search for Meaning. [00:31:00] He was in Auschwitz, he lost most of his family, but what he studied in Auschwitz, which is an interesting place to study, for sure, was that the people who lived beyond the ones who were taken to the gas chambers, had an interpretation or a meaning ... which is his word, but I think people are confused by that word sometimes, so I use the word interpretation ... that people had an interpretation or belief that their future will be better in the middle of hell. They believed that something better is gonna come from this, those are the ones who thrived in the worst conditions on eArth. [00:31:30] And so Frankel recognized this and so his big sort of contribution is, stimulus, response, in between those two moments, is a choice. And so that's where your power lies and that is what most people outsource to other people. Tom: And what is that choice? Mastin: The ultimate choice is, "What does this mean or what is my interpretation of this event?" How am I going to see this? Are you going to see this as a breakthrough, are you gonna see this as the end? Are you gonna see this as an opportunity to grow, or are you gonna see this as a reason why you're not enough? And [00:32:00] anyone who has starred in successful business and done entrepreneurial work, that is a meaning ... you get PhD in meaning, when you start doing work like that. Because, you know, when you start a business or you get into a relationship, God forbid if you do both at the same time, right, you're gonna just be in a battlefield of stuff going crazy, things you don't see coming. In school, you study and then take the test, but in life, you take the test and then you study, right, it's the other way around. So if your meaning [00:32:30] is, "I'm not enough, I'll never be successful, this isn't working," and then you'll stop right before a breakthrough. And how many times in a business does the breakthrough happen right after some type of failure? Every single time. So you better look at that failure and go, "This isn't a reason to stop. I'm one step closer to figure out the answer." Edison said, "I didn't fail 10,000 times," right? That wasn't what it was about, it was 10,000 different experiments. The meaning is what helped Edison make his discoveries. So that's the number one choice that we [00:33:00] have. It doesn't mean that you stick your head in the sand and say, "My emotions aren't there." What you do is you say, "Why are they there?" And if you say, "they're there because I'm depressed," then guess what? That's what you'll find. You're depressed, maybe there another reason why you're depressed. If the meaning is they're there because I'm repressed, I'm repressing my soul, I'm repressing my purpose, and I get to go on an expedition hunt to figure out why and after that I'm gonna be free, even when this is gonna feel like a kick in the teeth, by the end of this, I'm gonna come out the other side [00:33:30] and I'm gonna be crushing it. That's a very different meaning. And you gotta kinda fake it 'til you make it, but it's not Pollyanna, it's not sticking your head in the sand, it's actually very pragmatic. And every single high achiever, high performer, has been able to do that. The real juice of life is emotional fitness. And it's harder to see it 'cause it's invisible, but that starts with meaning. Once you pick a meaning, which is always your choice, then, you can start to build a great life. Very practically, Tony Robbins asked Nelson Mandela, "What were you doing all those [00:34:00] years in jail?" And Mandela said, "I'm preparing." That's a choice that he made to see it that way. Most people would say, "I'm a victim of the system or whatever," and that one meaning changed the world. And so that's our primary power and most people don't think they have that, they don't know they have that, they think it's some Pollyanna bullshit, when really, it's what creates all the resilience, all the change, all the entrepreneurs, all the world changers. If you took all of them, they would all agree with me, because that's the one choice that we have. But [00:34:30] the problem is there's this nervous system and this unhealed trauma that gets in the way. So, the goal is to kind of take it all in one sort of package so that we can kind of just handle it, basically. Tom: I'm so curious to know if I would feel this way if I hadn't read your book, but listening to you talk, it feels like the hero's journey. Now, of course your whole book is literally built like the hero's journey. You break it into the four parts, there's a ton of Joseph Campbell quotes, which was really, really interesting and I know that you've re watched or re listened [00:35:00] to The Power of Myth, every year- Mastin: Yeah. Tom: which is totally [crosstalk 00:35:05]- Mastin: [crosstalk 00:35:05] the research, that's cool. Tom: For sure, and you were well worth it, I assure you. And Joseph Campbell, specifically with the hero's journey, like, is that what you think this is like? If somebody does this work, is that what it's gonna feel like on the other side? Is it them as the hero of their own life, finally? Like, what made that analogy so powerful? Mastin: Sure. So I equally love stories, like, well told stories, primarily science [00:35:30] fiction and personal growth, and long story short, I figured out they're the same thing, because I started studying film, and I love Star Wars and I started studying George Lucas, I started studying then his whole tribe, Spielberg, and Coppola. That all led me to Kurosawa and all of Kurosawa's films and then I saw Seven Samurais and holy shit, that's Star Wars. Nothing original about Star Wars now, if you see Seven Samurai, even though it's amazing ... But like, all these guys, especially George Lucas, love Joseph Campbell and George Lucas credits the hero of a thousand faces [00:36:00] as like the underpinning of Star Wars, A New Hope, and helped him frame it, 'cause it's such a big story. So I was like, "Who's this Joseph Campbell guy?" So I started to [inaudible 00:36:08] Joseph Campbell and I said, "Oh, my God, this is some next level stuff," and the hero's journey, like you see it everywhere, in every film and every story, every movie, every, you know, every great transformation, this is the process and Campbell created this process 'cause he was the professor at Sarah Lawrence for 40 years. He studied comparative religions, which very simply is when you compare religions, right? And what he saw was [00:36:30] these common threads or common themes and he synthesized it into the hero's journey. So I obsessively studied this stuff and then along the way, started learning more about personal growth and the work of Caroline Mays, she talks archetypes, which are these universal patterns, like the wicked witch or the mentor. And then I started studying archetypes and then I started learning that Carl Young was kind of the guys who brought that around with the idea of archetypes and the collective unconscious, and I realized, Young and Joseph Campbell were kind of like contemporaries [00:37:00] in a certain sense, even though Young was ... [inaudible 00:37:03] contemporaries, but Campbell was highly influenced by Young's work and I realized, "Oh, my God, stories are the sort of out picturing or the way we tell the own journey that we have to go through," and most people live vicariously through a film or through a story. And what I realized was, "Oh, my God, let's keep people on their own journey. How the hell would I do that?" And so 100%, it's like you are the hero of your own life, that's why I think superhero movies ae so big right now, since so many people are not living [00:37:30] a super life. So like, "Oh, my God, I'll be Superman or Batman or I'll be Wonder Woman," whatever it might be. You know, Wonder Woman was such a hit because it sort of represents, I think, the big expression of ... we're about to see a huge explosion of feminine empowerment on a whole nother level in the next 10 or 15 years for sure, which I can talk about, but it represents the unlived life. And so I want to help people step into that life. The problem is, it's one thing to watch Luke in the Deathstar, you know, and he like turns off his targeting computer and then blows up the Deathstar ... It's one thing [00:38:00] to watch it, and be like, "Yeah!" It's another thing to be in it, freaking out, going like, "What the fuck?" You know? Like most people, their journey will feel like they're dying, so they'd rather outsource it, versus recognizing, "You know what, I have to live it." And the most important virtue that we can have is courage, because without courage, nothing else is possible. And courage feels very practically like this, "Oh my fucking God, I'm about to die." That's what courage feels like. [inaudible 00:38:28] feel like, "I'm all strong," and shit. No, you are [00:38:30] terrified. And the more terrified you can be, the better, essentially. So, yeah, that makes sense. Tom: Dude, I love that more than you know. I won't go into my whole obsession with that as well, but I want to talk about CIA. Mastin: Sure. Tom: So, courageous and perfect action. Mastin: Yes. Tom: That ... The way that you described that is so on the money and I think people are so expecting that ... I think they just write themselves off, right? Like, "I guess I'm just not a courageous person or I'm gonna have to fake the funker," whatever it is. How do you help people [00:39:00] step into that to find that, okay, that's the truth of the matter. So now how do we embody that, how do we take over the role of hero in our own life? Mastin: Sure. So, every hero has a mentor, right? So, Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi, and the cool thing about mentors is the mentor disappears at the end, so the hero can figure it out for themselves. But you need a mentor, you need a structure and a system, and you need to implement. So, anyone who's great has support. So I'm a big believer in having mentorship and mentorship not like ... [00:39:30] For example, if you want a relationship, don't make your bitter, single friend your relationship mentor. Like, bad idea, right? You want to get a mentor who's consistently lived and produced those results. And then you need a structure and a system that implements that over time. Because there's the breakthrough or the, "Aha!" Moment, but then it takes time to implement that and re associate your nervous system to whatever it is you want to create. And then you actually have to implement. So CIA stands for courageous, imperfect action, and quite practically, courageous means, "I'm freaking [00:40:00] out, I feel like I'm gonna die." Imperfect means, "I'm doing it totally messy, there's mistakes everywhere," and action means you're actually doing it and you're not just reading about it. So if you can just be scared shitless and be super messy and take action every day, you'll be great. Tom: How do you get people to take that first step? In my world, that is the one thing that I fight with all the time. People want to know, "How do I get started?" They have this sense that they have to figure something out, they need to research [00:40:30] something instead of acting. Like, how do you get people to go? Mastin: Analysis paralysis ... yeah, that happens. Yeah, there's a lot of things that people say they have to do beforehand, they have to have the perfect trainer, the perfect this, they have to have ... One of the greatest survival patterns I've seen lately, especially with high achievers, is like over complicating very simple things. And most of the times, like if we look at Occam's razor, Occam's razor basically says, "Given all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be accurate." So, how do we get people to do it? You just [00:41:00] fucking jump. And basically what I do is, I tease them, I call bullshit, I use direct language, and what I'll ultimately do, if they really need a push, is, I'll link them stepping into uncertainty with whatever they value most. So, I had a woman once who cared about her family tremendously. And I was helping her process some childhood abuse and her nervous system said, "Any level of success beyond this ..." what the unconscious belief was, "I'll re-experience what happened to me," essentially. [00:41:30] When she realized that holding herself back and not going forward in her business was letting the people who abused her win, because she wouldn't be able to provide more for her family because she was keeping herself stuck, she, on her own, said, "Fuck that." So before, her nervous system said, "Oh my God, uncertainty equals revisiting this abuse that I went through." Now, her conscious mind says, "If I don't go into uncertainty, the people who hurt me are effectively hurting my children. Fuck that." So, you've gotta find that leverage point, and I [00:42:00] learned that from Tony Robbins. Tony says, "How do you get someone to change who doesn't want to change?" And like every co-dependent in the room goes, "How?" Right? "Tell me, I've been trying to figure this out my whole life," right? But the real thing is you gotta find leverage. Right? What motivates somebody and everybody has something that motivates them. So if you can learn how to link what motivates somebody with forward momentum, then you can get them off their ass. And then if you have that mentor and structure system of support for a period of time, you can kind of sustain them there. But I don't know anyone [inaudible 00:42:28] by themselves. The [00:42:30] idea that I can do it by myself, I'm an island, that never works, ever. Tom: I love that. Leverage is a really, really good point. And reframing in that, like getting her to see that in a new way. Now, you've talked about fear being a compass. Is that an example of that, do you have another example of that? What do you mean, exactly? Mastin: Yeah, so like especially in the self help community, there's a couple of things. Fear means false evidence appearing real or fear is the opposite of love, there's this idea, or that there's no such thing as fear. And I'm like, okay, but [00:43:00] what about ... one of my clients who is on the front lines in the Marine Corps in Afghanistan. You tell him fear is false evidence appearing real, come one, right? Or someone who's been through any levels of abuse, or just anyone who watches the news, right? Fear is real in and of this human world, this physical plane that we live in. And so there's practical fear, which is, "I'm I'm in a burning building, I must leave." You don't stay in the burning building and say, "Mastin said face my fear," right? Like, don't do that. It's not smart. Tom: It's [00:43:30] good advice. Mastin: Sorry, bad timing on that. Tom: Yeah, that was good. Mastin: But most of the time, you're gonna be afraid right before the biggest breakthrough of your life. So think about right before your first kiss or right before you went to college or right before you started the company in the garage, right, or maybe before you left the company to do your passion. Or right before any major event, there's tremendous fear. So if that's the case, fear actually has been misinterpreted and if you think about the Greeks, they had multiple words for love. You know, agape is very different than Eros, right? Very [00:44:00] different. But yet, we have one word for fear. It makes no sense. So there's different types of fear. And there's the fear of ... right before I ever go on stage, I'm terrified, every time, and that to me means the energy's there and I'm ready. It doesn't mean I should freak out. So we have to understand that before every major event in our lives that's going to move us forward, we will be terrified. And so if we can start to see that fear as a compass, then we know, I'm going in that direction. So people tell me all the time, "I don't know what to do." [00:44:30] That's bullshit. Do the thing you're most afraid of and then do it 'til you're not afraid of it. "Can it be that simple?" It's that fucking simple. "No, I gotta research it first." No, just fucking do the thing you're most afraid of and do it until you're not scared anymore, and that's how we grow. And I think the people who are the most successful, either consciously or unconsciously understand that. And they just hang with it. You know, I can imagine starting a business and ...Starting a business is one thing, scaling it? That ... 1,400 employees, I bow, I can barely handle 10. You know, I don't know how you [00:45:00] guys do that, but it's very difficult. and one of my friends has a company that he's scaling, and he was like all micromanaging his team, and then he left 'cause he had a family emergency, came back three months later, the team was doing better without him. Tom: That's interesting. Mastin: You know, so it's at every level. This fear is there, you know? And it's more about just letting it go. And the way you let it go is to experience it consistently until your nervous system just sort of normalizes with that. Tom: Do you have a process for helping people understand how to deal with ... not just the fear, 'cause I get that do it right, immersion therapy. [00:45:30] But, when they mess up and something goes wrong, and they feel like, "See, my fears were validated," like, do you have a process for getting them into the Thomas Edison frame of mind? Like, what does that look like? Mastin: It's basically consistent reminders. Like, for example, I have a meal plan, I forget what my afternoon snack is every day, I have to look at it every day, I forget. Even though some of the most important stuff is my food, like, "Alright, okay, got it." So that's why that structure of support is so important, is like consistently reminding people of the basics. I think [00:46:00] some people ... amateur mindset says, "Oh, give me more information." This level two, level three, up sale stuff in personal growth ... quite frankly when someone comes and works with me in a coaching program, there's no new information, it's all implementation. There's no secret level two information, it's just like, "Let's make this shit happen." So, the way that you do it is, you get around people who have a like minded mindset so that you ... see, when you start to do new things, if you're around people who aren't, you're not gonna be supported, you're not gonna be ... they're not gonna cheer you on. They're gonna talk about all [00:46:30] the reasons why you can't. So you have to have a really good tribe of people that have those same shared values, then you have to self disclose in that tribe 'cause all the high achievers don't want to be all vulnerable and say, "I'm having a hard time with my business," right, so you have to self disclose around that tribe and let them support you, and then, you just have to hang with that process for a period of time and recognize that you're building the muscle. Like myelin, for example, which is like the connective tissue that helps us [inaudible 00:46:55] habits and make things automatic, you have to build it through repetition. So that's what emotional fitness is [00:47:00] really all about. There's three levels to emotional fitness. The first level is emotional awareness, you have to know you have emotions. Most people don't. They're like, "I feel nothing." It's like, bullshit, you have 30,000 feelings under there. The next level is emotional intelligence, which is like, "What are my feelings?" That's hatred, that's shame, that's joy, that's love. And the third level is emotional fitness. And any fitness, physical or emotional, is trained. And the more that you can live in training, the more that you can live that as a lifestyle. Then, when things go wrong, [00:47:30] 'cause they will, you don't go, "Things are going wrong," you go, "Oh, yeah, I got this." 'Cause anyone who doesn't anticipate curve ball, is just not understanding the rules of the game. So when, for me, especially during a product launch, technology always breaks. So instead of getting mad at [inaudible 00:47:47] for breaking, 'cause it always does, right? I go, "Oh, yeah, it broke again, let's fix it." And that's for any technology, right? And that's learning the pattern of the process. So to understand that you hit a plateau or to understand [00:48:00] that you relapsed or that you went back into old thinking, if you know you're gonna do that ahead of time, then when you're there, you can get out faster, versus this perfectionist thought ... People have this insane idea that if I'm gonna change my life, I have to be equally at good as something I just learned as something I've been doing for decades. Which is an insane thought. You have to kind of take that childlike mindset back on. And when you're in a tribe and you have a mentor, then you can go a lot faster, 'cause you will go back off course, consistently. It just happens. Tom: You've said that a master is somebody [00:48:30] who was a beginner who kept beginning. Mastin: Yes. Tom: What do you mean by that? Mastin: Well, so I think masters is a mindset. And any high achiever has that process, but any person who is [inaudible 00:48:42] , who's been successful, and I'm talking not like ... I'm talking epic levels of success, but who are also happy, which is really rare. The percentage of people who are financially successful is very rare. Of those people who are actually happy, every single one of them is curious, [00:49:00] they're open, and they're ... like, any idea is like something new. And they have a childlike, not childish, childlike mindset that says, "OH, let me consider that." And so they just consistently being again, and again, and again, and they're open. They don't think like, "Oh, 'cause I'm successful I know everything." I think the more successful people become, the more humble they would become because they realize how much they don't know. And so this idea that I get to begin again and again and again, gets rid of any assumption that now [00:49:30] I'm an expert. Anyone who calls themselves an expert, I'm like, "You're an egomaniac. You have a tiny fraction of knowledge and you call yourself an expert? There's no way you're an expert. You might have some education in that area, but there's a lot of stuff that we don't know." So I think that there's this ability to remain childlike and just see yourself as always at the starting point and that's how you remain hungry and I think the most important thing, I'll go woo woo for a second, the people who become successful who think they're the cause of their success, are the most unhappy. [00:50:00] People who get successful and realize it's a gift of spirit and that they just worked hard, are the ones that remain happy. So the idea that I am my success is a really toxic thought as well. So, if I can keep beginning and have that beginner's mindset consistently, I will be happy, I'll be innovative, I'll consistently be learning, and I'll be a pleasure to be around. Tom: Alright, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you? Mastin: Oh. So the book is at claimyourpowerbook.com and with the book, I actually [00:50:30] didn't want to write a self help book. I see it as an implementation guide. So part of that, when you go to claimyourpowerbook.com, there's a free course where you can just have me coach you along with you through the book, so you don't have to go through it by yourself. And then from everything else, it's just mastinkipp.com, or @mastinkipp on all the platforms. Tom: Alright. What is the impact that you want to have on the world? Mastin: That's a great question and I've contemplated this question a lot and it's a moonshot. So my moonshot in my lifetime is to end emotional trauma. That's my goal, in my lifetime. And I hope I can do that. [00:51:00] Because if we do that, then by default, we'll have heaven on Earth, 'cause I think that's the root cause of all the problems that we're seeing out there today. Tom: I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much for [crosstalk 00:51:09]. Mastin: Awesome. Tom: Alright guys, you're gonna have fun with this one. It is the rare individual that you're ever gonna find, anywhere, in any space, that can blend the two worlds of real science, talking about functional medicine, talking about the brain, neurochemistry, myelination, and then talking about deep spirituality, God, the quantum realm, [00:51:30] whatever you want to call it, whatever your word is. It is absolutely fascinating to see him go back and forth between the two and to really hold himself to a standard of usability. And his book does read exactly like he wants it to, which is an instruction manual. It's an implementation guide, he's there with you, he's walking you through it. It's broken into 40 days, it's four parts, it is, literally, the hero's journey. It's got all the things you're gonna need to break down your own emotion, to prioritize and figure out how you prioritize, and to crawl underneath [00:52:00] the hood to figure out what's driving them. To identify the things that are creating your behaviors, not just dealing with the symptom but really dealing with the root cause. I think that his correlation between functional medicine and functional life coaching is so spot on, I think you guys are really gonna get a lot out of it. Be sure to check it out. And his book is in one, two, and three on Amazon right now, that's madness. And if you're wondering like I did how that's possible, it is the Kindle version, the physical version, and the what, Audible version? Mastin: Audiobook, yeah, yeah. Tom: All three, right there, one, [00:52:30] two, and three, not bad. So, you guys can't go wrong. Dive in, you're gonna have a great time. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. That was awesome. Mastin: that was a lot of fun. Tom: Thank you guys so much for watching, and if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and for exclusive content, be sure to sign up for our newsletter. All of that stuff helps us get even more amazing guests on the show and helps us continue to [00:53:00] build this community, which at the end of the day is all we care about. So thank you guys so much for being a part of the Impact Theory community.
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Channel: Tom Bilyeu
Views: 288,906
Rating: 4.8503299 out of 5
Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, mastin kipp, mastin kip, blend science and religion, Spirituality, Science, Scientific Method, Spiritual Healing, Personal Development, Life Hack
Id: ZMQ3dk3TU3s
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 53min 15sec (3195 seconds)
Published: Tue Oct 10 2017
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