MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Ego and fear hinder a person from growing and stop anyone from becoming an MVP in their business. How do successful individuals overcome those two? In this episode, Mario Lanzarotti, a high-performance coach, shares his journey to climbing back to the top after hitting rock bottom. He also shares some tips to overcome ego and fear to meet your highest level of success. Mario’s philosophy in life to respond to circumstances that allow him to grow is by taking 100% responsibility for his actions. It removes you from the fear state and meets your success. Reach your highest level of success with Mario Lanzarotti today!

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Overcoming Ego And Fear To Meet Your Highest Level Of Success With Mario Lanzarotti

This episode’s guest is Mario Lanzarotti. As a high-performance coach, TEDx speaker with over one million views, and a conscious leader, Mario is focused on helping entrepreneurs make more money in half the time through building an unstoppable mindset. From CEOs to Olympians and mission-driven entrepreneurs like you, Mario helps high achievers all across the world gain the mental clarity and focus necessary to achieve what would normally take years in six months or less. Now, Mario travels the world on a mission to raise the consciousness of humanity through his masterclasses on conscious leadership and next-level mindsets. He’s here to share that brilliance with us in this episode. Thank you so much, Mario.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited about our conversation and I know that it will be packed with lots of value for your amazing readers. I’m excited to dive in.

I’m excited too. There’s so much, but I want to start with you telling us a little bit about who you are and how you got to be this conscious leadership leader.

It all started when I was becoming a pilot in Germany for Lufthansa. I was in the pilot training program and I became severely depressed. I was in chronic back pain due to a slipped disc and came to almost commit suicide. It was close. I saw my whole life spiral out and hit that famous place called rock bottom. I realized that I had chosen a career path that wasn’t truly me and wasn’t truly embodying what I wanted to share with the world.

I picked it because I wanted to prove was becoming myself. I wanted to find the hardest and most prestigious thing in Germany for me at the time. As I worked myself to the very bottom on top of that, when you have this sensation of wanting to prove yourself, you also have a hesitance towards asking for help. I never asked for any help because I thought if I did ask for help, it would mean that I’m a failure. I went through all of it by myself without talking to anybody.

 

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

 

At some point, through what I call a divine intervention on YouTube, I don’t know what I typed in, but I came to see Tony Robbins and Les Brown. I grew up in Germany and German is my first language. Italian is my second and English is my third. For me, it was unheard of what I saw there. Tony Robbins, motivational speaking and coaching. I was like, “This is a scam. It’s just an American con artist. Don’t listen to that,” but there was another voice inside of me that said, “Listen,” and I did listen.

It was the first time in my life for a long time where I felt that sense of hope inside of me and that sense of, “I can change. This is not the end of my life. This is only an experience and this experience can help me catapult myself to greater depths of living my life.” After I had consumed that content every single day, I made the decision to open up about what I was experiencing and reached out that I needed help. I reinvented my whole life.

The impact that these videos and this information made on me was so profound that it was then and there that I decided that one day, I too would help people free their minds from the thoughts that are holding them back in life. It wasn’t for another seven years that I would begin practicing this, coaching people, and sharing this in a public setting but it became my personal manifesto to live my life by. I became obsessed with personal development and it was the beginning of what I am doing now.

I have a couple of questions here. You said it was rock bottom and it felt like the end for you. I know that now, here you are in what other people would see looks like the top. Tony Robbins is at the top of his game. You’re at the top of your game that you’re playing. Was it really the bottom for you? Did it feel like it was the bottom like you were done with everything? How did you decide to make that Google search or to do that one thing that took you over the line from bottom to a little piece of stand-up?

It was the lowest point in my life that I’d ever experienced. I was always the kind of kid or man, depending on what time in my life you look at, that was used to being the first, the winner, the best, the strongest, the best looking, or whatever. That came from my pattern of having to prove myself because it came from a deep place of insecurity and of not feeling enough but I never understood these things.

It was like, “That’s what you do.” You become the best at everything you do. It was like the whole ground underneath my feet was taken away. All my strengths were taken away. I couldn’t do any workouts. I was in chronic pain every day and it was so bad that I had to take painkillers that made me fall asleep in class.

I’m sitting there with all these top gun people and it’s extremely hard to get into Lufthansa. I think 96% of all the thousands of people that apply each year fail. Only a handful of people make it. There was this extreme level of pressure of getting in and then maintaining it. I was there not able to concentrate because of my pain. I was constantly in my chair moving around trying to keep it together because I was afraid that if people find out that I’m in so much pain, they will deem me unfit to fly and kick me out.

I was like, “Hold it together.” I would swallow the pills. I would sit there in class, drowse off, and then the mental part kicked in. They were saying to me, “You’re not taking this seriously. You’re such a loser. Everybody else is doing way better than you.” I was dealing with so much pressure at the time that I remember one morning I woke up in my bed and I couldn’t move my legs. I was paralyzed. It didn’t last long. It was a few seconds, maybe 10 seconds but it was so strong. I had no more feelings there.

I was like, “What is going on?” Every night, I cried myself to sleep. It was bad. I can’t tell you what I typed into YouTube because I had no connection to coaching, public speaking, and personal development. It was completely foreign to me. I might have typed motivation into YouTube because my thought process is I’m not motivated enough. It’s me. I’m lazy. Just keep going harder and then I came to Tony Robbins.

I listened to their stories. Both of them have incredible stories of hitting rock bottom in their life and then coming back and coming back stronger than ever. It was that part that I listened to and that I connected with that helped me see that there is another chance. There is another way. This is not the end. This is only an end of a period of my life and I can reinvent myself.

That’s when I decided I need to open up. I started talking to my parents. I started talking to my girlfriend at the time. I started getting help. I recognized that it’s not that I’m incapable. I just don’t like this. I don’t want to sit in a cockpit for the rest of my life. I was like the dog that barks at all of the cars that drive by. It’s like, “Come here. Car stop. Come here.” I did that for a long time. I was like, “I’m going to become a pilot,” and then I finally was there and I was like, “This is real. I never thought I would get here.”

Also, how do I tell everybody when I’ve been barking for so long?

I felt like I was faking the whole thing and I didn’t know who I was and what I was doing anymore in life. Finding these two men gave me an incredible sense of hope.

Your story is one that is far more common for your generation than anyone else. It’s because I’ve heard this story of young male suicide and it’s higher than ever before. I appreciate you telling your story and realizing that the only way to get through it is to talk about it because what I’ve seen happen is that young, good-looking, successful football star boys don’t know how to fail or how to talk about insecurity.

We’re in this place in our culture where we are talking about White male privilege and all these kinds of things when it comes to America and the world but what we don’t realize is that there’s all this extra pressure put on men and all of this lack of understanding of grit in a different way. You knew how to work hard, but you didn’t know how to fail. You didn’t know how to fall and then get back up.

What I’m seeing right now is still a very young man who has lots of opportunities to fall again. One of my lessons has been that there is no bottom truly and there is no top. It’s wherever you stop yourself and you can stop yourself by giving up and committing suicide or you can stop yourself by doing a Google search and finding Tony Robbins. Also, you can stop yourself by telling your girlfriend or your mom or your dad or your teacher or whomever that you’re having a problem or by saying, “Get out of bed,” or whatever it might be.

Your bottom is your bottom and you can find it again and again or you can climb out of the hole. The other lesson is that because you’ve hit bottom once doesn’t mean it’s the only time. It doesn’t mean that’s the lowest you’ll ever feel, but knowing that you’ve been there or that somebody else has been there and found a way to get out and get back up is the first secret to continuing to move on and not giving up.

I’ve had many other very low experiences later on. I think these experiences were to recognize what part of me is creating them. The way my philosophy for living life and the way that I also coach my clients is 100% responsibility. Most people when they hear that, they don’t understand what responsibility means. They think telling yourself, “I messed up,” that’s taking responsibility. That’s not. That’s the opposite of it.

Taking responsibility means you need to understand the word and if you break it apart and turn around, you get the ability to respond. Most of us are not responding to life. We are reacting to life. We’re living life based on a conditioned program that’s playing out and deciding our behavior. Taking responsibility means, first of all, getting yourself out of a fear state. If you are in a fear state, fight or flight, survival, and all kinds of names, you will never ever be able to take responsibility. It’s impossible. You’re always going to react.

Taking responsibility means you need to understand the word. And if you break it apart and turn around, you get the ability to respond. Click To Tweet

I went on a very long healing journey. I didn’t call it a healing journey. I call it a healing journey now because, for me, it was a learning and growth journey. I talk about this in my TEDx Talk as well. It’s a journey that took me from my head into my heart. It is in the heart where the healing took place and it is the heart where the intuitive way of living my life came into place where I’ve created a lot of the success that I get to enjoy nowadays from quite an effortless place.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I know that I get to decide how I show up each and every moment of my life today. With that, I can tell you that I haven’t had any lows for a lot of years. That doesn’t mean that nothing happened in my life. There are things that happened in my life, yet I now understand how to respond to what life is presenting at any given moment, which means I have a much greater capacity to hold myself and not rely on external circumstances on people. If I like the weather or what my bank account looks like. They have an effect on me but I’m a lot more conscious in deciding how I allow these to affect me and how that plays out in my life on a day-to-day basis.

What practices do you put in place or do you suggest that your clients put in place to stay in that balanced place of head and heart?

There are daily practices and there are the once-off or the monthly or yearly practices, if you want to call it that. On a daily basis, it’s becoming very conscious of your thoughts and feelings. I used to meditate every single day, in the morning and afternoon without missing a beat. It was hardcore. Now, I barely meditate anymore.

Why? It’s because most of my day has become a meditation on the way that I live. Before this interview, I went on a promenade walk. I live right by the beach here in Cape Town. When I walk on this promenade, I’m very aware of my own thoughts. I’m very aware of my body. I’m very aware of what’s going on when other people pass by me and what kind of thoughts come up.

I’ve learned to cultivate a sense of loving awareness. The challenge with awareness is people confuse it with judgment. They’re like, “Here’s self-doubt. Stupid self-doubt. Why am I doubting myself?” That’s not awareness. That’s judgment. When you judge, you go back into that fear state. Everything you do will be less effective in a fear-driven state.

Number one, cultivate a daily sense of greater awareness. How do you do that? You slow down. That’s a challenge. For most entrepreneurs, slowing down is like jumping off a bridge. They’re like, “No way. I don’t have time for that.” I got to go get results. I’m like, “I get it,” and the reason I’m presenting this to you is not to help you create less of the things you want in life, but to help you become way more effective.

I talk about helping entrepreneurs make more money in half the time. Where does most of the time they get caught up? It’s in their thought process and in the way that they feel. In procrastination, overthinking, and perfectionism, just to name a few of those things, you can never change that stuff unless you slow down and take inventory of what’s going on inside of you. That’s number one.

Number two is breathwork. Even when you and I are talking, especially when you talk and I listen, I consciously bring my awareness to the lower part of my abdomen and I take slower and longer breaths. Why do I do that? It’s because it moves me into my center away from the fear state. I then have a much greater capacity to show up with you for this interview. Also, physical touch.

I’ve had this conversation before. This is like, “You have that fear voice.” We call it ego or lower self. There are so many names for that fear voice that is constantly telling you, “You should be doing this. Why are you not doing this? You’re not good enough. You’ll never get there. This is taking too much time.” People try to argue with that and I have a rule of thumb. Never argue with your own mind.

Never argue with your mind. Instead, become aware. Click To Tweet

If the mind goes, “I’m not good enough.” Don’t say, “No, I am good enough,” because you’re entertaining the same process. Instead, become aware. “That’s interesting. There’s something happening. There’s that voice coming. Hello there.” The way that I approach it now is as if I was to speak to my young child, which I don’t yet have, but to a young child and say, “Honey, what’s going on? Are you okay? Do you need a hug? What do you need right now?”

I give myself a hug and I rub my chest and I take deep, long breaths and I say, “I am safe.” I repeat this for a couple of moments and I come back to my center. I then can make a conscious choice. Before that, my choices are unconscious. I just react. I do the same thing again and again and expect a different outcome, which is the definition of insanity.

In that case, I can choose. “Do I need time to rest right now because I’m overwhelmed and burned out? I’ve just been working. I’m going to take a step away and rest, or can I proceed and embrace the discomfort and the fear that is presenting itself and front of me?” I promise you, if you do this practice, you are going to save so much time, energy, and all the money that comes with that.

It goes back to the concept of talking to yourself as if you were your best friend or your lover as opposed to the way that we talk to ourselves a lot of times as closer to somebody we don’t like. If we shift that script and allow ourselves the time, especially as you said, as entrepreneurs. I remember being at a conference and hearing Arianna Huffington talk. She was one of the first entrepreneurs to talk about giving yourself time. She put nap rooms in her office in New York City, meditation rooms, and all those kinds of things.

The CEO of the company was sitting next to me going, “That’s absurd.” I was like, “That’s the ticket. That’s the trick. That’s what you need. That’s what we need.” We put nap rooms in our office. He never took advantage of it, but I did and it made a huge difference. As you said, I would put in practices where before any big meetings or calls, we’d all go outside, take a breath, be in the trees, and center ourselves. That one breath makes the biggest difference. I love the idea of touch also. When a new customer comes to you, how do they usually find you and what’s the most common challenge?

Nowadays, most of my clients come through referrals. I have a very vast network and I am part of a lot of communities where I show up as a facilitator, as a teacher, and as a coach. People come through these channels. In my TEDx Talk, a lot of people come to me through that. I’ve specifically built it that way because I’m not a fan of social media. I’m not in alignment with every day posting a story, “Everybody, here’s what I’m eating. Here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s what I’m doing.”

Some people are great at that. Awesome for them, but for me, it doesn’t work. I’ve specifically cultivated deeper relationships and created a referral system. I’d say the most common challenge that people face, they come to me. They’re already relatively successful in what they’re doing with multiple six-figure levels or close to seven figures and a lot of these business leaders are wearing all the hats in their business. They struggle to let go of control and manage their time.

They think that it’s a time issue when it’s not because the thing is, there is no time. Time is a psychological concept, but there are emotions. If you cannot navigate your emotional inner world, you will never be able to master time management. A lot of them come to me because they get this feeling of, “I’m ready to expand to get to another level and something is missing. I’m maxed out in my action-taking, but nothing is moving. I’m on the same level.”

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Highest Level Of Success: If you cannot navigate your emotional inner world, you cannot master time management.

 

They know that it’s an inner issue. Oftentimes, they think that it’s a mindset shift that is required. They think in terms of limiting beliefs when actually, it’s not that. The only thing that’s holding you back from the next level is your unwillingness to feel. The more capacity you have to feel your feelings, the more capacity you have to hold yourself.

This means that when you step outside of your comfort zone and all of those feelings and thoughts come up, and you get to make a conscious choice. However, most people don’t get to have that because they don’t have the tools and the awareness so they retreat. They go back into their comfort zone and do what they have always done.

What does a typical first or second session look like? I know that as they get going, it’s all very custom, but what do the first conversations sound like?

The first conversation is an understanding of their world. I want to dive into your world and get an understanding of who is Steph and why is Steph. It’s the classical understanding of where they’re at and where they want to go in life, or where they want to go through, not the superficial, “I just want to make some more money and grow my business by X.”

We get that stuff but why do you want that? What’s behind there? What’s your mission? What’s your vision? I want to know why you do what you do. The requirement also that I have for people to work with me one-on-one is they have to inspire me. I cannot work with people that I don’t find inspiring because I get bored quickly. We look at that and then what I do and my specialty is in pattern recognition. I listen very intently to the words that you are using. The moment you tell me, “I’m doing X, Y, and Z and it’s okay. I’m okay with the things but I know I should be doing more. I know I could be doing more.” I already know what your whole situation is.

I can tell you exactly what. It’s guilt, because you’re using should and could. Should means there’s another part of you that is telling you. It’s like this nagging person sitting next to you. It’s like, “But why are you watching Netflix? You shouldn’t be watching Netflix. Shouldn’t you be working harder? Why are you still in bed?” You’re feeling, “I feel awful.” You feel that sense of guilt. You also feel that sense of shame because you’re not doing what the guilt voice is telling you which now, I know that you’re operating on your own small level.

It’s because of guilt and shame, if you look at the scale of consciousness from Hawkins, shame, and guilt are the lowest states of consciousness to be in. It’s the very lowest one because how will a guilty person act? Like a guilty person. How will a shameful person act? Like a shamed person. There’s no power. There’s no vision. There is no love and connection there. There is none of that.

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Highest Level Of Success: Shame and guilt are the lowest states of consciousness.

 

By listening to your language patterns, I can tell the emotions that you’re avoiding. When we go deeper into that, it’s where the breakthrough comes in. Here’s the thing that most people don’t understand. You can never think greater than how you feel. Have you ever felt anxious and had peaceful, amazing thoughts, clarity, and awesome ideas? No. It’s in your capacity to feel greater and to release and transcend the feelings that you’re holding onto that you’re going to maximize your business, your vision, your relationship, and your health.

What practices do you use to get them out of those low levels of consciousness then?

One is awareness. Awareness is my number one tool. Unless you see yourself, you’ll never change. I can give you all the tools. I can tell you all the stories. I can guide you into breathwork. I do breathwork as well. My wife-to-be works with me. We co-facilitate. She’s very powerful in doing trauma-release breathwork sessions. She’s trained in that but we can do 100,000 of these and every time you’re coming out, “I feel so much greater. I’m so much freer. You are amazing,” and two days later, you’re going to step right back in.

Awareness is the number one tool. It’s helping them in recognizing who they are being in that moment. That’s one. Two is the breath work that allows people to feel their feelings because the type of entrepreneur that I work with is very headstrong. They’re very much analytical thinking and holding onto control pans which is why I work with a lot of men. To work with them is to move them from the head to the heart into their body. We do this through breathwork.

There are somatic practices of touch and also another practice is the letting go technique. A lot of what you and I are discussing is completely based on the world of meaning. Take anxiety for instance. There is no such thing as anxiety. If you were to cut me open and open my chest, would you find a label on there that says anxiety? There is no such thing but yet there is an experience that we all relate to. Most of us say, “That’s anxiety.” Is it really?

It’s something that somebody at some point decided this is anxiety and then everybody is like, “Yeah. Okay. Agreed.” The challenge with that is that you now put yourself into a box. “I feel anxious. That makes me weak,” because remember that other person that I saw online that is screaming with anxiety, “I don’t want to be like that.” Again, we’re back in shame. One of the most powerful practices is to feel the body.

One of the most powerful practices is to feel the body. Click To Tweet

I often ask them, “How are you feeling?” “A little overwhelmed, a little this, or a little anxious.” I’m like, “Where in your body do you feel that?” We go from the mind into the body and I go, “In my chest.” What I then have them do is go into a letting go process where they are essentially scanning the sensations in their body without labeling them. Is it heavy or is it light heavy? Is it opening or is it constraining? “It’s constraining.” Is it fast or is it slow?

We use these terminologies to disassociate from the label. What that does is now we recognize sensations without stories. When that happens, there’s way more space to create freedom and a greater capacity to create new possibilities for who you are being in that moment. You feel through that, you create the sensation, you observe it, and you do it with breathwork. Sometimes stronger emotions will surface that need to be released. Sometimes, it is a subtle thing. Bring this into practice and it allows you to move through things fast with a greater sense of ease.

Do you find it challenging to get men to open up and come down into the heart and body or do you just work with more conscious leaders?

Even though I have done over a decade of personal development work and inner healing to this day, opening up about my feelings in certain environments is a challenge. Is not like, “Easy.” It’s a challenge and the more conscious you are, the more open to that you are and the less conscious, the more difficult it is.

My trump card is always my fiancée because I’m always taking my clients into the breath work with her. They are so deep that they bypass the analytical mind. They don’t have a chance to think about the way that they feel. They’re forced to feel the way that they feel and that’s my go-to. I’ve done a lot of work in psychedelic environments like ayahuasca, mushrooms, and San Pedro. I would not facilitate that. I’m not trained. I also don’t believe that this is my part in this world. That’s why I work with shamans. That for me personally has brought the greatest degree of emotional mastery in my life by far.

It’s emotional mastery. Tim Ferriss has been on this exploration journey for a while and other ayahuasca and all the things that are going to come into the mainstream in a completely different way in the last several years. How has that experience affected you and your work?

It’s profound. It’s like we could have a 10-hour conversation and probably we wouldn’t be done but the first thing that it did for me, I remember was an ayahuasca ceremony in upstate New York. The first one that I’ve ever done. I had no idea what this was. A friend of mine told me about it. I was like, “That sounds cool.” I did some research online. I was like, “Okay. Sure. I’m open to that.”

It was with a tribal leader from Brazil from the Yawanawa tribe. His name is Matsini. At that time, I would identify as an atheist. I was the kind of atheist that if you told me that God is real, I would argue it into the ground to make sure that I’m right. That’s one of my shadows. I’ve got to be right and make sure that I got to win that argument. I went in with that and what I experienced changed my life forever.

I cried for about 3 to 4 hours straight. It was non-stop crying. There was so much sadness that I was holding onto in my relationship with my mother and my sister. A lot of that came up. I had this incredible experience and it’s even challenging to put it into words, but there was this sensation that was holding me throughout that whole sadness. It was telling me that no matter what you do, no matter where you are, I will always love you. There’s nothing you can do to make you not love me.

It was so profound that at that moment my belief in God, Spirit, or Universe, or call it whatever you want to call it, that universal presence that’s out there was ignited. That was so strong. I felt this sense of safety. The way that I refer to God is both masculine and feminine and, in my understanding, the divine feminine is the Divine Mother. Nobody can give you that sense of safety like a mother can where you’re like, “I can take down the whole world and come home defeated and my mother will always be there and she will always love me no matter what.”

That became real for me in a spiritual sense and it gave me so much confidence. I went out there and I could feel myself showing up differently in conversations and inviting people into coaching conversations, going to workshops, speaking up, and doing public speeches. That was the first one and it reignited my connection with nature.

I had to talk about suicide in men. I believe strongly that the reason so many men are committing suicide or considering that is that they’re completely disconnected from the feminine essence in life. The feminine essence is nature, Mother Nature, and I found that connection. It’s like a peace that was missing in my life was being reintroduced.

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Highest Level Of Success: Men disconnect themselves from the feminine essence in life. It is why more men are committing suicide or considering it.

 

Was that ayahuasca?

Yeah.

That’s not something I have experienced yet. That’s very similar to stories that I’ve heard from many people and it’s life-changing. Thank you for sharing that. Where do you go to find inspiration or learn? It sounds like you’re continually learning, diving deep, and finding your own emotions. Where do you find that?

It’s a great question that we all could ask ourselves more. For me, it’s teachers and mentors. I have a lot of mentors and teachers. I’ve always cultivated relationships with people older than me, more advanced than me, and more conscious than me that I learn from for all kinds of areas of my life, for spirituality or for business. I could have business mentors that are in the 9 to 10-figure space.

One of my closest brothers, friend, and mentor is what I call a true business sage. He’s helped me so much in elevating consciously. I have coaches that I hire ongoing basis. I believe if you’re a coach, you should hire a coach as well because it defeats the purpose. I go into nature on a five-day solo retreat. I book myself into a cabin here in the mountains in South Africa completely by myself. It’s a very rudimentary lifestyle and no consumption of anything.

It means no media and reading. I’m going to be writing, sitting, meditating, and walking around there in the mountains on a very limited diet. It’s essentially soup and water to clear whatever I’m not seeing. I make a lot of space and time for these processes, to God and nature, and find that inspiration because inspiration is in spirit. The more I connect to my idea of God, the more inspired by the life I live and that’s where the ideas are coming through me.

The more I connect to my idea of God, the more inspired the life I live. Click To Tweet

I’ve been in this interesting space for the last year and a half or so, and it seems that the more I connect to spirit, the less I connect to business. I feel like that is a fear that a lot of people have. I wonder what path it’s trying to take me on, but I was on the treadmill of business for so long. As you were saying, a lot of entrepreneurs and business people think that if they get off the treadmill, everything’s going to stop.

I have this dichotomy of feeling that I have to either be going 1,000 miles an hour or be 100% into spirit and life. It’s difficult for me to continually find that balance, that yin and yang or whatever it might be that you define it as in your world. Do you find that happens with people who are on their first journey through coming out of their head into their heart and their body?

It is an interesting perspective and questions that you’re asking. Let me ask you this. Do you notice yourself having extreme tendencies to be a black-and-white or all-or-nothing person in other areas of your life?

In some and for myself, yes. When I look at other people, it’s 100%. I’m very open, accepting, loving of all things, and understanding. It’s so easy for me to put myself in other people’s shoes. However, when it comes to self-awareness and judgment, it’s very black and white.

That’s the one that matter matters and what you described is a reflection of that. It’s like this tendency that you have within yourself. It’s like all or nothing and it’s reflected now in spirituality. It’s like, “Either I become the next Mother Teresa or I become a multimillionaire in what I’m doing.” I can’t only be either one. What I would look into is learning to access a greater level of emotional mastery because oftentimes, these extremes are controlled by emotions. It’s either that or either that.

It’s learning to integrate that more. Sometimes that could mean when I have clients that have these bursts of energy, they’re like, “Oh, my God,” and then they could work until 11:00 PM and oftentimes they do. Naturally, the next day, they’re flat or they reach Friday and they’re completely spent. What I do with them is, first of all, set boundaries. I’m going to be operating from this time to this time.

If I still feel those bursts of energy afterwards, I’m not allowed to put them into my work. I will take them in other areas of my life. In the beginning, it’s going to be uncomfortable. You’re going to hear your mind, “This is stupid. You’re wasting precious energy that you could be putting into this. I got to meditate harder. 5 hours or 4 is not enough,” and all of that. I would learn to tap more into an equilibrium because you are a high performer. You are someone that has a lot of creative energy to pour into things.

Take a little bit of that and pour it into another area of your life. It doesn’t mean that you have to do this for five hours every day. It means 30 minutes or 20 minutes but the more you learn to harness and become more holistic in the way that you live every single day, the easier it will be for you to learn to integrate the spiritual and the business path because you can combine both. That’s exactly what I do.

The more you learn to harness and become more holistic in how you live every day, the easier it will be for you to learn to integrate the spiritual and the business path. Click To Tweet

I combine the Zen philosophy and business strategy because a lot of my day is spent in a conversation with God and I was like, “God, how would you have me show up on this show? God, help me be the person that will provide the breakthroughs for whoever is reading.” I do that constantly. My partner is a beautiful woman and as a woman, you are much more connected to your feelings, and with that, comes also a much stronger expression sometimes.

I used to go, “This is too much. This is toxic. I don’t want this. This is crazy.” Now, I’m learning that the reason I judge that is because I’m not in touch with my own wild emotions. That’s what I’m working on at the moment. To go more into that raw energy that sometimes is so uncontrollable. It’s like, “Great. Let’s go there.”

That’s beautiful. I just wrote a book about my memoir and the pattern that I always knew was there but I’m seeing in myself reflected is we moved every 6 months to 1 year until I moved out. As soon as life would feel comfortable and confident, I had all my friends. It’s like we were gone. We’d go out and be homeless for a little while and start over completely. I have all these strengths. Because of that, I am able to meet people where they are and see people clearly.

I felt like I got myself out of that pattern, but I’m realizing that I haven’t gotten myself out of the pattern emotionally. That all-or-nothing is still there. That’s the thing and one of the things that Tony Robbins talks about a lot is those patterns that were put into place when we were three years old. Those patterns of fear, judgment, lack of love, or whatever they might be are so ingrained in us that we repeat them if we don’t stop, look, and reflect. That’s been interesting for me to see how what I saw as physical patterns come up emotionally.

Emotions are such an underrated topic because it’s messy and uncontrollable. That’s why we don’t like to talk about that stuff. There’s so much gold in talking about this and having this conversation. There’s so much more space also for myself to grow into and it’s all of my emotions in all situations with all people. If you look at the landscape, a lot of women have been conditioned to try to become more like men in that environment.

I’m saying this boldly. I’m happy for someone to challenge me on that. The business and work environment is not designed to help women thrive in their authentic nature. It’s not designed that way because a woman cannot work the same hours that a man can work because a woman’s body is comprised differently. That doesn’t mean that she’s going to produce less or worse but she needs a completely different approach to that.

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Highest Level Of Success: The design of the current business and work environment does not help women thrive in their authentic nature.

 

I feel oftentimes, and this might be a subtle notion that women try to squeeze themselves into the business environment as a man does and it just doesn’t work. Maybe something for you to look at is, “How can I bring more of my divine feminine into the way that I structure my days?” It could be sleep as long as you want to and then wake up.

I always do this example with my clients, which normally only work with mothers. The question is if you only had three hours a day to dedicate to your business, but you knew you have to generate X amount of income per month, what would you do? If you have a child, that’s a very real scenario. I have the deepest respect for mothers. You cannot work more than that because your child is your number one priority. What do you do then?

It requires you to have a completely different mindset. It requires you to shift your business model to one of high leverage. What gives you high leverage is relationships. It’s because if you know the person that knows the person that knows the person, you’re going to get your TEDx Talk in one conversation, which is exactly what I did.

I had one conversation. It gave me a TEDx Talk. I had another conversation. It got me my coach before my TEDx Talk for free essentially. It’s all relationships. If you then understand that, you can then go, “What I want to work on is relationships.” In order to work on relationships, I first need to work on the relationship that I have with myself.

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Highest Level Of Success: To work on your relationships with others, work on your relationship with yourself.

 

Everything you said there was spot on. I grew up as a feminist and then realized that I was having arguments with my feminist friends because they were trying hard to fit themselves into the male paradigm, and I do too. However, the concept just doesn’t match, and the respect for mothers and stay-at-home mothers and all of that.

Going back, also, one of the reasons that you are successful, and one of the things that I find powerful with certain coaches is when they fully understand how necessary and valuable emotional connection is to business. There are those coaches who are constantly pushing hard and what’s your next deadline? How are you going to hold yourself accountable?

I remember when I got my first coach, my husband at the time thought that it was going to be a Tony Robbins guy. I’m like, “No.” It’s this local guy who’s a musician and talks to me about quantum physics. That’s the guy that I want. It’s the concept of what reality is, who you are, and why we are here. Also, emotional well-being and the one who gave me the assignment to take time for myself because he saw that I was pushing too hard. That’s the coach that was necessary for me.

If somebody has gotten this far in the conversation of reading this, they are on board with connecting to emotion, God, and Spirit but I want to reiterate that there are coaches out there for everyone and everything. It’s finding the one that connects to what you need, not necessarily what you think you need. You’re going to a coach because there’s a gap there. They’re probably going to take you to a space that is not that comfortable. Do you want to be pushed over the limits of speed and time or do you want to become more conscious, successful, and whole?

It’s thinking about, “What are those questions? What is it that you truly want to achieve with getting a coach?” or even within the next year. One of the first exercises that my coach had me do, and that I have people do is to write out the perfect day in three different scenarios. What would be the perfect day while you’re working and while you’re not working? Maybe if you’re traveling while working, what is your perfect day?

Taking that and saying, “What does it feel like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like?” You’re not thinking about that when you’re writing it. When you break it down, what does it feel like? That’s what you’re going after. It’s not, “I got on a plane and everybody waited on me in first class.” What did that feel like? Why did you like that?

There are a couple of great points that you’re making. When choosing a coach, take time to speak with more than one coach and find out who is the right fit for you. Also, ask yourself, “Why do I say that this is the right fit for me?” Not just, “This feels good.” It’s like, “There’s more to that.” My invitation for anyone and this is the challenge that I see with the coaching industry, is there are too many coaches who do not embody what they are selling. They have read 1 book or 10 books. They’ve listened to 500 podcasts. They’ve gone to two NLP seminars and now, they present themselves through very clever marketing as the coach.

I can quickly look beyond that and see, “This is not somebody that I would work with because there’s no integrity. They’re just good marketers.” If I want them to help me only with my marketing, sure, but as soon as it goes beyond that, I wouldn’t do that. One of the exercises that I do with my clients is such a powerful exercise. I call it the 555 Vision, 5 years from now, 5 areas of your life, and what are 5 statements that are going to be true?

I’m going to call you and say, “Steph, five years from now, I’m calling you into the future.” She’s like, “Mario, my life is amazing. Let me tell you about my business. My business is making $10 million. I have a team of ten people. I love them. We have published five books and it’s so amazing. I get to travel every year. I’m constantly invited.” I love it. It’s clear. We then go into the different areas.

The final piece of this, and this is why so many people either don’t achieve their vision at all, or it takes them way longer. The manifesto, a credo, a principle for living to get them there because they’re thinking. They’re envisioning the vision from who they are being right now or five years in the future. They need to be the person five years from now. What I do is I have what I call a declaration of excellence. I have it right here. It’s a little bit small. You can’t see it, but it’s co-signed by two other people that are holding me accountable.

The first statement that I have here is I choose to view those who trigger me as my best teachers. Why do I do that? It’s because relationships are the biggest opportunities for growth and the biggest inhibitors to growth. How many relationships do we have in our life where we say, “God, my mother-in-law is such a b****. She’s just freaking me out. That person that I talked to or that client is like, ‘Ugh.’” We externalize our responsibility for how we feel to other people in our life. If you implement something like this, all you see is opportunities. That’s going to help you excel. I feel like we all could use a principle for living our life.

Relationships are the biggest opportunities and inhibitors to growth. Click To Tweet

If you look at the great spiritual teachings of the world like the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, and the Quran, they help people because they are specific principles for how you should live your life. Why not create your own? Why wait for somebody else? Why not decide, “This is how I want to live my life and this will help me become the person that will manifest this vision that I want?”

Everybody, you have clear steps. You have several things and bits of homework to do here. What advice would you have, Mario, for someone who is thinking about starting their own business or jumping out into doing something that they’re passionate about but have not quite taken the leap?

First and foremost, I would play the game with you, which is called Let’s Pretend. The game is called Let’s Pretend because a lot of times, when people start or even when they’re further ahead along the journey, they tell me, “I don’t know. Should I go left? Should I go right? Should I go up, down?” I said, “That’s fine.” Are you open to playing a game? You can answer this for yourself if you’re reading right now. I’m assuming you’re saying yes.

The game is called Let’s Pretend and there’s only one rule. We understand that you don’t know what you don’t know, but let’s pretend you did. What would you say? Here’s what happens. 9 times out of 10, this always happens. People will give you the exact thing that they want. They’ll tell you, “First, I would do this. I’ll start my podcast, then I’m going to develop a little bit of a voice online and get comfortable with that. I’m going to then start putting out my own blog articles. I’m going to start forming my own tools. I’m going to start inviting five people to practice this. I’m going to start charging money for that.”

“I thought you didn’t know what you wanted.” Here’s the thing with that. When it comes to saying what you want, there’s a huge fear that comes with that because the moment you speak out your true desire, you have a responsibility to make it happen. If you say, “I don’t know.” It’s called learned helplessness. It’s way less scary. If we play a game, we take away the risk, which means we also take away the fear. That’s what I would do. I would play this game. I would ask yourself, “What do you truly want to do?”

The second thing that I would do is, “In what way is achieving what I want fun?” Ask yourself what would be fun. I asked myself that question as a coach, “What would be a fun way for me to create clients?” That’s exactly why you and I are here now because what did I do? I did the whole Instagram DM strategy, LinkedIn, cold reach out, and cold emails. I didn’t get a single client because I hated it. It’s because every time I send it out, I was like, “This is so stupid. I wouldn’t respond to this,” but I still did it because I had hired a business coach who told me that’s what you need to do. That’s the thing.

Don’t do that. Ask yourself what would be fun. If you bring fun and business together, you become unstoppable because you’re having fun every day with what you’re doing. That’s number two. Number three is set process-orientated goals. What’s a process-orientated goal? An outcome-orientated goal is, “I want to make $10,000 at the end of the month.” You have no control over that, zero, but what you can say is, “My product costs $2,000. That means I got to sell five products or services this month.”

MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

Highest Level Of Success: If you bring fun and business together, you become unstoppable because you have fun.

 

You can then ask yourself, “How many conversations do I need to have with people to sell five products?” Let’s say you are a beginner. You need to have twenty conversations. Every four, you sell and then you go break it down. We say, “My process-orientated goal is to invite 30 or 40 people to a conversation with me.” You want to create a framework around why you’re inviting them. It could even be a podcast.

I know a lot of people that use their podcasts as a way to create clients. At the end of the podcast, they ask them, “Would you be interested in learning more?” Now, you have a process goal which is, “Invite 40 people to a conversation with me.” You have 100% of control over that goal because all you do is make the invitation. Whether they say yes or no is none of your business. Now, you know what you want. You know how to make it fun, and you have process-driven goals, which means you’re becoming focused on the moment. If you do those three things, that alone will move you quantum leaps forward.

Thank you so much for all of your insight and inspiration, Mario. Thank you for your time. If you would like to learn more about Mario, you can go to his website. You can find him at MarioLanzarotti.com/Welcome-MVP. Thank you so much for everything. You are wonderful. We all want to sign up and do that breathwork exercise with your fiancée as well. You are a wonderful and beautiful spirit and I thank you so much for sharing your time and insight with us.

Thank you, Steph. I can only give that back. The work that you’re doing is very crucial and important. Also, who you are being more importantly is setting a new standard for women and for the people that look up to you and want to do what they’re doing. You’re one of those pioneers that embark into unknown land because you don’t know what you can expect at the other end of that, but you still do it anyways. That’s courageous and I appreciate you for doing what you’re doing in the world and thank you for having me on this episode.

Thank you so much. If you liked it, tell your friends. Follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn. The mission of the show is to dig deep into the lives of true leaders so that others can follow, knowing that the path isn’t always easy, but the journey is worth it. Enjoy the day and live with passion.

 

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MVP 5 | Highest Level Of Success

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