Full Transcript

James: 0:47
Hey team, what is up? Welcome back to the Denyssey Invest Podcast. A little bit of a different one today. It’s less about the nuts and bolts and finance and more of what’s going on inside our heads. How can we allow ourselves to be as successful as possible When it comes to the world of investing? I have sat in front of me a really interesting champ. His name is Adam Cox. Adam has a few different hats, mainly a hypnotist, got a podcast which is doing exceedingly well, called the hypnotist. Feel free to check that out in your own time, guys. One of the main things that Adam does is that he is a wealth coach, so to speak, or he allows people. He allows individuals to understand what limited beliefs they have in their head whenever it comes to their wealth journey and then overcome those and be as successful as they can possibly be. Adam, have I done a good job of describing you, or are you just going to say, james, that was all. Let’s start again.

Adam: 1:34
No, it’s a fantastic introduction, i think. For me, two real passions. One is hypnosis. I was starting taking an interest in hypnosis from being about 13, 14, seeing a stage hypnosis show and reading a few books on hypnotherapy. Also, this idea of financial independence and not just accumulating money but for me money is a vehicle to freedom, having different ways of making money was things that I was interested in even as a teenager. What I do now is fuse a lot of those passions together.

James: 2:13
Very cool. How did this whole journey into self-development start?

Adam: 2:19
Yeah, for me it came from necessity. Sometimes you only figure things out when you look backwards. As a child I was into bizarre things for a child to be into. I was reading books on hypnosis and psychology when I’m 12, 13 years old. I was reading books on speed reading and mnemonics and the Tony Boozen kind of mind mapping approaches and all these kind of strange things. It only made sense afterwards. I had a core belief throughout my teenage years childhood teenage years of not being good enough. I didn’t realize at the time but my desire to kind of investigate personal development or what was called self-improvement. Back then I was doing things like lifting weights and all these kind of things. That again make sense if you look at it through the lens of a belief of not being good enough. If I genuinely believed I wasn’t good enough but I wasn’t happy with not being good enough, it was to get better. That was kind of where it all started. There is a real silver lining to that cloud because if you are focused and determined at self-improvement, there’s a lot of people that read personal development books and learn about self-improvement don’t actually apply any of those things. If you do apply those things actually, it kind of gives you a bit of a superpower because you realize that you can learn. Metascales like speed reading means you can learn a lot of information rapidly. Mnemonics means you can recall information. I had these kind of metascales that are kind of the foundations of compounded learning, which actually gave me a huge edge in life later on. But it came from a place of feeling that I wasn’t worthy. If that doesn’t sound too tragic, No, it does.

James: 4:04
Here’s the thing. First of all, it doesn’t at all. but where it kind of resonates is that most people would you call yourself, would you use a label, entrepreneur to describe yourself? I’m just curious, I would.

Adam: 4:15
Yeah, I would.

James: 4:16
Cool, interesting thing about entrepreneurs they’ve got three common traits. The first one is they’ve got this crazy self-belief that they’re the best. That manifests in their childhood at some point. Perhaps they had a natural ability at a few different things. I see that in myself. I was good at sports and generally academic. That was ingrained in me, that I believed that I should be the best, even though I wasn’t always, even though reality sometimes tried to rock that belief, but it was still there. Second thing paradoxically, they also feel like they’ve got a huge point to prove, like a little bit of a chip in their shoulder. It’s not enough for them to know that they’re the best. They have to let everybody else know. That’s why they do. They build these crazy big things. You know what I mean. It’s literally the path of an entrepreneur. Third thing is is that they have a weird ability to focus on stuff To the point where it’s almost destructive to other things in their life. No on obsession. On obsession exactly? Is that the definition of an obsession?

Adam: 5:23
An obsession is to value something so that it gives you your resources effectively. You’re funneling your resources in the thing that feels the most important. Obsessive people have that laser beam focus. They tend to that 10,000 hours theory. If you spend a lot of time doing something, you tend to get pretty good at it.

James: 5:44
Yeah, okay, there you go. Well, anyway, those are the three core traits of an entrepreneur partly nature, partly nurture. Yeah, i mean it sounds. you kind of reminded me of that whenever you were talking. I was thinking, okay, it sounds like Adam similar. I see those in myself big time. I see those in myself and I see those in other people who use that label entrepreneur. Not everybody is like okay with that label. they think it’s like a little bit too.

Adam: 6:13
I think there’s another definition that you would link to an entrepreneur, which is risk taking. You can have these kind of people that do very well, for example, in careers, that they might have this kind of weird paradox where they think they’re very good but they have to prove that they’re good. Maybe they want to kind of climb the career ladder and they become workaholics and they focus. The added ingredient, I feel, to entrepreneurial is the willingness to take a risk, to bet on yourself. That really comes from the value hierarchy, Those people that tend to thrive within structured environments like careers and corporations. For them the significance comes from the status of a title or promotion, Whereas entrepreneurial they would rather be the master of their own destiny and kind of forge their own path. That willingness to take a risk, I think, is also quite a vital ingredient in entrepreneurs.

James: 7:13
Seeing risk is your friend. Here’s what I do. I flip risk on its head and I’m like, well, okay, i can do all these things that lots would label as risky, but isn’t the riskiest thing of all that I stay where I am and then feel unfulfilled at some point in my life? further down the line I’m like, oh, okay, well, i know that’s going to happen unless I do something. Therefore, doing something looks way less risky, relatively speaking. now that I acknowledge that, does that make sense?

Adam: 7:36
Totally makes sense because effectively you’ve got a way of framing risk to incentivise taking a risk, because you’ve now got a frame against what not taking a risk means. When I work with people with Thanatophobia, which is the fear of death, the way of When people have the natophobia and they don’t do anything because they feel that life is meaningless because we’re gonna die, in on a cosmic level we’re all you know blink of an eye in the kind of big scheme of things Can take any motivation. But the solution to that is to look at your life and say, well, if you’re gonna die anyway, isn’t the tragedy to live a life where you haven’t done anything through fear of you know it all being meaningless? And what’s interesting about that is my first big risk that I did on myself was the age of twenty three, leaving a job and becoming self employed. So the PR agency that I run now I started when I was twenty three years old and the way that I framed it was very similar to what you said. There is that I evaluated that Business is something you learned from doing it, you know. So you can learn a little bit doing an MBA. But it’s like swimming. Nobody can get to be a good swimmer by reading a book, you’ve got to jump in the pool. So I looked at business as I made about fifteen thousand pounds as my seed capital for my own business And I thought well, twenty three years old, i can invest that capital in my own business And if it works out well, then in my early twenties I’ve got a successful business. But if it doesn’t, the lessons that I learn in that kind of one two, three years plus the money invest is going to be worth more than Any intense course in business I could ever experience. So when I framed it that whatever happens I win, then you can’t lose that fear of risk goes away. So it’s that kind of in hypnosis. We call it a double bind. It’s kind of like Head’s I win tells you lose, whatever happens. I’m coming out of this thing smelling roses and that’s really how you minimize the anxiety that comes from taking a risk. When I was twenty three years old, telling everyone that You know, telling family members I’m gonna go self employed, there was two reactions. There was a reaction from family members which was like good for you, that kind of like patronizing. You know, you know nothing of the world during for a wake up call Or concerned people saying is not a bit risky because you’ve got a job at the moment, you’re earning a good salary, isn’t it risky? So again, different perceptions, but it was the same thing. And that sentence. You said that the biggest risk is doing nothing at all. To me that really resonated, which is why I was able to make that choice at a relatively young age.

James: 10:23
I think about that at least once a day. I think about eighty five year old me, right, and I think to myself okay, james, imagine that person being unfulfilled. Imagine telling that person that you didn’t do what you’re about to do because of fear, or so you could Some sort of emotion. How much would that person just be like. That was so ridiculous that you ever thought about that Little. I’m gonna just touch on three quick things and then I wanna get into some like real meat and bone stuff about limiting beliefs that you commonly observe. So the first one of those things Is that there’s that survey, isn’t there, about people in Australian nursing in the Australian nursing home, and you might, what’s that? I can’t remember the ladies name, but it’s a famous one, the famous Ted talk, wasn’t it? five biggest regrets, i think always it’s a talk as well, right? so, anyway, number one. Number one is that the so for contacts, people who are listening, when to serve in an old people’s home in Australia, surveyed like five hundred people who are eighty five and over And this lady asked them you know what’s your biggest regrets in life? right? number one was that I didn’t do it I want to do out of fear, didn’t live a life true to me right now. If That’s what the people who really five, literally saying, okay, there’s a really good chance that we’ll probably say that to ourselves unless we live a life that’s a little bit different from everybody else, because that’s what most people are saying And most people live the average life and most people have that logic. So we’ve got to be extraordinary with me. That’s the first one, right. Second thing is we were talking about metascals, just as earlier on. Right, one of the metals, get one of the metals skills. In my opinion, like probably the only thing you need to get really good at is talking and being good with people, and the reason for that is, naturally, if somebody else can do the thing that you need done and you’re able to talk to them and communicate well, you can get the thing done. You don’t have to learn how to do the thing. You with me, true, and there’s a vast ocean of talents and skills out there, so you can communicate with people who can do it, and wonderful, which is why, in my opinion, self awareness and being an amazing communicator and being a good dude, or one of the most, are some of the most important trace that you can have in business, which is why there’s something that I try to work on all the time and I would encourage anybody to work on, so I really feel like lots of doors open for you. I said that with compassion and love. Right, and they are stuff that we have to work on right there, not things that come naturally. Everybody, even if we do have those traits, we still have to work on it. Be with me. And then there was the third thing. What was the third thing? it evaporated out of my head was the third thing. Hopefully it’s gonna come back to me as the podcast goes on, but I feel like those two. There was some, there was some meat on the bone with those two to digest. Anyways, move, the third thing will come back to me anyway, not to worry, moving swiftly on. So Naturally, adam, a lot of what you do is uncover the Limiting beliefs, the hidden barriers that people have whenever it comes to being a successful as a possible can ensure you. Through doing this for the time that you have done, you must notice that there’s some common themes, there’s some Relatively common ones that you see all the time.

Adam: 13:22
There is, yeah, and the first one we’ve already touched on a little bit, which is Beliefs about risk, and risk for a lot of people Is linked to undesirable consequences. So when people have this kind of evaluation of undesirable consequences, the default for a lot of people is to do what is safe, and what’s safe and what’s secure normally is in action, which is why procrastination is such an issue for a lot of people. If in doubt, leave it out. You know, people just don’t, don’t do anything, and with money, that can be a real issue. So One of the key things that I learned about, which was really helpful when thinking about money and investing, is the idea of compounding. So there was a website I think it’s still around called the Motley fall, and I was about twenty, twenty one, twenty two years old and I saw this article about compounding. It was a really interesting thing because it the maths blew my mind that the maths were that if you start investing at twenty years old And you put in a standard amount let’s say a hundred pound or two hundred pound a month from the age of twenty to thirty, and you stopped at thirty, someone starting at thirty could put the same amount per month For the rest of their life and not catch up with the person that started at twenty and only did it for ten years. So this kind of idea of compounding blew my mind and therefore I was looking at that kind of risk reward curve of yeah it might be risky to invest. But equally, if I never invest, then there’s the risk of getting older, you know, at a situation where you can’t work. you know there’s a lot of people that If they get fired from their job they’re screwed. Or if they get sick, you know they’re in real problems. Or if they retire they have to keep on working. And for me, the idea of compound growth created two different ideas for me. One was this idea of financial freedom That actually you could reach a point where you’ve got this growing snowball of kind of wealth that meant that you had choices. So for me the value was freedom and it’s kind of like well, what would stop me doing the things to get that snowball effect working? Well, the obvious fear is that you’re going to lose whatever you put in. And I think that’s the biggest limiting belief that people have about investing and wealth is that they’re going to lose it. And unfortunately there’s a lot of scammers in the world of personal finance that you know that could be true. So there are people that have bait and switch tactics. They’ve got ludicrous, you know, kind of promises And what it comes down to really is counterparty risk, which a lot of people might not be familiar with, but it’s the risk That is carried not in the investment itself, but in the person you’re trusting to look after the investment. So you could invest in a good quality brand through a pension fund, but if it’s fraudulent pension provider, you could lose your money. Or if it’s a personal, you know advisor of a financial advisor that is scamming you and draining the funds and putting it into their own things, you could, you could lose that. So the biggest fear is that people are going to lose their money, and it comes down to trust or the economy. Those are the two key things that propagate this idea of risk and, like anything, there’s an element of truth in those, in those fears. It’s good to have an element of fear, because if you have no fear at all, you’re reckless. So the purpose of fear in terms of financial freedom is to mitigate your risks by good research, due diligence, you know, diversification there’s things that you can do But the key limiting belief is that money investing could lead to you losing it, which nobody wants to do, because if you work hard for your money, the last thing you want to do is to lose it Or what money represents, and unfortunately, a lot of people have beliefs about money which is linked to Either the idea that it’s fundamentally bad, and this comes from the idea of a zero sum game. So in a lot of games like poker, for example, if I’ve got more chips, it means you’ve got less. Now, if you think of money in a zero sum game and you’re a good person and you believe, well, i’ve accumulated a lot of money here, which means there has to be other people in the world that have less, then you know you’re going to self sabotage that at some level because you don’t want to be greedy, and there’s that idea that having too much money than you need is greed. So it can link to that. But it can also link to this idea Of when it when it comes to money, that it’s almost fundamentally corrupt. There’s a lot of high profile people, billionaires, very wealthy people that are. You know they use that the money for, let’s say, negative outcomes. And then, if you’ve got that association idea that money is evil, again you have people that fundamentally Steer away from the kind of things that would give them freedoms. When i’m working with people, it’s really almost reverse engineering to discover what are the beliefs that are clogging up the whole thing And making it possible for them once you find them. As a hypnotist, it’s relatively straightforward to change the belief. But you don’t be changing beliefs that are good. You want to be changing the beliefs that are not useful. So i feel like my job is to play detective and kind of figure out what’s the limiting belief, what’s the thing getting in the way of actually making progress?
James: 19:24
So cool, right, and i feel that people underestimate the power of the subconscious, general, low level chatter that’s going on all the time. It’s like if you have that belief, you’re gonna feel uneasy about pursuing a business interest because you believe money is fundamentally bad. If you, when you’re talking about it or you’re pursuing it, right where is? if you have the belief that you’re serving someone else and that you both win whenever you work together and money is the facilitator to that transaction, oh my god right. All you did was you change how you thought about it.

Adam: 19:54
Makes. It makes a big difference because my belief about money is that the amount of money i have is a reflection of the value that i’ve contributed to society in the world. Therefore, the more money that i accumulate, the more good feelings i have. It’s like i’ve had an impact on on this world in my brief time i’m here. Makes me feel good. But if i have to zero some game mentality Then sometimes you hear people’s belief systems in conversations is kind of like well, how can, how can, you must have all that when there’s people starving in you know yemen and this kind of thing is. It’s fundamentally some misunderstanding of what money is. Money, money’s value. You know that’s what it really is.

James: 20:35
Let me believe so. one of the ways that i help people, i suppose, whenever it comes to that stuff, or one of the things that i find helpful, one of the methods for overcoming the police and i’d love to hear about your methods in two seconds is if you point out how something logically just can’t be true, right, then people are like, oh, i’ve held that belief in my hope in me my whole life, never actually thought about it from that perspective and actually in the light of this evidence it makes no sense whatsoever. and then only at that point they’re open, perhaps building a new belief which is more conducive to getting them to where they want to go. so to you, to your point, the thing that you were saying, believing that i feel like believing that if you have more, i suppose, than other people, if you, if you have that belief that basically they’re missing out, the more you have, is the more they lose out, fundamentally where that comes from. part of what helps with that is realizing that actually money is infinite because it’s just created at all times by the government. so when you realize that actually, just because you have maybe more relative to someone else, doesn’t mean that they’re Necessarily losing out, because there always is constant money getting put into the, into the economy anyway. then all of a sudden i’m like oh okay, so they’re not actually losing out just because i have a little more. necessarily, therefore, i Begin to feel more comfortable with that right of course, and sometimes example helps.

Adam: 22:02
So if you say, right, if i lend a really smart, talented person ten thousand pounds And they take that ten thousand pounds and they start a business and that business starts producing products, change raw materials into products and people buy that to the extent that it’s making ten thousand pound a month from an original ten thousand investment, you know who’s lost there. You know you’re gonna get that money back. The people that have the products benefit, the people that has the business benefits. Effectively it has that kind of not just a win-win outcome but a win-win-win outcome that everyone benefits from the, the investment.

James: 22:36
And you can take it one step further and say it’s my duty to overcome that, or else that person would have never been helped, right anyway. anyway, going back to what we were saying just a second ago, i’m really curious how you help people overcome the limit of bliss. what is that process look like?

Adam: 22:53
Yeah, so there’s multiple ways. I kind of look at belief changes like a toolkit and is it true, is a helpful tool in the kit. But sometimes whether it’s true or not isn’t as important as if it’s useful or not. So, for example, i’m not religious, but i think the majority of religions are quite useful to believe because it encourages people to Be kind, compassionate and considerate and do certain things. If it gives them A sense of structure and morality, that’s a very useful thing. So even if it wasn’t true, it could still be really useful if that makes sense. So i some of my favorite beliefs, beliefs that i know are not true But are really useful. So here’s the thing, james i never pass a wishing well without throwing a coin in making a wish. Now, do i actually believe That by throwing that coin into the wishing well i’m magically gonna manifest something? no, but i choose to believe that because i know the power of beliefs And if i have a placebo effect where i’ve now got an intention and that activates my reticulated system, that increases my ability to notice certain key things that at some level create a ripple effect, that then that thing happens. What then? that fifty p i threw down the well, was a massive investment. I have crystals. I don’t believe crystals have magical power, but if i have a belief system that certain crystals link to you, know certain things like that’s a creativity or relaxation, or citrine, for example, you know, attracting wealth. I’m a big believer in belief systems And they don’t have to be true for me to believe them. So when i’m working with clients, i will start with is that true? And a lot of people don’t evaluate if it’s even true. They’ve just picked it up from things they’ve heard or things they’ve seen in the media and that kind of stuff. And it’s like once, once you identify that something isn’t true is very whole hard to keep holding that belief. But then if it’s not true and it’s not useful, well then it’s. It’s almost a poison for that belief system. And my metaphor belief systems is that you can’t plant a tree if there’s already a tree planted. So step one in belief change is you’ve got to use a dental term extract the. You’ve got to extract the initial belief before you can put the implant in. You can’t, you can’t have the new one, the new tree, in the, in the, in the old location of the tree. So we gotta figure it out and remove that and then there’s this void. Nature, like the mind, doesn’t like a vacuum, so when you’ve, when you’ve got that void, you can plant a new belief system. There is a reason that people with religious beliefs tend to, by and large, have the religion of the culture that they’re brought up in. But it’s relatively difficult to change a religious belief if that’s belief is already ingrained. You tend to have the you know, this kind of momentum. So it requires some kind of change. Most people have not audited their beliefs about money or investment or wealth and therefore they just walking around with this kind of beliefs that quite often aren’t true, most of the time aren’t useful, and they’re just kind of carrying around with those kind of things. Now, once you, once you identify the to use you know therapy terms disempowering or limiting belief Within your, your step one to challenge that. So you can challenge that by saying is it true, is it useful? or creating emotional leverage? what’s the consequences of believing this? how is it harm during the past? what was it cost you? And quite often holding a limiting belief or disempowering belief is an opportunity cost. You know, quite often I have the metaphor that belief systems are gateways to resources. So, for example, if you believe that is risky to start a business, even if you’ve got a great idea for a business, you’re probably not going to launch that business. So you do enthusiasm and excitement to launch business Is shut off. It’s like the vault is closed. If you believe that, okay, there are risks attached, but you can mitigate the risks through competency, you suddenly open up that doorway to the emotions and those emotions then suddenly mean that that’s possible for you. So you can almost look at it like like a stop tap in plumbing. It’s kind of like well, all those resources that are flowing through are limited, based on the belief systems. So if you change a limiting belief to an empowering belief, suddenly all these amazing resources and emotions can kind of flow and then you get the self fulfilling prophecy, because when you believe something, you tend to take action. When you take action you tend to get results, and that reaffirms the belief that you’re on the right Path. Where this gets complicated with investment Is that the primary emotions that drive investment decisions are fear and greed, and if you don’t want to be so much about it, you could change greed for desire Basically what you want and what you want to avoid the two dominant emotions in investing. But the paradox of investing is that normally the absolute worst time to invest Is when, on the fear and greed index, that greed is high, that everyone is piling into this market because they convinced this easy money and generally you’re buying at the peak of the market. In that context, you’re normally the exit liquidity For the smart money that’s deciding right. This is oversold time to get out and, paradoxically, the best time to get into a market is normally when everyone saying that the world is is, you know, coming to an end and the sky is falling down, normally when fear is at its highest. Generally That is priced into the market so you can get assets at discount prices. So when I bought my properties I’ve got about 10 properties I bought the vast majority 2000, 2008, 2009, 2010, after the credit crunch, because everyone’s, like all the markets, ruined I’m getting property at Half half the price of their previous sold price, let alone their kind of peak value. When I buy a lot of shares and stuff, i bought a lot of tech shares six months ago because I could see that a lot of the tech shares is all doom and gloom and like Facebook’s laying off staff and that kind of stuff. So you get these windows of opportunity. But if the belief system of an individual is that it’s risky to invest, and they’re looking at the news and they’re saying, you know, google’s lost another 5% of its share price again today, you’ll be like who glad I avoided that. But the paradox is that if you have the belief system that the biggest opportunities when fear is at its highest, then suddenly you can. You’re getting the same asset at a discount. So you get these windows of opportunity. But they’re inextricably linked to the belief systems that you have about that particular Thing. What I’m normally pretty good at is helping people to recognize those belief systems and creating a change, and sometimes That’s challenging the belief system. Sometimes it’s things like clinical hypnotherapy, sometimes it’s just a metaphor. With the right metaphor you get people seeing the same thing in a different way, and then it’s like I’ve never thought about it that way before And then that enables them to make an entirely different decision, because it’s a paradigm, it’s a framework to evaluate things differently.

James: 30:19
That’s so cool and this is something that you touched upon during when you were speaking. So it’s like this obviously, we can have different people with different objectives. Right, and here’s the thing. There’s no right or wrong belief Necessarily they can have because their objectives are different. They can have different beliefs and their beliefs might be optimized to take them to their own relative objectives. Right, but totally contradictory to each other. Right, and it’s all about figuring out what those are, because the beliefs that you have are only effective. Whenever you can, you can say that they’re relative to something else. Right, they have to be measured against something. Right, they’re either effective, they’re optimized or they’re not. Optimized is how I explain it to people. Optimize means they’re going to take you towards your goal in the most effective way. Right, even though some people might say well, you know what? I don’t agree with Your belief or that sounds silly. Right, but you keep it anyway because you know that it’s more likely to facilitate you reaching that goal. Right? you said something. If I’ve understood correctly what you said, this is what I say to people all the time, right? so here’s the thing. Let’s go back. You said something really interesting just then about auditing beliefs. How does one audit their beliefs?

Adam: 31:30
Yeah, the way that you start is by giving an element of importance. So the meta belief about beliefs so anything matter is kind of like the highest possible level. So a meta belief is beliefs about beliefs. So what am I beliefs? I’ve got two meta beliefs that are quite useful and again I use the word useful because they don’t have to be right or wrong, but if you believe them then they can be helpful. So I have one met a belief, and that is that I can change it. I can change a belief whenever I want, because if you don’t believe that you can change a belief, then that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But if you believe that beliefs can change rapidly, then that’s a good belief, because then you can change beliefs quicker. So I have a belief about beliefs that they, they, they can change, but also that beliefs itself Have a cause and effect relationship. So as you change a belief, that then influences lots of other things as a ripple effect. So generally, beliefs are normally linked to values And then the beliefs influence the emotions that you feel and then the emotions that you feel tend to influence the thoughts and actions that you take. The thoughts and actions that you take influence Your environment and the quality of life that you you have. So the the auditing belief element is that if you can believe anything that you want And you have a belief about that, and that you can change any belief, well then you arrived to the conclusion that it makes sense for me to have the best beliefs possible And to remove the beliefs that are most limiting and harmful or disempowering at some level. And then you almost use a metaphor become a gardener of your own belief systems. You wanna keep the flowers and remove the weeds. But to get to that point it wouldn’t make even sense to do an audit unless you believe that you can change your beliefs And that you can have new beliefs that are useful. So it’s kind of like a little game. But once you have that belief and it takes some people longer to get to that idea that you can kind of change your beliefs, just as a side note, the way that I get people to create the belief system that they can change their beliefs Is by letting them know they’ve already done that. So normally I ask someone I would say when you were four or five years old, did you believe in Santa Claus? And they’re like yes, and it’s kind of like okay, was that excitement real on Christmas Eve when you thought Santa was going to deliver those presents? yes, okay. So you had real emotions linked to Santa coming. But was Santa real? it’s kind of like no, okay, so you had a real emotion connected to a belief that wasn’t real. And how difficult was it to get that excitement back when you knew Santa wasn’t real? Oh, that was hard. And how quickly did it take for you to no longer believe in Santa? And normally they get, they regressed. They have a little flashback of an older sibling saying, oh, santa’s not real. Or a friend at school. And then and it hits them like that moment in sixth sense where you realize, like he was dead all along. He’s like, oh right, it’s all been a lie. So it’s kind of like, so they have evidence that they can change a belief within their own life. Is kind of like if you said, right, you completely change your belief as to whether or not Michael Jackson was alive the moment you knew he was dead, okay, so you change the belief in a second. It’s just, some of these beliefs are kind of contextual, peripheral beliefs and some are identity beliefs or meta beliefs that have a huge impact. And when you change that meta belief or that identity belief, it has a huge impact. You know, that’s the kind of the road to Damascus kind of epiphany. It’s kind of like who am I really like? you were a dentist And then you had some kind of realization about who you really were and you had a belief change at your identity And from that point onwards you couldn’t have gone back to just being a dentist. You know, you fundamentally saw your role differently. So everyone has got these experiences of belief change. And that’s an important place to get people to, because once people accept that they’ve already changed beliefs, then the next logical question is well, what are the beliefs that would be most useful for you to change right now? And what I tend to do to get to that audit is I’ll use anecdotes or I’ll say look, a lot of people believe that. You know, the money is kind of risky to invest. You know, does anyone here believe that? and if they raise their hand it’s kind of like okay, well, clearly you believe that, or you can. You can believe this idea of like, for example, children that grew up in a home where, if they didn’t spend the money in their piggy bank, their siblings would spend it. Okay, learn very quickly that money is scarce And if you don’t spend it, someone else will. So that belief system that money is there to be spent gets ingrained with a carrot and a stick very early on. But if you go up in a household where you were encouraged to have a savings account and you could see that money grow and by not wasting it on sweets, you would then have more for something more important later, and you grew up in an environment of delayed gratification. Those two people have very different belief systems about money. There are some people that have a compulsion that if they have money on a credit card or in their bank account or in their wallet, they are like an obsessive compulsive. They will not be able to remain calm unless they’ve spent that money. So it’s gnawing away at them. Equally, you get other people that have a different belief system that, okay, having a rainy day fund of money is their security. Well, that’s an entirely different belief system, but it’s massively going to influence their choices and their decisions. So the audit comes from a level of self-awareness, to say what’s my beliefs on this?

James: 37:30
Do I believe that?

Adam: 37:32
And then if they do believe it was it costing me by believing it? And if that’s detrimental and you believe that you can change it, well then it’s kind of like what would I like to change it to? And all this sounds like Harry Potter kind of magic, but it’s kind of like it’s something so important because if you believe and the interesting thing with the belief system is that you act as if it’s true that that’s the nature of what defines a belief system you act as if it’s true, whether it is or it isn’t. So there are people that grew up in really religious cults, for example, that believed that if they did certain things they would go to hell. And it’s kind of like and if you did those things, then you would have that kind of visceral reaction. you’d have people with panic attacks and all kind of stress reactions, because people can believe pretty much anything. And if you’re not sure, if that’s true, everyone knows at least one conspiracy theorist. I love speaking with conspiracy theorists because they are evidence for me that humans have the capacity for two things. One, they can believe anything And secondly, you can have cognitive bias to protect that belief. You find references to back up whatever you believe and you have strategies to contradict or dilute anything that contradicts your belief system. Humans can believe anything. Therefore, why wouldn’t we believe the most empowering, useful belief systems that exist? And when it comes to money, there are certain belief systems that are really, really useful to believe because it can change your life.

James: 39:08
I love that. I love everything that you said then And it was really amazingly articulated as well. The Santa Claus belief just absolutely hits flipping home because everybody’s like, oh my goodness, that is so true. And then when you understand that actually that belief was fallible, even though it felt so damn real at the time, then it makes you think, doesn’t it? And the way I sometimes explain this to people is this I say okay, listen, if you thought that everything outside the front door of your house was lava, you would literally never go outside because you think that you perish. But here’s catch 22,. The only way you’re ever going to find that out is if you go outside the front door. But there’s this immense barrier of fear at the front door. Now, sometimes that belief will serve you. If it literally is lava, then it will serve you, but we know that it isn’t. That sounds ridiculous. So here’s the thing Even though that barrier of fear is absolutely massive, it’s only really when we actually push through it a little bit and in the face of new data, then we can change our beliefs. It’s not the only way, but that’s one of the ways.

Adam: 40:11
And it’s totally true. And the metaphor that I use to highlight that point is I say well, what if your fear is an illusion? And in many cases, fear is like shadows and action is like light, and the shadow and light can’t coexist. So if you take action, the fear disappears, particularly if it’s a fear that was never real to begin with. So there’s a nice acronym of fear stands for false evidence appearing real. But the tricky thing is is that if you think about what the function of fear is, it’s to keep you safe, it’s to protect you. But one of the problems of fear is that most people deal with fear by avoidance. So if you believe that something is dangerous and you avoid it and then you never do that thing again, then fear becomes like a noose. It gets tighter and tighter and tighter. And I’m saying this as someone that when I was 19 years old, i was a recluse for about a year because My strategy for dealing with anxiety was to avoid the triggers. but all that did is it increased the sensitivity to the triggers, which largely were just my perceptions. Now, to use the analogy, i mean I was almost an agoraphobic of that particular point, so My heart was beating at 200 beats per minute. I had one of those old polar heart rate monitors just opening the door to my bedside So it did feel like the floor was lava, felt like I was going to die if I left my apartment. So you can have real intense emotions and the fallacy that a lot of people come to when it comes to belief systems. if they have a real visceral emotion, then there is a belief system that the belief that is causing that emotion must be real because they’ve got a real reaction to it. Okay, it’s a fallacy, it’s a false belief system. but if every time you feel that thing, you avoid the thing, well then you have a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you can never reach the point of contradiction. So there’s this kind of meme that says you know, the reason that you haven’t seen pink elephants hiding in trees is because they’re so good at hiding in trees. It’s kind of like no, there’s no pink elephants in trees, yeah, because they’re so good at hiding. There are certain ways of believing about things that will always give you evidence that it’s real, even when it’s not. and that’s where you get these kind of really destructive loops. And there’s a lot of those destructive loops in money, because people think right, investing is risky so they never do it. And then when they read the newspaper and they hear about a scam or they hear about prices going down, they’re like, see, you know, i’m the smart one because I never did that thing. And that cognitive bias means that they ignore those people that could retire at the age of 40 because they made smart investments. It’s like no, they’re just trying to sell some kind of scheme. You know, if you look at it through the lens of that, you’re going to have that cognitive bias where you cherry pick everything that supports your belief system and ignore everything that doesn’t. but if, fundamentally, it keeps you trapped and you’ve got to work for the rest of your life and certain things happen and you’re left high and dry, well then that’s going to become true for you. So when I created hypnotic wealth, it was designed to enable people to effectively audit the 10 beliefs that are the most disempowering when it came to money, but, more importantly, provide the hypnosis sessions to enable them to change those belief systems and to feel comfortable with risk. And the way that you feel comfortable with risk is that you take out this binary idea of all or nothing A lot of people will look at money and they’ll say, right, you know, now I can lose it all. It’s like, well, why would you invest it all, you know? whereas if you start looking at investing or business as a game, where you want to get good at the game with low stakes, it’s a whole different thing, you know. then it’s kind of like you know it would be risky to drive 200 miles the very first time that you pass your test, but nobody does the very first time they pass the test. They have short journeys and when they feel more confident they do a bit further and a bit further. and investing in money is a lot like that It’s. it’s something to learn, but you want to learn with low stakes so that you build up the skills. One of my belief systems about money is that the journey prepares you for the destination. But actually, how you feel about making that first trade enables you to manage your emotions when it comes to risk. Now, if you can feel that way about a hundred pound investment and you can get to the point of managing that as your investments grow, then suddenly I’ve had days in the market where it’s got up a hundred grand or it’s lost a hundred grand. OK, i don’t lose sleep. in either case, you know I’m not super excited when it goes up. I’m not devastated when it goes down, because I’ve managed to regulate my emotions. In 10 years time it could be my portfolio goes up a million or down a million, but the journey has prepared me for the destination. I’m going to be able to regulate my emotions because, going back 10 years ago when it went up 10 grand or down 10 grand, you know again, i reconcile that as just part of the journey of investments that you invested volatile markets. That’s going to happen.

James: 45:37
Yeah, man, 100 percent. And one of the beliefs that I see most common is belief that money is scarce, right? So therefore you’re more likely to hold on to the money. Therefore, you’re less likely to invest it in things that might bring more money. Are you with me? See that all the time, Self-fulfilling prophecy? It always will be scarce. So the scarce in your head because you’re never going to invest it.

Adam: 45:57
But here’s an interesting thing, james, about this idea of if you believe that money is scarce, because quite often the dominant belief system is actually the most damaging belief system. So, for example, there are cases of kind of people hiding money under their bed because they don’t trust banks, and it’s kind of like, well, i’ve got the money and there it is, it’s safe and sound, and it’s under the bed or it’s under the mattress or it’s under the floorboards, safe and sound, no one can touch it. But here’s the thing most Western economies are increasing the money supply every single year. So when you do that, effectively, your safe money that you’ve got is being diluted about 5% to 10% every year. So that debasement means that your safe, secure thing is actually, you know, imagine a slot machine that every time you put 100 pounds in, you typically get 90 pounds back. Well, you only have to go through like five or six cycles and then suddenly you’ve got hardly any money left. That’s how casinos and free machines make so much money. It doesn’t have to be, you know, a very high percentage. So if money is being debased by about 5% to 10% every single year, well, in about 10 years you’ve lost half of your money by keeping it really, really safe. So you get these odd paradoxes where the very strategy to keep you secure is the riskiest possible thing to do. And they’re common, these paradoxes.

James: 47:27
Yes, 100% right, and it comes from not knowing how money works. Partly, i think, right, flip side. Well, another thing to add on that people think investing in cash products long term is the best thing to do, right, because they’re getting a 5% return and that looks good on paper, right, yeah. But then if people don’t get that, inflation is 10%, right, and that usually, whatever interest rates are, they’ll usually be lower than inflation, right, usually, right, yeah, virtually always. It’s how money works, right, ok, but people have that belief that, well, they think that the money, the value of money, is fixed and they don’t appreciate inflation, right, basically, yeah. So they think that the cash option is the place to put their money long term, which means that whilst you are getting 5% appreciation there’s, but because there’s a 10%.

Adam: 48:18
Yeah, in real terms, you’re losing 5% every year.

James: 48:21
It’s a net loss of 5% right Now. if you need it, maybe under two years, then it’s justifiable. But 10 years you will not make any money. You will stay in the position that you currently are. You’ll never get to the point of financial freedom. But again, it comes about through knowledge. I have one thing to add to the fear thing that you said way back when. I’ve got another acronym for fear Yes, everything and rise.

Adam: 48:46
Nice, I like it.

James: 48:48
We’re going to wrap up in about two seconds. Adam, i’m really curious to know, through all your experience with helping people with this stuff, what are the top three limiting beliefs that you see most commonly?

Adam: 49:01
Yeah, that limiting beliefs around money is that it’s risky to invest. I would say it’s risky not to invest. So that’s number one. That it’s a zero-sum game, i think, is another. And actually the nature of money is that if you believe it in terms of creating value, then it’s limitless. The money supply in the world is trillions and trillions Go back 100 years. It was billions Go back 100 years. Before that it was almost non-existent. So it’s kind of like we’ve got all this infinite kind of money. It kind of expands. So an abundant mentality is really useful. So therefore a scarce mentality is a really limiting belief. And I’ll say the third belief system is that somehow it’s wrong or evil or bad to have money. My belief system around money, on that particular area, is that money amplifies your character. If you’re a good, generous person and you’re given 10 million pounds, you could be even more generous. But if you’re a mean person that wants to cause damage to the world, that 10 million means that you’ve got more capacity to do damaging things. So my belief system, money is not good or bad, it just amplifies the nature or the character of the individual.

James: 50:21
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. Adam, thank you for an awesome podcast. Where can the listeners find out more about yourself?

Adam: 50:29
Yeah, so best place to go is if you want to check out my podcast. It’s called The Hypnotist. That’s on all major podcast platforms And my website is adamcoxcouk And I’ve got a couple of free videos there that kind of introduce you to the first module of hypnotic wealth, completely free. So you can kind of check that out just as a bit of an intro to who I am and what hypnotic wealth is all about.

James: 50:52
Wonderful stuff. Feel free to check that out. Everybody’s listening. Adam, you’ve been super generous with your time today. I am looking forward to the next time we catch up. We’ve got to get you back after that episode. That was awesome. Thank you so much, dude.

Adam: 51:03 
It’s a pleasure.