Dr James: 0:44

What is up? Dems Invest Nation. Welcome back to another podcast with Returning Faces, Tom. I almost said Dr Tom, but through force of habit because of all the dentists that we have on the show. But Tom is of course, not a dentist. Tom is Tom. How would you introduce yourself? What would you say?

Tom: 0:59

your job title is Well, my original training was a therapist on Harley Street for many, many years, but really now I help successful people to be more successful by looking at their relationship to success and their work and what they believe they deserve, and so still helping people clear out their psychology, helping them believe in themselves more. But today we want to talk about, like what do people believe about money? What’s people’s relationship to money, your attitude to wealth, your sense of what’s normal? All this stuff has a massive impact on how much money you make. Also how much money you keep, how much you enjoy the money that you make, which is also probably the most important thing, right?

Dr James: 1:41

Big time. And you know what? I used to be super duper, uber cynical about these things. I just thought the only way that you could make more was if you got lucky, if you bought the right crypto, if you bought the right stock, if you invested in the right thing. All of that stuff I thought it was purely external rather than internal. And then I went on this voyage of discovery, which, in which I learned and understood how many subtle things that I thought were true were holding me back from success and hitting that next level, and tell you what it’s not like. I’ve worked through all of them, but I’m like 50 million times better than what I was before and through seeing the effects of that in my life and just how much more good stuff has come back, has come into my life, and how much my life has been enhanced. Now I’m like a flippant preacher about this stuff. I’m like, yes, how can we share this message with as many people as we possibly can, particularly with dentists? Because we’re so traditionally academic in the sense that we come through school a lot of our energy spent in our GCSEs are A levels and our degree and then we get out of university and then we’re so focused on our careers and there’s very little time to think laterally about all these cool concepts that can really, really, really help us, which is actually part of what Dennis, who invested about.

Tom: 3:00

Yeah, nice, yeah, I mean it’s. You’re right. As I’ve told, through my psychology and I’ve helped so many entrepreneurs like make more money it has been fascinating to me discovering the types of things that impact on what you believe is possible, what you feel you deserve. You know, the great motivational speaker Jim Rowney has got this great phrase and I love it. He says if you get given a million dollars, you’d best become a millionaire or you’re going to lose the money. Love that, because having a million dollars is not what defines you as a millionaire right, it’s, you know, it’s a part of it. But the truth is really it’s about whether you feel aligned with that, whether you feel you deserve that, whether that feels normal to you, because if it doesn’t, you will fritter it away or you’ll sabotage your success, or it will be so mind blowing to you that you’re turning over a million pounds a year or that you’ve managed to save a million pounds. That you’ll be. You’ll be. Your success will be blocking you because it’s so surprising and so shocking and seemingly so enormous that you can’t recognize actually you could, just you can, you can completely take it to another level. So it’s not that people don’t succeed, it’s actually they limit their success. They think that they’ve got that. And I’m not on about constantly pushing just to make more and make more and make more. For me, I’m as interested in people having life balance and actually making a fortune. And actually, you know, if you can turn over a million in a year and work three days a week, well, that would be, for me, would be preferable than, you know, making three million in a year and working 60 hours a week. For me, it’s like the psychology is around your lifestyle and actually some of the you know, most wealthy people. They don’t work crazy as they don’t need to and they certainly don’t want to. And so people make the mistake of thinking you know I’m going to be successful and then I’m going to be happy. It’s like no, no, no, no, you want to be happy and you’re way more likely to be successful. So how do you rearrange your life? How do you rearrange your business? How do you recreate a lifestyle where, by which you have contentment, calmness, clarity, focus, joy and and and and a deeply held belief that you can still make really good money without absolutely driving yourself insane?

Dr James: 5:13

Awesome stuff. Two things I wanted to share really quickly and I want to jump in to some of those beliefs that we need to. Well, we don’t need to do anything, but it’s helpful to rewire on this journey. Very first one is the very first thing I wanted to say is. It alludes to what you were saying just a second ago, and that is another quote or saying that I heard once and it really stuck with me and I don’t know to whom it is attributed, but the saying itself goes like this you are exactly in life where your subconscious wants you to be. What do I mean by that? Think about business. Think about if you have a really good month in business. Let’s say you do double your turnover in your business in a month, right, what probably will happen is you feel so good about it that you’ll spend your way back to where you were before and then the next month where you’re not doing so well, you will work more, you’ll put more effort in to get back to where your preference, to get back to the level of turnover that you used to right. So here’s the thing that’s your subconscious basically keeping you equilibrated at this particular amount of turnover. And unless you actually think to yourself hey, do you know what I feel? Good, but does that necessarily mean you have to take my food?

Tom: 6:27

off the gas or not?

Dr James: 6:27

even not necessarily take food off the gas and then stop working. But does that necessarily mean you have to blow all this money? It’s until you’re aware of that, it’s only until you’re aware of that, will you stop spending your way back to where you expect yourself to be, which is actually a manifestation of your subconscious, or, conversely, or conversely, finding yourself in a position the month after where you’re not quite where you want to be, turnover wise, therefore working harder to get back to that point, because then you just get caught in the cycle. So it’s about resetting your financial thermostat, so to speak, enhancing what that turnover is expected to be Potentially, therefore meaning that whenever that money comes into your life, you don’t have a sudden urge to just go and blow it all, which is partly what you’re saying. So that’s the first thing 100% Financial thermostat. That’s called right and it’s a manifestation of your subconscious. So you just got to be really aware of that, and it manifests itself in all sorts of ways, even ways you don’t even realize are happening constantly, but at least if you have a name for it, you can contain it, which is the saying that I always throw around. So whenever that, that used to happen to me all the time and there’s a certain number that I couldn’t get past in my month, in a month. And now I reflect on it I’m like, oh wow, that was just my brain playing tricks on me and I didn’t even see it at the time. I had to actually be conscious of that before that stopped. And then the second thing is just really, really, really quick share. I used to have the belief that the harder you work, the more money you make. That’s just not down to you. That is just not down to you. If that was true, the people who make the most money in the world, the people who are doing hard physical manual labor all day long, and we just know for a fact that that’s not the case. So the second, that we understand that that observation is not consistent with that belief. When someone points it out to us, then we begin to question it, then we begin to be receptive to new, better beliefs which are more likely to allow us to be wealthy. Hard work and remuneration they correlate to a point, but past that, it’s more about points of leverage. It’s more about where you put that effort and you don’t necessarily have to do more to get more. That was a big belief that I had to work on, and I’m still working on a little bit as well. I’m still working on unraveling that, because sometimes I still find myself just doing things for the sake of it.

Tom: 8:46

Of course, yeah, absolutely. And it’s not about the doing, it’s about the state of being. Are we being in alignment with a value set and an expectation of the thermostat as you described it, which I love, which is just comfortably, joyfully, wildly abundant, and it’s just, and that feeling, normal, like what’s your family’s relationship to money? What was your dad’s relationship to money? Did your mum believe about money? What did they tell you about money? What do you see amongst your friends? A lot of people. They’re like, well, I’m more successful than most of my friends. I’m like, yeah, but compared to who or what? And I’m not saying like, ship out your mates and just wheel in billionaires to hang out with although if you did, you’d probably make a lot more money because your expectations change. So if you look at the differences between kind of like you know a private education and a kind of public public, you know comprehensive education. Any kid in any setting can smash it and they can get straight A’s and they can turn their life around. But if you took 100 kids from Eaton or 100 kids from a local comprehensive and you said to them what’s normal in terms of pay, what’s normal in terms of lifestyle, they would have a completely different internal thermostat and actually that is going to determine their success more than anything else. People are like, oh well, they’re born a spoon in their mouth. You know daddy’s going to let them invest something. Yeah, that happens. Trust fund babies, of course, but it’s more just their expectation of what’s normal that sets a tone of what they will and won’t. You know, do and be, you know, makes a massive difference.

Dr James: 10:17

Yeah, I agree with that, because those people will be looking for the opportunities which are more likely to yield the remuneration that they expect. Therefore, they’ll not even engage with opportunities that would preoccupy their time otherwise. Therefore, they’re subconsciously walking through life in this more receptive state to more high leverage chances, to more high leverage things that might come their way. And when I say high leverage, what I mean is greater output per unit input, and specifically in this case, greater output per unit input, and it’s specifically in this conversation what I’m referring to as time is the input and output being money. Of course you might say as well as that, because of the silver spoon factor, they’re more likely to find those opportunities. It’s really hard to hone down someone’s success to one particular thing, but what I would say is I agree with you in that respect for sure, about how their expectations are that much higher. Therefore, they’re more likely to find these opportunities, surely just by having the ability to be more receptive to them and their eyes open looking for them, because you’re subconscious like a heat sink and mess out and improve your eyes constantly.

Tom: 11:23

But also it also like if your primary purpose is to make money, then you’re coming from a kind of survival place, even if you’ve got loads. So you’re coming from the sympathetic nervous system, which means you’re running on adrenaline, you’re running on cortisol. When you’re in front of someone and you’re running those, what happens is they don’t feel safe. You don’t feel safe. You might be sending them some new, you know, some dental procedure or some implants, or you might be trying to convince someone to come and do training with you, or trying to seduce someone. Whatever it is, the point is we want to partner, invest, spend money with, engage, you know, make love to people who are in their safety. They’re regulated, they’re running on the Paris empathetic. They’re an oxytocin, they’re on dopamine, they are feeling and serotonin. These are the hormones of joy, these are the hormones of stability. This is what communicates people. This is a person who’s got enough food in his cave. This is a person who isn’t threatened by predators. It gets very primal. The psychology of success is how stable is your nervous system? And if you’re scrabbling for cash and you’re overworking, you come across like a desperate salesman and people feel it, and so it’s so much about. Success is being able to operate with a place of like focus and clarity and calm and stability and joy. It’s like those are the people that we want to hang out with, because we feel good around those people. Someone who’s insecure makes us feel insecure. Someone who’s boring makes us feel boring. It’s like you know charisma and confidence and calmness and it’s all about wow, this is a safe footing. I want to build on solid ground and our relationship to wealth, therefore, is an energetic one. And I’m not talking about hippie positive psychology. I’m on about the practicalities of our beliefs affecting our nervous system and how that affects how people see us. You know, when you want some people walking to the room and they are so flipping money, right, they just look great, they feel great and they may well be driven, but their nervous system is stable and we’re like I want to invest in you, I want you to teach me, I want to. That’s what we want. We crave that, we seek that and we want to condemn and destroy and push away those who are edgy.

Dr James: 13:47

There we are. So it becomes like a self-fulfilling thing really, past a certain point it’s almost like the more you let go, the more you welcome it into your life in a way.

Tom: 13:55

Totally my partner you know I was like I wanted to slightly quiet in August and so I structure it with my clients now moving forward. You know I work with people with either three months or six months or 12 months, but when August comes along, that’s it. We’ll pause and then, you know, the months will start again. Whatever you’re paid for will start again, you know, in September. And it was just really interesting just the way. Yeah, my August naturally just went quiet and I was like, oh, that’s it to my partner it’s like it’d be actually quite good to pull it. You know I work with maybe six or seven people a year, right, so it’s the way I, where I charge, but she was like oh is it time? you kind of bought in another one or two clients and I was like, yeah, it is. And she was like, oh well, you know, you know, you know what you need to do. And I smiled and she’s like you need to take a few days off, really relax, you know, just, really just do a bit less, because it was September and I was starting to get a little busy, you know. And she’s like oh, in order to bring in more money, you need to do less. I was like you’re absolutely right and I did. And then just just incredible opportunities came to me. It wasn’t like they just magically landed in my lap, it was more that just I was thinking. Clearly I was more creative when I had conversations, I was more grounded. You know, it’s contaliate.

Dr James: 15:15

And that’s even coming from you, who’s hyper aware of this stuff. You know what I mean. And it still took. It still took your part, and maybe you were going to do that anyway, but your partner reminded you.

Tom: 15:26

I guess, or she’s obviously. She called it. It was nice. It’s something we’ve been working on over the last year and a half and BC. The truth is, our natural state is one of we’re wild animals worrying when winter’s coming. You know, have we got enough nuts to make it through winter? This is our normal thing. This is seasonal affective disorder. It’s not about the sunlight in terms of actually creating vitamin D in our skin that’s a slight part of it, but it’s because it’s triggering to our animal inside. Winter is coming and a long time ago that was a scary thing. Getting through winter is no joke, and so people get really stressed in September and they get really, you know, it’s a dark time and so just being able to remind yourself not to lean forward into it, to lean back, to remember you actually have a door on your cave and you have central heating. Now you can relax, there’s enough cans in your larder. I know this sounds ridiculous but actually, speaking to your internal primal survivalist nutter, you know we all have an inner caveman and an inner cavewoman, like the chimp mind, right, but it’s you know. I think cavemen were probably more troubled than chimpanzees. So it’s your inner caveman, you know. And yeah, they take some calming, they take some soothing. You know I mean everyone knows when they’re in there sympathetic. You know they’re leaning forward into life and out of breath and pushing too hard. You know it doesn’t work.

Dr James: 17:35

Yeah, 100%, okay, cool. So when you’re working with clients and when you’re helping them bust through this stuff, what are the most common things that you see, or what do you think are the most common hurdles that hold people back from more success? And I get that that’s a little wishy-washy. How do we define success? Success could be even achieving that state of mind, but I guess if we were to be really specific for the purposes of this podcast, let’s say specifically greater remuneration as an enhancing their income month in, month out.

Tom: 18:08

Got it. I mean so. For me, my specialism is working with people who struggle with self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, and so these are still very successful people, people around them. They might be the most successful person in their circle right, but compared to what they’re capable of, they’re holding themselves back and they know. They know that there’s a greater potential waiting to be expressed there. And just because they’re doing great, so yeah, and so it’s really common. I think this holds most people back, at least to some degree. In simple terms, it comes down to your relationship with yourself. If people struggle to receive compliments, if they feel like a bit of an imposter when things are going well, if they struggle a little bit with addictions, these are really clear indicators that people have a psychology which is slightly opposed to you being successful. So your success will involve push and willpower and effort and managing your mindset, and you know it’s like this is where the miracle morning stuff comes from. It’s like someone has to wake up and work for two hours to get into a positive mindset. It’s like if your relationship with yourself and life is clear, you wake up in a positive mindset. You don’t need to spend two hours doing gratitude journals and meditating to get into a positive state of mind to be successful in the day. It should be your normal waking state. I don’t mean I wake up every day feeling joyful of course I don’t. That’s not a realistic aim. But I don’t need to put loads of effort into being into a state of positivity and belief, and so for me it’s like why don’t we have that? The truth is, most of us are clogged with a whole bunch of frustrations, resentments, angers, disappointments. That goes largely unprocessed, and we can get away with it until we’re like 35. But after 35, a hard drive often just starts to get a little bit clogged and we just shine off. The shine gets taken off life. We’re a bit heavier, we’re a bit more frustrated, we’re a bit more cynical, we’re a bit more skeptical, you know, and that has a massive impact on how much money people make. So my work is about helping people identify these moments and these beliefs and these stories that are still stuck in their system, that need to be detoxed, so that people can then wake up in a much better state and frame of mind. But if we were looking for another kind of quick and simple answer, your family’s relationship to money is massive. There’s a whole bunch of glass ceilings that we get boxed in, and you might be listening to this thinking you know I’m earning way more than my dad ever did and I’m actually the breakout guy. But if your family did struggle with money, it’s highly likely that you’ve got some limiting beliefs about what a lot of money is and what’s possible, and so that’s a really, really common one, and so when I work with clients, I also encourage them to take some extraordinary steps towards reaching out to people and building collaborations, and what you find there is people struggle a little bit to feel deserving enough to maybe make that call to that celebrity or reach out to that person that they know could do a partnership with them, and so my work is about encouraging people to take extraordinary steps to confront their fears. So if it’s jumping out of an airplane calling up that celebrity you want to work with, you know committing to, you know bowl up to people you don’t know, every time, you go out and just practice being more charismatic and confident, whatever it is is like. Clear out all your of your resentment, all of the negative energy that’s been pent up inside you, and actively seek to confront the fears that hold you back and within a year you’ll be living in a completely different world.

Dr James: 21:47

That’s pretty cool, man. That’s really awesome, and I’m sure there’s like 10 layers to as to how the actual process of unraveling that looks, in so far as the psychology aspect of it and how you help these people. Well, actually, let me pause there for two seconds.

Tom: 22:04

Is it?

Dr James: 22:04

quite a complex thing, or is it fundamentally quite straightforward? Or I mean no, I mean?

Tom: 22:09

the simple answer is straightforward, but they the unpicking. It’s complicated. There’s a very specific order to being able to help people get out of the way themselves and stop sabotaging and stop feeling like an imposter and and so, yeah, that can be tricky. And also, getting you know, encouraging people to kind of look at things that they’ve kind of you know pushed away. They’re like why should I dwell on that? I can’t change the past. And the biggest take home I would say to anyone is like you don’t need to change the past. It’s not about changing the past, it’s about changing what you made. It mean, about who you are, what money is, how hard you have to work. It’s not what happened. Who gives a crap about what happened? That’s not relevant. Same thing could happen to 25 different people. Some people won’t be affected, other people be liberated. It’s not what happens to you in life, it’s what you do with what happens to you and that you can change at any time. And it’s not about taking years in therapy. It’s finding ways to pinpoint where a limiting belief was formed and going to meet with that belief and changing it. And boom, you know, almost automatically the phone rings. More, more people want to do business with us and we start believing that we deserve it. And people start feeling that we deserve it and everyone starts celebrating our success. If we feel guilty and we feel undeserving, the people around us will resent our success and try and tear us down. When we get truly self loving, people just start to feel really good about us feeling good about doing well. It’s a total game changer.

Dr James: 23:35

That’s interesting, that’s really interesting that somehow you almost hacked their subconscious as well to be more aligned with yours, not through an indirect method, just via the energy that you project. That’s actually new to me. I never thought about that 100%.

Tom: 23:53

More than anything, congruent belief is transformative. This is leadership. Leadership is the ability to bring your visions to life, and you only do that if you can enroll people in your vision, and that comes from being able to get people to feel compelled when you share who you are and what you hope to do, and if you do that with a completely vibrant sense of belief, like it’s 100% congruent. People’s unconscious are incredibly good at detecting bullshit, and by bullshit I don’t mean lies, I just mean someone who’s not completely congruent, and it’s actually very rare to meet someone who’s 100% congruent. I aim for that, but it’s rare I’ll be able to manage that. But if you’re operating in a really high level of total faith and belief and congruence, people’s unconscious feel that and they’re like whatever he says, whatever he says, it’s like it has a truth to it that creates power. This, again, is not some wishy washy nonsense. This is just the psychology of again. People are looking for something that feels secure and right and true.

Dr James: 24:59

Surely you still get some naysayers. Though what’s that? Surely you still get some naysayers, like there’ll still be some people who don’t believe, even when you reach complete alignment with your internal belief and you’re absolutely.

Tom: 25:12

Yeah, of course, because they are, for whatever reason, not wanting to. You know, there was a piece of research done on people who identified as being lucky right, and they contrasted this with a group of people who identified as being unlucky right. And the one experiment that I just found fascinating was they printed a newspaper they took from recent stories and in the middle of the newspaper there was an advert and it pretty much said giving away a free car. First five people to call this number get a free car. No tricks, no, you know, we’re not doing it, it’s just a completely free giveaway, right. And there was a massive correlation between the lucky people seeing that advert, responding to it, acting on it, and the unlucky people not even seeing it.

Dr James: 26:06

There we are Right.

Tom: 26:09

It’s so much more like our beliefs about reality, you know, end up becoming true. Yeah, and that’s not just generally like are we? You know, yes to life and no to life, although that is a massive thing, but on almost every level, what you believe about love, what you believe about your ability to play music, what you believe about your ability to do mental arithmetic or play chess or play the piano, all of these beliefs are invariably insanely limited, and what we’re capable of is extraordinary and unlocking that potential is a blast, because everything starts to change and every area of your life is improved when you improve any area of your life. And the reverse is also true how you do anything is how you do everything, and if you have areas of limitation, it puts a limitation on everything.

Dr James: 27:02

That’s cool. Thank you for sharing that. I guess what I wanted to know to build on that for the benefit of the listeners. So that’s really, really, really cool. How can we hack our beliefs? How can we make them better? Is there anything that we can talk about today Real quick fire, because you’ve got about five minutes left in so far as how we can enhance our beliefs and our expectations and our relationship with wealth and then therefore make it more likely we can welcome more into our life 100%.

Tom: 27:31

I mean quickly, five minutes, quick fire kind of advice I would be like find your resentments, let them go, forgive yourself, forgive others, move the airfine right. Just get the negative energy out of your life. Same with unconditionally loving as many people as you can, but not unconditional proximity. So some people you need to love unconditionally from some distance. So get around as many positive people as you can. Get around as many people who have strong and high beliefs about what’s possible. Hanging out with people that are making a lot of money and enjoying it and have also life balance, whose wives still like them, whose kids still know them. This is important, right? It’s like it’s be around people who have the life. That is a reflection of what you truly, truly want. Be very careful where you get your advice. Always choose to get advice from people who have a lifestyle that fits, so they’re selling you something or advising something from an alignment that is actually in alignment with your highest vision for your possibility. Look at your beliefs about love, money. You can literally write out a letter. My beliefs about money are. When it comes to money, I believe that I full stop fill in the blanks. It’s like you can expose your negative and limiting beliefs quite easily by writing yourself a letter about what you believe about these things. Let your pen just write and you’d be like, wow, I’ve got some messed up ideas about how I get love or how I make money, or how much hard work it has to be, and so exposing your negative beliefs and then working on reprogramming those by finding more positive ways of thinking and feeling about it. Get around people that seem to already have that and soak it in. Soak it in. Be aware of where fear is running you. So confront your fears wherever possible, all in any fears that you have. Lovingly confront them. Step into them. Do more public speaking. Go jump out of an airplane, go do a bungee jump. Do rock climbing. Go and speak to the girl that you really like. You’re scared to Go. Speak to the celebrity and don’t miss that opportunity. I know you did. You’re in Dubai, aren’t you, james? And you saw someone who’s a crypto celebrity and you’re like I’m gonna go and speak to him and it’s like this action means you get to go to bed being proud of who you are. Contribute, make a certain percentage of your money, do good in the world. You know, beyond just taxes, it’s these are the things that make us go to bed liking who we are. We go to bed liking who we are. We wake up liking who we are, which means when we go through the world, other people will like us. That’s the key.

Dr James: 30:01

It’s massive right. It’s almost worth doing something for the energetic state and the energetic state that you’re gonna be in afterwards not even necessarily the thing itself, and that was something one of our previous mentor pointed out to me, and he was like James, you do know, it’s more about how you feel about it rather than what that specific thing was that you did, and I was like holy shit, that actually resonated with me big time. So, yeah, like you can look back on the day and think, hey, do you know what? Maybe that thing didn’t go how I wanted it to do, but I still tried, put the effort in and I feel empowered because of that.

Tom: 30:38

That Beautiful, absolutely 100%, 100%. Like you know, philanthropy is great and contribute, do good things in the world. But recognize doing that is hugely about raising your sense of abundance, and your sense of abundance is key. A final piece I’ll leave you with. You know, the degree to which we believe we are blessed is the degree to which we’re blessed.

Dr James: 31:08

Let’s let everybody dwell on that. Tom, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been flipping awesome as ever. I’m looking forward to getting back on the podcast super soon.

Tom: 31:19

Thank you. Thank you so much Lost.