Full Transcript
Dr James:
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the Denys Timbervist podcast. We’ve got an amazing guest with us, as ever, particularly amazing guest today and her name is Joanne Phoenix. We’re here to talk about, well, beliefs, the subconscious mind, the conscious mind, all of those things, all of those amazing things. The power of the mind is absolutely incredible, and take that from me, the biggest cynic as regards to this stuff of all time, maybe as of, let me see, two, three years ago, and now I’m a big fan, a big proponent, and I believe this stuff needs to be shared, ultimately because it can help us insofar as progressing us as an individual, as a person, as regards to how we can be happy and content in our life, but also further on our wealth journey to you, which is what we’re going to talk about in just a minute. But anyway, let’s save that for the conversation. Before we do that, joanne, how are you today?
Joanne:
Very good. Thank you, Joanne.
Dr James:
You’ve underpawed. Well, you know what? I know that obviously we’ve chatted a little bit, Joanne, but there’ll be lots of people out there on the podcast who have yet to meet you, so maybe it might be nice to do a little bit of an intro.
Joanne:
Okay. So there might be some people watching me because I’ve been in the oh no me, because I’ve been in the dental industry for God, I think, about 27 years. So I worked for Colgate and I worked for Henry Scheinfels 15 years and I currently work for Practice Plan. So some people might know me from those backgrounds.
Dr James:
Good stuff and anything more to that, because I know that you were telling me a really amazing story about yourself off camera and your journey has to get to where you are. So you know what I love stories, because stories make people real really and we all have a story. So if you were happy to share as much as you were comfortable with what you were telling me beforehand on the podcast, I think that would be an incredible way for people to get to know you.
Joanne:
Okay, so I lived a very conventional life. Prior to being in the dental industry, I was actually hairdresser. I’ve always been a little bit spiritual and curious, but I’ve lived a very corporate life and a very like, say, conventional life. I climbed the ladder, had my nice house, nice car, great job, husband, everything. And then, like I told you about five years ago, I found myself having a bit of a breakdown. Meltdown because I realised that I wasn’t happy, Like I’d chased everything on the external world that I thought would make me happy. At 22 years old I was nearly 55 now I came across manifestation books and they used to do manifestation. People have heard of that. That’s about creating things that you want. I chased all these amazing things, everything that I thought would make me happy, and ultimately I found myself one day looking around and going I don’t even know who I am, I haven’t got a clue at who I am anymore, and I actually had psychotherapy. And then I went about deconstructing my life and changing things. And here I found myself five years later in a completely different scenario, happier than I’ve ever been. On the internal. So every day I get to feel at peace, every day I’m relaxed and the biggest thing is, I know who I am and I’m not afraid to be that person which I was before. I thought I had to fit in or be a certain way, and they were parts of me that I wouldn’t have shown until now.
Dr James:
I love it. Thank you for sharing that so much, and one of those things that is on the external and can serve as a driver. However, ultimately, what I often find is, no matter what milestone a hit, it’s a little unfulfilling is the money side of things, would you agree? And perhaps that’s partly what you were alluding to?
Joanne:
Yeah well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having money. In fact, I feel wealthier than I’ve ever felt, and I’m actually rebuilding my wealth. Only, this time I’m building it from a different place and I’m building it from joy. So, just on a book, all about how to do this, about how to create life from a happy space. When I get up in the morning now I’m excited and I do things that are joyful for me. And I noticed that particularly when, obviously, I work in the dental industry. But what I’ve observed this for many, many years, because at Hennish High we used to teach business, we used to work with software I’ve noticed that there are many dentists who think they have to do things a certain way. And then when I come across the ones that are entrepreneurial even associates, not just business owners when I come across the ones that are entrepreneurial, who dare to do it a little bit different, who follow what their passions are, I watch them thrive.
Dr James:
Why do you think that is?
Joanne:
What that they apply. I think that’s when we show our true selves. People will respond to that and everything’s energy and you’ve heard a vibration. We’re energetic beings and when we’re resonating at a level that we’re living our truth, people respond to that, but a lot of people are scared. So that’s what my book is all about. My book is all about how to be conscious enough to move through that fear and what that fear is.
Dr James:
I love that, I love that. So that’s super high level how that journey looked for yourself, right?
Joanne:
Yeah Cool.
Dr James:
What do you think? Here’s the thing we all have trauma, in vertical commas Every single one of us has, and the trauma comes. Here’s the key thing to realize. Right and this took me a while to realize as well Just because we have trauma doesn’t make us unique or the victim.
Joanne:
No, you have to take full responsibility for who you are.
Dr James:
Well, this is the thing. Listen, people might say to me. It’s easy for you to say to James middle class and all of that and have the background that you do no major strife in your life, but at the same time I think that it kind of and I’ll never be able to say that I went through anything horrendous whenever I was a child. You know like really dreadful, but you know, to a greater or lesser degree, there’s things that in that, they’re in there, that through the lens of my perception key phrase lens of my perception at the time, felt traumatic right, and what I felt for a long time was that that was like unique to me and that everybody else was just floating through life in this blissful state and how unfair it was. And then the second, that I realized that actually, to a greater or lesser degree, when you guys know people, more or less everyone feels like that. That to me, that to me, took the victim hood out of it.
Joanne:
And that’s, that’s the stumbling block. So when I was coaching that was really interesting for me because I do a really in depth coaching diploma I did have a traumatic background and it was for me. One of my things when I was coaching was to show people you don’t have to have a traumatic background to experience trauma. So trauma for a child can be sat in a class and they don’t understand what’s being spoken out and they want to cry but it’s inappropriate to cry and they can’t even ask. So what happens is if you, if you look into the science of it and the energy of it, they don’t cry. So they store that energy in their body and then this creates the stumbling block. When they get older so it might be something comes up very similar. And if we’re talking about wealth, they’re going someone’s going to build the wealth, if still about that energy stored in their body. And when they go to do what’s required, they’re not used to feeling and in order to move through what they need to move through, to be different, to achieve what they want to achieve, they would need to feel that energy that’s in them and that people don’t understand that and that’s why they self-sabotage, they don’t do what they need to do. So, talking about investing, we used to talk a lot about digital dentistry and how much of a benefit that would be, and people would be afraid to invest in that. But yeah, I’d watch the ones that had invested in it. They were doing absolutely incredible. And what happens is when they’re afraid, when we’re moving towards what we want, we’re hitting those traumas and all that stuff’s coming up. So we kind of retreat. It’s making sense.
Dr James:
It is. And what I would add to that is this because it’s basically our subconscious, manifest in itself, and all we know, if we don’t have an awareness of what’s occurring, all we know is we feel icky and we want it to stop. Right, if we were goddamn icky, whatever is going on, even when it’s a positive thing, and even when it’s a direct, indirect contradiction to our stated goal and objective. And I’ll give an example of that. Right, for a lot of people. They say that they want financial freedom. Right, everyone says that. Have you asked anybody walking down the street do you want to be free financially? Right, yeah, for a lot of people who are in a situation where it’s feasible that they might create something in which they could achieve that, such as a business, for example Then sometimes what happens not to everybody, but sometimes an example of this would be the self-sabotaging thing that you were talking about as well. Because they feel icky, they don’t know why, then they push the eject button out of the business, however that looks. So that action is actually directly contradictory to their stated goal. Because if their stated goal, if their subconscious, was truly aligned with their stated goal, then they would just keep going, wouldn’t they. But here’s the thing unless you know that happens, unless you’re aware that’s happening, you just feel bad and then you react off the basis of that bad feeling and you have no ability to discern. Is it actually helping you or is it sabotaging you achieving your actual goal? And I might have got super. You know what? Can I just pause there for two seconds? Did that get super airy-fairy or did that make sense?
Joanne:
No, that makes sense and there is science to back it up now. So I’ll give you an example with me in my life at the moment. I’ve been wanting to write this book for three years, being on quite the journey for three years, and then finally I hired a mentor last year in August. I think you and I both know having a mentor is. Oh man not a mentor. You and multiple mentors, oh my God. So she followed me through this process of writing this book and started off really great and hit about a third of the way through and all started coming up and my mind was making all these excuses why I shouldn’t carry on, why it wasn’t the time, blah, blah, blah, blah. Thankfully, I’ve been doing this for five years and still last year this happened and she called me out. Thank goodness, I hired her, came to the end of the mentorship and then the book was ready to be edited and I put the pause on that and just so happened. Everything is energy, I became a grandmother, my daughter got ill and all these things happened. So in my world, that was all a great reason for not launching this book. And what I found myself saying things were like oh, I don’t have the money for this. Oh, and speaking out things that literally were not true. They actually weren’t true, but I totally believed them and it wasn’t until I really sat with this after Christmas and I hired her again to edit it, and now there’s a date set and I can see it’s still coming up. So I’ve spent the last 48 hours. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for five years and I want to let what I’ve written about and I came to something only yesterday and really core belief in my system that has been hidden and it was. I’m not worthy, and the great news is that once you’ve uncovered this, it’s been it’s. You’ve uncovered it, so that’s all you need to do, but you have to be willing to go there and look, and best thing to do is this meditate. It’s simple as that. Just meditate and allow yourself to see.
Dr James:
You know what it’s. It happens all the time where your subconscious is actually completely obstructing you from actually achieving what you want to achieve. It’s huge and I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on it by any means, but certainly the more I know about that world is the more I see it and other people. Yet still, sometimes it still catches me off guard myself, In fact, not even sometimes literally. It happens all the time. It’s just that it’s a skill. It’s not like we, it happens or it doesn’t happen, it’s more like a skill right. And you know, I’d be interested to learn about your taking meditation in just a second, because that’s actually not something I’ve ever done. Just before we do that, I actually had, I actually hired two mentors just this week, completely on the plate.
Joanne:
I didn’t even expect it to happen right.
Dr James:
And you know the very first one, he was talking to me and I was like I know this is really good, I know this is really good and he knows he’s versed in all this stuff as well. And I said to him I was like my subconscious is firing, bro. I was firing really hard right now. That’s what I literally said to him when he was talking to me and he told me what the investment was and I was like it’s wanting so hard for me to just not say no. And it was. I could have really easily listened to it, but because I’ve been there before and I’ve seen other people in that situation, I was even though it was really strong, like really strong. I kind of rewired my brain to realize that that’s actually means that I’m going outside of my comfort zone and that means that I’m growing. So actually it fired really hard and then I was like actually, james, this is why you kind of need to do this, even though that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily gonna work out or not work out. It just shows that it’s a growth thing for you. And I was like whoa, okay, and it had me for like 10 seconds and it’s trying so hard to be like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, like that. And then I had that epiphany and I was like, ah, okay, I see what’s going on here, but it’s so easy to listen to that. It’s like you’re a migtail or whatever the hell. It is that part of your brain you know what I mean Right next to the spine, right Like one of the primitive parts, and who knows, it might work out and it might not work out. I’d probably say there’s like a 90% chance of it working out, but your brain the little 10% that it would not work out your brain will listen to that 10% every time, every single time, right, and it’ll focus on all the things that could go wrong before it focuses on the huge chance of something going right and really on balance of ratios. 90% of something working out is freaking incredible. At least that’s what my intuition tells me at this stage. It may work out, it may not work out, but the point is, nine out of 10 times is a pretty good odds. You do that enough times and you’re gonna win.
Joanne:
If you wanna progress in life and you wanna I’ll use the word grow and expand, or if you’re ambitious and you wanna move to the next level of life, then you’re gonna have to expect this. The problems don’t go away. I’m being mentored by a multimillionaire at the moment and I’ve got to say that’s been really interesting journey, and he will tell you your problems grow with you.
Dr James:
Oh yeah big time.
Joanne:
He came from nothing, no money, and there is a multimillionaire. And he said you’re not gonna reach that level of wealth until you can handle problems. So they just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So the thing is to learn this, to learn presence, to learn that there’s no such thing as a problem and the problem comes along. Oh my God, this is great. This is growing and shaping me into the person I’m becoming, and not to believe whatever your mind says. It’s bullshit, it’s only knows what it knows up into that moment. It doesn’t know where you’re going and what you need to know for that. And it’s the skill, it’s the skill that you learn, and one that presence, he said talk about meditation the one that presence and meditation can help you learn. That’s like your training ground, Training ground to self-awareness.
Dr James:
I like that because you know, I’ve never I love this stuff like I’m fascinated by it and I try to grow myself on this front all the time, and that’s actually a big part of the message of Dennis and Vest as well. It’s like, hey, we’ve got the finance stuff, the technical stuff, the numbers, but actually making more money, in my opinion, is more about your skills. Well, it’s just at least just as much about your skills and your awareness and self-awareness and how you come across and recognizing these little traits in yourself which hold you back from success, which are massive, don’t get me wrong the tough places to go psychologically like really tough, but there’s growth there. And you know, one of the things that I’ve heard, this is a belief system. Maybe people believe this or don’t believe this, but if you wanna reframe your problems, if you wanna diminish your problems, basically if you get bigger problems, then they don’t really look like they’re that significant anymore. Take of that what you will. Not everybody’s gonna agree with that mindset, but there’s some sort of wisdom in there. But anyway, let’s talk about meditation, because I’ve never done that before. I’m interested in that.
Joanne:
So I knew I needed to meditate for years and years and years, and I’m a real advocate of it now. And I get this exact same response each time I talk about meditation I can’t meditate, my mind’s too loud, I can’t sit still, I can’t do that, I can’t do that, I can’t do that, and that’s the way I used to be and that’s a complete. I’ve done actually redoing my YouTube channel at the moment, deleting those things, but I’ve left a video on there that says so. You think you can’t meditate. And so, basically, meditation isn’t some enlightened guru like Buddha sat under a tree with nothing going through their brain. That would be like less than 1% of everybody that could do that. And enlightenment isn’t about empty in your brain. What it is is becoming self-aware. So one of the best meditation teachers I’ve ever come across, called Michael Singer, has written two books, the Surrender Experiment and the Untethered Soul, and he used to meditate for like eight hours a day. And even the only advocates 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, and it doesn’t matter if when you start meditating, your mind wanders off, your alarm goes off. 10 minutes has gone. When you have daydream, for 10 minutes, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of meditating is just sticking to that routine. To begin with, 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, whatever you choose, and then eventually what will happen is you can use the breath and bring yourself back to the breath of awareness when you remember, when you do get through 10 minutes without being distracted, and the whole idea is to become aware of yourself. So a lot of people won’t meditate because they become agitated or they become angry. That’s absolutely amazing, because you are then agitated and you are then angry and you bring in awareness to that agitation and not anger or sadness. And so meditation is a training ground as well for the rest of the day. And what happens is you start to become self-aware, so that voice in your head, it’s turning all those lights that you then become aware of that voice and you just witness it. You don’t try and get rid of it, you witness it and you don’t become it anymore. So what happens is it moves up as through time, it moves on into the rest of your life. So let’s say you’re at work, let’s say you’re a dentist, your book’s running late and you’re anxious, and then one of your members of the team does something and that triggers you and then you go into that whole emotional response and that has a knock and a fault in your team and that does affect wealth. Right, that’s how the business is running. What happens is, if you practice awareness and presence, you are aware enough to go okay, that’s triggered me. Okay, I’m stressed, okay, this is going on in my system. I now know that my nervous system is in a flight and flight response, say, for example, and I now know that if I use my breath I can calm that down. Wasn’t the nurse’s fault, it’s nobody’s fault and it spills out into the rest of your life. But first it’s not easy because you have to look, you’re forced to look at yourself. So the first time I meditated, I’m a bit extreme. The first time I meditated I was just back from Hawaii, I’d given up my job, I’d gone on this bit of a life exploration and I meditated in a cottage and cleaned my own for five days and I only stopped to eat and speak to one friend a day for five days and it was the most frightening experience, just to stop and I was shaking and all sorts were happening. But it’s the best thing I ever did. I mean, it was a bit extreme. I don’t suggest that you do it that way, but it put me on a journey to self-awareness and I remember thinking on the very first evening, because I started in the evening. I remember thinking on an evening oh my God, this much is going on in my system. I’ve already been doing quite a lot of self-help. There’s no wonder my life’s chaotic, there’s no wonder my life’s a train wreck. And I’ve worked on this for five years now and I still notice things come out of the system. It just doesn’t end, but it gets easier and you become less effective. So that was the answer to that in a lot of words.
Dr James:
That was cool. Listen, the more information, the better. And just to go back to what you were saying, yeah, a classic example of someone sabotaging themselves whenever it comes to wealth is the situation that you just mentioned. Let’s talk about the principle of a practice. You snap with a team member. Say that happens consistently, the team member leaves, then we have to replace them. That’s all money out of a pocket. You know what I mean? It’s not the only thing, but if your goal is to make money, if your goal is to have a business that is productive in that sense, then actually that’s a really good example of our self-sabotaging right there, without even being realising, because we’re just reacting in the moment. And what I would say is this say you’ve got a situation and the exact same situation occurs on a Monday, whatever that situation is, and you’re in a good mood that day and you don’t snap, right. Then let’s say two weeks later, you’ve forgotten about it the first time. It is no bearing on the subsequent occasion. Exactly the same thing happens when you’re in a bad mood, right, and you snap. And then two weeks later, you’re in a good mood, the same thing happens and you don’t snap right, so here’s the thing, you know, the most powerful thing that somebody said to me. On that one they said James, did that person make you angry or was the anger already in you?
Joanne:
Yeah, absolutely. We can’t make anybody angry, it’s impossible.
Dr James:
The anger is in you, your mind is complicit in it and you know lots of people would be like, oh, what the hell is this? We were. But you know what, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that it doesn’t get the better of us sometimes, even though we know that. But what it does give us is accountability, a lot more accountability to be reflective and understand just how much control you have.
Joanne:
So you talk about, there is science actually like this. So Dr Gabor Matty, who’s a really good one to go to the very scientific minded of which I realized entities are evidence based, so I would really recommend his works Cool.
Dr James:
Yeah.
Joanne:
He’s got the sense and Epigenetic. There’s another one search Epigenetic on YouTube, full there.
Dr James:
Man. You know where I get half this stuff? From Dilly Stowick on Instagram. Epitamous quotes and Aristotle quotes. They’re my bank of knowledge, but you know what I need to read a book on this stuff, because it’s fascinating.
Joanne:
Thanks for reading my own.
Dr James:
Oh, I don’t want to do just that. On that very topic. I know you’ve mentioned your book and we’re really interested to learn more. Can you tell us about your book, john?
Joanne:
It’s about creating consciously. So, like I said, I stumbled across manifestation at 22 and I really dug deep and that can appear very woo-woo to a lot of people. And then I reached a point in my life. It was like gosh, I’ve created everything, and they even beyond that, even after I left all those scenarios. Why is it that I can manifest so well? But yet there are things that I try to manifest or try to create, try to do, and they don’t happen. And that’s when I started to dig into all these unconscious beliefs and these things and these fromers that we’ve had that are in our system. So the book’s all about how to be conscious, create a life that you want to live and well, more of what you want to live. And so, for example, if we were to relate it to dentists, I come across a lot of dentists that did really well at school. They came into this career. I’ll tell you what I’m coming across a lot working for a practice plan, very incredible dentists who want to do more private dentistry, especially in Scotland, uk, in Scotland, and they are very invested in the NHS. It’s not paying them and they are scared and they’re afraid to do more private dentistry and create more wealth because they’ve got so much going on in them that is conflicting, living a life where they’re benefiting their patients, they’re benefiting themselves. They know deep down they want to, but they’re so afraid to do it. I come across that so much and the book’s all about that, and why.
Dr James:
Love it. Thank you so much for sharing, joanne. Well, listen, it’s been really enlightening having you on the Dinosaur Invest podcast to share your wisdom because, as I was saying earlier, I wasn’t necessarily someone who’s open to this stuff and now I’m the biggest believer and proponent of it in the whole wide world. In fact, I personally think my belief system is that when you refine this stuff and you craft it and you work on it as in your understanding of yourself, in your work and self-awareness and all the things we were talking about it’s actually just as important maybe even slightly more important on your wealth journey than the technical side of things, which is the finance stuff, because it can actually speed it up a lot, in my opinion, particularly whenever it comes to running a business, etc.
Joanne:
Joanne thank you so much for your time 100%. We reflect what we are on the outside.
Dr James:
Billion percent, a billion percent. Thank you so much for coming on the Dinosaur Invest podcast today, joanne. Any final words of wisdom?
Joanne:
Good. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Dr James:
My pleasure. We’ll get you back soon, guys. Hope everybody listening today has a smashing day, wherever you are in the world, and we’ll see you on the next episode of the Dinosaur Invest podcast.