Dr James, 0s:

Super excited to be presenting this podcast today. A little bit different. We're talking about money mindset and how my next guest retired from the 9 to 5 at 28. We have Mr. Neo from Neopositivity.com, the official voice of the Thoughts Become Things movement. Neil speaks to dentists specifically and helps them understand how much more there is to Light and Dentistry, what are the things that they can do? Whether they like dentistry or they don't don't like dentistry, it's good to know what else is out there and broaden our horizons. Neil has a really interesting story, lots of takeaways. Looking forward to getting into it on today's podcast. As ever, you can claim your CPD for this episode within the official Dentists Who Invest Smart Money Members Club. Smart Money Members Club also includes multiple mini courses and webinar series on finance for dentists, including how to become as tax efficient as possible, as well as understanding investing. All of this content counts as verifiable CPD, and you can download your certificates there and then upon completion of each lesson. In addition to this, we also include a whopping 10% discount on your dental indemnity and a 5% discount on lab bills for dental principals, amongst other perks and discounts for members. Please use the link in the description to claim your verifiable CPD for this episode. Everybody's just heard my intro about Mr. Neo, and I'm gonna do what I'm very bad at today, which is do less talking rather than more, because this podcast is about yourself, Neo, and how we can relate the lessons that you've learned, particularly from your walking away from the nine to five at the age that you did, how people can translate them to their own lives, and why you believe this is especially important of it's an especially important message for dentists specifically. We're gonna be getting into all of that today, all of that good stuff. Neil, maybe a good place to begin is with a little bit of an introduction from yourself to the audience.

Neo, 1m 53s:

Yes, yes. Thank you, Dr. J. Can I call you Dr. J?

Dr James, 1m 56s:

Yeah, sure. I've been calling voices.

Neo, 2m 0s:

No, that's a he's a legend out here, and you're a legend. Um, thank you for the intro. And uh hello everyone and welcome. I'm Neil from NeoPositivity.com. Voice of the thoughts become things movement. And just to sum it up for you, uh as quickly as I can before we dive in, uh, you know, I learned about this phrase, thoughts become things. Uh, when I was 28 years old, I was a police officer on a SWAT team in the most dangerous city in America. And when I learned this phrase, I got obsessed with it, how to use it, how to manifest. And uh eight months later, I was retired and I sat on a journey to tell everyone exactly how I did it. You know, so interviewing people that know about this stuff, learning more from them, and then sharing it on stages. I've been doing that ever since for the last 18 years. I'm obsessed with it, changing lives. And uh, I was brought into the dental world because of the high suicide and depression rate, you know, specifically to uh change the industry. They were number one in America, high suicide depression rate for 18 years in a row. And they brought me in specifically to combat that. And in the last four years, we've gotten down to number four. So something's working. So in a nutshell, you know, that's that's where we're at with it.

Dr James, 3m 18s:

Nice. And all of that good stuff on the Dice Podcast, the best of the best of those lessons which are really valuable to people. And you know what? We should just set the scene. Um, when we share this stuff, we're we're sharing it from the point of view of emphasizing the positive side of it. Like what takeaways can we have? Because there'll be people out there who just flippin' love their life, right? Or or people who think it's really great, but they're looking for these little bits of tid, you know, tidbits of information to take their life to the next level. We're definitely not saying one path is superior over the other. You know what? If you love dentistry and you're working nine to five and you're living your best life, in a way you kind of are retired, right? You're having fun, you know, it's it's so unique to you. And I just wanted to say that to set the scene. We share this stuff from a place of inspiration, and that's about it. Neo, when us Brits hear about the SWOT agents, we think to ourselves, right, this is what I don't know how it is in America. Maybe you can just set the record straight, okay? But basically, when we when we watch movies and the SWAT agents get called in, we're like, oh shit, shit's about to get the fan. We're sitting up, shit's about to hit the fan. We're sitting up on our seat, and we're like, right, okay, this is the this is the action part of the movie. So I'm actually really interested to start a roundabout there. How did you get into that?

Neo, 4m 34s:

Well, let me have you ever heard of uh a Warhammer?

Dr James, 4m 37s:

Yes, the the little figurines and you paint them, right?

Neo, 4m 40s:

Yeah, is that big at all over there?

Dr James, 4m 43s:

It's it's actually a UK company, interestingly. Okay, yeah, so it's it's actually on the uh a little bit of an investing reference here. It's on the aim market, the alternative investments market. So it's like if you're not quite big enough to make the FTSE 500, I think you go on this AIM uh public uh stock exchange, effectively. So yeah, it's a UK company, so there we go.

Neo, 5m 3s:

Nice. Well, you know when those guys show up, how all the rest of the soldiers are looking.

Dr James, 5m 9s:

What is it? The um oh yeah, we will not we've got to be careful to not go down too far this rabbit hole, right? Because a lot of people might not have heard of Warhammer, but it's like what are the what do they call the guys, the the Space Marines, right?

Neo, 5m 21s:

Yeah, there it is. That's you know, when all the normal cops are there and SWAT team shows up, it's like the movies, they're like the celebrities of the police department. Yeah, so it's actually like rightfully so, because the training and everything that we go through is rightfully so. It's earned, and the things that we have to do, you know, going into houses full of smoke and gunmen, you know, normal cops don't have to do that. So a lot of respect, yeah.

Dr James, 5m 50s:

Wow, and what drew you to that path? Because you went on a bit of a journey, right? You obviously that was the objective, the goal for you at one point. That was like, wow, this is where I really want to go. And then you had a bit of an awakening, right?

Neo, 6m 3s:

You know what? I say like this. I always wanted to play in the NFL, I wanted to be a football star. And while pursuing that, I ended up having my daughter and my my dad, who was a sergeant in that same police department. You know, he was just like, you need medical benefits. So take the police test. I took it, I scored high, and that's where I ended up at. And, you know, while I was a cop, you know, I wanted to be undercover, I wanted to be SWAT, I wanted to be, you know, bike patrol, I wanted to do all those fun things. So yeah, just following what I love to do, you know. Karate was huge in my life growing up and football, you know, obviously was huge, and being a police officer involves chasing people and fighting. That's karate in football. So that's how that ended up there.

Dr James, 6m 51s:

Sure. Because we have over here, I don't I'm not an expert on this stuff, right? But in America, there's a a lot more of a gun culture, right? What is it, the Fifth Amendment, isn't it? The right to bear arms. Over here, not so much. So there's not really it's not really as common that that there's you know, there's these sort of agents required. Uh so they don't get nearly the same publicity, but SWAT is like everywhere in the movies. So it's crazy that it is actually like that in real life. So you were you were following your heart, in effect, and then I guess a question to ask is just before we move on, was the when you made it, when you got to where you wanted to go, which was to become a SWAT agent, how did the reality compare to how you imagined it to be beforehand? Was it that? Was it different? Did you become disillusioned?

Neo, 7m 40s:

It everything was just so much more real. I was um I was on a championship paintballing team before that, and so the tactical warfare part of it I was already good at, but when you got real bullets in the game, that changes everything mentally, blood pressure, tunnel vision, that changes everything. So it's just a lot more faster, and you know, you just got to be trained to use muscle memory because you can't think in those moments. It's like flying a helicopter. Uh, I'm a pilot as well. When you fly an airplane, you you know, use gauges and you fly. When you fly a helicopter, you can't think. Your hand is moving off of just reactions. If you try to think, the plane, the helicopter's moving left, go right, you're gonna crash. You just have to use instincts completely when you're using the uh the stick. So it's kind of like that.

Dr James, 8m 36s:

Okay, fine. Yeah, right, crazy. Okay, cool. So we've talked about that part of the journey, and then you had an awakening, as I as I was saying a second ago, and that's when you learned about the concept of thoughts become things, which is on your t-shirt.

Neo, 8m 55s:

Yes, every shirt I wear, my wristbands, everything uh says thoughts become things on it. Um, my old partner in the police department was a retired CIA agent, and he's telling me about he knows I'm all about psychology. I've always been into the brain. I wanted to take psychology classes. Um, and he tells me about this movie that they make all the CIA agents watch every year in the academy. Every year they have to watch this one movie. And I'm thinking it's like SWAT team, rapid deployment, something like that. But no, it's this movie called The Secret. You familiar with The Secret?

Dr James, 9m 29s:

I've heard of it, never watched it.

Neo, 9m 33s:

Well, if you're gonna get into it, just skip the movie because it's although it's a good movie, it's a bit redundant. They basically say thoughts become things over and over again for 45 years.

Dr James, 9m 40s:

Should we say spoiler alerts, right, Noy? Or no?

Neo, 9m 43s:

No, because they say thoughts become things over and over again in the movie, they explain it 50 different ways, but it's just it's it's more of a documentary. Sure. Um, uh, I'll put it to you like this: Oprah describes the secret as a cherry on top of a cake. I describe the secret as a cherry on top of a multi-layered cake with sprinkles and jimmies and MMs and all the fixings. So you need to know all the other things as well. And that's what I did. I compiled everything together to become what was neo-positivity. It started off as a philosophy and became a stage name. So that's what I got from the movie. Thoughts become things, and uh, I just got obsessed with the concept. You know, my partner told me about it. I saw the movie, it made so much sense. It connected all these pieces in my brain as to why I did what I did and in my whole life and why things played out the way they played out. So for me, you know, a lot of people hear a concept and they might resist it. And some people gravitate towards it. I immediately gravitated towards it because it made sense to me. And then I wanted to know more. I went straight to YouTube. That's where I saw, you know, uh the Oprah video. She said there's a book that she sleeps with on her nightstand that she highlighted so many lines in the first chapter that she just stopped highlighting. That book is called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolley. So I went and got that book, and then I just let the universe take me on a journey, getting me new, more and better information that I could use to start shifting my mind and all this other stuff. And, you know, I guess we'll get into the all the meat and grits of that later. But yeah, that was the start of my journey, you know, and I started manifesting things, it started working and it started working on demand. And I said to myself, whoa, this thing, if it really works the way it's working, then I should use it to retire. Like I want to retire and do something else. You know, I knew I was meant to help people on this earth, but I knew I was meant to help more than just the citizens of Camden City. You know, I was doing great as a police officer, but I wanted to affect the world. And in order to do that, I couldn't be chasing bad guys for 40 hours or 40, 50 hours a week in this little city in New Jersey. And so that's what I did. I set on a path to retire, and eight months later, I was done. I was able to do that, and that's exactly what I did after that. I've dedicated my whole life to spreading this information and learning more about it.

Dr James, 12m 9s:

I love that, man. And you know what? Something clicked, right? Because literally eight months later, you got to where you did, which is amazing. So I'm looking forward to learning more about that journey as this podcast continues. And I mean, yeah, in a weird way, I I uh the listeners in this podcast may or may not know that I left clinical dentistry when I was at 29, and the reason that happened was uh a lot of it was manifesting, man, you know, like a lot of it was like I just know I'm just gonna build something and I I can see the vision, and there's literally two realities right now. I'll either die trying, right? I literally, I literally die trying, okay, or this will happen, right? And when you bring that energy, you know what? You can't you can't lose, like you physically can't lose because you're not gonna quit. You only quit, you only lose when you when you give up, you know, and um that that kind of period of time. It was about you know what it was about like maybe I started Dennis Who Invest and then I went back to clinical dentistry for a while, and then nine months later it I actually went full time on on Dentist Who Invest, and yeah, man, I just would never have believed that was possible. And it's it's weird these kind of curveballs and things that can come up for you. And I'm not saying that's the right thing for everybody, but I am saying I actually really liked dentistry. Uh I just guessed that other things came up. Let's just say that. And I I was I was really enjoying the journey of Dentistry Invest, and I just thought, you know what, let me try this for six months and let's see how it goes. And here I am, four years later, still having fun, still growing. Uh anyway, I don't want to steal the limelight. You know, I'm just I'm just what I'm trying to say is the story resonates with me, man, because a lot of it was manifestation. You have to believe in yourself uh before anybody else does, right? Like you have to set you you're almost setting that boundary. It's like, no, I take myself seriously, and then you keep pushing until everybody else does, because they never will, it'll never happen the other way around, if you ask me. So it's it's partly that. But anyway, man, um I'm really interested to get into more of your story. What happened in those eight months?

Neo, 14m 27s:

It was it was to key off of what you just said, real quick, which will segue great into this. In those eight months, I had to learn how to use thought to become things. And one of the biggest struggles was when I sat back and tried to close my eyes and and meditate or just sit in the headspace, two or three seconds would go by of stillness, and then my mind would say, I need to get milk on the way home. Or did I take out the dog? It's that's it's it's humans, and it was so frustrating for me. I'm like, why won't my brain just allow me to sit in these head spaces and visualize? Because they say we're tuning forks, we vibrate at a specific frequency, and that's according to what we're feeling and what we're thinking. And any two things that vibrate at the same frequency will naturally pull towards each other. So you and a certain outcome, good or bad, stressful or great, when you're thinking about it, you're pulling it towards you. And so if I can't sit in these great head spaces because my mind is wandering everywhere, then I'm not going to be able to pull it towards me long enough till it's actually a part of my reality. So that became my main area of focus. That was it. We as humans, we have 65,000 thoughts on average per day per person, right? And as a tuning fork, 94 plus percent of those 65,000 thoughts are on autopilot. Our brain is just throwing at us what it's used to throwing at us, and that's what's creating our future. Thoughts become things, and so immediately I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't want autopilot creating my future. So I need to control that 94% of my thoughts. I need to shift that. And so that led me to all kinds of mental exercises that I had to create because I can't, I can't use the same mental exercises as Oprah Winfrey. For her to sit in the corner and say, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich. My ego, if I say I'm rich, I'm rich, my ego is gonna say, No, you're not, no, you can't. How dare you dream that big? How many people with the percentage of people that you grew up with that made it? You know, your egoic voice that's always kicking your back in when you're trying to dream and not allowing you to stay in these head spaces. That voice really became my target focus. I needed to weigh, I needed ways to be able to sit in a great scenario that's not currently happening yet, you know, a scenario where I'm retired, a scenario with that promotion, whatever I wanted. I needed to be able to sit in that scenario without my ego coming in and saying, that's not currently happening. That's not, how dare you dream that big? And that became the area of focus where I needed to really knuckle down and see how to trick the ego into shutting up, allowing me to stay in that headspace, vibrate at that frequency, and pull it towards me. So that was just a journey. I always call myself a professional tryer because that's what I'm doing. I just try, try different things in my mind, try, try, try. I feel tested, friends and family, old, short, tall, young, fat, skinny, no matter what religion, I feel tested with everybody I can. And when it works, I release it to Facebook. And so, to you, to what you were saying earlier, all of these mental exercises that I came up with, a lot of them I would see in other books, and I'm like, okay, that's cool. That means I'm on the right page. But most of them I came up with them on my own. But no matter how many mental exercises that I might give somebody, none of them will work if you don't believe in your ability to manifest. Is what you were saying earlier. You had the confidence in yourself that you were either going to do this or die trying. And you had the confidence that it was going to work. You didn't know how, but you had confidence in your ability to manifest. When I was trying to, I just came up with a book, 18 years of research, over 2,000 live stream interviews, and over 200 podcasts of me interviewing people who have used these techniques. I'd put that all into this book, and I couldn't couldn't think of a name. I'm like, man, what do I mean this book? What do I name this book? I ended up naming it your ATM. And ATM stands for ability to manifest. And I like when you think of an ATM machine, you know. Um, do you guys call it ATM machine?

Dr James, 18m 43s:

Where we do, we do, or we just say we say crash point, but we we know what an ATM is.

Neo, 18m 49s:

Okay.Okay, yeah, no, because I said that to somebody from Missouri and they were like, What? Like they never used that term before. So anyway, uh, I'm thinking of the ATM machine, you put something in it, your card, and then you get something out of it. And that's how the universe works. You put your thoughts and your emotions into the universe, and then it gives that back to you. And so I like the ATM reference as far as the machine and then your ability to manifest, because that is the strongest point. I can give you all the tools, I can give you every mental exercise, I can give you everything I've learned over the last 18 years. But if you don't believe that you have the power to create your future the way you want it to, it's not gonna do no good. Not gonna do any good. So, yeah, that was that was my journey. The next eight months was intense mental exercises, field testing, seeing what worked to get me this and what didn't work to get me that and what felt good when I said it, changing my affirmations because one word made me feel different. Talk about this thing in the in your chest. I call it the knot. If you're to lie to yourself or say something bad, uh you'll feel it go down, right? And it kind of like gut-wrenching, you know. If you're if you were to and give me an example, if you were to say, I'm a billionaire, you're gonna feel something go down a little bit. It's because you lied to yourself. But if you're to smile or laugh, you feel it go up. Pay attention to that knot. So if you're gonna do an affirmation like I'm rich, you feel the knot go down, it's not a good thing. You shouldn't use that affirmation because your ego's coming and saying, No, you're not, no, you can't, no, you don't. Your ego's showing you your bank statement, proving to you that you're not rich. So you got to pay attention to that knot. If you were to say something like, I love money, that knot might go up a little bit. It's not gonna go down, might stay still, might go up, but guess what? That's what you want. You want affirmations that make that not go down. Because we do love money. It's what feeds our kids, it's what put gas in our car so we can go to where we we need to go to. So it's all about the verbiage with these affirmations. And this is the type of things that I was working on over those next eight months and been trying to perfect as good as I can over the last 18 years, you know, while sharing and learning and you know, interviewing people along the way.

Dr James, 21m 9s:

You know, I'm just gonna offer two quick reflections and then I wanna hear what happens next. There's a book by I think it's John Maxwell, uh, and it's called Psycho Cybernetics. Have you read it?

Neo, 21m 24s:

No, but I'm familiar with Maxwell.

Dr James, 21m 27s:

Yeah, I think it's I think it's Maxwell. Maxwell, no, sorry, I messed it up. His name is Maxwell Holtz, I think it is. Sorry. John Maxwell is somebody else. But there's a quote in that book, okay, and he's like, Your mind, your subconscious mind is a heat seeking missile, right? It just finds the thing that you tell it to, and that can be happiness, but it can also be sadness, it can be anger, it can be also joy, right? And it's it'll always find ways to prove itself right. So, in a weird way, if you want to achieve your Goal, you have to convince your subconscious mind that it's real, first of all, because then it will find ways to prove itself correct in your world, which sounds really woo-woo, but it's a hundred percent a thing. It's a hundred percent a thing. Because otherwise, if you don't do that, if you're trying to do something and you fail, which you inevitably do, depends how you term fail. Let's say you suffer a setback, right? That's not really failure, it's just a setback. Your brain, your subconscious brain is like, Told you you could never do that in the first place, right? And you're that much more likely to just quit. That's the first thing. I know the second thing is this, and I know this this may be a teeny bit controversial. I'm gonna say it anyway. I know not everyone is an Elon Musk fan. That's fine, that's completely okay. Let's put that aside. The one thing the guy does do, or the one thing the guy has is a crazy level of self-belief, right? But we can't take that away from him, that's for sure. And there's this one video, and it's when he's he's being interviewed, right? And he gets really emotional, and it actually gets me a little bit, this interview. And the interview says to him, it's like, Hey, when you had that third rocket failure, did you think about giving up? And you can see the tears in his eyes, man, when he's replying to the to the interviewer, and he's like, I don't ever give up. And it's the way that he said, he's like, I don't ever give up, like that, right? And it's the emotion, I'm not doing it justice, right? It's the emotion in his voice, and you just tell you can just tell he believes in himself so much, man. You know, even though he's trying to do this completely crazy thing, like trying to he literally trying to put this the first private rocket ship in orbit that no one has ever done before, and um to you can just tell that he doesn't care if he's a laughs and stalk, he literally does not give it one toss, he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him. He will either do that or he'll die trying. And I really like that clip, man. I really like it, and I know not everyone's an Elon fan, but I do really love that clip. Anyway, uh back to what you were saying, I just wanted to offer those reflections.

Neo, 23m 56s:

No, it it it is a great it plays a huge role, your confidence, and so many people lack that confidence, and it's this pre-programming that we have growing up, and a lot of people will blame society and governments and all that other stuff, and it does make sense, but you've been taught limits since you were birth born. When you were a baby, you could only scream so loud, you could only reach so far. Every single day of your life, you're taught these limits. So, of course, you're gonna have limiting thoughts. Of course, you're it's gonna be hard to see unlimited. We've never seen unlimited anything. So we're tasked with being able to see and live in these head spaces for long periods of time to attract these things towards us for the reward of having them. You know, they say controlling one's thoughts is the hardest occupation a man can have, according to both science and religion, right? Hardest thing a person can do is control their thoughts. And for a lot of people will say, Oh, it's not hard. I can think about anything I want. Just think about the last time you had a grandparent who was in the hospital, and you're trying to stay positive, and the hospital bed's beeping, and you don't know if they're gonna make it home this time because they've been in there a bunch of times. You're trying to stay positive, your brain keeps going back to the what-ifs and all my that's just a perfect example of how the mind works. It's it's very hard to control, it's the hardest occupation someone can do. However, it yields the greatest reward in the spirit of yin-yang evenness, it yields the greatest reward, which is the ability to create your future a thousand percent. But this is it's work, it's not easy, it is a lifelong practice. It's not like a black belt where you get it, it's yours for the rest of time. No, no, no, this is something you gotta work at. It's like jogging. You're a world-class jogger and you take off for two months, you're not gonna be a world-class jogger anymore.

Dr James, 25m 52s:

You might still be good, but this is like a muscle practice. Um I think a muscle is the perfect analogy, right?

Neo, 25m 59s:

Yes, yes. They say the brain, they don't say, but the brain is an organ, but it acts like a muscle, and that's what you're reprogramming, your brain. Those that 94 plus percent of your thoughts that's on autopilot. What I try to do is get people to reprogram that so they think differently, they see differently, they act differently, they make different decisions, and what happens when you're making different decisions, different outcomes. Now you're a different person, now you're retired at 28, 29, pursuing something else. I loved being a cop. You love being a dentist. However, here's the thing I felt like I was meant to serve a larger group of people than just the 80,000 citizens of Camden City, and so I went for that. You know, I always try to tell people, let's say you wanted to be, let's say you're this type of doctor, uh, a foot doctor, right? And you were meant to be a gastro. Now you can go on and be a successful foot doctor and have three or four practices and live a very great life. But once if you had pursued what you were meant to do, which is the gastro, it would have been far, far better. Whatever that means, whatever 10 practices, better marriage, better life, I don't know. But when you pursue your dream, what you're good at, what you do naturally, great, that's when you end up in those spaces. That's when you end up in great head spaces, and everybody around you is in a great headspace, living a better life, living a better, fulfilled life. I was happy as a cop. I was I was the man everywhere I went, you know, SWAT team. I walked in the room, I was like the president. Um, and it and it felt good, you know, but I was putting my life on a line every day. My kids knew that, they saw that. The waves were sometimes at my face. But when I started pursuing this, the waves have been at my back ever since, thrusting me into the next room full of people that wants to hear this message and is telling it to all their friends and it's spreading it, and that's how it goes. The waves are at my back now. I'm out of the danger that I was in. My kids are happier, everybody's just happier, and that's what I that's what I feel. So for everybody out there, you might like this and be great at that. And I just want everybody to take a little deeper look inside and ask yourself if I won $10 billion, right? After I paid off all my family's debts and bought everybody houses and cars and took care of their health bills, and I took every vacation that I could possibly take. At the end of all that, you're gonna sit down on the sofa and you're gonna be bored. And you're gonna say, Okay, now I have to do something. You're not gonna care about money because you got billions, but you're gonna have to start, you're gonna start some kind of company, whatever it finds, that is and pursue that. In your downtime, while you're still doing whatever you 40, you're doing for 40 hours a week, just put a little bit of effort into pursuing that, and them waves hit you at your back and you start ending up in phone calls in that direction, and be open to where the universe takes you. I never knew that this is where the universe was going to take me. And I'm here and I'm happier than I could have ever been. And you know, from talking to you, it sounds like you're experiencing the same thing. You know, you you you're you're growing when you talk about your newest ventures. And I love that. See, you start smiling. For those who are listening to the podcast, get on the video and see them smile when I say that. And that's it's a different life when you're in that headspace like all day. It is a different life, a different world. And I just want to get everybody to that place.

Dr James, 29m 35s:

Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. And you know what? My reflection on that is uh that I never really intended to build like 90% of the things that I built, right? I was in it, it almost sounds slightly whimsical, right? But I was just doing the thing that I thought made sense next, but was also fun and that I enjoyed. And that sounds a bit whimsical, but you can actually get pretty far on that logic because I think a lot of people they kind of they're they kind of feel paralyzed because they're like, oh, but how do I know the next thing that I'm gonna do is gonna be my passion or what I enjoy or what I love? It's literally as simple as just pick the thing at the top of your fun list, potentially, that it doesn't even necessarily have to make you money, right? Just friggin' do it, right? And it's as simple, it's it's almost like it's as scientific as that, really, from for me. And then if it is your goal to make money out of it, I mean you'll probably figure that out along the way, or maybe it isn't. That's fine too, but at least you're kind of enjoying yourself at the same time. And I think we should remember that. I think life's very short, and we need to remember that a lot.

Neo, 30m 47s:

I think it's a huge level of blind faith. You're just like, okay, I don't know if this is gonna work out, but I'm gonna give it a shot anyway. And so many people have been let down so many different times in their life that they don't even want to try something new or try to make what they love into a profession. But listen, step out and just give it a shot. What if you got to lose? If you if you if you pursue that and it doesn't work out, you end up right where you are right now. You've lost nothing. But you can say that I tried. And like I said, I'm a professional tryer, so I'm just gonna keep trying things.

Dr James, 31m 23s:

I think I think a big part of it is reframes, right? It's like we, you know, it it depends how someone frames failure, right? And there's there's a saying that I love, and it it the saying is you either win or you lose. You I sorry, you you either you either win or you learn. That's the saying. So you're not really losing per se or feeling, right? You're just learning. You're like, okay, that didn't work. Fine, I learned. And then when you remove the the F-word in a way, the the feel word, I guess, right? You're just like, hey, I'm learning. And if you feel like it's tough, you're just learning real hard, right? Yeah, that's what I say. And that sounds a bit silly, but I say that to myself all the time. You know, uh, is Jay-Z big out there? Oh, yeah, he's big. He's big.

Neo, 32m 13s:

He was one of my favorite artists um growing up, and um, he said in this one song, he says, For I will not lose. He said, 'I will not lose for even in defeat, there's a valuable lesson learned, so that evens it up for me.' And when he said that, it just hit me so hard. And I said, I will never lose again. You know, and and it and you know, it's got to be said different ways to different people. And it's the same thing with these mental exercises. There's no one path. I can't get up here and give you a set of mental exercises and a set of affirmations that are going to work to get you exactly what you want today. These are so custom to each person because of what we've been through, what we've learned, and what our brains allow us to believe. And so diving into it is a really a self-study of who you are and then implementation of these practices daily. That's what it comes down to. And at the end of the day, when you lay down in bed and you say, How many mental exercises did I do today? That is the same question as how bad do I want it? Because if you did three mental exercises, you have 65,000 thoughts today, and three of those 65,000 thoughts were positive affirmations. What's the over-under on that? Three versus 64,997. Hmm, why didn't your life change today? You know, so it's it's it's all about that over-under and how bad you want it. That's why I try to challenge people with this, but it is possible. There's no doubt. I was I Camden City, where I was a cop, poorest and most dangerous city in America, I was born there. I grew up there. There was nothing special about me from the person next to me, outside of the fact that when our guidance counselors and our teachers told us that we were never going to amount to anything, I didn't believe them. All my friends did. I didn't believe them because my dad was a cop and he had he had he loved watches. He had these expensive Movado watches. They were a thousand dollars, and this is back in like you know, '95. So the thousand dollars was a lot more back then than it is now. And he would have these watches, and it gave me hope that I didn't have to end up like everybody else in my school whose parents and brothers and cousins were drug dealers, and my dad is the one chasing them. And so I didn't listen to the teachers who told me that. And I'm so like my life would be so, you know. Point is everything changed when I learned this message. I was just a normal dude following his dad's footsteps, joining the police department because I got my girlfriend pregnant. Learned this message eight months later. I'm retired. I have my own TV show, I have five Super Bowl rings, I have my own radio shows, changing whole professions at a time all the day that this came in. So a lot of people consider it hippie talk. My life is my resume, it is not hippie talk.

Dr James, 35m 20s:

Boom. My life is my resume.

Neo, 35m 23s:

Mic drop.

Dr James, 35m 24s:

Mic drop right there.

Neo, 35m 26s:

I talk about interviewing so many people, just getting this information, getting their tips and secrets, and putting it all in this book. 98% of those life coaches and new thought thinkers that I interviewed live terrible lives. Their relationship with their kids are terrible. They don't talk to their parents, they're broke, they have another nine to five job that they hate, and they're life coaching other people. And I just, I just, I don't, I just don't, you know, this doesn't add up to me. You should be financially stable and happy with good relationships if you're using these principles right. Now, I'm not saying they're not good at what they do, because often people aren't good at taking their own advice. That's very, very common. So I get it, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to say my life is my resume, and I can lean on that, I can stand on that, you know, and I live by that. I I wouldn't be happy as happy as I am if it wasn't, you know.

Dr James, 36m 32s:

I used to be really skeptical of this stuff, and then yeah, as I say, I I embraced a lot of it as well, and things changed, you know, they're not going to change overnight, right? But it's that it's that spark that starts the fire, isn't it? And you know what I'd love to do, you know, over that for the for the benefit from my own curiosity and also for the benefit of the audience. If we zoom in on that eight months between initial inception of this concept, and then you leaving uh and inverted commas retiring, right? And the reason I say inverticomas is it's like it's not like you sealed off in the sunset and went to a beach, right? You you started to enjoy yourself, right? And that is a version of retirement. That's basically what retirement is. You know, I read a really great book once, and it was ah, that's gonna annoy the hell out of me. I can't remember what the book's called, but uh, what did stick with me was how he defined retirement, and how he defined retirement was the day that you stop exchanging present unhappiness for the future promise of being happy. Okay, bit to unpack there, right?

Neo, 37m 40s:

I'm gonna have to unpack that one. I like it.

Dr James, 37m 42s:

Right, and I know there's there's at least two or three things to unpack there. I'll I'll cover it super quick because I think you'll like it, and the audience. Maybe, maybe some I think I've said this on a podcast before, there might be some people rolling their eyes out there, but you know what? It's so it's so useful. I'm gonna I'm gonna cover it again. The the day is in right here, right now, okay, or whenever this happens, that you stop exchanging present unhappiness, that you sacrifice happiness to some level versus your 10 out of 10 version of being happy, right? There's some sacrifice of happiness going on there, yeah. The day that you stop doing that in exchange for the future promise, because it is a promise, you don't know if you're gonna be happy when it actually you actually get there, right? You have no idea, it's just a promise, and like all promises, with the best intentions, they don't always happen, yeah. The future promise of being happy, as in that you'll reach a finish line and then be happy. It's where you just do it in the here and now, however that looks. And that's actually not a money thing. Think about that. That's not a money thing, man. That is that is a fulfillment thing, isn't it? UK Dentists, Dennists Who Invest now has an official platform where you can learn about finance and obtain UK compliant, verifiable CBD at the same time. The only platform that exists on which you can do both. The Smart Money Members Club has hundreds of hours of mini courses, webinar series, and live day recordings on all things finance slash tax efficiency for UK dentists. This includes complete courses on how tax works for UK dentists, finance so that you can invest and grow your own money, business so you can improve your profitability as an associate or principal, and for those out there that want it, there's also a mini course and how you can responsibly enter the crypto space using measured amounts of capital. I've gathered this content from the best of the best I could find in each respective area so that you know that this is how people at the forefront of each field advise their clients. The Smart Money Members Club also contains discounts on common things that UK dentists need to pay for on a regular basis. This includes a whopping 10% discount on dental indemnity, the offer to beat your income protection deal no matter what you're paying, and for the principals out there, 5% discount on lab bills and 10% discount on practice insurance. These are designed to offer hundreds, if not thousands, in annual savings. The purpose of this members club is to not only boost your monthly income but also manage your outgoings as much as possible and therefore create more profit. To celebrate the launch of the Smart Money Members Club, and given that the CPD deadline is coming up soon, I've decided to offer the first month of this platform entirely for free. This offer will end in the coming weeks as soon as the current CPD cycle is up. To collect your CPD for this podcast episode using the Smart Money Members Club, feel free to use the link in the description of this podcast.

Neo, 40m 40s:

Definitely. He started like started the rap game. Uh, I read this book seeking financial advice, and it didn't talk about finances at all. So yeah, and I I love that. I'd love to memorize that and be able to say it because it means it doesn't make sense now that I explained it, right?

Dr James, 41m 10s:

You get it.

Neo, 41m 10s:

Yeah, big time, big time. I wish I had heard that years ago. I always define retirement, you know, as being able to because it just simply just being able to not have to work anymore, ever. You know, that's in and that's and that was my goal, you know, so that everything I did after that would be like on my time, and I could take six months off if I wanted to. And you know, and so that was that was my big thing. But to uh to to to give you a breakdown, after I saw it was uh March 11th, 200 uh eight. I saw the secret. My my partner told me about it. I went and picked it up from Barnes and Noble, um blew my mind, and I tried to sit down and think. Like they said, I tried to visualize and then these random thoughts would come into my head. I gotta walk the dog. Uh a car drives by, and I the sound of the car just they're playing music, and it's a song that I like. Whatever, all these interruptions. And I didn't like that I wasn't able to sit peacefully in a scenario and vibrate at that frequency until that toy, because I was going for toys at the time, uh specifically remote control airplanes, because I'm I'm I'm really into remote control airplanes, um, and hell copy anything that applies, I'm I'm obsessed with. And so I I said I have to learn how to meditate. That was my thing. I needed to learn how to meditate. And that's a the that that word is a lot of people hear that word and they run for the hills. But if you want to be able to quiet your mind, you have to practice quiet in your mind. Just simply put, you have to practice quiet in your mind if you want to be able to do it on demand. And so for the next 16 days, it was mental torture trying to learn how to meditate. I'll never forget it was exactly 16 days. And then I thought back to the movie The Secret. They said there's a little hack, and they said, I'm so happy and thankful for dot dot dot, fill in the rest with whatever you want. And I said to myself, I went back, I went back and watched the movie again. And that's where I said, you know what, let me key in on that. And so I started saying, I'm so happy and thankful that I enjoy meditating. I'm so happy and thankful that meditating is working. I'm so happy and thankful that meditating is one of my favorite things, even though it wasn't. I was saying these things, I was reprogramming my mind. And then I would find I was able to sit in these head spaces, this peaceful, blank, no thought. Because for me, meditation, some people have guided meditation where there's someone telling you, you're walking through a forest and the trees are I call that guided meditation. To me, true meditation is absence of thought. Nothing. You're just focusing on your breathing, just complete absence of thought. And it's hard to do that for even a couple of seconds. But the more I did it and the more I did that affirmation, I'm so happy and thankful for, I was able to spend more time. It went from three seconds to four seconds to five seconds that I can sit in an empty headspace with no thoughts, up to 30 seconds where I could sit. And I was like, wow. And then I started to like it. Because after that 30 seconds or 15 seconds of pure no-thought just being, I would be able to run a scenario like me owning my own airplane, me retiring, me doing this, me doing that. I was able to sit in those scenarios. So I'll give you an example. My friend, my best friend, I tried to tell her to envision going on a cruise with unlimited money. You can spend as much money as you want, that you won a prize, go on this cruise to wherever you get off the boat, you can spend as many, as much money as you want. She won't even run this scenario with me. She feels uncomfortable. And a lot of people do because they feel like it's a waste of time for one. And when they come back to reality, they're disappointed because that's not the reality. Because of the limiting beliefs and the pre-programming. And that's what I'm talking about. Being able to sit in these scenarios for an extended period of time and vibrate at that frequency for an extended period of time, you need to be able to do that. And so meditation became a big part of my life. And that's when I would just try different things. Once I was able to sit in those head spaces, now I can run scenarios, which is what I call proactive manifesting. If your thoughts are becoming things, and a lot of them are on autopilot, well, the ones you're proactively projecting, you're choosing which thoughts to think about. I call that proactive manifesting. And then that's that's when it got into all the affirmations. Um the ego was a big part because when you think something good that hasn't happened yet, the ego says, You're lying, that's not happening. I needed to figure out why that was happening, and that was huge. Why does the ego keep kicking my back in every single time I try to think of something great? The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Basically, in a nutshell, the ego wants you in this moment. The ego wants you in this moment at all times. It doesn't acknowledge the future of the past. You and I, we've never tasted, touch it, touched, or seen anything in our future. Have you? Think about it. And in your past, you can't go back and relive something from your past. If you did, it would be doing it the second time, not the first time. So the ego doesn't acknowledge the future of the past because they literally don't exist. Everything we've ever done, everything you've ever done, you will do in this seemingly recurring current moment. And that's what I learned from The Power of Now by Eckhart's Holy. We everything is this moment. Like right now, me and you are talking in this moment right now. Okay, when I just said that, that's the past, right? I'm gonna do it again. Right now, we're back in this moment again. Everything again, we're back in this moment. There's no future or no past. And since the ego doesn't acknowledge them, if you spend headspace in those times, the ego will wake you up from it. So all 65,000 of your thoughts that you're gonna have today, something is going to wake you up from every single one of them. That's your ego saying you're not present and pulling you back to this moment. That's why it's shutting you down. That's why when you try to dream about having a yacht, you don't have that. It's using your subconscious database to prove to you that you don't have that, showing you bank statements, you're not rich, all to pull you back to this moment. And so this was a big realization for me because I was I was hating my ego. I'm like, why do you keep interrupting my beautiful thoughts about the future and vacations and money? But you got to learn your enemy. It was my enemy at the time, but you have to learn why it's doing what it's doing. And once I learned that, and I learned that it's a part of me, and to hate a part of me is going to manifest, thoughts become things more hating me. You know, that all became a study, you know, and I'm still working on you know egoic studies now. But yeah, that's what those next couple months consisted of me coming up with different mental exercises and finding out the rules in the game, like the ego, why it does what it does. Um, you know, all those types of things. Learning the rules, learning mental exercises. And uh in November of 2008, I had this uh crazy epiphany I call a watcher. Um basically, and this is this is one month before I retired, and I believe this is what pushed me over the edge. This is what got me there. I call it the watcher exercise. I'll tell you a story real quick. I was taking this government test, right? Now, it wasn't a super important test. I was in a room with no windows, there was no camera, it was just one desk, one chair. I take the test. When I get up to walk out, my my foot, I trip over the leg of the table. I just stumbled a little bit. And mind you, no one's watching me. It wasn't that important. But when I stumbled, I felt embarrassed and I kind of like, I kind of looked around, like, oh, like who saw that? Like, you know, you just had you know, you've ever had that feeling like someone someone's saw you, someone saw that. We've all had that feeling. We're walking down dark alleyway, or you know, as your kid, you're walking down the hallway to use the bathroom at two o'clock in the morning, you feel like something's watching you. That watcher feeling, everyone has experienced that in their life. And I like to study things that we all experience. Every country, people laugh in every country. You know what I mean? I like to experience, I like to focus and study things that we all have in common on every country and every, you know. So I decided to study this watcher feeling that I had in that moment and that I can have right now, and you don't even know I'm doing it. So I decided to study it. And the first thing I noticed when I decided to study the watcher feeling was that it knew I decided to study it. I don't know how I knew that, but I just knew that it knew that I had decided to study it. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, watching me at all times, okay, even when I'm not watching it, because when I when I go to notice the watcher watching me, it's already watching me. So watch me at all times, even when I even when I'm not watching it, no one can hear my thoughts. I'm not a super religious person, but this kind of sounds like God. And if I'm right, this is the closest humans have come to uh feeling interaction. Like I'm in my mind, I'm like, holy crap, what have I stumbled onto here? And so that led to a whole slew of different uh research projects and exercises with just that watcher. But what I ended up using it for was this. I'll give you and I'll give you an example. I had never been to the Bahamas, right? I wanted to go to the Bahamas, and so visualizing myself in the Bahamas right now, not in the future, it's key to manifesting, is key in visualizing is you're it's happening right now, or it already happened. That's a huge part of uh of you know manifesting. So if I'm gonna visualize myself in the Bahamas, that's one exercise. I want a compound exercise. So I go outside, let the sun hit me in my face, just like the Bahamas. This is the second element. I take my son to the park, take my sandals off, and I put my toes in the sand, just like I'm on the beach in the Bahamas. So now I got the sand on my feet, the sunlight in my face, and I've got the visualization going on. And then on top of that, I bring in the watcher. I feel that presence watching me on the beach in the Bahamas, sun in my face, toes in the sand. Now I'm compound exercising, I got all these things working at once. And I started using those visualizations, those type of visualization techniques for retirement. I wrote myself a check, I put it all over the place. I had one in my wallet, I had one in my pocket. Every time I reached it, I would look at my check and you know, say things like, I'm so happy and thankful that I'm retired, how and ask myself questions. When you ask yourself a question, your subconscious will have to answer it. So when you say something like, I'm retired, back then when I wasn't, my ego will say, No, you're not. No, you can't. You're only 28. But if I were to say to myself, how would it feel to be retired? My ego shuts up, my subconscious answers the question. It would feel great. You'd have more time, you'd have more money, you'd be spending time with your kids, you'd be able to work on these projects. So asking yourself questions like that is a great tool as well. So using all these examples was great over those eight months. But there's no doubt in my mind that the watcher exercise was a huge emphasis on what pushed me over the edge of me. My last day of work was November 28th, uh, 2008, eight months later. And I I felt invincible. I said, man, I can do anything with this, anything. And I just went for custody of my kids, no lawyer. I I've never seen a male get in New Jersey, never seen a male get custody of his kids ever. I went in that courtroom with no lawyer, just the law of attraction. Came out with my kids, and I was just like, man, I am unstoppable. And I wanted to work with celebrities. I started working with athletes, started working with the Philadelphia Eagles. Andy Reid went to Kansas City, started working with the Chiefs. They start winning Super Bowl rings and they play against each other. No matter who wins that, I get a Super Bowl ring. It's it's just it's just been a journey ever since uh of learning. But yeah, those eight months were were very critical and taught me a lot about myself and what I needed to do. Because, like I said, the mental exercises that Oprah Winfrey was doing and sharing with people, I couldn't do. Because she could say, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich, and her ego's gonna say, Yeah, you are. And my ego's gonna say, No, you're not, no, you can't, no, you won't. How many people you know? So that was pretty much the journey for there.

Dr James, 54m 40s:

I I was gonna ask, how does life look for you now? However, you told us, which is which is amazing. Um, Neo, Neo, I actually think that that's probably a really great note to wrap up on uh this podcast, because it was just so beautifully put, and I think that that really allows people to understand some of the micro steps that they might take to start feeling more in control and start pursuing what makes them happiness and is think what makes them happy, what gives them happiness and is aligned with their inner essence, so to speak, however the flip that looks. Neil, I I I want to invite you to shout out your book one more time for the audience so people who can find out more about you, and then also your website as well, just purely so people can continue this journey and continue to build on what we've talked about today in the podcast.

Neo, 55m 41s:

You know, I'm gonna do you one more better. I'm gonna give every side everybody something to start on. Um, sure. But I want to start I want to do this little note real quick. A lot of people I talk to swear up and down that they don't have negative thoughts. First step is to acknowledge that we do. Self-preservation, it is what it is, except that we do have negative thoughts. Um, but as a starting point, I would just say wake up as often as you can. I like to rub my fingers together. Just wake up from the rat race, wake up from everything, just to the moment, this room right now. Do that two, three, four times today. And then tomorrow you may do it one or two times. So I'd say do it 10 times a day. Tomorrow you'll do it on your own three or four times. Practicing waking up is what I call it. Do that first as often as you can. Once you wake up, then you can do any affirmation you want. I got the book is called Your ATM, Your Ability to Manifest. You can get it on Amazon, uh, you can get it on neopositivity.com. The audiobook is there, the ebook is there, my Instagram, Facebook. People reach out to me all the time with all kinds of questions. I love answering questions. It makes me feel good. When if you if you hit me up and say, Hey, I'm going through this, when I when I answer your question, I end up reminding myself, hey, I should be doing this too. But there's so many different practices and so many different mental exercises, it's hard for even me to remember. So reach out, you know, go to the website, uh, thoughts become things, shirts and merchandise. These are all reminders. These are all just reminders for me throughout the day because remembering to remember to do these exercises, remembering to remember that this stuff even exists is the hardest part. A thousand percent with life coming at you a mile a minute, it is the hardest part. So get you put a pebble in your pocket, and every time you feel it, do a mental exercise, something like that. But whatever you have to do to keep waking up and doing these, that's that's the key to everything. I want to see everyone succeed. Money is cool, you know, but it's about quality of life. Sitting down on the sofa and during the commercial break, you're smiling at where your thoughts are taking you. Driving through tap traffic, you know, you're stuck on a highway, you're not gonna get home for the next 45 minutes, your brain starts to wander. Have it wander to a different place, a good place. That's the ultimate benefit here. That is what you want for the rest of your life. Because what trust me, you get you get all the money in the world, you'll realize the first thing you realize is money's not everything. The first thing you realize once you get money is money is not everything, it's about your state of mind. And that's that's the number one goal. So please reach out, go to neopositivity.com, get the book, read it, audio book, and share it with as many people as you can. That's the goal. And thank you, Dr. J, for allowing me to be on your platform. And um, I always like to say this too. There are thousands, if not millions, of people out there that you have helped that you'll never hear say thank you just because they're listening to your podcast while they're driving, you never get to see them. On behalf of all them, I thank you for everything that you're doing.