Align Your Unconscious Mind and Change Everything with Aslan Mirkalami

Hi, Aslan. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Orion. I’m really happy to be here and lovely to be with you.

Yes, you too. We’ve known each other for a while now, but we haven’t seen you in a long time. I know that you’ve been through so many adventures, and I can’t wait for this conversation to unfold because you are a fascinating man. Before we begin, maybe you can share a beautiful childhood memory with me.

Well, my childhood has been an interesting one. I was the firstborn in a very lower-middle-class family. I was born in Iran. I remember my mom and dad used to rent a room in a house where the washroom was two stories down in the yard. Our home was upstairs and backed right onto the railroad station. Every time a train passed by, the whole building shook. I remember this home to be so big. 

A couple of years ago, I visited my mom and asked, “Mom, is that home still there?” She says, “Yeah, that home hasn’t been changed.” I said, “Can I?” I went there and it was so small. I don’t know if this happened to you, but things you thought were so big. Now that you go back, and it’s so tiny, and you say, “My God, I grew up here. I was born here.” In fact, my brother was also born there. We were born in humble beginnings. I was born in Iran, of course, and I grew up here. 

My dad was a rug dealer and a carpet dealer, and he owned a carpet shop. For him, education was the most important thing. He was very adamant that I become educated. I would go back to school from his shop, sit behind his desk, and do my homework while he attended to his business. 

But I was listening to what he does, how he talks, who he talks to. Visitors were coming, and they would be talking politics. They would be discussing the economy. I was learning from a very young age, all these adult things. But I had big dreams. I always had much bigger dreams than my peers. I didn’t want to stay in Iran. 

I remember I saw a movie. It was about Niagara Falls. A couple fell in love. They went on a honeymoon. I don’t remember the name of the movie, but I recall it was set in Niagara Falls.  How beautiful it is. It was as if they made this movie as a promotional package for Niagara Falls hotels. I was like, “I fell in love. One day, I’m going to go to Niagara Falls.” It wasn’t very long after that, maybe 8 to 10 years later, that I was here, visiting Niagara Falls. Couldn’t believe that dream came true. 

That brings us to whatever is in our life has really been a dream of ours, or we’ve been dreaming or thinking about it for a while. The unconscious mind accepts it. Once the unconscious mind buys into it, you’re done. You’re living what your unconscious mind wants you to be living, or what you have in your life is exactly what you wish to be unconsciously. With a little time delay, because there’s a time capsule that this was yesterday’s dream, and today’s dreams will be tomorrow’s or the day after tomorrow.

You moved to Canada? 

I moved to Germany first. I lived in Germany for a couple of years before moving to Canada.

Then you opened your own business.

God sometimes sends people to tell you the truth about yourself that you’re not willing to acknowledge.

I came to Canada. Something happened when I was in Germany. I was actually so naive. I did a transaction with a guy, and he basically screwed me over, took my money, and I had no money, and I had to really be in a hurry to find it. But at the same time, I was very lucky. Naive and lucky. Not a bad combination. I found a job, but I also rented a place to live. I paid everything, and I was down to five German marks at the time. This guy gave me my employee, a shopkeeper in a carpet shop, whom I knew everything about because my dad was in that business. He gave me 20 German marks, and he said to me, “Here’s a receipt for my shirts. Go get them from the dry cleaner.” I was also trying to learn German very quickly. 

I went and asked him, in German, “How much was this wash custom?” He said, “Three German marks and here is the return of 17 marks.” I thought the opposite because I was so happy that I even understood—reverse understoon. I’m a little bit dyslexic, not this little bit; actually, I’m extremely dyslexic. I reversed understood it, and I came back, and the guy says, “How much was it?” I said, “17 marks, and here’s your share.” Because the guy jumped off his seat and said, “Grab him by the hand,” someone else added, “Somebody is not being honest here, let’s go.” He’s dragging me to the drag line there, and I’m shocked. I don’t understand what’s going on. I stopped him and said, “Let’s count the money.” I count the money as 17 marks. He says, “Ok.” He kind of brushes it off. 

I went home that night. Sitting in a corner of my room. I cannot stop; my tears are coming. I’m not crying; my tears are coming. I’m all wet on my shirt. I’m saying to myself, ‘This guy thought I was stealing from him.’ It’s been like a dagger in my heart. I said, “My God, this will never happen again.” That night, I decided I would never be an employee again. That was my last employer. After that, I came to Canada. By the time I arrived in Canada, I had around $700 left in my pocket. I wanted to start a business. 

Everybody thought I was crazy. I was in the midst of a particularly cold winter, which was actually the coldest winter on record in Canada. It’s business. It’s called the storm of the century in 1987. I arrived first, and I went to Vancouver. I didn’t like it. I came back to Toronto. I was right in the middle of the century’s storm, and I wanted to start a business. Someone introduced me to a very beautiful man, an Armenian from Turkey, and I went to see him. 

I said, “Send me here. Very nice,” he said, “Let me buy you a coffee.” He took me to a coffee shop here, and we were sitting. “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to start my own business,” and he said, “You must have a lot of money to start a business, not even arrived.” I said, “Well, not really,” he goes, “How much money do you have?” I said, “$750.” He thinks I’m talking $750,000.

He says, “Oh, with that kind of money, you’d be stupid to start a business. I would buy the building; I’m in favor of selling it. I can help you. You buy it, and I’ll be your tenant. There’ll be 10 other tenants. You make so much money, and then you can buy another one. I buy another one.” I said, “Listen, it’s $750.” He says, “Do you have a place?” I said, “No, I don’t have a place.”  He said, “Do you know English?” I said, “No, not yet.” He said, “Do you know anybody?” I said,  “No.” He said, “How do you want to do it? You can’t even find a place with this money.” 

Anyway, he was very concerned. I said, “I’ll start a business with this money.” I did. He said to me, “But you don’t even have a phone number.” I said, “Well, but you do.” He goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “I’ll leave a little booklet right beside your phone with a pen. If somebody called and said they want to talk to us, would you please take their name and number? Then each evening I come to your office, I pick up the name and number and I call them myself from the pay phone.”

He kind of looked at me and said, “Boy, I know what’s going to happen to you.” It’s minus 20 degrees. That was cold. The snow was so deep that the army had to come in. They summoned the army to go and remove the snow. It was very bad. But he says, “ In my heart, I cannot say I caused you not to do this. I want to do it for you.” He became my secretary. He’s an amazing man. I love him. I love that man. I owe him. A part of my success comes from him because he worked on it diligently. 

I would walk because I didn’t have the money to afford bus passes. I walked from business to business, and I printed some business cards. I’ll give them a business card and tell them what I do. If they needed one, they would call, and he would tell me their name and number. I’ll call them, make an appointment, see them and make business happen. That’s slow. I started that business. Then, once I got grounded, I started gaining traction, and business began to grow. 

What type of business was it?

It was a rug business. It was my dad’s business. The good thing was that I grew up in his business because he wanted me to pursue a career in it. He wanted to make sure I did my homework. He’d go back to his shop after school. I was learning everything there was to learn about that business. I started that, and I became a retailer. I started a retail rug business. I started another shop, another shop. I started one in America. I started one in Chicago. In Chicago, I had people work for me, and I would visit various stores. One time, I was in Chicago. It was a place called Waukegan. It’s a suburb of Chicago. We had an insurance guy. I don’t remember his name, but he was selling us insurance. He was the guy. He wanted to discuss some policy issues and other matters with me.

I got there, he came to see me, and we were talking, and he said to me, “This is just now a side gig for me. I’m making more money online than this.” I said, “What are you doing online that makes more money for you than your main business, which is your insurance business?” He says, “I’m selling golf bags. My father-in-law manufactures them, and I’m selling them. I’m putting them on eBay and selling them. This was 1999.” I said, “You put them on eBay and sell them? I said, “What is eBay?” He goes, “Let me show you.” He goes, “I’m my computer connected to the internet. Here goes to this place, eBay.” I see, “He’s selling golf badges. Do you think we can sell rugs on this?” He says, “I think so. We are like rugs.” He just came, “They’re selling rugs.” I said, “I’ll sell.” 

I went immediately to Office Max, bought a digital camera, and took some pictures of three rugs. On my trip back to Toronto, I found a guy who actually posts them on eBay. We sold all three of them at a profit margin. I decided, “Okay, I just think I know what my next step in my business is going to be.” I closed those businesses within four months. In four months, I told everybody, “You guys are better off looking for a job.” I opened up an office with my sister, and we started an e-commerce company called rugman.com. 

That company became the largest rug site for many years, until I finally sold it in 2013. It started in 1999. That’s how I transformed from a retailer to an e-tailer. We shipped to many countries, including 46 countries, such as China, Israel, Spain, and all of Europe, as well as the United States. 90% of my sales were to the US, and only 4 or 5% were to Canada. This opportunity was also very nice and allowed me to pursue my dreams. It’s also interesting to see how your dreams come to life. 

I was very busy. I was working. I had multiple locations, and in my retail business, the peak time was the weekend. I worked every Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes I would go home at eight or nine o’clock at night. I was so tired that I passed out. I was never really able to be with my family. I had attended a Tony Robbins event a couple of years before that year, as they tell you on the date with destiny. At that time, it wasn’t a date with destiny. 

It was something else, life mastery. It was a much more intense 10-day period. They said, “Find a partner that you’re going to be a partner.” I couldn’t find a partner. Another guy couldn’t find a partner, either. His name is Jeff. I remember that. He was a guy from California who had a golf magazine with his wife. They were running the magazine from their garage in California, and it was doing well. 

We became partners, just a sign because he was the only one. The universe brought us together, and I told Jeff that my dream was to spend more time with my family. He was so good; he told me, “Aslan, stop lying to yourself.” I said, “Why?” He says, “You don’t want to be with your family, yet you’re avoiding them.” I said, “No, I’m not.” He goes, “If you didn’t you wouldn’t be living in Toronto have a business in Montreal Chicago and so you would be having a business very close to your home like me my home is and my business are walking distance like I could just take tennis steps and I’ll be in my business in garage and and I’m always with my kids I’m always with my wife and we are best friends.” 

That little truth is that God sometimes sends people to tell you things about yourself that you’re not willing to say to yourself. This truth, this piece of information, he gave me, changed my life. That was the time when, immediately after that, it was in September, and I met this insurance guy in October. By January, I had closed every location, opened the office, and started the Rugman business, which has its own story; it didn’t become successful overnight. It took us a year, in order, to sell one rug and one piece of jewelry. 

We didn’t know how to do that. We used to be able to use the website, but it was difficult to access. Then I finally got hold of it. I started attending conferences, including e-commerce ones, and I said, “Oh, this is what we’re making.” I became more involved in the community, and before I knew it, I had become the largest e-commerce site for Rugs. We generated hundreds of thousands of sales, millions of dollars in revenue, and tens of millions, even more.

After the conversation with Jeff, what happened with your relationship with your family? Were you more present for them? What changed?

Whatever the unconscious mind wants matters because it’s something around 60 to 100,000 times more powerful in manifestation.

I was living 15 minutes’ drive from my home. My office was a 15-minute drive. I was always at five o’clock at home. The office closed at five. I was home. I would eat dinner at home every day, and spend time with the kids every Saturday and Sunday. As we earned significantly more money through this business, we began traveling together. Every three months, I would take them to a place. I’d take 10 days off. As I did on Thursday night, I’ll take off and return the following Sunday, which is about 10 days later. That would be every three months; we would go somewhere, here, there, or to Europe. It’s not much when you travel across time zones. It is not much, but it is better than nothing.

No, I’m sure it’s wonderful. What changed about the guy who sold his company, the successful businessman, the one who has never given up? What changed to make that switch into becoming a leader? You were a leader in your business, taking that knowledge from the business. But how did you get into the whole world of NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, and helping people?

When I was 14 years old, I was diagnosed with dyslexia, and I had ADHD I don’t know anybody who diagnosed me properly. I was unable to study because I was failing my classes, which left my dad devastated. This was his dream; he wanted me to be educated, but my numbers and failure rate had been a concern. He had hired private teachers, but nothing seemed to work. My mom knew a man in Iran; he would be an exceptional coach, an unbelievable one. 

His method was limited to only hypnosis and spiritual some spiritual practices, but he was very famous and he had written a couple of books and was having a following in Iran and my mom took me to her she was he was it was quite a bit of money at the time but within two weeks of me going there I could now put my mind together. I could focus. I started studying and went straight to the top of my class; I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked that what I was struggling with so hard was so in my reach, and it was he who didn’t do anything. He didn’t teach me. He didn’t sit and study with me. He just worked on what was happening here, and I was just boom.

Through only hypnosis. What was that diagnosis?

He taught me self-hypnosis. He taught me self-hypnosis. Taught me analysis for a few sessions. I told my mom, “I want to learn this.” My mom said, “Okay, I’ll buy the books.” She bought the books. I read the books. Now I’m reading the books, and I’m hypnotizing anybody I can get my hands on. It was so funny. I tried on my dad. My dad just didn’t like it—my brothers, family, and everybody. I was Aslan the hypnotist from the age of 14. I also took courses for them. I took classes from him and his students.

What is something that was told to you that stuck in your mind and can be really helpful for somebody who’s listening right now?

When I went to see him, I had this giant problem. He said, “What’s the problem?” I said, “I don’t know. I can’t study. No matter what I try, I try really hard, but I just can’t do it. I’m failing in school.” He says, “That’s nothing. In two or three weeks, you’ll be coming and you’ll be showing off your marks to me.” I was like, “How? Show me.” Of course, the proof was in the pudding. Very shortly, and this is exactly what I’m doing right now, actually. I’m going to talk about something that has become a new passion of mine. It was unbelievable.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I took this very seriously. I learned everything there was to learn from him. I practiced for everybody. I was trying to help people even with my own thing. This became a thing. When I came to Canada, I called the Hypnosis Association. They had an office in Calgary. I talked to them on the phone and said, “I have done these trainings and I want to do further.” He said, “Are you a doctor?” I said, “No.” They said, “Oh, we only train doctors.” I said, “Why?” They said, “Because this is not for everybody. This is for only doctors.” That’s how I discovered NLP.

Not only that, they allow, for instance, if you’re a dentist and a doctor, then you’re good. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have any psychology background. If you’re a doctor, but a dentist, then you are allowed to do.

Doctor, dentist, psychologist. But this changed later.

I also practice hypnosis. Some states allow it if you’re not a doctor. It depends on the location and how strict the authorities are regarding this.

At that moment, I decided to do it. I didn’t know, but I ended up going to Tony Robbins, who kept mentioning NLP and various other things. I said, “Okay, I’m gonna learn NLP.” In 1992, I attended a seminar with the founder of NLP. John Grinder, I attended his last seminar, which was held in Los Angeles and sponsored by a gentleman from the area. It was a three-day workshop that left me absolutely blown away. 

I remember every word that came out of his mind and mouth, even today, which is very rare because I don’t have a good memory, but I remember everything. I began my journey with NLP and became a trainer, which led to my roles as practitioner, master practitioner, and trainer. I went through that program. I went to Tad James and then went with Dr. Richard Bandler, doing the same thing. I went from practitioner to master practitioner. I decided, “Okay, well, I’m gonna go back to Grindler.” I’ve done it about three or four times, and then I attended many other trainings. I did Something called neuro-hypnotic patterning with Richard Bandler. I did it many, many times. 

I took a human design engineering course, where I studied dynamics, psyche, and various other topics. I like it. I can fill up a room with my certificates, and then I just found out they’re all doing the same thing. This is the beautiful part about doing multiple things: they’re all working towards the same goal, essentially aligning your conscious and unconscious mind. Alignment happens, magic happens. Because we always have conflicts. Like your conscious mind goes here, your unconscious mind goes here, and always the unconscious mind wins. You can influence it. But the general direction is the unconscious mind. In fact, brings me to my book title.

My last book was titled this: Unf*ck Your Life. It’s because consciously, we are f*cked. We might want anything we want to, but whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the unconscious mind wants matters because it’s something around 60 to maybe 100,000 times more powerful in manifestation. When do you have this agreement? You have the whole universe in the palm of your hand. That’s how I create massive transformation in people. People come to me, and they change profoundly. The only reason is that I now understand how to do this: creating complete alignment, where the conscious mind’s desires become a mission and a vision for the unconscious mind. 

What are some practical tools you can share with us?

Practical tools. Well, anybody has the possibility of using a pendulum, you hold a pendulum or any other. I don’t have a pendulum here, unfortunately, I would have been prepared for it. You can hold one, or you can even be a teabag; it just needs a string and a weight to hold. Then, you can say ‘show me a yes and show me a no,’ and you’ll see that the pattern on this pendulum will change. ‘Yes,’ it goes this way, ‘no,’ it goes that way, or the other way, or go around. 

Once you calibrate yes and no, you’re tapping into the unconscious mind and start asking questions. You can say, you can ask your beliefs, ‘Do I believe I’m worthy of this? Do I believe I deserve this? Or do I believe?’ You can say that, you can ask those, you can research, you can use that as a research tool, which is finding, digging into your unconscious mind, because whatever it believes and whatever direction it wants to go, you’re done. You’re basically going along. 

What happens when you are like, “Okay, this is what makes me stuck.” How can one unstuck that? You did the thing with the pendulum. It says, “Yes, you have fewer rejections. Now what?” How do you work on that?

Well, then you say, “Is there a purpose for this fear of rejection?” They say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The intentions are always good. But the act may not be good or positive. The act is the one we deal with. We say, “Is there a positive intention for this?” The intention is yes. Always, often the answer is yes. Then you say, “Can you find a better way, a more ecological way to achieve your intention?” The unconscious mind, if he says, “Yes,” then you say, “Go ahead, do it right now. And then will you take responsibility for maintaining this behavior, maintaining this new set of behaviors for the rest of my life?” The unconscious mind says, “Yes, you’re done. The shift is happening very easily.” That alignment occurs there. 

That’s amazing. I have that, that’s amazing. I have pendulums, but I never thought about inquiring my subconscious mind with pendulums. That’s awesome.

Well, that’s one benefit of spending two million dollars on learning these things: in so many different ways. You realize, “My God, they’re all doing the same thing. Why am I?” I have a pigheaded tick skull, and I am very stubborn. I learned it the hard way. Then I got a couple, and a couple came to me and said, “We don’t want to divorce. We’ve been 40 years together, and we’re fighting like cats and dogs.” I said, “Okay, let’s work. I work with you first, and I work with the husband, and then we work together.” I say, “Okay.” During that session, while working with her, I discovered a distraction here. That was very interesting. I said, “Okay, tell me about your past love life.” She goes, “I was totally in love.” 

When you fall in love with somebody, you’re in love with their positive qualities and minimize their faults, because we all have good, bad, and ugly aspects. Nobody is perfect, but you don’t see their imperfections.

She was in the Air Force, and she had a boyfriend with whom she had an incredible love affair. All of a sudden, this guy comes into his life, this other guy comes into his life, and he seriously wants to marry him, and she is saying to him, “Listen, I’ve got to make a decision. I have a man who wants to marry me.” She goes, “No, no, no, I’m not serious. There’s this no, no, go.” She goes and marries her husband. They have two kids together. They live 40 years together. Forty miserable years it’s been.

I accepted them because they had energy, and they were fighting. If they had stopped fighting, I wouldn’t have worked with them. The minute I found out that there was a heart, her heart was already taken by a previous relationship. I said, “Ok, well, I have to empty that.” I did that. It’s a long story, that one. All of a sudden, she was available. She realized, “Oh my God. My life is here. My mind and my heart were there.”

How did you do it? What did you tell her?

It’s sophisticated and complicated. There’s a strategy of falling in love, and there’s a strategy of falling out of love. We essentially do it in our minds. You can basically produce it. I can produce it. But there’s a natural way. You fall in love. There’s a natural strategy for it. Falling out of love is a natural thing. But it can be accelerated and done in a couple of hours or even half an hour. I employ a strategy of falling out of love with the old guy and falling in love with the new husband. Then talk to the husband, and you’ll find out the same thing is on the opposite side. He just wanted to marry her to take revenge on a lover who was totally blind.

No, that’s terrible.

I listened to this. I did that too. All of a sudden, they’re sitting across the table, and then I put it together. As he came back to me and said, “I don’t know what the fuck you did. Well, we’ve had sex like never before. I made breakfast for my wife, and she’s now ironing my clothes. She’s never done this in the past. She threw out all my clothes and bought me brand new ones.” They went on a two-week or four-week tour after that; it took only three sessions.

What’s this strategy of falling in love?

When you fall in love with somebody, you’re in love with their positive qualities and minimize their faults, because we all have good, bad, and ugly aspects. Nobody is perfect, but you don’t see their imperfections. It’s just, and then you see, ‘ah, ah.’ When you’re falling out of love, those things come and go. These things are major, ‘ah, ah. No, no, no, no, no. You didn’t wash the dishes. There’s a little stain here, okay. Or you throw your socks on the floor.’ That’s a strategy for going out of love. Anyway, coming back to this, I decided that if there’s another couple, I would probe for this. 

After that, I had another couple, then another, then another, then another. The universe sends you when you ask for something. I don’t know. I’m like that. I don’t know if you’re like that. When I desire something, it shows up right at the door. I said, “I had couples and I did the same process.” I just found out, “You still have a crush on somebody. Get it out.” Then, “Okay, now the same, get it out. And now bring these two together,” and boom, fall in love. I’ve never had any of the couples I worked with come back saying, “I had one divorce.” They decided, “Okay, we’re done.” Peacefully, they divorced and stopped fighting. I only took people who had energy, which means they were fighting. They were initially hostile towards each other, but turned that into a love affair. The more they fight, the more fiery and amazing it is.

The number one and biggest job of all is to de-traumatize them and enable them to face their fears, anger, shame, guilt, hurts, and sadness.

What happens when people stop fighting? They just give up on themselves? When people say you only take couples that are fighting, but what about a couple that doesn’t fight at all?

They basically have cut the cord. They either started another relationship, and both of them have to be not in a third or a secondary relationship. They have to be there. They have to be fighting. They’re fighting for their relationship. That’s a good sign. That’s a wonderful sign. The fact that they’re fighting with each other means there is misdirected energy. That energy is like the fire that’s burning the house, but there is fire in this house.

Now I need to warm up the house with this fire. It’s wonderful. It feels amazing. I had a gentleman call me. He was a very wealthy man, had casinos and investments in the casino business and stuff like that in Mexico and here in Canada. He said, “My son has dropped out of the university. He’s having fights with his mother and his brother. He hates us all. He’s got trouble in the law, and I want you to see if you can talk to him.” I said, “Sure, bring him.” I start talking to him. Basically, I realized that all he wants is to be loved by his parents, and he misses that family feeling. 

I was just working with him and creating these alignments that I mentioned to you, these alignments, and then, before you knew it, this kid dropped out in year three. Means he had to finish the third year and fourth year. He found out all the necessary units that he was finishing. He finished them in three months with marks way above the park, 90-95%. It’s the top of the class. He goes straight to work with his dad. He took over a department, they were designing games like jackpots, and they had a department that they were designing these machines and they were producing them. He takes over that department and does an excellent job for the entire company and the dad. 

The next thing I know, he has all his friends asking, “What the hell happened to your son?” Then, before I knew, half of my clients were these young men. I was getting something out of it that I didn’t get from the others. I was getting a lot, and I’m helping people come to this mindset. I really get a lot of it, but I was getting something totally different from these. I started saying, “I’m going to charge them half price because it’s not fair. I’m really enjoying this.” I started cutting the price in half and was still amazed. When I started traveling, I had clients who were very young men and women. 

There was this one lady, and her father called me. “My daughter, I think she’s depressed. I don’t know what’s wrong. She doesn’t want to study. She doesn’t want to get out of bed. Would she come see me?” I said, “Okay. Let me talk to her.” I talked to her on the phone and she said, “Sure. If you think it’s going to help.” I said, “Come on over.” She comes and comes to my office, and I look at her, saying, “Is she still alive?” She was like a dead person walking—Pale, no makeup, no hairdo, dressed.

Lost all of her passion.

All of her passion for life. I worked with her. I worked with a couple of sessions. She comes back for a third session. I’m looking at her, and everybody’s in the office, some people work in the office, and they were saying, “Who is this gorgeous grass? It’s the same girl. She came two weeks ago.” She was, “No, that’s not, she’s never been here before.” 

What was the connection that was made for her? What was the reason she wanted to? She had no passion, and what did you connect her with? What was the compelling future?

I actually came up with a four-step process that you can do, and it works perfectly for almost every teenager and young adult. The number one step is getting over the past, putting it behind them. A lot of them are living it. A lot of them are traumatizing, and they’re frozen, and they’re basically they’re not even able to breathe. The number one and biggest job of all is to de-traumatize them and enable them to face their fears, anger, shame, guilt, hurts, and sadness. 

Once they are through with these downward or down draft emotions and the past, then bring them into envisioning and designing a future that they love to have, because they really cannot do this unless they’ve cut that off or not cut it off. It’s actually transforming it into something positive at that point. They are now able to dream like children. “I want this. I want this. I want that.” Then, “Ok, you want this now.” Now, “How do you become passionate about it? There’s a strategy for that, you see? We’ve done it.” Every time you become passionate about something, you’ve done it the same way. You become passionate about it and become motivated, passionately motivated. That has a strategy too. 

I connect these strategies, then motivate and instill consistency in them by putting them on an accountability program with me. Every day, they have to tell me, and we make it very simple. Like, if let’s say the kid is a dropout, I say, “Okay, your commitment is going to be you’re going to spend three hours in the library every day. You tell me, you’re going to text me every day, I spend from three o’clock to six after school in the library.” “Okay, good. That’s good.” I teach them a little bit of mechanics, which is the 10% or 20% of it that makes them successful. I say, “Listen, you go to the classroom, you study the material slightly before and then when you come back out of the classroom, you sit down and study it thoroughly and make sure you totally understand it, and then you do it in those three hours that you go to the library.” 

That accountability, and all of them within a month, was just kicking ass and taking names. Within three months, they no longer need me; they’re already so proud of themselves and seeing results. They’re amazing. I get an orgasm. It’s crazy how I love it. I love it. It’s like I see my own kids. I say, “Oh my God.” I pray sometimes. Say, “God, send them somebody like me to be able to do this for them.” My kids are grown up now and they’re in their 30s, but they could use something like that because they hang out, everybody hangs out, to their childhood past. “My mom did this to me, my dad did this to me.”

If you’re the mom or the dad, you’re too close. I get it with my own family members, where, like, “I’ll tell my mom something, like I’ll give her advice.” Ten years later, somebody said something about it on TV, and she’s like, “Whoop, mix the switch. Mom, I told you about this 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Why aren’t you like doing it?” Well, because you’re my daughter.” “Like why?” No, I want to repeat the process. First, you eliminate the past. You have them go through, and then use NLP.

All the above, all the above. I look at NLP and hypnosis and all that just as a tool, like a screwdriver, hammer, or saw—it’s a tool. Some people say, “I’m a NLP practitioner or NLP therapist.” There’s a limit to the things you can do with that. As I say, “I’m a dry water or I’m a screwdriver guy. It’s a tool.” When you have multiple ways of doing things and understand the purpose, you can choose the best one. Now everything is available. 

No, I totally get it. Because I’ve studied many methodologies myself, and at the end of the day, when I connect with people, I’ll use this as a screwdriver. That’s the tool I’ll use. But at the end of the day, for me, it’s just like opening myself as a channel to connect with the person and have divine wisdom flow through me to guide them. Everything we learn, regardless of how much money we spend on our education, still falls into the bucket of wisdom and knowledge. But when you are really connected, you can effect change. This is what’s happening with you because your love guides you, and that love is connected to the source. 

Techniques are just tools; the intention and the openness of the heart, coming from the right place. My life has undergone significant changes over the last five years.

This is what brings about those amazing shifts and transformations that you were talking about because you’re doing it out of passion. You’re doing it out of love. That’s what creates the intention, because we live in a quantum world. Like you said, “Our intention brings our dreams to us.” When you sit with a patient and the intention is to bring healing, to effect change, it’s almost like, even though they’re not present, it might not be present in the same room, there is some kind of mirror neuron that happens in both your mind and that person’s mind. All of that is connected to the matrix, the field. Change happens when you are connected and have the desire; that transformation will occur in that person.

Absolutely. All that is true. Techniques are just tools; the intention and the openness of the heart, coming from the right place. My life has changed completely over the last five years.

Let’s talk about that part.

Let me share two more brief stories with you.  About a child, but it doesn’t matter. Let me tell you about myself. I actually have a very good mentor. Five years ago, four years ago, I was at his home, spending time with him, and he told me that you’ve grown so much. He has known me for a few years. You’ve grown too much to let it go completely. Let go of all your fears, and I said, “How am I going to let it go?” says, “How do I? I tried everything and whatever is there is there.” He says. “You’re really letting it go by inviting it and facing them off, and that depression that exists inside of you asks it.”

I came back to Toronto. I was traveling at the time. I was backpacking. I came to Toronto, and my sister has an apartment with a guest suite. I checked into this guest suite. I looked, I told my sister, “Don’t bother me. I’m just going to be here.” I accept food and necessities. I was just sitting and inviting my fears, my anxieties, one by one, as they took hold. I became so depressed. I remember I was depressed at the age of 40. That was a time when I sold the business and began exploring coaching. It was as heavy as that. 

But I said, “I’m not going to stop. I don’t care if it takes 10 years. I’m going through this. I’m not stopping.” I would sometimes stay in bed, day and night, not knowing if it was day or night, and cover the windows to create a little dark room with a little light in the corner. It was the day 23. I woke up and there was no sign of depression. It was just an unbelievable joy, ecstasy. Ecstasy, you cannot imagine. I was out of the woods, and I was like, “Where was this? How come? I never experienced this.” I said, “I could even love myself.” 

Any feelings, any emotion that you have, fear, that you have, and it ends with the fear, is going to drag you down.

You know what Jesus says, “Somebody slaps you on the cheek, you turn the other cheek.” I could do that after that. I told you this story. I put it on Facebook, and some people were worried about it. Maybe I’m gone mad. While traveling and backpacking in Argentina, I bought a brand-new phone. Just got an iPhone, $2,000, the most expensive one, the largest one, with the most memory and everything.

I’m looking for my Uber when this kid comes riding a bicycle and grabs my phone. My phone is ringing, and the kid—I look at him—he is barely 18. He’s going, “Yeah, yeah,” screaming out of joy that he got my phone. I fell on my knees. I start praying for him. I said, “God, I’m giving my phone to him. I don’t want any karma for this. Make it so the money that he earns from this phone changes life out of this career to a better, more ecological one.”

There were taxis around. There were like five or six taxis around there. They thought he hit me. They thought he hit me with a knife or something. I’m on my knees, praying for him. They run over and say, “Señor, Señor.” I said, “No, I’m okay. I’m okay.” He said,  “Say what?” I said, “No, I’m praying for him. I’m praying for him.” I went to see the police that night. I had to make a police report just in case my insurance covers it. The police said, “Are you sure they took your phone? You’re not upset at all.” I said, “I don’t get upset anymore. Nothing upsets me. Nothing hurts me. Nothing upsets me. I haven’t experienced any of those feelings anymore.” 

At the moment you faced your darkness, you felt it completely and utterly. I don’t know what other words can go with it completely, but the moment you really felt it, the moment you were just, I’m not hiding from this, I’m looking it in the eye, and I’m going to experience. When I went to India, the monks said, “Let the tiger devour you.” In other words, you have to acknowledge and feel your emotions. It’s like, really, let them think all of them, but don’t stay there more than 10 minutes. 

I did it. I did it for 23 consecutive days.

But you also did a darkness retreat. How did that? How did you do that? Why did you do that? Can you tell me about that?

It was absolutely. I recently did Dark Street.

You could explain what it is and how you got there.

There’s a place called in Chiang Mai, Thailand. There’s a place in Chiang Mai called Tao Garden, owned by a gentleman named Mantak Chia, also known as Master Mantak Chia. I love this man. It’s a very beautiful man. He is a Taoist, and he has created a complex for about 40 to 50 people to keep them all in complete darkness. It’s like a condo building with different units. Some people have two doubles and triples, and I had a single, and then you meditate in total darkness, like there’s not a pinch of light. If it is, it will be canceled for 10 consecutive days. You don’t eat anything. I’ve been fasting—water fasting, many times. I just did one actual, a week ago. I came out of a 12-day fast. 

For 10 days, you don’t eat? Do you drink water? What? That’s why you look so good. You look better than I remember you. I mean, you always look, but seriously, you look younger than I remember you. 

Thank you. I feel younger, I feel more energized. Fasting was such a scary thing when I first tried it 12 years ago. Actually, I did with an Israeli girl called Shakhti. I think she’s in Israel.

All the Israelis who go to India come back with their names.

Live as if today is the last day of your life.

She was this beautiful, beautiful soul, and we did it in. My queer island, thank you. Her husband was Polish, and she was from Israel. I don’t remember his name. I don’t know his name. It was a nice man. We did it. I was cheating literally from the third day on. There were fruit gardens around, and I would pick plums and berries. One day, she caught me. She says, “I had something like a blackberry.” I go, “Aslan, tell me what you have done?” I said, “Nothing.” He goes, “Have you eaten?” I said, “No.” I was smiling. She says, “Your teeth are full of blackberries. Blackberries have a mark, too.” I was like, “Oh my God, Aslan, you’re going to get, your pancreas is going to get hit. You’re going to die. Don’t do this to me. Okay? If you’re going to do this, stop the fasting, start eating, but don’t do this.” I got, “This is dangerous. I didn’t know that.” I’ve done it about six times now, for as long as two weeks.

Is it good for men and women to fast for so long? Because I get men, but women, we have like different systems.

It’s wonderful, next time I’m going to do three weeks. I’m going to do three weeks. I did 12 days. I had to stop it because I was scheduled to have surgery on Friday. I thought, “Ok, I’m not going to go into surgery fasting.” 

What happened? What happens? Like how? What? Where? Why? What happens when you fast for 12 days?

In the first two days, you feel a little tired. You need a little extra sleep. I sleep 12 hours, and you’re still exhausted. On the third day, and by the way, your body’s reflexes are really urging you to eat. The third day, hunger goes away, and your energy goes through the roof. Like you, I would sleep four to five hours a night and have the same level of energy as if I had stayed eight hours. I’m normally an eight-hour guy. I need to sleep eight hours, and it’s just unbelievable. 

Live at the same time as if you’re going to live for eternity. Have plans. Never lose hope, because our humanity has undergone numerous changes.

I worked out the entire time. I worked out for an hour a day during my stay. There are about six or seven floors in this building. I would go up 10 times the floors, stairs up and down. That was my cardio. Then I would do it to avoid losing muscle, because you want to maintain your muscle mass while also losing fat. The only way to do it is to keep working the muscles to retain them and reduce the fat. I lost quite a bit of weight, too. I was actually surprised that I didn’t lose as much as I thought I would.

It makes me hungry just thinking about you fasting for 12 days.

It’s nothing. I’ve done Vipassana. Vipassana is a meditation practice where you refrain from speaking for 10 days. That’s also a very, very wonderful meditation. It’s just life is beautiful. You see, and you start saying beautiful things, even in the midst of death and destruction and everything; you see the lovely things, and it’s wonderful.

If you’ve been through a lot to get to where you are, you’ve been through a lot. If someone is struggling right now, even looking at the news, 2025 seems like a very intense year. The last four or five years have become increasingly intense in terms of geopolitics and the AI revolution. There are so many things happening at once, and people are missing a sense of groundedness. Like they’re not grounded. What would be your advice to somebody who’s listening or watching and needs something?

I will have to backtrack on this. We are born with two emotions, love and fear. These are the only two feelings we are born with. We love to suck our mom’s nipple. We love to be tickled and played with. We are afraid of loud noises and dropping. These are just the two, and all the other emotions—guilt, joy, everything—are like a book full of them. They are all manufactured based on one of these two. They’re branches. We have extended it. Our minds have expanded it, and it comes. Anything, any feelings, any emotion that you have, fear that you have, and it ends at the fear, is going to drag you down.

The fear was instilled in us for our survival. When you enter survival mode, you typically have four responses, which are fight, flight, freeze, and fold. These are the four F. You get an F in life. Suppose you are afraid of the AI; if you’re afraid of war or something, we may be in the middle of a world war. Perhaps one day they will write about these years, saying, ‘Oh, it was the peak of World War III.’ Maybe we are. Don’t know that yet. L: Living life now comes to the advised part. Live as if today is the last day of your life. Tomorrow, there’s no tomorrow. That means if you have to say thank you to somebody, you have to apologize, you have to send love, you have to make love, whatever you need to do, do it. 

Don’t leave it for tomorrow because there may be no tomorrow. Live at the same time as if you’re going to live for eternity. Have plans. Never lose hope, because our humanity has undergone numerous changes. We’ve had the Black Plague and the Spanish flu; half the population of the world was wiped out, and yet we’re still here. Our humanity is still here. Now, could we end it? Some idiot, maybe in some government, could push a button that could destroy the whole world. We are counting on it. 

Hopefully not that, and hopefully not us, but we are finding our place and discovering the right things. We are going to be experimented on like a child in this universe. Our species is a million years old, that’s the oldest. You can go 50,000 years, maybe for some religious people 5,000 years, but we are like children; the universe is billions and billions, trillions of years old. There’s so much knowledge that we have absolutely no idea how much we know. Our knowledge and know-how are not just a speck of dust; they don’t even count. 

Live with joy and understand that whatever you’re taking seriously today, tomorrow will not be important. When I think about the days when I used to run a business and had to fire and hire people, I was a nervous wreck. I was just a taskmaster.. I had a binder, like a time management system, that I had for 15 minutes. That was the maximum I could spend on a task. I had to write for 10 minutes. I would do the task in five minutes. 

I had to write down what I accomplished and how this related to my major goal. Looking back, I’m saying, “Did any of it matter? Probably not. Probably not. Probably not. I would be better off if I fell in love with my wife, showed more life to my kids, and more to the world. Love humanity, that would be better.” I help, and now the irony is that I coach businesspeople to be better at what they do, and they are really excelling. But when it comes to myself, I’m just in a very good place. I don’t ever want to go back.

I’m looking forward to seeing you in person the next time I’m in Canada or elsewhere in the world. It’s a pleasure seeing you and witnessing your evolution, as well as everything you’ve been through. We barely scratched the surface with you and everything you’ve been through. You’re always welcome here. Thank you, listeners. Remember to live as if this is the last day of your life. Live as if you are going to live forever, and don’t ever lose hope. Whatever you are worried about today might not be important tomorrow. Make your life stellar now. This is Orion, till next time.