Know Thyself with Dr. John Demartini

A Personal Note From Orion

Knowing who you indeed are from the inside out can be one of your greatest assets. When you are hyperaware of your value, wants, dislikes, and patterns, you begin to master yourself more effectively. Being able to control your thoughts and actions leads to wise decisions that help shape your future.

On today’s Stellar Life Podcast episode, I am honored to have the amazing Dr. John Demartini once again on the podcast. I consider him one of the best mentors, and it’s such a blessing to have him share his wisdom once again, this time more profoundly. Plus, his volume is way better than his last appearance.

Dr. John Demartini is a world-renowned specialist in human behavior, a researcher, author, and global educator. His education curriculum ranges from corporate empowerment programs, financial empowerment strategies, self-development programs, relationship solutions, and social transformation programs.

If you want to start your day or your week with something motivational, this episode is for you. Tune in!

In this Episode

[1:03] – Orion introduces Dr. John Demartini, a world-renowned specialist in human behavior, a researcher, author and global educator. He has developed a series of solutions applicable across all markets, sectors and age groups.
[05:04] – Dr. Demartini talks about the transition of people going outside, involving in physical activities, and the challenge of moving forward in creating a new life.
[10:52] – What are the right questions to ask yourself to see both opportunity and challenge in your life and come up with a solution?
[16:09] – Dr. Demartini discusses how envying other people clouds the clarity of your mission and distracts you from what is deeply meaningful in your life.
[20:12] – How can you improve self-love?
[25:32] – Dr. Demartini recommends a quick exercise on how to clear self-doubts and guilt.
[31:36] – Dr. Demartini shares his great mission in life and points out the difference between mission and passion.
[37:15] – Dr. Demartini describes how human beings can harmonize between the pairs of characteristic opposites in life.
[43:12] – What are the ways we can deal with fear?
[49:28] – Follow Dr. John Demartini on his social media accounts and visit his website at drdemartini.com, take his Value Determination tool, and check out more of his valuable resources.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hello Dr. Demartini, and welcome to the Stellar Life podcast. This is so wonderful having you here again. Thank you so much for taking away from your busy schedule and being here with us. I appreciate you.

Thank you. Thank you for having me again.

Before we begin, can you share a little bit about how was the last year for you and what you are the most excited about these days?

Well, the last year has obviously been an educational journey. I upgraded my awareness of the internet world, the social media world, and the Zoom technology world for sure. But we’ve had a booming year, and I can’t complain. I’ve been blessed. St. Corona has blessed us very well. We’ve reached people that we’ve not been able to reach in countries we haven’t been able to get to. I can’t complain. I’ve been researching, writing, teaching, and traveling on Zoom.

You travel a lot, so that was a big difference for you.

Yeah. I’ve already broken the 20 million miles in flights. But this year and last year on Zoom, we had people from every country. It was great to reach the world that way.

What do you think people are craving the most this year? Do you feel any shift in the world or in people’s awareness?

Pity parties, trauma drama, and the ho-hum doldrums are not the way to turn scars into stars. Share on X

Yeah. I think that there’s definitely going to be a desire to contact and get together physically. I think right now in New York, they’re putting on a big celebration where they’re going to have, I don’t know how many tens of thousands of people are coming out. They’re out because they go okay, the masks are off, we’re into work. We’re going to go and do it.

I think a lot of people are compensating for the repressed physical contact. They’re out there full blast the second the freedom to do so is there. I think that’s going to be a booming thing. The restaurants and some of the places are just absolutely packed right now. I think that people are going to be having the itch to get out and interact.

Where I’m staying here in this hotel complex, there’s been weddings and events, and things are booming here.

As far as spiritual awakening or spiritual awareness, do you feel or see a shift?

I think that out of the slingshot effect of the challenge of having to adapt, once we conquer that challenge, there’s a tremendous amount of grace and gratitude that emerges for knowing that we’re resilient and capable and coming up in upgrading technologies. I think a lot of people are grateful for what has come out of it. There are always people that want to be victims of their history instead of masters of their destiny, but this is a catalytic opportunity for people to turn that around and make it into something great.

It all depends on the questions you ask.

It all depends on the questions you ask. If you ask questions, how does whatever’s happening help me fulfill my mission of service to people? You turning into an opportunity of not. You dwell in the story and run the story instead of actually running forward with the new creative life.

I just posted an episode where I interviewed my husband, Stephan Spencer. We were in Israel for nine months and now we’re in Florida. We were in Israel when it was a super lockdown. You couldn’t even leave the country. It was almost five months of lockdown. It was difficult. It wasn’t easy, but out of that, it feels like he went through this spiritual awakening. He’s so much more connected to himself and to guidance. It’s fascinating to see what came out of it.

I also feel, in my own life, when I’ve been through really hard times, at the moment, I didn’t see the gift in it. But years down the road, I look back, and it was like a gift with a bow on the bottom. I could look back, I can open it, and I can go, “Wow, this happened.” Because this painful situation happened, now I’m better. Now, I’m in a completely different place.

Well, I’m a firm believer that it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you decide to perceive, decide, and act from it. Sometimes, we have events in our life that we think are terrible, but a day, a week, a month, a year, or five years later, we look back and say thank you. I say, why have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process? Why not look right now for the things to be grateful for and find the creative ideas out of it? Use it to your advantage and have the wisdom of the ages without the aging process.

It seems like that’s what you’ve done. You turned the challenge into an opportunity. Now, you’re able to serve even more. I’m a firm believer that it’s up to us to take command. We have control over our perceptions, decisions, and actions, that’s it. If we choose to perceive things as a setback, it becomes one. If we choose to see it as an opportunity because we extract out of an opportunity, then it turns into something that fuels us, not frictions us.

If we choose to perceive things as a setback, it becomes one.

How can one get out of the victim mentality? Because I feel like sometimes I do it or I can talk to other people and I can hear them, almost the victimhood. They don’t take responsibility for their lives or they see everything is done to them.

The thing is if they’re going to play that role and they’re going to be on their amygdala and they’re going to be searching for fantasies. The only reason why we’re depressed and the only reason why we label something negative is because we’re comparing that current moment of reality to a fantasy about how it used to be or how you wish it would be. Instead of getting grounded on how it is and using that to our advantage, we keep running a story about how it could’ve been, should’ve been, would’ve been, used to be. That’s not going to get you anywhere.

Running your story, if you really care about yourself, quit hanging out with people that will listen to your story. Hang out with people that will say, “Shut up and get on to work.” If we fill our day with the highest priority actions that we can do at that moment to make a difference in the world and contribute to other people, and focus on serving people, we don’t have time for wallowing in pity parties. We can focus on making a difference in the world.

It doesn’t serve us. Sometimes people will hang out with people that will listen to their misery. But like you said, it doesn’t help because it just keeps you in this—you said in the—amygdala. What’s the job of the amygdala? What does that mean to be there?

You want to avoid predators and seek prey, avoid pain and seek pleasure, avoid difficulty and seek ease. It wants to search for that, which keeps it juvenilely dependent, and it doesn’t grow up. It attracts even more disturbing, distracting, and distressing challenges every time it seeks to avoid them. Whatever you try to run away from, you keep running into. That’s a pointless pursuit. Wisdom is embracing the challenges that inspire you and tackling them.

Going after and solving a problem in the world. Instead of focusing on your trivial problems, go focus on a big problem and solve it. Find resources, people, or talents to go solve problems. When you do, you have fulfillment. The greater the problem you solve, the greater the fulfillment you get. Focusing on that is the solution, not sitting and wallowing in a pity party. Pity parties, trauma drama, and ho-hum doldrums are not the way to turn scars into stars.

The key is finding out what you’re intrinsically driven by and prioritize your life accordingly.

Nice. Because you’re either complaining or creating. How do you deal with challenges?

I changed my perception of them and see them as opportunities. I don’t sit there. I just turn them around. Everything that can manifest in the universe has got a pair of opposites. You can see it as something supportive or challenging to your values. If you see it is challenging and you’re going to label it that way, you’re going to avoid it. If you see it as an opportunity and see it supporting your values, you’re going to embrace it. Whatever’s happening right now, how is it helping me fulfill my mission?

How is it helping me get where I want to go? How is it helping me serve more people? Once I find the upsides to it, it changes my perception. You’re not even labeling it as a challenge because it never was. When you’re resentful of something or avoiding something, you’re conscious of the downsides, unconscious of the upsides. You’re not mindful. When you’re infatuated with something, you’re conscious of the upsides and not conscious of downsides. Again, non-mindful.

But the moment you ask the question that allows you to see both sides, you become mindful. Mindfulness always comes up with the solution to every so-called problem.

How do you ask that question?

Just write a simple question. Whatever I’m perceiving right now, how is it on the way? How is it helping me get what I want? How does it help me serve more people? How does it help me get more efficient? What is it teaching me? Come up with it, just sit down, and be accountable to write the answers down, and don’t stop until you get a tear of gratitude for the experience. If you’ve got an experience and you walk through it, you’re only a more empowered individual.

Mindfulness always comes up with the solution to every so-called problem.

What are some ways to find empowerment?

I think anytime you’re living by your highest values, your self-worth goes up, your creativity goes up, your space and time horizons go up, your walking of the talk and leadership capacities go up. It’s key. If you don’t fill your day with high-priority actions that inspire you and ask how is whatever’s happening helping me fulfill what ties to my value, you’re automatically going to fill up a day with distractions that don’t.

Your job is not to let entropy run your life, but to actually let a vision, dream, and a mission, something that you’re inspired by, some calling in your life that you want to contribute to, to focus on that all day. If you do that, you won’t have time for problems. You’ll fill your day. We all know that if we have a day that’s really, really filled with an agenda of high-priority things, it’s easy to say no to distractions and opportunists.

But if you’re not, you got your day wide open and there’s nothing on your plate, you’re going to be available to all kinds of infiltrations of opportunists and all kinds of challenges that are going to take up the time. Parkinson’s law states that whatever time is allotted is going to be filled with low-priority things if you don’t fill it with high-priority things.

How do you prioritize your day? What do you do?

I asked myself back—almost 37 years ago—what are the highest priority actions I can do today to help me fulfill my mission? I wrote this down on an index card, kept those index cards, and looked at what was the priorities of the priorities of the priorities over the years. It came to me just simply to research, write, travel, and teach. I basically hire people to do everything but that. I basically hired people to cook and drive. I haven’t driven for 30 something years. I haven’t cooked since I was 24. I delegate everything.

If you delegate, you liberate.

If you delegate, you liberate. I say no to all things that aren’t inspiring to me and say yes to things that are going to fill my day with inspiration. You can’t live an inspired life doing low-priority stuff.

Can you share a little bit about how to determine one’s value? I know you have something on your website that can help people have the exercise to do that.

Yeah. On my website, drdemartini.com, there’s a value determination process for people to help them find out what their life is truly demonstrating what’s important to them. Because a lot of times, people tell you they want to do something but it’s actually an infiltration of an individual or collective authority speaking through them. They hear themselves saying, “I should, I ought to, I supposed to, I got to, I have to, I must.” It’s imperative instead of something indicative of what their life demonstrates.

I tell people, until you find out what’s really important, quit going after things that you think are important but aren’t important. You’re going to need motivation instead of being spontaneously inspired to act. What I do on my website is I have 13 questions to help discern what that is. If you go on there onto my website, drdemartini.com, fill out the questionnaire, and store it there, it’s private, it’s free, you’ll blow your mind with what you learned about yourself. If you don’t know yourself and you don’t be yourself, you’re not going to love yourself. Knowing yourself is knowing what you really value and prioritizing your life accordingly.

What it does is it asks how you feel about your space? How do you spend your time? What really energizes you? What are you really spending your money on? What is it you’re really organized in? Where are you really spontaneously disciplined? What do you think about, visualize, and internal dialogue with yourself about most? What do you keep talking about other people? What is it that inspires you? What is it you have that goals are coming true? What is it that you love learning about?

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Questions that make you look at what your life demonstrates, not the fantasies you hold because of comparison to other people. The key is to find out what you’re intrinsically driven by and prioritize your life accordingly.

I have a very high value on being a mom. I almost put my business (most of it) aside and I just want to be a mom. It took me a very long time, and it was very difficult to conceive. Doctors gave me 5% to conceive. In my mind, I decided it’s 95% and co-created with God this miracle baby. The only thing I want to do is just be a mom. This is my highest value, and on the other hand, I have guilt. Oh my God, I have all this knowledge. Oh my God, I need to help people. Oh my God, I need to work on my business.

Look at those other moms that can do it all. I have this conflict inside of me that I feel is not resolved.

Well, anytime you subordinate to somebody else and compare your life to theirs and think they have a better life than you, you’ll inject some of their values into your life which will cloud the clarity of your own mission.

Rose Kennedy, her mission statement said, “I dedicate my life to raising a family of world leaders.” She didn’t try to waver from that. She focused on that. She gave herself permission to be what she really wanted to be. But if we compare ourselves to others, envy other people, and try to imitate other people, we’ll cloud ourselves, confuse ourselves, and distract ourselves from what’s deeply meaningful.

Each time we do, we create symptomatology, confusion, and self-depreciation, which is a symptom to let us know we’re not true and authentic. Every symptom in our life—psychologically, physiologically, sociologically—is feedback to guide us back to authenticity.

When the voice and the vision inside are louder than other people’s opinions outside, you begin to master your life.

Yes, and I still have this sense of guilt of like, oh my God, I can really help someone if I’ll do more coaching calls. I feel guilty that I’ve been given all these answers.

You only feel guilty when you’re letting what you think somebody down. It could be your husband. It could be your friend. It could be somebody else that envies and imitates online. If it’s really, really important to you, you stick to it, you won’t feel guilty. It’s when you’re trying to do something that you think somebody else wants you to do and you feel like you’ve let them down, that’s where the guilt comes in.

If you want to go and do a podcast periodically and do a service to people, do it at your own rate. Do it according to what you don’t feel guilty about. Allow yourself to be that because otherwise, you’re going to sit there and compare yourself to others and think I should be somebody else. Anytime you’re a cat trying to swim like a fish, you’re going to beat yourself up and feel guilty because you’re not going to excel at it.

I’m definitely a cat, more cat than fish. That’s awesome. What about self-love? How can we increase it? Because I think it goes together with loving yourself more, appreciating yourself more. I feel like if you are in super deep love and appreciation for yourself, it doesn’t matter what other people say or do, or all the “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” in your life. You’re just, “I live in the moment, this is my life, and I appreciate every moment of it.”

You just said it perfectly. When you’re living by your highest values, you’re most objective, most neutral, most resilient, most adaptable, least influenced by other people on the outside. Remember I said many years ago when we first met, with the voice and the vision on the inside is louder than all opinions on the outside, you begin to master your life. The moment you live authentically according to what you value most, which is where your identity really is, you don’t have that guilt. You’re too busy doing something that you feel is your mission.

Self-depreciation is a gift.

The second you go and try to be down and live on something lower on your values because you think you should, according to other people that you’re comparing yourself to, boom, self-depreciation comes in. Self-depreciation is a gift. It’s feedback to let you know you’re not being authentic. You’re allowing other things to distract you from what’s really important to you.

And allowing other people to tell you what you should do and how you should live your life.

But everybody’s got a different set of values, and they’re always going to project their values onto you and they’re different. As Emerson said, “Envy is ignorance, and imitation is suicide.” Einstein said, “My contempt for authority is what made me one.” He became an authority because he wasn’t subordinate to authority.

Wow, that was so powerful that I forgot my next question. I was there with the quotes. That’s so powerful. When you think about increasing self-love, is there an exercise or something that people can do to find that place within them?

Sit down and don’t even waste your time on anything but the highest priority things because anytime you do the highest priority things, your self-worth goes up. It’s really that simple. Your self-worth is based on your values. The higher the value, the higher the self-worth. The lower the values you live by, the lower your self-worth. Then give yourself permission to go and document what you’re grateful for for the day. I keep the largest collection of gratitude of anybody I’ve met on earth.

I do it every single day. I’ve already typed the opportunity with you today. I do it every day. Every day I write what I had the opportunity to do and what I’m grateful for in the day because then that gives me a metric. Also, it’s wise to keep a metric of what you’re accomplishing. If you say you’re going to do something and you’re not doing it, it must not be important to you. That helps you get feedback on what’s really important to you because that’s what you end up doing.

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That’s why you want to look at your life and be honestly reflective of what it’s demonstrating, not what you fantasize about. I asked people by the thousands if I’m speaking, how many of you want to be financially independent? Everybody puts their hands and legs up in the air. I ask how many of you are financially independent? All the legs go down and hands go down. I said, “Because many of you live in a fantasy of living the lifestyles of the rich and famous and consuming consumables that depreciate value instead of buying assets that work for you and put money in your pocket and give you passive income.”

Many people have a delusion about what they want instead of actually looking at what their life demonstrated. Start with what your life is truly committed to demonstrate and set goals that are there and you won’t beat yourself up. You’ll actually grow, expand, and do something significant that makes a difference.

It’s beautiful. Ten years ago, I created a vision board. One of the photos on the vision board was you.

I think you mentioned that. We were sitting in the Fairmont Hotel out there in a little circle out near Highway 1 in a little cove there. If you remember. It’s a little noisy there, but we did a little interview. I remember that.

I remember. It was a good interview.

You mentioned that then.

I mentioned that, and I still remember it. I’m still in awe that, wow, I’m talking to the great Dr. Demartini. This is so beautiful. I’m so grateful. When you think about manifesting things from nothing into reality, how do we do that? I happen to do that through prayer, through vision boards, through intention, mostly prayer, a little more prayer.

Being adaptable means you’re resourceful, creative, and determined to succeed no matter what happens to you.

I happen to manifest the love of my life and having my baby, which was not easy. I feel like I’m at a place where I forgot what it’s like to be manifesting, even though I am right now in a very beautiful place that I’d never imagined living in. How do you go back to that desire and that creative spirit of manifestation and working with those universal laws, the law of attraction, and other universal laws?

Automatically they’re created by nature. What happens is, whatever is highest on our value is what spontaneously comes up into our mind. What we do is that’s where our clearest attention is. We’re more attentive to the environment for the opportunities and synchronicities, and we’re more intent in the sense of taking actions and decisions. The key is to actually get clear about what’s really important to you because your innermost dominant thought will become your outermost, tangible reality because it’s the one that you’re going to be most persistent and consistent in thinking about.

It’s the one that’s going to end up having the one that you build momentum and incremental momentum towards greater achievement. It’s the one that’s going to allow you to spot in the environment, the opportunities and act on them. Back to the same answer, sticking to top priorities. I tell people, if you want to depreciate yourself and actually undermine the law of attraction, go try to be somebody you’re not. Then the universe is going to kick you in the butt by giving you the feedback that that’s not the pathway.

Once you get all back on track with your authentic self, the high-priority things, the thing that’s deeply meaningful to you, watch what happens. The law of attraction starts kicking into gear and you start manifesting these almost instantaneous manifestations. We’ve all had situations, we think about people, they’ve called, they suddenly emailed, or whatever. That’s because of our clarity or our intention. We’re connected to them.

I’m a firm believer that if we focus on what it is that’s really deeply meaningful to it and never lose sight of it. I had a vision many years ago when I watched a movie by Houdini. I saw him perform at the Palladium in London in this movie. In the end, there are 2000 people in a standing ovation, and there’s royalty on the upper balcony. I saw him bow and take his standing ovation. I sat down, and I said, “You know what, I’m snapshotting that picture of the movie. I’m putting myself in there.” In 2007, at the Akasha conference, I was the speaker at the Palladium with 2000 people and royalty on the upper left balcony.

Most of the time, it's not what happens to you. It is how you perceive and act on situations at that given moment. Share on X

Oh my goodness.

I actually bowed in the exact same way he did and remembered that moment. I snapshotted that picture from front and back just to make sure it matched the thing that I saw in the movie. I’m a firm believer that if you hold a vision of something like that, you can create amazing outcomes. If it’s not important to you, you won’t stay focused on the mission. You won’t stay there, you’ll forget it. If it’s really important to you, you’ll never forget it until it’s manifested.

I feel that in the last few weeks, I have had a lot of abundance in my life, and I’m super grateful. But there is some time, this little girl that grew up in this poor broken house, she doesn’t believe she deserves it. It’s like, I have the ability to have what I want but I don’t believe that I deserve it.

Anything that you think you’ve done that you feel is unfulfilling, undeserving, or whatever, write down whatever you did, how it served you, and how it served others and clear it. Because it’s just an assumption that you’ve caused more pain and pleasure to somebody in the world, and that makes you self-depreciative. Find out how it served. There is no situation that it doesn’t serve. Anything that’s on this planet is serving. Just because somebody else doesn’t see it, it doesn’t mean you can’t look for it and find it.

I’m a firm believer in making a list of everything you feel ashamed or guilty about or anything that if you were to be exposed publicly about it, you would go, oh, I wouldn’t want them to see that. Write them all down and write down whatever I did, how did it serve me, and how did it serve the people that are involved? And clear it out. Otherwise, you’ll carry that around. You’ll feel like you have to owe the world something that you may not, and you’ll have difficulty receiving.

It’s like, why me and not them? It’s, again, that weird guilt of why do I have it, and somebody else doesn’t.

Anything that’s on this planet is serving.

You just explained it. You’re sitting there concentrating on what you want, you’re focusing on priority, you’re doing the things that you love to do, you’re raising the family, you actually manifested the thing. They’re not taking the time to do that, that’s why they’re getting their result. I don’t believe there are victims of history out there. I’ve met people that live in townships.

I had a boy that had nine brothers and sisters. He was 14 years old, and he came to my program. His mother and father both died of AIDS. He was living in a shack, they didn’t have electricity or even a floor. I watched him come to the program, turned his life around, started saving 15% of $0.60 a day that he was earning stacking mud bricks. I watched him go out and buy a little shack, an upgraded system, save money, and build things. I watched him get out of his situation because he took action.

I watched a lot of other people in that same situation run their story and want somebody to rescue them. The difference between getting out of that situation and staying stuck in that situation is your attitude. That determines the altitude. If you take that, perceive things differently, take actions differently, and start to be grateful in your life, things turn. You move in a direction of opportunity.

It’s beautiful. Thank you for that. That makes me very happy to hear what you just said. When we attract good things into our lives, maybe we do deserve it. Maybe, like you said, there is a reason for that.

If you’ve got an opportunity to have more of an abundant life and you’ve got a husband that’s participating in that and everything else, he wouldn’t be doing that if he didn’t value you. He’s obviously seeing a value that you do not see in yourself. Ask him what the values are and have a night together where you sit down and list all the things that you’re grateful for in each other and watch what happens.

Nice. I love that. It sounds like a good night.

You probably end up with a very moment of reflective intimacy and appreciation for your journey.

Yes. My coach just gave me an assignment to ask 10 of my closest friends and family members about five things that are my best qualities and five things that are things that I maybe need to work on. What do you think about this exercise?

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You have to realize that their opinions are going to be based on their values, and they’re going to project their values onto you. That’s great. I found out that no matter what you do, you have people supporting and challenging you, liking and disliking you. You’re a hero and a villain, a saint and a sinner, and a virtuous and a vicious individual to somebody. I don’t let the outside world dictate that. I just go inside and I find out whatever I’ve done, how it is serving, and use it to my advantage.

There’s going to be people that like and dislike me, and they’re going to try to change me and fix me. I just don’t pay much attention to it. What I do is I find that if I’m going out and doing what I can to make a difference in people’s lives and serve the people that I can do in my niche of the world, I end up having fulfillment. There’s always going to be somebody that’s going to think you need to change because they’re projecting their values onto you and you’re challenging their values by your existence. Look at what Copernicus and Galileo went through, and Bruno.

All great thought people automatically have people because anytime you go against the grain, that tradition, that convention, and stand out, not conform and start giving yourself permission to be unique, and an unbridled visionary to make a bigger difference, people around you, that mediocrity, are automatically going to challenge you. I would be selective in listening to those people and make sure that they’re people that are really, really dedicated to doing some missions so their opinion has value.

That’s powerful. That makes it even better. Somebody in your position, somebody who teaches—I don’t know how many millions of people you’ve taught so far—I bet you get criticism. Do you not even feel it when you get criticism? How do you not take it personally or take it to heart?

I understand that whatever somebody sees in you is a reflection of something they’re too proud or too humble to admit that they have inside themselves. They’re just facing themselves. They’re pointing a finger back at themselves more so than me. I don’t really pay much attention to that. If I see a pattern of people that they keep repeating saying something like that I might pay attention to it, just to see if they’re giving some feedback. I realized that no matter what I do in life, there’s somebody’s going to like and dislike it.

If you’re not being crucified, you’re not on purpose in life.

Most of the time, when people are projecting their criticism on you, it’s because I’m reminding them of something they do not love in themselves. It’s making them want to avoid and change me, so they don’t have to face their own stuff. I can’t let somebody else’s wins affect my life. I’m here on a mission. I focus on my mission every day. Along the way, I’m going to have people that are liking and disliking that mission, or otherwise, I’m not making a difference. If you’re not being crucified, you’re not on purpose in life.

What’s your mission?

My mission has been, since 17, to research everything I can, read the greatest writers, thinkers, philosophers, and people on anything to do with maximizing human awareness and potential. Integrate that, correlate that, synthesize that, and syncretized that in such a way that I can produce that in every possible vehicle to express that in radio, television, newspapers, magazines, movies, books, any possible vehicle to get information out that might upgrade, expand, and give the opportunity to people across the world.

That’s a tall order. You’re the one. I heard you talk about mission versus passion. A lot of self-development gurus and coaches, they talk about connecting to your passion, finding your passion. What’s your take on it?

Just go lookup on Google passion. Type in passion-etymology. Just type it in. You’ll see it comes to a root word that means pati and passio, which means to suffer. The word “passion” means to suffer. The word “compassion” means to suffer with somebody. One wounded person buying into the wounds of another person. I have no interest in that. I have absolutely no interest in trying to help people suffer or have suffering with them.

I’m interested in teaching people how to master their life, how to turn whatever they thought was suffering into opportunity so they can be inspired by a mission. I’m a man on a mission, not a passionate guy. Passion is an ungoverned, uncontrolled animal behavior of the amygdala, a response that basically is a survival response from avoiding predators and seeking prey. That’s passion. That’s an impulse state.

A Passion for Excellence by Tom Peters and Nancy Austin

Somehow, in 1985, when A Passion for Excellence book came out, the lexicon got changed into common use. The common vernacular now is that people go and find your passion. What they’re really buying is mission, but they’re not understanding the etymologies of it. I’d much rather disburse great things with my mission than I would sit there and be running my life by elusive passions. I just tell people to go get the etymologies and go study the background of the term. Not the more recent ones that have been skewed, but the ones that are original.

Studying etymology, as the great philosopher said, is our key because some of these words have deep meaning originally by the entomologist and the neologists that started the words. I use the word “mission.” I’m a man on a mission. People label me that in interviews sometimes, “Oh, you’re so passionate.” I said, “No, I’m on a mission. There is a difference.”

I guess your girlfriend will think you’re passionate.

It depends. Anytime you’re infatuated with somebody, you’re too humble to admit what you see in them is inside you, and you have a disowned part and a disconnect. Anytime you resent somebody you (again) are too proud to admit what you see in them is inside you, and you have a disconnect. You’re just disposed of. You’re not going to have intimacy with somebody and love for somebody if you keep having a disowned part.

It’s when you actually own, reflect, and realize what you see in them is inside you so you can identify, relate to them, and reflect in your awareness that you can have intimacy. Intimacy is the embracing of all the parts you see in them inside you without avoiding or seeking any of them.

That’s beautiful. Do you even work on yourself anymore?

There’s no end to refinement and polish of the mission that you’re on. Every day you ask yourself, how do I become more effective and efficient at fulfilling my mission? That’s a non-stop game. I don’t find that moral language of I’m better, I’m worse, I’m good, I’m bad, I’m right, or I’m wrong. I don’t find those productive. I find those are survival thinking.

That leads to moral hypocrisies because I don’t try to get rid of half of myself to love myself. There’s nothing to get rid of. Every part of you serves. The moment you finally realize that every part of you serves—the nice, the mean, the kind, the cruel, the positive, the negative, the giving, the taking—when you can embrace all parts of yourself, you can love yourself. But you’re not going to love yourself trying to get rid of half of yourself.

Beautiful. I like the way you said it, moral hypocrisy. I never thought of it like that.

Moral hypocrisy is fantasy. In case people don’t know, a lot of the morals came out of institutional religions and politics in order to keep people disempowered. If you want to keep people disempowered to make it easy to control, tell them an idea that they’re supposed to live by that they can’t live by. If I went up to you and I said, “You’re always nice, never mean; always kind, never cruel,” your own intuition would go, “No, that’s not true.”

Why bother with being something that’s not true when you can be authentic and embrace both sides?

If I said, “You’re always mean, you’re never nice; you’re always cruel, never kind,” your intuition would go, that’s not true. If I said, “Sometimes you’re kind, sometimes you’re cruel, sometimes you’re nice, sometimes you’re mean, sometimes you’re positive, sometimes you’re negative, sometimes you’re peaceful,” you’d immediately go, “Yep, that’s true.” Why bother with being something that’s not true when you can be authentic and embrace both sides?

Is there a way to embrace both sides that is a lesson to intellectual and more of the heart?

The second you see both sides, you go into heart. That’s the thing. Lopsided perceptions and polarized emotions are not the heart. They may be emotional feelings, but they’re not the heart. The heart is a state of grace, a state of presence, a state of certainty, a state of love, a state of inspiration and enthusiasm for life. When you embrace both sides and see they both serve you, our intuition is trying to find the upsides to what we think is down, and the downsides are what we think are up to get us back into the mean so we can be our real self.

The moment we’re authentic and not proud, looking down on people or shame, looking up at people just being people, having reflective awareness, and seeing equitably between us and them, now our hearts open. I say, don’t put people on pedestals or pits; put them in your heart. Then you have a balanced perspective, and you have equanimity. That’s where grace occurs.

You’re very good at that. I’ve noticed you interact with people throughout the years and you have such kindness and such love for people when you’re with them. I really admire that. I’m not putting you on a pedestal. I’m just saying it’s a beautiful thing that I see.

Orion, wait until you go and see me at the airport and they said, “Well, we’ve somehow overbooked the flight.” I’m not a nice person, Orion. I don’t want to promote that fantasy. I’m not a nice person. I’m not a mean person. I’m a human being with both of those potentials. If you support my values, I’m a pussycat. If you challenge my values, I can be a tiger.

I know. I just want to acknowledge those times where you handle people so beautifully. I saw that. I didn’t see you at the airport. I’m sure you can be a tiger.

I don’t want to get rid of my tiger. I know my tiger has a place. I used it the other day and it was very effective. In The Breakthrough Experience, my signature program where I help people, we had somebody that was playing tough ball and trying to be resistant and trying to play wounded person. I went in there and I did not let them run their story. I broke it through and I was tough on them. In the end, they had tears of gratitude and they said thanks. I said, “I need both sides. If I had been a wussy pussy around that one, I wouldn’t have got the result. I need both sides in my life.”

There was a time in my life after I was out of an abusive relationship, the guy hit me once, and I ended up in the hospital. I broke up with him the next day. For two or three years, I did everything to my ability. I studied martial arts, I studied MMA, I studied Aikido, and I was weightlifting like the boys. It became really tough. I was very much in (what you can call) masculine energy.

That was really hard for me to be or find a relationship where I try to emasculate every guy that I’m with because the question that ran in my life was, how can I not get hurt? Coming into any relationship with that question is not a good thing.

These are the two expressions of my nature, and I need both of them in my journey.

The thing is that it made you more independent, made you find out you have both. All relationships strive for androgyny. If you’re very, very much on the gender side to the feminine side of the old traditional gender idea, well, the spouse will end up having to be on the other side. The play of opposites does bring androgyny to the game. That’s okay. Whatever side you play, you’re worthy of love.

Sometimes if you get challenged, you automatically get testosterone built up in you and you start to do the things that testosterone tends to lead to. That’s great. That’s a chapter in your life that still serves too.

Absolutely, and I can see it.

You can keep Stephan in place by doing that. You can arm wrestle him.

But then, I had a breakthrough, and I went on this journey to find my feminine self and to find what I call the goddess within and the softness because it was becoming way too much. It was like I was walking on a beautiful day on a beach wearing this heavy armor and it was hard to even walk with it.

You’re a “Rockess.” Instead of Rocky, you were a Rockess for a while.

Yes. I did the whole shift to more like finding my feminine and being more in that feminine flow, did a lot of workshops and went on retreats, and found that part of me. Then I felt too weak. I was like, where is that tiger, that lioness? Where is she? I miss her. I found a way throughout the years to integrate it and I feel like when I’m more on one side than the other. You call it androgyny, I call it more harmony within myself.

That is harmony. That’s what all nature strives for. All organizations, all relationships, all families strive for an androgynous harmony between the pairs of opposites. That’s the beauty of the eclectic integration of the dour, the yin-yang, or whatever you want to call it. It’s the pair of opposites. That’s what love is. Love is the synthesis and synchronicity of those pairs of opposites.

I feel that throughout the day like you said, I’m not one thing or another. I’m not a saint or a sinner. I can be so many things throughout the day with so many people. It is about loving the whole of you, loving everything—the good and the bad.

I don’t even call them good and bad. I don’t put moral language on it. I just say these are the two expressions of my nature, and I need both of them in my journey. To think I’m going to get rid of one of them is moral hypocrisy. That’s the thing. That’s why you find out that the people that you think are the heroes, eventually find out they also got the villain.

Yes. That happens a lot in my life.

A lot of heroes turn into villains over time. I don’t even try to be a hero, I already know I’m a hero-villain.

I like that. Being around some of the greatest minds in the world, studying with them, and being close to them, I’ve started to see that. In the beginning, it was hard. It was being unplugged from the matrix and then seeing that, oh my God, they’re human too, no. I really wanted everyone to be a hero.

That sets you free to awaken your own power because if you think they’re a hero, you’ll be subordinate to them. If you think they’re a villain, you’ll aggrandize yourself to them. If you see both sides, you’re able to be yourself.

Nice. I’m still finding myself. It seems like it’s never-ending. I’m still finding more things about myself that I want to work on, that I want to improve, that I want to excel, that I want to refine.

You may find out that all the things you have, there’s nothing to fix. As Epictetus, the Greek philosopher said, at one time, when you’re first starting your journey, you blame things on the outside, when you go through the journey, you blame things on the inside. Eventually, you realize there’s nothing to blame. There’s no order to it. Then you finally realize, oh my God, I can look in the mirror and say, “Thank you, I love you.”

I love that. It’s embracing all your perfect imperfections.

It may not even be imperfections. I don’t think there are. Somebody calls an imperfection as something that they’re comparing their action to somebody else’s values. When they think somebody else’s got imperfection, they’re comparing their actions to your values.

The imperfections are perceptual, not actual.

As soon as I said that, I bit my tongue because I knew you were going to tell me that.

The imperfections are perceptual, not actual.

On a different topic, how do we deal with fear?

Fear is simply an assumption that you’re about to experience through your senses or imagination, from somebody or yourself more drawbacks and benefits, more pains and pleasures, more losses and gains, more disadvantages and advantages, and there is no such thing. We just have an assumption that it’s going to happen, but actually, it’s not there. Because no matter what happens, if we perceive it as a disadvantage and advantage, it’s not because of what it is or what happened. It’s because of our perception.

If we go and find the advantages of what’s happening, we don’t have to live in fear. If we sit down and say, okay, what if this happened? Okay, what’s the advantages if it happened? Once the advantages equal the disadvantages, you can’t feel fear. There’s no fear of the unknown, there’s only fear of the content that you have these perceptions about.

If you balance out your perceptions, you can’t have fear or fantasy. Most people get addicted to fantasy and then they live their life in fear. Their fantasies make their nightmares. I’m a firm believer in setting realistic objectives that are really balanced based on our real values. When we do, we don’t live in fear so much, we live in the action towards fulfilling our life.

There are two types of fears, the fear of loss of that which we seek, that we’re infatuated with; and the fear of gain of that which we resent, we try to avoid. I don’t want to seek and avoid like an amygdala, that’s the passion world. I’m interested in living on a mission where I embrace both sides equally. When you’re neutral, there’s no fear.

Do you experience fear anymore?

Whenever I’m under my illusion, then I’m going to get more advantage and disadvantage and I fear the loss of it; or I’m going to get more disadvantage and advantage and I feel the gain of it. Sure. Whenever I do, I now know to ask the right questions to dissolve the illusion and move past it.

What about fear when I don’t see it? If a family member is sick, what is the advantage of that? I don’t see that. That can be unfair.

That’s a perfect lesson for them to learn, isn’t it? If they’re sick, they’re trying to get to physiologies trying to give them feedback about being authentic, about how to eat, how to live their lifestyle, what their priorities are, what their careers are. I always say symptoms are unconscious motives and strategies in order to get more authentic.

There’s no reason a person has to stay in prolonged grief.

What if you lose a person?

The only thing that we fear the loss of people are the things we are infatuated with. If we really feel love for somebody, we honor the moment they’re passing. Who are we to judge when they’re supposed to go? Do we have a fantasy about when they’re supposed to go? We don’t know.

What happens is to honor what it is. If they passed, honor it, be present with it. Don’t put them on pedestals and put them in pits, put them in your heart, you’ll feel their presence. You can’t feel the loss of somebody you really feel true grace for and love. You only feel the loss of the parts of them you’re infatuated with. When the general from Iran died, when Trump’s team took him out or whatever, all the people in Iran were sitting there grieving his loss, 5 million people came out to grieve his loss.

In America, because we saw him as a villain, not a hero, we weren’t infatuated with him, we didn’t celebrate, we didn’t have a grieving process. We had a celebration, oh, we finally got rid of the terrorist. If you resent somebody and they die, we don’t grieve. If we’re infatuated with them and they die, we grieve. If we love them, neither one of those occurs. Grief and relief are only polarized perspectives that together combine, at the same time make love.

That’s a very, very, very deep topic.

I have a new book that’s just coming out on grief because I’ve been teaching people how to dissolve grief. The work I’ve done has been used in the Christchurch earthquake, the Maldives tsunami, the tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in Japan, the one in China. We brought in our facilitators and used the methods to dissolve grief. We have a science of that. That’s something I’ve got a book out on that’s in the making, that’s coming out soon that’s about that. Because there’s absolutely no reason a person has to stay in prolonged grief for more than three hours, it’s about all it takes. If you know what you’re doing, you know how to dissolve it.

Wow. I’m looking forward to that book. It sounds very important. I’m sure a lot of people will benefit from that.

Most people run the story and they’re traditionally taught, a lot of it is cultural. When I was surfing in El Salvador back in the ‘70s, all of a sudden, I saw this big procession with about 200, 300 people walking and I joined in. I said, “Que pasa, what’s happening here?” He says, “Well, our mayor just died.” I said, “Oh, that was a shock,” because it was a big celebration.

We went down to the cemetery and they had a feast, dancing, singing, and feasting of food, and they perceived it as the celebration and freedom of the mortal body into the spirit world. I thought, wow, that’s an interesting perspective. Then if you go to Greece, guess what they do? They sit there and think that maybe they should be mourning for two years while wearing black. I thought, well, this is cultural belief systems affected around the same exact thing. That means it can’t be that other than a cultural tradition that’s sitting there.

I started exploring this back in the ‘70s and developed a method by the ‘80s on how to dissolve that.

Wow. Do you have a name for the book yet or not?

Stop comparing and start doing actions that align with your highest values.

It’s just basic right now, the working title of it is Relief from Grief in your simple steps. The final title, I don’t know. I’ve been rejected by six publishers because they’re afraid. They’re shocked by the things that I say there. I’ve got 4000 death cases that I’ve actually taken through privately with that work. I’ve got a track record at Kale University. They’ve done research and actually see me do it live.

We have a 100% track record with it. They’ve never seen anything like it. They compared it to two other approaches to it and nobody got results. We got 100% results, and that’s something that they’ve never seen. They wrote a paper on it and they’re the ones that also say, “Man, you need to get this out there, people need to know about this.”

Beautiful, wow. I’m glad I asked. That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us. I want to be respectful of your time. Before we say goodbye for now, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life and where can people find you?

The first tip is to make sure you listen to Orion and her Stellar Life and keep learning from whoever’s the guest there because there’s going to be guests on there that blow people’s minds and inspire them. I would say that you give yourself permission to do something extraordinary on planet earth and realize that the magnificence of who you truly are—your authentic self—is far greater than any fantasies you’ll ever impose on yourself or compare yourself to people.

Stop comparing, start doing actions that align with your highest values. Liberate yourself from a lot of the low-priority stuff. Delegate the heck out of the things that aren’t inspiring to you, and give yourself permission to do the things that really uplift and that really you want to go and do on a spontaneous basis.

Beautiful. Where can people find you?

They can find me simply going on drdemartini.com. I’m all over the internet, as you probably know.

Yes. Your YouTube channel is extraordinary. If people want more of you, they should go on your website and take the value assessment. Is that what it’s called?

The Value Determination Process on drdemartini.com. That’ll be a goldmine and do it again a week from now, a month from now, and a quarter from now, and keep it. It’s private, compare it, look at it, and be honest with your answers. It will be of value. I promise that will be of value in your life. We have millions of people using that in companies, organizations. It’s being used all over.

Thank you, Dr. Demartini. Thank you so much for being here. I am so happy that we got a chance to talk again. Thank you for everything that you shared here and all the beautiful wisdom that you shared here with us.

Thank you for getting the opportunity. It’s great to catch up. Give hugs to your son and your husband again. It’s great to see them. They’ve popped in there real quick. I love you all and thank you again.

Thank you and thank you, listeners. Remember to realize the magnificence of who you are and stop comparing yourself to others. Just give yourself permission to be and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Improve your level of adaptability to help you manage change better. Change is inevitable, and nothing is permanent in this world. Being adaptable means you’re resourceful, creative, and determined to succeed no matter what happens to you.
{✓} Become the master of your destiny by doing everything in your power to achieve the life of your dreams. Nothing great just lands in your lap. You need to work hard for it day in and day out, and the reward will become more fulfilling.
{✓} Stop playing the victim and hold yourself accountable for what is currently happening to you. Avoid blaming others all the time when things go awry and really look deep within to find solutions to your problems.
{✓} Take control and be mindful of your perceptions and actions. Observe how you react to situations and ideas, whether you agree with them or not. Every effort you put out affects you and your surroundings.
{✓} Be courageous enough to let go of what doesn’t serve you. Prioritize your happiness and well-being. You cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot share your light wholeheartedly when you’re feeling dim.
{✓} Be mindful of the upside and downside of every decision. There will always be consequences to whatever you do. You just have to make sure it’s all worth it.
{✓} Focus on what’s important. Then, decide where is best to spend your energy and delegate as much as possible to help free up more time.
{✓} Get to know yourself deeply. Find out what you’re intrinsically driven by and prioritize your life according to your goals.
{✓} Stop comparing yourself to others. It will confuse and distract you from what’s deeply meaningful.
{✓} Visit Dr. John Demartini’s website to determine your values, discover what drives you the most, and learn more about Dr. Demartini’s events and courses.

About Dr. John Demartini

Dr. John Demartini is a world-renowned specialist in human behavior, a researcher, author and global educator. He has developed a series of solutions applicable across all markets, sectors and age groups.

His education curriculum ranges from corporate empowerment programs, financial empowerment strategies, self-development programs, relationship solutions and social transformation programs. His teachings start at the core of the issue, addressing the human factor and range out to a multitude of powerful tools that have proven the test of time.

He has studied over 30,000 books across all the defined academic disciplines and has synthesized the wisdom of the ages which he shares on stage in over 100 countries. His presentations whether keynotes, seminars or workshops, leave clients with insights into their behavior and keys to their empowerment.