Overcoming Procrastination and Developing a Strong Mindset with Joel Brown

A Personal Note From Orion

Welcome, stellar souls! I’m thrilled to share this episode all about overcoming procrastination and developing that unstoppable mindset we all crave. My guest is Joel Brown – mindset coach, motivational speaker and all-around life transformation guru.

Joel’s journey is beyond inspiring. From pushing himself to the brink of burnout chasing traditional success, he found himself on a profound healing path. Joel shares his deeply personal story of childhood wounding, forgiveness work with his father, and his beautiful reconnection with God.

Prepare to receive an abundance of game-changing mindset hacks and habits! Joel maps out a revolutionary system for identifying your unique procrastination patterns so you can break free once and for all. You’ll learn how to harness the power of vision, forgiveness and aligning with your divine purpose to operate at peak productivity. His advice on rewiring your neural pathways through imagery and emotion is pure gold! Joel’s insights will ignite your fire. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the show!

In This Episode

- [01:49] – Orion introduces Joel Brown to the show to share his journey of healing past trauma and how his attachment style was shaped.
- [14:56] – Orion and Joel discuss the importance of vulnerability and the need to accept and love oneself and others with their flaws.
- [24:16] – Joel highlights the importance of having God in a world filled with fear and self-righteousness.
- [27:42] – Joel offers a quiz to identify the type of procrastinator someone is and provides insights on how to repattern procrastination.
- [34:22] – Orion asks for universal exercises that anyone can do to repattern procrastination, regardless of their archetype.
- [45:59] – Joel shares his top tips for living a stellar life.
- [49:44] – Here’s how you can connect and learn more from Joel Brown.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hi, Joel. Welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure having you here. Thank you so much for taking your time. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

I’m excited too, Orion. I know we can dive into many different things. We had a bit of a conversation before this, and I was like, “Oh, this is good. I like this. I like the direction we can take.”

I like it, and I’m curious. Before we begin, please share a little about your passion and life journey. How did you become the magnetic speaker, teacher, and coach you are today?

I started personal development; I had a full immersion when I was 22 years old. I always read books here and there, but I committed to it and went, “Hey, what would happen if I applied what I learned to my life on as many levels as possible?” I became very much addicted to success and very much obsessed with transformation. I created a website called Addicted 2 Success, which attracted many high achievers because that’s a sort of mindset someone has if they’re an A-type player. I got caught up in about six or seven years of running hard to “Put the pedal to the metal. The rubber hits the road; let’s go. Climb every mountain you can.” I got to a point where I felt like I was capped out.

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I went on a different journey after that and went into some healing, explored childhood wounds and trauma and got really involved in a lot of the deeper transformational aspects. Then, I went on this adventure with God and came to understand God through my relationship with him. It was not religion but relationships, which was really powerful for me to have that shift in my life. I’ve had a very colorful journey over the years, and throughout that, I’ve learned a lot of coaching tools, frameworks, exercises, and techniques. I’ve created hundreds of different coaching tools.

I’m a sort of nerd or a geek when it comes to human behavior. I love studying how the brain works, how humans function, and how our patterns can predict our outcomes in life. I think many people are very much stuck in subconscious patterns that aren’t serving them. In reality, we’re getting results that we could be happier with. I love sitting down with people, understanding how they tick, why they’re procrastinating, why they’re not thinking big enough, why they’re not getting into action, and how to be able to release the things in the past that are holding them back. Hopefully, that covered as much ground as possible.

It’s beautiful. Can you share a little bit about healing trauma? Usually, a very strong masculine that is addicted to success is very detached from their emotions and even their physical body. It’s from the neck up, even though you train at the gym. The deep emotions and issues in the tissues are being suppressed. What created that shift form, “I’m not even going to feel any of my pain. I’m just going to go and achieve and do and do and do,” and all of a sudden, you’re like, “Wait for a second, there is something here that I need to heal. I don’t feel whole.”

It’s such a loaded question. There’s so many layers to it, right?

I am a very loaded person.

At about two months old, we start to develop our attachment style, which is how we relate to love and understand relationships.

Good. We’re going to have a great conversation. Let’s unpack the layers. I’d say first things first when I was brought into the world. My mom told me, maybe a few years back, that the doctor she saw would go on holiday. He said, “Hey, I’m going to induce you, and your son will come into the world a week earlier.” As you can imagine, I’m getting rushed into the world. Then, in Australia, where I’m from, my parents mentioned a massive interest rate crisis. I think the housing interest rates were at 17%. Things were quite high. My parents had just started building, and all the houses around them had to shut down. They were going bankrupt. My parents decided as soon as I came into the world that “We would not lose this home. We were going to work three times as hard.” They went from one job to three jobs and would take me with them to all the jobs they were working on.

At about two months old, we start to develop our attachment style. How we relate to love and how we understand relationships. And so I was brought into the world, rushed, and around my parents rushing and working hard. My mom had postnatal depression, and so every time she would hug me, there was this energetic imprint of anxiousness that equals love and connection. My dad didn’t know how to be around my mom when she was like that because he had never learned. He would try to be away as often as possible. I needed love from my father, and he was dismissive. All of this was something that they didn’t quite understand. They were just trying to do life like all of us. We’re trying the best we can with what we have.

My mom became good a few years after that. My dad sort of balanced out a bit. But my imprint and attachment, my blueprint from childhood, was very much learning that anxiousness equals love and that I needed to close a loop and get a connection from a dismissive figure. Even though I’m heterosexual, I’m looking for a partner, somebody who represents an avatar or an association with a dismissive type of behavior. I equaled that in my subconscious to somebody whom I need love from. I continued this journey at a young age, at 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, and 25, constantly attracting women who were dismissive and avoidant.

I got to a point when I was 29, and I felt the brunt. I really felt like, “Man, why am I doing this? Why do I keep attracting women like this?” It’s fair to say it’s that person’s fault. I keep attracting it. I ended up seeing a relationship coach, and she helped me to identify that I had anxious attachment and anxious preoccupied patterns. In my process, I went through a forgiveness conversation with my father. It was crazy because, initially, my father was apprehensive about the conversation. He’s like, “We don’t need to do that.” I said, “No, this is really important to me.” When I opened up about the fact that I felt like if he were to die that day, I wouldn’t feel complete in my relationship with him, which made me tear up, he realized the importance of it.

You gave me goosebumps right now.

That was big. We modeled so much of our world. I don’t mean just like other people. The way that we look at money, business, business partnerships, and ourselves is modeled so heavily off our figures in life who are caregivers, parents, teachers, or coaches, somebody that you had an early experience with where you’re just trying to get answers from them. It’s like, “How do I do life? I need reference points right now. What do I do?” I like to work through subconscious repatterning. I like to look at the childhood blueprint. It’s taught me so much from my own experience about what’s important to look at in my clients. I’ve worked with over 12,000 people in many capacities in events, conferences, retreats, summits, one-on-one group coaching, etc. After a while, you start to see through it. You see through people who are posing to be all famous and the overcompensationary success that a lot of people come from, “I got to prove to everybody,” which is what I used to do. I just see the child who is wounded. I’m like, “Man, you got some love to reconcile with. You’ve got conversations to have.” So much of the world—you and I included—have fragments of things we get to heal.

When you had that conversation with your dad, you probably healed the whole lineage epigenetically and healed him, too. What was it like to have a conversation with him?

Initially, my coach at the time, Thais Gibson, ran an awesome YouTube channel. She’s got an academy called The Personal Development School. I came across her videos on YouTube because I was just sick of feeling anxious. I was losing weight. I felt so consumed.

A lot of my success was due to connecting with the right people, putting in the work, learning the skills, and being consistent.

You become really successful, yet you’re feeling all that.

Yeah. Speaking on stages with some of the biggest people in the world, featuring documentary films with people like Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama, all these status things and credibility things. But it didn’t matter. A lot of the success I had achieved was because I connected with the right people, put in the work, learned the skills, and was consistent. Anyone can do it. I’m this guy from Perth, Western Australia, in this quiet little town. I got out there and made it happen. It’s not to say that there’s something mythical and mystical about me. I committed to it, and I stuck to it.

There is some mythical, mystical about you, but we’ll get to that later.

There’s definitely a purpose implanted. God planted seeds, so I showed up to watering those seeds. But I definitely felt like I had something to prove at a young age because I really wanted that love from my father. Achieving things meant I would get a pat on the back or the acknowledgment, the validation, the words of affirmation, which is still very important to everyone. Everyone wants to feel seen, heard, loved and understood. Once I reconciled with my father, it was really powerful because he shared with me that he had only really felt love and was and hugged his father when his father was on his deathbed. It really put things into perspective for me. I didn’t look at it like that until we had the conversation. I was like, “You’ve come such a long way compared to where you came from.” He was sometimes scared of his father, and he didn’t feel like he had the warmth there. And so for my father, it was hard for him to say, “I love you.” It was rare, but now it’s more common. My dad was not as supportive of the personal development stuff. He’s like, “Oh, I don’t do that stuff. That’s stuff that your mom does.” But then, once I had this healing conversation with him, he decided to go and book tickets and he came in and said to my mom, who my mom was so frustrated because he never wanted to travel, and he said, “I’ve booked tickets. We’re going to go see Joel at his event.”

So, my mom and my dad came to my transformational event. My dad got up on stage. We had breakthroughs, he teared up. The women at the event were going through breakthroughs. They looked at my dad as a father figure. He was able to look at them and see the healing that was needed. It was such a healing thing in the dynamic of my family, but it also healed aspects of my brother’s relationship with my father, and it improved my parent’s marriage and understanding of each other. It had this ripple effect.

Time management is only a small part of procrastination; emotions are what you get caught up in before you even look at time itself. Share on X

That’s the cool thing about healing: you show people what’s possible just by showing up in the healing, having tough conversations, being open to being vulnerable and holding your heart out with a chance that it could be threatened. I know it’s not easy for everyone. I know some people struggle with that healing conversation. It was very tough for me. But I looked at myself in the mirror with tears and thought, “I will get through this. I’m not going to carry this for the rest of my life. This is so painful and frustrating. This isn’t who I wanted to be.” When I thought of my self-concept, the self-image of myself being someone who would be a powerful leader in this world to one day be a father when I have children and show up for them in a healed way, even though I’m still imperfect, I knew that it required from me to take a leap and to show courage and to be the first person in my family to step in. Because if I didn’t, who would do it? If you’re listening right now, maybe that’s a question you get to ask yourself, too. “Am I going to wait for someone else to go first?”

Nice. Dr. Wayne Dyer says that when you change, the world around you changes. A lot of time, we look for other people for us to heal. But it’s never like that. It comes from the inside, and it comes from stepping up and taking that courage to have that conversation with your father that had such incredible ripple effects, not only for your father but also for your mother and the people at your event, and you as a person, completely. What changed in you after that conversation? Who did you become?

Well, I think it would be unfair to say that everything would just turn on a dime. It was amazing. I don’t think it’d be right to say that. It’s not a linear process. Even with me, when I had my experience with God and then went through that process, you don’t just become a saint overnight. You have a process of undoing things and understanding things one bit at a time.

You have a process of undoing things and understanding things one bit at a time.

I think no one is a saint, period. I used to put people on pedestals, did all the Tony Robbins seminars, and rubbed shoulders with some great people, and they used to put, like, they were the big people, and I was that small person. I’m just like, “People are people.” They are great people. They’re doing a humongous service to the world, and they’re flawed, and it’s okay to love and accept them the way they are and love and accept myself the way I am with all of me because this is me. I’m trying to be better every day. Like you said, it’s not a straight line up the mountain. It’s very complicated and wavy, especially for the feminine.

We all need a little bit of that order and a little bit of that chaos. What keeps life interesting is the fluctuation of in and out and up and down. You’re married, right? You have a partner and a child. You know that there’s going to be certain things in your life that you’re going to be tested with, just like me with my wife, where there’s an opportunity for growth. It’s opening up, being vulnerable, and sharing things that you wouldn’t usually share—even sharing scary things about yourself that have been a big thing for me. I’ve admitted things to my wife about my insecurities. I’ve admitted things like, “I think I act like this because of this, and this is what I really need. All it’s ever done is make us closer. It’s only ever created a deeper and more powerful connection. I think so many of us are so scared to be rejected. We’re so scared to be looked at in a way that doesn’t equate to who we’d like ourselves to be. But as much as we put other people on pedestals, I think sometimes we pedestal ourselves too much, and we’ve got to have more grace for ourselves as well.

Nice. I love that. So you had some kind of new connection with God. What was that about?

I grew up in the church. For me, I never had church hurt. Some people have church hurt. It’s like, “Oh, I had such a terrible experience. I never want to go back.” I never had that. I had a good community around me. For most of my early childhood, my mom said, “Jesus loves you. God created you for a reason.” I had nothing but love poured into me from that perspective. I felt a little bit restricted from committing to religious rituals and practices at times. I was like, “Okay, I’m sort of over there,” especially as a teenager. Once I turned 13, I said, “I need to go and work out how I want to live my life.” My parents eased off and let me do that. They weren’t trying to control me, which I think was the best decision. I went off and got involved in all sorts of things: drugs and alcohol, sleeping around and partying. I was diving into lots of different belief systems, everything from the Eastern esoteric stuff to studying the Quran and Islam, hanging out with my Jewish friends, talking about Judaism, and just bouncing around and living in Bali, hanging around Hindus, going to Buddhist temples, and hanging out in India, living there for six months and doing all the ceremonies. I was around all of the different cultures. I traveled to 42 different countries.

God’s story is playing out, and we’re a part of it, whether we like it or not.

I got to a point where I was speaking on big stages and podcasts and getting offered book deals. But I felt empty. There was a void that wasn’t being filled. No matter how much success I achieved, how much money I had, fancy luxury rental cars I jumped in, penthouses I went to, parties, or shoulders I rubbed with, there was a gap in my heart. I was gaping. For a long time, I thought it was a partner, like a relationship with a romantic connection. I tried that, and it still wasn’t there. I still felt it. I went on a trip one day to Tulum, Mexico, and there was a lady there. It was a bachelor trip with my friend, and the bachelorettes were also there in Tulum. We’d catch up sometimes during lunchtime. One day, she just asked me, “Do you know Jesus?” I was like, “Yeah, I know who Jesus is. I know Christianity. I grew up around it.” She’s like, “Yeah, but do you have a relationship with God? Do you understand God as a relational being, or is it religious?” I was like, “I’ve never looked at it like that. What’s a relation or being? What’s the relationship?” She’s like, “Going directly to him. You are having your prayer life with God, learning through what Christ taught about how we can connect with God. God has a greater plan for us in this world; we aren’t doomed. It’s not like we’re just living here, and we got to live in a corrupt society and that there’s evil lurking around the corner. God has great plans for us to bring us back to who he created us to be, live in our purpose, and teach us about love, truth, and liberty.” It was a game changer for me because I realized I’m like, “Yeah, I haven’t prayed for the longest time.” I started bringing that back in. It’s hard to explain what happens on a personal level, but you start to look at the world differently. You start to understand that history is his story.

God’s story is playing out, and we’re a part of it, whether we like it or not. We get to choose how we want to relate to God because God is who he is. Whereas if we’re living in all the constructs of what the world is telling us and these institutions of how we’re supposed to do things instead of going and having our personal relationship and experience, we’re never going to feel the fullness of what’s possible. It was cool to come back to realize it doesn’t have to be religion because religion demands obedience to God. I believe that the gospel of what Christ taught us inspires us because we want a deeper relationship with God. There’s such a difference to that. I was like, “Wow, this is really cool.”

That’s helped me a lot in deepening my connection with people and understanding what’s unfolding. I felt this deep sense of peace that washed over me. I felt my ways and thinking just transform, moving in a different direction that’s more fruitful and centered around love. I’m not perfect. I have my days, but I really felt what it meant to be washed. I decided to be baptized. It’s interesting because you see, like, Russell Brand recently got baptized. There are a lot of people who are having these experiences now. I truly believe that a rising movement in the world is getting sick of materialism. I do believe that.

Have a vision that excites and inspires you – your vision for your lane.

We all have different expressions when connecting with him. I always felt connected, even when I traveled the world on my own. I always thank God and the angels. I felt the presence that was guiding me. The strongest time I felt was when I spent some time at Oneness University in India. We had a God meditation where you go into a beautiful room, and then God is sitting there, and you’re kind of sitting in God’s lap and getting a hug from God. That was a powerful experience because we could talk about God all day. It’s something that you need to feel, just like love. You can’t explain love, but you can sense love. I feel like that’s the same way with God. With everything in this corrupted world, sometimes, I’m in and out of my relationship, where I’m in fear and when I’m not trusting. It’s mostly when I’m in fear. That’s actually the perfect time to go back to that amazing, beautiful connection and sense it to my core. Thanks for that reminder.

That’s so good. I’m really happy. God’s not forceful. That’s the thing. I think that man has created institutions that can be forceful and self-righteous, but God’s not. We get to choose him. That’s what a relationship means. I think opening yourself up to the love of God is so healing. A lot of people are denying themselves that because they have a construct or they’ve had a really terrible experience with somebody who was all righteous and religious. You come into this world alone, and we need God. He is our lifeline in all of this. A lot of the time, we work so much of it out ourselves with all the tools. There’s so much that we can do with it. Then there’s beyond that, which is transcending self-actualization, coming to God and experiencing that on a spiritual level, which is just the next level.

I actually had also a more recent psychedelic experience where I was in this space of non-duality completely. It just strengthened the idea that God is in love with me. And love is the key to everything in this world. If we just pour more love on everybody and all of our fears, traumas, and things and setbacks, and if it just puts more love into everything, we’ll expand into co-creation with the divine because that’s what it is. It’s not fear, it’s love.

I truly believe God created us to be in acceptance, love, joy, and peace.

Yeah, absolutely. He created us for that. Have you ever seen The Map of Consciousness Explained by David R. Hawkins? You have enlightenment, peace, joy, love, reason, acceptance, willingness. Under willingness is neutrality. Then you have courage, pride, anger, desire, fear, grief, apathy, guilt, and shame. I truly believe God created us to be in those upper brackets in acceptance, love, joy, and peace. That’s creation. We get to be weapons of mass creation. Instead, we’re in this world looking for weapons of mass destruction. We’re trying to live in stagnation or destruction to try and maintain power and control. God’s like, “No, I created you for so much more than that.” It’s unfortunate because there are always going to be people in this world who are getting the short end of the stick until we get to experience what it’s like to be in God’s kingdom. We’re trying our best with all our different governmental ways of doing, like democracy. Everyone else is pushing for different systems, “I want socialism. I want humanism. I want all these systems.” We’re trying to get it right. The more we come to God, the more we can go into those brackets and live more in accordance and rhythm with co-creation with him, not in destruction and stagnation.

I love that. I want to move into something more that is probably emotionally linked to that connection and healing. But something that is present in my life is procrastination. Sometimes, I don’t do the things I want to do or say I’m going to do, and there is a lack of discipline. Let’s talk a little bit about discipline and procrastination and how we can improve on that.

Well, this is my jam. I specialize in re-patterning procrastination. It’s something that I committed to about nine years ago. I’ve trained tens of thousands worldwide on how to re-pattern their subconscious programs around their procrastination type. You can take a quiz. I’ve got it up online. It takes about three minutes; it’s super quick. It’s doquiz.com. Don’t procrastinate. Go and do it. It’s nice and easy, just yes and no answers. It’s going to come back with the result, and it’s going to share with you the type of procrastinator you are.

The more we come to God, the more we can live more in accordance and rhythm with co-creation with him, not in destruction and stagnation.

We have six different types. I don’t want you to assume because sometimes people say, “Oh, I think I’m that type.” Then, when you do the quiz, you will find out you’re actually another type. Everyone experiences these patterns, but we’re all dominant in one of the types more than the others. The first type is the obsessive idealist. The obsessive idealist is the one who is a perfectionist and a high achiever. They have this all-or-nothing type of personality. They wait until the last minute, so the adrenaline rush kicks in, and they can have very black-and-white thoughts a lot of the time. That’s the obsessive ideas. There are good and negative things that can happen around these types. One of the things about obsessive idealist is they can be really great at putting in the work and focus and so on. But on the back end of it, there’s a lot of exhaustion and burnout and a lot of not feeling good enough. There’s a lot of beating themselves up and judging themselves and judging others.

The second type is the stargazer. The stargazer is somebody very good with vision and ideas. They can write out really great goals. They can talk about a big game, promote it, and do it well. But on the back end, they end up jumping ship a lot. They move from one shiny object to another. They’re not grounded in strategy, which becomes their procrastination struggle.

The next type is the dreadhead. That sounds pretty intense. The dreadhead tend to turn back in, and they fear stepping too far outside their comfort zone. They want to achieve big things. They truly believe that they want it and love learning and all those things, but they get caught up and enthralled in negative thinking patterns and spiral back into safety and comfort.

The next type is the diversion junkie. The diversion junkie likes to chase entertaining distractions when things are coming to a head. They start to do some work, but then they end up distracting themselves a lot. Many people are moving into these patterns because we’re being trained through social media to scroll, scroll, scroll. That short-term thinking is like big. Everyone’s looking at three-second videos and five-second videos now. So it’s like junk food for the brain that we keep living on. Instead of committing to the responsibilities, instead of having structure, instead of prioritizing what the most important tasks are, they end up hopping around a lot to distractions, entertainment, drinking, gambling, Netflix binging, and all those things that have nothing to do with what they get to do.

The obsessive idealist is a perfectionist and a high achiever. They have an all-or-nothing personality type.

The next type is a radical defiant. The radical defiant is very rebellious against everyone and everything. They try to strong-arm others a lot to be able to get their way. A very small percentage of people in this world are radical defiant. But it can hinder somebody’s growth if they have this. They tend to believe it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and they’re in it for themselves a lot of the time, trying to make a way. The truth is they haven’t felt supported at a young age, and they’ve learned to try and be in self-preservation a lot. This keeps them from being able to actually network and connect with others and grow together. They don’t believe that it’s possible. Working on the re-patterning around love and connection and also being graceful in yourself are huge shifts that get to be creative for the radical defiant.

Then, the last type, which is the 6th type, is the angry altruist. They tend to be more of the people-pleaser type. They give and give so much and expect giving in return. They get resentful, angry and frustrated when they don’t get it. They put themselves last. They tend to overwork for everybody else. They also get really down on themselves if people don’t think highly of them. They don’t like to be seen as someone lazy, so they work a lot to try and prove themselves. They think their value is in giving all the time to everybody else, so they’re too altruistic. We all have like narcissism and altruism. Everyone goes like fluxes in and out of that spectrum. But when you’re too much on that end all the time, it comes at a consequence. You end up putting yourself out, exhausting yourself, getting behind, and not doing anything for yourself, and your ventures, business, and finances have a very big negative impact because of this and your health. So, there are six types.

Take the quiz and find out which type you are. You get a PDF report. It’s free. You just get that it’s going to break down how to re-pattern. And then I have my mind strong academy where you can come in and learn how to actually repattern it. I have weekly coaching and live calls there. It’s super affordable. It’s $47. It’s a seven-day free trial. So you can just jump in for free. You have nothing to lose. So, yeah, it’s been a game-changer for so many people.

That’s incredible. When I was listening to you talk, I could see myself in all the types. I’m in trouble. Like with any archetype, I guess we embody all of them to some degree.

You have to train your brain to identify your priorities and give it commands and prompts.

Yeah. There’s a dominant tendency to lean towards one of the types. When I created this system many years ago, I tested it, and we’ve differentiated them enough to show where your strong leanings are. Sometimes, people will heal in one, and then they find they’re leaning into another for a bit. It’s just this process of healing one to another till you balance it out. The key is to come back into your center. Because of procrastination, many people think, “Oh, I’m lazy.” It’s not about laziness. There’s something deeper going on in your subconscious. It’s more to do with emotional management, not time management. Time management is only a very small part of it. People don’t understand that because your emotions are what you’re getting caught up in before you even look at the time itself.

When you’re in your flow or your zone, time doesn’t matter. You work, and you don’t even feel it. It is all emotional. Even discipline is emotional. What are some universal exercises or steps for all the archetypes that someone can take?

That’s a good question. I have about ten modules for each type. If you come into the Mind Strong Academy, they’re three to seven minutes each. They’re nice and easy to do. I’ve intentionally not made them super long, which will help you re-pattern, like going against it and going the other way and breaking the cycle of these patterns you’re in.

Working on the re-patterning around love and connection and also being graceful in yourself are huge shifts that get to be creative for the radical defiant.

But universal exercises that anyone can do no matter what their type is number one: getting really clear on what your priorities are. We hear this word a lot: strategy. The strategy just means priorities. That’s what it is. It’s like, “Hey if I work out the sequence of how I must do things in what order?” That’s strategy. You need a strategy for your life because if you don’t, you’re going to bounce around like a pinball in a pinball machine, just being moved around by your emotions with no anchor holding you in the place you need to be in or no sail to let your ship move. The key is to sit down and write down.

Maybe you have a list. This obsessive idealist will probably end up with 20 or 30 things on a to-do list. That’s pretty normal for an obsessive idealist because they think they can do everything and all things. The dreadhead might write one thing down. There’s a difference between the types.

Write down a few things. Your key is, even if you start writing down five to eight things, I want you to sit down with it. Have tea or a drink of water, breathe some fresh air, and return to that. You’re looking at it with a fresh perspective. Sit down, close your eyes, and really connect with it. Out of the list, what are my top three and in what order? Write down number one and circle it. Write down number two and circle it. Write down the number three and circle it. You have a very defined list of things that you get to commit to. Also, I want you to close your eyes, connect with it, and play it out in your mind. It doesn’t have to be long, and it could be a quick minute. Play it out through your mind, run through it, seeing yourself, committing to that, following through, seeing the benefits that come from it, and feeling the benefit of committing to it because what you’re doing is you’re inputting a command. People use ChatGPT nowadays. They put in prompts and tell ChatGPT what to do, but they don’t tell their own brain what to do. They’re constantly trying to put things on social media and tell everybody else what to do. You have to train your brain and give it commands and prompts.

I think the hardest thing to do is to sit and think.

Yeah, but if someone’s an overthinker, that’s all they do.

Thinking about your thinking is the hardest thing. It’s so easy to just listen to someone like you tell me what to do or get caught up in my own mind. I do that sometimes when I sit and think about my thinking. That’s when I’m the most productive. It usually happens in the middle of the night for me. For example, I’ll wake up at 3 AM and start journaling because it’s quiet, nobody needs me, and I can just be.

God created us to be weapons of mass creation. Instead, we're looking for weapons of mass destruction. We're trying to live in stagnation or destruction to maintain power and control. Share on X

Well, you’re organizing. Your thinking is what you’re doing. You’re allowing yourself to vent out, and then you organize it. What’s most important? Where do I put it? What am I going to do with this? What’s going to come from this? Those are all really important questions you get to ask yourself. When you sit down and write out the list and connect with it, the benefit is training your brain because your subconscious learns through imagery that you feed it. You can close your eyes and come up with images. You don’t need to see it on a screen. God created an incredible brain for us. We can close our eyes and think of the most epic thing that AI may not have created yet. It’s getting pretty close, but we close our eyes and just imagine what will come from it in detail and feel it. What’s it going to feel like? What you’re doing is you’re training your subconscious through imagery, emotions and feeling.

Then, the next key, and the final thing that’s the most important thing that seals the deal, is repetition. If you want to train your subconscious, imagery, feeling and repetition must be consistent. If you truly want to train the neural pathways in your brain, you must commit to at least 21 days. It’s when you start to see a big behavior shift. If you commit for 60 days, it’s part of your being and your identity. Our identity is shaped by our beliefs and our habits. Our values and our beliefs drive every decision we make. Our beliefs and our habits shape our identity. It’s really important to know that and to actually start to see, “Hey, man, I’ve got a supercomputer in my head that God’s given me and an incredible body and a nervous system, which is like a highway of emotions that can run up and down and communicate back and forth. Why would I not learn how to tap into this thing and upgrade my way of thinking and my way of being? Why would I not do that?” I’m really big on hacking the system. I’m hacking the system on every level. “How do we hack what’s going on in the world and come out of the systems that aren’t beneficial for us? How do I hack my business to have better strategies and set up things to help us automate? How do I hack my brain? What’s the best way I can support it? How do I hack my body? Fasting is really powerful. Maybe I’m going to start fasting and commit to that and then hack your mind.” Someone out there has committed to way longer than you, and there are, as Tony Robbins says, decades of being compounded into days in a book. Why would you not read that? There are so many different ways we can hack. I think a lot of people are consuming way too much, like sitting and watching everybody else. They’re on the sidelines in panic, going back and forth, but they’re not moving anywhere. They’re not progressing.

Creating buffers is really important. If there are ways to create hurdles between your distractions, it’ll help a lot.

You want to be the leader. You don’t want to be the one that consumes it.

Yeah. Don’t be ruled by the robots.

Also, to be fair, everything on social media is made to be extremely addictive. How do you have the willpower to say no and get less distracted?

Well, what has worked so far for me is that I have many of my businesses on my social media and on my phone. It’s not like I’m just going to delete everything, but I’m putting my phone on airplane mode and then putting it away. Creating buffers is really important. If there are ways you can create hurdles between your distractions, it’s going to help you a lot.

I need to put mine in a Faraday cage inside a tombstone, inside a mountain on an island surrounded by crocodiles, and then I won’t touch it.

I love it. See, that’s the thing. It’s good that you know that that’s how much you look at it. The key is that your struggles are just as different from mine as anybody else’s. You’ve got to look at it and say, “Hey, how aggressive do I get to be with myself until I come out of those loops?” I think the perfect example is if you have ever gone into cycles where you’re drinking alcohol. That’s just one example.

I don’t drink alcohol. For me, it’s not even interesting.

For some people, it is. They’re like, “I’m not drinking.” They’ll go for a while and then go out one night and drink. All of a sudden, it’s like week after week, they’re finding, “Well, I drank on Saturday, I can drink on Wednesday.” The next thing, “Oh, I drank on Wednesday. I can drink Saturday and Sunday or Friday night.” And then they just go back into a revolving door. It’s not until you come out of the revolving door that you realize, “Whoa, I don’t actually like being in this. I think I perform better outside of it. Sometimes, we get into the revolving door with our phones and social media, and it’s not until we can take a break or get away from it that we realize and see the behaviors happening and the results it is bringing. Either way, it’s either you don’t like the results, or you do like the results. You’re getting some form of result to look at it. You made a really good point about thinking about thinking.

There’s definitely a purpose implanted in us. God planted seeds; we just need to show up and water them.

I interviewed Dr. Jody Spencer on my podcast, and one of the profound things he said that just sent chills down my spine is that maybe we’re just really poor observers. I was like, “Oh, that’s so true.” Because if we actually sit back and give ourselves time, not being distracted or pulverized by the news and the media, all the fake news stuff and all the propaganda and all the things just come out of it and sit down with it and be like, “What’s going on here?” If I were to look at it, observe it, take it, zoom out and take a bird’s eye view, you could go macro, micro zoom out, nano, where however you want to look at it, go in and out of it, and observe it on a few different angles and look at it and be like, “Is this going to be beneficial if I continue down this path? Is this going to be beneficial for me? How is this helping me reach my vision or goals if I don’t have a clear vision mapped out right?” I’m very big on having a vision. It’s the story of the successes in my life, and I cast a ten-year vision fifteen years ago.

There are many different levels to it. I’ve hybridized models together in my vision training for it, but I truly believe that if I don’t have a big, clear vision that excites me, inspires me, I’m aligned to, that my values are injected in, that makes sense to me, that I’ve gotten clear on the skills and the beliefs and the habits and the values that must be in it. Then, someone else will come along and project a small-minded vision on me, and I will adopt it because I don’t have a big and powerful enough vision to see that. My vision is my vision for my lane, and I’m sticking to it.

Or you’ll end up seeing your vision in other people. It’s almost like God gave you an idea and a gift, and if you don’t act on it, you’ll just give it to someone else who wants it more.

The Map of Consciousness Explained by David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D

Yeah. Regret’s a huge thing to have to bear on your shoulders. It sucks. I definitely experienced that at a younger age. I take more action now, but I turn around like, “Oh, man, I could have taken advantage of that moment and really stepped in.” It’s our beliefs of not feeling worthy enough, not good enough, or we’re just caught up in some other idea that distracts us. Sometimes, some ideas are dressed up nicely and neatly and look fancy with a bow tied to them, but it could lead to a path of destruction. So it is good to be observed.

Yes. To be respectful of your time, I have two more questions. One is, what are your three top tips for living a stellar life? And where can people find you?

Well, you’ve got to have a vision, as we’re just talking about. You get to have a vision that’s yours, one that you get to own, one that excites and inspires you. If my social media scrolling inspires me more than my vision, I get to go back to the drawing board. Because then my decisions in life and my inspirations are dictated based on an external thing that’s constantly moving in flux and flimsy. It’s not mine, it’s somebody else’s. I’m not really going to be living in the fullness of who God’s created me to be. I’d say that’s the first thing: have that vision.

The second thing is forgiveness. Sit down, “Who do I get to forgive”? Think about what you expect from a mother, father, brother, sister, ex-partner, or even current partner or best friend or whoever we get to reconcile in our subconscious. Writing down a forgiveness letter and forgiving yourself is key because we often beat ourselves up. Where have we gone very hard and with no grace on ourselves? Make sure that you sit down with that and write it out. “Dear Orion, I’m sorry. I forgive you for the times when you were beating yourself up because you didn’t show up in this, this and this. I forgive you for the time when you played small and didn’t step in.” We get to do this for ourselves. It might sound a bit silly to some people, but it’s very freeing because it puts into perspective that we’re not on our own team so often. Somebody who is on their own team is a very hard person to beat. “Every part of me is on my team. I’m very clear on where I’m going. I’m very clear on why I’m doing it. I am constantly learning how to do it better and improving and tweaking. I’m often seeking what comes next. What do we do along the way, and what do we get to recalibrate, tweak, change, and improve?” I’m a very hard person to beat because of that. It’s not something like I’m gifted with favor on every level. It’s like I have shown up and done the work, and I’m gifted, too, and everyone is gifted.

God placed value on your heart; you aren’t just dancing with your DNA.

The third thing I’d say is understanding that you’re here for a real reason. God placed value on your heart. You aren’t just dancing with your DNA. You didn’t come from a salamander or popped out of nowhere. You are brought into this world, from non-existence into existence, from the infinite into the finite, in this very precious amount of time, to do something incredible, to be in your full expression, to give God the glory, but also to be able to fulfill and create a ripple effect of what’s possible in humanity, too. Why would you not step into that? Remembering the importance of that can absolutely transform the way that you view the world and the way you even look at time, and it highlights the importance of the healing that takes place within yourself. Let go of the boulder that’s holding you back here. Instead of always thinking it’s about adding all these things on top, sometimes it’s about letting go.

Wow. There was so much to unpack just in the last few sentences, and it was beautiful. I have so many more questions and much more to share, but our time has ended. So, thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I’m sure other people did, too. Where can people find you, reach out and get your course?.

At the moment, I’m running a coaching certification program. If anybody has listened and thought, “Wow, I want to learn these coaching tools from Joel. I want to break through my inner limitations and become confident as a coach, learn how to craft my message, how to be able to create content, how to be able to create undeniable offers, get leads, enroll people into your coaching business and create freedom in my life.” Then, you can go to Influential Coach and apply. We have seasonal programs, we launch group programs, and I’ve had almost 400 coaches that have graduated through that over the years. It’s an incredible program. It’s 32 training sessions with me, and you become a whole new person by joining that program. It’s very powerful. You get to create a coaching business that allows you to work from anywhere in the world, which is really cool.

If you want to train your subconscious, imagery, feeling, and repetition must be consistent because sometimes, ideas are dressed fancy with a bow tied to them, but this could lead to a path of destruction. Share on X

You can go to iamjolbrown on Instagram, and you can go to Mind Strong Academy if you want to be able to work through your procrastination patterns, come out of the systems of the world, break free from this matrix construct that we live in, and live a life of abundance and freedom. And the Addicted 2 Success podcast. I have another podcast coming out soon as well, so there are many things. I got a podcast called The Unknown God, which is really cool. It’s a podcast about God for people who don’t like church. That’s been popular. We’ve had a lot of downloads recently.

Amazing. Well, thank you, Joel, and thank you, listeners. Remember to own your vision. Forgive yourself and others. Have clarity for yourself and your life because you are here for a reason. Let go of what is not serving you, and have a stellar life. This is Orion till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Take the procrastination type quiz (doquiz.com) to identify your dominant procrastination pattern. It’s an important first step to recognizing your tendencies and breaking the cycle of procrastination.

{✓}Write down your top three priorities and visualize yourself committing to them. Setting aside scheduled time with defined boundaries and creating buffers to avoid distractions is critical.

{✓}Train your brain by using imagery, emotions, and repetition for at least 21 days to rewire neural pathways.

{✓}Create hurdles and buffers between you and distractions like social media. It takes effort to avoid getting easily distracted by technology and social media.

{✓}Have a clear 10-year vision that excites and inspires you. Understanding what is truly important to you will help you avoid wasting time and energy on fruitless activities.

{✓}Practice forgiveness by writing a letter to yourself and others you need to forgive. Reflect on past mistakes or regrets that you haven’t forgiven yourself for.

{✓}Don’t let excuses or stagnation hold you back from your true purpose. You are here for a real reason – to fulfill your God-given purpose.

{✓}Let go of what’s holding you back instead of always adding more. Notice recurring patterns or triggers that lead to stress, procrastination, or dissatisfaction. Recognizing these can help pinpoint specific issues to address.

{✓}Observe your patterns objectively and decide if they’re beneficial for your goals or detrimental to achieving your aspirations.

{✓}Join Joel Brown’s Mind Strong Academy to overcome your procrastination patterns. You can also enroll in Joel’s Influential Coach Certification Program if you resonate with Joel’s coaching philosophies and want to launch your own coaching business.