The Long 18 inch Walk From The Head To The Heart

We lay out the eighteen-inch path from head to heart and show how to reorder intuition and reason to create alignment, peace and real results. Stories, examples and practical steps help you stop overthinking, trust your knowing and build what you love.

• head as survival, heart as life and alignment
• intuition before reason and present over statistics
• ditching realism and approval to ask what’s possible
• stillness, nervous system safety and quiet signals
• signs you’re in heart-led living and flow
• alignment over hustle and how trust replaces force
• entrepreneurship as growth of self and self-worth
• practical exercise to feel, then act toward 2026 goals

Go start that business. Go start that empire. Just start. Do it as a passion because you love it.

If you are a business owner, founder, coach, healer, or business professional, then the Embodied Leadership Collective is for you. Helping you grow your business on the outside, by becoming the CEO of your life on the inside. 

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Transcript

Head Vs Heart Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Once you see what you actually are, that you're an infinite, limitless being, you'll see that nothing exists outside of you. I'm your host, Derek Grant, and this is the Pathway to Your Results Podcast.

unknown 0:25

Bro.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I welcome you to the Pathway to Results Podcast. It is your boy Derek Grant, DG, him, whatever you want to call him. We're here. All right. This episode, so I ran a program last year. It was called Coaching for Coaches.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

And the whole point of this program was to take some individuals on a year-long journey to coach them, right? To coach them, and most of these individuals were coaches, so it's like to coach them, to teach them how to build a sustainable coaching product, but then to actually like coach them.

unknown 1:07

Right?

Defining Mind Faculties And Intuition

Dangers Of Overthinking And Survival Mode

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Because I would say if you're a coach and you don't have a coach, you ain't really a coach. So it was to help these individuals to show them the framework of them, and then the framework of them as that expanded, teach them then how to actually construct a business, and then how once you construct a business, take that in alignment with who you were, and then you can build it. And now you out here sharing your gifts with the world. And like my daddy would say, if you do what you love, you ain't never gonna work a day in your life. Okay. So I sat and thought about how this happens. How do we do this? And I'm gonna talk, break something down to you, okay? They say that uh our brain and our heart is 18 inches apart. Okay. This world that we live in is a three-dimensional world for the most part. And I'm talking about three-dimensional in terms of density, in terms of light, in terms of consciousness, okay? So most of this world is walking in a three-dimensional uh perspective or mindset, meaning they operate from the ego. They operate from a place of uh of uh separation. Uh they see skin color, they see political preference, they see sexual orientation, they see all of these differences to separate ourselves, right? This is a very, I'm not saying it's from a place of the ego, but this is a very low consciousness, okay? It's only 18 inches from your head down to your heart. But let me tell you something. That's the longest 18 inches that you have ever seen in your life. That is the longest walk to go from your head down into your heart. And I'm gonna break this down for you for all of us out here who want to start something, who wanna build something, who wanna create something. You're gonna need to do some of this from your head, but you're really gonna have to take a little trip, take a stroll down to your heart. And here's why uh we have to understand this because your head is the linear logical uh processing system of your mind, right? Think of it like this. There's six faculties of your mind, right? Imagination, memory, intuition, reason, willpower, uh, perception. These are the six faculties that you use to create your reality. If you notice, number three was intuition, number four was reason. Intuition comes before reason. The heart has intuition, the head has reason. The issue is in a three-dimensional society, the head comes first, then the heart. But spiritually, structurally, it should be the heart comes before the head. Why? Because your heart can process information before your head can. Your heart was the knower before you knew. So now we know that. So the issue is that your head wants to protect you and keep you safe. But your heart wants you to follow your passions and live free. Hold on now. Hold on now, hold on now. Do you not hear a conflicting statement there? One of them wants you to be safe, and the other one wants you to walk around butt-naked and be free as a lark. Huh? Do we see? Do we see how this works? Conflicting statements. So now the question is which one you gonna which one you're gonna follow? But here's the deal you gotta understand that your head, your brain is gonna keep you alive. The heart is what allows you to live. Good God Almighty. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing. Don't at me with none of these bars either, because I know you're gonna probably go ahead and at me and tag me in a story, but I'm just telling you right now, don't you even at me on these. But this is what ends up happening. We over here trying to live in survival just so we can stay alive, but you're not really living because you're not following your heart. You have to understand the mechanism of your brain. Your brain evolved for survival, constantly scanning the environment for threats, analyzing patterns, predicting what could go wrong. How many times we do this? We call this. Excuse me, let me clear my throat. Uh, for all my overthinkers out there. That's all overthinking is. That's a telltale sign. You out chill living through your head instead of your heart. Now, no, don't get me wrong now. This is useful. This helps. But here's the deal that thing that keeps you surviving will eventually be the thing that keeps you locked up. That will eventually be the thing that creates the survival mode identity. And then here's the head, what the head asks. The head's gonna ask, what could go wrong? Mm? How many times do we do that? This is why you should never ask nobody for advice. Don't ask anybody for advice because most of us are living through our head, and you over here trying to follow your heart because your head's gonna say, Well, what are the things that could go wrong? And you go ask somebody and you're like, Man, I feel like this is gonna be great because you live it through your heart, and then you go ask somebody through the head, and they're like, Well, well, you know, you they say like 10% of the population who starts a business fails in the first. What the what? I had somebody tell me the other day, well, you know that they only say like 1% of all like high school athletes ever make it pro. I said, man, you gonna get out of my face with that bullshit. Get out of my face. Get out of my face with that. You over here living trying to be quote unquote realistic. I'm telling you, if you're gonna start something, if you're gonna be something, you have to get rid of this thing that we call being realistic. Get rid of it. You know what realistic means? Realistic means it can happen in reality. Cool. Well, now define to me what reality is. Reality is your experience from your perspective. So therefore, reality is subjective. So what is realistic? Good God almighty, you ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying. It's based on what you say is realistic. So, how's somebody gonna tell you and define you for your subjective experience and tell you what's realistic? So here's my point: stop going around asking everybody looking for approval. Hey, you think I can do this? What do you think this is okay? Hey, what do you think about this idea? No, what do you think about it? So understand the head is gonna ask what could go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

The heart's gonna ask, What's possible? What's possible? Who do I want to become in 2026?

SPEAKER_02 7:16

What adventure do we want to go on this year? What adventure? My wife said, What do you what do you want what do you want to do for like for summer, you know, because we're gonna have some time for vacation. I said, Here's what I want to do. Okay, I'm gonna tell you right now. There's two places I want to go. Number one, my dream has always been to take my family to Hawaii. Okay, now me and my wife went to Hawaii for our honeymoon. We're going up on our, it's gonna be our 15th anniversary this year. Now, we already did it. Me and her already done it, but I have a family now. I want to take my children. I want them to actually see the beauty of this island, these islands in real life. We done looking at pictures. So I said, I want to go there. She said, okay, where else do you want to go?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

I said, I want to see a jaguar in real life. She said, okay.

Ditching Realism And Seeking Possibility

Adventures, Mortality, And Stop Waiting

The Quiet Language Of The Heart

Present Moment Over Statistics

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Is there like like zoos or anywhere there? I said, no, no, no, no, hold on now. I want to see them in their natural habitat. I want to go to the Pantanao Rainforest in Brazil. She said, okay. She said, yeah, we can do that. I said, well, hold on now. It's hot down there, and I know you don't fare too well with heat. So if I have to go by myself, I'm willing to go by myself. But I decided this year I'm going to make 2026 an adventure. So if it is my last year, if I do get back on the other side and I get back with my spiritual brothers and sisters, I can end the game and say, you know what? Look, it was a hell of a ride. I heard something the other day, I read something the other day. It said, we always put things off. We always put things off. And this lady was uh crying because she was, it was her last holiday because she had cancer and they told her she was gonna die. And she was like, we always put things off and we put things off and we put things off, and now here we are. It's like, now let's hurry up and do it. It's like, why did I put it off? Why did I put it off? Why didn't I just do it? So I'm saying this to you. You have something inside of you. You have a seed, you have an idea, you have a dream. Why do you keep putting it off? Remember, we're not gonna make it out alive. We're not. And we don't know when the game is over. You don't know when you're coming out. You know, normally in a basketball game, I can look to the sideline and see somebody walking to the scores table, like, oh dang, they're coming for me. Damn, they're coming to get me out. Dang, I'm coming out of the game. We don't know when. You don't know the place nor the time. And how many times does this happen? You know somebody close to you and all of a sudden they hear, and then they gone. It's gone. I'm telling you, I'm begging you, please stop waiting. Stop waiting. Stop waiting for this dream inside of you. Stop waiting. Stop and go back and listen to the episode on failure if you need to. Stop waiting. Your heart is literally inside of you, about to break out of your chest, saying, Can we please just go? What's possible? Anything's possible. You have to understand the language of your heart. Your heart always seeks alignment. If we're not living as what we like, following our passions, we're not living in alignment. You're not. Because your head's gonna always want to try to calculate. Your head's always gonna want to use, try to use statistics, but your heart already knows. And here's the deal: your heart ain't got no time for no bullshit. Your head, your heart ain't gonna argue. It ain't gonna do that. You ever notice that? Your heart is super quiet. It ain't arguing with nobody. How am I gonna? This is what the heart said, okay? Well, let's play a little roleplay. Hold on now, stay with me. I'm not arguing with you. I'm not arguing, this is what he's saying to the head. I'm not arguing with your hard-headed behind. And I mean it literally. I'm not arguing with you because I already know you're trying to catch up. That's why you have to use statistics. That's why you have to use uh logic. Do we not realize that logic is nothing more than forming a calculation based off of past information? That happened in the past. I had a client the other day plays in the NBA. He told me, he said, coach didn't want me to shoot, he didn't want me to shoot threes because it says that I'm only shooting 20% from the three. He was scratching his head like how I'm scratching my head. Like, what in the world you did? Well, what what did all those past three-pointers have anything to do with the three-pointer that you're shooting right now? What did all those past things that you had tried in the past, what did they have to do with right now? Do you not realize that now is a new moment? It's a new moment. This is why the present moment was so critical. Because the present moment is new. It's new, it's new, it's new, it's new. You see, every time you hear that snap, that is a new opportunity, a new chance, a new moment for you to do something that had never been done. So you sit in here and play off statistics. Statistics are telling a past story. It's telling a past version. I never forget. When I found out the statistics, they said that one in every three black men will go to prison one day. I said, No, I won't. You out your mother mind. No, I won't. No, I won't. What them statistics got to do with me when I have, I get to have choice over where I put my mind and my actions. You ain't gonna sit here and put a statistic on me. You ain't gonna do that. So I'm telling you all right now, a lot of us, we're living through our head. You ain't gonna get to where you need to be if you live through your head. It's gonna be through you living through your heart. And here's the deal: your heart is only seeking peace. It's only seeking alignment. So when you don't feel peace, when you don't feel alignment, this is when you know it costs too much. This ain't it. This is not it. So now we have to understand that there's going to be a war, there's gonna be a battle between your head and your heart because there are two conflicting statements. They're two conflicting things. But it doesn't mean that they don't work together. The issue is that we're putting one in front of the other when it should be the other way around. See, the head fears judgment. The higher, the head, the heart desires authenticity. You see, you're so afraid of worried about what people don't think about you. But your heart's saying, just be everything that you are. I tell my kids when they get when I drop them off at the bus stop every day, go to school, be who you are. Be who you are. Now they in it, they they in the process of trying to figure out who they are. But up until this point, be who you are. The head wants control. Meaning it wants certainty. How many people struggle with certainty? Yeah, we struggle with certainty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I need to know. I need to know. I need to know what this is. What you gonna eat here in a week for dinner? Huh? Huh? That's what I thought. You don't know. But you ain't worried about that certainty. Hmm? No. You don't need to control everything because the heart wants surrender. The heart saying, chill, just sit down, relax, I got it. The head wants you to live in the past of the future, but the heart only wants you here right now. See, when we start to understand, most of us are living out of our head. And this is why, like, I realize, especially on this healing journey, if you're not careful, when you go on this healing journey, you'll start living through your trauma, through your head. Because the head rehearses the trauma over and over and over and over again. I see this happen so often in the spiritual and self-help communities. You get caught up in this loop, and now here we are, eight months later, we still talk about the same thing. You ain't moved past that yet. You still over here talking about that one? Because we never sunk down into the heart. The heart remembers truth. The heart knows what it is. See, the heart is the divine antenna, the divine aspect that there was no trauma. It was only love, it was only uh joy, it was only peace, it was only patience, it was only kindness, it was only gentle, it was only the fruits of the spirit. So I know that my heart is where my spirit resides. And my spirit doesn't resonate with the frequency of fear. My spirit doesn't resonate with the frequency of the past or the future. My spirit only resonates with right now and these divine aspects of love, peace, kindness, joy, etc. So now my job, my job, my job is to move down, take this journey, take this walk from the head down into the heart. And this is what we call returning home. This is what we call coming home back home. Go and take that. You remember, remember y'all seen Wicked? Remember when they were building that road? What is it called? What's it? Yellow brick road. Oh, excuse me, I'm burped. Excuse me. Indigestion coming up. The uh the uh yellow brick road. Remember that? Remember that yellow brick road? Yeah, we gotta build that yellow brick road from the head back down to the heart. So here's what that requires, okay? You're gonna need to slow down. You're gonna need to slow down. You're gonna start having to feel how you feel. A lot of us don't feel how we feel. We run away from how we feel. We'll numb ourselves out. We'll drink, we'll snort, we'll do something. So I ain't gotta feel, we'll pick up that self on a scroll so I don't have to feel what I'm feeling. You're gonna need stillness. Quiet. Because the heart's very quiet. The heart doesn't really start to speak up until the nervous system feels safe. And here's the thing about the heart the heart walks in that golden jaguar energy. The heart doesn't speak over chaos. Nah, there's all this rumbling and all that. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Heart's just sitting back and it's waiting for stillness because stillness was the doorway back to yourself. And he realized that that stillness wasn't actually empty, it was actually full of answers. It was all there. So, how do we know if we're living from our heart? How do I know if I made that walk? Your decisions feel peaceful, even when they are uncomfortable. Oh yo, okay. Okay. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you. Don't, don't, please, please, don't think that just because it's peaceful, it ain't gonna be uncomfortable. It's gonna be uncomfortable. When you move through the energy of your heart space, when you start to walk down, you're gonna stop performing. Meaning, I don't need their validation, I don't need their acceptance. And you want, they may not talk to me anymore. They may think I'm weird. They may say, what the, what, why what are you, why are you so wait, you're doing wait, what? Why? Sorry, I'm just following my heart. And then here's what ends up happening: you'll stop forcing things because you trust. Remember when I told you everything was always gonna be okay? You're gonna get to where you're supposed to be. I sat here, you know what? I was rearranging my bookshelf and I was putting some books in order. And I remember some books when I bought them. I bought a book, and there's a couple books. I bought them. You ever buy a book and you think it's about to be gonna be about something, and then it ends up being about something completely different? I'm sitting here looking at some of these books. I said, why in the world did I buy that book at that point in life? I would have never bought that book knowing what I know. Why did I buy? But then I started to realize that these were just breadcrumbs. There was a part of me that I already knew. It was my heart. My heart knew. Just get the book, boy. Just get it. Just get it. And then I started reading. I'm like, yo, this is wild. What is this? I'll never forget. I bought a book by Dr. Jodis Spencer. That's the only book I ever bought from him. It was called Becoming Supernatural. I bought that book thinking it was going to be about like how to become supernatural with mindset and grow. And I said, Here, read, what in the world is quantum mechanics and quantum physics and meditation and all what in the world is I what? But it opened me up and I'm like, wait a minute. This is foreign, but it tastes good. You see, your heart already knew. And I started to think back, my whole point of this is I started to see my heart was guiding me all along before my head could even catch up. Do y'all see how this works? You started to talk to that person, and now look at you. You married, got three kids running around. You started to talk to them before you even liked them. You walked away from that job before you even had another source of income coming in. Now look at you. You got more money than you could ever spend in your life because your heart already knew. So I started to realize when you take this walk, you move out of survival mode and now you move into thrival mode. You stop trying to compete and you start trying to create. You stop chasing worthiness and you start embodying it. This is how you know you start to move down into the heart. And now here's what ends up happening when the heart leads, life is gonna flow. And now, what's meant for you, you know when it's meant for you. And you don't betray yourself anymore. You don't abandon yourself. Yourself. You don't reject yourself by trying to force something. You're living what we call alignment. And then here's the deal. Ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? You ain't got to hustle and grind no more because you align now. And you start to realize that hustle and grind was up the head. Long as I'm aligned, long as I'm living through my energy of knowing everything's going to be okay and I feel at peace. Oh my goodness, everything's going to be just fine. So I'm telling you, here's the reward. The reward of you living through your heart. Your connection with other people, with yourself is going to deepen. And then your purpose will become so clear because you're living out your passions. Your passions are in your head. Sorry, your purpose is in your head. Your passions are in your heart. But you've got to follow the passion first. You got to follow the thing that lights you up. And then here's what's going to end up happening. You're going to start to feel at home with yourself. There's nothing more powerful than feeling at home with yourself. You feel good in your own skin. You feel comfortable. And once you reach your heart, you can now stop chasing what you already were. I was already it. I was already it. I didn't even realize it. I was already good enough. I was already enough. I don't need to do that, this, and that to be enough anymore. Why do you think we always put our hands over our heart when we feel something? When you really feel something, what do you do? Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness. Sink down into that heart space. It was never really about you becoming someone new. It's about you returning back to what you've always been. Before the fear, before the trauma, before the conditioning, before the paradigms, before the world, before the ego. This walk from your head down to your heart is you moving out of the ego into the spirit. And then you'll get into this mansion that has so many rooms. So many rooms. And you're like, oh my goodness, look at this house I got in my heart. Look at this house. Oh my goodness. And now this thing that we call embodiment won't be so difficult anymore. So much easier to embody when you live through your heart. So much easier. So take a deep breath. Slow your mind down. Let your nervous system know that it's safe. We're safe. We're always gonna be okay. We will always be okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

And remind yourself of this. From moment to moment, I'm good. I'm fine. I'm safe. And go start that business.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Go start that empire. Go, go, go build what it is. Go start just start. Do it as a passion because you love it. Because you love it. That's it. I never had, I never, it, it, it, it wasn't really ever like, oh, I want to play basketball for a living. I want to make money. No, it's like I just love basketball. I love it. I remember living at 38 Walnut Hill Drive when my dad came home with a basketball hoop and he put it in the driveway and he got me a little mini ball when I went to the Globetrotter game. And I would be out there pretending I was Michael Jordan. I was pretending I was Dominique Wilkins. I was pretending I was Larry Bird. I was all these guys' driveway. I just developed this love. I loved it. And I just kept doing it because I loved it. It was never, ever, ever about where am I going to get? What's the money? It was never about that. And then I realized, like, oh, well, if I want to do that, I'm going to have to be intentional. Then the head came in. Then the head, what do we need to do? What CDAs, what consistent daily actions do I need to develop? But the bare minimum, I did it because I loved it. And now I'm doing the same thing now. This was never the plan.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

This was never the plan. Oh, I know what I want to do. I'm going to be a speaker and I'm going to be a coach and I'm going to have an academy and I'm going to have a podcast. I would never, it was never in the cards.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

I just knew how it felt to give somebody a glimmer of hope because I knew how it felt to be hopeless. And I love that feeling of knowing that I helped myself to get out of this situation. And that there was a process that was repeatable. I love to see you win. I love to see you win. And I love to see you. See, the love, the love was all, that's all it ever was. And then the head came in. So in 2026, think about what your goals are. Think about what it is you want to create, what you want to do. Ask yourself, why am I doing this? Don't you let that nappy, hard-headed head come in there. Don't you let it come in because the head's going to say, yeah, but are we going to make money from it? What if it doesn't work? What if we it uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh? No, we're not. We're just gonna live from the heart right now. Give yourself permission to just live from the heart. And then here's what ends up happening. The more that you live from your heart space, you know what's gonna end up happening? The head's then gonna fall in alignment. The head's gonna then come in second and start figuring out a way to make this a reality, to problem solve. Don't problem solve on the front end, you problem solve on the back end. Because the front end of your heart, that is the fuel source. The head was the steering wheel. You need a fuel source to get the car to where it needs to go. So for everybody out there, it takes great courage to live through your heart. It takes great courage to take that walk from your head down to your heart, that 18 inches. That 18 inches is that's some real courage to be able to do that, especially when you're living in a world that doesn't take that walk. Especially when you're living in a world that says, no, don't you do that. And we look at the story of Jesus. Remember when Jesus they were all so mad at the Pharisees were mad because he was, he was, he was uh doing Jesus-like things and it was on the Sabbath. Remember they got mad at him? They say, What you doing? What are you doing? You don't you don't you don't heal people on the Sabbath. What are you doing? But here's what ended up happening. You see the difference between a patriarchal society, aka the Pharisees, that was living through the head. You know, here this uh individual is living through the heart, meaning I'm just doing what's aligned with my my spirit. I don't see days, I don't see none. I'm just gonna do what aligns with me. And you see how there was a conflict required a great deal of courage. We never talk about that story in the Bible. We never talk about really that Jesus had courage. You gotta have courage. You want to have courage for you to live through your heart.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

And then here's what ends up happening. You break free of the matrix.

Signs You’re Living From The Heart

SPEAKER_02 26:59

See, the matrix was a set of programs to keep you living through your head. When you break free from that and you sink into your heart, you become immune to the matrix. Yes, I'm in the matrix, but I am not of the matrix. I can I can move and maneuver and uh create as I want, as I need, within the bounds of the matrix. Because you don't operate by the same programs. And if you look at the government, if you look at every uh governing part of, you can look at the school system, everything that's put in charge within this matrix, the whole point of it was to keep you living through your head. Well, look at school. School doesn't teach individuality, does it? No. We're gonna pump them out. We gotta pump them out. We need, we need these, we need these workers, we need these worker bees, we need these employees, we need it now. So I started to realize I never plan on ever being an entrepreneur, but I realize what entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is nothing more than the manifestation of you living through your heart. That's all it is. In order to live through your heart, guess what you got to go through? Transformation, information. Sorry, the movement of information, meaning I have to move from my head down in my heart. Well, in order to do that, I have to heal all these wounds and have to go through the self-develop, self-development journey. And then here's what you're going to realize everything in your business is going to grow at the same rate that you do. You were worried about raising your prices. It wasn't actually the number, it was your self-worth. You didn't know if you were worthy of more. But because you have healed the wound and you know that you are worth just a little bit more, how much easier is it for you to raise them prices? And guess what? People pay it and they don't bat an eye at it. So that's how you know it was never actually the number, it was you. And then here's what ends up happening. You start to realize my whole entire business, entrepreneurship is nothing more than me. If I grow me and I live through my heart, everything around me has to turn to gold. And why do you think they made that the yellow brick road? Because the road back, the road back to your heart, those 18 inches, it is a road of gold, and you will make it. When you get down there, you see it was, it was, it was uh, what do they call it? The Wizard of Oz. It was, it was, it was the uh uh the kingdom. That's where everything was. So in 2026, I'm gonna give you just a little bit of permission to give yourself permission. I want you to write down what it is you want to create. What is it that you want to create? Uh-uh. Don't you bring that head in and figure out how? Don't you even do it because I know what you're thinking right now. It doesn't have to make you money. It ain't got to make you famous. Just write down what it is that would bring you joy if you could do this every single day. Just write that down. And then I want you to take time and just imagine what it would feel like in your body. Just really. I mean, it may take a couple days, may take just if you got 20 minutes, 30 minutes, just sit there. Maybe you need to play a song. Maybe that's a song that you'll hear. When you hear that song, dang, that's what I'm gonna like. That's what it's gonna be like when I hit that, when I when I get there, when I do it. Do something to make you feel it in your body. And once it's in your body, it's in your nervous system, once it's in your nervous system, the head will take over now to start scanning the environment, how to make this possible. So um, if anything, give yourself in 2026 permission to just dream. To start moving from your head down into your heart. Exercise the energy of courage. And please know that um I'll be right here with you, cheering you on, wishing you nothing but the best on the pathway to your results.