Master the Art of Intentional Living with Rudi Riekstins

Have you ever felt like you're just going through the motions, living life on autopilot? Join me and my inspiring guest, Rudi Riekstins, as we explore the power of intentional living in this week's episode of the Live Your Extraordinary Life podcast. Rudi, a Top 5 leadership coaching , Top 20 thought leader, and host of the InPowered Life Podcast shares invaluable insights on becoming part of the estimated 2% of all people who actually lead lives filled with intention. You'll walk away with strategies to plan not just your achievements but who you want to be and how you wish to feel each day.

This conversation ventures deep into the heart of leadership and self-leadership, where true success is measured not just by wealth, but by personal fulfillment and the positive impact you have on others. Discover how leaders who prioritize their joy and well-being can transform not only their own lives but also those of their teams. Rudi and I share personal stories that reveal the profound influence of aligning leadership with spiritual values, providing you with a new lens to view your role within the workplace and beyond.

We wrap up with a candid look at the power of beliefs and the importance of questioning our own negative thought patterns. You'll learn the art of being present and the significance of evidence-based positivity to reshape your life's narrative. Embrace this episode as your catalyst for an internal shift towards living with authenticity, purpose, and a profound sense of connection. Join us for a journey that is as heartfelt as it is transformative, promising to inspire a profound shift in how you perceive and engage with the world.

Connect with Rudi:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/rudiriekstins/
Website: https://www.rudiriekstins.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-inpowered-life/id1595631807

Connect with Michelle Rios:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/michelle.rios.official/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/michelle.c.rios
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3ahwTlqiLU&list=PL-ltQ6Xzo-Ong4AXHstWTyHhvic536OuO
Website: https://michelleriosofficial.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Success isn't achieving wealth. I can tell you, twenty six years old, sitting in a law department, of sports car in my garage, two thousand dollar jeans, drink a nice bottle of wine, thinking I'm the man. And I read, my brothers led and I start crying and realize, man, I'm still broken, I'm still sad, I still don't know who I am. When you can be defined by how you leave a room and how people feel about you when you leave a room, to me is the most beautiful thing that leaders have.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Hi, I'm michelle rios, host of the live your extraordinary life podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:36

This podcast is built on the premise that life is meant to be joyful, but far too often we settle for less. So if you've ever thought that something is missing from your life, that you were meant for more, or you simply want to experience more joy in the everyday than this podcast is for you. Each week, I'll bring you captivating personal stories, transformative life lessons and juicy conversations on living life to the fullest, with the hope to inspire you to create a life you love on your terms, with authenticity, purpose and connection. Together, we'll explore what it means to live an extraordinary life, the things that hold us back and the steps we all can take to start living our best lives. So come along for the journey. It's never too late to get started, and the world needs your light.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the live your extraordinary life podcast. I'm your host, michelle rios, and I am absolutely thrilled to have my dear friend, rudy ricksteins join me today. Rudy is a leadership coach, he's an entrepreneur, he's an author. He's also the co host of the empowered podcast with his lovely wife, aniston. I cannot wait for you to get to know him more. He's a fairly new friend in my world, but let me tell you we are kindred spirits and I know that what you're gonna garner from today's conversation is gonna be magical. So without further ado, rudy, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Michelle, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm excited to connect with you in your audience.

Speaker 2: 2:20

Well, we're gonna jump right in and I'm gonna start with where I start, with all my guests, and that's asking the question what does it mean to you, rudy, to live your extraordinary life?

Speaker 1: 2:31

You know I love that question so much and, in all transparency to your audience, I knew the question was coming because you asked this question on your show and I gave it quite a bit of thoughts and I really want people to think about the purpose of the question and then the value of the information that they're gonna gain from every single guest, because in the answer of every single one of the responses is clues to how people can duplicate this and apply it into their lives. To me, I really think that there's two ways to live your life. You can either live your life Intentionally, purposefully, very carefully calculatedly, planning. Who do you want to be, how do you want to show up, how do you want to feel the day, feel the day and that, when you do the things that you're aspiring to do, that once you've achieved them, what is that going to physically feel like in your body? And that, when you go to bed at night, how do you want to lie there and vibrate, as your entire body literally starts to slow down and you think back and you're reflecting in on what has been your day, what has been your week, your month, your life.

Speaker 1: 3:27

You see, my estimates are that 98% of the people on the planet living a life by default. They walk into every single room every single day, they reacting to situations and circumstance. They are literally responding to what is happening in a room. So they're aspiring to fall in love, they're aspiring to create wealth, they're aspiring to do something, and that's what they want.

Speaker 1: 3:48

But then, when they walk into a room, they're dealing with a conflict or a problem or a situation and they are having to respond and react and respond, and react, and respond, and respond, and react and respond. And then one day they wake up and they say just don't understand. I don't understand where my life went. I don't understand what happened, what went wrong. And so the answer to the question is to live an extraordinary life is to really be purposeful, to be very careful and calculatedly planning. Who do you want to be? So that every time you take a step in your life, you're taking the direction Of where you want your life to go, rather than something else? An external force is dictating what your life is going to look like or feel like.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Absolutely. This idea of being on autopilot Is, I think, something that a lot of people are confronted with when they're really honest with themselves. Unfortunately, they're incredibly busy, which is, I think, a word that unfortunately defines most of the world these days really busy but that doesn't necessarily mean they're being intentional, nor is necessarily the activities that they're spending all of that energy on getting them where they want to be. So I appreciate that answer so much. All right, so that really begs the question when did you really come to the conclusion that perhaps you really yourself were not living the life of intention that you really aspire to? What was going on in your life? Maybe give us a little bit of the context and understanding of maybe that time in your life where you really started to have an awakening that something had to change.

Speaker 1: 5:18

I'm going to answer your question slightly differently than the way you asked it, and I want to just add some value and meaning into what was my life experience. But I don't want people just to listen to it and hear a story. I want them to hear what I'm saying and then to somehow take that information and filter through their own life, through their own story, through their own lens. And so I believe that every single experience that you have a good or bad, right or wrong is serving the person that you get to become and that when you have the experience and in having had the experience, you have a new vantage point and through having that new vantage point you get to be who you've ultimately come here to be. You get to show up as the full expression of you and you've got something that you otherwise wouldn't have had. And so my experience was feeling unworthy. My experience was not feeling good enough, feeling like I was stupid. I was named stupid by teachers in my school growing up. They literally called me stupid, made me sit in a dancer's chair, put a dumb hat on my head that said Dance on it, and I was just always reminded that I wasn't good enough and I wasn't worthy and I'm talking like six, seven years old but it dictated how I felt about myself. And so throughout my entire school career, I just believed I was stupid. I never studied, I never tried, I never applied myself, because I literally thought, well, really stupid. Well, you know what's the point of learning, what's the point of wanting to study? When all my friends were planning to go to college, I was like there's no way I would get to college, that's not in the cards for me, and so it wasn't even an option for me to think about. What was the potential of me living an expanse of life? Because somebody, at some point in time, inserted a label on me. And I believe them Now. We know now today that under the age of six and seven, the brain influence is taking all information in as a fact, and so you don't have the ability to process ration, logical reason.

Speaker 1: 7:01

And so, at six years old, being labeled stupid at school, I believe them because the teacher said, hey, you, you're stupid, and so I took that as I am stupid. But that became the way that I identified myself, and so I made all decisions from that vantage point, and I'm talking about having terrible friends, dating girls that cheat, dating girls that are never available, going into business in my 20s with people that would take money from me, and I would tolerate it, I would allow them to do it because I never thought I was worth more. I didn't think I was good enough and if I stood up to someone like told my girlfriend, well, you should stop cheating, or whatever the situation was, that she would leave and then I'd be alone and I'd have nothing and I would be further validated. I wasn't good enough. And so at twenty six was when I really sat down and I've shared this so many times that I don't want people to hear the fluidness of the story and mistake the intensity of that money.

Speaker 1: 7:53

You know, my younger brother wrote me a letter to tell me how proud he was of me and he gave it to me on my birthday and it's my favorite gift I get from my younger brother every year is a handwritten letter and he was writing about how I grew up to be this man that I'd always said I was going to be, because at some point in time, as a stupid little boy who felt stupid and acted stupid, he made a commitment that he was going to be very successful and that when he was successful, he would have respect and when he had respect, people would listen to him. And when people would listen to him, then he could become a speaker, a coach, and he could create an impact in the world. And so, at 26 years old, my brother wrote me a letter saying man, I remember when you were a teenager, talking about you were going to be successful, talking about the things you were going to do. He's like and now I look at you and I'm six years older than him, but he was like man. I'm hitting my 20s now and I'm not even getting into my stride. And I'm looking at you and everything you've achieved.

Speaker 1: 8:44

And that was when I realized, man, I wasn't in my driver's seat of my life experience at all. I had created what I, at 26, thought was wealth, and I created stability by owning companies and doing things. But I had done it by default. I had done it by thinking I was stupid and I had something to prove. And that was really where I started questioning who am I, where am I going? What do I want to do? And it took me on the most intense journey of self discovery, of learning a little bit about who I am and how I want to show up out in the world, and I completely transformed how I interacted with myself and then the people around me, and I think that's the value is, we need to be able to turn around and ask ourselves like what is that thing that we're going through? But what's it there for? What's the value in the meaning for that? And it was what qualified me to do what I do today.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Amazing. And now you grew up not in the States, you were in South Africa, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 1: 9:35

Beautiful coastal town in South Africa called Nizna. It's like a picturesque Orange County meets North Carolina coastline Just beautiful.

Speaker 2: 9:43

Oh lovely, and is your family still, by and large, there? Are you the only one that left, or is everyone sort of migrated to the States?

Speaker 1: 9:50

We got everybody over a little bit by little. But my brother was living here before and that's how I ended up here. We started a company together in the US and then I met my wife and settled down, and then my parents eventually immigrated and my younger brother he just came over now recently.

Speaker 2: 10:03

Oh, wonderful. Oh, that's such a great story. All right, so let's talk a little bit fast forward. Here you are today. You're considered one of the top thought leaders in the world, and I know that something with great humility that you dismiss is not a big deal, but I say that because when you hear Rudy speak, it's with such a level of genuineness and with plain talk and with a level of, I think, deep sincerity of wanting people to understand, and that, to me, is gold. And so to have other people recognize the gift that you have and that you are bringing to the world, I think merits mentioning.

Speaker 2: 10:44

So, with that in mind, I would love to hear from you a little bit of what you think is probably one of the biggest sticky points with leaders, because we have an audience full of leaders, whether we're talking CEOs. Ceos are their home of their lives, of their businesses. We have entrepreneurs in our audience, we have business leaders. We have really everybody under the sun, in one capacity or another, leading, leading groups of people, leading entire companies, leading families. What do you think is one of the biggest sticky points for leaders in terms of growth? Because it's one thing to say okay, leaders, you need to inspire everybody else. You need to get everybody else working optimally and collaborating. But then what about our leaders themselves? How are we nourishing and feeding them? What is the biggest sticky point you find in your work with leaders?

Speaker 1: 11:42

You know, your question is so beautiful and I hope that everybody leans forward just a little bit closer so they can hear this, because I work with high-level leaders who have achieved profound things in life, and the majority of the people that I work with when I meet them, are deeply unhappy and they are pouring all of their value in their company or in their teams or in a project or in a child, but not in themselves. And I'm not saying everybody, but the majority of leaders that I work with have so much around them that can give them the value and the joy and the fulfillment of the freedom that they seek, but they're looking at all the wrong things and they're pouring all of their time, effort and energy into something that's never going to fulfill them. And I like to remind people in life and in business that everything we want to have, everything we want to do, everything we want to achieve it already exists within us, and we just have to look within ourselves to connect to who we really are, what we've come here to do and how we've come here to change the world, and then when we do that, we are allowing people to see us. You used the word leadership, and so let's stick with leaders for a second. To lead people, we need to hold one's hand and march them forward. That's the definition of a leader. It is to take a common-aligned group and to move them in a common-aligned direction.

Speaker 1: 13:03

So many leaders are not leading themselves. They are driving performance, maybe in a business. But driving performance in a business doesn't mean that you're a great leader. Driving dollars doesn't necessarily mean you're a great leader. If you walk into a company and you see that they're doing really well in profitability, but everyone is in burnout mode, everyone's freaking out and they're turning through their staff, well, you're not leading the right way that you should be leading.

Speaker 1: 13:30

And when a leader can first lead with self-leadership and learn to connect to who they are, who they really want to be, how they really want to show up, if they want to be a little more intentional about how they want to feel at the end of their day, how they want to be able to impact their people, and then they start to meet that expectation. And this isn't really hard and it's not woo-woo. It really is just the most beautiful process of learning to understand the value and the meaning of being purposeful and intentional and identifying that the people that you work with are not just there for a function, and that there's this beautiful, divinely orchestrated moment of all of the people that are in. Your employee are there because they're there to learn and to gain something from you and you're there to learn and to gain from them, and there's this beautiful, equal exchange of energy that's happening in every single company. But for so many leaders, they're not present to the information because they're too busy trying to drive a particular result or to get something across the line and when we can take a moment to just pause and look at all of the beauty, of the magic that's happening around inside of a company, and that the leaders' responsibility is to lead themselves to the highest standard, and that means to be happy, truly happy, to be joyful, to be fulfilled, to have abundance in not only their wealth or their success, but also in their freedom, in their downtime, and then in health and well-being, in religion and every area of their life. If they can create that structure and that stability, it's going to change everything, but they're going to mirror to every single person in their company what does success look like? You see, because success isn't achieving wealth, I can tell you, 26 years old, sitting in a loft department, have a sports car in my garage, $2,000 jeans, drinking a nice bottle of wine, thinking I'm the man. And I read my brother's letter and I start crying and realized, man, I'm still broken, I'm still sad, I still don't know who I am. When you can be defined by how you leave a room and how people feel about you when you leave a room, to me is the most beautiful thing that leaders have, and most of the leaders that I come into contact with, when I start with them individually, it's to support them, and then, when I work with a teams, the leaders turn around and say I don't know what you did there, but I want that. I don't know what that entails, but give it to me, because I want the joy and the fulfillment of the happiness and the calm and the clarity that they have. I want to just clarify this for a moment, and I know that you asked a really, really, really good question and I feel if I didn't give this to, but I think I'd be leaving a lot of people not fully understanding the point I'm making.

Speaker 1: 16:04

Seventy five percent of people are suffering chronic stress, more than seventy five percent of the time. Those are the latest stats that came out of coven. Seventy five percent of our entire global population is suffering chronic stress every minute that they wake up until they go to bed. If you look at that inside of an organization, three quarters of the people in your company are suffering chronic stress.

Speaker 1: 16:25

When a human being is suffering stress momentary stress, not even chronic stress, just momentary stress you lose the ability to have logic, reason, intuition, inspiration and you also lose the ability to be creative. So now, when you think about people inside of a business, they are required to have logic and reason and to draw an inspiration, intuition and, yes, they're required to be creative. And when you lose that function, you're losing the human being that you've hired. And when a leader teaches people to be calm and to be happy and to be joyful and to show up abundance, the stats don't like. You become seventy percent more productive at work, driving greater results in last time Because you're happier, because your brain and your body create coherence. You go into a state where inspiration, intuition, creativity and all of it is free flowing and we're able to produce significantly greater volumes of work at work and then go home and feel really good about ourselves. But none of that works if the leader doesn't mirror that behavior themselves.

Speaker 2: 17:23

I mean, that's such an incredibly important point and I don't want to leave it quite yet because someone who is lived in the corporate realm for a very long time and been a leader Really help to bring leaders up been amongst leaders.

Speaker 2: 17:38

One of the things that really has struck me is, despite the fact that we have a lot of the data at our fingertips, about how leaning into joy first Is really an act of service, because the happier you can show up to the workplace, the more you're gonna be able to give to others.

Speaker 2: 17:54

Right is the whole phenomenon of you can't work from an empty cup.

Speaker 2: 17:58

And yet what I find still to this day and I'm curious about your experience one of the knee jerk reactions of leaders when he starts getting cranked up Is your virtual patterns, which are what's the familiar, and the familiar is a lot to do. I gotta get into the office early and I gotta attack everything on my to do list and I need all my teams to be doing the same. And then we get to that, to this place where people are tired they're not living from a joyful place right there, all kind of on edge Mainly because that one particular leader or group of leaders, as I've experienced and to get into that group, think of we need to attack the spass and go deep, and the panic whether they would admit to it that or not, I'm not sure, but the panic that ensues is go back to old habits. So I'm curious is this an age based phenomena? Does I'm very curious to see what you're seeing in younger leaders that are coming up through the system, if you will, or is this across the board sort of human nature?

Speaker 1: 19:02

So the answer is human nature. I think that it's gonna be different for everybody, but if I were to blanket it, it's gonna be human nature, because we need to understand that in order to create a shift or a change in a person any person that can be an individual and or a group that those people or person have been who they were longer than they've been the person they're aspiring to be. And so when you support somebody to be happier and more joyful and we don't stress anymore and we get to approach this with clarity, and then all of a sudden, the pressure ensues and they go back to the default pattern of how they reacted. It's because they themselves have learned a pattern or behavior of how to show up in past experiences when it's successfully drove a particular result, and so if you know that that's going to work, you're gonna default back to that one path or platform. And so what we need to do is create a new platform, a new way to show up, a new way to be, and so that when now stress ensues, when something's going wrong or they have to achieve something they've got to do in a really short amount of time, that they become very carefully Intentional about how they're approaching what they're doing. And then here's the key you have to stack enough evidence of what it is that you're doing, that the new way is going to outweigh the old way. And you've got to be able to stack the evidence, not just looking at data, but looking at how did it work, how much easier did this happen in flow? What was the end result? Didn't drive greater results. And then, at the end of the day, how much money did we make? But we have to be able to measure the evidence of the shifts or the changes, because if we just create the change and we do it and we don't stack the evidence that this change drove that result, people won't have the proof.

Speaker 1: 20:35

And as humans, we need to know, if I'm going to do something, what's in it for me. If I don't know what's in it for me, I'm never, ever going to do anything, and that's true for anybody. That could be a diet, that could be visiting somebody for a dinner or that could be changing a behavior. We need to fundamentally, individually, understand why are we doing it this way, and only if we understand that are we capable of duplicating it, and then we'll be able to do it again and again and again. And so if you want to create systemic change inside of an organization, to not go into a default pattern of how you were in the past, you've got to have coherence and you also have to be conscious.

Speaker 1: 21:10

And so 98% of the human population is suffering the unconscious way of showing up in their life, which means that they're acting as a default pattern and they just reacting to how they've always been conditioned to react. What makes that so scary? And I laugh and I joke, because I'll go into companies and let's say they've achieved something really profound and I'll say You've achieved all of these things and you've achieved it with the programming of a seven year old child. If you haven't done this work, because the program that's formulating the human brain under the age of seven still governs every single adult today, unless they become more conscious, present, if they become more aware, and we default into patterns and every time you do something, your brain learns how to do it, so it does it again. And then you do something else and it does it again, and then it groups them all together.

Speaker 1: 21:57

And so when you fast forward into your 40s and 50s and 60s and you're running a company and you're reacting. You're not the one reacting, it's the default program that's reacting. And 95% of every single thing that an adult does over the age of 35 is unconscious 95. And so if you think about putting your pants on in the morning, driving to work, what you eat, what you put into your coffee, how you respond into meetings, how you react to stress, everything is unconscious 95%. And so when I expand 10x companies, all I'm doing is creating happy and joy and fulfillment and freedom inside of the leader so that expands under the people and we get everyone inside the company to become more conscious. We get to become more present, more aware, because if they're aware, they are in control and they no longer having the program that is in control and that's how you create the change.

Speaker 2: 22:49

Amazing. Let's delve into this idea of presence because I think it's probably one of the most important things you feel when you're around a leader is whether or not they are actually present in that moment with you, or if they are thinking six or seven thoughts down the line and you're sort of just in the way of getting to the next thing. And so when you talk about cultivating presence and this idea of really focusing in the now to get out of that reactive mode, what's probably one of the most effective tools or a couple of tools that you would recommend people think about using or experimenting with to cultivate more presence?

Speaker 1: 23:28

It really depends on the situation. But if I were to respond to the question, I would say you need to ask questions. When you're asking a question, even if you're doing a presentation to the leader of your company, or you're the leader and you're doing a presentation to your team to get the buy in to do something, or whether this is to pitch for some merger or something and you're responsible for doing all the talking, you can still ask questions. You don't have to ask a question and expect a response, but it's going to prompt people to think about what you're talking about, and the minute someone's thinking they're conscious, they're present. If I say to you right now, michelle, would you like a Coca Cola or a glass of water, in that moment, the minute I ask a question, your brain goes to. Well, do I want Coca Cola? 34 grams of sugar? Do I want to have water? Am I thirsty? Do I need it now? Like, oh, I just had something to drink and you're processing real time thought. That is, you consciously present and away. And so if I'm communicating with the leadership team and I'm wanting their retention or I see them slipping away, I'm going to do something that gets them to be present in that room at that moment and the first thing's going to be to ask a question. What would it feel like if, at the end of this, you had the answer to the solution of what it is that you're looking for and in that question, all of a sudden, they're not present or they're listening. The second thing is I want them to feel something, and if I can get people to sign emotional value to information that I'm communicating, they're buying whatever it is that I'm talking about. And so if I'm talking to a team and I say to them, what would it feel like to wake up in the morning feeling happy, committed, so excited to be showing up at work, to be in the flow, to have more money coming in and have it be easier than it's ever been before, to have you be celebrated for all of the accomplishments and achievements, of what it is that you do every single day, and for you to really love where you work, because you're being seen and valued and heard and appreciated, and that we understand human behavior. We all want connection and every single person wants to know you, wants to celebrate, you, wants to hang out with you. They're asking you questions about what you're doing because you're so successful and you seem to have found your flow. What does that feel like? And if I could give that to you in the next hour, would you be open to it?

Speaker 1: 25:28

Now, everyone's open to what I have to say because they've taken on that information. So I asked the question which brought them to be conscious and present, and then I made them feel something. And when they felt something, they connected to it. And then I spoke into a future vision of something that they're looking for. And so, if you're wanting to get attention for anybody in a room, ask questions, make them feel something and get them to buy into the information.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Remember, I gave it to you a little earlier, but I'm going to go back to it because it's important. People will only ever do something if they know what's in it for them. And if you're selling something or you're communicating something, or you're enrolling or convincing somebody to do something, or you need something, they're only ever going to do whatever it is that you're wanting, if they themselves understand what's in it for them individually or for them as an organization. And so you've got to be able to communicate in a way where they see themselves as the hero of whatever it is that you're communicating that they are going to benefit from whatever their participation is, and if you can get them to do that, then they'll do anything.

Speaker 2: 26:28

I mean for our listeners if you haven't already glommed onto the idea that this man is pure genius. It's incredible Everything you're saying. Not only is it fluid, rudy and I know you have a lot of experience with this but it just makes so much sense. So, thank you, thank you for just bringing all of this to our listeners. I know there's going to be so much value derived from this conversation and I cannot wait for all of those that are listening.

Speaker 2: 26:53

If you find a particular tidbit from this conversation useful, please go online, go to Insta or go to Facebook and just let me know that moment in this conversation that stood out for you and tag myself, tag Rudy, and we'll look for something to send your way just to keep you inspired on your own path of personal growth and development.

Speaker 2: 27:14

All right, rudy, let's talk spiritual connection, because that's something you've mentioned a couple of times in our conversations.

Speaker 2: 27:20

It's something that's incredibly interesting and probably one of the most, I would say probably the moment in my own personal journey which, by the way, was really activated at the age of 26.

Speaker 2: 27:31

So we have that in common, that moment of awakening, and I really want to understand more from your perspective what you see as the importance around spiritual connection, because for me, quite honestly, like a lot of people, I was looking outside of myself for validation worth for decades and it wasn't until I was sort of forced to look at myself from the inside perspective and have that reconnection with self at a spiritual level that things started to really to fall into place and then flow and alignment and those lovely words that we talk about when you're on purpose and you really are really understanding what it is you're here to do, started to make sense. But before that it was like learning a foreign language outside of myself, so it really was at homecoming. I'm curious, from your perspective, when you think about spiritual alignment, spiritual connection and leadership and workplace, how do you reconcile what often is considered separation of church and state?

Speaker 1: 28:33

Man, I love this question so much and this is where I spend the bulk of my time. I cannot go into an organization and talk spirituality Boardrooms are not ready, but what I will tell you is every single person inside of a company is ready, and it's how the information is delivered, but the end result is just the most beautiful, profound shift. You see, I'm going to talk to you today about what I believe. I'm not going to tell you. That's the truth. I'm going to tell you what's my truth, and my truth is that we all come here for the sole purpose of learning, growing and evolving, and that in every single moment, we're achieving a new level of awareness. In the same way that a leader starts a startup company, builds the company and exits the organization, they now have a skill set. They know how to build something, they know how to grow something, they know how to make something from nothing, and then they know how to exit something. And so they've all these skills, and so they can turn around now and they can teach it or they can duplicate it, because they've done it, so they now know how to do it. Well, life is exactly the same way when you get bullied in school, or you get picked on or you made to feel like you're stupid or not good enough or unworthy, and then eventually you start to stack enough evidence that you're so fricking wicked smart that you can create things. You can do things, so you have value, purpose and meaning and you can create an impact in somebody else's life. And then you start doing it and you stack evidence of it. Then all of a sudden, everything starts to have meaning. I openly share that.

Speaker 1: 29:55

As a young boy, I was sexually assaulted by an older female cousin, and at six and a half years old I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't understand why it would happen to me. It was a traumatic experience that I actually buried. I didn't even want to remember it, I pretended like it didn't happen, and so at some point in time I forgot that it happened. In my twenties, all the memories came back and I was now trying to reconcile what had happened and what my experience was, and there's a lot of pain in what was that experience.

Speaker 1: 30:20

I can also tell you stories about being held up three different times by guns, having somebody put me on my hands and my knees as he robbed me in my business and he told me he was going to blow my head off and he put the gun between my eyes and said close your eyes, it's the last thing you're ever going to see, and thinking, wow, this is it. This is the last thing, at twenty one, I'm ever going to see, and then to still be here today and to take all those moments of all the little pains and the sufferings and the heartbreaks and the girlfriends cheating on me and people taking money from me and all of life experience. Well, that only has meaning if you can do something with it, and so I will share with you that over 60% of the people that I work with, which is in corporate America leaders of large organizations, small businesses, startups 60% of the people that I do business with have been sexually abused or assaulted in some way, and I'm uniquely qualified to help them. And when I go into companies, that means 60% of the people in those companies have suffered some form of sexual abuse and or trauma. If we're using that as a formula for what we're seeing out in the outer world, and what's so crazy is every single experience that I've ever had that at one point in time came with some form of pain or suffering or struggle, that when I support somebody in lessening their pain, or if I stand on stage and I'm communicating to an entire audience and a thousand people are crying because we've given them permission to heal, it no longer makes mine painful. It makes my experience beautiful. And the beauty is in taking the lesson, the value of what I learned and what I gained and teaching. And then when I can lessen somebody else's pain and support somebody through something in a shorter amount of time, then all of a sudden I have additional value and meaning to what has been my life and my experience.

Speaker 1: 32:00

You see, I believe that spirituality is really about the inner journey of realizing that we are here to make a difference. We had to create an impact. I believe we had to give selflessly of ourselves every single day, in every single way. And when leaders specifically understand that they are the example to their teams of what does it look like to live a beautiful life? What does it look like to live whole? What does it look like to have balance and structure and, yes, to be abundantly successful, they're giving and empowering, through example, their people to be able to do the same.

Speaker 1: 32:32

We don't have to use the words, god. We don't have to use the words religion and we don't have to use the word spiritualism. But when I go into businesses and I stand in front of an entire organization of 2,000, 3,000, 10,000 people and I say to them every single moment is a divinely led, orchestrated moment that has perfectly led you to being who you are here today and that in every single moment you have an opportunity to show up as the best version of you and that in every moment you get given a gift and that gift is you can create an impact. That could be a person at the water cooler, that could be somebody in the photocopy room, that could be the CEO of the organization. But you have value to add and value to give, and I wanna remind you that people spend more time at work than they spend anywhere else doing anything else. And the people that they work with are not just people that are there because of a function. They are these beautiful spiritual agreements where we come and we work together and we spend hours immersed in other people's lives. And if we can show up in every room, in every place, regardless of function, and leave that room better than what we founded, we understand the true value in the meaning of life.

Speaker 1: 33:36

My podcast is called the In-Powered Life because we get to live an empowered life, and an empowered life is when we understand all of what we want already resides within us. We are everything we wanna have, be, do and achieve and we're looking for all the external validation. But when you can bring purpose, passion, meaning, spiritualism into a business and you can remind people that you get to spend eight to 10 hours a day with these people and that there's a gift in this and that it's a divinely orchestrated moment, and just because you don't like that person or you don't care for that meeting, that when you show up, looking at that as an opportunity to serve and to add kindness and compassion and value and meaning, I'm gonna tell you now not only are you gonna have the greatest levels of joy and fulfillment and freedom, but you're gonna make more money than you have ever made before. Every company that I've ever touched has literally exploded in revenue, in company fulfillment, in culture, because people are desperate for value and meaning.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Covid was a terrible experience for so many people, but it was a catalyst for every single person on the planet to stop and say man, do I even like my wife, my husband, my job, my kids, what I do for a living, like what's working, what's not working. And now everybody's gone back to work, except everything is different. The rooms look the same, the company calls look the same, but every single person's different. Because they're starting to question where do they place their value and their meaning? And the companies that are succeeding are the companies that bring in passion and purpose into work, and the reward to the company is profound growth. I mean, it happens every single time, but the value is going to always be in the fulfillment and the joy of the people.

Speaker 2: 35:13

I think that's so incredibly important and I don't think enough people hear this often enough that the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of more, the pursuit of abundance and all of this is really the wrong pursuit, and the pursuit of peace and the pursuit of passion, the pursuit of purpose and the pursuit of joy, which is counterintuitive to a lot of us who are told work hard, work hard, work hard, and you play or you have some sort of validation of joy during vacations or weekends.

Speaker 2: 35:42

But when you inverse this and start with those as the focal point, then all the other things that you want come, and more so than what you would have otherwise received. I have experienced this personally, I know you have and I know a lot of the companies and the clients that we've worked with have had this exact experience. When you start to shift what you focus on, what you put your energy on, it really does have the potential to quantum leap where you otherwise would have been able to land, far beyond where you could have gone otherwise if you were looking at it from the quote unquote old school way if you will, I'm gonna add in something to what you just said, because it's so beautiful and it's so rarely brought up in a podcast.

Speaker 1: 36:26

We only ever get whatever we believe we're worthy of having, and I wanna explain that again Every single person that's listening to this podcast everything that you have ever had, ever experienced or ever go into experience, is for 100%, proportionately tied to what you believe you're worthy of having. And so if you're experiencing success, it's because you believe that you're worthy of the success that you're experiencing. If you generate X amount of money in your business and you can never generate more than that, it's because you believe that you've hit a glass ceiling in what it is that you're experiencing. If your marriage is terrible, but your business is thriving, or your marriage is amazing but your business is failing. If your health sucks but you've got money, every single category of your life, you are only experiencing that because, on some level, that is what you are expecting. That is what you're thinking about, and what you think about is what you create. You see, the formula is thoughts produce feelings, and thoughts and feelings drive all human behavior. And if you wanna create a shift or a change in your life, in your business in any area of your life, then what you need to do is challenge what it is that you think or what it is that you feel about what it is that you're experiencing.

Speaker 1: 37:29

If you pause right now and you take a snapshot I do this with the leaders that I work with and we'll look at every single area of their life and every area of their business and we'll snapshot them and say where is your relationship and that's feedback to what you believe you're worthy of having. We look at your health, you look at your freedom, you look at your time, you look at your bank account, you look at your joy, everything, and we say this is what you believe that you're worthy of having. And the only reason you have the evidence of that in your life is because you are first in alignment with that outcome. And if you wanna change the outcome, you've got to realign to something new, and I teach a process called priming that we bring into businesses that the entire organization can adopt, that in 20 minutes you can realign to a new goal, new vision, new experience that will literally change your physiological state. The scientific data shows your physiology, your entire body, is going to change how you think based on how you feel, and if we can get people to feel very differently, they're going to now bypass the default the world is telling us change behavior, change behavior. You wanna lose weight? Great, go to the gym, run, and that's never going to get you to the goal. But if you change what you're thinking or you change what you're feeling, it's gonna have an automatic default which will change all of your behavior.

Speaker 1: 38:40

I said it in the beginning of the episode today when you're in a heightened state of stress, you lose the ability to be creative, you lose inspiration, intuition, all of that, but let's ground the most important one. You were created for the sole purpose to create, and the life that you're living is your creation. You created it based on the confines of the limitation of your mind, and if you wanna create a new life which you can you have to change how you think or you have to change how you feel. And so if you learn my priming process, for example, and you change how you feel about your life, it's gonna change everything that you're going to have.

Speaker 1: 39:14

And where we talk about flow. Flow is where you are thinking and you are feeling in alignment with the outcome, and it becomes easy To grow a business or to fall in love or to get perfect health doesn't take effort, doesn't take work, it takes alignment. You've got to fall back into the divinity of the tapestry of how the universe works and to do that you have to understand who you are, first and foremost, and you have to understand energy and you understand the program, and that is thoughts produced feelings, and thoughts and feelings drive behavior. And if you just manipulate thoughts and all the feelings, it's gonna have the most beautiful and profound shift in your life.

Speaker 2: 39:51

So our audience cannot see my face right now, although I'm sure you're gonna catch some of the clips but I'm just beaming from ear to ear because everything it really is saying if it doesn't have you super excited in jazz and on the edge of your seat, I don't know what will. This is just pure gold and I'm so grateful it feels so in alignment. It has everything inside of me going yes, yes and more, and I don't want this conversation to end, but we don't have time for a lot more and I wanna ask you a few more questions and so a follow up to this such an important point that you've made.

Speaker 2: 40:24

What happens when you have somebody who's stuck with a limiting belief of what they really, truly deserve or what they can hold, and yet they want to be more successful? Where are the levers we can push? Is it around the thinking and the feeling of what's possible? How do we start to shift that I'm not worthy of whatever it is, the love I truly want, the marriage I truly want the bank account I want to be the recipient of. How do we say, okay, I gotta have a limiting belief, I've gotta remove that. How do I do that in a way that really, truly is authentic and not just I'm gonna keep repeating it until I believe it, until it starts to become true. What's the foundation of that shift that needs to happen within the individual so that their belief shifts accordingly and is replaced, so that they can experience the love, the marriage, the healthy relationships of the children, the healthier bank account. What needs to transform?

Speaker 1: 41:29

The first thing is, people need to be ready, and if you're not ready, nothing's going to give you the change that you see. And so, when you're ready and you're open, you're going to be present to the information that's around you. When you're present to the information that's around you, you're going to snap back into being conscious, and so I'm going to explain that a slightly different way. If you're not ready to create the change, you're not looking for the new evidence. You're not looking for new information. The human brain perceives information at a rate of 10 million bits of data every single second. You're going to smell everything coming at you, but your brain's narrowing down 10 million bits of data to 50 bits of data based on how you were feeling lost. And if you were feeling unworthy, lost, then you're only going to see 50 bits of data to reinforce, out of 10 million bits of data that you should stay unworthy. When you think that you're unworthy and you see evidence that you're unworthy, your brain's going to process and fire a neurological pathway that it's done your entire life and it's going to send it from the frontal lobe to the limbic brain. The limbic brain is going to produce a chemical equivalent of that it's going to put it in your bloodstream. So now, not only did you think that you were unworthy, not only did you see 50 bits of data to reinforce that you are unworthy, you now feel unworthy because that chemical instruction is emotion, and so now your body goes into state of feeling the emotion fear fired or flight. You shut down. You either run, you hide or you fight.

Speaker 1: 42:42

And so in that moment, what you're doing is running the default pattern, and what you need to do is to be ready to create the change. And the only way people can create change is one you hit rock bottom. Your life gets so freaking bad, or the situation gets so difficult that you have to create a change. You're being literally forced to change or you manufacture a change, and so, for me, I manufacture change in people or in companies where you don't have to go through the hardship. You just have to be posed the right amount of questioning so that you can be able to shift out of that state. And when you're ready to create that shift and you've now moved into a place where you say okay, I'm open to the potential of change, because you really have to be open, and if you are now in a place where you've been shifted. To be open, you have to start looking for evidence. And when you ask questions and we're coming back to this because it's so important 98% of the people that's my estimates, 98% of the people on the planet are living a life by default. They are reacting, which means they're in the default pattern, thinking, the default thoughts which produce the default instructions for the reticle activating system to show you what you should be focusing in on. So the body and the brain produces the same chemicals and you react the same way, so you feel the same way. That's why today, people feel the same way they felt yesterday, the day before and the day before that. But if, all of a sudden, you can start saying is it even true that I'm unworthy? When you ask a question, 10 million bits of data become available to you and the brain starts to scan 10 million bits of data to look for where are you worthy, where do you deserve love? Where have you been loved? Where are you finding joy, fulfillment of freedom?

Speaker 1: 44:08

I used to say to my wife oh, people don't like me. I would walk into a room, I would have a meeting, I would leave. She would say how did it go and I'd be like they didn't like me. And then a week later, they'd love me and she would say like why do you say they don't like you? I would never understand. Or I'd have a call with somebody this was years and years ago and she kept saying really, every time we meet someone, you say people don't like you. And so I sat down and I challenged the thought is it even true? So powerful, is it even true, those four words?

Speaker 1: 44:33

And then, by asking the question, the brain starts to scan all the evidence and that starts to bring you new information, to reinforce the new thought. And I started thinking well, actually that's not true. People love me, like I'm a good guy, like I do good things and I help people. And then, all of a sudden, I started staking evidence. So now when I walk in a room, my brain's expecting people to like me, not the reverse, which had been true for 20 odd years of my life. Oh, people don't like me. And so we have to ask better questions to get better information.

Speaker 1: 45:00

And then the last thing is you have to stack the evidence. So we said this earlier when you look for new information and then you see the new information, you see new behaviors and then you see that it works. What you're doing is you're building evidence that it's true. And the more evidence you build that it's true, the more likelihood you're having believing that narrative. And if you believe it, then you're going to know that it's possible. And if it's possible for you, you're going to do it.

Speaker 1: 45:23

This whole episode, if you re-listen to it again, has been interwoven, because people only ever do what they know that they are going to get if they understand what's in it for them. And if you want to create a change or you want to feel more worthy or you want to feel more loved, you're not going to change. If you don't believe that you are worthy of the love that you see, if you believe you're worthy of the love, well then you're going to do it. And you can only do it if you believe it. And you can only believe it if you stack the evidence. You can only stack the evidence if you start to challenge the way that you were thinking. And if you challenge the way that you were thinking, it means you were ready for the information. I hope that serves you and your audience.

Speaker 2: 45:56

Oh, my goodness, I hope everybody is just soaking this in. Well, look, we know that this audience is primed for this message, because one of the reasons they are here and listening to the Live your Extraordinary Life podcast is they know that mediocre is not their God right. They know that living an average life or just settling for less than what they're capable of is not what they want. They might not always know the how. That's why we have experts like you here to help us really talk through how do we shift our thinking and how do we bring about those changes that we want to see in our lives. So, thank you, thank you, thank you, rudy. This has just been a phenomenal conversation. I cannot wait for everybody to listen more and to get to know you more. Where can people find you best? Let's talk. Of course, we'll have a link to the In Powered Life podcast in the show notes, along with Rudy's website and his Instagram, but go ahead, rudy, let people know how they can find you.

Speaker 1: 46:51

You know I'm going to use our closing seconds to just ask everyone that loves you and your show to go ahead and smash five stars, give them ratings and reviews. It's the greatest gift you can give a podcaster for their time, their effort and the energy that they pour into what they do. For anyone who wants to find me, you can click on any of the links that'll be in the show notes. Just Michelle, thank you for showing up and being such a beautiful, bright light out in the world. People really they don't understand the value and the meaning of giving somebody a rating and a review, because it gets someone's message to more people and it's such an incredible gift and it's such an easy barrier to entry. So go ahead and if you love the episode, go and love on, Michelle. That would be my ask.

Speaker 2: 47:29

Thank you so much, rudy. It has been an absolute pleasure. I cannot wait Everyone listening. This is not going to the end of the conversations between Rudy and Michelle. I'm excited to see if we can get his wife on here as well. I'm so excited to bring that dynamic to the conversation, and Rudy and I are going to be talking more in the upcoming months and I think we have a trip coming up together where we'll hear you speaking and we'll do a podcast with a group of people, so I cannot wait. Lots of good stuff coming. You are a blessing and a light in this world, rudy. I am so grateful and I can't wait to see what's next.

Speaker 1: 48:02

I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 48:04

All right. Thanks everyone. For the next time, go and live your extraordinary life. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please take a moment to rate and review. If you have recommendations for future topics, please reach out to me at MichelleRiosOfficialcom. Lastly, please consider supporting this podcast by sharing it. Together, we can reach, inspire and positively impact more people. Thank you.