Feng Shui Your Soul! (w/Brendan Fitzgibbons)

Has your inner critic ever roasted you immediately after one of the best nights of your life? Cool, same here. In this solo episode, Brendan dives deep into one of the most overlooked game-changers in your life: your environment. From your friends to your way too comfortable and sad sweatpants, everything around you is influencing who you become.

Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell, a wild Joe Dispenza monastery study, and a roast battle with his own inner critic, Brendan explores:

🏠 How your space shapes your mindset more than your will power, 

🔥 The subtle chaos of comfort zones disguised as sweatpants,

🚪 How to ditch environments that don't serve you, and maybe not Living as much Más at Taco Bell,  

😂 And why your own inner critic has the roast battle timing of Jeff Ross. 

WATCH THE EP HERE

RESOURCES
🎬 Support Brendan’s show Death is Normal on Seed & Spark
📖 The Harvard Monastery Study
📲 Follow Brendan on Instagram: @the_brendanfitzgibbons

Transcript

okay, so has it ever occurred to you that. Your inner voice, your inner critic is arguably the best writer of all time. It's timing is impeccable. It's use of syntax is devastating and perfect. It's ability to say the thing that would make sure to take you down the best,

talk about a roast battle. talk about writing the best roast jokes of all time. Your inner critic should really just be a comedy writer. I'm not kidding, guys. in 2023, I finally recorded my comedy album. Okay? This is a comedy album that I've been working on for 12 years. I put my heart and soul in this.

Thousands of shows, thousands of open mics at dry cleaners, laundry mats, basements of taco restaurants, using a beer bottle as a microphone. This is one of the biggest days and nights of my life. Okay? It was an incredible show. I did two shows. People were cheering for [00:01:00] me so much when I got off stage. I was so proud and so happy.

And the second I come off stage, I hear my inner voice go. Great show Tiny Dick. Oh, thanks man. Thanks. Impeccable timing. Impeccable. It's insane. Another example. I was really into a woman. I was falling desperately in love with her. I, this is a while back. I remember this specifically. finally get some time with her alone.

Okay. After a very long buildup, I'll save. I will save the details. Okay. I finally get some time alone with her, we have this beautiful moment together on a table, and we're overlooking like the mountains and the rivers. It's green, it's lost. It's beautiful. Okay. This really happened. I'm so nervous because she's about to leave and everything was like building up to this moment.

It was super cinematic. And I remember finally I was like, okay, okay, I'm gonna do this. Here we go. So scared. [00:02:00] I put my hand across the table and I just said, Hey, this is hard for me to say

I love you. And she looked like shocked and it was kind of beautiful. And then I hear my inner voice go gay. Gay

cool.

Thank you. Thanks, voice. Super helpful. I mean, but here's the thing. Okay. Here's how we can feel good about this, and I want everyone to feel good about this. Everybody goes through this. There's no human being who doesn't have a nasty ass inner critic. No one. Okay? Which means that even great people, the greatest of people have an inner critic that even Martin Luther King.

Has an inner critic. So that means that when Martin Luther King was up there giving his famous, I Have a Dream speech, and he's like, I dream that one day my kids will be judged, not by the color of their skin, by the content of their character. You know, his inner voice was like, okay, shitty Gandhi. Calm down.

Calm down. Shitty [00:03:00] Gandhi. this is the wildness of being human guys. Welcome everybody to a brand new episode of Spiritual Asshole. I'm so excited that you're here. I'm so excited to see you coming to you live.

From my friend's place in Santa Monica. It's beautiful out here. If you've never lived in Los Angeles, the east and west side are basically like two different countries, like you could literally drive from the east side. It's one climate, and then the west side it's another. And the further that you drive west, the hotter everyone gets.

You just see people slowly transition. From like flannels and jeans to perfectly manicured yoga pants and plastic surgery and it's just incredible. It's an incredible climb up or climb down, you know, whatever you want. As you can see by my beard, I'm more of an east side man. I'm so glad you're here.

I love you. Let's go at the underscore benefits gibbons. Okay, so today I wanna talk about something that seems very simple, but it's actually not, and I talk about this a lot, but I don't think that. I don't think I've explained it as to how powerful it is.

and how important this is. Okay? Because it's running your life. that is your environment. Alright? So I want us to think of our lives in terms of what are you surrounding yourself with. Whatever you surround yourself with in your environment often triggers the very behaviors that allow you to thrive or stay stuck in your environment.

This is really important. 

okay, so those are familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's work, and I'm gonna talk about a study with Joe Dispenza. The broken Windows theory was developed by James Q. Wilson and George [00:05:00] Kel, and it suggests that. By addressing minor disorder like broken windows, it can actually prevent more serious crime because it shows a lack of community control and discourages further disorder.

That's from Google, right? So the theory is like if you're in a neighborhood where there's broken shit and like garbage everywhere, you're much more likely to fuck it up even more and cause crime. Okay, now this seems like an outwardly example. But I wanna show you guys that that broken Windows theory is entirely applicable to your life right now.

Okay? Think about this. If you go over to someone's house and it's super nice, it's clean, like beautiful, pristine, really taken care of, what do you do? You make sure that when you're in that environment. You are careful. You are considerate. You are respectful because the energy of the space is at a level that you want to maintain consistent.

But all that person did was clean up their shit, [00:06:00] right? They most likely didn't tell you to take off your shoes. You probably voluntarily did it because you're like, oh, but this is a take off your shoes vibe. Now, juxtapose that with a shitty dive bar. You come in there, you smoke a cigarette right away.

You're not even supposed to be doing it. You try a vape, someone gives you a pickle back shot, you hate those, all of a sudden you're doing off track betting because that environment informs that behavior, right? how is this important for your life? All right? This is important for your life because think about this.

One of the things that you hear a lot, and I was with my buddy. When he interviewed Tim Ferriss and he said to Tim Ferriss, Adam Glenn, who has been on my podcast, and he said to Tim Ferriss, what's the most important piece of advice? You could say anyone, to anyone. And he said, you really are the sum total of the five people that you surround yourself with.

So your environment does not just apply to houses or neighborhoods, it applies to your life.

If you're surrounding yourself [00:07:00] with five incredibly positive, upbeat, rich, if you want to be wealthy, healthy, happy, funny people, the environment of that will cause you to act in a way. That adheres to those people as well, you will be raised to that level with them because your environment, to use a term that Joe Dispenza says, your environment signals the gene, but that's just not true for your body.

Like if you fill your body with cigarette smoke, now, your body's basically an off track betting site, isn't it? Right. So the environment of the body. At that point, if it's filled with cigarette smoke, if you're smoking all the time, it's signaling a gene of disease, most likely. Right. But again, this applies for everything in our lives.

Okay. I made a decision to leave my apartment and I made that decision yesterday. It was hard to, for me because it's scary, but I, 'cause I don't know where I'm going, but I know that my apartment in Los Angeles. [00:08:00] Triggers thoughts and feelings in my body that I do not like. It triggers feelings of being stuck.

It triggers feeling feelings of old repetitive behavioral patterns that I don't want to be doing anymore. It reminds me of an old me. Okay, now let's use an even more intense example that we can all relate to. Okay? Why is it that when you go home, you revert back to your old self? You find yourself triggered.

You find yourself getting pissed at your mom. You're arguing with your sister trying to tell her that you actually are good at what you do, whatever it is, because the environment of your home is signaling those things to you. Okay? Now you can overcome this. Like, I don't wanna say there's no hope that if you're in a low.

Vibrational environment. You can't, I mean, Tiffany had a straight up lived in her car when, right before she became famous. So it's not like it's impossible. It just becomes really harder. Like [00:09:00] why do more people get involved with crime? When they grow up with crime? It's not because they're bad people, it's because their environment is signaling that gene.

I taught prisoners in jail. I taught them writing and script writing. And they would tell stories about how they were 10 years old and they were involved in car chases, drinking and driving, stealing. And it's like, dude, I don't care who you are. If you are brought up that way, those patterns are very hard to break.

That is your environment. So you have to change the environment of your mind. And it could be, it doesn't have to be big things. You don't have to move. But what you can do is like, hey. I really want to play the guitar more. Take out your guitar and have it out. Don't put it in a case, Hey, I want to stop shotgunning milk duds in my closet in the dark.

Well then stop bringing milk duds home. And these [00:10:00] things sound simple, but they're actually like. Not, and it's actually everything. Okay? Like I'll give you guys some examples. I have my guitar out, that's why I said that example. I do my best to not bring shitty junk food out. I specifically never wear this pair of Lululemon sweatpants that I have.

'cause when I put those sweatpants on my day's over, okay, posture triggers behavior, right? You ever do the Superman pose? Why is the Superman pose feel so powerful? Because you're setting up a different environment in your body. Okay. People said that, I don't need to do this anymore, but people said like, if you're struggling with working out, take out your shoes and your shorts, put them on the ground so you can see them tomorrow, and you're fucking doing it.

Okay? If you're struggling to meditate and you're like, I don't wanna do this, what I would do is. Set up an environment where your phone is not in the room with you, your computer is not in the room with you, your TV's not in the room with you, [00:11:00] and you have to sit there even if it's for three minutes. And you know, I'm a big proponent of this.

I don't care how long you do it for, but start at a minute and then eliminate things in your environment that is causing you to not do the very thing that you want to be doing. Okay. you need to set up conditions and environments in your life that are going to cause you to do the behaviors that you want to be doing.

Like a lot of us think, okay, I just need willpower, right? New Year's resolutions. Best example. Woo shit. Okay, well, this year I didn't get to the goals, but today. On this very December 31st, I'm gonna make a list of 700 things that I will be doing by June. And the thing is, you can't do it.

But that causes, that is a tremendous amount of willpower that a lot of times you're not even setting up yourself for success. And if you do those, and if you do those things if you [00:12:00] tend to do those things and you're not successful, what ends up happening is people then. And I've done this judge themselves more and feel shame for not, you know, achieving their goals of not having 14 cigarettes a day and eating a bucket of pulled pork sandwiches.

Okay, 

so your body is an environment where you live is an environment. This is why Feng shui is so po is so powerful for some people. Who you talk to is an environment, and if the people that you're talking to are consistently giving you a negative reality that you don't believe in or that you want to change, you have to change your environment.

You have to change who you talk to and watch when you start to change your internal state, how the people that you talk to then change their internal states. Okay. I've had so many experiences like this where once I decide to change my opinion on something like I, here's a really fun game you guys can play.

It's mind blowing. If you wanna see how reality works, decide an opinion on something. [00:13:00] Okay? Let's just say you want to start a podcast and you're really excited to start a podcast. So you hang out with a friend and you tell that friend, Hey, I'm starting a podcast. They're gonna be like, hell yeah. What's it about?

You're like, hell yeah. We need more podcasts about murder. There just aren't enough. This one's called The Murder Is Murder of All Murders. Okay, the Murder. Murder. Murder of All Murder. This one's called Knife in the Face. Your friend's like, fuck. Yeah. That's great. I'm really excited that you're doing this podcast.

Okay, now. Go to do the podcast. You don't actually do it because you think it's too much work and you're like, I can't do this. Okay, that's fine. You hang out with that exact same friend and you're like, I'm over this podcast. Bring up the podcast again and tell them, be like, yeah, I don't really, uh, I don't really think I want to do that podcast.

There's a lot of podcasts like that. Your friend will be like, you're right. There's a lot of podcasts like that. You shouldn't do this podcast. What I'm saying is that, again, your internal state. Always is reflected back to you. Nothing changed other than your opinion. You could have had the greatest podcast of all time. So surround yourself [00:14:00] with those people and those things that are going to trigger in you positive actions. If you want to quit drinking, stop hanging out with people who booze all the time.

It makes sense If you wanna meet your wife. Your future wife or husband or partner? Maybe stop going to Dave and Buster's. This seems like the simplest thing in the world, but it's actually not.

So here is it Dispenza study that he talked about at all of his events? It's the monastery study. So I think it was about a couple years ago, they did a study of a monastery where they had a bunch of priests who were in their sixties and no, a bunch of priests who were in their seventies and eighties were told that it's 20 years earlier.

Okay so what they did was they put up posters from 20 years ago, played TV shows from 20 years ago, and. I played music from 20 years ago and they had to act and pretend like it was 20 years earlier. that'd be like if we all have to act and pretend like it's [00:15:00] 2005, what most everybody's doing in Iowa.

I love you guys. by the time and the end of the study, like a month. People that were in their eighties were no longer using walkers and wheelchairs and canes. They were playing catch with a football, playing catch with baseball. They were growing fingernails and showing signs of increased youth. and now think of the other extreme.

I already brought up jail. Like if you go to jail, you're much more likely to probably to do crime. 'cause if everyone else is doing it, it influences you. So, where is your jail? What are some things right now in your life that you're like, I can make a small change in my environment that would make the biggest possible difference in the world?

What is that for you today? Literally, it could be as simple as, I'm gonna stop driving past Taco Bell every night because I have it five times a week, and we all know you should be having it only four times a week. food is a big one for me guys. Like I definitely, especially late at night, if I'm out and driving and I see something, I'm like, oh, I should just go there.

But that's because your environment is [00:16:00] triggering your behavior and that's okay, but know that you can overcome it. But also know that set yourself up for success by putting yourself in places that's gonna trigger incredible behavior for you. All right, we're making this quick. I love you guys so much.

You're the best. I believe your dreams can come true. I believe there's so much love for here for you. I believe that your environment of your body, your mind, and your soul can be so good that you could just surf that you won't even need Taco Bell. Okay. No. You're going to a real Mexican restaurant, Chipotle.

I love you. Have the best week. Please follow me on Instagram at Brendan Fitzgibbons and my seed and spark. You are the best. I love you.