Ep 64: Consciousness and 3D Reality with Derek Loudermilk

“What does it look like to be the hero of your own life?” That's the question today's guest, Derek Loudermilk, asked himself after getting fired from numerous jobs, dropping out of his PhD program, recovering from failed marriage, and realizing he had been living someone else’s dream.

I discuss my similar experiences and we explore how experiences like these lead to an opening of the mind, which allows us to begin to see how our consciousness creates our 3D Reality.

Today Derek is a Professional Adventurer, Bestselling Author, Speaker, Digital Nomad, Business Coach, Father, founder of AdventureQuest Travel, and Host of The Art of Adventure Podcast

Check out The Derek Loudermilk Podcast Or his book Superconductors: Revolutionize Your Career and Make Big Things Happen available on Amazon and Audible.

Got a question or comment about the show? E-mail me at podcast@justinwenck.com. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode! Then connect with me at  JustinWenck.com, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn!

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Pick up a copy for yourself or your team today and remember to leave a 5 Star ⭐ Review to share your experience!

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Transcript

Justin Wenck: 0:01

Welcome to the engineering emotions and energy podcast. I'm your host, Justin Wenck. Here we are trying to help people be more relaxed, more energetic and live a heartfelt life. On today's show. We got a fantastic Yes, Derek loudermilk. He's a professional adventure best selling author, speaker, digital nomad, business coach, Father, founder of adventure quest travel, and the host of the adventure podcast. He also has the Derrick loudermilk podcast as well. He is committed to helping people make their lives the most amazing adventure possible. After getting fired from numerous jobs dropping out of a Ph. D. program recovering from a failed marriage, he realized he had been living someone else's dream. He set out to construct a career and lifestyle that would let him be the Explorer and teacher that he was always meant to be. He asked, what does it look like to be the hero of your own life. And in the past seven years, he has been doing a lot of heroic things. I'm not going to touch on all of them. I'm just gonna go to what one of the more recent big things, he's got his first solo book out called superconductors, revolutionize your career and make big things happen. It's available on Amazon. And one of my personal favorites, Audible, I listen to way more books now than I actually read. So welcome to the show, Derek loudermilk. Hey, Jason. Hey, thanks for having me. Great to be here. Yeah. So I know, I know, we said we want to talk, consciousness and 3d reality. And I think we will. But I did kind of want to like, poke into your Ph. D. program. Because I, you know, I, I went the whole way through and got my PhD in electrical engineering. And I don't recommend it to most people, I know lots of people like, Oh, my kids, they can have a one or I'm thinking of getting a PhD. And I'm like, what's, what's wrong? Why are you Why are they so unhappy? Like, they want to talk to me, maybe we can work some stuff out, like, very few well balanced, happy people get into PhD programs.

Derek Loudermilk: 2:05

And this is this is one of those things where like, do you actually know what it's like to be in a Ph. D program, like maybe you should try to really understand that because I had this vision of what I thought it was going to be like, and I was going to be working in the field in Yellowstone National Park, and taking samples in the hot springs and snowmobiling through herds of bison. And that happened, not accepted. It was only, you know, two days out of the year. And the rest of the time, I was trying to teach myself, programming and bioinformatics or spending 12 hours in a dark microscope room, or, you know, whatever it was, and there were certain aspects that were really amazing, the experimental design, I really loved teaching undergrads, I really love that. And those are things that I've brought forward into my career, but there is that all the time by yourself, spending two years before you can publish anything, just, you know, realizing that my professor, my mentor was one of the best in the world at what he does. He's the first person to create synthetic life forms, using, he created the first synthetic virus, and he was barely able to get funded. And so the amount of competition for doing good basic research was, you know, it's there's, there's no profit motive for just simply learning about some of these things. And I was studying, you know, the beginning of life, where does life come from? How does it originated out of, you know, the soup of the frothy early oceans. And so we were looking at viruses, because they're the simplest life forms, right? And, you know, really, I could just see the writing on the wall in terms of impact, like what impact would I really be having, as a basic researcher and this like, sort of far out field of microbiology, extreme extreme microbiology, and what were the economic prospects Could I really become wealthy and influential as when I'm when I'm sort of bound by competing against hundreds of amazing other researchers for a small pool of money. So I had to I had to pivot and that was the time in my life when I sort of not only did I dropped out of my Ph. D program, but that was the same year that I lost my house in a flood. I had a traumatic brain injury at the same time, and I got divorce all in the same year until Wow, basically lost everything all at once. And started over.

Justin Wenck: 4:30

Wow, that was was that like in 2013? When? Exactly, yeah, okay. Yeah. It's sounding almost like my, my, my most recent, my most recent year, because that's like, I I stepped away from my tech job I've been on I've been on leave since November. I hadn't realized that my marriage was, you know, not really working out well. So I'm in the middle of getting divorced. And, and, you know, so, you know, she moved pretty much immediately and so like I'm in this big five bedroom house and says, What the hell do I do? I don't want to live in this giant house. So I'm, I'm renting out my house. So this is like actually my last week in my house before I started renting it out and travel around. So it is one of those like, it's a lot of stuff. How I'm gonna be a nomad. I'm going to be a little bit of a nomad. Yeah, yeah. So learn how learn how that is. Because I've always been someone like I want like my home base this and it's gonna be different. And I'm ready for different because yeah, like in your, in your bio, where it's just like you've been living somebody else's life. That's, that's I'd look back. And it's like, Yeah, I did all the things that everyone else would have wanted me to do. But what did I actually want to do?

Derek Loudermilk: 5:48

It's sometimes it's really hard to tell if it's your idea or someone else's, like, if you think like, Oh, I have a great idea, I'm going to go get a PhD, or I'm going to go do a career. How do you know whether that's yours, or whether that's programmed to you, that you picked up somewhere along the way, before you even had a time to sort of think about it. And that's really what happened to me it was I just always assumed, I'm going to be a scientist. But I picked that up from from somewhere, as a young kid, and it partly because everyone was always telling me you're really good at science, you're really good at math, keep going. And so then you start going down this script, this, this flow, and all the pieces flow naturally until they don't until you realize you're like, Ah, I'm just sort of ambivalent about this, even though I'm really good at it. And it's okay. See, I think a lot of people get caught up in like, I'm either highly trained, I've got sunk costs, or I'm naturally gifted in this thing. And all those you know, you have all these reasons, that make sense. Except you just don't want to do it.

Justin Wenck: 6:52

Yeah, oh, no big deal, except that there's no joy in it, there's no love of it. It's it each, the more you achieve them, the emptier it almost starts to become. And there's

Derek Loudermilk: 7:05

that's why I ended up getting married in the first place. It wasn't because I was like, I really wanted to get married. It was because my girlfriend, she wanted to get married. And I was like, Oh, well, I kind of like being with you. And I think that'll make you happy. So. And also, how much can you really know about yourself if you've never been married? So I was like, well, let's just give it a shot. You know, which isn't actually a great reason to do it.

Justin Wenck: 7:29

That that is about the same, pretty much the same reason I gave to the couples therapist, and we started a couple therapies, you know, why did you get married? And it was about like, Oh, she really wanted to and yeah, I wanted to try. I wanted to ride the ride. I didn't want to be afraid to step on the marriage carousel. And in retrospect, probably not the greatest Reno with But hey, it's, you know, it's an experience and learned and luckily, it you know, it's going going really well, because we're both, you know, pretty good communicators about it. And a lot of similarities here. Yeah, so, um, I guess, leading to the topic a little bit of, So at what point did you actually get to that? Well, okay, I sound like the universe kind of said, Hey, Derek, none of this stuff is working, knock it off. How is your process to kind of go like, okay, there's gotta be something else. Because it seems like you, you're definitely on your path of doing what you want. I mean, maybe I don't think you've ever finished what you want. It's just you do one thing, and then you realize you want to do another thing? I think that's the rite of life. But how was it to actually getting sort of beyond that loss, which some people never recover from? And you know, and since you've turned that into basically an amazing growth opportunity for that, not for yourself, but for others with you know, your, your books, your book, and you're doing your coaching and your podcasts like?

Derek Loudermilk: 9:03

Yeah, there's two things I'll say about that. One was the the brain injury says a freak blood clot in my brain, that we don't know how it happened. And it's, you know, less than one a million people actually. It's a very rare random occurrence. But it made me sort of think about mortality and all of the things and the shortness of life and that sort of, you know, I think we're all sort of aware like our time is limited, but it feels like we have forever and then when you when they call you and they're like, I'm coming to the hospital immediately, like you could die. You need to get here and we need to inject you with some blood thinners, etc. Yeah. And then you're like, Okay, is what I'm doing the rest of today, the rest of the week, what I really want to be doing if I die in the next three months, is there stuff still left unfinished Do I need to say Do I need to express myself to people express my love to my family, or do I need to do something really exciting? Or have a big party or jump off of an airplane? or What is it? You know? So ask yourself those questions. And there were parts of my life that I was already loving. And there were parts where, like, if you, if you chose your last day, like, I'm not going to spend 12 hours trying to learn to program on my last day, like it wasn't exciting. Yeah. And

Justin Wenck: 10:30

that's, for those of you considering computer says, it's just programming. It's not Yeah, there's a lot of people that sign up for that major. They don't know that, oh, it's just trying to code all day. That's, yeah,

Derek Loudermilk: 10:40

yeah. And for some reason, you know, this, this was one of those situations where they're like, you know, bioinformatics is gonna give you the best sort of cross section between understanding biology and managing lots of data. And you'll have if you learn Bioinformatics, you'll have a great career. And I was like, sounds like a good idea.

Justin Wenck: 10:59

It was such a hot hot area. Yeah, at that time, I remember around that time and hearing about how this is the hot thing, like machine learning and AI is, you know, right now.

Derek Loudermilk: 11:10

And so I was like, okay, gotta learn Python. And all this time, it's just, it's just so hard, please. So you got the clarity.

Justin Wenck: 11:17

That's how you would spend your time that's that out.

Derek Loudermilk: 11:21

And that intersected with reading four hour workweek. And it wasn't so much that it was I just stole his ideas, which I did. But it was that it was a different frame of thinking about how to create autonomy for yourself, how to, because I had already been starting to think about business, I was selling people's old sports equipment on eBay, I was coaching cyclists, I was already dipping my toe into entrepreneurship. But that book sort of said, to me in a way, you can just do whatever you want, there is a way to make a living doing exactly what you want to be doing. You just have to figure out the details. And that was a big shift for me. And so I moved out of my Ph. D program. I said, I need to find a really cheap place, which was Southeast Asia, Vietnam was the first place I went. And I started with four clients, cycling coaching clients paying me 250 a month $1,000 total. And I projected my cost of living was gonna be about 800 a month. So basically, I had an infinite runway to experiment and explore and figure out business in a broader sense.

Justin Wenck: 12:36

Yeah, I think that's such a great example of once you kind of know what you want, when you allow yourself and then just you ask the question, Well, how do I make it happen? Whereas usually, we're, it's just like, well, I am where I am. And I can only see maybe I'm one step away from where I am. And it's just like, that's so so limiting. Because that go moving to another country is a game changer for almost any, in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons, you know, and especially from the cost of living standpoint. So I think that's like, super cool.

Derek Loudermilk: 13:10

Yeah. And anytime you just sort of plopped down in a new place. The just the systems that you move through the world, how you eat your food, how you pay for things, how do you talk to people, it's just so different, that it sort of cracks, open your, your neural connections and forces you to make all these new connections, it just shakes the whole snowglobe. It's like, travel is like psychedelics, it just shifts everything. And lets you reform, new patterns, ways of thinking, and all of a sudden, you're more creative, and you just figure out solutions that maybe even weren't available before.

Justin Wenck: 13:48

Yeah, because in some ways, you're creative problem solving all the time. Because so many things are different. You have to adapt. You know, like you said, even for the most mundane things, buying groceries, it's like the I remember, I lived in Germany for six months, you know, right when I got out of graduate school, and like, even just like the system for buying bananas was different. Like, I think I was supposed to have weighed the bananas and put a price tag on it before I went to the checker. And so I just showed up with bananas. And the checker, you know, in German was very sadly, yes. What are you doing? We've got bananas without the sticker. Like, my I don't know, I'm, I'm American. I'm sorry. That I learned and it was not it was not the end of the world. Yeah,

Derek Loudermilk: 14:34

yeah. And so so we're talking a little bit about the interplay between when you're doing new things and having new experiences, and it's, it's building new pathways in your mind. That's also a sort of the opposite of productivity and efficiency. And like, if you want to build a habit, and if you want to get a lot of creative output done, right, if you've got a career, and this is the challenge of a lot of digital nomads is how to be highly productive with what really matters. And at the same time be having a whole slew of new experiences because they're sort of oppositional. And you sort of have to have times when you're just way out there, being adventurous and not being productive at all, but shaking up your worldview, and then come back to a place where you're just like, for me, I'm almost hermit for a while, my output goes way up, and nobody hears from me for weeks at a time.

Justin Wenck: 16:44

Yeah, that's something I've started sort of play around with is you? And I think we're all we're all different on that. Yeah. How much can you be gogogo? versus how much do we need that like rest and relaxation? And I think I'm now getting more comfortable that like, yeah, for me, it might be, you know, yeah, I need to, because I went on like a men's Yoga Camp for three days. And I was just I was, you know, talking to people and loving it. And then I got home and I was just, I'm done. I'm like, I just want to do nothing for like three days. And so I did and then I'm, and I think sometimes we think, well, we have to be Go, go, go, go, go go. And if not, there's something wrong with us, which I don't think is true at all. I think it's we all have a different sort of setpoint balance that lets us be our best in different ways.

Derek Loudermilk: 17:33

Well, here's what's fascinating to me, is how we as a capitalistic society have tied productive value to individual worth, that you are a valuable member of society, if you're contributing. And when you force people to not work because of lockdowns and shutdowns and things, all of a sudden, people see for the first time that they're valuable as a person as a sole, regardless of their economic output, and they can just spend time being who they are, which is, I think, perhaps one of the greatest gifts of a lockdown or a pandemic is that there's a chance for people to see like, their own true nature, separated from economic output.

Justin Wenck: 18:18

Yeah, and I think it just, yeah, cracked open this whole the, you know, oh, you have to do something to get to get money. And it I think a lot of people finally got that taste of money's sort of a magical weird thing that is not necessarily tied to I do this many hours. And I get this amount that there's a whole world of pasta, you know, and wealthy people I've known it for for ages. But I think now more and more people have gotten it. And I think that'll end up being a good, good thing. Like, I don't know what, you know, I became a homeowner five years ago, and then that magic to be able to, like I can refi and cash out and magically, I have 10s of 1000s of extra dollars. Why cuz a magic number that somebody said the Federal Reserve changed and poof, just it because it can and there's really I didn't do any more. I didn't I just It really is. And then yeah, you can just focus on Well, what do I want to do? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to interact with as opposed to that really, machine like transaction where that our whole economy and society has been set up for? What is it a couple 100 years now? And? Yeah, it's not, it's not going to be necessary anymore with basically 3d printing and AI, and what do people need to do? In 20 years? We're not going to need to do anything. It's just a matter of time, I believe.

Derek Loudermilk: 19:47

Yeah, and and one of the things you know, we're talking about abundance once you once you realize, oh, money is just part of abundance, and of definition I like to work with is being able to do what you need to do when you need to do it. Yeah. And so, so money is very helpful, but it's very limited in terms of doing what you need to do. And I really like thinking about training, luck, you know, how, like, if you if instead of money, you just had everything fall into place for you? If it just you can't even imagine you're good luck to get a house, a car, a job, the right connections, a romantic thing, if it was all just really good luck. Yeah. Is that possible to train? Is it possible to train the synchronicities that that lead to you, you know, just loving everything. And I think partly in a way you can, you can be looking for it right like when when you when you know the right connections to make when you know where you want to go and how you want to feel and all these things then you're looking for. If you expect to be lucky, right? Then you can see the pieces falling into place, even as it's happening. And someone who's just looking for money to do what they need to do. They're gonna miss all the connections. But you also have to be well trained and well educated to be able to put the pieces together, right if you're like me, trying To discover a new species where you have to have enough knowledge, to know where to look and how to find it, and how to know if it's a new species and all these things. But then once I set out, you know, it was actually quite easy to Good luck, you know, to actually find it. And I think that can happen in in so many ways, when you stop focusing on money as your sources of abundance, but you know, somebody could just give you something right gifts. Oh, yeah, exchange, barter, good luck. There's so many different avenues to get a thing if you, you know, like, we just went shopping for a new car, we're gonna buy it with money, right? But we actually, people offered us new cars before we decided to use the money. Right? So we could have just taken the gift. But we decided to choose money instead.

Justin Wenck: 22:04

Because I guess maybe just you prefer a different type of vehicle or whatever.

Derek Loudermilk: 22:08

Yeah, exactly. It was, we want to we want a van I have a family I love to carry a lot of toys. So yeah,

Justin Wenck: 22:14

yeah. Yeah, because some, because some people get, you know, into this sort of the the manifesting world of, you know, I can just, I can just let things on. So I'll just, I'll just sit around and not leave the house. And, but there is like, as you're mentioning, there's, there's an element of like effort, and intelligence and discernment, it's, you know, it's not, you don't throw the logical mind completely in the trash. But you don't want to be a master, you don't want to be a slave to the logical mind. Either, which is such a trap, kind of, in our traditional way of, you know, how to be successful is, you know, you'd be really smart, and then do all the smart things. What usually ends up to ridiculous amounts of unhappiness and body, you know, damage to the body disease, whatever type of things. And

Derek Loudermilk: 23:07

there's a certain amount of both unlearning the the rational way, and really having to have trust, that the new way is gonna work out for you. And you just kind of got a, you got to do it a few times to really build that trust. But an example is we were shopping for this van. And we logically, rationally we wanted a plug in hybrid. And there's only one company that's Chrysler making a plug in hybrid van. And every time we went in to look at it, it just wasn't doing it for us. And we were like, Yeah, but it's the plug in hybrid. And it's, it's really great. And it's the only one it's rated highly, it's there's a lot of good reasons for it. But we didn't want it. And we did want this, you know, this other van, which is slightly older, you know, hybrid technology, but it's it the Toyota. And we both kept looking at Toyota's and be like, we like these. Yeah, like, it feels good. And, you know, then we realized, well, we could get it in emerald green, Oh, cool. We both want this color that's kind of like rare and wild. And so here, you've got this, you know, okay, list of pros and cons, or a list of reasons why you should do one thing, but if you don't want to do it, and there is another thing that you really want to do, can you trust that that's actually the right choice at the thing that's lighting you up and filling you with? Like, I really want to be in a future where I own this vehicle, or I want to have it this way big just because it feels great. That's good information. And you might not know all the reasons why it is lighting you up so much, but you have to trust that your feelings are as right or much more right than your reasons.

Justin Wenck: 24:51

Yeah, that's, that's so just, you don't need a reason. It's it just it kind of just it is which in some ways is that's the ultimate connection to the universe in a way because there's a lot of lot of things like why why does the seed turn into a giant tree? Does like what you know, and you know, botanist or whatever the site you know, can can explain that the different times like well, this cells dividing and it becomes this but but the Why? It there's no it does, it just does there's not and so like why did you not like that one? You didn't like that one and you like the other one and they usually would come up with reasons but they're, like, we get really honest with ourselves are usually bullshit reasons. You know, it's it's filled in after the fact so that we can explain it to somebody else. But usually it just I don't, that's not for me and that's a good enough. That's all you need really, to be okay with that is such a such a gift. And really is the key to starting to create kind of anything like to go I don't want to I don't want to do this type of work and then head into whatever you want.

Derek Loudermilk: 26:01

And there's a dynamic here, this playing out at a society level of like, right, our own freedom to choose and someone else's, you know, there's some amount of control that's trying to be exerted over other people. The Cuz, you know, so it's like power control and freedom. Is this sort of dynamic that's happening right now? Because if somebody is like, well, I don't, you know, I think everyone should get the vaccine, well, that's some amount of control. And then that butts up against someone's freedom to say, like, actually, I don't really want to get a vaccine. And then yeah, you know, so. And maybe they don't have a good reason, maybe like, The reasons are bullshit, but they still don't want to. And so there's an individual level here, but there's also a societal level of like, how much are we going to force people to do things? Or how much are we going to allow them to have these things, even though they're like, we don't want them to choose this? Right? We, as me as parents, like, I've got two little kids, and the times when I'm keeping them safe, from the thing they want to do, but is dangerous, I'm controlling them. And so really, we are we are faced with this dynamic of, can I allow you to actually have your own free will? versus how much do we need to sort of protect you for your own good?

Justin Wenck: 27:26

Yeah, I think this was kids, that's a really good exam, because it's sort of like, well, when you're, you know, much younger, you don't have the capability to, you know, do much of your own thought and self control yet. So that's why it's really important. And then as we get older, and we're in a society there ends up being sort of that trade off of, you know, the social contract of various things of like, Well, yeah, I'm going to give up certain freedoms, or, you know, but Oh, look at all the benefit I get, you know, I get, you know, easy exchange of goods and services, and, you know, an illusion of safety or whatever. And I think we're, like running into reevaluation of a lot of these of, you know, what, well, what do I, what's, what's the value to me? And what am I willing to give up? And I think we're starting to kind of go, it might might be kind of interesting, because in a lot of ways, it's like, nothing seems right or wrong, necessarily. It's just different varying degrees of, well, how much do you want to be on the hook for everything? versus how much do you want to just go treat me like a baby?

Derek Loudermilk: 28:35

Yeah, and I can tell you, when between obedient children are much easier to deal with and obedient adults. If you get domesticated to be an obedient child, you become an obedient adult, perhaps. And does that help fix problems? obedience really doesn't make things better? You know, it doesn't. If we have a broken system, or something needs fixing. You need someone to have brand new ideas, brand new ways of trying to do this and obedience really, isn't that. No, it

Justin Wenck: 29:04

just results in less hassle for whoever's attempting to control right? That's exactly that's the only Yeah, like some of these these things, like, you know, loyalty and duty and obligation. It's like that, who does that benefit, it's like, doesn't doesn't benefit me to be loyal to somebody or, you know, fulfill the duties. It's like, somebody else made that up, it helps somebody else not have to worry, they can just go Ah, just just not just do that. Even though it's completely against, you know, his, it doesn't actually help him. It's probably bad for him, but we made him think that he's being loyal. And he's a he's a good little obedient.

Derek Loudermilk: 29:42

You're reminding me of my time and Boy Scouts when they have the scout motto, which is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. There's a lot of programming in those.

Justin Wenck: 29:59

Wow. I'd say there's definitely some of those that I would I would want to I would want those traits to be you know, like kind I'd like but that's kind of an interesting mix of traits that probably everyone would go like, yeah, I want that with someone's like, no, let's get these program deep end and with a slip these, you know, be obedient in with

Derek Loudermilk: 30:20

that's pretty and that's a holdover from Boy Scouts recruited in 1910 or so. So right 110 years ago. And but we're still having kids recite that now. So that's a very in depth like mid industrial era programming.

Justin Wenck: 30:38

Yeah, which is now so long ago it's like I shouldn't change that.

Derek Loudermilk: 30:42

Well, I was at the fourth grade and there was there was um some military vehicles driving by like some tanks maybe World War One World War Two era you know motorcycles and and I just thought like, how quaint to have you know, cannons and little projectiles. When it's likely that you know, the next it's going to be cyber warfare. It's going to be chemical warfare, biological warfare.

Justin Wenck: 31:11

there Yeah. Yeah, space lasers. Right. Yeah. So maybe I think now we've, I think we've covered a lot of runway, I think now let's take off into consciousness and 3d reality. So I think this is one of these things where there ends up being some different, you know, verbiage that people do, but I think we all ended up, you know, so manifesting, I'm guessing is, you know, maybe one term that some people use in this space, but often can get confused, but here's your, you know, what's your take on sort of this, you know, the mind being able to create?

Derek Loudermilk: 31:55

Yeah, so so one, that's, you know, very easy for people to get an accept is, right, when you think negative thoughts that make you stressed, your cortisol levels go up. So there, you're just, you're impacting your own biology, right? There's one system that all you have to do is think some thoughts, and you're changing your physical chemistry. And there's indications for people healing themselves for hurting themselves for, you know, just changing all kinds of things about their physical body. And that's sort of a good jumping off place for people to realize that their thoughts can can impact the material world. But there's nearly sort of an infinite, almost anything you could imagine and beyond things that are beyond my comprehension as possible, because in a quantum physics, space, reality, sort of anything is possible, and you probably haven't thought of all the possibilities yet. That then you get into just really wild stuff, and you have to sort of suspend disbelief to consider whether you may just be limiting physical reality because you you aren't believing it's possible.

Justin Wenck: 33:12

Yeah. Because, you know, it's, it's always interesting, you know, to read, you know, some older texts and things, you know, not even, you know, as old as like, you know, the Bible, but even just like, Yogananda his Autobiography of a Yogi, which I am trying to remember, I think that was written like, 1940 something. But, you know, it's like, his experiences in like, the early 1900s, like, of, you know, performing, and him witnessing what would be considered miracle, you know, like, very physical, tangible things like getting, you know, changed appearing disappearing. think there's, you know, what some story of, you know, some woman who, you know, people signs up for, like, literally, like, never ate any food, like, never took in any food whatsoever, and she lived for it, you know? And it's like, I think that people then just, were open minded to it, so they're able to see it. Whereas most of us we know what's possible, and what's not. Science has told us what's real and what's not. So, since since we know, we can't see anything outside of what science has told us as acceptable. And so maybe that's why we haven't had and you know, these things, we don't see things, you know, and these fast, at least, not in the mainstream, it doesn't show up in the mainstream. It is interesting when you start opening your mind and start being a little bit more curious and talking to other people where they'll be like, well, there's this one time when,

Derek Loudermilk: 34:41

yeah, and I, I can speak to my own sort of, probably six years ago, my mother in law, said something like, there was a high pitched whine, which was her air conditioning unit. But she said, that's the aliens, you know, they communicate with me through my air conditioning unit through this high pitch whine. I was like, uh, yeah, okay, whatever. Right? very dismissive. That sounds like a bunch of BS sounds kind of like you're paranoid. to, to me now being a C 100 100 degrees, one at 100%. The other direction where I've had my own experiences are intentionally communicating with other sort of entities of consciousness at different levels, and actively seeking it but, but watching how much evidence I needed to shift my perspective, like, how many cell phone camera footages of UFOs did I need to see? To start to say, okay, it's actually totally, you know, UFOs are totally real, and they're sometimes piloted by humans and sometimes piloted by humans, right. I had to see quite a bit of actual video footage before I started letting my mind open and there's a certain you know, see it to see it to believe it. I think it does take for people that have been in a obedient scientist. make rational, linear, capitalistic society which we all are immersed in, in order to start to take these leaps of belief take these leaps of logical. It's actually logical for me to stop having linear believes it's actually you know, it's, it's a total, it's a total shift and until you till you walk down the line with yourself, it's hard to know what that's like.

Justin Wenck: 36:46

Yeah, it's got a it's, I think we all have our own way to get to. So maybe stuff,

Derek Loudermilk: 36:52

maybe I'll tell you might be an informative story just just to talk a little bit more about that. Because

Justin Wenck: 36:59

Can you hold on someone's like knocking at my door? Well, one, one second. I'll be right. Sorry about that. They were they were very persistent. Knocks that many times. Okay. Yes, I'm ready. I'm ready for this this great story. Yeah.

Derek Loudermilk: 37:15

Well, so I was thinking May, it might help to fill out the story a little bit, which is that when I was living in Portugal, I had dreams every night for two months of crop circles. And crop circles are those geometric patterns that appear in the fields largely in England, but all over the world to some degree, some in Portugal, some in Germany, some in the US. And sometimes there's animals, sometimes it's sacred geometry. Sometimes it's code coded messages very, very rarely that you can sort of translate it into an English message. But I had these dreams every night. And so I finally said, I got a research crop circles to find out what's going on. Because I always thought, Oh, that's so beautiful. But what is it? Is it a hoax? You know, because there was these guys in the 70s. That said, we can make a crop circle with with a board. But once you start digging in, and you realize there's been 150,000 crop circles, created over the last 20 years, well, these two guys are not creating 150,000 crop circles. And less, that's a different type of magic that they're doing. Right? Like that's, that's some, that would be something else. Actually. Yeah. And then, you know, you see that these crop circles are actually can be read as two dimensional pieces of artwork, or sometimes three dimensional, or sometimes even for dimensional. And there's, there's such nuance, and then there's these, these videos of them being created over the course of 15 seconds, like an entire 300 foot crop circle. And you see these flying little orbs, and then the whole crop circle just appears in the field. And it's like, What is going on? What technology is this? And that sort of opened the door for me to consider our crop circles a means of communication from a higher intelligence? Or are they a technology? Is it our future selves sending us messages? You know, are we time travelers? Is there? Or is there some other explanation, right? And all kinds of things happen, like the crops in the crop circles grow better for the next, you know, 10 years in that one space. people that walk into a crop circle have spontaneous healing of things like arthritis, and cancer and all kinds of things. You know, or it can make people feel nauseous and vomit when you walk into a crops or other other things happen. So there's all kinds of weird things, just from this one phenomenon. But if you accept that, I don't know, perhaps maybe aliens are making crop circles, then. Well, where are the aliens? Right? So then I started looking at footage of actual sightings and people, you know, let's take the take one in Miami, for example, that has footage from you know, a dozen different angles of the same event showing all these different crafts, doing different things and traveling, that don't correspond to physics, right? It pops in here and pops over there. And right, there's no, it's traveling faster than the speed of light, potentially. Right. So, oh, that means we have to question our physics. And we have to question how a craft like this could be created or piloted, and there's so many things that once you start being curious, and investigating, it opens another door and there's a lot of answers that come in when you ask the questions. But that's how you know me as a trained scientist approaches the magical world.

Justin Wenck: 40:41

Yeah, well, it to me, it's you're coming from it from the the true essence of science, which I feel like in some ways has gotten lost. In that there's, there's the science religion in some ways, which is, you know, unless it fits in with what we know know, and currently can explain with what we know now. Let's just talk about what we know right now. Like it's almost like do us not even go in here to the left or the right or anything. It just lets deny anything else, which to me starts to be like a religion thing. We're just like you almost blind We accept and deny anything outside of it. Because like you said, it's, you know, there's footage of things, there's, you know, documented things, but often, it's just like, just ignore it. Like I was listening to your, your podcast with Dawson church about, you know, some, you know, quote unquote, alternative, more energy based techniques going to like the VA, and I think it was like the psychiatry head was just like, this is all a bunch of garbage, like, Get the hell out of here, even though you know, it's been proven to work, there's scientific studies that show it works. People do do these techniques, and they feel better, like, what more do you need, then? You know, it works. But because it's outside of what the psychiatrist, you know, trained for, you know, probably did their PhD for seven years, and then in turn, and all this other stuff, just like, No, no, no, I'm gonna close my eyes. And it's like, can't we just look at it? And maybe we don't have to have an answer. And sometimes it works is good enough.

Derek Loudermilk: 42:11

Yeah. And so just for the, for the listener for the audience. We're talking about EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping you it's, you know, a lot of people have heard or heard of this. But he basically he was, he wasn't the inventor, but he was one of the sort of early investigators and he was like, wow, this can heal PTSD. It, you know, 50% of symptoms that people come to the hospital with, you just do tapping for five minutes, and the symptoms go away. So it's effective for almost all kinds of things. And he said, Well, if we're, you know, we're doing a disservice to veterans, if we're not teaching him this, and he basically set up a foundation, and he's delivered for free, I think training to 25,000 or more vets through, and, you know, he's helped them with their PTSD and so many emotional issues that come from, you know, being in combat. And I have a lot of respect for him, just knowing that something works and setting it up. And now, you know, 15 years later, the VA was like, okay, you know, now that you've done the hard work and proven it, we'll we'll use it.

Justin Wenck: 43:20

Yeah, it's, it's, it was pretty amazing, amazing story. But it's in some ways, the the over reliance on science ends up doing us a disservice. Because it's sort of like, that's, that's 15 years wasted. Whereas if the, you know, this, this head could have just been open to all right, well, let me try the technique five minutes a day, for one week, he wouldn't he would have known, he would have felt, hey, this has a benefit, and probably would have tried it on some and, you know, but because there was the belief, this doesn't work, it took 15 years to counteract that belief that this is not of, quote unquote, science that this person believed in.

Derek Loudermilk: 44:02

And let's just reflect this back to ourselves, because we all have the same blind spots to some degree where we might be really open minded, in one area. But there might be other areas, and, you know, perhaps, you know, around me being white in my privilege, like, I just don't really feel like looking at it. I don't want to go dig and explore, I'm happy with the status quo. because things are working out well, for me, etc, etc. So, you know, that's also totally expected that a human would, would have that sort of reaction. And it's, that's okay, too.

Justin Wenck: 44:40

Yeah. Yeah, it does it. It's, it's easily okay. On the individual level, it gets a little tougher when it's, that individual is responsible for the health and welfare of possibly 10s of 1000s of people based on their then it'd be nice if we, you know, I guess, made sure we are educating our leaders or requiring more that they have maybe a system or, or a belief that they're okay to examine their blind spots and change much more rapidly. I think that would be a better belief, if we could instill in anyone in a leadership position as Yeah, Nope, I'm

Derek Loudermilk: 45:21

gonna stick with the status quo, which means in some way, building rewards and incentives for people to be able to reevaluate and admit mistakes and kind of like what Ray Dalio has done. You know, if you if you read principles or see his TED talk or anything, they've built a system, right and your system spits out results. So if you're not getting the results you want, look at the system and re rejigger the system, but his system rewards people for speaking the truth speaking what's on their mind, even if it's not popular, It rewards people for having mistakes and then sort of using that as information. And it helps triangulate better decision making, but you have to have a system where people are safe and supported to really Take these leaps, to say something that, right? Like the whole rest of the room is saying one thing, you need to be able to say the other thing, and have it be rewarded instead of punished.

Justin Wenck: 46:27

That is such an awesome system like it's that's, that's the system I would I would want to implement in my company type of a thing is like, let's get the truth there. And yeah, hopefully he can get it in more companies. I don't know if that's happening super fast. But it was

Derek Loudermilk: 46:46

interesting was right, when people come in, you have to train them to tell the truth, you have to train them to say what's on their mind, or you have to, and some people can't do it, right. Some people want to look out for their own best interest. And they, they end up getting fired, because they can't be as open as the rest of the unit.

Justin Wenck: 47:07

Yeah, and then most people do just follow sort of like the rewards punishment. system. And, you know, they, most people aren't really smart, and they figure out, Okay, I'll get rewarded, if I do this behavior, if I don't do it, I don't get rewarded. And so it's not, it's always interesting, a lot of the sort of marketing speak of systems and companies is one thing, but the behavior never changes. Because the reward, the incentive structure doesn't change. And people ultimately, they go for the rewards, I think, and,

Derek Loudermilk: 47:37

and one way to, for the listener to sort of start bringing this into their lives, is I do this with my kids, I do it with my friends. Instead of praising the, like complimenting your friends, or complimenting your children on being good at math, or good, you know, or a funny person, or whatever it is, praising the, their own system that led them to that, like, wow, I see that you've really been practicing your math a lot. And it shows because your competency has has really gone up, it's very impressive, or your friends do something amazing, like, what actually acknowledge that you, you know, you, you plan this and you put the effort in to make it happen. And, you know, this is an amazing party, or you you pull off an event or something like that, acknowledging the process and the system that led to that, rather than just saying, you know, you're naturally good at this, you know, great, great job being tall, you know, keep up the good work.

Justin Wenck: 48:33

Yeah, I love that praising the process, not just not just the result. That's why whenever I would interview, I always I would always purposely ask a question, I knew they couldn't answer that I knew they would fail, because I wanted to see how the process of going through it, how they would work it maybe what they would try what they wouldn't try. Because if I, you know, like, if I because I have an electrical engineering background, but I, you know, interview a computer science person. And so it's like, I know, they know nothing about circuits. I'm gonna ask him the circuits question, and just see how they, how they work through that. Mickey? Yeah, I don't care if you get it, right. It's it's how do you how do you get the feedback? You know, somebody will say like, oh, how did you fail at the question? Let's know, how do you? How do you deal with the feedback of you don't know, and how do you get information? How do you work with me? And that was always way more valuable than just, oh, well, it's, it's two the answers to I don't care. Well, I, this has been a really good conversation. I don't know if we've gotten how people can, you know, with their consciousness, create a whole new planet. I but I think we gotten some things thinking and honestly, it doesn't have to be big, just when we started out with you know, that just by how you think controls, you know, even just your your stress levels, your cortisol, that can have a huge impact. So don't worry about all this other big stuff that we've been talking about, just start with something simple. And then these big things, they start to steamroll, at least

Derek Loudermilk: 50:07

I will share a perhaps the best manifestation, you know, law of attraction, advice, that I have to work with my clients on the train people. Once you sort of figure out what you want, you know, if you want an experience, or a thing, or relationship, or whatever it is, and you know, kind of how that's going to, like you want to feel. You want to find your romantic partner, right? And you expect them to feel joyful and at ease and full of possibility and all these things, right. So once you sort of have that in mind, a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll keep working on it, like it's a problem that they got to keep figuring out how to solve. But the that's actually just putting on the brakes. So there's that, that moment, when, when you're in that relationship in the future, and you feel the joy and the ease and the thing, everything you ever wanted, it's came true. All you have to do is spend a brief moment there from time to time, just feeling that exact feeling and What you have to stop doing is trying to find that person or trying to solve that problem or trying to get more money. Because that usually is just putting on the brakes. Because it's, you're, you're placing your attention back on the thing that you don't have. And so 99% of manifestation or law of attraction can be made much quicker and solved by just stop, stop trying to solve the problem.

Justin Wenck: 51:43

Yeah, trust trust that this the subconscious has it. And it's, it's working, it's much, much faster, much better, and much more parallel than your conscious mind ever is. And so by working, working hard to make it happen faster, is actually distracting your beautiful, beautiful system that is working on your behalf. Well, not just while you're awake, but as your sleep as well, and coming up and helping bring all this stuff in.

Derek Loudermilk: 52:09

Yeah, I love that. That's a great to prove this to myself. Once I sort of had that idea. I said, Okay, well, let me prove it to myself. Let me run an experiment. So I did not look at my financials for an entire month, I completely stopped thinking about money altogether. Except when, for every every day for 16 days straight. Random money showed up in my life, whether it was a new client hiring me for$10,000, or bank error in your favor, like the monopoly, you know that you pull the chance card monopoly like, Oh, we refunded you $215 just yeah, we made a random error, or a relative causes, like I have an extra 15,000 can I send it to you? Every single day, money was just showing up, because I had deliberately just stopped thinking about it. And I was like, okay, sold. I'm sold

Justin Wenck: 53:03

to Yeah. And that's the most important experiment that matters is the one for you. Like, that's what I like to tell people is like, it doesn't matter what the statistics are the site, like if something works for you, it works for you. Like, do your own experiment. Like, you know, you could be hearing all the stuff that Derek and I are talking about, like, that's, that's bullshit. But try it out, like, heartfelt you know, put your heart into it. Give it a whole go and try it and then make your decision. Yeah, I think I think we got to give ourselves as you know, we're our own scientist as well and doing our own experiments. And you know, that one result for me is what matters. The result for you is what matters. And yeah, yeah. So thanks so much, Derek. I really enjoyed this. I mean, we could probably go like two more hours. So I have to do another episode. So do check out Derek on the Derrick loudermilk podcast and you check out his his book, superconductors revolutionize your career and make big things happen available on Amazon and audible. If you have any questions for the for me about the podcast podcast at Justin Wenck comm check me out on social media. And you remember, subscribe, and good day. Thank you.