Retraining Your Brain And Making It Happen with Rock Thomas

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Retraining Your Brain And Making It Happen with Rock Thomas

I’m excited about this episode. I have Mr. Rock Thomas with me ready to share his knowledge on you so that you may live better. He’s a rising global phenomenon impacting the lives of millions. Leading the I Am Movement, he is the make-it-happen expert who will help you train your brain and redefine your life. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve been programmed ever since we’ve been growing up as a child by the way our parents did things, what they learn or what they did not learn. We didn’t get everything that we would have liked to have gotten when we were a kid. We only got what they were able to give to us. That may have put us on a certain path. What I love about people is that we can make it happen in our own lives by what we choose to put into our minds and put into our brains. That’s what we’re going to talk about on the show. Mr. Rock Thomas, welcome to the show.

It’s an honor to be with you, Rodney. I think that I’ll learn probably more from you than I can share with your audience, but I’ll do my part.

I’m excited about you. I’ve been reading up about you and I see that you’re doing some phenomenal things in the world and you’re talking about making it happen and retraining our brain. I want to learn everything that I can learn within the duration of this show about retraining our brains and using that to redefine our lives. I want to dive into that. I want to start talking about what is it behind the I Am Movement and give us some things about you when it comes to making it happen. You are a make-it-happen expert. There are many people that did want to make things happen in their lives. I’m looking to learn about how we can do that.

We’re programmed as you said from a young age and unfortunately, due to society, we learned the word no, not, never about 14,000 times before we’re ten years old. Our brain starts to be very cautious. It takes an incredible amount of desire and passion to overcome that initial programming to step out and be willing to not win and lose but win and learn. I’m a big believer there’s no losing, it’s only learning. It’s how you frame the learning to yourself that determines whether you’re going to be somebody that keeps on taking action or do you become discouraged, cynical, bitter, pissed off at the world and play the victim? From my young age growing up on a farm, I learned that hard work was the way of the world. For many years, I thought that was life.

All I did was drive taxis, busboy, carpentry or anything that was basically minimum wage and could be long hours. Around my late twenties, I met a mentor who opened up a whole new world for me. It’s almost you don’t know what you don’t know until somebody goes, “Maybe you don’t know this.” I shifted from working hard to using my brain, relating and communicating with people. I became a salesperson in real estate. He mentored me from one sale a year to a hundred a year. The average real estate agent does six a year and the reason they do is they don’t have a work ethic. They’re not that curious about learning better methods and they can’t get them to move past the words, “I don’t feel like it. I’m not in the mood.” Those are killers for most people because unfortunately people look at life upside down. They go, “I hope it’s going to be easy. I hope I win the lottery. I hope that this works out.”

I come at it from a different perspective. I have the intention that things will be fluid and they’ll go in a way that serves me, I just don’t let myself decide how that’s going to be. I keep on showing up. If on first down we don’t make the pass, I’m still fully engaged on the second, on the third and I’m willing to go on the fourth. I’ll do my part in life, God will do the rest. My teammates will do what they will do, but I’m going to show up 100% and not wish for it to be easier but wish for me to be the best version of myself. I wish people would get that because we live in a world where there are even more entitlement with social media and you can be the next YouTube specialist. I like to invest in myself and I hope that other people get that they should be doing that too.

I find that 90% of the population have that entitlement syndrome. It’s hard for them to break through certain barriers, especially their own personal barriers when it comes to going to the next level. Let’s dive into that a little bit deeper. What do you think is the problem with that? Why is that? Why is it only a few people, let’s say one out of ten is willing to do what it takes because that’s what you’re talking about? Willing to do what it takes to succeed in life, to have what they want in life or to contribute to life in a maximum type of way? Why is that?

A lot of it is programming, a lot of circumstances and a lot of it is framing. When I was around thirteen, I wanted to badly drive my brother’s motorcycle. He would taunt me, let me sit on it, let me rev it up and then he shoved me off of it and then jump on it and spin dirt in my face and laugh at me. I go running into my dad and I would tell him what happened and he would say, “If I got to stick up for you now, I’m going to have to stick up for you for the rest of your life. It’s time to become a man.” I felt so unloved and so unsafe. However, I became hungry and I spent the rest of my evenings and weekends working to save pennies to get my own motorcycle. I got my motorcycle when I was fourteen years old, a little moped.

Pain breeds passion but what happens if I went inside and my dad said, “Come here, you poor little boy,” and he beats my brother up or gives my brother detention. He puts me on the bike and makes it all easy for me. The next time I have an obstacle and adversity, I go running to daddy again and I become maybe a little bit soft and not capable of standing up for myself. If you didn’t have the fortune to go up with the difficult circumstances I did growing up, you may not be as resilient as I am. That being said, there’s a flip side. For many years, I was told by people I’m not empathetic. I’m not compassionate. Somebody would hurt themselves playing a sport or doing something I’ll be like, “Get up, so your arm’s broken, you can still play. Come on.”

I was that way because I literally did break my arm, got kicked by a horse and my parents did nothing until two weeks later when I visited my mom. My parents were divorced and they found out that it was broken. I had to have it re-broken, put it in a cast and I came home and my dad’s like, “Why do you have a cast on? What did you do?” I go, “Remember two weeks ago, I got kicked by the horse? That’s when I broke my arm.” There are always assets you get growing up. Maybe you’re taught to be good listener, empathetic, soft, caring or you’re taught to be a badass, tough, etc. It’s the hand you’re dealt as we say. I say, “If the hand you’re dealt is great, play it out,” but what we never hear when the hand is dealt is that in most poker games you can trade a couple of cards in and make it better. You get to make it better. You get to surround yourself with people that have assets you don’t. You get to work on your weaknesses. You get to work on your talents and hone them in with 10,000 hours and hit a level of mastery. To me, that’s the journey of life. That includes feeding a burning desire of living an epic life. I do it by thinking, “One day, I’m going to be eating dirt. One day, I’m not going to look at the beautiful weather.” It’s about me being able to live to my fullest ability by nurturing division and playing full out with the cards that I was dealt plus trying to get a couple of better ones.

Make It Happen: Feed that burning desire of living an epic life.

As you were speaking, what came up for me is when that adversity strikes, when that problem comes, it’s always an opportunity. Sometimes our perception is not that. Our perception is, “Here’s another challenge, here’s another obstacle, here’s something that’s in my way.” It doesn’t matter in my book how you’re brought up. I believe in the program and I know there’s things that we carry with us as a result of our upbringing. The things that I’ve learned now, I feel that what is important to get is that you have a decision to make. Whenever that decision, whenever that problem or that obstacle shows up, you have a decision to make it.

It’s like you said, “You got to play the hand that you are dealt. You got to play it.” I believe that if you play it, maybe you have a vision of it turning out beautiful and as beautiful as it can be but a lot of times people don’t play it at all. They don’t like the hand they’re dealt and instead of playing their hand, they turn it back in or they don’t play the game. I believe that you can change the game. I believe that even if it doesn’t turn out the first time you wanted it to turn it the way you wanted it to turn out, you’re going to learn so much by playing the game that you’re going to be better. Sometimes if you don’t get that vision, it doesn’t mean that you have lost. It means that you didn’t get that vision. You probably have gained so much by playing a game.

If we can be grateful for the intangibles that we learn by playing the game and going through a tough time and going through a challenge. There are things about us that take place that betters itself because you’ve gone through a hard time and that’s a natural default way of life. We get to pass that on even if we don’t get our vision. We get to pass on those lessons learned. I believe that having that level of awareness is so powerful. I think people miss that. There’s the opportunity in everything and it doesn’t matter how bad. All opportunities are not like shining little stars. Some of them are rusty and ugly.

I have a little example to give you. When I was 23 years old, I wanted to be in the movies and Patrick Dempsey came to Montreal, Canada where I was raised to film a movie called Meatballs. He was not that successful then but he was the lead actor. I went down to the set to apply and they kicked me off the first day and they said, “It’s a private set. Get out of here.” I had to feed back into my vision the next day. I went back, crawled through the fence, got up there and the guy building the set was, “Get out of here. It’s a private set. I told you it’s a private property.” I went back the next day and the next day. I started using his name, Tim. He’s like, “Rocky, I told you there are no jobs here. Go home.” I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Tim.” He goes, “Go home. There are no jobs.” I said, “One day, something’s not going to show up.”

On the seventh day, I pull in late because I had stopped for a coffee and he’s waving his hands. He pulls me in and he goes, “John didn’t show up. You’ve got a job. You’re parking cars and you’re doing this.” I got a job as a gofer. One day they were at the scene where Patrick Dempsey was losing his virginity in a boat at nighttime. The boat needed to be doing that up and down motion like something was happening. The set was all up, the cameras, the lights and everything. It was a cold evening, people had sweaters on, dark murky water and the director goes, “Action.” Nothing happens. He goes, “We need somebody to move the boat.” Nobody moves. I’m in the background sweeping up literally as a gofer. I’m nobody and I run right past everybody with all my clothes on and jump in the water, grabbed the boat and go, “How’s this?” Rocking the boat and he goes, “That’s perfect. Roll camera.”

They got the scene and the boat moving. I was hidden behind it and the next day funnily enough, they had another scene in the mud, similar situation. Nobody wanted to walk through the mud and Don Carmody, the director, goes, “Where’s that kid from yesterday? He’ll do anything. Where’s that kid? Get him.” They brought me in and I walked through the mud. I moved some stuff around and then I got a job as an assistant director on the next movie. I dated one of the actresses. I say this because had I not persistent with the first through the no, all of that wouldn’t have happened and I learned that you are so rewarded when you push back where everybody else stops. You got to get through the line between stubborn and crazy. Some people are like, “That would be crazy if you did that.” I’m like, “Sign me up because that’s where all the magic happens.”

I find that a lot of people are afraid of that. Most of the time it’s because of judgment. I think judgment is such a huge killer of dreams of people because they don’t want to be classified as crazy. Like you said, “That’s what a reward is.” How can people retrain their brain for success?

There are a few ways. The one way that worked well for me is the words that follow I am, follow you. What happens is that people make suggestions at judgment. They go, “You seem shy. You seem tired. You seem discouraged or upset. You’re too tall, too short or too skinny.” There’s a whole bunch of labels that our parents or our teachers give, “You’re bad at math. You’re not good with numbers. Are you kidding me?” These all kinds of micro-labels that we have for different things, “I’m gluten intolerant. I can’t digest well. I get headaches at 3:00 in the afternoon and it goes on and on. You’ve got to be careful though because what one person suggests, doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s who you are. You could be suggested that you’re shy but you’re quiet or tired or had a headache that day but it carries with you for the rest of your life because you live into it.

The way you reprogram it is you write out the words that follow I am. You go, “How would I describe myself?” You have trouble with that, “How would my friends describe me?” Resilient, funny, determined, playful, cheerful, whatever and when you come up with the words that don’t serve you like tired, not good with business or can never make a lot of money, you upgrade them. I went from pizza face to ruggedly handsome, from working hard to working with my brain, from making $10 an hour to making $1,000 an hour. From businessman to coach, to speaker, to trainer, to impacting over 70 million people with my Goalcast video. It’s an evolution. The key though is that you’ve got to say it in a way that your brain can feel it and relate to it. A few are struggling with money. You can say, “I’m a millionaire,” your brain’s going to go, “You’re a loser,” and therefore it won’t have any stickability.

What I usually say to people goes something like, “Every day in every way, I feel like more and more opportunities are coming my way. I’m open to saying yes to things and allowing the universe to support me while I support myself. I’m stronger. I’m a gladiator,” is one of the ones I like to say, which means to me is, “You can’t stop me.” You’ve got to find the words that resonate with you. Once I was working out with my trainer and he goes, “Rock, you’re like a ripped machine.” I went, “I’m adding that.” Every time I think of that, I want to do another 100 pushups. I want to do more crunches. I want you to get into it. I’m 56 years old and I win a lot of push up contest because I’m a ripped athletic machine and I never quit because I’m a gladiator. It helps you perform in a way.

Make It Happen: One person’s suggestion doesn’t necessarily mean that’s who you are.

Imagine that somebody has to write a script for an actor and they go, “Rodney, you’re getting to play the part of The Rock here. In this scene here, he breaks to that wall and he saves the girl. He comes out with a big smile on his face. Can you do that?” You’re like, “Sure,” but most people don’t do that in their life. They go, “That looks difficult making those calls. I’m a procrastinator. I’ll do it tomorrow.” You’re a procrastinator. You chose that. You chose to say that with yourself. Are you kidding me? You’re the one that directs your conversation. Why not say, “I’m a badass and I could do whatever I want. Give me the phone, I’m calling anybody.” I used to do that when I was building my real estate company. We compete, me and this other guy and we would call to see who make the most contacts. Sometimes I couldn’t find my papers with numbers. I dial any number, punching any number. Massive action. You can’t stop me.

Were these scripts that you wrote out and you paste it somewhere so that you could see them? How did you physically do this?

Yeah, 100%. The more the merrier. You can have them on your mirror. You can have them on your visor in the car. You can have them as a screen saver for your computer. I have them on posters on walls. I have them on notes. My favorite one is I recorded on my phone and I put some badass music in the background and it is five and a half minutes long of me saying, “I am, I am. I am gifted, guided, grateful, powerful, passionate, playful, sexy, central, sensitive, blessed. I’m a gladiator. I attract great opportunities. I make great decisions. I love my family. I’m so grateful that I have three kids that have taken this information or blowing up their life.”

As crazy as they are sometimes, we still have an amazing time and I can go on and on. I’m basically brainwashing myself. Brainwashing is negative. Brainwashing is either conscious or you delegate it to somebody else. We talked about before why are so many people apathetic? Because they watch TV and they’re told, “If you’re tired, take this pill and if you feel bad, take that one.” They give up their power, Rodney. They give up their power to a pill, to a bag of chips, to some food, to a drug, to caffeine or whatever. They give up their power and then they wonder why, when the moment counts, they can’t execute.

What are some of your go-to strategies?

One of them is winners make decisions quickly and losers take a lot of time because they’re not clear first of all on what they want. They’re like, “I don’t know if I want that. I don’t know if I want to go to that podcast, listen to a podcast.” You’ve got to get clear on what you want and spend some time meditating and visualizing so that when the opportunity comes you can go, “Yes, I want that. Yes, I’m in. Yes, I’ll read that book. Yes, I’ll go golfing with you or whatever it is.” In that process, you win or you learn. If you went to the party that you thought you shouldn’t go to and then you go, “Next time I’ll ask for more information. I should listen to my intuition and stay home and read a book.” Get in the mode of saying yes to opportunities because most people say no and they play small.

The second thing is once you start taking lots of action, things are not going to work out the way you hoped. You have to have a strategy. A lot of people say, “Think positive.” How easy is it to think positive when you get a flat tire in the rain? “I’m so happy I’ve got a flat tire in the rain. This is awesome.” It’s not that easy. You have to have a strategy and my strategy is to ask a quality question. You want to ask a question because question directs focus and it gives you a specific example. If you invest in the stock market, you’re out for a date with your lady for lunch. You look at your phone and the investment you have, your portfolio went down $20,000. That might affect your mood because you focused on it. Had you not looked at your phone and it still went down $20,000, you didn’t focus on it. It wouldn’t affect your mood.

Questions direct focus. In the moment you get the flat tire and it’s raining you say to yourself, “This sucks. Why am I still unlucky?” What about if you said, “What’s great about this?” You went, “I have a spare tire. The tire is not on the side of the highway, it’s on the other side and we’re going to get hit by a truck. I can wait in the car and listen to some Rodney CDs or read his book until the rain stops.” There are a million things you can do. What’s great about this directs my focus. When I lost my hair to alopecia when I was 40 years old, I thought I was getting cancer. Initially, I was having an identity crisis. I asked that question and my brain went, “You’ll never have a bad hair day again. You don’t have to spend money going to the hairdresser or the barber. Save that money and you could get a massage once a month. That’s pretty cool. You will get ready faster. You can do more. That’s cool. You don’t have to spend money on shampoo.” It’s not the event, it’s the story that each one of us make up about that event that messes people up. Become a masterful storyteller about your life and be like water when the wall goes up or the mountains there, you glide around it and you look for the next bend in the curve and what’s going to come up there and you roll with it, take it. At least that’s the philosophy I’ve employed.

You talked about being a masterful storyteller about your life. What do you mean by that and what’s the benefit of that?

Most people in my experiences hope that life is going to be easy. They’re hoping that the guy who’s covering them, when they’re running a pattern is going to fall down. The ball is going to be perfectly in their hands and they’re running for a touchdown. In fact, it’s not what people want. What people want is they want to push up against stuff and they want to win the Super Bowl on the last play of the game with everything on the line. It was 60 minutes of being fully alive. That’s what people want. They don’t admit it necessarily to themselves and they’re afraid of losing so they want a little cushion. The story is that when the ball was thrown to you and it was in your hands and you dropped it, most people go, “You stupid loser. You’ve embarrassed the whole team. You’ve let them down. You’re a complete fill in the blank.” They may even go back to the huddle at an amateur level and apologize and suck the energy out of the huddle.

Make It Happen: Don’t mistake kindness for weakness. Be kind to yourself but have standards for your life.

Instead what they do is they’ve got to tell themselves, “The next time you’ll get it. I know it’s an amazing pass and the numbers don’t lie. The next ten, I’m going to catch. That’s for sure. I am on now. I got that out of the way. Way to go. Done early in the game. Now, I’m in charge.” That’s a better storyteller. You’re telling a story about the event. Make it a great one. If you’re a coach for a high-level athlete and you know this. It’s the coach’s job is to build the confidence of the player not to beat them down and say, “You idiot. Why did you shoot that way? Why did you do that?” It’s to say, “You are so good. That was so unusual that you dropped that pass. You’re going to be on the next flight. You’re the man. You always make it happen.” That was blip. Forget that. Move on.” I say we have to do the same thing.

Most people, if they talk to their friends, the way they talk to themselves, they’d have no friends, “You idiot, you loser. You should have done this. You should have known better.” We don’t talk to our friends like that. They won’t hang around. I say to people, “If you have a dog, talk to yourself like you’re a dog.” All back in love with yourself. I had to learn to love myself. I didn’t feel like my father loved me. My mother was a gypsy. I’m the youngest of seven kids. My brother beat me up. My sisters made fun of me. I had to fall in love with myself and become a better storyteller about my life, my best effort and what I learned, fall back in love with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Don’t mistake kindness for weakness. Be kind to yourself but have standards for your life.

Have you ever experienced trauma in your life?

Described trauma. Being left in a forest at the age of eight on my own, yes. Having no money at the age of 21 in Asia thinking that I might be put in prison, yes. Getting lost in the jungle in Fiji while the night was coming down and it started to rain as it does in a tropical forest and stumbling upon a fire that had embers in it and bones, knowing that in that part of the world that they practice cannibalism, yes. I ripped the triceps off of my elbow, yes. I tore my PCL. I did describe trauma.

I didn’t think it was that much. How have you been able to overcome come all of that trauma? Is it the life script that you talked about and the retrain your brain exercises that you’ve given to us? Is that all you’ve done to overcome trauma?

I went the traditional routes, having sex, drugs and rock and roll. I tried to find the answers and all of those bottles, potions and lotions to quiet the voice inside that my parents emotionally abandoned me. Trying to overcome the sadness of thinking that I wasn’t worthy of a great life. I’d been divorced a few times because I tried to get all the love from one person that I didn’t get from my parents and disrupted some of those relationships. I did a lot of lousy things in my quest to get to a place where I am with 36 streams of income, multiple books, multiple businesses and ability to impact people’s lives and ability to overcome more minor things. I had an investment goes south for half a million dollars. I had to use some of the tools I had to overcome that. It was an investment that I had with a friend and the friend dropped the ball and I wanted to blame him.

You go through the same tools but you get better at it, you get stronger at it. It’s more familiar. Tom Brady loses a great receiver. It’s not the first time for him so he knows that he can go to plan B or plan C or the other guy that’s coming in. He can use them in a different way and change the tempo of the game. You adapt and survive but it’s cliché things like, “Be grateful that you’re alive, be grateful that you have the opportunity to fight for something.” For me, it comes down to you’ve got to have a great peer group. People that are going to support you, encourage you and challenge you. I have created some mastermind groups of people that will hold me to a higher standard but also help me when things are tough or when I’m not at my best. The second thing is that constant work of meditation and visualization. What I call incantations from Tony Robbins, where you out loud repeat the words of who you are and what you stand for.

Often, I play golf with guys and after they hit a shot they say something, “You stupid idiot.” They look at a shot and they go, “This is impossible.” I won’t use that language. I’ll go, “This is an exciting shot.” You got to choose between going for it. It’s going to be cool or maybe being conservative, managing it and making two shots from here. I look at life almost like a game, scripted out. Be super conscious of the people you spend time with and super conscious of your inner narrative. That conversation that never stops. Those are some of the things that have allowed me to overcome the trauma. That being said, I’ve gone to India meditating. I’ve done rebirthing. I’ve done work on myself to discover and help me reveal those patterns. Ultimately, you’ve got to be hungry enough to look at them. Landmark‘s another great vehicle for people understanding about their childhood trauma and reviewing some of the patterns. You’ve got to be willing to do the work and to keep on flipping over another book, another stone and another seminar.

I know a lot of people are trying to get to another level in their life. I feel that with these practices, it’s looking at them not so much to help you get to the next level but to help you live in general. It sounds like this never stops. You don’t do this in order to get to this destination and then, “I’ve arrived and I don’t have to do it anymore,” but this is a continual tool that you use in order to live your life in a powerful way.

That brings you to the routines and rituals. For instance, journaling at the end of the night some of my wins and some of the things I’m proud of, some of the things I’m grateful for allows me to marinate and enjoy the day. Sometimes if you’re busy, you go to bed and you watch TV, Facebook or YouTube, you might not remember the little victories. Life is a series of moments. It’s important to cherish those moments. The next day, I know I’m going to journal that night. I’m looking for those moments. I can help the old lady across the street and feel good about it versus if I didn’t capture those moments I might go, “Nobody cares. Nobody’s going to know. It doesn’t make a difference.” You become beige in a world that needs those little things to happen. I go to Starbucks, I might use the person’s name and sometimes it’s amazing. You watch and look up and go, “Yes?” We’re like this robotic people going in and out of a latte and we don’t connect.

Make It Happen: Going for a beautiful walk on the beach doesn’t cost any more for the guy who’s homeless or the millionaire, but the experience that you have, that’s an inside job.

I try to do the little things while I’m growing but the rituals that have served me as my first hour of the day, the last half hour of the night. In my book, I talk about, tell me what you do before 8:00 in the morning and after 8:00 at night and I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life. It’s easy to make it in the margins, 9 to 5, it’s easy to fake it with emotions. It’s easy to sit at your desk and do nothing or do something or what have you. The change agents of the world is what you do after and before 8:00 in the morning, after 8:00 at night and before 8:00 in the morning, that time with yourself. Do you do the 100 pushups or you say, “I don’t have time to go to the gym?” It’s those rituals and routines I think that keep people on track, whether you’re a millionaire or billionaire or whatever. Going for a beautiful walk on the beach doesn’t cost any more for the guy who’s homeless, the millionaire or billionaire but the experience that you have, the way you enjoy it, the gratitude, the texture that you pay attention to, that’s an inside job.

You mention a lot of exercise and pushups and things like that. What role has that played in your success?

Massive, I’m a physical person. I grew up in a farm but I believe and I learned a lot of this from Tony, is that motion creates emotion. I say to some people, 30 and 40 years old, “When was the last time you sprinted full out?” They’re like, “I don’t know. Fifteen years ago or twenty years ago.” I go, “Let’s put that as a metaphor. You’re leaving the office building. It’s raining. You run to the car, you pull your hamstring, you’re injured and you’re in physio for three months.” The reason you are is because metaphorically, people don’t sprint in their life anymore. They don’t take the stairs when they could. They take the elevator. They don’t do pushups while they’re waiting at the airport for an hour. They sit on the chair and complain. For me, I look for gaps in my day when I can move my body so that I can trick my body to stay young, alive and playful as much as possible.

I’ve done as much as 1,000 pushups in a day. The minimum that I’ll try to do is 100. If I can’t get to work out but I will work out and move my body about four hours a day. I find that it keeps me healthier, it keeps me more vibrant and it affects my mindset. People would go, “I don’t have four hours to work out.” “I know you don’t have four hours to work out and take the stairs instead of the elevator, park the car a little further.” I love being creative in finding how to play this game of life. It’s up to you. I put on Facebook, me doing squats while putting gas in my car because we had this competition and I was, “You can do it. You can do squats. You can get in 50, 75 while your car’s gassing up. 75 squats is a good, decent little workout for your body for two, three minutes.” How committed are you to living an epic life? It depends on your creativity.

I believe that is the secret right there. What you said is resonating with me because it’s all around us and we’re always looking for some type of profound statement or some profound knowledge to come forward about how to live powerfully. It’s right in front of us and it’s how creative are we with our own mindset and you said it perfectly. How creative are you at playing this game called life? If you wake up every day and thought about, “What creative things can I do to help me be healthier, be more financially stable, be more serving or giving to the world?” We can imagine what our lives would look if we woke up every day with mindset.

We talk a lot about this in my mastermind group. How do you attract the mentor? First of all, a mentor is somebody you respect and admire to a certain degree. Somebody you want to be if you want to get the results they’re getting. It always comes down to the same thing, solve a problem for that person or serve them. I worked in a restaurant and I had this mentor and he had young kids. I offered to come in early and stay late in the restaurant so that he could be with his family during those times. Within three months, I became a partner in the restaurant. When I was taking flying lessons, I offered to clean the plane and to do odd jobs for my instructor and he soon offered for me to become partner in the plane, which dropped my fees down by 50%.

When I was working in the real estate office, I prepaid my bills six months in advance, which is the dream of any broker because agents are terrible with their money, which made me stand out. He walked into my office and offered to sell me the office out of the 94 agents there, even though I wasn’t the most experienced. You make your own good luck when you add value and people that have results like you, wouldn’t you mentor some hungry, willing to work, curious kid who said, “Tell me what to do, point me in the direction, plus I’ll pick up your dry cleaning and cut your lawn for you for free, so I can get into your brain and you guide me.” Wouldn’t you help somebody like that? They’re not on every corner. They’re like, “How much are you going to pay me? I’ll pay you nothing, I’ll pay you with my wisdom. I charge $1,000 on coaching. Talking to me for ten minutes, you should feel honored if you understood the process of becoming successful.”

Talk to us about the I Am Movement. What is that all about?

When I came out with Goalcast, I bumped into these guys that were doing these viral videos. I was telling him about my mastermind group, where I help people become whole life millionaires, which is where they become financially free through cashflowing assets without giving up their health or their relationships. You see so many, it’s cliché. You know the person’s 50 years old gets a heart attack. He’s divorced but he’s a millionaire. He’s not in shape or you get the guy who runs triathlons, he’s a soccer dad but they’re broke living in an apartment. I said, “Why can’t we have it all? We live in an abundant world. We can have it all. I believe you can have it all.” I started teaching people how to do this and he said, “I want to get that message, help you get the message out there so people can get this alternative education.”

We did the video. When the video came out, he told me to have two million hits a day. It’s up to I think 72 million or 75 million views. I had over a million shares, 10,000 personal messages, 500 messages a day. Me and my staff were staying up eighteen hours a day answering one-on-one emails of people saying, “I can’t believe it. I’ve been programmed. My parents told me I was this, that or the other and I realize that you can change it. I had no idea. I thought I was trapped in this hell of a life for the rest of my life.” 10,000, even 100 people approximately said that they were going to commit suicide until they realized that they were programming themselves or telling themselves a lousy story about something that happened. Remember there’s the event of your father raping you, which is terrible but there’s the story that you tell yourself over and over again about it that makes it your identity.

The Power of Your Identity

We decided with that and with my book, The Power of Your Identity, is to start to make people aware that they’re creating their own misery. You can literally be a director and a screenplay writer if you want, of your own story and if you’re willing to put in the effort. If you woke up every day and you said, “I am blessed. I am grateful. I had the opportunity to create my own life. I’m so thankful that I do every day and every way I’m getting stronger. I am a gladiator,” or whatever words work for you. You said it consistently throughout the day, you would create enough mind files in your brain that you would start to live it. You know why we know this because people are doing the exact opposite, “I hate my boss. I’m not good with numbers. I never could amount too much,” and that’s their life. Why not decide which one’s your life to be and then to live into it by creating the words that follow I am to follow you. That’s what it’s all about.

Where can we find your book? What’s the name of your book again?

The first book I wrote is called The Power Of Your Identity. You can go to RockThomas.com and get it for free PDF. You can go to Amazon and you can buy a hard copy if you want one. You can get the free book and start doing the work if you’re willing to do the work. It’s a good place to start. We found that it’s great to do it with others. That’s why we created the mastermind group because one of the things that’s lacking in the world is accountability. When you’re part of a military organization, part of a classroom, a school or a sports team, there’s accountability. You’ve got to run three times around the fields. You’ve got to do your pushups, you’ve got to do your homework.

In the world, where is the accountability on your personal development? Us managing our own mindset, making better decisions, meditating and allowing space for creativity to come in. There’s no accountability there. I don’t want to say it’s not fair but with billboards, advertising and it used to be nice, you could go to YouTube and watch something. Now, ads pop up in the middle of it, and I’ll probably have some there too, but the fact of the matter is you’re being programmed whether you like it or not, 24/7. Carve out a bit of that time to program yourself because the world is desperately trying to get your eyeballs to do what they want for their dream.

When you think about stuff development and being in that space, when I first got it, it felt like I was ostracized. There weren’t a lot of people in that space and doing those things. More have gotten on the bandwagon now, but when I got into it, it was like, “You’re one of those guys.” When you talk about accountability, a lot of times it’s tough to go at this alone because it feels like you’re going against the grain of society. More so now, you can find people that are in that space and that are doing it but you’re right, your environment, especially societal environment, is not pushing self-development. They’re trying to get you to go the way they want you to go to follow instead of lead. I believe that’s what self-development is all about, getting you to lead, even if it’s leading your own life.

Food is the biggest drug that’s out there. I went on a fast and I was like, “Everything I saw was food.” You smell it more. You see it, every second commercial on football is food and you’re, “I didn’t realize how they push food on us.” It’s like legal drug that they’re pushing on us. People eat way more than they need to. They don’t even know it. They think they’re hungry when they’re not. They’re dehydrated. There’s a whole different philosophy around food that people don’t even realize. Most people are foggy in their brain because they have so much toxicity from what they put in their body that they can’t even think straight. They’re longer even creative and they’re forgetful. There are all kinds of stuff and they blame it on other stuff and then they put pills on top of that to mask the stuff and they’re completely lost.

That’s a whole other conversation but clarity comes from that. If you don’t have some ways that you can fight against the culture that’s out there, you’re pretty much salmon swimming upstream. You’re screwed. You’ve got to carve out an hour or two. I’m constantly working at swimming against the current because the society wants us to drink their Kool-Aid, their food, their pills, their mediocrity or work for somebody else. I encourage people to become entrepreneurs. Write your own book, everybody could write a book. Everybody could become a teacher by telling their story. Your story is phenomenal and not everybody has that story but they have their story. They can teach it to people that have similar stories. They can influence people and they can create residual income. When I couldn’t find the right tribe out there, I created it. I have a tribe of healthy, wealthy, generous people that choose to lead epic lives and don’t apologize for being awesome. We get together. We did 25 events a year and we have an online community and everybody feels like they have a place to resource, which is great.

I want to say this to you and get some feedback from you on this. You talked about everyone could write a book and be an entrepreneur. I believe that everyone is here for a reason. Everyone has some type of contribution to make to life in general. None of us asked to be here but nonetheless, we are here. You didn’t ask to be here but you’re here. I believe that because you didn’t ask to be here but you are here, that means that you have something to contribute. I believe in eternity. My life has a beginning and an end to it. I feel like there’s something that I’m supposed to do within this time and that time but that time, I don’t know when that time is. I know that I have something that I should be contributing to because I’m alive and I didn’t ask to be alive. That in itself is a gift. I need to be figuring out what am I going to do to give back because life in itself is going to continue on. You can’t stop life. What is your thought about that as someone who’s dealt with trauma and been in this space for a while? Can you talk to me about that?

It’s very similar to you. I think that some of the beliefs that are helpful is that everything happens for a reason and it’s there to serve you. When you believe that, it’s easier to adapt to the things that happen, including traumatic divorces or physical things that come upon people. If you have that as an underlying belief, then you literally adapt with the new information and you carry forward from there. I think it’s important that people are at least open to that concept because the reality is you can’t change what happened anyway so you might as well have that belief. By the way, beliefs don’t need to be a truism, they need to be useful. You can say, “I love it when it rains when I’m driving.” You may not but if it’s raining when you’re driving, you might as well love it. I believe that and I like to believe that I’m here to evolve as much as I can. I don’t know what’s on the other side but I believe that’s the journey is for me to evolve as much as possible, to pass on my wisdom as much as possible and to learn from everything as much as possible. With that, I maintain a level of enthusiasm until my dying day because it doesn’t matter.

Let’s say this is the first my life from zero to 120 years old I live, maybe that’s the first game of the season for me and in sixteen games. If I play this first game like it’s everything and I lose it, the second game I show up there poorly prepared with lousy muscle and a bad attitude. If there is another game after this, if I come back as a dog or if I come back as another soul, I’ve gotten as far as I possibly can by being the best person that I can be. My father taught me, “I may not be out there always watching you do the chores but somebody is watching you. You could call it God or whatever you want to call it son but somebody is watching you all the time. I want you to imagine that whatever you’re doing as a task, an assignment or was a chore around the house, is going to appear on the front page of the newspaper or now you’d say Facebook. Do it with pride. Do it with integrity because somebody is watching and you bring that work ethic to the next task, the next chore and under pressure. How you have practiced is how you will perform in public. You might as well practice like it’s the real game.” That’s the gift my father gave me that served me very highly.

Where can people find you?

Make It Happen: Whatever you’re doing as a task, do it with pride and integrity because somebody is watching and you bring that work ethic to the next task.

RockThomas.com, social media, the usual Twitter and Instagram. If they wanted to learn more about my mastermind group, they can go to GoM1.com. I have a bunch of Facebook groups that I do some lives on if people are looking for something free, complementary or get my book. Other than that, we’re all out there in social media. We’re findable absolutely. Go to the website to get the book. It’ll pop up right on the page when you get there. Fill in your email and we’ll send you a PDF and go to Amazon if you want to look at my other books. Rodney, it’s an honor to be with you and to get to meet and hear you. You have a very nice grounded presence and you stay with the conversation. I appreciate that.

Thank you, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. I want to connect with you after the show because I feel like there are some vibe things going on. You and I should get together and talk a little bit more. Maybe I can also have you back on the show and I don’t know if you have a podcast or not but I would love to come on your show as well. This has been amazing and I feel like an hour is not enough time to get into some of the things that you have experienced, some of the things that you know. I feel like the audience could benefit from you, the things that you talk about and things that you bring to the table. I want to say thank you for being on the show. It’s been an honor and a pleasure.

It’s my pleasure. God bless you big.

Please go check out Rock Thomas and the I Am Movement. You will not be disappointed. Rock is doing some amazing things. He’s so generous to give his experience and his life lessons and pass those down to us. For my audience, please do not forget to check us out on Facebook. Check out The Game Changer Transformation Community. I want to thank you guys and as always. I want you to remember that greatness is your birthright. Peace and love.

Important Links: 

• Rock Thomas
• Landmark
• Goalcast – How to Change the Way You See Yourself video
• The Power of Your Identity
• Twitter – Rock Thomas
• Instagram – Rock Thomas
• Facebook – Rock Thomas
• The Game Changer Transformation Community
• https://RockThomas.com/
• www.GoM1.com
• www.Gobundance.com
• https://Bit.ly/2CjcDNF – Change the way you see yourself
• https://Amzn.to/2x2uHfd – The Power of Your Identity
• https://Amzn.to/2QjOzm5 – Your Epic Life Blueprint
• Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
• Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today https://rodneyflowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734

About Rock Thomas

Leading the #IAMMovement, Rock is the make it happen expert who will help you train your brain and redefine your life. The #IAMMovement is on track to have a similar (or better) national impact to what the Tony Robbins’ “Transform your life” campaign had in the late 1990s.

With 36 streams of income and national levels of business success, Rock is the Founder and CEO of M1 – March to a Million, a leading mastermind of success-oriented individuals who choose to lead epic lives. An equivalent of a whole-life millionaire MBA, Rock leads aspiring entrepreneurs to millionaire status – www.GoM1.com

Rock is also the Co-founder of Gobundance, a renowned Mastermind/Adventure Tribe complete with elders leading events in exotic locations worldwide – www.gobundance.com

From humble beginnings to Certified NLP Practitioner, a self-made millionaire, bestselling author, and world-renowned speaker Rock Thomas skyrocketed to success, earning awards, shattering records, and becoming one of the top 50 realtors in the world. Searching for more meaning in a life filled with achievements, he traveled the world, studying one-on-one with the world’s best teachers, including masterminds of growth like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Wayne Dyer.

With a mission to give back to the community and support the collective, Rock Thomas now spends his time helping others achieve whole-life wealth and massive success through his events, programs, books, and coaching.

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