TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tenacious Living Radio on this lovely tenacious Tuesday. I am so excited to be here with you. For those of you who are returning thank you for continuing to listen to the show. And for those of you who are listening to the first to the show for the first time, welcome. It’s so exciting to have you here. Today we have an amazing speaker, amazing guest he’s sitting in the virtual green room from Philadelphia. And he is going to share some amazing discussion discussions on finding your zero point. So basically, he is going to be helping people understand he helps people understand what they were designed to do. And B, his name is Chris M. Sprague and he is an international Transformation and Empowerment ambassador, keynote speaker and bestselling author. His purpose in life is to inspire and empower people to find their zero point which will, in turn transform their lives. Through research, personal experience and working with countless clients, Chris has discovered that once you understand your zero point, you will be able to eliminate frustrations and transform your life and business. Welcome to the show. Great Chris, how are you today?

Wonderful. Carrie-Ann. And how are you?

I’m doing great. I’m calling I’m here in Vancouver. And as we were talking a little bit off before the show started, I’m sitting here curled up under some covers that it’s a rainy day here in Vancouver and I’m looking forward to the next hour chatting with you. What about you?

Yeah, me too. I’d normally don’t say normally, normally, very quiet. But I too am curled up under covers. It’s kind of interesting, because good 75-degree weather in Pennsylvania. And for anybody who knows, Pennsylvania, especially east coast 75 in October is just, it’s just not real, or to carry and I’ll be right there with you. Because involved for days is going to be in the 40s. So we have our four seasons all in one week. So

that’s great. Are you excited to be like, are you excited to share how to find your zero point with our listeners today? It’s I’m pumped. I’m pumped carrion. And I always you know, it’s interesting because I calm myself down a little bit just so that I don’t overwhelm your listeners right away. Because the zero point is something that has become such a passion of mine since I discovered it. And since I realized the fundamental transformation, it can make in everybody’s life that, you know, most times you can’t get me to shut up about it. So I’ll stay calm for a little bit here. So we can kind of get the momentum going a little bit but BM Stokes excited and ready to rock and roll.

All right, well just let you know, we’ve got just under 55 minutes to talk. So I think I think you’ll be just fine. I’m so excited to get you excited to talk and do all this stuff. So Chris, before we get started into the nitty gritty, can you tell us a little bit about your own personal experience and how you got to this point?

Yeah, and I have to take your listeners all the way back back-to-back to when I was a kid because when I when I was a kid I was I was always in acting. I was in drama. In fact, I’m one of the few people I know who lettered in drama. Is there. Yes. For those of your sports fans who know people who’ve lettered in, in high school athletics high school, I went to actually gave a letter and drama so I kind of it’s kind of neat. I’m going to start taking it to my gigs to show people because most people go you can let her and drama. But the interesting thing was that throughout my life I had I took a detour away from doing what I’m doing now, and will tell you that I’ve spent over 40 years on and off the stage and over 40 years studying people and understanding what makes them tick and watching the Interact She’s really getting a deep understanding from both the inside and the outside what makes people successful and what? When for successful, how did they? How did they get there? I really wish I would have taken as they say in in doctor speak physician heal thyself, I really wish I would have taken all that knowledge. And, you know, almost wish I wouldn’t be talking to you about the zero point right now carry on. Because if I Oh, my advice, well, here’s why. If I would have taken all my advice and done everything right, I probably wouldn’t have gone through everything that set me up to uncovering the zero point. And here’s what I mean by that. So out of high school, I was a DJ and entertainer, it was I wasn’t making a lot of money. And even though I’m not a very materialistic person, you know, I’m kind of the typical person where, you know, some nice things are good, but I’m not, you know, you know, interested in driving around and million-dollar car, well, maybe Ferrari F 40. But that’s a whole another topic, anyway. But at that time, I wasn’t even making enough to live. And I ended up working two jobs just to make ends meet. And this was back the time when you still could get two jobs, because unemployment wasn’t you know, crazy out of control. The other stuff is going on here in the United States. So I came across this job in information technology, I jumped into information technology spent about 15 years in it, you know, which is a very natural thing for somebody who loves to be on stage and be outward, you know, be an extrovert and everything is very natural, sit behind a desk for eight hours a day, 16 hours a day, and punch coded. It’s very natural extension. The interesting thing is I will I will later on get to what, how putting the joke aside, it is a natural extension of my zero point. But back to the story. It took this detour. And towards the end of my IT career, I had been laid off twice. I was running a department for a small retailer. And then I ran an ITT piece of an IT department for a small retailer. And then I was a senior director for Fortune 500 company. After my second layoff, I tried too hard to get back into it. Because I had been out, quote, almost brainwashed. That’s what I was going to do the rest of my life. And I can explain that a little later on the conversation. But fact of the matter is, is that it after a year of trying, I was unsuccessful in getting back in. So John Maxwell, who is a noted leadership authority leadership gurus published now I think, 75 books, his latest one was great leaders, good Leaders Ask Great Questions just came out. A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t have to broadcast with him on October 10. And the interesting part was when he started his coaching, teaching public speaking certification program, I had always been in leadership, I had a master’s degree in leadership, a six-year Masters of Science Degree with a specialization to leadership. So I thought I was meant to teach people leadership first, and I thought this was going to be a natural fit. Well, fast forward a few years, the business was a failure. I personally felt I was a failure. It had gotten so bad that my wife looked at me it was kind of an interesting scenario. Carrie-Ann released the book, had a great day later had a great New Year’s Eve, a day after that my now ex-wife looks at me and says, If you don’t stop this whole public speaking thing and get a real job, because of course, Carrie-Ann, you and I know that, you know, being on the stage isn’t the real job and work we have to do to make this what it isn’t a real job. We don’t you know, for all for all those who you want to be public speakers and am not a real job. Don’t worry about it. You just come and they’ll come see it. And you know, you push a button and it just happens. She looked at me and said, Look, man, you got 30 days. And I’m not wanting to take ultimatums very well, first of all, but second of all, I knew that if I could succeed in those 30 days at my chosen passion, that things would turn around. Well, fast forward 30 days. I’m speaking on stage in Maryland getting rebooked for another gig in Jersey. And she’s at the house move and half her stuff out. That started a year of just more stuff than I know it all happen for a reason. But it’s really more stuff than people should have to go through considering I had a financial meltdown, had the divorce. Lost my last grandparent to a sudden stroke and lost my birth mother to cancer all within the span of a year. That’s probably that’s about two thirds of what happened. You say that was not a good year, except and then I’m going to wrap this up and I’ll get to your next question. Except during that year. What I figured out after a lot of soul searching after days on the couch where my only happiness was to get one foot off the floor and put it back on the couch and say Yay, I got you know, I moved today. I discovered it uncovered that everybody you meet everybody in this world has a zero point has that thing inside of them that they were that is imprinted on their DNA that they were meant to do. It started off a little bit differently as understanding how you’re wired. And realize that went even deeper than that. So to kind of bring the story to fruition, about the only good thing that I can think of that came out of that whole year was finally having the ability to look inside and say, What the heck is wrong? What is going on? And then what can I do to use that for to help everybody else. And I realized it was this, it was this nugget called the zero point.

So what exactly is the zero point then?

The zero point is what is imprinted on you at birth, it’s in your DNA, it’s the thing that when you find it, and you live to, through and within it, and I’ll explain that in a second. You will be the success you were destined to be. Now the last thing I threw in there, you know, from being in this industry carry and a lot of people I’ve been poo pooed by the majority people who first hear this concept, you know, have poo pooed it and said, Wait a minute, you know, you can’t tell people they’re going to live within something because you eliminate them. And it’s like, no, I’m actually freemen natural questions, women, how can you free somebody by telling them that they live within something? Well, the problem is in our industry, that everybody is telling you, you can be any you want to be, regardless of what that anything is. You know, my mentor, John Maxwell loves to joke around about him, you know, wanting to be Carina. And we know he makes the joke that it’s plus years old, you know, 3040 50 pounds overweight, he’s not going to be a ballerina anytime soon. And it’s, it’s a great example of where I understand our peers in the industry, need to give people hope. And that’s great. But if they don’t follow hope, with actionable things, to teach people how to really be the success they were born to be they were destined to be, then all they’re doing is selling people selling people snake oil on a bottle, and they’re not doing any service, but they’re filling their pockets with a whole lot of money.

So, tell me, what was your zero point? I’m curious to know, what was yours? How did you find it? Specifically? If you’re okay with sharing that?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love sharing the story. Because, you know, you’ve heard me talk at the beginning about how I was always in in drama and acting, and I was a DJ at a high school, radio, all that stuff. In fact, in high school, I ran the high school television station that was going to go to school to be in radio, television and film. And then I got so far away from that it’s not even funny. And it’s funny to think about it. I knew for the first 19 years of my life, 20 years of my life exactly what I was meant to do. And then I got away from it, because I let the world and money and everything else cloud over what I was what I was meant to do. It wasn’t until I hit my darkest times, when I went when I went and looked back and said, Okay, I look back at my life and said, What did I always love to do? What was the creative will be some creativity, but what was the string through everything, and part of it was creativity. And I started looking back and back and back. And I looked for my first vivid visual positive memory. And it turned out that that was a player within us about three or four years old, maybe five. It was it was in kindergarten, pre-kindergarten. And all I remember is that was a wizard I had this purple hat on and had stars on it kind of like the Mickey Mouse, you know, talents Mickey Mouse in the wizard thing, but literally, why wasn’t a mouse on yours. But I still you know, I could have been Dumbo when I was a kid because that was I was overweight and everything else but I’ll tell that are in a second. But the fact of the matter is I went back a little bit and I found my first visit to a positive memory and it was in this play and that’s when it dawned on me is Wait a minute, you know, when I was that young, I knew what I was meant to do. I do what I love to do, I knew what came natural for me to do. And I said Why am I so far away from it now why am I you know, I mean I’ve gotten in touch with someone with the speaking but goodness gracious this whole speaking on leadership as the lead in is just not getting me just not getting me anywhere. And the thing and I want to wrap this piece up in the stance or up by saying that so first of all My zero point I found, that’s why I am the in for the International Transformation and Empowerment ambassador, because I realized that my zero point, this is what I was meant to do, I was meant to come out, I was meant to be on shows like yours is meant to be on the stage is meant to be every place I could be, and getting people to understand and inspire them to transform your life and go back to what they were meant to do. And I was meant to bring this message to, to the world. The you know, the interesting part about the whole thing was that, you know, I originally thought that message was leadership. And I’m going to have a story about that if we have some time, I’ll tell you about how I went from leadership and realizing why leadership wasn’t. What’s that?

I love that. Let’s talk about that. Tell me about that story. Yes.

Okay. So. And this, this, I hope will resonate with a lot of people who are listening, because we have a lot of leaders who lead the way I did, and who think about leadership the way the way I did. And unless they were destined to be a leader unless their DNA, their zero point says they’re meant to be a leader. They’re never going to succeed at doing this. So I looked at, I said, look, this all makes sense. I’ve owned businesses before. I have a master’s in leadership. I’ve listened to John’s books for ever in a day, every place I went those in leadership, my first job I’ll never forget, my first job was 15 going on 16. And I was running the kitchen crew for five star restaurant background around where I grew up. And the general manager of the restaurant brought me in and she said, I want you to run the whole kitchen. Because you’re the only one that can talk to us and can talk to the kitchen crew. It’s like, wow, I mean, you literally go and lay that on a 15 or 16 year old. So I mean, ever since I was a kid. I thought that’s what I was. That’s what I was supposed to do. Here’s what I didn’t realize, carry on. I didn’t realize the effect bullying had had on me when I was a kid. That’s funny because I told you earlier, I was always heavyset as a kid. I had my growth spurt early, which I take them for to get for the parents of who are boys in the audience. Man, pray your boy doesn’t grow through his growth spurt until he hits Senior High School. Because I went through when I was in sixth grade. And the fact of the matter is, is the bigger you are, the younger you are, the more people want to bully you and knock off the big kid on the block, especially when your kind of lovable all along that just wants to make it simple. Find a funny story. Real quick, funny story about being a fly have a funny story about being bullied. It shows you the stupidity I had when I was a kid. Kid comes up bullies me wants my lunch money. Now. I’m carrying my lunch. Okay, I have a brown paper bag, which has my lunch in it and the bully wants my lunch money. So first of all, for those of you astute listeners out there, I didn’t have any lunch money, but he wanted anyway. So I was kind of sick of being bullying. So I decided to defend myself with the only thing I had in my hands at the time, which was my lunch. So now not only did I not have lunch money, but I had no lunch because I threw the lunch at him. That’s brilliant. I was when I was a kid. But there was there was a sadder story about bullying that when I was about 10 years old, I’d played football. Now in America today. When kids play football, if they wait too much, they get moved around and they get slotted they’re a little more forgiving. In other words, you can have a 10-year-old play with a 14 or 15 year old and 10 year olds concert Grossberg already, you know if he’s big enough, his body can handle it. Well, that ride played didn’t let you do that. So I had to lose weight to play football. Let’s step back for a second forget if it’s American football or Canadian football, you guys with your extra 10 yards or something like that the five-yard line. Got it? Yeah, you guys still have the 55-yard line up there. I haven’t watched Canadian football.

I’m not a football.

But the point is, is that if you think about it, the fact that matters losing weight to play football is just like a foreign concept. I mean, it’s a context sport, the bigger you are the you know, within reason the better the whole nine yards, but I lose weight to play football because there was this weight limit on my age group. And I did end up losing 10 pounds. Now mind you I was 100 pounds I lost 10% of my body weight. I struggled. I struggled mightily to do it. But I did it and at the end of the year the I the coaches’ wives and their and the mothers invited me to picnic and I said I can’t go to picnic because you sent me with all these French fries and hotdogs and all that good picnic food. So they gave me a little end of the season award, it was the willpower award. Now mind you, the willpower award was a white t shirt with a sticker on the back that said willpower. But be as you know, 1011-year-old, there was something special, I was really proud of it. So wear the t shirt in the school. And that was lunch table. And three kids came up behind me and said willpower, hmm. And I said, Yeah, I got it for, you know, it’s telling the story and everything. Notice I was proud of something. And I was telling them the story is kind of goes into later on why I’ve had some challenges. But what they ended up doing said, hey, that’s nice. And they took the sticker and they ripped it right off my back. That would teach me you can even hear me gold, but the story because it still remember, in large part how it felt. But what it taught me was couple things first, that weight loss was going to be painful. And secondly, that success was going to be painful. So it led to you know, a 30-year struggle with success. 30 years struggle with love at one point I was 300 pounds, you know, and now, now I’m 165 is pounds. And I’m loving life. So yes, I’m half the man I used to be. But here’s why bullying and leadership. If anybody’s wondering right now, what does this have to do with leadership? When you’re bullied as a kid, you have one of two actions you can take and your brain decides to have rewired or you know, wherever you started is the is the reaction is going to make one, you’re going to push through it, it’s not going to change it and you’re going to be stronger for it, too. It can affect you. And it affects most people and how it affected me was that I thought for my entire life, that if I was the leader, I would never be bullied again. If I was the one in control, if anybody just upset me, I could fire him, I could get rid of them no big deal. If I was the leader, then I wouldn’t have to worry about taking the arrows and everything else that I experienced when I was a kid. That carrion you logically know that’s so far from the truth. It’s not even funny, because leaders take all the arrows for their entire team, regardless of whose mistake it is, great leaders accept responsibility for no matter how bad the team does, because they knew they either hire them directly, or hired somebody who hired them. We’ve seen CEOs have to step down because of one mistake, somebody 17 levels down, make sure we see companies have to put out apology letters, because somebody in their tech support treats customer poorly. So I had absolutely no logic behind it. But it was my emotions, saying okay, if I’m the leader, I’m never going to have to worry about being bullied, bullied again. Here’s the interesting part. I never set out to control people. I believe I did it at all. Sadly I did accidentally in other words, I wasn’t constantly thinking of I am now in control you are my You are my subordinate. In fact, I stayed very far away from even the word support. And it was kind of it was a bizarre way I used to manage I mean; I stay far away from it was like 180 degrees opposite of trying to be the controlling manager. And I think that’s because part of me knew that that was that was inside of me. Now do I still teach people leadership today? Yep. Because I follow John’s leadership methodology. And I will teach the I Will Teach great leaders and good leaders how to be great if that’s what their DNA says they’re supposed to do. In other words, if somebody like me comes to me for help, I first find out if their DNA if they are wired, if their zero point says they are meant to be a leader. If they are, then we show them how to be a great leader. If they aren’t, then we figure out how to redefine they’re their definition of success. And get them to understand what their new definition of success should be. And is based on there you know, based on their want based on their zero point based on their wiring, and we take them in that direction. So this whole thing is taught me one of the things that I’ve learned throughout this whole process is there. There are ways for people who are bullied to be great leaders. There are also ways for people who were bullied to teach people about leadership. Once you go back and figure out you uncovering get rid of the effects of bullying. And once you get once you get rid of the stuff the world has done to you.

So I think your kind of may have already answered my question, but I just want to clarify for listeners. Why is it so important to find that to find your very own zero point then?

Yeah, great question. And part of the reason it’s so important is because if you don’t find it, you could lose everything. I know. I did. You know, I mean, you know, the big house, the you know, the cars the everyday everything you need. I got three cats. That’s the cat on the cat man now and that’s about all I haven’t lost from this whole thing. There’s they’re sitting, they muddied me out during this interview, because they’re great. They, you know, they kind of look at me like, Daddy, who are you talking to you talk to yourself all day long. So the first thing is you could lose everything, if you don’t find it. The second thing is, is that if you don’t find it, you don’t know, if you’re going in the right direction or not. She could be it’s like, it’s like running a race without a map. I mean, you’re, you’re in the Ironman Triathlon. And, you know, they gave you sort of direction to say you Well, if you swim this way, you’re going to be going in the right direction. If you run this way, you’re going in the right direction. And by the way, when you get on the bike, go in this direction, and you’ll be okay, I got a real funny story about bike directions, just real quick, because you appreciate his carry. And I did a I did a think I did a thing called a tour to cure. And I hadn’t biked in a while. And so I’ve done it for like a 25-, or 30-mile ride, no big deal. And they didn’t mark the course too awful well, and it was one of the times where I didn’t listen to my gut, and I followed everybody else. By the time we knew we were on the 15th. And I’m sorry, I signed up for the 50-mile ride. By the time we knew we weren’t on the 50-mile ride, we’d almost done the five-mile ride. And we behaved as well as the heck, let’s go back out for the 50. So we then went back out for the 50. By the time we got back, they were closing the tents up. So it’s a great, it’s a great example, if you don’t mark the course, they don’t know you’re going in the right direction.

So not a good thing. So that’s what the zero thing does.

Yeah, it points you in the right direction. It gives you that blueprint, that framework for your life and for success.

So in your life, so what’s the difference between noticing knowing your zero point for your personal life versus your business? Or is it one in the same is the zero point the same? Or different?

In the end, in the end is zero point is the same? And it’s it ends up being? What? What was imprinted on you from day one, what you were destined to do be to have the whole nine yards because here’s the beautiful interior, my ex-wife, great, great woman, we grew completely in different directions. And I mean, at the end, we grew in different directions part partially because of lack of success, and partially because of other things. But he’s always made this joke that when I was on stage, she would rather be about 17 states over, you know, again, another county in the country, so to speak. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to see me on stage. It was an illustration of how diametrically opposed we were. In other words, I love this. I love being center of attention. I love being on stage. I love the spotlight, she does not. Now the interesting part is how I figured out my zero point and understood everything about my zero point earlier. I’m not sure it would have saved our marriage. Because even though I would have been a success, we would have still got to the point where we were so diametrically opposed. I’m not sure if I’m not sure if it would have continued to work and everything would have been I’m not sure she would have been happy. I’m not sure. You know, I’m not sure I would have been happy. So when you find your zero point and you understand your new definition, success and everything else behind it, you’re going to start to bring people into your life that are going to go along the path with you. So it’s Oh, go ahead, Carrie. Go ahead.

No, no, that’s okay. I just heard you say it once you figure out your new definition of success is did, I hear you correctly? So people can actually redefine what success means to them?

Yes, in fact, in large part what happens when you find your zero point is you end up redefining what success means to you and in the end, you go back to finding out what your true definition of success is. And here’s why I bring that up the majority of people especially in you know, in our area so to speak here of you know the United States North America that thing that that type of thing in Canada you know we’ll include you guys I guess way it’s part of the world. I’m just kidding.

North America Yeah.

I was going to kidding about being sarcastic about so forget. I’m just I was digging myself a deeper hole. It’s kind of like Steve Harvey who was on the other day and went way too far with a job on daytime television. He even said he’s a nation has now crossed the line. Anyway, the point is, in our society, and in our part of the world successes to find his money, forget about everybody forgiving everything else people will tell you. You just have to look at commercials and everything else that’s out there. It is defined by money and by materialistic things. And for some people, that is right. That is what they were meant to do. They have the Midas touch; they have the golden touch. They are meant to be millionaires and billionaires. They’re meant to run successful businesses. There’s a movie from the 80s called risky business. And it was interesting because Tom Cruise plays a character that wants to get into Princeton. And the interesting thing about it is he wants to get into Princeton for business. And he goes through this really weird escapade. I won’t explain the whole thing. But the short verses, he goes through this weird escapade, that eventually leads him to on the night he is getting his interview from Princeton, to basically having an entire party at his house that, you know, turns into a business venture, so to speak. And that, you know, he was going to get kicked out of school, and the whole nine yards, because of all these other mishaps that happened along the way. But if you look at his character, his character eventually gets accepted to Princeton and goes on, you know, I guess goes on to be a success, because I’ve never done that there’s a risky business does where they finish the story. But the point is, is some people are meant for that other people were meant to be servants, other people and meaning servant leaders, other people are meant to be, you know, ditch diggers, so to speak, other people are meant to be, you know, in, you know, it’s like a good example here. Another quick example, like what separates somebody who works at a veterinary hospital from somebody who works at a people hospital? Well, one loves people and one loves animals. And they both end up doing, I’ll say the same thing on different, you know, on different bodies. But let’s face it, one’s made it a whole lot more money than the other is. So one was designed and destined, and in their DNA to be a vet, and the other was designed to be an oral surgeon, baby. And when it all comes down to shedding your current definition of success, to figure out what your real definition of success was meant to be.

Can I ask what your definition of success is? Your personal definition is it’s making an impact in people’s lives.

Nice, nice, like that. Like that. And so you, you were comparing different job categories, it doesn’t really matter which job you have or what you’re destined to be, it’s all equally valid in different respects. Correct?

Correct. Exactly. You know, everything, in the end is success. You know, really, I shouldn’t hate saying the word really, in my book, I tell people don’t use a wild, because it’s, you know, you’re, you’re over emphasizing things. But in the end, you know, like I said, it’s, it’s really am timid about using word brainwashing because it has such a negative connotation. fact of matter is, is that in some ways, by TV by everything else, at this point, and believe me, Carrie, and I was one of those grown up who said, TV doesn’t affect you, and games don’t affect you. I think back then back in the 70s, and 80s, it didn’t because there were three channels of nothing on, there was 20, there was 20 video games. Now there’s 300 channels of nothing on. Give me an example, I went through yesterday to test and flip through 2025 channels. And there was one at that time that had a show running the other 20 the other 19 to 24 had commercials on here. I mean, so I think that we’ve reached this, we’ve reached this interesting time, where people just get inundated with so much that they don’t know what it was. Their brains don’t know how to handle it. And they’re being told what success you know, what success is. There’s an interesting I want a real quick story. And he you might have heard this before, but it’s basically a parable. So its rich guy, a rich guy goes on goes on a vacation with his family, and he goes on a beach. And on this beach, beautiful private island on this beach, the fishermen sits there and he’s just cast his passive line out straight every time he casts you draw the fish back. And it’s been rigged. This rich I’ll call my rich Westerner looks at him and says man, doing great you should open up a business and the and this is why and the rich Western looks at him and says well, so you can make money. And they said why? He said Well, so you can you can have a big business and the guy said why? He goes well so you can eventually sell the business and become really rich. And the guy says why? He said, so you can move to a private island and fish all day and live in paradise. And the fisherman just smiles at them. And he cast his line back out. And the moral of the story is the fisherman isn’t rich, but we in the western world have been so has had been so inundated with, with monetary things that most of us tried to work 40 to 60 years of our life to get rich, so we can move to a private island, when, you know, it’s like, you can do that without, if you redefine your definition of success, you can actually do that without having to go through for two years. In other words, let me shorten this up. So you get back to your next question. The point is, each of those two people have different definitions of success. In the end, the Westerner felt that money power, and everything else was the definition of success. And his end game, you know, was to live on an island, you know, this, this, you know, the island, his definition of success was saying they’re fishing all day, and didn’t really have to sit and work for the Navy years stress, you know, 4060 years stressed out and everything else to achieve it. And, you know, it’s all about your definition of success.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It’s so important to understand that success is not what we’ve been conditioned to believe. And I think our ability to be willing to consider that we were, it’s okay to redefine how we view success, to support ourselves in the way that we choose to live our life and choose to live our life and move through our business is so important. And it’s a key message to me to my teachings, tenacious living, be willing to think outside the box and live outside the box. Now, when I say living outside the box, it’s because it’s exactly what you just said, we we’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s this one way. So thinking outside the box is really just thinking, thinking as is without any constraints. So would you say, would you agree with that? I kind of took over there for a second. But yeah, well, that’s okay. Yeah, exactly. That’s the interesting thing. And it’s funny, because people who know me know that I’m a very creative thinker. And they will always say that, you know, I’m not only thinking outside the box, but usually I’m thinking outside the university. Yeah. First heard, talk offline more, I think we have a lot of good anyways, go ahead.

It’s interesting, because when they first heard about maybe even make an income living within your wiring, once again, those people were like, hey, wait a minute, this isn’t you? And it’s like, no, actually is. Because the inside the box thinking in our industry, is you can be anything you want to be and just you just have to push hard enough and work hard enough and work smart enough, and work right enough and all this other stuff. It’s funny, because one of the guys I know James Malign, check, it was on ABC Secret Millionaire, you know, talks about you know, you don’t work right, you know, where you don’t work smart, you don’t work hard, you work, right. And he goes through an illustration of how-to Buster a wall and how to get from one side of wall to the other. The fact you know, you know, it, the fact of the matter is, is that the outside the box is taking outside the box, thinking all it does is taking a different path than what everybody else feels is acceptable. And it’s looking at things differently and creatively, so you can achieve a different result than other people have achieved. I can write that one down. It’s pretty good.

I think it’s good. It’ll be on the recording. Quoting you on that. Okay, so. So obviously, it’s important to find your zero point, it’s important to be able to live your life on your terms in any your way through, eliminate those frustrations and transform your life. So how does, how do our listeners? How would one start to find their zero point?

Yeah, it’s the goal of starting is to understand and find your first vivid visual positive memory. For some people, it comes very naturally they can you can say, hey, I remember when I was three years old, I did this. Okay. That is your that is your starting point to figure out, you know, that usually is your zero point or that is going to give you some great clue as to what your zero point is. For others, it’s more difficult to go back to that timeframe. So there’s a process you want to go through, which is you take your brain backwards in time. And when it’s when the process really, I’m going to try to get as simple as possible, because sometimes I tend to complicate things, so I’m trying to make this one as one of my JV partners and I joke around about being Dirt simple. So I’m to try and make this as simple as possible. If I get if I confuse anybody to reach out to me online afterwards, I can take you through the process. But here’s the short version. Whenever you have a memory for, whether it’s a moment, whether it’s a minute, whether it’s an hour, your brain feels, this is back in that time. And it really temporarily transports you back to that time. see an example of what I’m talking about. If you know anybody with post-traumatic stress disorder, you see a living, breathing, very nasty example of how your brain does this. If you if you don’t know somebody with PTSD, to get a really different perspective on, on how good you might have it, I suggest you go to a military type hospital, and just, you know, asked to basically sit with a patient with PTSD, and watch what they go through. I’ve known some people with PTSD throughout my life, some people have handled it better than others. But it’s a very eye-opening experience to somebody, literally, literally, you know, you’re in this year, and they all of a sudden think they’re 20 years ago, it’s kind of an it’s a very surreal circumstance. But for people who don’t have PTSD, you can mimic the same effects in a very positive way. And here’s how you do it, you go back to the earliest memory, you can remember whether that’s a day, a week, a month or a year, the minute you remember that your brain says okay, it’s a day we come off a year ago, and you immediately try and remember an earlier memory. And then you remember that memory, your brain says okay, and other than that, it’s now another two days or two weeks or two months or whatever. And you remember another memory and your daisy chain the memories together until you get back to your first vivid visual positive memory. Like one of the clients, you know, went to class took through, we went back through and went back into when they were a child and this awesome things about riding the bike and then went back to a day they were bullied and then went back and back and back and back and back. Until they actually until you know, a client I worked a short version of client I worked with had trouble believing that he could ever have meaningful relationships and could ever have friends. And we he couldn’t understand why because of the gay I’m a lovable guy. This is you know, I don’t understand this, but I’ve never had any friends. So in the end, we took him back and he had he had he had he hidden and covered up some bullying and some other things that had happened to him and realized, okay, there was a time when he did have friends. And that led him to say, okay, now I can start working on it’s okay, yeah, I really am meant to have friends who let’s face it carry and there are some people who really are meant to be loners. And were meant to kind of be out there and be in their own little bubble. And they perform incredibly, wonderfully in those in in those circumstances. But the short answer to your question is this, you go back and look for your first vivid visual positive memory. If you can’t go back to the time, you were three to five years old automatically, then what you do is you start with the most recent vivid visual positive memory, you can find and work your way backwards. So one more thing I want to throw. Yeah, go ahead. I would just say just one more thing I want to throw in real really quick. If you had a negative memory, which people will tend to do, there is a way you can dampen the result. And you can actually help overcome that negative memory. And the short version of this is that you picture an audio recording of that memory on a on a on a record. And if people remember the old vinyl records, which are now making a little bit of a comeback, which is kind of strange, but they’re still cool to listen to. But if you remember what would happen when you would scratch a vinyl record is usually some static and you could eventually scratch the record enough to change what you physically heard and eventually cover it up completely. That’s what you end up doing to help dampen and sometimes you raise those negative memories you come across you picturing and record you play forward, backward, forward, backward, you start scratching it to it until the feelings that are associated with the memory are dampened enough that they don’t affect you anymore.

And that was really what my question was is like so many people have negative memories that it’s harder for them to pull out the positive because there’s the negative has so much more of an impression on them.

Yeah, exactly. And the one thing I always recommend to people is that if you find that the negative is just so overwhelming, and you’ve gone through the exercise that I just gave you walk people through an exercise where maybe you take a DVD so you can see a video copy of it a VHS tape is not a great thing. If people remember VHS tapes you remember the more You record on a VHS tape the worst quality got over time. So you could do things and, you know, you used to be able to fast forward and rewind through those and actually see it scrambled. So there’s different techniques that take people through there. But one of the things I always recommend to people is look, if it gets overwhelming, and if it gets really, really bad, then what you need to do is, then you do need to go seek a professional licensed therapist to help you go through those really bad times to make it through, because at this point in time that we’re talking, I’m not a licensed therapist. I’m not a licensed hypnotherapist, either. Or licensed, you know, I don’t take people through crisis or anything like that. I believe all the answers are, are within our mind and are accessible to us if we just put our mind in the right state to get to him.

Great, because that was I was just going to ask because I was wondering, some of our listeners are probably wondering, is this process done through some form of hypnotherapy or NLP or other energy work? But it’s simply just two people talking and asking the same question over and over again, basically, yeah, exactly. And here’s the beautiful part is that people go through this on their own, you know, it’s something that you just let your brain you know, you go back and say, What’s my memory? And then, okay, you know, we start remembering, and they, you know, the beautiful thing is, is experiences whether they remembered or not, meaning, you, you know, it’s like, a great thing by bureau remember that Christmas, I mean, one of the things I’ll have a client do is remember their favorite holiday. And you’d be surprised you personally carry and wouldn’t, because you, you, you know, because you work with this blogger listed, you might be surprised that the minute you mention a holiday, you can find pretty much any, you will find your happiest memory from that holiday in your memory bank somewhere, even though you haven’t thought about it, it could be 1020, could be 50, you know, could be 50 years, you know, you will find it amazingly it’ll pop right back out, just because your brain knows how to access those things. I do believe that that energy work, I do believe that hypnosis, I do believe in psychotherapy, I do believe that, that a lot of other tools are helpful for people, and they help people get through things. It’s an all depends on the level that they need to they need to get through. Here’s why I start with this. And then you know, say basically start on your own. And if you can’t get back there, you know, let me know. And let me try and help you. And if we still can’t get back there, then you work. You work around the sphere of other professionals. Because what we do is pure, and here’s what I mean by that. And this is meant to be not offensive to any other professional. What we when we work things is pure meaning first you start off with yourself. So it’s whatever your brain remembers, and yeah, let’s base your brain could it tweak memory a little bit, but it’s whatever your brain remembers. So it’s just you, when you work with me, it’s just you and I and me asking you questions where you’re fully awake, fully aware, and your brain has a chance to, to say yes or no shut things off, turn things on, do whatever it wants to do. You don’t have to be worried that you’re being led in direction that that you don’t have to be worried about being led in a certain direction, you will be worried about things out of your control. But if you can’t get back there, and you need to get back to everybody does, then you have to explore everything, whether it’s NLP, whether it’s hypnosis, whether it’s, you know, psychotherapy, you know, especially if there’s negative really bad emotions, then, you know, psychology psychotherapy, you know, definitely needs to be part of the routine. It’s one of the things like I said, I’ll stress time and time again, not only on ratios, but declines. Look, look, if it gets to a point where there’s some bad stuff going on, you need to see, I’ll say professional meaning licensed industry professional help. Because we’re here to help you get better not to not exactly worse.

And that’s the whole point of your work. And my work is to help people move forward not regress, right? So we’re taking them through these various techniques and modalities to like basic mindset shifts, to move them through something to move them through that frustration rather than hold them there and keep them stuck in it.

Exactly.

Okay. So, so we’ve got a boat, seven minutes left. So I want to know what do you do once we find the zero-point Chris? What happens like now Okay, so now we found our, our first positive, vivid visual memory. I’m sure I didn’t make the words quite put together there. But you know what to say. So what happens once you find that, yeah,

what do you do? You take that and then You look at how you have either implemented it stayed away from it or utilize it throughout your entire life. Like you remember, I was talking earlier about how it’s natural for anybody who loves to be on stage in front of people, but an information technology, well, it looks completely unnatural looks like I went in 180 degrees opposite 180 direction was opposite of what my, my zero point was. There’s something that there is a thread that runs through, and that’s the thread of creativity. And just like when you’re on stage, you can be crazy. It’s like when you’re in front or back of the camera, you can be creative. When you’re in information technology, and you’re coding and you’re doing all that stuff, you can be creative. The other thing you get from being an information technologist, when something works, you get this incredible high from having it work just like you do when you’re on stage and having people cheer for you. You also get the incredible frustration when it doesn’t work, just like you’re on just like when you’re on stage, and a job doesn’t go over or a bit doesn’t go over, or things don’t go over as well. So while I change the while I change the method of me create my creative outlet, the string of creativity was always was always there. So it least allowed me to use that creativity, and allow me to push things forward. But I never achieve that ultimate level of success. And that’s the key here. When you find your zero point. And you watch how you’ve implemented it throughout your entire life and what you wanted to do, what you did, where you took the detours and everything else, you should find, if you found your zero point, you say, if you found your zero point, you will find that there’s this string that goes from that moment that you found up until the current day, and you can weave this string through everything, you know, it’s like threading the needle. And it’s just watching the string come from the past to the present. So then you have to figure out what you’re going to do with it in the future. So, you know, I had to figure out that for me personally, it’s like, okay, I know that stage and everything else is what I was meant to do. That I had to go deeper and say, okay, this is you know, to inspire, empower and transform people and be in this area was what my zero point was, how can I set myself up to make sure I’m successful going forward, you know, going forward. And here’s, here’s the beautiful part is the fact that once you find it, once you set up your path going forward, the obstacles do start to melt away. And that’s a few things few things not to impress you but to impress upon you what can happen when you find your zero point, you know, I went from struggling to have struggling to be on the radio to now being able to pick and choose and is it scary now well, noes have had probably a little less power on my hands and I should Yes. Pick and choose what shows I’m on now today I was on I was on two shows because I started to be on two shows. And like I said, that’s not to impress with impress upon you those are the things that happened when I first started off in leadership. I was struggling to get one show, you know, a year, let alone one show a day. You know, the other things such as example, a month or so ago, I signed to deal with a New York, New York publishing house and we’d have an edge book published by a company out in New York be out probably the spring of next year, depending on when I sit down and get everything else together. I hope they’re not listening right now. This guy’s there waiting. Just got to get it together. But no, in all seriousness, I mean, you know, I struggled mightily to create content before. Now, you know, I’ve got another book coming out, that’s going to be you know, not self-published, but published by, you know, a New York City publishing house. So there’s just two examples of how, you know, things just dramatically started to change once you find the zero point and instead of your plan to go forward.

I love that Chris absolutely loves that. So, if someone wants you’ve kind of talked a little bit about if they can’t quite reach their zero points or if they need a little bit more support from you, where can we work? Where can we find out about all these amazing books that you’ve wrote and the books that are coming out and just find out more about you in general?

You just please just Chris M sprake.com CHR s and there’s Michael or as another reader so who said make it happen sprig.com spry H UE that has all my contact information and every way you can reach out to me there you’re going to find on there is the professional practice builder society, which is it I co created and what we do is take coaches, specifically and other professional practice builders and teach them how they’re wired how their ideal client rewire and show them how to map create and distribute great content to get to become the recognized expert in their chosen niche through things like video and basically taking less than four hours a month and creating over 30 pieces of content month after month after month. Because, you know, carry on from even doing a radio show, part of the whole challenge of you knows, once you find your zero point, once you find what you’re meant to do, part of the challenge is to get people to recognize no one understand you is recognized expert. You’re doing a great job with a radio show you’re recognized expert and how to live tenaciously. You’re welcome. So for people who haven’t found that yet, you know, that’s one of the other things that that we, you know, that I do. And it’s, it’s nice, because it helps coaches were in the same situation often to get there a whole lot quicker than then have to go through the stress and frustration of a divorce and too many courts that I carry on account at this point.

Yeah, well, and it’s so true. Like, if we can share what we’ve gone through to support others and avoiding that end result. It’s so worth it, isn’t it?

It is it is and that’s you know, it’s one discussion I always have, with my business advisors and everybody else’s, I just want to be able to help people. I’m just letting the money in the back end take care of itself. And my goal is to be able to help people. My Maslow’s need, I’m stuck in that need to be loved. And I love to be loved. I love to help people. The way that I get my fix and my highs is, is impacting people in a positive in a positive way. And I want to you know, I see we’re running time here. So I want to leave your audience with one more thing really quick. So for almost completely at a time if I can do that. Now. If not, you have to say I’d like.

Go ahead. That was my next question.

So here so here it is. We talked earlier about defining success. And we talked about understanding your own personal definition of success. I’m going to give you a few people now. And I want you to realize what you really think about how different the world would be. If they’ve had a different if they would have thought their personal definition of success. Met different. The first couple are going to be materialistic people, you know Richard Branson, they are the Virgin companies, Virgin Galactic virgin airways, Virgin Music virgin, everything’s point. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. There are three people who if they thought they were meant to be servants, if they thought they were meant to be servant leaders, if they thought they were meant to do other things in their life, they would never have created the huge companies. And if they didn’t understand that they were, they were meant to be rich, they wouldn’t have created these huge companies and accessible. They were and it’s interesting because I don’t know much about Steve Jobs or Richard Branson’s philanthropic efforts. But I do know Bill Gates is now turning the biggest philanthropist in the world, you know, helping the Rotary Club, you know, eradicate polio and that sort of thing. So while he’s turned into change, he’s used his business sense to data, a huge success. Then you look at some other people, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, those four people if they would have thought they were meant to be rich, if they would have thought that they were meant to, you know, basically have everything and all the trappings of life was different what our will be right now if they if they didn’t realize they were meant to, to live a servant’s life and servant leaders life and they were meant to sacrifice themselves for the good of the world. And that’s what I really mean by change your you and really transform your personal definition of success. Don’t let the world brainwash you, maybe you were meant to be rich, but maybe, just maybe you were meant to change the world in a different way. Find the way you were meant to change the world. Whether it’s changed the world, change your community, or even change one life. Because if we can live one life one day in this life, living to our zero point and change even wise, then for my money we’ve been successful we’ve made a difference. So go out and make an impact on in whatever way is good for you and is whatever way you are meant to make an impact. So that could be one or could be a million people do that. And I guarantee you’ll be a success.

Absolutely wonderful message. I’m just sitting here nodding. I agree so much with what you just said. Thank you, Chris, for joining us. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to chat with you during this last hour. It’s been amazing. And I Carrie-Ann it’s been an honor, honor and a privilege to be on your show as well. Thank you.