Rewiring Childhood Imprints to Achieve Prosperity

Ever wondered why some people seem to attract success while others stay mired in setbacks? Together with the brilliant Dr. Ryan Wakim, we tackle the hidden forces of your brain that shape your reality. 

In our mind-expanding discussion, we uncover the subconscious patterns laid down in childhood and how they script your adult pursuits of love, success, and self-worth. From the depths of the limbic system to the heights of the cortex, learn how your brain can become your ally in consciously crafting the life you're yearning for.

Peel back the veil on the silent saboteurs in your mind—those limiting beliefs that whisper you're not enough or that safety must trump satisfaction. As we journey through the maze of the subconscious with Dr. Wakim, discover how to use emotional feedback to reveal and rewrite these internal narratives. By cultivating mindfulness and self-reflection, you'll find strategies to transform your inner dialogue, empowering you to break free from the chains of past programming and step into a realm of limitless potential.

Join us as we wrap up with a powerful testament to mentorship and the importance of mindset in entrepreneurial success. Sharing insights from the trenches of business growth and mentorship, Dr. Wakim and I emphasize the significance of facing the unknown with courage and the transformative questions that can pivot your path towards prosperity. 

So, get ready to shift gears and manifest the big stuff—because with the right tools and insights, your ultimate end game is closer than you think.

Connect with Dr. Ryan Wakim, The End Game Coach

Website: https://endgame.coach/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/endgamecoach/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085095900141
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theendgamecoach6602/ 

Podcast: https://endgamepodcast.buzzsprout.com/ 

Transcript

Greg Kuhn: 0:12

Hello everybody, so glad that you are here with us again at Manifested Big Stuff for another life-changing conversation, this time with a super special guest that I am so excited to share with you. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. We are welcoming Dr Ryan Wakim to the podcast to have a paradigm-shattering discussion about manifesting better versions of life. Dr Wakeham, please say hello to folks who are joining in.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 0:52

Hey, greg, thanks a lot. Yeah, I'm Dr Ryan Wakeham. I really appreciate you making the time to have this conversation. We had an incredible one on my podcast and I've also really been looking forward to the follow-on to that and digging deeper into manifestation and all the things that will come with that. So thanks for having me.

Greg Kuhn: 1:14

Wonderful. I, of course, am Greg Kuhn. I'm a manifesting coach, which means that I help people turn up their manifesting power. It's one of my very favorite things to do in life, and one of the ways that I do that is by bringing you life-changing podcasts. Today's guest, I want to tell you a little bit about Dr Wakeham, and I think you'll get a sense of why I'm so excited to continue the conversation that he and I started on his podcast last month.

Greg Kuhn: 1:51

Dr Ryan Wakeham is a board certified psychiatrist and he is an entrepreneur. He was driven early in his career to expand access to life-changing behavioral health care, and he has a passion for, and an expertise in, the subspecialty of, interventional psychiatry. Here are some examples of interventional psychiatry the use of ketamine and other psychedelics, transcranial magnetic stimulation and EEG-driven treatment planning. Now Dr Wakeham got his MD from West Virginia University. He also completed his residency training there, where he finished as the chief resident in 2014.

Greg Kuhn: 2:42

Dr Wakeham co-founded and served as the CEO of a wellness-informed multi-state healthcare system called Transformations. In 2021, transformations successfully merged with Shore Capital's outpatient mental health platform, and now Dr Wakeham sits as the acting chief medical officer of the Transformations Care Network, where he develops strategic clinical and growth-oriented initiatives, all infused with a purpose of changing the standard and stigma of behavioral health care. And, of course, as mentioned, Dr Wakeham hosts the Endgame podcast where, as your endgame coach, he teaches us how to exist today, expand into tomorrow and create our ultimate endgame. And the Endgame podcast is where Dr Wakeham and I had that powerful conversation about manifesting that we've both referred to that. We're going to continue today, Dr Wakeham. Is that a fair introduction? Is there anything else that you need to add?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 4:04

I think that's incredibly fair, Greg. It's certainly better than I did for you, so I really appreciate all the time and the effort there, but no awesome introduction. Exciting for the conversation.

Greg Kuhn: 4:14

Well, as am I. I got to tell you. I wrote down a few notes because I was getting pretty excited preparing for our talk to continue, if you will, our conversation previously. I want us to take a deep dive into the biology, the neurobiology of manifesting and, of course, manifesting better versions of ourselves and life, which is something of interest to every viewer and listener who tunes in to manifest the big stuff. I will say just to lead into my first question with you, Dr Wakeham, the biology of manifesting, I believe, is a major contributor to the I don't want to put this in air quotes, to the Wu status of the subject matter, because the biology of manifesting is really predicated on our limbic system and, as every student of neurobiology knows, our limbic system comprises what we call our subconscious. We call it subconscious for a reason it's sub, it is below our conscious awareness. And to really set the stage for us, I just want to, at the risk of oversimplifying it, our brain.

Greg Kuhn: 5:53

We're used to learning about the brain having three evolutionary components, if you will the cortex, which is the more modern, the most modern part of our brain. Our cortex is our thinker and our decider and that when we're, when we are, having conversations with ourselves inside our head when we're talking to ourselves. That's our cortex, right, that is who we most commonly think of as us. However, we have other parts of our brain, the limbic system, and I primarily focus in on the amygdala, which is a major component of manifesting our life.

Greg Kuhn: 6:38

Our limbic system, which comprises our subconscious, is actually the part of our brain that is manifesting our life and predicated on beliefs that we have inherited, ways that our amygdala has learned to look for change in its effort to keep us safe and alive.

Greg Kuhn: 7:03

And as we so, in my view, our limbic system manifests our version of life, manifests our reality, and then our cortex makes the best of it. I say makes the best of it because, right, wrong or indifferent, we all inherited beliefs that, as we move into adulthood, proved to be too limiting in their ability to manifest versions of life for us, and that can get pretty frustrating, to say the least. We manifest life by default before we start to go in and coach and work with our subconscious, with our amygdala, but we do not have to manifest life by default, not anymore anyway, as more and more people learn and study how we manifest our life. So, Dr Waco, my first question to you is at what point did you realize that manifesting yourself and your life didn't have to be done by default, and how did that work for you?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 8:25

Yeah, so. So, first of all, to touch on what you've just been speaking about, there's, there's that is science, right the science behind the cortical brain, which is thought to be our conscious level, and then the structures underneath the cortical brain, which is the subcortesis, and that includes the limbic system, which includes the amygdala and hippocampus, and amygdala is where we really it really drives our emotional states and our memories as it relates to emotions. And one of the things we know scientifically is, for instance, someone who's experienced a big T or little T trauma, the one of the areas of the brain, if we were to image it, that we see disruption and function is the amygdala. And so if you think of someone who has that chronic fight or flight adrenaline, someone with your diagnosed potentially PTSD, that is their subconscious, that is their amygdala, that is their limbic structures acting against them, right, and so they live their life in this hypervigilant state and they live their life at the effect of that which is around them, right? I think, when you boil it down to, both scientifically and otherwise, how you manifest, how you, how did I determine that I wasn't going to be determined by things in my life or affected by that around me or, for that matter, simply beholden to my own BS. You talk about beliefs. I talk about BS as belief systems that I had learned through, consciously and otherwise, my childhood, my upbringing, my surroundings, my environment, all of my experiences.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 10:15

And so the way in which, scientifically, you change, that is, you work on changing your mindset, and that involves separating yourself from the animal brain, which is the limbic system, and being able to bring that to your cortex and understanding that you're not beholden to things around you. Right, that no one can make you feel a certain way. You choose to feel a certain way about a given stimulus or event or experience and you can control that. Right. And the sooner you realize you can control your own emotions, you can control your reaction to that which is external to you, and that you don't have to be controlled by the things outside of your control, the sooner that you will get to a mindset closer to the point of manifestation.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 11:08

Now, that is not that is necessary. In my experience, that's not sufficient Meaning understanding the locus of control is a necessary aspect to shifting mindset and getting to a point of manifestation, but those two things are not directly correlative Meaning. You have to be able to do that. However, you also have to be able to click down one more level. You also have to be able to train your mind in a different way. You have to be able to think outside the box and stretch beyond, with even traditional science would tell you, in order to get to the point of manifestation.

Greg Kuhn: 11:49

Interesting. When we're talking about the components of the limbic system. I have come more and more to understand that changing the life, the reality that I'm manifesting, really comes down to being able to coach my amygdala and not to get too deep into the weeds of the biology here. But my understanding is that the amygdala has an outer section, an outer layer called the basolateral amygdala, which is an active learner. But talk to us. I mean, you mentioned beliefs and I like how you're differentiating, while also speaking to the connection of therapeutic processes, our beliefs. I am adamant, when I speak before groups of people to let them know that they are not. We are not responsible, if you will, for the bad versions of life that our beliefs are manifesting for us, In the sense that we didn't select those beliefs, did we? We inherited those beliefs, did we not?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 13:10

Absolutely. When you think about again. I use I always think about all this in the setting of trauma, because that's how I first learned about dysregulation of the limbic system, or maybe when I first really understood dysregulation of limbic system. And what we know is if you were to look at someone's amygdala and limbic system and think about when could our brain actually remember something? And if you look at the science, it's about three years old, give or take six months.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 13:43

However, if you had something incredibly traumatic happen to you at one and a half years old, it can't actually still code and stay coded into your brain at one and a half, even though scientifically we say three, and so that's a great example of you have known as a one and a half year old heck.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 14:06

Even as a three year old, you have very little control as to what's being deposited into your brain, right, you have very little control as to how you could maybe shift that experience and think about it a different way or package it in your brain in a more positive light, candlely.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 14:23

You really can't do that at three and so, to your exact point, not until you're seven, eight, 10 years old could you really begin to even scratch the surface of that capability and so, for everything that happens to you, until that time it was bestowed upon you good, bad or ugly and now it's part of your belief system right it is.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 14:46

You're viewing your world through that lens because it's the only lens that you know, and a lot of what you know you didn't go out and ask for, and so if you truly do inherit, now we can get into epigenetics and we could go to the I forget the Stanford professor talking about just free will and how this is actually multi-generational. But the point is you do inherit, even in your own experiences, belief systems that you did not choose right or that you did not comprehend or that you didn't understand at the moment in time. That happened to you Again, and that's without going down the road of epigenetics and generational genetics, which actually there's a lot of science and evidence and power to as well. So you absolutely view the world through a lens, with your own belief systems, many of which you did not choose to do or choose to have.

Greg Kuhn: 15:48

And correct me if I'm wrong. Just I guess, to double down on what you're saying prior to age nine 10, we don't even have the ability to discern, correct. I mean we cannot. A child does not have the capacity to say gosh, my mom sure is being an asshole right now. I bet she's had a really bad day. I shouldn't take that personally. That's not how it works, is it?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 16:22

No again. When going back to just the brain systems, your limbic system, the subcortive areas develop and really finalize earlier in your life. Again, these things are encoded and maintained and housed, whereas your cortical, your ability to discern, your ability to execute a function, your ability to truly have a mindset change doesn't fully develop until your mid-20s and there's a reason why car insurance companies charge you extra until you're 25. That's scientific. I mean, most brains are not fully baked, so to speak, until you're 25 years old and it's those cortical parts, those higher-order thinking areas, that need more time to develop. That makes sense.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 17:15

The animal brain, the reflexatory brain, is something that is through evolution. There from the start you have to know as a five-year-old to run away from a predator, but you don't know as a five-year-old again, that exact thing which is mom's upset. This isn't really intended to me, this isn't really toward me. You're just viewing it through the same lens as there's a predator or there's some fear or some danger. So you have to be able to do that at five.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 17:48

But your ability to truly discern and connect and disconnect comes much later in life and even then it's always changing. We're always learning more, we're always putting different lenses, we're always editing that through our own ability to be in touch with ourselves. And candidly, greg, as you know, there are many people that are far beyond 25 that still don't really have the ability to discern in a way that gets them where they want to go, and that's a lot of the work I'm sure you do which is, even those who are highly educated, even those who have an otherwise well-developed cortical framework, may still not be good at understanding external versus internal understanding, discerning and really being able to frame things in a way that gets them closer to the level of manifestation versus depression and anxiety Right, what we're talking about here is I treat every day and that is, those who don't, who can't, who haven't been taught or who haven't been able to make that discernment and begin to disconnect and reconnect in the right areas.

Greg Kuhn: 19:07

And, of course, I want to say, just for the record, that when we're speaking about mental illness and maladies that require a medical intervention, that's not necessarily, of course, the path that I'm speaking to on this podcast we're talking about. Well, let me put it this way often use this example and I'd like you to speak to this and the impact of this. So I am. I'm a five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old child and my mother wants me to be thin. I'm chubby, kind of husky, you know whatever the nomenclature uses to refer to that in a polite way. My mom has the best of intentions for me. She doesn't want me to get teased at school. She has her own bias against extra weight, whatever a combination of factors, but she is giving me a lot of messages about needing to eat better, needing to get more exercise, needing to lose weight, and she's doing her best to convey that in a helpful way. Sometimes she gets frustrated with me. She's got her own hangups. You know, all humans are imperfect. I would never want to demonize parents. I'm one myself and I'm just as prone to do this throughout my parenting. But somewhere along the way because my mom resorts sometimes to tough love she certainly doesn't back down from her expectations because they're coming from the best of intentions, and somewhere along the way I quickly the message I get as a child is that when I'm disappointing my mom, that's not okay and that I need to change myself. I'm not okay. I need to be something different to please her. I need to make sure that I am suitable enough to please important people in my life. Ultimately, that's what I take away from those interactions.

Greg Kuhn: 21:26

And now, as an adult and I'm in the dating world and I get married and we do those things that so many of us do, I now have a far different conscious thoughts about my worthiness, about my, about my desirability and my internal value, and certainly I consciously lean into wanting an intimate, open, sharing, fulfilling relationship. However, because of that belief that I inherited inadvertently from a well-intentioned mom, I, in my amygdala, in my limbic system, I have this belief that is running the show that says Greg, you're not good enough, just on your own. You've got to please the important people in your life. So I'm now in my relationship with my wife. I am operating on this system where I've constantly got to prove myself and I've constantly got to be validated by external rewards, recognition from my wife that I'm okay.

Greg Kuhn: 22:49

Well, anybody who's been through that kind of a situation whether whichever of the seats you were sitting in you know that is a nothing but a setup for resentments, unspoken expectations, a lot of pain, a lot of heartache and, furthermore, anytime that I'm dependent upon anything outside of me to feel okay, I've created a bottomless pit because that will never be satiated. So here I am as an adult, functioning very capably, and my conscious thoughts are not geared toward I'm not good enough and must be externally validated. Yet underneath my conscious awareness, that belief is still running the show and manifesting my life, and that is why so many of us or I really should ask this as a question does that speak to why we, as adults, can find life to be so disappointing, so dispiriting, so frustrating and ultimately and unfortunately, usually wind up blaming ourselves because we just don't understand what is happening beneath the surface?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 24:18

That's exactly I mean the answer is yes, Greg. The reality of the situation is in that forever spiral. As I said, you can be well beyond 25 and still not really maybe be in touch with your own self in a way that puts you in a position to be successful. That you're in this never-ending doom loop based on belief systems you inherited or that were thrust upon you consciously or subconsciously and you've not taken a step back and a breath to think through that. So that goes really deep and there's a lot there, and obviously, again as a psychiatrist, that's when it gets to a spectrum level of zero to 180, and once you cast the 90 degree mark now we're talking about maybe you're seeing me in a different capacity, but the reality is it is a continuum, it is a spectrum and I think there's a lot. I mean, even just that kind of line of thinking can cause a lot of anxiety and angst, and so I think the most important thing someone can do and what, as part of my tagline to exist today.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 25:33

I do firmly believe in the idea of mindset and in order to get into the right mindset, you have to be capable of taking a breath and you have to be capable of being able to look within and examine these things right, and so the most intelligent people in the world may not have the ability to be in touch with their own feelings, and that will put them at a disadvantage. If you could take a breath and look within whether that's meditation, mindfulness exercises if there's a pattern you can establish or you can take a breath and realize, then you can begin to do something about that right. And that might be something that has to be practiced and take time and again. You're not going to just go from someone who's lived their whole life with these subconscious belief systems who's suddenly not going to do that right. It's like you just wave a magic wand or snap a finger and all that goes away. But if you can't even take a breath and begin to realize that those patterns exist or begin to realize that they're disempowering behaviors or belief systems, then you'll never get there right. So the first step is to, as I say, exist today and I know you believe this heavily too which is you have to be able to meditate, be mindful and take a breath and begin to analyze your own life and your own belief systems and your own processes, so you can eventually get to the point.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 27:03

As I said, there are pieces of this that are necessary for manifestation, but many of them are not sufficient in and of themselves. Right, and step one is you have to at least be able to be in touch with your feelings and understand your own patterns and get out of your own way, and if you can't even do that, you'll never get to the point of manifestation. But yeah, so go back to your original question. That's 100% true. It's a never-ending do-loop and for me and those I mentor or coach, that is where you have to get into some sort of mindfulness practice or meditation, or you have to be able to calm the mind so you can see deeper within yourself and begin the process of a mind shift in an eventual manifestation.

Greg Kuhn: 27:50

I love that, Dr Wakeham. So I let's take this street level for our viewers. I am walking through life. I inherited limiting beliefs limiting, but let's define this. I say limiting beliefs, meaning the beliefs that are currently reside in my subconscious are proving themselves incapable of manifesting a version of life that is aligned enough with my desires for it. So I'm cruising through life and I have these limiting beliefs and they are manifesting dissatisfying, frustrating, unfulfilling versions of life.

Greg Kuhn: 28:38

I tend to notice these unfulfilling versions of life in the most important parts of my life, the parts of my life that are just laden with opportunity for fulfillment, like relationships and career and community engagement, spirituality, parenting, those sorts of things. It can almost seem like my subconscious is working against me, it's my enemy, because it doesn't care about my happiness, it cares about my safety, it cares about keeping me alive, and so its job is to monitor for any sort of change, any sort of deviation from what it knows, and it doesn't matter whether that change is of a positive nature or a negative nature. Any change sounds the alarm. Well, so am I imprisoned by my subconscious. Well, what I have found and I'd love you to speak to this, I may not have a intercom. That's a pipeline, direct connection with my subconscious, hence it's called subconscious. However, I can see shadows of what's in there in every moment of my life.

Greg Kuhn: 30:03

And to take a step back to what you were talking about a moment ago so powerfully, my feelings, the feelings that my life, my reality elicit, are breadcrumb trails back to my belief systems, and painful feelings are breadcrumb trails back to limiting beliefs. My feelings are a feedback loop. Is that? How have you come to view feelings and how do you utilize feelings? Of course, and I will say this before I turn it back over my work has often drawn praise from therapists. I've heard from therapists through the years because I am so adamant about feeling and processing our emotions. For one thing, we can't follow that breadcrumb trail without processing them. We need that information, don't we?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 31:10

Yes.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 31:10

So feelings are your feedback loop and that's where, as I said earlier, there's actually something called alexithymia, and alexithymia, by definition, is this inability to be in touch with your feelings. So if I were to ask you how you're feeling today, you would say I'm feeling just fine. Meanwhile, you have this frown on your face and you have a tear rolling down your eye. So this emotional disconnect and actually this can go down a whole other rabbit hole of EQ and emotional intelligence, and that's both internal and external too, how you perceive others and yourself. But the way in which you feel about a situation can absolutely be the breadcrumb back to a limiting belief, and so when I talk about taking a breath or a moment or meditating or being mindful, it is around the idea of examining or processing why did that thing cause this reaction? Why did that situation or that comment or that TV show, whatever it is, point to an external something? Why did this external something make me feel this way? Because that feeling is a feedback loop, it is a clue back down the road of maybe a limiting belief that exists and, by the way, it's also okay to have a fear. I mean, if there is something happening around you that brings you fear, that emotion may be the right emotion. But if it's disempowering you, if it's not serving you, if it's coming up and other people don't see it or other people aren't feeling that, that's an opportunity for you to take a step, take a breath and examine why did this cause that?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 32:58

And the sooner you can connect to your emotions, the sooner you can understand the way things are making you feel, the more likely you are to go down the right path of positive mindset shifting and again, ultimately manifestation. But it is a feedback loop. It does point us in the direction of some clues and if you never follow the clues or you're never doing anything about that, you will continue to have this never ending new loop. You will continue to feel that way when you shouldn't, and you'll continue, which will disempower you and not serve you, which will lead to voids and infelings and voids and purpose and voids and happiness, which again just becomes an ever ending loop. So that just enhances your subconscious, that just enhances the next continues to feed into that. And so the sooner you can identify it and try to break that cycle and then do something different about it, the more likely you'll be successful.

Greg Kuhn: 33:59

Yes, absolutely. I listening to you speak. You reminded me Dr Wakeham of. I understand I haven't been to medical school, but my understanding is it's an old joke that the amygdala controls the four F's fight, flight, freeze and sex.

Greg Kuhn: 34:23

So, and when we let's talk about what, in terms of manifesting our version of reality, our amygdala senses things that are below our conscious awareness. Our amygdala, for example, can smell the difference between sweat that a human makes by exerting themselves and sweat that a human makes because they're scared. And the amygdala smells that, that hormonal difference, in four milliseconds, so way faster than our conscious mind, is sensing and interpreting. And the amygdala is also using that information, using its own sensory information, primarily above, if you will, taking precedence over the conscious sensory awareness that we are sharing with the amygdala. So my understanding is in this and I want to use this as a transition into now how do we begin to coach and I know you've been talking, you've been speaking to that throughout the conversation.

Greg Kuhn: 35:43

My understanding is that my amygdala it's not usually wrong in what it senses. It definitely identifies change. It changes appropriately and accurately. What it's often wrong about, however, is the degree of the threat, and I heard you speaking to that just a moment ago, because when we don't have a rapport, what I find, that most often and unfortunately this gets taught a lot in law of attraction circles and another self-help circles A pretty common reaction, consciously usually for humans, when they are receiving that reality manifestation of an overreactive amygdala, is to shout the amygdala down, to try to shut it up. Shut it down and right wrong or indifferent. One of the most common ways to do that is utilizing positive thinking as a way to cram a new understanding into the limbic system, and that simply doesn't work as a change agent in those kinds of situations. It's rather limited, is it not?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 37:23

It is. I think, when we talk about your ability to manage your limiting beliefs and your amygdala as I said earlier, the amygdala we're spending a little bit of time bashing it, but the reality is it's a critical and survival mechanism and, to your point, it can sense and process things. Your whole limbic system will sense things in milliseconds and your it goes. A good example is you can think. I think it's four times faster than you can talk. So and your talking is actually part of your cortical functions. So as you just get deeper into the brain, deeper into under the layers, the speed at which things can be sensed and spoken and thought all change and they are dramatically different. However, in my experience and what I believe is, the more you train your cortical brain, the more that. Just like if you're going to go do some sort of Ironman contest, if you just walk out on the course and you've never lifted a weight or done any swim training or your chances of finishing in A or slim the none, your chances of doing anything successfully with it are certainly zero. And so it's all about that training. And so if you prepare your cortical brain, if you prepare your executive function, your discernment, if you can train that over time with meditation and mindfulness and self reflection and internal report building, then even when the amygdala senses something that might be a threat, your brain, your cortical brain, can at least filter it a bit, not necessarily tamp it down.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 39:08

Again, the amygdala is not a bad thing. Your limbic system is not bad. Your limbic system just needs the filter, it needs the filtration. And so the more you can train your cortical brain to be both aware of but also respond to stimuli and a more positive light, the less likely something that wasn't negative doesn't get into your amygdala and start causing that fear reaction. Right, you should still jam on the break. We need to jam on a break. That's your limbic system working. But you might not need to jam on it as hard if you had trained your brain around the idea of what is stopping an appropriate amount of time being, and that's all around your cortical brain. So, being prepared, training it up, investing in your cortical brain, in your higher thought order brain, to be that filter for your limbic system, because it will sense quicker and react quicker if you don't do some work in advance.

Greg Kuhn: 40:15

I'd like to share with you my number one way of doing what you're describing as a manifestor when I notice that I am manifesting a version of reality that is either very frustrating or very unfulfilling painful for me, and I'll give an example of this. I was getting ready to go for a run. I'm a pretty avid runner and this was a couple months ago. I was out in the garage getting ready and I noticed that I was feeling just terrible about my business. Manifest the Big Stuff based on some feedback that I had gotten recently, the kind of dispiriting affect where I felt like I was a failure, I wanted to quit, I wanted to chuck it and run away, I wanted to hide whatnot. Well, I have taught myself and I talk about this often to tell. In situations like that, where I'm manifesting that kind of a reality, I tell myself the best feeling, believable story possible For it to be best feeling. I start by acknowledging the feelings that I'm getting. I start by and in that situation. So I started by saying, yeah, I have gotten some really disappointing news. I absolutely wanted to get different feedback. I'm very disappointed by that. I'm unhappy about it. It's scary to me. All those things are true. You are absolutely right, amigdala. All that stuff has occurred and I don't feel good about it. And then, to make the story believable, I softly, if you will, without trying to shout the fear down and the painful feelings down I begin to soothe myself by bringing up authentic engagement and experiences that I've had. For example, in my garage, I said while all that is true and there's no denying it it's also true that Rome wasn't built overnight. That's absolutely true. It's also true that I'm working very hard and that the missteps I've taken weren't done intentionally, nor were they done out of lack of attention to details. And it's also true that I've had successful experiences and plenty of them in the past. It's also true that I'm continuing to work hard and that I'm learning and growing and changing. It's also true that the reality I manifest, the best use of it isn't to define me but to inform me.

Greg Kuhn: 43:13

Now, none of this stuff changes the disappointing nature of what has occurred. However, it is reasonable for me to say that, while disappointed, this may not be the end of the world, and ultimately, I might even look back on this and be grateful for the pathways it opened and the willingness that it brought to me and things of this nature that I know. I've often experienced what that does for me and what that did for me in the garage. It doesn't instantly change my reality, like a genie granting a wish and suddenly there's a treasure chest in front of me full of gold, but it completely changes me and since I am the source of what I manifest, I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to have me share that.

Greg Kuhn: 44:10

As I left the garage and went on the run, I hadn't changed the base reality of the news that I'd received and that material feedback, but I was already beginning to see and understand opportunities right in front of my nose that were there all along, but I could not see and understand them from my previous perspective. And that works very well for me. What are some of your top tools that you yourself use in addition to teach?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 44:48

Yeah, so I love that. I love what you just said. It's the reframing and the restructuring and again, both things can be true to your point. You can have this feedback and this situation and this history of success and so on, so forth.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 45:08

I've always learned and my mentor always taught me, and what I teach others is Is the power of your life really comes down to the power of the questions that you ask, and whether that's to yourself or to others. And so, in that same you know mindset or environment or situation, one of the things I would ask myself or I would coach someone else to ask is and basically, what you did, but this idea of what's great about it, right? So, yes, there's this thing and it's not so great and I'm feeling this certain way, but just the question of what's great about it, right? So, like a good example could be, I Wrecked my car right, and so that's obviously negative, that's bad, that's all, all insurance and all the money and all my car is going to devalue and but just take again going back to take a breath, take a step and what's great about this? Well, I'm not life-threatening, you know, my life wasn't threatened. I'm was able to walk away from the situation or, hey, I really wanted a new car anyway.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 46:13

This is an opportunity to go get that or just that one simple question, to break the negative Feedback loop and that limbic system taking control. That one question could go so far and shifting your mindset towards a positive and to your point. Think about how the rest of the day, you know, would go if you were able to just take that breath and ask that question and answer it Truthfully, right. I mean, you can't ask yourself the question and then say a bum bug like, and you know, keep going down the negative, truly trying to find the positive or not. Try, you know, do or do not. There is no try right. Find the positive in that situation and it'll serve you so well in your future, regardless of what it is you're going to take on or what it is you find purpose or derive fulfillment from. Ask yourself powerful questions and you'll get powerful results.

Greg Kuhn: 47:06

That's a great seque, Dr. Wakim. I'm keeping my eye on the time here. I've got a really important question that I want you to answer momentarily. But first, something just as important Talk to us about the ways that you work with people, the ways that you help people. What are some of the services that you provide and what are the best ways for people to engage with you and get in touch with you?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 47:37

Yeah well, great Thanks for that setup there. So, as you alluded to at the top of the hour here I go by the end game coach. Really, that was born out of when you're going through my bio, when I merged in with short capital, I had at the time six outpatient group practices I developed, and when I did that in going through the diligence process I had a hundred plus employees. I had built this from the ground up and I lived my life by the idea if you don't know what you don't know. And I was so shocked at what I didn't know going into the diligence I knew my business so much as I understood kind of what I was getting myself involved in. And I found myself in that process really being really asking myself like where can I find more help? Why is there not someone I can turn to? I don't have a mentor for something like this.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 48:31

And that's really where the end game coach bore out of. It's this idea of Kind of tactically, the idea of how you might develop your own end game, both through setting up a business, developing that business, growing that business and then maybe eventually selling that business. So this idea of an end game being some sort of sale or transition of your business. But, as you've heard me say before, I'm also a firm believer that there's the professional but also the personal side, and so, as a psychiatrist, as someone who believes heavily in mindset, I do work with individuals or groups around Culture and communication and mindset shifting and just really setting up a successful ecosystem of the mind so you can even be a successful entrepreneur, so you can even get to a possible end game, and so that's my backstory for the end game coach.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 49:24

You can go to endgamecoach. As an example, I have a Facebook group that we've recently started, called the end game club. That really brings like minded individuals together, spirited business entrepreneurs who might need help with how do you set up this thing, or what is due diligence look like, or what's the best business type or structure for my new venture. So it is, you know, focuses a lot on business, but it also focuses on mindset, focuses on how you put yourself in a position to be successful. So, whether it's through the YouTube channel, my podcast and game coach podcast, or the Facebook group, would be really great ways to engage and we'll put those obviously in the show notes here too, but that's how you would engage and I do again offer group coaching, individual coaching, mentorship, whether it's on the business side or the person side.

Greg Kuhn: 50:23

Wonderful, and that is also a great segue, because I can't end our conversation without asking you to speak directly to the audience. Imagine that I am a client of yours and although, of course, people aren't coming to you saying,. r Dundefined D S S Wakeham, teach me how to manifest my life better that may not be the nomenclature that they're bringing to you. What do you say to me? I'm coming to you and I need your coaching. Obviously, there are parts of my life, whether it's my business or things related to it, that aren't going the way that I want them to, and I've probably gotten myself into a pretty dispirited place, frustrated place.

Greg Kuhn: 51:16

Undoubtedly, I've been trying a lot of different things. I've been trying my best. I've probably sought out expert help. I've read books, watched YouTube videos, talked to friends whatnot? Done my best to manifest this part of my life the way I truly want. I've reached a point where I'm ready and willing to be coached, which we both know. I make sure that I'm actively coached all the time. It's such an important component to a successful life. This person is not in a good place and they're coming to you. Where do you start them? What are the most important things to set somebody onto a better path to help them get and stay on that better path.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 52:09

Yeah, really the crux of this whole conversation, which is we have to first dig into almost a bit of a discovery as to why, maybe why they don't think they're successful or why they haven't yet been successful, and where they want to go. So, again, asking powerful questions, getting to the pain points, getting to the pleasure points and understanding what drives you. Why do you want to do this? What results are you looking for? Why are you looking for those results and what's not serving you? So I do, although, again, a lot of what I put out there has more to do with just the tactical business side. You can't be a successful entrepreneur if you haven't built from a strong foundation, and to me as a psychiatrist, that has to be a foundation of an inappropriate and positive mindset.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 53:04

And what I often see in individuals who are not as successful as they want to be or who really want to do more but they just can't get out of their own way to do it, is that they haven't yet done the existing today part right.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 53:19

And that's actually why I say exist today so you can expand tomorrow and then create the ultimate end game, because if you don't, if you build upon a cracked foundation, the chances that you're not going to turn out being the leaning tower of Pisa are pretty small. So you have to start with the basics, you have to get your mindset in the right spot and from there good things will come. And that goes to the manifestation piece. Yes, there's mentorship involved with just changing your inflection point and your growth strategy, and I've been there. I've done that, so I'm able to help you on truly the business aspects as well. But again, you often have to start with that positive foundation and ecosystem so that you can eventually get there. And I don't take that lightly, nor do I think you can go where you want to go or be the best version of yourself, unless you put that work in on the front end.

Greg Kuhn: 54:15

So having a target, meeting yourself where you are and building a foundation to go from there and making sure that all of those things are authentic, Based on our own internal litmus test. We don't want to go through the motions. We don't want to slap smiley face stickers on top of empty gas gauges, do we?

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 54:41

Correct. Yeah, I'm a big Simon Sinek. Find your why. Like, if you want to go, do X, if you want to have this goal, let's explore why and let's make sure that's aligned with yourself and your family and all the things you value, like what are your core mission, vision and values, so that we can shoot for the stars, but do it in a way that aligns with who you want to be as a person.

Greg Kuhn: 55:06

And that brings us to a wonderful conclusion. I really want to thank you, Dr Wakeham, for your time and for popping the hood for us and laying it all out there. I know we made good on our intention to create something of tremendous value and I really appreciate you being willing to do that with us and for us today.

Dr. Ryan Wakim: 55:31

Yeah, great, it was a pleasure. Both these conversations have been truly amazing and look forward to a continued relationship with you. We'll have to work together on what manifesting that will look like, but very excited to continue the conversation over time and super appreciative for you having me on your podcast.

Greg Kuhn: 55:49

Well, very much reciprocated. And in closing, I want to remind folks, if you haven't joined my Facebook manifesting group, that's a great place to start, and why haven't you Go ahead and rectify that? Today it is called manifest the big stuff, with Greg Kuhn creating our realities together. That's a great place to be so that you can stay abreast and stay in touch and hear all the latest. I can't think of anything more valuable for you to share with me and with Dr Wakeham then your time. You're spending that with us right now and that is not something we take for granted. I always want to honor that and I definitely want to thank you for sharing your time with us. So until we get a chance to meet up again and hopefully that will be very soon Keep believing and keep manifesting.