Ronnie Landis: Welcome to the holistic health and human potential podcast.

I am your host, Ronnie Landis. I’m an international speaker, author of multiple books, an integrative nutritionist, a transformation and embodiment coach, and simply a man who has devoted most of my life to the study application and integration And it is my biggest inspiration to bring you weekly episodes that will expand your mind, challenge your paradigm, deepen your heart, and help you to embody the greatest version of yourself, as I believe you are meant to do something incredible with your life.

And this podcast exists simply to support you on that journey. Welcome to episode 102 of the Holistic Health and Human Potential show. My name is Ronnie Landis and we have an absolutely incredible interview lined up with Dr. John Demartini and before we dive into that I want to let you all know that this show is sponsored by a company called Neurohacker Collective and this company has produced one of the most powerful nootropics otherwise known as a brain supportive cognitive enhancing product called qualia.

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You can look at all the testimonials. And really decide if this is something that you want to try. And if it is, you can get 10 percent off your first order by using my coupon code, human potential, again, receive 10 percent off by typing in. Human potential at the checkout. And the last thing I want to say before we dive into this is that if you get tons of value out of the show, and you’ve been listening for quite some time and you just really appreciate the amount of effort that it takes to bring on some of the world’s best and brightest minds, I would love for you to leave us a review on iTunes.

You can do that on your iPhone app, or you can do that on your iTunes app on your computer. And just leave us a great review because every time somebody does it boosts our ratings on the iTunes Visibility and makes us more accessible to people all around the world and that is the goal of this show to reach hundreds of thousands of people All around the world.

So that’s it for me. I want to bring you into one of the most amazing conversations I have ever been a part of by far. And just really diving into the brilliant mind of one of the world’s foremost leaders in transformation and personal development, Mr. Dr. John Demartini.

Dr. Demartini is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on human behavior and personal development. He is the founder of the Demartini Institute. A private research and education organization with a curriculum of over 72 different courses covering multiple aspects of human development. His trademark methodology is the Demartini Method and the Demartini Value Determination.

Are the culmination of 44 years of cross disciplinary research and study. His work has been incorporated into human development industries across the world. Dr. Demartini travels 360 days a year to countries all over the globe, sharing his research and findings in the all markets and sectors. He is the author of over.

40 published books and over 29 different languages. It is my supreme honor and delight to have this conversation with you, Dr. John Demartini. Welcome to the show. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, thank you for having me. 

Ronnie Landis: Yes. Um, so I want to set this up by saying that I first, like many people became aware of you and your work about, I want to say 11 or 12 years ago in a wonderful film called the secret.

Uh, and one of the quotes, I can remember it as clear as day because I found myself, um, sharing this quote with people that stuck out to me so much. Um, And it really sums up to me a lot of what I get out of your work. And, um, the quote was basically when the voices on the inside become a louder than the voices on the outside, you have mastered your life.

And that quote has stuck with me ever since. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, I, uh, I I’ve been. noted, I guess, for saying something along that line for many years. And, uh, it’s very inspiring to know that, that it has somehow been, you know, received and is used. And because I, I believe that there’s some wisdom in it and I, I try my best to share wisdom.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Well, one of the things I want to, as we get into this, Or before we get into this, I should say, I want to have you share your, your life experience with people and just kind of like a superhero origin story, if you will. That’s something that I think your story is phenomenal and very inspiring. And one of the distinctions though, that you made recently in an interview that I just listened to that I thought was so.

so profound and so almost necessary for people that may not be aware of your work to know is you said that you’re not a motivator, you’re an inspired educator. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about what that distinction means to you? 

Dr. John Demartini: Okay. I, um, it’s been my observation over the years of research that each individual lives by a set of priorities, a set of values.

Things that are most important to least important in their life. It’s sometimes called the hierarchy of an individual’s values. And this set of priorities that they live their life by, uh, their highest priority, their highest value, the thing that’s most important in life. They spontaneously are inspired from within to do.

They don’t require any motivation from the outside or incentives or rhetorical persuasion to get them to do the thing that’s most important to them. And, uh, this is where they’re most disciplined and reliable and focused and where they. are spontaneously acting. This is where they’ll walk their talk, not live their lives.

But as 

you go down the list of values, the values become more extrinsic and they require ever greater degrees of motivation or incentive, uh, pleasure to do it, pain if you don’t do it kind of things, uh, to get you to do it. So motivation from the external sources like that, obviously not an intrinsic value.

It’s an external motivation. And so motivational speakers many times use rhetorical persuasion to get people to do things that may or may not be intrinsically valued by the person. They may be trying to sell something to them or selling an idea and they can use persuasion to in a sense, derail them from what is really meaningful to the person.

I’m interested in helping people find out what is truly inspired from within, what’s intrinsically driving them, and help them orchestrate their life through education, inspired education, to help them live a magnificent life from within. And I believe that when a person is congruent in an alignment with what they value most, They have an Excel and they, they have the most fulfillment.

So a motivational speaker, somebody to trying to get you to do something that may or may not align with that. And, um, an intro and inspired educator like myself is interested in finding out what that is and structuring your life around it. 

Ronnie Landis: That’s, that’s a beautiful explanation. And I love your work around clarifying our, our hierarchy of values.

When I really dove into your work a number of years ago, And got a feel for what your message really was about. I realized that my value system could use adjusting because like so many of us out there, we often will take on the values of other people for whatever reason. Um, and I just found that to be super helpful and very clarifying.

And it’s actually something that I share with my clients and it’s part of my work in the health and nutrition field of actually helping people. Find what works best for, for them by actually identifying what are their values in the first place. Can 

Dr. John Demartini: I share a story? Yes, please. It’ll take a few minutes, but it’s a worthy story.

I was, uh, asked by a doctor quite a number of years back to, who asked me to consult with him to assist him in being what he perceived to be more successful. He wanted to be successful. At the time, he thought he wasn’t. And I, and I said, uh, he told me, he says, I want you to help me become successful. And I said, all right.

So the first question I have for you, sir, is where are you successful? And he looked at me with a puzzled face and he said, but I’m not, and that’s why I’m hiring you. And I maybe didn’t make myself clear, but I want to be successful. Uh, and so I want you to help me become successful. I said, great. So answer the question, where are you successful?

He was puzzled again and he said, well, Dr. DeMartino, I’m not making myself clear. I’m not successful. I want to be successful. Can you help me be successful? I said, great. Um, if you want me to help you, then you need to answer the question, where are you successful? And he looked at me again with puzzlement and I said, you’re not missing success.

You’re not honoring the success you have. So I want you to find out where you’re successful. So look in your life, right? And where are you meeting the expectations and the intentions that you are setting out for and accomplishing them? And he all of a sudden paused and he looked at me and he said, well, I do have an amazing relationship with my wife and we really have a deep love for each other.

And we have something that is a special. And he says, and I did have that as a goal and I’m achieving that. And, um, yes, I guess that would be considered by many to be successful. And I said, great. What else? And then he paused and he looked at me and he said, well, my son is in baseball. He’s 10. And, um, we may win the pin it this summer.

I’m the coach and he’s doing a great job. And, uh, we really love working together as a, as a family team here. And we just might win the pin it. And I guess I’m successful in the way I’m raising my son and playing ball and also, uh, governing the team as a coach. I said, fantastic. Where else is successful?

And he paused again and he looked deeper and his eyes rolled looking in the, his, his eye dials. And, uh, and he said, well, actually my mother in law lives with us and most people don’t get along with their mother in law, but we have an amazing relationship. And she’s as close to me as I am to my own mother.

And, uh, we get along and she’s helps with the, the children. And, and, uh, I guess that’s a success. I said, fantastic. Where else are you successful? And he looked deeper and he goes, well, we, uh, all as a family work in the yard and we have the most beautiful yard, I believe. And I think we’re going to win the yard of the summer.

And, um, we’re on track with that. And we have all as a goal to do that. And I think we’re going to win that. And I said, great. Where else is successful? So on a Wednesday nights and Sundays, I. I’m a lay minister at my church and I’m participating in that. And that’s been a goal for about a decade and I’m achieving that.

And that was a long term goal and it’s happening. And I said, okay. And we went on down the list and, and we found a series of, of successes. And I said, okay, so can you see that you have successes in your life? And he says, well, in those areas, yes. And I said, can you see that if you’re judging yourself as not successful, you’re expecting yourself to be successful in another area, other than what you already are successful in.

He goes, well, that’s true. And I said, well, in order to do that, you’re probably comparing yourself to somebody else you think is more successful. He said, I think that is true. I said, so who are you comparing yourself to? That’s making you think you’re not successful. He says, well, I think I know who that is.

And I said, who is that? And he says, well, this gentleman up on the Hill, he’s got a 6, 000 square foot home, three car garage, uh, a boat in the front, uh, has a big practice. He sees lots of patients, makes lots of money, et cetera. And I said, so in comparison to him, you’re labeling yourself not successful in those areas of business practice and volume and big houses, et cetera.

He says, yes. I said, just out of curiosity, do you know this gentleman? He said, yes. Do you know his relationship with his wife? He says, I do. I said, how’s his relationship with his wife? He says, attention. You asked that there’s a lot of controversy around that. They. They sometimes separate and then get back together again.

And there’s cause, you know, talk about divorce and it’s very volatile. And I said, I got a question. Would you say that that’s a, where his success is? He goes, well, maybe not. I said, and what about his relationship with his kids? Does he have kids? Yes. And does he have a son? Yes. And he says, it’s interesting you asked that he says they’re having problems with their son there.

He’s not doing well in school. He’s doing drugs and he’s getting in trouble a lot. I said, all right. And uh, what about their mother in law? Uh, he said, that’s interesting you said that, well they moved out of the country to get away from that crazy lady. And I said, and what about the yard? He said, well they have people that take care of the yard, I don’t think he even notices his yard.

He drives sometimes right over the edge of the grass. And I said, and what about, uh, church on Sunday? Does he, does he go to church and does he participate in church? He says, no, they’re not, they’re much, they’re not much into, uh, those types of things, spiritually. And I said, alright, let me make something clear to you.

Everybody has an area of success. And, uh, it’s in their highest values and you have a very high value on family and spirituality and a lower value on business and finance. He has a very high value on business and finance and a lower value on family and spirituality. He’s excelling in the area of his highest values.

Like you are, you’re excelling in the area of your highest values, like you are. And like he’s not. And can you see that in the areas, would you trade places with him when it comes to family or spirituality or, or your son, et cetera? He says, God, no. And I said, so let’s get the first principle of success clear.

Every human being will accelerate and become excellent in the area of their highest values. And if they have expectations of excelling there, they’ll feel fulfilled and successful. But if they have expectations outside their own highest values, And they expect themselves to live in other people’s values.

They’re going to end up beating themselves up and thinking there’s something missing with them. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re not honoring where you are succeeding and you’re expecting to live outside your values. So unless you shift your values and have a higher value on business and finance and allow the other values to maybe drop on the value list, uh, you’re not likely to live his life.

So envying him and trying to imitate him will be suicide. You want to understand and honor the success you already have and appreciate that. And he looked at me and he goes with a tear in his eye, he goes, I never would have even come to that conclusion. That is so amazing to finally realize that I’m successfully got a tear in his eye.

And I said, now he said, is there any way I can make more cash? I said, well, unless you have a higher value on wealth building and you’re willing to sacrifice some of the money spent on the things you do for your family and the art and, and your studies at spirituality, Um, you’re probably going to keep spending your money on those over buying assets that put money in your pocket.

So we can stack up the benefits of building wealth in your life and stack up the benefits of how building a business will help you and your family and your spirituality. And we can integrate those values and increase the probability of empowering both. And that’s what I did with him and it changed his life.

But he started with the illusion that there was something missing in his life. And in fact, there isn’t anything. It’s just a Hercules dictating his destiny. 

Ronnie Landis: Oh my, there’s so much that comes up for me. As I’m listening to you, there was a moment I just closed my eyes and just this big smile came over me because I just realized in our personal development climate, it’s so, it’s so easy to externalize our values or the things that we think we want in our life that represent a sense of satisfaction or fulfillment or success when it’s not.

What you so brilliantly laid out for us is that if we just look inside and we look close enough, we’ve already achieved, so to speak, maybe there’s a better word than achieve, we’re already Existing as the thing or the experience that we’re trying so hard and we’re so often stressed out to, to achieve outside of us.

And it just kind of brought a, almost brought a tear to my eye. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, anytime we attempt to live outside our own hierarchy of values, we automatically designed. physiologically and psychologically to perceive self defeat and to have fears and to have self depreciation. And the self depreciation is a normal healthy feedback to our consciousness to let us know we’re not being authentic and integral to what we value most.

And so this is a lesson not to try to subordinate ourselves to others and live in the shadows of others. But to master ourselves and let the voice and the vision on the inside become louder and more profound than all opinions and reflections on the outside. That’s the whole principle. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, that’s it.

Yes. Okay. So, um, everyone listening bullet point that one, I want to pivot, um, because you have such a remarkable, um, story that led you to where you’re at. And for me personally, John, what I love about origin stories is all the synchronicities. the way, and I would love for you to maybe share just what comes up for you when you think about how you got to where you’re at from where you started in Oahu and just maybe share some of the, the interesting, uh, stories that, that were really profound for you.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, I’ll go back even further than Oahu. Cause that probably has some meaning. I was born in Houston, Texas, 1954, November 25th, 808 in the morning. I actually met later in my life at age 50, the actual gentleman that actually delivered me. It’s quite interesting. Wow. Uh, but I had a deformity. I was born with my arm turned inward and my leg turned inward and I had what they call pigeon arm and leg.

And, um, so, When I tried to get up to walk, my, uh, I would fall over. So I had to wear braces on my leg and my arm. I was left handed, which was considered sinister in those days. And I tried to suck my, my, uh, T my second, my, And, um, so they, in those days, it was bad to be left handed and they were trying to correct people from doing that.

So when I had to wear braces on my arm and leg, they thought, Oh, this is good. This will keep him from using it, train him to use his right hand, which led me to being ambidextrous in many ways. By the time I was four, I begged my father to let me out of the braces because I was tired of being kind of a Forrest Gump ridicule.

And people didn’t really want to interact with me. And I, um, I finally got out of the braces and my dad said, as long as you keep your arm and leg straight, you’re out. But if not, I got to put you back in. And I made it a point to keep my arm and leg straight as much as I possibly could. And then because I had been constrained, I wanted to be on the run.

So when I, second, I got out of that, I literally ran around the house. I ran down the, around the yard. I ran up and down the street. I ran to school. I ran everywhere as I got older. And I’ve been on the run ever since. So I really think that that void was necessary in my life to live the life I have today, which is full time travel.

I like, I feel a bit claustrophobic. Um, I always say that the universe is my playground. The world is my home. Every country is a room in the house and every city is a platform to share my heart and soul. And I really believe that Earth is more home than any one location. I, I, I live on a ship called the world that actually circumnavigates the world.

And I get off and on as I’m traveling, speaking, but it’s, it’s free to travel around the world. It goes to every part of the world, literally. And so I, I think that that childhood event was a perfect thing for me, a gift to me to fulfill my mission. And, uh, and I’m a believer that anything you can’t say thank you for his baggage, anything you can say thank you for his fuel.

Then in kindergarten, when I got to be five to six, um, in kindergarten, I had a Mrs. Farmer as a teacher, and I had a tendency to want to hang out with the girls more so than the guys. And, uh, I was, I won’t say I was feminine by any means, but I just, I liked looking at the girls. I was Italian, you know, And, uh, I, I wanted to draw with them and I didn’t want to draw with the boys.

And the teacher said, you are a boy. You’re to draw with the boys during the art class section. And, uh, and every time she would take me and drag me over to where the boys were, I would sneak over when she wasn’t looking back to the girls. So finally she said, you are not a girl. You’re a boy. And if you’re not going to play with the boys and you’re not going to, you can’t play with the girls.

You’re going to play with yourself in the center of the room. And so she literally slid me to the center room and I played doing art with myself, which I really think was part of the perfection because everything I teach is about the androgyny, the balance of opposites and the masculine feminine integration.

And I really think that that was part of the perfection. Even at that stage, it was a message to me. Then I got to first grade. And, um, I tried to do reading and I had, I’d already been to a speech pathologist in addition to the twisted arm and leg, cause I had speech problems. And when I got to first grade, the first grade teacher put me in remedial class and then eventually in the dunce cap and I had to wear a dunce cap cause I couldn’t read.

I couldn’t understand and couldn’t get meaning and I couldn’t spell and I couldn’t write. So my teacher told my parents, um, that I’m afraid your son will never be able to read or write or communicate or communicate better. go very far or amount to anything in life. You’re going to have to put him in sports cause he likes running and he likes to be free.

And, uh, so I ended up making it through elementary school with the help of the smartest kids by asking questions. Now, today, the Demartini method and the value determination process is all about questions and the quality of our lives based on the quality of the questions we ask. So all of what I do today is all about the questions.

And I really believe that that was, The way I strategize making it through elementary school by asking the smart kids, what did they learn? And then I would learn from that because I couldn’t read. I didn’t read until I was 18. So then I, I, um, by the time I turned 12, I had been involved in baseball and I was really good at it.

And, but my parents moved to Richmond, Texas from the city where I was excelling in baseball. And when we did the baseball really fell down there because half the time the team, the team wouldn’t show up. Uh, the, the, the coach would sometimes be having an affair. Wouldn’t show up. And we’d have to use baseball players from other teams to play on our team in order to make the game.

And if you struck somebody out like I was, um, a gang would attack you the next day in school and they’d, uh, you know, they’d try to stab you and stuff. And so I left school and I left, uh, you know, when I, I left home really at age 13, but at 14, I finally took off and I, I lived in a different city. And, uh, I had been traveling really from nine, 12.

I’d been already, uh, riding bicycles, 35 miles, hopping trains. But when I was 12, 13, I was hitchhiking to different cities, 14. I hitchhiked to California and throughout Mexico, Central America. I was a kind of a wandering nomad, uh, even then. And then when I turned 15, um, late 15, I ended up, uh, I ended up going to Hawaii to surf because I was living in California.

I made it over to Hawaii to surf. And I was riding big waves. I got into surfing and, um, I literally became big wave rider. I mean, I got into magazines and movies and even books on, on surfing. And, um, I guess I had a part of a death wish cause I, I didn’t seem to care about dying on the waves. And, uh, but then I ended up almost dying.

And, uh, if it wasn’t, uh, if it wasn’t for a lovely lady who found me in my tent. I was almost dead. I wouldn’t be here today. And, uh, that, that led me to a little health food store that led me to go to a yoga class to regain some composure over my body from strychnine and cyanide poisoning. And, um, that’s where I met Paul Bragg and Paul C Bragg in one hour, one night, this one man with one message.

awakened inside me a belief that maybe I could overcome my learning problems and maybe I could be intelligent. I never believed I would ever be intelligent until then. And he inspired me that night to, uh, want to go and learn how to read and learn how to speak properly. And I wanted to, I had a dream about being a teacher.

And that was the beginning 44 plus years ago of doing what I’m doing today. I set out on a new quest to, uh, to start my journey of trying to learn how to read and overcome learning problems and which I slowly but surely did. And I started doing, sharing my ideas, whatever I learned and, uh, you know, I never stopped and here I am.

Ronnie Landis: Such an excitable story. And what comes up for me out of that is really the power of desire, right? Because it doesn’t appear to me that, and I don’t know, maybe there’s a, there’s a greater intelligence that kind of governs each one of our lives and how we, we grow up, that kind of leads us on a particular path, but.

Um, in a general sense, it seems to me that each one of us has the opportunity to do anything that we, we so choose, or maybe that’s an alignment with our values. And it appears to me that at a particular moment in your life, the desire to be, as you said, intelligent arose in you. And then, um, I imagine this inexhaustible.

You know, um, thirst for knowledge or, or, um, for learning took over at that moment. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, when I left, uh, I studied with Paul Bragg for three weeks each morning. And, uh, and he started me on a journey. I picked up my first book. First book I ever picked up to try to read was Chico’s organic gardening and natural living.

And the reason I picked that book up is in this little health food store. Is the guy on the cover was a long haired hippie just like me and I thought if that guy can write this book, I bet I can read it. And then I, and then I picked up that book and that was the first book I ever went through page by page and actually attempted to get, you know, some sort of message out of that book.

And it was very invigorating to think that, wow, I didn’t give up on this book. I didn’t just throw it out and throw it down. I actually went through page by page and looked every page, even though I didn’t understand much of it. Yeah. At least I did that. That was like a major break too. And then I, um, I left Hawaii and I flew back to LA, hitchhike from LA, back to Houston, Texas, where I was born.

And, um, Oh, actually to Richmond, Texas, outside of Houston. And, uh, my parents, when I got home, they, they were astonished that I’d come home. They didn’t, they weren’t expecting me. They didn’t recognize me because I had long hair and a beard at the time. And they said, uh, you know, welcome home. And a few days later, my mom and dad suggested that I take a GED, a high school equivalency test, 

which 

is a test that if you pass, you know, you get your high school degree.

That hell, he said that if you do this in case you needed a job, you know, this would help you get a job because you don’t have an education. And I, I took this test and Paul Bragg said to me when I told him that I didn’t know how to read and he said, son, that’s not a problem. Every day for the rest of your life, I want you to say that I am a genius and I apply my wisdom.

And he said, say this multiple times during the day and soon later, the cells of your body will tingle with it and so will the world. And I started saying that. I’ve never missed a day since. In 44 and a half years, I’ve never missed a day. So what that really meant at the time, but I learned that a genius is one who listens to the inner voice and vision and follows the inner voice and vision on the inside more so than opinions on the outside.

So I followed that. And I said that, and I took my GED and I guessed and I passed. It was purely a guessing game and I passed that thing. And I had all of a sudden I had a high school equivalence and I thought, wow, maybe there’s something to this affirmation and maybe there’s some destiny behind this.

And then I, my parents said, well, why don’t you take a college exam test? Because you’re not going to have surf come up until October. Might as well stick around and take some summer school. So I took this college entrance exam and I started to say, I’m a genius and I apply my wisdom. And I closed my eyes and I went with my intuition and I darkened in with my pencil, the little, you know, the pencil dots to get the test.

And, um, I passed. And I thought, wow, maybe there’s something that’s a higher order governing this. And then I started into college and I took an English and History summer school class. It was six weeks. And on the first test I took out of history, I thought I was going to pass because I passed two tests.

And I failed literally miserably. I got a 27 instead of 72. And when I got that 27, I got that grade. I was so humiliated. I did. I just ran to my car and cried in my car and ducked down in my car. I didn’t want anybody to see me. I felt so stupid. And all I could hear is my first grade teacher saying, I’m afraid your son will never read.

He’ll never write. He’ll never communicate. Never mountain thing. You’ll never go very far in life. And And I, uh, drove home crying. I had to pull off on the side of the road three times during that time because I was trying so much. Could, I was blurry eyed. I came home and I curled up in a fetal position under the Bible stand that my mom had that had a Bible on it.

And I curled up and I just had a really low moment where I was just thinking, maybe this whole thing’s a fantasy about being a teacher. Maybe this thing’s just a delusion, you know. And I was really torn inside. And my mom came home from shopping. And she saw me on the floor and she said, son, what happened?

What’s what’s wrong? She hadn’t seen me cry in years. And she said, uh, what happened, son? And I said, well, mom, I blew it. I got a 27 instead of a 72 to pass. I guess I don’t have what it takes. I guess I’ll never read or write or communicate, never mouth thing, never go very far in life. And she didn’t know what to say.

She just stared at me for a moment. And then she, she put her right hand on my shoulder and she said something that was very, very powerful that only a mother could probably say. She said, son, whether you become a great teacher, healer and philosopher and travel the world like you dream, or whether you go back to a ride giant waves in Hawaii, like you’ve done, or whether you return to the streets and panhandle as a bum, as you’ve also done, I just want to let you know that your father and I are going to love you no matter what you decide to do.

And when she said that. My hand went into a fist. I looked up and I saw a vision of me standing in front of a million people speaking and, uh, from a balcony. And I said to myself, with my hand in my fist, I said, I’m going to master this thing called reading. I’m going to master this thing called study. I’m going to master this thing called teaching.

And I’m going to do whatever it takes. I’m going to travel whatever distance. I’m going to pay whatever price to give my service of love across this planet. And I’m not going to let any human being on the face of this planet stop me, not even myself. I got up, I hugged my mom. I went into my room, I shut the door, I locked it.

I got a dictionary out and I started memorizing 30 words a day with the help of my mom who tested me on the words, on the use of the words, the spelling, the meaning. I started memorizing 30 words a day until my vocabulary grew strong enough where I could read and understand What people were writing in the books and the teachers were saying, and then I was just thirsty.

You have no idea. I just wanted to learn. I started reading encyclopedias. I started reading dictionaries. I started picking up my grades. I started excelling. And all of a sudden because of that, people started noticing it. I didn’t care about anything except learning. I started reading literally 18 to 20 hours a day.

If I wasn’t going to drive, reading on the way to school, on the way back from school, I’d drive with a book in my hand. And I, uh, I literally just devoured everything I could get my hands on. And, uh, I started excelling. I started picking up students. My first student was a 375 pound Afro American woman who wanted me to teach her yoga.

I then picked up a guy from Persia, Tehran, who was, who wanted me to teach him meditation. And then a German fellow wanted me to teach him the math I was learning. And I started gathering students. They started coming and gathering around me and wanting to learn from me. And it was so inspiring. And then all of a sudden, as the year went on, I started excelling and I started being the top of the class.

My mom came to me when I, my 19th birthday, she said, son, what do you want for your birthday? And for Christmas this year, cause I was born on Thanksgiving. And she said, uh, what do you want? And I said, I want the greatest teachings on the face of the earth, the greatest writings humanity has ever created from the greatest minds around the world.

And she said, well, you sure you don’t want a t shirt? I said, no, mom, I don’t care about a t shirt. I just want knowledge. And she said, well, let me see what I can do. So she literally called her brother, who is a uncle, my uncle, who is a professor at MIT earlier, who was a shell professor, a shell, a chemist and physicist.

And he sent two giant six by six by six foot wooden crates filled with thousands of books on a flatbed truck down to our house. And And I went out with a crowbar and opened it up and filled my room with books, thousands, 

and 

started devouring every book that was there. And I just started reading literally 20 hours a day, doing yoga for four hours a day, sleeping with a yoga position.

And I, all I cared about is learning the laws of the universe. And that was a, that was a very catalyst to me starting to excel in school and drawing more and more students. And by the time I was at the University of Houston, I was attracting 100, 150 students a day under the trees. And sometimes in cafeteria, if it ran, I reigned and it just kept growing first around the community and then the city and then the state and the nation.

And now we’ve been in, uh, I’ve been 126 countries around the world and we’ve got students now in every country on earth. So it, I just never gave up on the dream. That was my dream at 17 to, to travel the world and be a teacher and go to every country. So I’ve never given up on the dream. And I, I can encourage anybody who’s listening.

To never give up on the real dream that you have when it’s really a dream that gives tears of inspiration to don’t let any human being on the face of there, stop you from it.

Ronnie Landis: I’m going to take a moment here. I, uh, yeah, that, thank you so much for sharing that and going as in depth as you did, I could feel you so clearly on the other end of that. And what was so beautiful about that story is you really keyed in on that moment. That changed everything for you because if you didn’t mention that that part of the story about having that that Dark night of the soul so to speak and and feeling disappointed and frustrated It would have been easy for me or anyone listening to assume that You didn’t have a moment of trial that you had the inspiration from paul bragg and you went on and that was it But there was that moment where you had to experience Um, you know, experience that frustration and then by the love of your mother coming in, it appears to me and just feeling you on the other end, it sounds like to me that was the moment that unlocked your, your genius, so to speak.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, that, that was a turning point in the sense that There was no, uh, there was no turning back. There was no option. That’s when divine providence and human sovereignty joined together. 

Ronnie Landis: Yes. 

Dr. John Demartini: That’s, that’s when a human will and divine will are one. That’s when you feel like the, you know, your, your, your inspired destiny is, is, is confirmed.

And so I, I have a, you know, people ask me, you know, why do you do what you do? You’re independently wealthy. I can live on my ship and I have a magnificent home on a magnificent, the biggest yacht in the world. And I, and it, and I, I could travel in that and live 120 years that way. I’m financially viable from that perspective and never work another day.

But I ha that would be, so that would be like death. Mm-Hmm. To me, what is inspirational is to go out and research and share and, and try to inspire another person to do something amazing with their life. That’s what, that’s what, uh, inspires me. So I, I, I don’t know. I’ll probably do that to the, to the day of passing.

I’ll probably continue to do that. 

Ronnie Landis: Well, I sure hope you do, John, because it’s, it’s a great, it’s a great to see you on your journey, and so, pivoting from this point, you know, just like this, this rush of excitement just came through me when you mentioned The point of no turning back is when divine providence sets in and I just realized every moment in my life has been exactly that Is when when that moment of no turning back comes in and you you just accept the call That’s when when life just reveals its secrets to us.

Um So with that my next question and it’s kind of a two part question. The first part is what is a polymath? And how can we all develop the qualities that help us better express our intrinsic genius? 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, when I was 18 and I moved home, Paul Bragg mentioned, when I learned from him, universal laws. Now, Aristotle termed it natural laws.

They’re called universal laws by some today. And what they were is they were the principles that would stand the test of time, that they’re the foundations, the most general abstract, generally mathematical principles that underlie life. The principles of the universe. And I, um, I set out to want to know what those universal laws are.

So when I started researching universal laws, it took me back to Aristotle, who then was a student of Plato, as you know, he spent 20 years from 17 to 37. So I really related to Aristotle and Plato because I was at age when he started with his mentor. And, um, he talked about it in term natural laws. And so I started studying those and everything I could get my hands on laws.

And that led me to various disciplines. Because it led me to a principle called the Logos, which is the, the study of reason and the order of the universe. And, uh, so when I did it, it led me to the various ologies, the Logos led me to the ologies, the various disciplines that a person can study. So I went to the encyclopedia and I, I circled every known discipline.

So geometry and mathematics and, you know, geology, physiology, philosophy, and I made a list of every known discipline and ology a person could, you know, study. And then I realized that the average PhD at the time studied, on average, a hundred books, 75 to 100 books to get their doctorate. And the doctorate, uh, actually, when they overlap, a lot of them are overlapping.

So I figured if I was to shoot for a hundred books in each of the disciplines and ologies, I’d be able to do that. I would have the highest probability of understanding the most universal laws because they would be applied in each discipline. So what I did is I started doing that and now I’ve read over 30, 000 books because of it.

And, and, uh, in the process of doing that, I found what were the most common principles that have stood the test of time in the various disciplines. And that has allowed me to have a lateral thinking. Now a person who has studied many, many disciplines are called polymaths. And, uh, so if they can apply them and use them for the service of humanity, then they can literally honestly call themselves a polymath.

So I would be classified that one. Herbert Spencer was a polymath. Da Vinci was a polymath. There’ve been many teachers who have been polymaths through the ages. And most of them are the ones that left their mark in history. Uh, René Descartes was a, was a, you know, polymath. Leibniz was a polymath, many of them.

So I, uh, I’ve been studying the polymaths throughout the ages. I’ve studied all the great Western philosophers, all the Nobel Prize winners. Eastern mystics, any great business leader. I mean, even Charlie Munger would be classified as a polymath today. And so these are, these are people that, that wanted to understand and know, and, and delve into a deeper level of, of appreciation of the, you might say the laws of the universe.

And so I consider myself a polymath from that perspective because I have put in the hours on it and I do talk about various fields. I have been blessed to, to lecture on many different fields. And people don’t know where to put me. They’ve had difficulty placing me. Because I’ve actually spoken at, uh, at Rice University on astrophysics and astronomy.

Wow. And I’ve spoken at Harvard on theology. And I’ve done lots of, you know, interesting conversations on economics and Tehran to the government. I mean, I get to speak on many different fields, but the most common to all of them is human behavior. Because I’m interested in the evolution of human consciousness and how every one of the ologies relates to the involvement of human beings.

That’s, that was the main objective. I linked every ology to human behavior. So human behavior is the primary objective. So, so, uh, that’s what I would consider a polymath, somebody who’s dedicated to exploring the laws of the universe and to integrate as many different disciplines as possible and apply them in a way that serves humanity.

Ronnie Landis: And from, from all the work that you’ve done and your breakthrough experiences and all the people you’ve worked with, are there any common threads or themes that you see that can really help other people access that, that, um, I mean, I guess maybe it comes back to the value systems, but I’m wondering if there’s anything else that comes through that you’ve helped to help people access their, um, yeah.

Intrinsic genius is the only thing that comes up for me or that poly math kind of thing. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, not everybody’s interested in being the polymath. Right, right. But what I found is, whenever, because every human being has a set of priorities, a set of values that they live their life by, whenever they’re setting intentions or attentions, attentions mean things they want to learn and intentions, things they want to accomplish and do, any time that they’re setting intentions and attentions that are aligned and congruent with their highest value, they’re willing to embrace.

Both support and challenge in the pursuit of it. When you’re doing something that’s low in your value, you’ll do it if it’s easy, but if it’s difficult, you’ll give up. If you do something that’s high in your values, you’ll embrace support and challenge, ease and difficulty, the positives and the negatives, the pleasures and the pain, equally in the pursuit of it.

And it is pursuing challenges that inspire you spontaneously. That awakens genius. So anytime you’re filling your day with challenges that inspire you, your genius is born because solving problems and solving challenges is what awakens genius when things are easy and things are supporting you and things are, you know, You know, pleasurable.

There’s no need for creating new ideas, new challenge, new, new things. So it’s the challenges that actually awaken it. So, so the great geniuses are people who look for challenges and problems in the world for the greatest number of people and find solutions to, for humanity. Those are what geniuses and geniuses available in all of us in the area of our highest value.

When we care enough intrinsically to be inspired to go after solving those problems. It’s, it’s waiting for all of us to do that, you know, and I, I think if there’s many different types of genius, some are in genius when it comes to technology, some are genius comes to mathematics, some are in music, some are in fields of, uh, social causes, each area based on their values can awaken genius.

It’s, it’s, it’s innate within us to pull it out. You, what you call the intrinsic genius is the best term for it. 

Ronnie Landis: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Well, that’s what it feels like. Cause there is no external kind of. Kind of marker that I’m aware of because what you big because this whole polymath idea to me is there’s so much Diversity, that’s the word that comes up for me when I think of Human expression and in life as a whole.

It’s there’s so much diversity that we actually have to go Within to find out what that is. Otherwise as you as your work so well Kind of displays is that we’re gonna live a life of quiet Desperation if we don’t find out what that thing is inside of us and fully own it. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, that’s the key in and What I do in the breakthrough experience program, which is the one I’ve done this week will be 1, 100 Presentations of this program and I I have been doing it now for 28 years And, and one of the things that I love about this program is that’s what we target.

We, we help people find out exactly intrinsically what it is that’s driving them. And then we structure, show them how to structure their life where they can literally delegate lower priority things and get on with doing higher priority things so they can awaken that natural genius. They can excel and achieve the things that they want.

And they can basically, because when your day is filled with things that are really truly inspiring, it’s easier to say no to people that are infiltrating you and trying to get you to do other things. And you’re able to say no because you’re on a mission. And when you’re not doing what’s highest on your value, you’re vulnerable to the injunctions of other people’s values and the injections of their time to distract you from what’s priority.

And entropy takes over instead of negentropy, which is life physics. very much. And life physics is what inspires people. And so that’s not the quiet life of desperation. That’s a life of inspiration. And that’s what inspires people. Cause innately everybody’s called and drawn and magnetized charismatically to an individual who’s living authentically that way.

Ronnie Landis: That beautiful. So on this topic, and especially as we’ve talked about, um, learning and, and knowledge and. That’s something I’m, I’ve, I’ve been a lifelong learner myself, and so I have a personal question that I think most people find interesting. I’m really interested in your perspectives around accelerated learning, and if you have discovered any particularly effective ways for people to Take a modality such as, um, deep comprehension while speed reading, for example, where that was not a strength before, and then it became a strength.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, because of the hierarchy of an individual’s values, any time a child or an adult is perceiving that what they’re trying to learn is linked and congruent with the highest values, they maximally absorb the information. And they can apply the information effectively quickly. But anytime something is not really inspiring to somebody, it’s low on their values.

It goes into short term memory at best and it’s not applied. So cramming for a test because you’re not inspired by the material is my opinion, uh, foolish, foolish use of time and energy. It’s wiser to link the classes you’re taking and the topics you’re wanting to learn and link it to your highest values by asking how specifically is doing this topic and studying it and devouring it and learning it.

How’s it helping me fulfill what’s most meaningful to me. And the more it’s linked and the more integrated it is with your highest value, the more engaged you are in absorbing the information, the more you’ll be able to do things with it and apply it. And it goes into long term potential. The reason why I retained so much information is I’ve linked everything that I’ve studied every field.

Whether it be quantum theory, or whether it be nuclear physics, or whether it be helioseismology of the sun, it doesn’t matter what the topic is, I’ve linked it to how does it relate to the evolution of human consciousness. And I’ve tied it together because I don’t see anything separate universe. It’s all entwined.

I believe that intelligence is permeating the universe and we’re part of it. And so as a result of it, it has no difficulty studying and absorbing and retaining information because it’s all linked to one highest priority. And if they do that, you’ll accelerate your learning. You retain the information and you’ll apply it and you’ll do something with it.

And you’ll have lateral thinking from all the disciplines from it. So I’ve, I show, show people how to do this. And in South Africa alone, we were asked to go into Alexandria, um, uh, township, and they had a 27 percent pass rate in school from a trick high school equivalents, and, um, they’re only 27 out of a hundred that were passing school and their, their high school degree.

And so I went in there, they asked me to come in there, and I had four meetings with the, with students, principals, and teachers. And I showed them how to determine their values, both teacher and student. I showed them how to link the topics that they were teaching or taking to their highest values. These are, these are three hour classes each, four times.

I showed them how to link the class, the, the values of the student to the teacher and vice versa so they could communicate respectfully. And we linked all the classes to their highest values, whatever it was, and respected their, their highest values. Whether it be video games or soccer or whether they wanted to be an actor or a movie star or a, you know, a business person.

Didn’t matter what it was. Whatever they were interested in at the time, we honored it and we linked whatever they were studying to it. And one year later, 97 percent of the students passed Matric. Thank you. That’s four classes. That’s 12 hours of work changed hundreds of kids lives. So I’m absolutely certain that we can retain information more effectively, absorb information more effectively.

If that information is meaningful to us and is linked to what we value most. And we sometimes autocratically label kids. foolishly with learning problems only because we’re autocratically projecting values onto them instead of honoring their own. Once we communicate the topics in terms of their values, they come alive.

I do a program called Inspired Destiny and we’re getting ready to do a three city tour with 1, 000 per city in Australia. And we’ll have 1, 000 kids from eight in the morning until seven o’clock at night and they will be engaged. They’ll only get three breaks during the entire time. One in the morning, one at lunch and one in the evening.

And they will stay there and be totally engaged the entire day because I’m helping them fulfill their dreams and showing them how to master learning and master communicating and, and, and defining what they will. When kids, kids love to learn, they just spontaneously want to wake up their genius. If you show them how they’ll stay there all day, totally engaged without distraction.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, that’s so true. Right. And because they’ve the imposition of other people’s values tend to bore them and kind of know them to sleep in a certain way, their intrinsic genius kind of gets laid dormant. And I think that they lose. Um, the desire for learning because they haven’t been properly led, um, and I think the work that you’re, you’re sharing is a way to reactivate that passion for learning that they, that they intrinsically have.

Dr. John Demartini: That is exactly what it is. And, and, uh, I’m a believer that kids love to learn. They have a natural genius inside. They just. Haven’t been given permission to be themselves. There’ll be there. They’re being trained as a drone, not as an entrepreneur leader. 

Ronnie Landis: Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, one of the things that came up as you were sharing about your perspectives on linking values to what we want to learn, which I, which I love how it keeps coming back to this.

And, and I think that’s brilliant. So what came up for me is just the simple, it’s really comes back to core, simple values, right? If we want to get good at something. I think there is the premeditation of how does this link to my highest value? And then the simplicity is persistence, right? Just actually having the persistence to overcome the learning curve and to get good at anything we want to do through practice.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, perseverance is one of the key elements of any study on genius. If you read a thousand books on genius, you’ll find the perseverance is showing up in them quite often and persistent action. Great geniuses in music are persistently acting on music. They don’t just, uh, out of nowhere habit. They’ve, they’ve studied it and practiced it.

And persistent comes from congruency. You know, you ought to make these spontaneous or inspired from within to do what you value most. So if you link it to what’s highest on your value, you will automatically do it spontaneously without effort. It won’t feel like you’re having to push yourself. People look at me and they go, you know, Dr.

Demartini, you’re very disciplined. And I go, no, I’m not, I’m not disciplined at all. I’m inspired by what I do. I don’t think it’s any will or any discipline to do it. And so people don’t understand that unless they have, when they have a different set of values, they imagine them trying to do what I do and they can’t imagine it.

But I would imagine if working out, see, I don’t do a lot of workout. I do yoga and some stretching and things, but I don’t do as massive gym workout every day. But I would imagine that if I was to do that, that would be disciplined because it’s not highest on my values. I’d rather delegate to work out to others and just do nice breathing and stretching and limber.

But the point is that, that whatever is low on your values, you require discipline and motivation. Whatever is high in your values is spontaneously inspiring, and you don’t even think it’s effort. 

Ronnie Landis: Oh, I love that. So, so it could be in a way, To demystify that concept of discipline by just taking it back to the root, which is no, I’m, I’m actually just inspired to do these things.

That’s why I can do things spontaneously and somebody doesn’t need to paddle me with a ruler or, or, or reprimand me to motivate me. Exactly. 

Dr. John Demartini: You know, I, uh, I, I’m a firm believer that, uh, when you find out what’s intrinsically there, what, what is your life demonstrate your values. So whatever your life demonstrates that you spontaneously do, if you structure your life around that, you’ll feel like you’re in the flow.

You’re in the zone. And what happens is, uh, people are constantly fighting uphill, trying to be somebody they’re not, and then being eroded by entropy and then self depreciating. And those are all normal symptoms. Healthy symptoms to let you know you’re going in a path that’s not you, dude. Wake up. You know, people go, I keep beating myself up.

What am I doing wrong? I said, you keep holding onto a fantasy about who you are and you’re beating yourself up because you’re not being you give yourself permission to be you and watch what happens. That is amazing.

Ronnie Landis: So I know, um, I just want to, I just want to make a quick, um, check Mark here. I know that, that we have a potentially a potential limitation on our time together. So I just want to check that we’re good to go with that. 

Dr. John Demartini: We’re still okay. That was an unexpected call coming in. I don’t know where that, that one showed up.

Pardon me. 

Ronnie Landis: Right. Okay, cool. Um, so the next, next place I’d love to take this conversation is in the area of neuroscience. So I would love to hear your insights, um, on your personal interests surrounding. The science of the brain, cognitive enhancement, and maybe even longevity of our brain and just kind of where your studies have been taking you recently.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, this again goes back to values. The highest value, uh, has been called the telos. Now the telos was an Aristotelian term for the aim or the chief aim or the end in mind, or the end goal. It’s a purposive goal. So the highest value is the highest priority, highest, uh, most important thing that a person aims at and Napoleon Hill called it the chief aim.

It’s the place you have a burning desire to fulfill. Whatever this telos is, Whenever you’re living congruently with the telos, the blood glucose and oxygen in the brain light the prefrontal cortex up the forebrain, the telencephalon, the prosencephalon. And this is the most advanced part of the brain.

It’s called the executive center. It’s responsible for inspired vision, strategic planning and executing plans and self mastery and governance. Whenever you’re living by your highest value, your telos, your telencephalon comes on. When it does, it basically is remodeling the brain with glial cells to remodel, to make sure that whatever you perceive and whatever you do is more in line with your highest value.

Your brain is a teloseeking and fulfilling organ. And uh, your glial cells, which are really monitoring the nerve cells and neuroplastic remodeling them to make sure that they’re, you maximize the fulfillment of what’s meaningful to you. When you’re living by your highest values, that part of the brain maximizes potential.

That’s where genius is born, because you’re willing to tackle challenges. What’s interesting is, the autonomic responses when you’re in that state impact epigenetically a release of cells of the telomeres inside the cells and elongate the telomeres by activating telomerase, the enzyme, and it allows the space and time horizons that you have with a bigger vision to be allowed to live longer to fulfill that vision.

So the second you live by your highest values, your space and time horizons get bigger, your vision of what’s possible gets bigger because you’re walking, you’re talking, you’re wanting to achieve greater. And when you do, your telomeres extend to give you the opportunity to fulfill what your vision is.

So, we literally enhance our life, have resilience, adaptability, use stress instead of distress and we live by our highest values and we maximize our physical and mental potential. 

Ronnie Landis: I think that was probably the most incredible explanation on a question like that and it brings up two things in particular.

One of them is one of the kind of driving things in my work in the health and wellness kind of space. I’ve been telling people at this point in my personal journey is that The number one thing you can do for longevity is actually live your mission on the planet and you just gave a very incredible scientific explanation for why that’s true.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, when people have purpose behind them and their highest value is activated, they have the most objective reason because they’re willing to embrace the positives and the negatives, the pleasures and the pains equally. Right. And the term objectivity means even mindedness. So you’re more poised, you’re more present.

You’re more in a state of equanimity and equity. You’re less likely to judge. And when you judge people and you put them above you or below you, you try to change you relative to them or them relative to you, which is futile. And you’re, you’re, when you’re just loving and you’re in that state of equanimity, there’s nothing to change.

You’re feeling the flow and you’re feel grateful and grace and you’re graceful in movement and physiology. And this is what allows you to live longer because there’s not entropy. You’re not striving for that which is unavailable and trying to avoid that, which is unavoidable. You’re doing actually a, uh, you’re in the presence of your own inspirations and you feel like you’re living your vision and you’re in a timeless mind, ages, body state.

So we maximize our potential physiologically and psychologically. If we live congruently with our telos, our highest value. That’s why I do with every seminar, I deal with the values and in the breakthrough experience, I make sure people get clear about that. And then they start structuring their life around it.

And they see the difference there. Your vitality in life is directly proportionate to the vividness of your vision and your vision becomes crystal clear to the degree of your congruency. And when you’re congruent, you’re fluent and that’s the flow. And that’s where you don’t have the aging process. I, I, a lot of people think I’m younger than I, than my age.

I’m going on 63 and people will constantly think, well, you don’t look 63. And I said, it’s because I’m doing what I love every day. 

Ronnie Landis: Mm hmm. Whatever that’s even supposed to look like.

Dr. John Demartini: Yeah, our, our, uh, our life is designed to be inspired. But what we do is we, uh, we subordinate to the influence of others. Kohlberg, the psychologist, said that in the stages of moral development, The bottom level of moral development is avoiding pain, seeking pleasure, avoiding predators, seeking prey. It’s an animal existence.

And you’re basically, you know, looking for a heaven and trying to avoid a hell all the time. And you’re living in a delusion, because it’s, it’s, uh, they’re inseparable. The heaven and the hell are inside the psyche. It’s all our perceptions. We make the heaven and the hell out of things by our misperceptions.

And the second level is the subordination to individual authorities. Mothers, fathers, preachers, teachers. And the third level is subordination to collective authorities, which are communities, cities, states, nations, or worlds. Traditions, conventions of ever greater dynamics. And the final level of moral development is the transcendence of any people’s opinions.

And instead of being subordinate to outer authorities, you are the authority and you transform the world and you become the renegades, the unborrowed visionaries that transform as the geniuses to change the course of history. I’d much rather play in that field of possibility than to be subordinate.

Ronnie Landis: Absolutely. Yeah. Hmm. Oh yeah. Another moment. I have to pause for just a moment here. This is such an incredible conversation. Okay, so one of the things that you brought up earlier was the, the, the two sides to every coin perspective, and that’s one of the keytones of your work. In areas of our life, we often do get tr we often, um, we, I mean we collectively can, can often get trapped in thinking one way or another.

And it can be very tempting to only look at one side. However, you continuously explain in many different examples, how. No matter what one side you’re looking at, there’s always another side that exists to, to every situation. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, William James, the father of modern psychology, in about 1895 said the greatest discovery of his generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind.

And, uh, so it’s never what happens to it, it’s what we decide to do and how we perceive it and decide to do with it and what we act upon. And I’ve had people in my Breakthrough Experience program, where they’ve gone through just about every imaginable thing that people would think is traumatic or challenging.

And I’ve yet to see anything that the mortal body can experience that the immortal soul can’t love and turn into opportunity. I mean, I’ve seen every imaginable thing. I had a lady that was raped by 100 men by a motorcycle gang, and now she’s empowering women around the world. And she’s done amazing things because we transform the perception from victim of history to master of destiny.

So it’s not what happens to you. It’s what you decide to do with it. I’ve seen people lose their arms and legs and turn it into an opportunity. I’ve seen people that basically, you know, lose their loved ones. I had a woman that had all four of her children killed in a car crash. She was the only survivor and, uh, she was sitting devastated and was immobilized.

And we worked with her in four hours. We got her in a situation where she’s now running a major foundation to make a difference in kids lives. And she realized that those kids sacrificed their life that way was a gift. And she sees it as a, she sees the pleasure and the pain inseparable now. So it’s not what happens to you.

It’s what you decide to do with it. I’m quite masterful at going through and helping transform people’s perceptions. So they don’t have to carry around baggage. And a young boy that came to me and says, well, I don’t have a mother and a father. And I have problem because I’m an orphan. And I said, really? I said, you got your cell phone here?

He goes, yeah. He said, let’s go look up how many famous orphans have been in the world. And I found a list of 700 of them. So Isaac Newton’s father died before he was born. His mother then left him for a while, left him with somebody else. And we went through Tycho Brahe was the same way. I mean, uh, Steve Jobs had some of that.

I mean, there’s people all over the world that had these same challenges and turned opportunity. And so I told the kid, I said, This is the category you’re in. You’re in the same category as Sir Isaac Newton. You’re in the category of Tycho Pryor, the astronomer. You’re in the same category as, as, uh, these people, Wayne, Wayne Dyer and stuff.

He goes, he lit up and he goes, you mean, I said, these are the people that you’re gifted, dude. And he went on and did extraordinary things over the next five years of his life. Now, since he got that realization, it had nothing to do with what happened to him. It’s how he decided to perceive it. 

Ronnie Landis: That is so fantastic.

And on the flip side of that perspective, if I find that a lot of people that grow up with comfort and luxury have a disadvantage in a lot of ways, where you may think that if you don’t have those things, you may automatically think that you need those things in order to succeed. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, James Hughes, James E Hughes, who wrote family wealth, talked about the rags to riches to rag cycle, multi generational wealth development.

The one person starts out with a void and a need to go and build wealth. The next generation has it luxury and they squander the wealth. And the third generation is down in poverty and then they start again. And that’s why if you’re over supported, you’ll probably remain juvenily dependent and disabled and enabled.

But if you get challenged, you wake up your tell us, you wake up your entrepreneur, you wake up your drive. It’s the challenges in life that make greatness, not the support. 

Ronnie Landis: That’s how, that’s how so much of our neuroprotective factors kick into like myelination, it actually is. It’s bait in, in our motor function, insulations based on, uh, you know, the challenges and to push through certain challenges, whether it be mentally or physically.

Dr. John Demartini: That’s exactly it. So, you know, if you’re not, uh, if you’re not getting up in the morning and filling your day with challenges and inspire you, you’re going to keep trying to escape challenges and you’re going to keep attracting challenge that don’t inspire you because living, looking for a fantasy world is the thing that causes your nightmare.

Ronnie Landis: So, as we’re going about pursuing these greater and greater goals in our life, and once we’ve really got it in our soul that we need to actually go after inspired challenges and, and grow through them, why is it important that we may want to create contingency plans to help us prepare for, for greater and greater obstacles?

Dr. John Demartini: Well, you don’t build the Brooklyn Bridge without a plan. You don’t build the Burj in Dubai without a plan. You don’t build the great, uh, 

Ronnie Landis: You mean it doesn’t just manifest? 

Dr. John Demartini: Yeah. So the fantasy, the most honorable thing a human being can do is to stretch themselves, to find the greatest challenge in humanity and find the greatest solutions to the greatest number of people.

That’s the most rewarding thing. You’re rewarded economically as well as fulfillment. So when you have those, you tackle those and those will require strategic planning and the strategic plan. The purpose of doing mitigating risk is to make sure you’re actually calming down fantasies of your goal.

Strategic planning is actually transforming fantasies into realities because it’s making sure that you don’t go after something that’s all positive without negative. You think out the negatives in advance and you think of how to handle those and you balance out your mind because it’s the balance of mind that achieves the greatness.

Never a fantasy mind. And it’s the, so the mitigating the risk is part of the planning process that makes sure you transform fantasies and philias, um, into real goals. And I feel a philia or a fantasy that doesn’t have a balance will automatically create a phobia and an anxiety that you won’t be able to deny because you don’t have a plan in front of you.

You don’t have a strategy on how to get what you want. But once you have a strategy and you chunk it down to small enough bites where it’s in the space and time horizons, you normally function in, you won’t procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate. You’ll get into action and you’ll achieve. 

Ronnie Landis: Yes. I find that one of the big sabotage mechanisms can be this, this, um, uh, expectation that we need to quantum leap.

Into greater and greater results opposed to taking incremental steps, which naturally will will kind of launch us Over time. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, Jim Collins beautifully stated in some of his books about the importance of incremental progress. I learned from Donald Trump cause I used to live in Trump tower and I used to interact with him quite a bit.

And, and, uh, he said to me, you know, people are always trying to make these big leaps instead of doing incremental steps and incremental steps to get ever bigger. Like the domino, you know, you can take a domino with a, In a Fibonacci sequence size, and you can knock down a tall building if you have enough dominoes lined up, ever progressive in size.

Well, if we take little increments and bigger increments and bigger increments and build momentum, we are unstoppable. So it’s the key of starting small and achieving it, setting a little bit bigger goal and achieving it, setting a little bit bigger goal and achieving it, with a big vision behind it, driving it.

Ronnie Landis: The power of momentum.

I noticed that whenever I’m going after anything in my life, um, I, I, you know, for example, I’m also a published author myself. And people ask me all the time, how did you write your books? And it’s kind of like, I kind of, I kind of look at them like a deer and headlights for a moment. I’m like, how did I write my book?

Well, I. Kind of laid out a potential table of contents. I started getting inspired insights for certain topics and then I just started writing and then eventually I got momentum and then it became more exciting and this whole pattern emerged. And then eventually over a number of years, I have a book.

Dr. John Demartini: Exactly. Yeah, I, I, I, today I, I mainly take live presentations and have them transcribed for the body of the book. And then we cut and paste and replay. Cause my time is, is, uh, you know, very costly to, to sit and actually just write it out, but, but I find that, you know, as you go along, your different ways of getting books done are evolving, but yeah, if you have a clear focus on what you want and you start to chipping away at it, it starts to have a life of its own, just like you said, and it starts talking to you and whispering to you and what to write.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. That, well, that’s such an important principle. I’m glad you brought that up because. I feel like sometimes we create narratives, we generate narratives in our own mind, um, in a way that can be really empowering. It can be great to tell ourself a new story that actually, like, elicits motivation, and one of those stories for me is, um, is, uh, ah, jeez, just lost my train of thought for a second.

Well, let me just, let me just divert on that. Um, it’s, it’s the momentum piece, right? Like when I just, Oh, here’s it, here it is. Thank you. Thanks for your patience. Um, it’s this idea that life can create something out of something else that I don’t have to know exactly how it’s going to turn out. I think a lot of people, um, they wait to get all the answers, right?

They wait to have the blueprint before they jump in the game. And, uh, but it’s never going to look the way we think it is. Right. We just have to have the willingness to jump in and let life kind of guide us. 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, some things you’ll have that are foresighted and clear in your mind and you’re working towards a clear aim, but along the way, there’s inevitably opportunities that you didn’t anticipate.

Right. I mean, I, I get opportunities weekly. I, right after I finished this, I have a, a gentleman who’s a producer for PBS specials and, uh, also reality shows and things, and we’re meeting, we’re filming for a few hours. And so this, uh, you know, appeared two days ago. So that’s an opportunity that I didn’t have on my radar that just appeared.

And 

then we’ve got one in Singapore coming up. That’s wanting to do the infinite mind series. It’s a documentary series on television. So there’s an opportunity to come in that you don’t always have, but if you look carefully, they’re perfectly aligned with what it is you are intending. So there’s, there’s, there’s this, it’s like the eye of a storm.

You’re focused on the eye of the storm, but there’s a whole lot of whirlwind things that come around the eye of the storm to come with it. And, uh, when you’re receptive to it and you’re clear about it, those opportunities come in and you get to decide which ones to use and not to use. And I I’ve been blessed by many opportunities that, uh, that are still in line with my longterm vision, but I didn’t see clearly in my mind at the time.

Ronnie Landis: Do you find yourself, I’m really just curious about this because there’s a popular meme going around, which is, you know, basically just like the power of saying no, which I totally believe in. And I’m wondering. If that has to do with internal alignment of your values, do you find yourself, Dr. Demartini, saying no a lot, or are the things coming to you actually in direct alignment most of the time?

Dr. John Demartini: Well, I’ve got, I’ve been blessed to get to a point where I have enough people around me that I delegate things that sometimes I delegate those responses to people who are specialists now. 

So 

I have people that screen out opportunities because I’m bombarded by opportunities every day and have people that are responsible now for screening those out.

So I don’t have to take up 15 minutes making that look, look at it and decide they screen it out. If it gets through them, they’re gatekeepers. Then it goes to me and I might be participating in that decision, but, but otherwise they know what I’m looking for and they’re the ones that organize it. And I get an itinerary every day and I fill my day every hour by hour throughout the day filled.

So I don’t have any idle time or wasted time. I’ve got, I fill it up every day. And then they’re the ones that put in the things that are aligned with my objectives. Some of them I didn’t anticipate, but they know what I’m, you know, my goals. So they, they allow them in and some they go, I’m not sure if you could do this or not.

And you make a decision and they’ll send it to me. But most of the time they do it for me. It’s all set up because I’m bombarded every day by opportunities. Some are opportunities that I say no to say no to, but somebody else does it. And, um, and that’s my gatekeepers are actually better screens than I do.

I sometimes, you know, uh, have to sit and think about it. And right. I’d rather not think about that. I’d rather think about what I want to think about and not let other people get. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That was, that was great clarity for me. Also to realize that. Having gatekeepers is a necessary thing.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, I mean, if I was to take in every email that comes into my organization, I wouldn’t get anything done. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. 

Dr. John Demartini: And, uh, so I, I don’t, I have only a few people that get to me on emails and the rest of them are all filtered out. And it’s not that I don’t care about people, I do. But I care about people enough to make sure I get to do what I do greatest and to get to my core competence so I serve the most people that way.

I get to serve millions of people by doing that. If I was distracted, I’d be narrowed down to whatever people are expecting from me at the time. You got to be able to say no to the things that distract you to say yes to the things that inspire you. 

Ronnie Landis: Yes. Yes. So I want to be super, super, um, respectful of your time.

And I’m so glad that you said yes. To this opportunity or your, your gatekeeper, I should say, said yes to it. That allowed you to say yes to it. And so my last question, um, to, to conclude this incredible conversation is simply what is the core quintessential message of your work over all these years? 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, I believe that there’s a, uh, a hidden order in our apparent chaos and there’s a deeper meaning in the things that we are.

Attracted to or distracted from. And so what I do is I help people ask a new set of questions to awaken their fullest awareness, to see this hidden order so they can appreciate their life. You know, I’ve asked people by the millions, how many of you have, if you had only 24 hours to live, what would you do with your life?

And they say, I would go to the people who’ve contributed to my life and say, thank you. I love you. So I’m interested in people being able to say thank you. I love you to themselves and other people on a daily basis. I have the largest collection of gratitudes of anybody I’ve ever met. There’s thousands and thousands of pages of them.

I was born on Thanksgiving day. So I consider that was kind of a message for me. And my mom told me when I was four, if you are grateful for what you got, you get way more to be grateful for. So if you’re not grateful for your life, then you got baggage. If you are grateful for your life, you got fuel. I’d rather transform the, you know, the, the Kindle, you might, the, the, the little, the little, uh, What do you call the little pieces of wood or whatever that you light a fire with?

I’d rather transform them into a fire and fired inspired states. So I’m basically dedicating to help people live a magnificent life. And so they can say, thank you. I love you to themselves each day. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. And, and the, the, the message that, that I hear from you quite often is that no matter what you are deserving of love.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, no matter what you’ve done or not done, you’re worthy of love. So many people are judging. The guy that thought he wasn’t successful was judging himself because he was comparing himself to others instead of comparing his daily actions to his own highest values. And, uh, so he wasn’t loving and appreciating himself.

And the truth is he was magnificent. And when I got through with him, he saw it and I’d rather help them see that. And anytime a person’s expecting to live outside their values or expecting others to live in their values, they’re automatically going to end up with a judgment that’s going to block their heart from saying, thank you.

I love you.

Ronnie Landis: Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Um, where can everybody find more about you, your website, your breakthrough experience, which I will be attending, I believe, in mid or late August in Los Angeles. Where can everybody find all this? 

Dr. John Demartini: Well, they can go to my, uh, website, which is dr demarini.com, dr demartini.com, D-E-M-A-R-T-I-N i.com.

Um, I’m on the web, you know the webpage. There’s a lot of ’em out there so you can find it. But my, my official website is dr demartini.com, and in there there’s just hundreds of radio, television, newspapers, magazines, inspired writings and products and live presentations and webinars. There’s just an assortment of YouTubes to educate people.

So you can go on there and spend your life educating yourself on there. So I, I’m a, you know, that’s the best place to reach me. That lets people know where I am doing public events. The private events aren’t listed, but the public events are. And, um, they can go and join me. We’re having a webinar, you know.

We’re having something going on every, every day. So if you look carefully, you can find it. 

Ronnie Landis: Awesome. And I, I just want to, I just want to say for everyone listening, um, Um, when you go on that website, look up events, look up the breakthrough experience. I have not been to one yet, but I’m making the commitment to myself because I deserve it.

And all of you out there deserve it. Um, to make that, that very simple investment to go to that breakthrough experience, if you’re in Los Angeles, like I know a lot of people that are listening to this, there is one going on, um, late August, you can double check the website, but I just want to make that quick plug.

I just feel inspired to do so. Cause I, I will be there. So, 

Dr. John Demartini: well, I thank you for that, but I, I’m absolutely certain. That Paul Bragg changed my life. And uh, the Breakthrough Experience is designed to do that. So what he did for me, I’m doing for others. And that, that, that program is 24 hours we spend. We spend 24 hours with people, from 8 in the morning till midnight, and from about 9 to about 7 or 8 at night.

And it is full on, doing everything we can to help people break through whatever’s in their way. And, uh, like I said, I’ve done it this weekend, it’ll be 1, 100 programs I’ve done on that program. And, uh, it’s very inspiring. I’ve done it in 62 countries, and it’s, it’s very inspiring. I’ve touched a lot of people’s lives with it, and I, I love, I love doing it.

It’s very inspiring to, to share that work. 

Ronnie Landis: Hmm. Well, thank you so much for doing the work. We greatly appreciate it, and I thank you for joining me on this 

Dr. John Demartini: show. Well, thank you for the opportunity. It’s great questions. And, and, uh, may we both fulfill our mission of making a difference in people’s lives and continue to serve as long as we have a physical body and a mind to able to do it.

Ronnie Landis: Absolutely. I’m on board. Thank you so much, John. 

Dr. John Demartini: Thank you.