We are here, Sun leaders, Sun readers, Sun listeners. Good morning. This is Eric Nutting, live from Kinekt Studios with a host of people. My goodness, look at everybody we have on the call today. We’re here for the purpose of our Sun Author, Adam S. Peters.

Adam wrote The Blueprint to Happy. He is, in fact, one of our Happiness Ambassadors. And I’m excited to get into this conversation. I have his book in hand, his signed, his autographed book, I might tell you. And we’re going to talk about something that’s really, really- oh, Josh has a signed book there too.

Love it. We’re going to talk about something that’s hugely important and a huge mission of ours here at Connect St. Pete and Sun Leaders, and that is the Year of Happiness, which we hope ends up being a decade of happiness, which we hope ends up being a lifetime of happiness. That’s our mission. So yes, before we get into the discussion, let’s just do a quick around the horn of introductions. Adam, you are our major guest here.

Let’s start with you. Tell the people what you want them to know about you quickly. I am a St. Petersburg native who grew up in Gulfport. I think that still counts, but I’ve spent most of my life here in St. Petersburg. I love it.

I feel like this city is the perfect place for the types of change that I want to make in the world. And that wasn’t always my story. We’ll get into that as we, as we talk. But I have history in corporate. I am now a motivational speaker and trainer, and I’m just trying to be the change in the world that I want to see.

I’m a big believer that we did not get to the moon because of money and smart people. We did it because of motivation. And I think that’s what we need more of in this world. And I am here to champion that. Awesome.

So I just try to do these fancy introductions for you and say all your company name, but really what I- how I’m going to introduce you from now on is second-degree black belt. Love it. I’m here for it. We’ll talk about that in a sec. We’ll talk about that in a second.

David, you’re next on my screen. Do you want to introduce yourself quickly? Sure. I’m David Pavone. I’m also a native St. Peters- St. Petersburgian.

And, um, I, uh, I organize a group called Evolve, which is a social community focused on personal growth, uh, relationship building through activities. So I’m really interested in what Adam has to say in his book, and, um, I can’t wait to hear more about it. Splendid, splendid. Welcome to the conversation. Josh, you’re next on the screen.

Oh boy. Hey everybody, I’m Josh Naiman. I, uh, am a founder and CEO of Naiman Creative, a creative, uh, production and marketing firm that’s located here in St. Pete, and also a founder of Sun Leaders, which is the, uh, the entity that hosts all these fun Sun Readers, uh, fun leaders. Tonight we’re having game night. And all these wonderful personal development meetings that we all connected through, essentially.

And it’s been a huge pleasure. And that led to me and Eric co-founding Connect St. Pete, where all of this now happens, where we host many different things that align with what Adam’s doing. Adam’s super involved, which we’re just incredibly grateful for. Everybody on this call is actually super involved in, in moving the needle forward into our mission of 2026, the Year of Happiness. So this book could not be more perfect in so many ways and more needed and useful today.

And I’ll leave it at that. Josh, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but, uh, you’re wearing the Sun Leader shirt 2023. We need a 2026 one, don’t we? Yeah, we’ll make a, we’ll make a year of happiness. We’re getting the shop.

We’re working on the shop right now. Awesome. All right. Sign me up for at least two of those shirts. Okay, good deal.

We’ll put your face on it. That stamp or something. No, that might be a bridge too far. So good. Just that as a shirt.

No context. I’m gonna let, uh, James- yeah, right next to you is James. James, how do you want, uh, this whole world to know you? Hello everybody, James Kobler. I am the owner of Vacations Are the Best.

I’m also the founder of LGB2B+ Networking, and I serve on the leadership team for Sun Leaders. So I do a lot of different things in the community of St. Petersburg. I’ve lived in Pinellas County since 2009. I hail from Louisville, Kentucky. That’s James.

Welcome. All right, welcome everybody. So we’re all Sun Leaders. I should tell everybody I’m Eric Nutting and I am a happy man. So I want to get to know more about why I am and how I can stay that way.

So gentle fellows, let’s begin our discussion. Adam, I, um, read the book. I didn’t- this is, this is interesting. This is similar to what we cover in, in Sun Readers. Your book really is one that should be experienced and worked through, not just read through, because there’s exercises and we’ll talk about that.

But I wanted to start out at the beginning. Aunt Ada, do I have her correct? Yes, Ada. She’s important in your life. Hugely important.

Tell me about that. So Aunt Ada is my dad’s half-sister. So my dad comes from a very blended family and he’s got his own crazy story of growing up in that environment. But Ada, when I was growing up, I met her maybe 3 or 4 times before I was an adult. And she was always like this lightning bolt of energy that just showed up did really fun stuff and then like was gone.

But she didn’t have any kids of her own. She has a stepdaughter, but she’s been like- she really took up the mantle of aunt. So she’s one of the youngest siblings of all of her big family, and she has tons of nephews and nieces, and she just is so invested in helping if she can. You know, like I’ve learned in my kind of helper career that you can only help the folks that want help. So she’s always kind of made herself available.

And I was one of those people was like, yes, I’ll take your mentorship, I’ll take your guidance, I’ll take your adventure, I’ll take your, you know, crazy ideas. And we just kind of bonded over that. I have a really fun memory of going out in the boat with my dad and her when I was like 13 or something. And my dad loves to fish. So we’re under this bridge and he’s fishing, having a great time.

And Ada looks up and she says, “We should climb this ladder.” I’m like, “Should we?” But somehow we end up climbing. I think it was like the Howard Franklin Bridge and we like climbed up a service ladder and went up to a platform and took a picture and then climb down. And one of her philosophies is that when you feel afraid of something, you should just take one more step towards it to get over that fear, to conquer it, to just, just be able to say that you did. And that is one of the, the thing- many things that she’s given to me that I think about often when I feel afraid to do something. I take one step closer to it.

So everybody should have an Aunt Ada in their life. If they’re lucky, man, truly, right? A step towards happiness, I believe, having those people in your life. And I want to make sure that anybody can jump in anytime they want, but I heard you say something that made me raise an eyebrow because I wrestle with this frequently and I want to kind of just touch on it. You can only help those people who want help.

Is that what I heard you say? Yes. Speak to that a little bit. Yeah, this is, this is a challenging thing for me, and, and I’m sure we’ll get into it, but I, I lost my sister to suicide last year, 2025, in January, early on, and it, it catalyzed a lot of things that were already in the works, but it just kind of like just put them into motion for me. But I really, really, really tried to help my sister.

Like, I learned, I wrote this book, I learned a lot of stuff, I was sharing with her, I was, I supporting her financially in other ways. And she is one of those- she was a paradox. She wants help, but she had built up these self-sabotage mechanisms so, so complexly and so expertly that she would often kind of get in her own way even though she wanted help. So it, it was a hard lesson for me to learn that I could make myself available, but I had to kind of detach myself from the outcome because I can’t control whether or not people will accept the help or use it in good faith or be to even faithfully execute it. I don’t, I don’t fault my sister for not being able to faithfully execute the stuff that she could use to help because she, she just kind of got to a place where she, she couldn’t.

It was, it was, it was too, too monumental for her by, by that point. So, and then I, I’m a helper. I like to help people and I used to get emotionally invested in helping people and only to see them either not want it, therefore not use it. Or they didn’t, they didn’t have a good grasp of where they were even. So like, how can you help someone if they don’t know where they want to go?

And so it’s one of those things where I’ve learned to be patient and be kind of quiet in a room and wait for people to express that desire. And then, hey, I, I’ve got all this stuff that might be able to help you. Are you interested? So, yeah. That’s such a recent loss.

And you and I have had several conversations, but so the audience can know that timeline, how did that move you forward, hold you back, shape you and your mission?

How did that affect you? Yeah, that’s a really great question, Eric, especially it’s not just a catalyzing forward. There definitely were moments where it felt like I was being held back. So just to kind of give you the brief overview, my sister and I were born in the ’80s, 2 years and 1 day apart. She kind of always thought I stole her birthday because I’m the 2-year, 1, 1 day later baby.

Um, and so she, from the get-go, she had a lot of emotional regulation issues. She was a very challenging kiddo according to my parents, and I was often the target of her ire growing up because she was older and she could, and sibling stuff. And so we never really got along very much as kids. At the same time, she was still very protective of me. So if other people wanted to come at me, she didn’t like that.

Um, and she called herself the crash test dummy because she was the first and she made all the mistakes and she made all of them. Like, she’s like comprehensive inventory of mistakes. So as the younger sibling, I watched that and was like, not doing that or that or that. Thanks, big sis. Like, you helped me out.

And so I got to learn from her. Unfortunately, she was kind of getting battered and bruised up in that process, and our parents split up at a very formative age for both of us. I was 10, she was 12, and that was stressful on our family. And then, of course, the divorce and being with my parents, but they had partners and their partners weren’t always great. And then it just created this, this disconnect.

And so my sister used drugs to numb the pain and the strife, and I used isolation. I just kind of like slunk back into the shadows, put my head down into the internet and just kept to myself. That was like my coping mechanism. And so we just kind of departed in our coping mechanisms. And then we were starting to kind of rebuild as we were becoming adults in our early 20s.

And she gets pregnant. And I am now in like the situation of like, I don’t think this is a responsible person to have a kid right now because she was still addicted to opiates at the time. She was still getting high even when she was pregnant, she admitted to us. And we had to go through the process of getting her detoxed in a safe way for her baby. And then once she had the kiddo, she stopped using, but then she started after my niece was born and I had to intervene.

I just, I couldn’t sit by and I, was instrumental in getting my niece adopted to my godparents and all of that. And so my sister and I were estranged for 10 years during that time because she was in and out of rehab. She had a couple suicide attempts like in this period of time that I didn’t know about until much later. But she came to me when she was in a rehab center and said, I’d really like to reconnect. And at the time I was, I was like so hot under the collar, so like upset.

I had plans to go to graduate school. I graduated college in 2009. My niece was born in 2008, and I wanted to go do historical preservation in Athens, Georgia. And I decided to stay and not go to graduate school and just get a job and stick around for my niece. And I was mad at my sister and I said, you, you need to be sober for 5 years before I am willing to even reconnect with you, to like have a relationship.

And sure enough, she did. She stayed sober for 5 years and I honored my commitment to her and I was willing to rebuild after the end of that 5 years, which was like 10 years total by the time we get to this point. And I told my godparents that’s what I was planning to do. They had a big chip on their shoulder and never really got over that, unfortunately. But I did.

And I started to rebuild my relationship with my sister. And I started at that time I had done plenty of work on myself. I’d lived 10 more years of my life. I realized that my coping mechanism of isolation wasn’t necessarily any better or healthier than what she was doing. There’s lots of ways that you can say those that are very similar.

And I let her back in. She let me back in. And for, for a little while, we were doing better. You know, before COVID she had like AA groups that she would go to. She had a sponsor.

She had community. Mm-hmm. And then COVID happened and all that just went away. Like, it just vanished in a puff of smoke because of all the shutdowns and lockdowns. And she ended up becoming very, very isolated.

And, and I would say that was the beginning of the end because there’s only so much I could do as a sibling. And at some point, like, I moved her into my house to try to alleviate the pressure of having to make rent, which was going up astronomically after COVID. But what I didn’t realize was that as siblings, we are incredibly triggering to each other. Not intentionally, not because we want to. But my sister always had a competitive streak with me.

She always, you know, felt lesser than because I had a bunch of things that she wanted and didn’t have. And it- the best of intentions, it did not go as planned. It actually started to make things worse. And/or the trajectory was just going that way and maybe I slowed it down or arrested the development. But also keep in mind during this time, I wrote the book in 2023, I published it in 2024.

I moved her in, I think at the end of 2023 and into 2024. I went on a book tour and she just- she really cratered when I was away as well. And I came back and she’s like actively in crisis. So I’ve got this happiness book that I’m out there telling people about, and I’ve got my sister really, really struggling. And there was this push and pull in me, like, you know, like, I don’t know what else to do for you, but I don’t want to abandon you.

But I, I have plans, you know, like, I- this is like graduate school all over again. Like, I would like to go. I’d like to make my mark. And she understood that. But she was frustrated with herself as well.

And to her credit, she did all the therapy. All the medication right up until electroconvulsive therapy, which is one of the last therapies she did that she actually responded well to. But you couldn’t take your medication while you were doing that therapy. So now we’re imbalanced in another way. So she just had this like constant, uh, disproportionate experiences all the time.

And ultimately I was like, I need a break. You need to go live with Dad for a while and then talk about sibling triggers, now we have parent-child triggers happening. And she didn’t make it too much longer after that before she decided that, I, I don’t want to be here. And it wasn’t necessarily all about her not wanting to be here. Like, she expressed many times to me and my family that, I’m holding you back.

Like, I recognize I’m holding you all back. And I- and we tried to convince her, like, nothing would make us happier than for you to live a, like, a life you enjoy, that, that you’re flourishing. It’s not that we don’t want you here, it’s we want to see you do well. And she just lost faith in her ability to do well, and she didn’t want to hold us back. And I think that was like a- it’s hard to explain this to folks, but I think that it was an act of love ultimately, her taking her life.

In her mind, it was to, to get out of the pain that she was in, but it was also an act of love. I understand what you’re saying. Um, first of all, I’m sorry for that loss. I’m sorry for your loss. Thank you.

I think every human being is essential, and I think every human being is of value. So when I say her loss on a broader scale, I think it’s a big deal. But I understand your personal loss on that. There’s so many questions I want to ask, and I want to make sure I get everybody else involved. But listening to you share your story about your sister, in your book you also talk about neurodivergency.

And then I think about emotional pain, um, mental illness.

Where in all of that did your sister rest, if any? Yeah. So the first chapter of my book is, is called A Love Letter to the Neurodivergent Reader. Specifically because my book is about the process that helped me get into a better mindset. So everyone talks about mindset and I think it gets very diluted, but truly the way that you see the world and think about the world is so, so important.

And what I did to move the needle for me is what’s in my book. But I- and I think everyone’s on the spectrum, first of all, like I think it’s a spectrum for a reason and I think I’m probably on it somewhere in a demonstrable way. But I’m not, I’m not so far on the spectrum to where I have a diagnosis or that it impacts my life in a, in a, in a material way. So I wasn’t sure if my process would work for the very neurodivergent people like on that other side of the scale. So I wanted to address that to the reader so that they know that I see them, I love them, I want them to get the help that they need, but they might need more help than just this book.

They might need a a CBT therapist, a DBT therapist, ketamine treatments. They like, there’s all kinds of stuff now that you can kind of supplement your mental health to get you to a baseline to where you can use this process. Because a lot of people are below the baseline to where they can even get to use this process. And my sister was diagnosed with many things. CPTSD, which is complex post-traumatic stress disorder, was one of them, but also BPD, which is borderline personality disorder.

And that is, That is like this innate inability to see anything but black or white. And that showed up in her so much. She- you could not give her a compliment without her thinking that there was some hidden slight in it. Everything was on the extremes, including her emotions. And that’s why she was so emotionally tortured, because she felt stuff so deeply and it was so real for her that that’s, that’s extreme.

That’s like being on a roller coaster every day of your life. Yeah, that’s exhausting. Yeah. And kind of speaking to your thought process there, there’s a lot of people out there in the world who struggle and they go, there’s something wrong with me. There must be something wrong with me.

Which seems like a pretty good time to get everybody involved. Do you gentlemen have anything you want to ask or any thoughts? Thoughts. First off, I appreciate you telling that story. It’s just really compelling.

And I think You know, a lot of people haven’t gone through maybe that. I’ve lost a friend to suicide early on, a good friend in high school, and lost another good friend who just lost himself. And it wasn’t suicide, but it kind of was slow suicide. And I’m just, you know, like, what happened? And I’ve heard you talk several times.

I just love your perspective and like the way you approach things. And one one word that continues to pop out to me is the process, or like the reframing of a thinking pattern, right? These patterns that we get locked into. And then that is like a perpetual motion machine and it’s compounding just like interest, you know? And if you lock yourself into that, then day after day you’re locked into that.

That becomes your world rather than catching it early. It’s like I tell businesses that I work with, like, let’s make this one degree change. Right. And right now that doesn’t feel like a lot, but you move that in time and the divergence of that actually becomes really great. And so I just- maybe you can like expand on the, the, the, the viewpoint of process and pattern recognition, pattern changing that, you know, for people who are stuck in a particular mode or have these diagnosed issues where like, I feel like your approach is really cool.

And practical for anybody on whatever side of that spectrum is because the processes and pattern recognition, you can- wherever you are, that can help. Might not be the full cure, but there is so much merit there. So I just want to like kind of like spotlight that and maybe give you an opportunity to, to expand on it because like for me, that’s sticky. Yeah, Josh, that’s a great point. In fact, Adam, you point out there are 6 steps to this, at least to your, to your thought process.

So I think that’s really what we’re kind of trying to- with, with Josh’s, you know, comments and questions, what we’re trying to dig into here. Yeah, yeah. You know, I’ve always been blessed with this pattern recognition. Like, I don’t know where that comes from. I feel like I was just kind of born with like, oh, these dots connect.

And that’s been a great value of mine. I had a very robust 12-year corporate career where I put that pattern recognition to work, and it did a lot of great things for my ability to achieve. But it wasn’t until I started putting a framework around the way that I was thinking that things really started to change. So even though I had this innate pattern recognition, there’s no form, function, or meaning to it in my own life. And so for that reason, I like many humans, was in this negativity cycle where I was just paying attention to things that weren’t working.

I had 10 things going well for me, but that one thing was a thing that I fixated on and, you know, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So when I had that kind of realization of like, man, my life is good, but I’m still not very happy, I started doing what I love to do. I love to read, I love to learn. And so I started picking up books around neuro-linguistic programming and neuroscience because I thought this is something happening in me. It’s in, it’s in my head.

Maybe if I understood more about how the brain works, then I can understand how to make my life better. And as I’m reading these books, the framework is starting to emerge. The patterns are starting to emerge across all these different books and all these different ways that people address this problem. And I start to kind of unconsciously put the process together and start using it. So One of the first things I did is I learned about language and how important language is to the way that we see the world.

So when someone asks you how you are and you say, “Fine,” you know, that’s just like, it’s a baseline, it’s kind of neutral. Are you really actually fine? But it’s just like this reinforcement of this mediocre kind of experience. So this is actually a tip that Ada gave me early on in me kind of questioning like, why am I like this? And she told me that her mom gave her the advice of like, show up with a positive word, like just start using the language.

And so one of Ada’s tricks was when people asked her, you know, how are you doing today? She’d say, “Phenomenal, fantastic, wonderful.” She’d use these really high-energy words. And so I started doing that thinking like, “Eh, I’ll try it.” I didn’t feel it, didn’t feel resonant at the time, but the more I did it, the more I was like, “Oh, I’m actually feeling phenomenal. I’m actually feeling really good.” And then I applied that to other ways. I’m like, I started to notice like, oh my God, I’m so- it’s so mean up here.

Like, there’s so much criticism and just judgment about what I’m doing or thinking or if I’m doing enough. And it’s like this constant, like, scorekeeping. And that was something my sister did a lot. She would constantly keep score. She’d be like, yeah, 2 weeks ago this happened, so you must still be mad at me.

I’m like, I can’t even remember what happened 2 weeks ago, but I was doing that. And so I started like the metacognition, thinking about your thinking. Was kind of the first step of just like, hmm, what’s going on there? And that became like the second step in my process, which is to notice, just to teach yourself how to notice what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, what the language you’re using, how you’re describing what’s happening around you to yourself, what that narrative looks like. And I think my initial model was like a NIC model-notice, interrupt, choose.

It was like just to be more intentional about what you’re doing, because I learned that when we’re in a negative headspace, our, our experience is kind of stuck in our amygdala, which is our, our threat detection center. It’s like every, everything that we experience goes through our amygdala first. And if it’s normal, then you can, you can go on to your rational thinking. But if something’s abnormal, something’s off, like you start smelling, you know, a gas leak or something like you’re, you go into fight, flight, fawn or freeze mode. And once I learned that, I was like, oh, that’s That’s why I keep getting stuck in these loops, because I’m in my amygdala this entire time.

Like something triggers me and now I’m just stuck. So what I learned is how to interrupt that, how to like get out of the amygdala and into the more rational part of my brain. And there’s a couple of different methods for that that I describe in the book. And that became the interrupt. And then the choose was just like, okay, now that you’re breathing, now that you are not in your amygdala anymore, choose how you want to see, experience act in this moment.

And that was just living more intentionally. And that’s kind of where I started. And then that kind of- that 3-step process got kind of blown out as I started to learn more about how to form a more cohesive view of the world that’s positive, right? Easy way to say that is a preference for positivity. So I’ll pause there because I don’t know if we want to go into the full process right now.

I certainly can, but if you have any questions about that. You took us through a great deal of it- declare, notice, interrupt the negative pattern- and I think you’ve got us to investigate. So let’s do take advantage of this kind of pause. Yeah, anybody have any thoughts, comments, questions? Hello there.

So I love your book. I think that the 6-step process is kind of like, um, like could be a workshop. I feel like this has the potential to be something more than just a book. And one of the things that I am trying to do better at is, I think it’s in step number 3, which is the interrupting the negativity, the negative pattern. So do you have any thoughts or suggestions on that particular step itself.

Yeah. Yes. And I’m so glad that you’re enjoying the book. And in fact, it is a workshop I do, I think, twice a year for the city right now. I do my Positive Influence workshop, which is this process just really blown out with like interactive activities and everything.

And I really enjoy it. I want to do that workshop more. So if you know anybody who wants that for their workplace, nonprofit, mission-based, anything, let me know. So the interrupt stage, this is really going to be what works best for you. So I describe 4 different techniques in the book, but there are other ones.

I think one I don’t talk about is probably one of the more easier one. It’s not always doable though. It’s just like literally walk away. Like whatever it is that is stimu- like triggering or stimulating you, like go for a walk. This reminds me of one of my old bosses.

I’d get so worked up about just perceived slights or people not doing their job the way I think they should do it. And he’d tell me to go take a walk, you know, like just walk around the building. And that was really good advice. So if you can do that, that’s really, really good. But sometimes that might keep you stewing.

Like, you have to be very thoughtful about how you take that walk. But for me, my favorite way to interrupt was battle breathing. And I learned about battle breathing in a couple of different books. And it gets the- and I don’t typically love language like battle or conflict or attack or stuff like that, but I like this because I could tell a story about the Navy SEALs and the way I understand it. When the SEAL program started, they could not graduate anybody from the program.

Everybody just freaked out and washed out before they got to graduation. And so they asked Navy doctors to come in and explore, like, why? We’re not asking them to do anything that’s physically impossible. We know that they’re just psychologically getting overwhelmed. And the Navy doctors came in, they said, have them do these battle breaths before you allow them to wash out.

So make it a requirement. And it’s a 6-second inhale, a 2-second hold, a 6-second exhale, and a 2-second hold. And they ask them to do it for like 2 or 3 minutes before they ring the bell. And essentially what you’re doing is a couple of things when you do the battle breath and you’re telling your brain, if I can breathe like this, I’m not in danger. You know, like if I can take this moment, if I can pause and breathe, like there’s no actual danger here.

My conscious mind is telling my subconscious we’re good. It’s also flooding your brain and muscles with oxygen. So it’s like a little bit of a physiological- physio- physiological reset for your body. And even if you are in danger, I always like to say, like, I’d rather be in danger with a clear head than a panicked one. So by breathing in these stressful situations, which is what SEALs are doing, like they’re learning this technique for when they go into battle, when they have to meet some sort of peril.

So bell breath tended to be my favorite because it was something you could do discreetly. It was something that I started doing automatically. So when I started to category the inventory of cues, the notice, I hold my thumb, I tighten my shoulders, I’m clenching my fists. When I start to notice that, my body almost automatically goes into deeper breathing. Like I’ve trained it over the course of doing this intentionally so many times that now I do it unintentionally.

And that’s why it’s so easy for me to reframe these days because I’ve ingrained it into the patterns of my thinking, which is what the brain likes to do. It loves to encode patterns and it likes to just work on autopilot. Problem is most of us are working on an autopilot that doesn’t serve us, that has been dredged up from childhood and trauma and insecurity, and we don’t want to work on that autopilot. We want to work on the intentional autopilot. So James, there’s also the surrounding scan.

So just looking around, like just dropping into the present moment and looking at the small details of whatever’s in your space. Because again, if you can do that, you’re not actually in danger. You’re popping yourself in the present moment. And if the present moment is safe, your body and brain will recognize that. If the present moment is not safe, also helpful to be present and aware and more logical about how you’re going to deal with the not safe situation.

And then the other one is an internal scan. So you just start taking inventory of how your body feels. How does this chair feel under my legs? What is the texture of my shirt on my skin. Just getting into your body again does the same thing, present moment.

And then the fourth one I talk about is called an anchor, and that’s a little bit more complex. It’s where you encode a positive memory into a physical gesture or touch. So I might touch the top of my pinky finger, and I- and that’s my trigger to recall this amazing moment. I won, you know, Employee of the Year, and I walked on stage and I got applause. And I felt accomplished and I felt competent.

And I would think about that moment and I would tap my pinky at the height of that feeling and then I’d let it subside and then I’d conjure the memory again. I’d tap my pinky and then I would conjure the moment again and I’d tap my pinky and I’m encoding this into my brain so that when I’m in a stressful meeting, I’m feeling like I’m not accomplished, I have feelings of insecurity, I just have to tap my pinky and now boom, I have this immediate rush of this positive memory that is a counter-narrative to whatever it is that is happening that’s triggering me. So those are your options that I have, but there’s probably way more. And it’s really about what works best for you, what actually breaks the state. Because some people, you know, the whole count to 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, you know, like they just like anger, anger count instead of like actually calming down.

So it’s really about what works best for you.

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Man, that’s great. James, follow up. I got the thumbs up. Yeah. So Eric, real quick, can I, cuz I, we didn’t really cover declare and I wanna just back up to that a little bit because declaring is something that I added to the process once I understood more about how the subconscious works.

So I think a lot of people are familiar with the elephant and the rider analogy of subconscious. You’re the rider in your conscious mind. Your elephant is your subconscious and it does what it wants. I think about it more like a supercomputer and a user. So your subconscious is the supercomputer that can process all this data and do all these algorithms and connect all these dots.

And then it spits out something that, because it’s your subconscious, is a little bit more abstract. It doesn’t really communicate in- sometimes you have the inner dialogue and kind of get these snippets of words, but most of the time it doesn’t come in a fully formed sentence. It comes in like in a feeling in your body, or it comes in just like an instant realization, or like you put things together. So when I, when I give this instruction for declaring your intent, basically what I’m trying to help you do is align your subconscious, who has run this programming for your entire life. It is, it is running all the subroutines of like how you wake up in the morning and how you see the world and what you consider to be threats and what your trauma history is.

And it knows all that stuff and it’s like running most of your life. And then you have your conscious mind who, who wants to be happy but this is sabotaging the happiness because it’s doing what’s familiar and what you’re used to, which is not always what is in your best interest, right? So you have to tell your subconscious somehow, we’re changing, we’re making a change today, and this is what the change is going to be. And you can’t just say that because it believes your actions more than your words. So it does believe your words.

But when you pair it with action or in this case visualization, it’s it becomes much more clear to your subconscious what you should be looking out for. Your subconscious is in control of your attention network. So when you are thinking about buying a house, now you start to see all the for sale signs that are out in your neighborhood because you care now. And they’ve always been there, but you didn’t care before. It wasn’t part of your attention network.

So the Declare step is an exercise that I walk people through so they can align and become partners with your subconscious rather than adversaries.

That’s really powerful. Real quick. Yeah, on the, um, the, uh, the actions, essentially what I- when you’re interrupting, you had mentioned like 3 things that either connect with my life or I’ve experienced. Um, one, the, the last one you said is the tapping thing. Like, there’s a whole like movement of tapping at a greater level where you’re like, I matter, you know, I am loved.

And, and it works, that stuff. It- there’s, there’s merit to it. I like the simplicity of like one thing, one tap, one memory. That’s, that’s so practical. Um, the other thing is, um, at the beginning you talked about noticing your thoughts.

That’s like ultimately, in, in my experience, what meditation is. Right? You don’t try to like block those thoughts, but you’re sitting, you’re noticing your thoughts, and you’re letting them flow through you, go by, you know, watching the traffic go rather than getting caught in the traffic. And you can watch it go and come and go and come. And you could notice a thought but not get hung up on a thought.

There’s like serious benefit to that because we get caught up in everything. And we are being bombarded every day. So it’s getting trickier and noisier to, to comprehend all the stimuli that are happening at all times. That’s outside, let alone what’s coming from inside, especially depending on where you are in that spectrum. So true.

And then the breath is number- I was going to bring my- wear my Just Breathe shirt. I love it. My wife made it. But your breath is everything. And one thing that I learned in yoga, one of the instructors goes, Yoga isn’t about these poses.

It’s actually about your breath. It’s about the control of your breath through the poses. And I never knew that or thought about that. And I was like, oh, it’s like these poses are the distraction and the challenge of if you can keep a solid breath through these extremely- if you’ve never done yoga and you think you’re strong, go do a class of yoga and then get back to me. Right.

Yoga is so good for you and so hard. And then try hot yoga. If you’re like, oh, that wasn’t so bad, you try 90-minute hot yoga session. But if you can breathe through those poses calmly, then you’re okay because your body, through that breath, is telling your body we’re good. And there’s so much power there.

Like, then you talk about Wim Hof and how he can run a marathon in shorts, barefoot in Antarctica, you know, or climb, climb a mountain in, in in nothing because all he’s doing is working on his breath. So there’s incredible power in our breath. So I just want to like put a spotlight on that because I love, I love like everything that you’re doing, Adam. Um, maybe becoming one of your bigger fans out there. Thank you, thank you.

And meditation is one of my 19 best practices in the book. If you haven’t gotten there yet, you’re dead on. That’s, you know, like I, I get that sometimes this process is challenging for folks, especially the more embedded these routines are, it might be hard to rewire them in the beginning. So I give you these other tools to sprinkle into your life that will aid you in noticing. So the more you meditate, the more it becomes easier to notice in your non-meditative environments.

Yeah. I’m going to take us back to declare because we’ve kind of talked about the first 4 steps. Adam, you took us back to declare and as everybody’s discussing this, We’ve talked about a little bit about trauma and, um, crisis, but for a lot of people, this is a slow burn process and their state of being is something they rest in. So as we think about changing deliberately our process to maybe discontent or even depression, into this want of happiness, that’s a, that’s a deliberate, slow process, correct? Yes, it is.

And when somebody asked me recently, I did my talk at Lifelong Learners I opened in January, and somebody asked during the Q&A, like, how long does this process take? And my answer is so unsatisfying because it’s truly different for everyone depending on, again, how ingrained these things are. But for me, it probably took a solid 2 years to get to where I could write the book, which is something else. You know, being able to articulate this stuff is a little different than simply practicing it, but it is a slow burn. You’re rewriting- I’m 39 years old, so I was rewriting 3 decades of programming.

And I think 2 years is kind of fast in that, in that context. And so, yes, you’re 100% right. It is a slow burn. You have to make peace with that. And we want at least almost 4 decades.

Those, that 1 to 9 is formative. Yes. So I push back a little on that. The reason I wanted, I wanted us to talk about it because I want it to be encouraging to people and to the listeners in the whole scheme of things, that daily work is so important. And what are some of the tools?

And we’re still really on Declare. What are some of the tools to keep us on course? Because it’s pretty easy, that subconscious is working against us to kind of say, “No, man, you’re better off where you’ve always been. Stay right here. It’s comfortable being here.” Yeah.

How do we stay on it? Yeah. Compassionate self-talk is a big one. And I think I talked about that during the interrupt step, but it is something that was required because once I started noticing, and once you start, like, I think it can be frustrating for people because they can notice and they know, and that was the truth for my sister. She could name every every single thing that was wrong with her.

She’s spot it, got it. She knew it inside and out. But the change wasn’t coming. And I think people get frustrated when they’re like, yeah, I see it, I see, I see it. But like, nothing’s happening.

It was like, well, it just, it just takes a little bit of time. But when I started to notice, you know, if I spilled something on my counter, it’d be like stupid. Whoa, hey bro. Like, that was, that was pretty harsh. Like, that was just an accident.

You know, like I would respond to those, those moments where I was being mean or critical to myself. And that giving myself grace was one of the most essential early tools that I used to keep myself on the path, keeping myself faithful that this was going to work. And I did it also because it felt so much better than being mean to myself. Like it was- there was incentive to keep doing that, that compassionate self-talk, because it just was a much more pleasant experience. Okay.

It’s crazy how ingrained that is, though. As a father, I don’t know, some people on this call know like when a spill happens, I’m- my immediate reaction is like, oh man, no, instead of like, hey, that was a learning experience and we’re okay. It was an egg that broke, you know, at the end of the day. Like, why are we being so hard on ourselves, right? And our children?

It’s crazy. That’s a great point. I can remember the stresses of fatherhood when the kids were young, and there’s just so much responsibility. And I think if we speak about capacity, the sponge gets full, right? Our sponge gets full and there’s only so much.

So that spilled water is like, oh my gosh, I don’t have time for this. And trying to kind of look at that through a different lens is maybe difficult in the moment, but certainly something we can practice for sure.

What do you feel, Adam, people should be declaring in our quest for happiness? That’s step one. What? What should they be declaring? So it is- the declare is mostly a visualization.

So it is you putting yourself into this scenario where you have two choices. And I think this is true of all of us in life. We have the choice to see the positive or we have the choice to see the negative. It’s not that you can only see one or the other, like you can still see see the negative and choose not to engage with it. So I ask people to imagine themselves on this road or path or, or dirt road, and you’re walking down and it comes to a fork, the fork in the road.

And to the left is this beautiful pasture full of flowers and sunshine and beauty. And then to the right is this dark sewage, humid like hellscape, right? And, and the more evocative the better, like when you’re imagining this. So it’s not just the visuals, you want to, you want to layer in other modalities. So like there’s a, there’s a stink and screech of bats coming from the negative side, there’s the sounds of beautiful laughter and clinking bells and the smell of freshly baked bread coming from the, the happy side.

And you envision yourself choosing over and over again, going down the happy path, looking at the negative path and choosing to go down the positive path and being as evocative as possible and doing this like 20 times in your head, just moving down the positive path. That is you effectively communicating to your subconscious, which works physiologically and through these modalities of hearing, smelling, seeing. And you’re telling your subconscious, this is what I choose. This I’m declaring This is what I want to do now. You’re, you’re alerting your attention network now to not only do I want to, like, I want to notice when that’s happening, but I want to choose this after I notice.

And that’s really what declaration means. All right. Excellent. Any questions on that from anybody? Thoughts?

Have you guys ever practiced this intentionally? I think that it’s kind of important to see both sides. Of the coin. Like Adam was saying, um, you have to be able to recognize the negative. You have to be able to recognize the unhappy and then see the happy.

And, you know, we’re all probably, um, worthy of more happiness and more grace than what we give ourselves. So it’s important, like he was saying, to train your subconscious because our subconscious has been our entity and our self-guidance for so long that training that subconscious is important. So I, I can relate to what he was saying, and I’ve done that before, um, kind of like not knowing the process, um, until I read that in your book, uh, of actually declaring the happiness side, um, just, just not exactly understanding what I was doing until, until I got into it a little bit. I love that. Thank you.

That’s true for me. And as I was reading a lot of self-help, I was like, oh, I know this, I know this, I know this, I’ve done this, but I hadn’t done it consistently and I hadn’t done it as a part of a process, which was a real game changer for me. And it’s really that process that you’re speaking about, which is why your book is so valuable, why people should, should pick it up and read through it. That’s the process that we can use daily to keep us on track. That’s why these tools exist.

So we have maybe about 10 minutes left, and I think we should dig a smidge more into step 4 and take us from 4 to 6. Investigate. What do we mean when we say investigate? We’ve touched on it briefly, but that is really what I’m talking about when we’re saying keep us on course, I think, don’t you? Yeah.

Well, you know, like Josh already alluded to it, those first 5 years really of your life are so formative. They found the basis of your entire worldview. Those first 5 years of data, we have about 90% of our brains developed during that time, and everything after that is either addition onto this foundation or subtraction. Sometimes we do prune things that we don’t think we need during the, the puberty period of our lives and into our mid to late 20s even. So in order to understand why we’re triggered, like I talked about all these little subtle triggers between me and my sister, you have to go back to where the foundation was poured, and that is in our childhood.

So when I talk about investigation, I’m talking deep, like not necessarily as part of the process real time, because it’s, I think, very, very difficult for folks. I can, I can do it now because I’ve done all this work. But what I always advise people to do is like get to the point where you’re interrupting Great. Like, just get back to baseline and move on with your day. Do what you can.

But like in the quiet moments when you are truly in a safe place, when you’re taking a shower, you’re doing your evening routine, you’re meditating, set your mind- your subconscious supercomputer, it’s running in the background at all times. You can say to yourself at that interrupt stage, like, ooh, figure this out. Like, think about why I’m feeling this way. And then when you get to that quiet place later in your day, the insights come to you. Oh, I’ll give you an example.

I’m learning piano and it’s- I’ve tried to learn piano many times. I’ve given up many times and I have a piano teacher now and he was triggering me. I didn’t know why, but like one of my last sessions, I was just getting very dysregulated and I could not figure out why. And as I logged it and I went back and I let myself think about it, I realized I don’t like- I didn’t grow up with music. I didn’t grow up with rhythm.

And he’s talking to me as if I should understand rhythm and I don’t. And that makes me feel stupid. It makes me feel like I’m lacking. And it- I don’t like expectations on me that I did not agree to. Like, and, and then I realize, oh, I kind of get like when my dad would teach me stuff as a kid, he’d get mad when I didn’t know how to do something.

And I’m like, I’m a kid. How would I know how to do this? But, you know, he was in his own dysregulation at the time, too. So like, I like, I put it all together. I was like, oh, I feel this way because as a kid this would happen.

And now I feel that as an adult and now I’m pushing through it and I’m still learning piano and I feel much more regulated as I do it. And so like, I had to go all the way back to get to my present regulation. And I think people fear that. They think they don’t need to. They think they moved past it.

My friends, you have not. It is still locked in there. It’s still a big part of who you are. And that investigation step is an invitation to dig around in there. And claim your own story.

There’s kind of a step in that investigation process, to my way of thinking, and a process that I’ve created where there’s got to be a forgiveness component in there, isn’t there? Oh, it’s all part of the broader framework of giving yourself grace and, and not judging yourself and others. Yeah, 100%. I think when you are kinder to yourself, you are much kinder to other people. It’s much easier to recognize that, oh, they’re human too.

Oh, they also experienced trauma. Oh, they didn’t have these tools, just like I didn’t have these tools before I have them now. And so 100%, it is to not to go back and dredge out indictments and blaming and putting the onus on anyone else but yourself. You have full accountability of your life as an adult, how you see the world, and it is a freaking superpower. You should embrace it.

Yeah, I really- we move on from music. Because I feel like it’s such a good analogy for what you experience. Because for me, right when you said about a frustration, you felt there was a day that was really hard in your piano practice, regardless of your teacher or whatever. For me, it was like, it doesn’t matter what you say after this. Not to discount what you say, but as a musician growing up playing guitar, very hard.

Drums was- is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life besides the challenges of fatherhood. But it is a very difficult task and there are ups and downs where certain days it’s like, I am so incompetent and this is so difficult. And other days you’re like, yes, I got that scale, I crushed the rhythm, whatever it is, I understood this. But I think about that is like life has its ups and downs, even if you’re doing the- like talking about the same task each day. Sometimes it’s harder one day and sometimes it’s easier one day.

And to recognize that, like, that there’s, there’s challenges and to give ourselves grace on that and like thinking about the journey of a musician. Actually, most of us are in ways musicians on this call at different levels. But like, that is a journey that you embracing that like difficult part. If it’s not difficult, then you’re not challenging yourself enough. To grow as well.

And so it, it is healthy to do that sometimes. But I want to like point that out because regardless of like what that circumstance was and that particular journey of a hard thing that you’re doing, which I respect very much, especially this late in the game compared to learning piano when you’re 8, you know, that is a different ballgame. You’re- the sponge isn’t as spongy anymore. Same with like language learning. Right.

You could apply that to whatever. I don’t know. So grace, I like that because we got to give ourselves that and others that. Your teacher should have given you more grace. Like, oh yeah, this person doesn’t have rhythm and lock it in as much as me.

Well, he didn’t know that until I told him, you know, and I didn’t know that that was bothering me until he triggered me. But we had the conversation and now like we’re on the same page. It’s great. Oh, that’s awesome. Awesome.

So that really does kind of complete the whole, uh, the, the last of the 6 steps because we’ve talked about investigate, And a lot of this conversation has been talking about reframing, the rewiring, going back, finding out what that trigger is, who we need to forgive, who do we need to give grace, including ourselves in that process. And then the 6th step is really what we’re talking about as far as staying on course, the longevity to increased happiness and mental health, emotional health is repeat, right? We got to repeat this. It is, it is repeat. And, and I don’t know if we do a part 2, but if we can’t, I’ll try to try to do a very quick, uh, 5th step, which is really the bread and butter of the process, is to tell yourself a better story.

And that’s what everything before the 5th step sets up the 5th step for success, right? So in order to tell ourselves a better story, we don’t want to gaslight ourselves or do this toxic positivity thing that people are really worried about because that’s what it can be. If you’re just being positive, you’re wallpapering over it, you’re pretending like, oh, my childhood doesn’t matter, I’m fine, everything is fine. No, it’s not. You have to understand your background.

You have to interrupt so you can get to the higher lobes of your brain. You have to notice before you can even start to fix something. So all those steps set up 5, which is tell yourself a better story that has 3 essential components. It’s got to be positive because that’s what we’re building. It’s got to be actionable because that’s how we feel like we have agency in the world.

And it’s got to be reality-based because our subconscious knows everything about us and it will not be fooled if we do not honor our lived experience. It will not change a damn thing if you don’t honor your lived experience. It will- if you just say, I’m fine, I’ll be like, no, you’re not. And I’m going to increase the pain until you recognize that you’re not fine. But if you say, I’m feeling this way because as a kid this happened and I choose to do this and I’m so grateful for blah, then it’s like, oh, okay, you honored- you’re on the same page.

I get it. Okay, I’m on board. Let’s do that now. And so that is what builds the more positive mindset. And that is the whole key to this process working.

And everything else is just to set it up for success. And then, like you said, Eric, repetition is what makes the pattern. It’s what embeds it. And it’s what the brain likes. It likes the repetitiv- the familiarity of doing something that it knows is safe, is tried and true.

And it’s doing all that with the negative stuff because it feels like it’s safe because it’s tried and true. But now you could tell it there’s another way. To do the same thing but better.

So if you’re struggling with this, we urge you to not give up. That’s, I think- I will, I will reframe that because we think about negations, we don’t hear the not. So all we hear is give up. Stay the course. We will stay the course.

All right, great. So stay the course. Let me go around the horn here and see if there’s any last words or thoughts or questions. David, you’re on my screen. Do you have anything you want to ask or contribute here?

No, it all sounds really good.

Yeah. No, thank you for sharing, Adam. Thank you, David. Awesome. Mr. Naaman?

Yeah, so I just wanted to first thank you, Adam. I think a part 2 would be cool. We can do it on the Name and Creative Show. Yeah, I’d like to talk to you about maybe a 7th step and brainstorm that. I’m not trying to rewrite your book or your steps, but I’m, um, you got my brain just on fire, um, in the best of ways, by the way.

Um, and I wanted to also just mention that this is such good, important work. Um, so when we think about these cycles that we’re breaking in a way, like these ingrained- why, why is this stuff in our subconscious? Why, why are these patterns continuing through generations, you know? And I think, I think, I think humanity is reaching, like, because of the work that you’re doing, Adam, and others are doing in this direction, help to break this cycle that evolutionarily, as I look at it, it’s going to take time. But we are moving the needle ingrained in us to a happier society if implemented over time, consistently through generations, through parents, through their children, and feeling that that stuff doesn’t get passed on.

We will actually live in a better, happier world. It’ll manifest itself out and it won’t be as hard for my daughter’s children to have to work so hard on this. And so I, I want to point that out, that like, this is maybe some of the most important work we can be doing. Thank you, Josh. And I cannot wait to talk to you more about this because I couldn’t agree more.

I think I have a kind of a call to action at the end of the book, which is like, if you want to make the world a better place, this is your top priority, because this is how we do it. That’s how we break the generational trauma. This is how we raise the consciousness of everybody. And I think A lot of people like me have this desire to make the world a better place. And I got discouraged because I can’t go and do these big grandiose things that I, in my mind, society, the news, movies have taught me need to happen.

It’s here. It’s right in ourselves and it’s a collective action. And if enough people do it, then we are in such a better place. And I could not agree. The time is now.

We’ve never known more about neuroscience than we do now. It’s a golden age of understanding, of meditation, of all of these practices coming into our consciousness. And, and there, I think we’re a majority of people, honestly, um, quietly, and many people in the early stages, but I do think that the majority of us are there, and I cannot wait to explore that more with you, my friend. Excellent. James, final thoughts, questions?

I’m good. It’s good. All right. So Adam, we turn it back to you. I want you to be able to have some final thoughts for the listeners here.

Tell people how they can get a hold of you, and then I’ll close this out.

I am so grateful that I met all of you and that the Connect St. Pete office exists and the ethos and pathos that you operate under. It has been a boon to me to have a community like this to plug into, and I think that is the true way forward for all of us. My kind of moniker for my motivational speaking business is Action Connection Hope. The idea that the action is what we take in ourselves. The connection is what brings us together.

And all of that creates this beautiful hope that we can build collectively, co-create to build the kind of world that every single one of us wants to live in. We all want to live in a good world. Let’s make it one. So you can find me at Connect St. Pete. My current website is mindmaprenovations.com.

I have Instagram and Facebook. You could find me in those places as well. And I am here for this conversation. So let’s Keep it, keep it going, folks. All right, thank you, Adam.

Gentlemen and, uh, some listeners, it’s been a pleasure. Adam, thank you for sharing your expertise and your knowledge with us. The book is The Blueprint to Happy: Become a Better Problem Solver, Broaden and Deepen Your Relationships, and Heal Faster. That is the book, and I encourage you, please Pick it up, reach out to Adam, engage with us, and know that you are not alone on this journey. And as Adam pointed out to us, and I want to stress this, stay the course, but that’s the new course that you’re creating.

So thanks. Until next time, we are the Sun Leaders. We will end this recording and wish you well until we see you again. Great conversation, friends. Cheers.

Thanks all.