Breakthrough To Success In Life & Recovery

In episode 290 of the Elevation Recovery Podcast, Matt Finch discusses his experience at a seminar titled “Breakthrough to Success” by Jack Canfield.

Matt provides his key takeaways from this seminar to either overcome addiction for early recovery and beyond or for life optimization.

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Matt Finch: And that brings us likely to my favorite quote that I heard during the entire seminar, another quote by Jack Canfield. Quote, "If you can tune into your purpose and really align with it, setting goals so that your vision is an expression of that purpose, then life flows much more easily."

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Elevation Recovery Podcast, your hub for Addiction Recovery Strategies, hosted by Chris Scott and Matt Finch.

Matt Finch: Welcome to episode 290 of the Elevation Recovery Podcast. My name is Matt Finch. I'm your host. Today with me is my trusted sidekick, Papaya the Parrot. And in today's episode, we've got a really long, really powerful episode that if you take action on this, this could change your life more than possibly anything that you've ever watched or listened to in your entire life.

Matt Finch: Let me talk about what's going to be happening. I recently attended this past weekend, this seminar, a three day live virtual seminar by Jack Canfield called Breakthrough to Success. This was 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Friday and Saturday, and it was 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Sunday. I originally found out about Jack Canfield by a documentary on Amazon Prime called The Soul of Success: The Jack Canfield Story. And I had heard about this author of this Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I had seen the Chicken Soup for the Soul books at bookstores and on websites. And I had never read it, never looked anything into it, but the guy seemed pretty cool. And after watching the documentary I was like, wow, I got to read some of this guy's books.

Matt Finch: And so long story short, one of my friends and one of my parents' Herb School graduates who I've interviewed on this podcast before, Dr. Toni Camacho, is actually a certified Jack Canfield Success Principles trainer. So she gets VIP tickets to these seminars, and she got a free general admission ticket as well. And so she gave me, found out that I was really interested in doing it with her, so I got a free ticket to this live virtual seminar, which was amazing.

Matt Finch: So what I've done today, well, I did this yesterday actually, is I compiled eight pages of notes on the seminar using the workbook and my notes from it, and my memories and experiences. And so what I've done is I've synthesized everything, and I've created this 48 slide presentation for you on my key takeaways that you can use to either overcome an addiction, for early recovery and beyond, and for life in general. So this is going to be on key takeaways for addiction recovery and life optimization from the Breakthrough to Success, Jack Canfield seminar.

Matt Finch: So without further ado, now that I've introduced what we're going to be learning, let's get right into the slides. I'm going to have video of my face as well. Most of the screen is going to be the slides, and you'll be able to access this slide deck as well, which I'm posting for free online. And if you like this stuff, I highly... Looking more into Jack Canfield and many of the books that he's written, many of his amazing free YouTube videos that he produces. A lot of the cool, awesome stuff on his website that's either free or that you can purchase, online courses that are virtual and on demand and much more. So okay, let's get right into it.

Matt Finch: All right, starting with slide one and moving right along. Like I said, key takeaways for addiction recovery in life optimization. This is Breakthrough to Success, this particular event and seminar the subtitle was Drive for Change. It is over, but I highly recommend if you really enjoy this webinar to do it in the future. It was only a few hundred dollars for general admission, and the software that they had and the tech team that they had supporting, it was amazing. It was totally interactive, they broke us out into groups, everything was just so smooth. And it was, like I said, it was an interactive seminar.

Matt Finch: Let's get more into it. This seminar was designed to provide two types of learning experiences: number one is the type that you're most familiar with and probably have done the most, that is conceptual and theoretical, number two was, like I said, they broke us out into groups. We did this big giant workbook and we had lots of exercises, and then we would share our responses to these worksheet exercises in these small groups of usually three to four people. There were live Q and A sessions too that we could ask Jack Canfield questions, and it was awesome. So number two type of learning experience was interpersonal, intrapersonal and also transpersonal. If you haven't heard about transpersonal psychology, I highly recommend looking into it. It's something that I've been studying for the past year and a half, or maybe even two years, and it has radically transformed my mindset psychology and my view of healing, healing and balancing and growing.

Matt Finch: All right, so this is Jack Canfield on the right. That's a more recent picture of him. This is a screenshot from one of his YouTube videos. Like I said, he is got a great YouTube channel. On the left is the image for the documentary that I mentioned, The Soul of Success: The Jack Canfield Story. I believe that's actually free for Amazon Prime members. I could be wrong, maybe it's a few dollars, but I'm pretty sure it's free, and I really got a lot of value out of that. This is the main book, my favorite book that I've read. I think I've read three books by Jack Canfield. My favorite by far is The Success Principles: How To Get From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be.

Matt Finch: And so, this was a really long book. I just let my mom borrow it for the section... I think there's around 67 success principles, which is a lot, and they're broken down into many different categories. I let my mom borrow it, I think because of the section on building your team. My mom is building a team right now, and so this was really relevant for her. Anyways, highly recommend this book. Also the Audible, the audio book is very helpful if you don't want to sit through and read this very long book. And so, I took some screenshots of the promo page for it just to give you a little overview on what I'm going to synthesize into this webinar for you.

Matt Finch: So anyways, you'll gain clarity around these fundamental questions: Who are you really and who do you want to become? What are your most powerful gifts and how do you want to use them in the world? What do you want to achieve with your life? What do you want your life to look like? And also last but not least, how do you want to feel as you live the life you have created for yourself? Some of the sections too that the webinar is going to go over that the seminar talked about: Tap into your true power, achieve the impossible, up-level your community, define your dreams and take bold daily actions, unlock your full potential, transform your mindset, adopt new success habits, and break free of old limiting beliefs. Very powerful stuff.

Matt Finch: A little bit about Jack Canfield. He is the founder and former CEO of a billion dollar empire called Chicken Soup For the Soul Enterprises. They've sold more than a hundred million books in the United States, and more than 500 million books worldwide. Jack Canfield is the best selling author of several books, and he owns the Guinness World Record for having the most books on the New York Times Bestseller list in a single day, at the number of seven. In one single day, he was on the New York Times Bestseller list for seven different books, the world record. Pretty cool. He was also voted Motivator of the year twice, and Success Magazine named him one of the most influential leaders in personal growth and achievement.

Matt Finch: And we're about to get into all my key takeaways and synthesis of this three day event. Let me just explain real quickly what each day covered. Day one is Creating a Vision For Your Life. Day two was Turning Your Past Into Your Power, AKA Reprogram Yourself. And day three was Activate Your New Life, AKA Make Your Vision a Reality.

Matt Finch: Now we're getting into the nuts and bolts of this training. Let's go straight into day one takeaways. Starts with a quote: "Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you, but you have to take action to get it." That's a quote by Jack Canfield. What's your why? This is such an important section, and I'm sure you've probably heard of it before. What is your why? I first learned about creating a powerful, compelling, juicy, motivating why at my first seminar on personal development ever called Unleash The Power Within. That was with Tony Robbins, I think it was in 2014. It was in the summer in Chicago, Illinois. It was hot as hell out, but the seminar room was freezing cold. It was really hot outside, freezing cold inside, and I mean freezing cold. It was like arctic cold. And they did that to keep you awake.

Matt Finch: So anyways, think about this. Let's do an example for addiction recovery. Who do you think is going to have a more fluid and easy time or less difficult time transcending a substance use disorder? Let's say two people are addicted to alcohol and they pretty much have the same type of alcohol habit, overuse or abuse. Let's say that the first person, their why is to save money and to get healthier. That's their why, it's their conscious why. They really want to just save some money. They're spending too much on really nice alcohol, expensive stuff, and they want to regain more help.

Matt Finch: Now the second person, they're in the same exact alcohol habit, but their why is to avoid getting divorced. Let's say their spouse is saying, "I'm going to divorce you and," let's say this is a woman. "I'm going to divorce you. You're going to have to pay me alimony and I'm going to take the kids 3,000 miles away to go live closer to my family. And you're going to have to pay child support too." So you're going to have to get divorced, pay all this money for the divorce, pay money for alimony and child support for over a decade, most likely, at least the child support. And you're not going to get to see your kids potentially ever again. So the second person, that why is probably going to be a little bit more powerful, a lot more powerful to help them to quit drinking.

Matt Finch: Now, each person and situation is unique and different, and unfortunately that type of a why isn't always strong enough. Because depending on the person's alcohol addiction, or drug addiction or even behavior addiction, no matter what their why is, sometimes it's just too difficult. Because having a powerful why is not the only factor when it comes to outgrowing, transcending, overcoming and breaking free of an addiction. Here are my notes and takeaways from the What's your why section. The more crystal clear, focused, compelling and powerful your why is, the more natural massive action towards your goals become.

Matt Finch: All right, moving along, where are you now? This was a section on checking in, and here are my notes on that. Basically what we did is we did an exercise where we did a lot of writing in this seminar, and you can do this too, you can actually use this comprehensive synthesized webinar to change your life as well. So, describe your life in as much detail as possible. What's working? What's working right now? List all the things in your life that are currently working for you. What's not working, write all the major things and even minor things if you want to. You can get really detailed. What are all the things that are not working? Who do you spend time with? What are your daily habits? What do you love about yourself? And finally, what do you wish was different? That leads us to another quote by Jack Canfield: "Most everything that you want is just outside of your comfort zone." We're going to be talking about comfort zone addiction basically later on in the webinar.

Matt Finch: Next, we did the life purpose exercise. Well, this is the next synthesis I have for these takeaways. This was powerful. I really enjoyed this, and I'm going to give you an example that's not my example, although I guess I could share mine too. Really simple exercise. It's a two step exercise, number one is you list two of your unique personal qualities, such as for this example I put kindness and enthusiasm. For my example, I put creativity and empathy. Number two of the life purpose exercise is list one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when you are interacting with others. For the example on this slide, I put to support and to uplift. For my purpose example I put to teach and to empower.

Matt Finch: And finally number three, you combine the two subdivisions into a single statement. For the example on this slide, my purpose is using my kindness and enthusiasm to support and uplift others. The one that I came up with for this workshop is my purpose is utilizing my creativity and empathy to teach and empower others. And again, I want to reiterate that you're going to have access to this slide deck online for free. So if you want to first, listen to or watch this podcast, and then go ahead and access the slide deck, you can actually go through this on your own in your own time, because it takes quite a while. You could do it over the span of a whole day, you could just crush it out. You could do it over the span of a weekend, a week or even two weeks if you wanted to at your own leisure.

Matt Finch: And that brings us likely to my favorite quote that I heard during the entire seminar, another quote by Jack Canfield. Quote, "If you can tune into your purpose and really align with it, setting goals so that your vision is an expression of that purpose, then life flows much more easily." The other day I had a coaching call with a client that is one week off alcohol, or he was one week off alcohol when we had the coaching call. And he was really tired, he didn't have a hard time with the acute withdrawal symptoms other than being tired. He told me that he would drink alcohol for the energy. Alcohol makes a lot of people tired, but some people, I call it the alcohol energy addiction connection. It can cause alcohol-induced hypomania, and that can become very addictive to get that alcohol fueled energy, enthusiasm and motivation.

Matt Finch: So he was suffering through the rebound effect of that. What's the opposite of energy? It's exhaustion, it's fatigue. So he was really tired, exhausted, and he was telling me that he really needed to find and figure out a clear and powerful purpose for his life. He's kind of just going through the motions, and alcohol can rob you of so many things including your purpose. And so, this is something that I'm going to do with him once he gets back to the next session, he's going on a trip. Because when you're going through alcohol withdrawal induced dopamine deficiency and you can't think straight, coming up with a purpose can be very difficult, so we're giving him more time to heal. The first stage of quitting is getting through the alcohol withdrawal symptoms, getting some mental health and physical and emotional health back, and then really redesigning the life so you can stay alcohol free or stay drug free, or stay gambling free, or shopping addiction free, pornography free or whatever that person's issue is.

Matt Finch: Next, let's talk about the equation, E plus R equals O. What do you think that means? Can you guess it? E plus R equals O. I couldn't guess it. What it stands for is event plus response equals outcome. It's never the events in our life that create our outcomes. It's always the event and our response to that event that leads to the outcome. So what could be our responses? Well, we could respond to events, let's say we have a horrible event happen where we get fired from a job that we really loved, and we got paid really well and it was unforeseen. It was kind of out of left field, and we're like, wow, can't believe this just happened. Well, that doesn't just equal an outcome of horrible negativity, depending on our response in the form of thoughts, mental images and behaviors, that equals the outcome.

Matt Finch: So one person, that event could totally make them crumble, relapse back into addiction if they've had some sobriety time, totally just say screw it, and their life could just spiral more and more downhill. Another person could have a different response, an empowering response in their thoughts, their mental images, their beliefs and their behaviors. They could have a totally different outcome. Maybe this person, the second example, they go out and they find an even... They have a good attitude about it, and they're thinking this happened for a reason. This happened for me, not to me. And they go out there and perhaps they get a even better career that they like even more, that pays even more money and has even better benefits. And maybe it's got a more flexible schedule.

Matt Finch: And so, it's just really about not just the event, it's our response. Event plus response equals outcome. This is so important. If all you learn from this webinar podcast training is event plus response equals outcome, and really work on this and dial this in and use this to optimize your life, this one strategy could potentially change everything for you. That concludes the day one takeaways.

Matt Finch: Moving right along, we come to day two takeaways. Here's a quote by Joe Dispenza, and if you've never heard of Joe Dispenza he has so many excellent, very helpful YouTube videos online, also written some fantastic books such as Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, and his newest one Becoming Supernatural. I've read the former book but not the latter. And I also read, the first book I read by Joe Dispenza was The Placebo Effect. Oh, sorry, it was called You Are the Placebo. Very good book. Quote, "The process of change requires unlearning. It requires breaking the habit of the old self, and reinventing a new self."

Matt Finch: What it comes down to is we have a pattern of being ourselves. The brain is just wired that way to make our days easier. So it gets so effortlessly easy to get stuck into a negative pattern in your life, or a negative lifestyle, negative thoughts, negative mental images, negative behaviors. But on the opposite side of that, this is a double sided coin. Fortunately, the opposite is true. It's also easy to get stuck in an awesome life where you have empowering thoughts, mental images, behaviors, and everything that you think, say and do is aligned with your purpose, and your vision and your goals and your values. And what this seminar was designed to do in many ways was to measure the gap between where we are and where we want to be, and how to fill in the values, the purpose, the goals, the action steps to bridge that gap, and then how to create a plan to start to bridge that gap. So then you're living a new life, a more optimized life that is much better than the one that you're currently living through.

Matt Finch: Another day two takeaway was a section on granting yourself permission. Specifically, there was a cool table with four different boxes in it. It was a rectangle table with four different sections. Above it says, "Today I grant myself permission to..." And the sections are ask for, blank, say yes to, blank, say no to, blank, and be, do and have, blank. So today I grant myself permission to ask for, say yes to, say no to and be, do and have.

Matt Finch: For my example, during the seminar I wrote Say Yes to myself. I also wrote down, ask for more help. I'm really bad at asking for help. I tend to go as long as I can without asking for help or support. And then finally, when things get really bad, then I just go kicking and screaming and I finally ask for help. And I just ask for a little bit of help and support. I don't know why I'm like that, but during the seminar I had a breakthrough. Because I want to not only say yes to myself, but ask for help and support. Otherwise, I am depriving people, loved ones, of the service of helping me, the benefits of them to help me in whatever way that is. Usually it's a small way too. So anyways, think about this for yourself. What can you grant yourself permission to ask for, to say yes to, to start saying no to, and granting yourself permission to be, to do and to have? Very powerful exercise right here.

Matt Finch: Another key takeaway that I took from day two was on reprogramming limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs can certainly be conscious, that means we are aware of them. More often, the biggest limiting beliefs that are really holding us back in life, really holding us back and acting as a barrier to progress from where we want to be, what we want to do and what we want to have, comes from our early childhood. It can come from adolescent life and adult life too, but a lot of times our deepest, most unconscious, these are limiting beliefs that we're not even aware of, not even at all, a lot of the times these come from childhood.

Matt Finch: Imagine if you grew up in a household, for example, where you always heard your parents say, "Money doesn't grow on trees," and, "Money's the root of all evil," and, "Oh, look at those rich people with their nice cars and mansions. They're probably taking advantage of people." I know that I grew up in a household just like this. And I wonder just how much that could have programmed me to view money in a certain way. Look at people that grew up in a different situation, where where they grew up in their household, their parents were wealthy, they were not taking advantage of people to earn that financial wealth. In fact, they were creating lots of jobs. Maybe they were even donating to charities, and maybe their company was to help protect the environment. And they had lots of really empowering beliefs about money, and about wealth and about finances, and so their children could have grown up to adults that were programmed in a different way to view money and finances.

Matt Finch: For this section of the seminar, we were guided through a visualization. And it didn't work too well for me, I think I was just really tired on Saturday morning. But I did do a limiting beliefs eradication exercise at that same Unleash The Power Within Tony Robbins seminar I mentioned earlier, that was extremely helpful. My limiting beliefs back then were, well, I really wanted to become an entrepreneur. I was still working as a $15 an hour substance abuse counselor, with a huge caseload and big time counselor burnout, and I wanted to transition to becoming an entrepreneur, being self-employed, setting my own schedule, working from home, having creative freedom into the work that I wanted to do and the people I wanted to help. And be in charge of my own financial destiny, and not have to punch a time clock in and out and only make $15 an hour.

Matt Finch: My limiting beliefs back then regarding becoming an entrepreneur were, one, I wasn't smart enough. Two, I wasn't yet ready. And three, it wasn't the right time. So we went through this what Tony Robbins called the Dickens process. I think this took about two hours, so it was very comprehensive. He used neurolinguistic programming, and by the end of that exercise I had totally crushed those limiting beliefs. And what I found interesting was the real truth was the antithesis. So in fact, I was smart enough to become an entrepreneur. I was ready, and there's never been a better time than now.

Matt Finch: So when I left that seminar, that was a four day seminar, I was jacked up, fueled up, motivated, inspired, trained up and educated. And within about a year of that seminar, not only was I working on my own doing addiction recovery blogging specifically for opiate addiction at that early phase, but I had tripled my full-time counselor income in one year working part-time. So instead of working full-time, punching a time clock, working at an outpatient opiate treatment program, now a year after starting my first blog I had tripled that income working part-time from home, and it was like if I didn't crush those limiting beliefs, who knows? Maybe I'd still be a super burned out substance abuse counselor making fewer than $20 per hour.

Matt Finch: What I've also found is that a lot of people have limiting beliefs regarding their ability to quit drinking or quit using drugs, and to feel normal again. A lot of times I work with clients that have been addicted for so long, or so many phases of addiction and recovery and relapse, and addiction and recovery and relapse, they think they've messed their brain up so much oftentimes, that they don't know if they'll ever feel really good again without the particular substance or substances that they've been using to feel good. However, I'm living proof that you can feel absolutely extraordinary without any substances, and you can actually do that in a pretty short duration of time after you quit, if you do the right things to repair your brain and to repair your body, and to rebuild your mindset identity, your beliefs and your character. It takes some work, but in my experience it is absolutely worth it. It is exponentially worth the time, money and energy that you invest into this process of transcending an addiction.

Matt Finch: This was a very interesting one from day two as well. This was another takeaway. There was an exercise called How Do You Hide? And so let me read off these little statements. And so, this is where we were supposed to fill in the blank, and there was many sections to do this process over and over and over again, perhaps around six or seven times on all the different ways we hide. And so, let me just read this for you. How do you hide? So, what I hide, then you fill in the blank. Who I hide it from. What do you fear if they knew? What does hiding cost you? What would you rather have, and how could you get it?

Matt Finch: So let's do an example. What I hide, for this example let's use somebody that is addicted to alcohol, and let's say they're physiologically dependent. That means they have to drink it every day throughout the day to avoid going into an acute alcohol withdrawal syndrome. So for theirs, one way they hide could be what I hide, that I'm physically and psychologically dependent on alcohol. Who I hide it from, everybody. Maybe they're drinking vodka and they're keeping it in their purse, or keeping a little flask in their pocket. Since vodka doesn't smell nearly as much as the other alcohols, it's an easy way to hide it. Especially if they brush their teeth often, carry chewing gum on them, breath mints, et cetera.

Matt Finch: What do you fear if they knew? Well, that this person would be judged. The stigma of being alcohol dependent. Fear of being judged and of being looked at as lesser than, as weak, as not having high morals and such and such. What does hiding cost to you? Well, keeping an addiction a dirty, dark secret totally destroys us. It eats us alive. For most people. For people that have a soul... No, I mean for people that want to be good people, that really want to live a good clean life, this can eat away at their soul. Of course there's people that are psychopaths, and hardcore narcissists, and hiding it doesn't really phase them much. But for most of us, hiding an addiction can eat away at us, slowly but surely. Next, what would you rather have? Well, for this example maybe the person would rather have an openness about their alcohol addiction, and also have love and support and compassion from the people that know about it.

Matt Finch: Finally, the next section, how could you get it? Well, obviously they would have to tell somebody. They could start with telling their most trusted, non-judgemental or least judgemental loved one, and just be open and authentic about it. It is a hard thing to do. I struggled with that for years. I had, my addiction was a dark secret many times throughout my life, many different phases of addiction. Either people didn't know that I was drinking or using, or they didn't know to the certain extent that I was drinking or using.

Matt Finch: Moving along, this is one of my favorite takeaways from the seminar. I also learned about this from that first Tony Robbins seminar I went to as well. I believe this is where Jack Canfield might have even got this exercise from. It's called Design Your Hour of Power. This also takes us halfway through my notes, and we got another halfway through the notes to go. So what is an hour of power? Well, it's kind of just like it sounds. It is 60 minutes of power.

Matt Finch: So here's how it works: 60 minutes in a row daily, and include things such as meditation, walking, other exercise, breath work, reading, affirmations, visualization, stretching, cold shower or sauna, vitamins, supplements, juicing. These are just examples to get your brain going, and many of these might be very helpful to put in your hour of power. This could be done first thing in the morning when you wake up. For example, you could wake up an hour earlier than usual to get done your hour of power before the day starts. A lot of people find that it works better once they're done with everything for the day, to do their hour of power in the evening time. And some people find it best to do it in the afternoon.

Matt Finch: I'll give you some examples for mine. In my hour of power, I start off by waking up and drinking a bunch of water, and taking vitamins and supplements. And then by drinking either tea, or coffee or espresso. Then I jump in the shower and I end my shower with freezing cold water. I come out of that, put on a robe and brush my teeth. Then I do things like meditation, prayer, journaling, affirmations, reading and planning my day. I don't like to exercise during my hour of power. I prefer exercising later on in the day after I've done all my work, all my getting the kid to school stuff, and helping her with homework and such and such. So I prefer to exercise either just before my lunch break or after work completely, depending on the day.

Matt Finch: Here's another example to give you of an hour of power. So hydrate, supplements, cold shower, 15 minutes. Meditate, 10 minutes. Stretch, journal and prayer, 15 minutes. Walk on a treadmill listening to audiobook, 15 minutes. Review planner for day, five minutes. So that is many different things, all stacked one after the other into a 60 minute hour of power. Some people maybe for their hour of power, all they do is worship. Maybe they get up and they read the Bible, and they pray, and they listen to worship music and they worship their creator. Other people, maybe their whole hour of power is doing a really, really intense, high intensity interval training ending with a cold shower for recovery, and a recovery protein carbohydrate fat shake with supplements. So this is fully customizable, and it's designed to help you to make a much better day, make you feel better, and get these really important success principles scheduled into your day and habitualized so you do them every day without fail.

Matt Finch: Another key takeaway from this day of training was the Law of the Vacuum. The Law of Vacuum. What does that mean? Well, when you stop doing something negative, you must replace it with something positive, otherwise you'll get sucked back in like a vacuum into doing the negative thing. I have talked about this quite a lot on the podcast, on YouTube videos and with my one-on-one coaching clients. Trying to quit using drugs or quit drinking without replacing those habits with something positive that gives you the same types of benefits that the substance was giving you, usually it's just a matter of time before the person, like a vacuum, gets sucked back into doing the negative thing. Whether that's drinking, drugs, procrastinating or whatever it is.

Matt Finch: An example for this is somebody that uses opioids for pain relief. Well, if they quit opioids and they still have pain and they don't replace it with some type of either non-opioid, and or natural therapeutic regimen for mitigating acute or more often chronic pain, usually it's just a matter of time before they get back on the opioid painkillers. Because they haven't replaced it with something more positive that's giving them the same pain relief benefits. Let's say somebody drinks a whole bottle of wine every night when they get home after work. Let's say they hate their job, and by the time they get home they're just so beat and so stressed out, and they're in this habit of drinking an entire bottle of pinot noir. Well, if they quit drinking a bottle of wine every night, if they don't replace it with something positive, that also helps them to get the same benefits from the wine, relaxation, comfort, euphoria, good mood, if they don't put something positive in that time slot of the entire evening, usually it's just a matter of time before they go back to drinking wine to fill in that slot.

Matt Finch: It's like a vacuum. We can so easily get sucked back into doing the negative thing if we don't replace it with something positive. So think about your own life right now, think about the past. Have you tried to quit something negative that you really wanted to quit, drugs or alcohol or even something else, and not replaced it with something really positive and then got sucked back into doing the negative thing? I know I sure have, more times than I care to admit, more times than I can remember, more times than I can even count, just so many times. The Law of The Vacuum is real and it's very important. And so if this is the only thing you take away from this entire training I'm providing for you, this one thing alone has the potential to change your life too. Every time you stop doing something negative, replace it with something positive so you don't get sucked back into the negative thing.

Matt Finch: The next takeaway from this day of training with an exercise called Keep Score For Success, here is a quote by Jack Canfield. Quote, "The easiest, fastest and best way to find out what is or isn't working is to pay attention to the results you are currently producing." One of the best ways to do that is something called habit tracking. And there's even worksheets that you can print out for free online, and there's ways that you can purchase habit trackers too online. These habit tracker worksheets, daily sheets, help you to score, keep score of the habits that you want to create, stick with, sustain and totally habitualize in your brain programming. And here's how it works. We naturally want to improve our score. Oh, I remember when I was a freshman in high school, my friend Joe and I wanted to learn how to play hacky sack, and we were horrible at hacky sack at the beginning. At the best, we could only kick it up like two or three times in a row before it would hit the ground.

Matt Finch: So what we did is we each bought really nice hacky sacks from this store called The Black, and in front of the apartment that he lived in there was this cool little area where we could play hacky sack. We would also frequently go out into the alley just behind his apartment which had even more space. And we would keep score. We would play with each other as well, so one of us would throw it up in the air to the other person, who would then kick it once. And in that one kick would pass it to the other person, who would kick it once, and in that one kick pass it. So what we would do was, we would keep the hacky sack in the air and pass it back and forth, back and forth. And at first our score was atrocious. It was what you would expect from a beginning hacky sack player, one or two, or maybe three or four at the most kicks.

Matt Finch: Well, guess what? We kept keeping score. We kept trying to get better and better and improve our score. And what happened was we both got extremely proficient at juggling the hacky sack, at being able to pass it back and forth. Wasn't too long before we could do it by ourselves as well. We would also practice on our own when we were alone and not hanging out, and it got to a point where I could kick it by myself more than 200 times in a row just playing hacky sack with just me before it would hit the ground. And it got to a point where he and I could just keep kicking it back and forth for minutes and minutes on end. Then after our score was really high, we got bored of that. It became so easy that we wanted to branch out into learning how to do tricks, learning how to do a front foot stall, an inside foot stall, an outside foot stall, learning how to do rainbows. Then finally learning how to do pendulums and heel kicks.

Matt Finch: We got so good at it that we would go down to the grass area on the beach and we would have these big hacky sack circles with our friends, and all of our friends were good because we had all practiced so much by that point. And it was really impressive to watch us volleying with the hacky sack, passing it to and from each other, and also incorporating all these different tricks inside these hacky sack sessions. It was really cool. But we started off horrible. So that's how the habit tracker works. We naturally want to improve our score, so when we keep score of something we just naturally, automatically buy default, want to get better at it, and typically get better and better at it.

Matt Finch: Here's how it works. Start off with a daily point total of a hundred points, then you create a list of habits that you want to create, start, sustain, stick with and habitualize into your automatic brain pattern. Next, you assign numerical scores to the habits. For example, exercise, 10 points, hour of power, 15 points, spend an hour working on a business goal, 10 points. Don't drink any alcohol for the day, 30 points. So this is very customizable, as you can see. And then you can also assign negative scores for bad habits. For example, drinking, you could do a negative 30 points. Or taking a painkiller that you don't want to take, you could do negative 25 or 30 points. Then you simply score your total out of a hundred points each night at the end of your day. And by keeping track of this and scoring yourself every day, like I said, we naturally want to get better at improving our score. And what we pay attention to and measure like this on a daily basis, we can usually make rapid long term permanent progress in it with the power of consistency.

Matt Finch: Next takeaway from day two, an exercise called Who Do You Spend The Most Time With? Here was an exercise where we were to list the name of the person in one column, and then in the side on the right we would put a plus if they had a net positive impact on our life, a negative minus sign if they had a net negative impact to our life, and we were to leave it blank if they are neutral. For me, every person that I put that I spend the most time with was a plus. I didn't have any minuses, and I didn't have any neutrals. Every person that I spend the most time with was a net positive impact on my life.

Matt Finch: Now, if I remember back to during my addiction, oh boy, oh boy. No matter what phase of addiction I was in, most of the people that I spent the most time with would be a negative. Some people would be a double negative, or a triple negative, or a quadruple or a quintuple negative, in fact. So this is very important to do. And it's not telling us to cut out all these people that are a negative impact, but for sure it could be very beneficial. If you notice on your list, there's people that have a net negative impact on your life, well, maybe you want to limit the amount of time you spend with them versus hanging out with them all day, every day, or on a very regular basis. Right now, you could start just imagining the people in your life that you spend the most time with and just visualizing and subjectively coming up with, well, is this person a plus or a minus or a neutral in my life?

Matt Finch: Before we finish up the day two takeaways, I did write some awesome notes that I want to share with you from day two. Here they are, I'll just list them off and won't go too deep into them. Otherwise, I feel this training is just going to go so long that not as many people will watch it or listen to it. All right, key takeaway note number one: the problem with the West is that we are addicted to comfort. Physical comfort and psychological comfort. And wow, isn't that the truth right there? We are addicted to comfort. I'm totally including myself in there. I'm addicted to physical and psychological comfort as well. Nowhere near as addicted to it as I was back in the day during my addiction, but it's still a work in progress. It's very difficult to overcome our need and our craving and our longing to be both physically and psychologically comfortable. Feelings of uncomfort, discomfort, especially when they're moderate to severe, are no fun. They suck. So a lot of us are now programmed, and our society also is programmed for seeking out this physical and psychological comfort.

Matt Finch: Next takeaway note. A study showed that the most successful people were the people that were most willing to be uncomfortable. That doesn't surprise me in the least. And fit recovery coach Zach Reeder often likes to say that he wants to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. And he teaches his clients how to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Another note, when you keep score at something you get better at it, next is The Rule of Five. Do five things each day that get you closer to your goal or to your goals. Since the seminar, I have started doing this.

Matt Finch: Additionally, where's my little thing here? I got this mailed to me, we got the physical workbook for the seminar mailed to us, as well as these little sticky notes, little Post-It notes here. It says Rule of Five, top five priority actions. And there is five check boxes and five lines. So now each day I stick this right next to my laptop and I put the five things that I want to make sure I get done today. And then at the end of the day, if I've checked off all five of those, if I keep doing that every single day, that one strategy alone right there is a total game changer.

Matt Finch: I've done similar iterations of this in the past and I found them hard to stick with. But with this Post-It note right here, I'm finding so far, it's only been not even a full week since I did this seminar, but so far so good. You can also purchase these at jackcanfield.com. I think he said they were seven or eight dollars for a big stack of them. Again, this is the Rule of Five Post-It notes. That rule is do five things each day to get you closer to your goal or goals.

Matt Finch: And here's another very powerful takeaway. When someone says no to you, ask, "What would have to happen for you to say yes?" An example of this one could be, let's say somebody is totally addicted to Benzos and it's because their career is so stressful every single day. Just if they can't even go into work without Benzos because it's the only thing that calms them down. Because their job is horrible, their boss is a total prick, the people that they work with are unhappy and stressed out. It's low paying, high stress, just horrible. Let's say this person asks their spouse, "Can I quit my job? Take this time to taper off Benzos, let's say the next two months. Can I take this time to quit this horrible job? It's totally destroying my emotional health and psychological health, and spend the next two months doing a taper off Benzos and then regain my health and then find a better job?"

Matt Finch: Let's say that their spouse says, "No, absolutely not. We need the money. I need you to keep going to work." Well, they could perhaps ask them, "What would have to happen for you to say yes?" That gets their spouse thinking, "Well, what would have to happen for me to say yes would be maybe you could take a loan out from the bank, or take a loan out from somebody. Maybe you could borrow money that you could then pay back later so we wouldn't be financially stressed out and not be able to eat during this time." I actually have used this with my daughter before. When I ask her to do something and she says no, I've said this several times in fact, "What would have to happen for you to say yes?" And so then you can start negotiating, working something out.

Matt Finch: And this is a very powerful exercise. It can work in your personal life, it can work in business life, in career life. It can work for quitting an addiction. It can work so many ways. So when someone says no to you, all you got to do is ask, "What would have to happen for you to say yes?" That's not a mean thing to say, that's not a rude thing to say. This really opens up dialogue and communication, and then this gives the opportunity for you to get your needs met and for the other person to also get their needs met.

Matt Finch: Now we've reached the final section of this training, which is day three takeaways. This started off with something that I learned about in the Success Principles book: considerations, fears and roadblocks. I've actually done trainings on this in the past, I've done YouTube videos in the past, and I even had a whole entire lesson in one of my previous online courses on helping people to quit opioids on this section. Well, I incorporated some other stuff in it as well. But a goal that is important to me, fill in the blank, what's a goal that's important to you? Is it quitting alcohol and staying alcohol free? Is it quitting a drug or many drugs and staying drug free? Is it improving your marriage or your relationship? Is it finding a new job that you like better, that pays better? Is it completing a fitness goal?

Matt Finch: A goal that is important to me, blank. Start to think about that. What often goes on either consciously or unconsciously or more often both, is that when we have an important goal, it can often come with considerations, fears and roadblocks. So a consideration could be, oh, it costs too much money and I don't have enough time to do that particular goal. Or fears, oh, if I quit drugs and I'm going to go through such bad withdrawal symptoms and I'm not going to be able to be able to go to work and so I got to keep using drugs to be able to keep going to work. So the person essentially has fears that if they don't use drugs, then they'll be sick, then they won't be able to work to earn money to buy the drugs. So it can be this between a rock and a hard place. I've been in that situation many times in the past.

Matt Finch: There can also be roadblocks to your goals. A roadblock could be a person has an important goal to go travel the world, but they can't get time off from their work. That could be a roadblock to that important goal. So there's different categories of things that act as barriers to achieving our goals, considerations, fears and roadblocks. What you can do to start to work past these, is write down a solution or an action to take.

Matt Finch: So for day three of this workshop, there was a table where first we wrote a goal that is important to me. On the left side, we wrote different considerations, fears and roadblocks. And for each of those on the right side of the box, the table, we were to write a solution or an action to take, thus getting us into solution oriented strategizing versus being stuck in the problem, stuck in the considerations, the fears and the roadblocks, and letting those prevent us from taking action towards the goals that we really want for ourselves.

Matt Finch: Now we've made it to the last page of my notes, page eight, and the last exercise that we're going to cover for my key takeaways from this seminar to help you with your life, whether it's for addiction, early recovery, beyond or just life in general. Here we go, act as if. And here's our Jack Canfield quote: "One of the great strategies for success is to act as if you are already where you want to be." I learned this originally maybe around 2014 or 2015 from Dr. Wayne Dyer, who passed away several years ago. He was one of my favorite authors of all time. I read many books by him. I took a live weekend writer's workshop with Dr. Dyer. And the first book I read by him was called Wishes Fulfilled, and it talked all about this. How to act as if you're already living a life that you want to be living. How to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, how to live in the emotional feeling, vibrational state of already being where you want to be.

Matt Finch: That is very difficult for a lot of us. The internet, and our smartphones and media have really eroded many of our creative and visualization potentials. So I understand if acting as if you already have what you want to have, be what you want to be, do what you want to do is difficult. But if you work at it, over time you can get better and better at it. Here's a 30 a day experiment that comes under the act as if exercise. What you do is you come up with an ideal vision for yourself and for your life, aimed out three to five years into the future. What does the best version of you look and feel like? And I'm actually going to read from my notes because I don't remember this part exactly, and I really want to be crystal clear on this.

Matt Finch: Here's how the 30 day experiment works. For the next 30 days, play the role of the person you want to become. When you think three to five years into the future and visualize the best version of yourself, what do you see? For the 30 day experiment, think of yourself as an actor preparing yourself for the role of this new version of you. To get you into your new role, spend some time developing your character using the prompts below. Here are the prompts. In your ideal version of you three to five years into the future, how do you spend your time? What are the relationships that you have? What type of work are you doing, and how are you being rewarded for that work? What activities do you enjoy most? What values are you living? What are your daily habits and disciplines? What are you saying no to, and who do you need to ask for help and support?

Matt Finch: I simply cannot recommend this act as if, ideal version of you three to five years in the future exercise enough. I'm about to share with you where to get the link to access the slide presentation for this podcast webinar episode training, and writing out in detail using all these prompts, and then spending every day reading through these and visualizing yourself living this ideal version of you. Serious magic and miracles can start to take place, and it almost seems like the universe starts to conspire with you to magnetically attract your ideal future of you to you. You still have to take action, you can't just visualize what you want and not take action. It's a combination of getting crystal clear, writing it all down, staying focused on it, visualizing it and taking action. And I'm living proof that this exercise works. I've done this, I've been doing this type of exercise for many, many years now. Probably at least nine years I've been doing this exercise, maybe even 10 years, really. It works, it works, it works. Can't recommend it enough.

Matt Finch: All right, and that actually concludes this training. At this point, I want to mention a few of the programs that we offer in case you don't know about them yet, and some of these resources are a good fit for your current needs and preferences and values and abilities. Number one is Total Alcohol Recovery 2.0. That is Chris Scott's flagship online course on how to quit alcohol, customized using the hierarchy of recovery, using biochemical optimization, psychological and mindset strategies, social strategies, spiritual strategies, how to detox, whether it's an acute withdrawal or a taper, relapse prevention. And really how to not just quit drinking and stay quit, but how to transcend it so hugely, so thoroughly, so completely, so permanently that you outgrow alcohol and it's not a resource for you anymore. You view it as a moot substance, you could care less about it. And this is a very powerful program to help you make that transformation.

Matt Finch: Next is Ultimate Opioid Detox 5.0. That is my flagship course and online digital program to take you step by step from a person that is currently opioid dependent, and how to go from that to having the smoothest, comfortable withdrawal process possible. How to rebalance and re-optimize the brain, get through the withdrawal and the post-acute withdrawal as comfortably and quickly as possible. How to use relapse prevention strategies and how to overcome the vacuum, the Law of the Vacuum, to where you replace the opioids with something very positive that gives you similar or even better benefits.

Matt Finch: And finally, I also have another course called Recovery Coach Blueprint. This is amazing, it's a six module online video course with PDF downloads that teaches you how to start from where you are right now with no, you don't need any background whatsoever, how to become a recovery coach. How to get recovery coaching clients, how to if you want, make your own recovery coaching, recovery online courses, how to price coaching packages, how to target your market, whether you want to be an alcohol recovery coach, an addiction recovery coach in general, a women's alcohol recovery coach, an opioid recovery coach. You could just work with the families of the people that are addicted, you could be a family recovery coach. So how to find your recovery coaching niche, how to attract the ideal clients and customers, and much more. Very comprehensive program.

Matt Finch: All of these programs that we offer are available at elevationrecovery.com/courses. Again, that's elevationrecovery.com/courses. That brings us to the end of this training, thank you so much for staying until the end. At this point, let me tell you how to get the free online link to this slide deck presentation that I highly recommend accessing and working with.

Matt Finch: Slide presentation that you can turn into worksheets. You can literally print this right out and then you can staple it all together, or you can three hole punch it and put it in a notebook. You can do what you like with it, or you could just use a journal or a notebook, or even your computer to fill in the exercises. Anyways, that's at tinyurl.com/bts-4-recovery. Again, that's tinyurl.com/bts, acronym for Breakthrough to Success, B-T-S, dash, the number 4, not spelled out F-O-U-R, the number 4, dash recovery. One final time, tinyurl.com/bts, dash, the number 4, dash, recovery. And with that being said, thanks so much my friend, and I'll see you next time. Take good care of yourself.

Chris Scott: Hey everyone, Chris Scott here. If you liked the information on today's episode regarding supplementation and empowerment strategies for addiction recovery, then please subscribe to the Elevation Recovery Podcast and leave us a rating and review on iTunes. And if you benefited directly from this information, I'm confident in saying that you'll love the information-packed online courses that Matt Finch and I have created. Matt Finch's Ultimate Opiate Detox 4.0 is a six module, 30 activity course that contains video lessons, written lessons, PDF downloads, worksheets, audios, and much more. And it has everything you could possibly need to know to conquer opioid addiction in the easiest and most comfortable way possible. My own course, Total Alcohol Recovery 2.0 is the most cutting edge resource for anyone who wants to transcend alcohol and build their best lives. To get these courses, to learn more and to read testimonials, simply go to opiateaddictionsupport.com/ultimate. Again, that's opiateaddictionsupport.com/ultimate, for Matt's course. Or for my course, go to fit-recovery.com/course. Again, that's fit-recovery.com/course. You can also go to elevationrecovery.com to see the show notes for this episode.

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