Colton Lindsay is an Internationally recognized Real Estate Sales Trainer, Online Marketing Specialist, Passive Income Creator, and Inner Game Master.
He has been in the industry for 13+ years and is founder of The WGR Academy.
Podcast Transcribtion:
Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the show, Respect the Grind with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show where we interview people who’ve achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who’s achieved mastery and exam what it took to get there.
Stefan: Today on the show, we have a new friend of mind Colton Lindsay. He says, “Success without fulfillment is a failure.” Financially free by 31, miserable by 32, drugging, numbing the pain, drinking, all the brutal stuff. Master of real estate sales, had his own brokerage. Colton, Respect the Grind, can’t wait to hear your story. Welcome to the show, my friend. How are you doing?
Colton: I’m doing great. I love my life. Thanks for asking, man, I appreciate you guys reaching out to me. I appreciate you creating value for your audience. Let’s do it.
Stefan: You know, I’m really excited to talk to you man because the darkness is where I think people can find themselves. I wrote this book, Hard Times Creates Strong Men. It’s my fifth book and there’s one of my favorite quotes and it’s by Lou Mannheim in the movie Wall Street and he says, “Man stares into the abyss, and in the abyss he sees darkness, and in that darkness, he finds his character, and that’s what keeps him out of the abyss.” Your story there in the preamble, when we were talking before the show, I’m super excited to talk to you about some of your stuff. So Colton, tell us your story. What’s your deal man, how’d you get started and what do you do?
Colton: Man, so I started back when I was a kid. My mom was an office manager at a real estate company, and I would show up, and I would see these guys driving nice cars. I remember this one guy drive a Red Hummer. I was like, dude, I was in the eighth grade. It’s like, do I want in that Hummer, right? Like, that’s the thing, right? And then, I was a senior high … I went and job shadowed him and that was senior high school. I did my senior project on being a realtor, which is super freaking random. No one does that, right? Everyone wants to be some international business owner, a fucking a doctor or something.
Stefan: Right. A marine biologist.
Colton: Right. Fucking zoologist or something like that. Shit that we’re never really going to do. And then, so that is where I got started with my mind thinking real estate because growing up for me, I had an amazing mom and dad. They always gave me love, and support, but we didn’t have a ton of money. My parents came from the belief like I can’t afford that. My mom, still to this day, we go out to dinner, she’s cleaning up everyone’s leftovers to take home, right? And it’s just like, so that’s how I grew up. Money was scarce. I thought if I could make $75,000 a year one day, awesome. That would be sweet.
Colton: And then, I started to see these realtors making money. I’m like, wait a second, I can maybe make a little bit more than $75,000. I don’t know how much I could do, which still blows my mind today. I just had my, in October was my biggest month ever, $168,000, which I did that twice of what I thought I could do in a year, I did it in a month this year.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: It still blows my mind. That’s where it started, right? I mean, it was deeper than that. Money became to me a sense of significance. It became a sense of certainty. I had these needs that were being fulfilled that actually left me quite empty along the journey. When I was 19, I went for the Mormon church. I went two years in Brazil. It was fucking phenomenal. I went in and sold the product of God to Brazilians. I discovered a book along the way. It was toward the end of my time there. It was, How to Win Friends and Influence People. You guys have definitely read it. I guarantee it, if you’re listening. If you haven’t you’re living in a fucking hole.
Colton: That book shifted me and realized that, do you know what? There’s certain things that if I do a little bit differently, I get a different result. That’s when I started realizing I could shift some patterns. When I was in my early 20s I went, and you guys might have heard of Wake Up Warrior, Garrett White.
Stefan: Love Garrett. I was with him on the weekend. Man, he’s money. He’s money.
Colton: Oh, were you? Yeah, this was when he actually, he was going through one of his darkest times. It was 2009. I didn’t realize it that he was drinking in the basement at that time and that he was having an affair on his wife, and that he was dealing with his struggles. He had said to me the phrase, financial freedom. That’s the first time I had ever hear of this. I was in my early 20s and you know, the idea that residual income pays for your desired lifestyle, I’m like, whoa, whoa. This is what I want, right?
Colton: Then I set a focus on this and then I started the hustle and the grind. In fact, only a couple of years ago, I discovered that my top three values, number one, commitment. Do what I say. I’m going to do sometimes more, but never less. Number two is hustle. Produce results possible, and number three was success. Always produce more results. Those types of value systems, if you’re operating on them, sound fucking cool on like an Instagram post, but it’s fucking exhausting your body. Like, you are going to burn out sooner or later if that’s what your value system is.
Colton: I just went into this grind, and this hustle, and I was just making shit happen. And then, I had some roommates in my early 20s when I was making, I don’t know, I was 23, 24, something like that, making $100,000 a year, which was a lot of money for me. I was spending it quicker than I could keep it. Even though I had heard about financial freedom.
Stefan: Your hustle mode, bro, you’re just in hustler mode. Hustlers and strippers hanging out together. Backpack full of cash, you make the money, you bring it in, waste it on the girls.
Colton: Right. I spent all my money on sex, drugs, and alcohol, and I wasted the rest. It’s funny, I hadn’t been at that timeframe, I wasn’t partying, but I had lived with these because I was in a church, right? I was pretty actually addicted to church at the time, but I had got some roommates and one of my roommates, he has tattoos all over his arm. He’s dealing cocaine. He plays in this band called, I Am The. He’s just like so far out to what I’ve ever experienced as far as what as my social, you know, my social realm, my social circle, but he was the nicest fucking dude I’d ever met, right?
Colton: I’m like, how is this dude, not mature, selling drugs, partying, but he’s the first one to take his shirt off his back. It just shook up my entire belief system. Next thing I know, dude, I’m taking shots of UV Blue. Next thing I know, I’m hitting these parties, and putting pills in my body, that I still to this day, no fucking clue what I was putting inside of me, right? It started me down this journey of really dealing with this pain that had been deep inside of me. For a while, it was this belief that I’m not good enough, right? This pain that life is supposed to be, is life isn’t fun. Life is painful. You know, life is lonely, right?
Colton: It’s certain experiences I had as a child, I had made some decisions, right? This then created an operating system in my brain that I didn’t even know I was operating on. So, I went into this place, this darkness of trying to find the light and it was a ton of fucking fun. I’m not going to lie to you. I mean, I had a ton of fun getting really high, and having a lot of sex, and spending a ton of money. But then, I would wake up and I was fucking miserable. I was actually even more miserable than when I started. Because of my belief system with a hierarchy of rules around a religious background, I then put even more guilt and shame on myself because I was doing things that weren’t approved by God. Does that make sense?
Colton: So, what had happened, I had created a major identity of shame. The only way I could deal with the shame was by getting high even more. Luckily, in 2009, I met my wife at the time. She’s no longer my wife now, but I had met her at the time. That is where I started to move away from drugs and alcohol but didn’t do it overnight, and I didn’t even do it ever quickly. I then found out in 2011 I was going to be a dad. That shifted me to go into another higher level of hustle mode, right? I started hustling and grinding to where my drug became work and week. Like, those were the two things. I would smoke weed all day and I would work. I thought I had been trained in this world that if I produced results, I was giving results to my family.
Colton: The reality is, I was actually starving my family because I wasn’t hearing them, I wasn’t seeing them, I wasn’t helping understand them, and I wasn’t making them feel safe. I mean, how could you when you’re fucking driving high down the road, talking on the phone, and text messaging, right? Like, this was the life that I was living, but I still had in the back of my mind, do you know what? If I can get financial freedom, man, I’ll be happy. Right, then I will be fulfilled, then I will be successful, then I’ll be able to reach that level.
Stefan: So, that’s called the someday my prince will come syndrome. Someday my prince will come.
Colton: Yep.
Stefan: Bro, it isn’t like that.
Colton: [crosstalk 00:08:12].
Stefan: It isn’t like that. The prince is never coming.
Colton: The prince is never coming. I got to be the fucking prince, man.
Stefan: You do. Dude, you are the prince.
Colton: I got to be my own hero.
Stefan: Dude, you are the fucking prince. You just got a gong for that, bro.
Colton: Gong, whoa.
Stefan: Yep, first gong, boom.
Colton: So then, do you know what? I started working even harder. I’m still smoking a lot of weed, but then I started going to these training events. I went to another event with a guy named Doug Nelson. He said the thing, he said, “Do you know what? Wealthy people go on … average people go on vacation for a week. Wealthy people go on vacation for a season.” I’m like, fuck, I want to go on vacation for a season because what I’m doing like, I’m burnt. I don’t want to keep doing this, right? I didn’t understand at that time though that my operating system was set to fucking hustle mode. No matter what I did, was going to hustle, right?
Colton: And so then, I kept hustling, and along the journey, I learned exactly how to create financial freedom. I really shifted my financial blueprint. By 31, I created financial freedom. By 32 I was fucking extremely overweight. I was still getting high. I was just like wasting my life away. This was only a couple of years ago. I shouldn’t say wasting my life away. I was wasting away my gift of my soul. I was hustling, and wearing this mask, that look at me guys, I’m fucking significant. I’m making a bunch of money. I’m financially free. Look at what I’ve done, right?
Colton: And then, it was February 2016, a good friend of mine was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He was 39 at the time. He was making a couple million a year. He had a Ferrari, the Lamborghini, the sick house, do you know what I mean? He had the life, right? He was diagnosed with stomach cancer by July. July 10th, 2016, he had passed away. He had gone from 195 pounds to 95 pounds in about four months and passed away.
Stefan: Wow.
Colton: One of the things though that I really recognized, [inaudible 00:09:59], one is that well, wake the fuck up. Like, dude, your mortal, you’re going to die one day, and if you don’t really get your shit together, you’re going to have lived this whole life miserable. Like this fucking gift that God gave you, his playground, and you wasted it, man. So, that woke me up. And then, I happened to meet this guy named Thomas that put me on the path to do Smoothie Shred. I dropped 50 pounds and I kept it off ever since then. But, what it learned was how to actually take care of my body, and really add a ton of powerful nutrients into my body.
Colton: Then, just a couple of weeks ago, Mike, his ex-wife, Steph, just passed away. She was 36 from liver failure and kidney failure from alcoholism.
Stefan: Oh, my God.
Colton: All right, so here are two of my really great friend are dead in their 30s and they couldn’t deal with the pain. I recognize that now, but I then I didn’t understand it. I thought it was just fun. I thought it was partying. I guess, from the time when I first met my wife and I was in my partying days, Mike and Steph kept partying. Right, like they kept going. They kept making more money. They kept partying and they kept staying in that phase. I slowly went away. In fact, I didn’t even fully get out of using weed until I used more drugs. As stupid as that sounds. I had a grandfather peyote ceremony with a Native American church. I was married at the time and my wife at the time, she said, “Hey, Colton, be careful. You don’t know what kind of drug you’re going to take.”
Colton: I didn’t know very much about hallucinogens at the time. I just felt like my soul was called to it, sort of speak. I want to be very, very clear because I know that right now Ayahuasca, peyote, these are hallucinogen’s that are very widely talked about. They’re being studied at New York, or third phases of trial phases to be FDA approved. It’s very popular in the underground right now. It’s like this plant-based medicine to heal us. I want to be very fucking clear, these are all drugs. These are all fucking drugs. That they are stimulating and shifting your brain at a high level, and especially these drugs with and DMT. They will send you on a fucking ride that you may not be ready for. I want to be very clear with that.
Colton: I went through this ceremony in the middle of the ceremony, the words popped from my wife, “Hey, Colton, you don’t know what you just took. This is the end of your life.” That’s what I heard, right? And then, all of a sudden, I thought I was fucked. I realized I really had no idea what was in this tea that I drank. I was about 1,000 milligrams, which if you know anything about and peyote, is five times, which is kind of a normal dose. Like it’s fucking ridiculously high. I thought was going to die. During this ceremony, everyone was purging. They were vomiting during these different sequences of energy flow. I never purged. I just fucking when to a massive amount of anxiety.
Stefan: Oh, man.
Colton: It was horrible. It was the absolute worse experience of my life. And then, when I came out of it, I fucking just cried at being, not even alive, but I found this pure joy and gratitude of existence. Like, I fucking exist. How beautiful is that? And then, probably about six or seven weeks later, I was like, I’m not smoking weed anymore. I just wasn’t. It wasn’t like, I’m going to stop drinking, or I’m going to stop smoking, or I’m going to lose weight, right? You know, how we all have all these targets? I just all of a sudden I wasn’t. It just shifted for me. I found that life was so much more beautiful sober when I could face the pain without drugging it out than it was by just being avoidance the entire time.
Stefan: Bro, you’re getting a gong for that. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that. I’m a no drugs, no drinking guy myself. My dad, I had an alcoholic for a dad, so he said, “Hey, here’s a beer with your dinner when I was 12.” I was like, beer tastes bad. I never got into beer. And then, I’d see him go to work and he had two coffee pots in bags. He’d carry two fucking coffee pots in bags to work. I’d have to put them on my legs. I’m a kid. I’m holding his hot coffee on my legs and it’s spilling. He says, “Never get into drinking coffee.” I’m like, no problem dad. This looks like it sucks.
Stefan: And then, my mom, she’d be out smoking in the garage. I’d wait for her to come home. I was seven years old. I’d wait for her to come home. The garage door would open, it would rumble. I slept above the garage. She wouldn’t come in the door at like 10:00 at night. She’s a teacher. She wouldn’t come in. I’d wait by the door and she wouldn’t come in, she wouldn’t come in. I’m like a seven-year-old kid. I open the door, she’s around the corner wearing a fur coat smoking. She’d look at me, she’d be like, “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Never start smoking.” I’m like, “Okay, okay.”
Stefan: I never got into, but I love what you’re saying, man. You know, when you’re sober, did drink. I had a rock band at one point. We fucking drank, like that’s what you did. I love what you’re saying, man. When you’re sober the colors are brighter, the light’s cleaner. You know, what’s your belief now Colton? Are you like a straight edge guy, and no drinking, no drugs, anything now?
Colton: Listen, no drugs for sure. I mean, what is considered attrition drug. I want to be clear, marijuana is a drug. We’re seeing this huge movement with marijuana and legalization.
Stefan: 100%.
Colton: I’m all about pro-choice, and you put whatever you want in your own body, but let’s be clear, it’s a drug. These are all drugs. Now, after working with Thomas, I recognize that anything I put in my body is a drug. I drink about a pound of green smoothie every day with spinach in it, and chia flaxseeds, and chia seeds. That is a drug. So, the question is, what drug am I putting I my body? We all are seeking the same thing. We’re seeing a release from some sort of tension or captivity inside of our body that’s just locking in our soul.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: We can open up our soul and let that thing come out, and let that shine with who we truly are at our core. Then, that’s when we can experience bliss. Do you know what? I’ll sip on like an ounce and a half on whiskey on ice, but it’s like over a four-hour period, right? I’m not taking shots left right and getting hammered at all. It’s not even because I don’t even support it. If you want to, that’s awesome, but for me, I want to be sober. I want to be clear. I want to be in this present moment. The only thing I’ve got is right now. This is … eternal life is this fucking moment. It is a fucking playground. Love is our legacy. We just have to … I choose to operate that way.
Stefan: Colton, I want to add to something you’re saying. You know, I think definitions are really important. There’s a lot of kids that listen to this show, like 12-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 25 five years old, 30-year-olds, we’re all kids. One thing that I heard once, I go fasting in the jungle. I’ve been fasting 30 days on water in the jungle. The guy who runs the fast is like a hardcore fruitarian in the jungle. He just has fruit. He’s ripped. He looks super good. He’s like a total purist, like water, fruit, that’s it. He said something to me that really banged my mind and it was, “There’s three things that something has to have to be defined as food. Food has to have fiber in it, water, and enzymes, which is life force. If it doesn’t have living enzymes, fiber, and water it’s not a fruit, or it’s not a food.” Sorry.
Stefan: If you have like a green smoothie that’s a supplement because you’re missing the fiber, right? The fiber’s been taken out. If you have an orange, it’s got fiber, water, enzymes. That’s food. If you have a chocolate bar, that’s not food. If you have like a pill, that’s not a food. That’s a supplement, right? So, anything missing those things is a supplement and it’s not food. So, the only things that aren’t food is pretty much fruits and vegetables are actual food, everything else is missing one of the three, right? Bread, missing water. Especially, white bread, no fiber, no water, no enzymes.
Stefan: Right? I thought it was one of the most cleanest definitions, fiber, water, enzymes, it’s food. Anything missing that, that’s a supplement.
Colton: Yeah.
Stefan: Anything missing that, and anything that you’re putting in is a drug. I love it, man. You know, it’s good to get clear about this shit because I wish I knew that ten years ago and I’m 32. You know, I’m not.
Colton: Right, and you know that’s what’s cool. We’re seeing a conscious shift right now in the evolution of human beings that younger generations are getting this and that’s what’s really cool. For centuries, this information has been locked away. For whatever reason, this time it’s being opened up and that’s really cool. Like, with my smoothie, I do 16 ounces of spinach in it. I mean, that right there alone, if someone puts 16 ounces of spinach in their body, what it’s going to do is, it’s not going to give you more energy. It’s going to reduce the amount of energy waste on just cleaning out the shitty toxins you’re putting in your body from the other stuff.
Colton: It’s about maximizing and optimizing the opportunity. Yeah, I started to look at everything as a drug. I actually discovered a really awesome drug this year, which is oxygen. I don’t know if you guys use it at all. It’s really fucking common. I found out and I figured out through transformational breathing, [inaudible 00:18:32] breathing and if I could actually increase the amount of oxygen that goes into my body in a short amount of period, then I could feel that piece and that tranquility that I so freaking sought after for so many years and the lie that my brain was telling me and my mind was telling me because the operating system says, “Hey, dude, you go make more money. You do have more success. You go build a bigger business. You go expand. You’ll get financial freedom. You go get some significance. You’re going to get more followers, you’ll get more likes, more shares, then you’ll have that.”
Colton: The reality of it is, everything starts in the core. When you start in the core, then it expands outward. I discovered these things. Okay, well, do you know what? I have even more energy when I eat healthy and I eat clean. I feel even better when I stretch my body, and when I grow it, and I increase my endurance. I feel even happier and more blissful, and present when I do these breathing exercises. I enjoy life, even more, when I’m playful and fun, verses, just so rigid all the time, right? I made these discoveries and then I just realized, okay, my gift is what I’ve learned. I have to share these gifts with other people.
Colton: That’s why I do what I do every single day. My goal is to share any bit of information that I have, good or bad, so you guys can make a decision on how to apply it to your life. I can tell you this until you’re willing to face the pain sober, and there’s other drugs too by the way, right? There’s Instagram, Facebook, social media, Amazon, even the gym becomes a drug for people right now to avoid the pain and the shit that they’re really dealing with. You know, the thing I avoided from a very long time was actually my marriage. The relationship was fucked up. I didn’t want to believe that because I grew up in a religious background where you don’t get divorced, right?
Stefan: Right.
Colton: You just fucking suffer through it, do you know what I mean?
Stefan: Right.
Colton: My soul was calling me to have a connection with my spouse and no matter which way I did it, it wasn’t working. It wasn’t happening. But, the more I faced that pain, it actually set me free. It gave me freedom at my soul. It ended up in a divorce, but it gave me freedom at my soul and it actually gave her even more freedom, right? When you’re in a relationship where whatever you say or do, and even just showing up triggers the other person, and puts resentment, and negative energy inside of them, that’s not a way to live either, right?
Stefan: Yeah.
Colton: Facing that pain, even though you don’t want what’s might or might not happen. That’s where anxiety comes from, right? This fear of things that may or may not happen in the future. What’s interesting about anxiety, chemically with our body, it’s the same, it affects us the same as if we’re excited, right? If we can reframe anxiety to excitement, then our mind accepts it even better, right? The body doesn’t change.
Stefan: You know, Colton, there’s something happening under the hood of what you’re saying. I can tell you hit up Tony Robbins. I’m hearing your Tony Robbins.
Colton: Fuck that, dude.
Stefan: I can hear you hit up Garrett White. I can hear these guys in what you’re saying and it’s like, the truth’s the truth, right? I went to one of Garrett’s events on the weekend, and they opened it up, you know, there’s like a fricking Navy Seal with a German Shepard barking at you, and there’s like guys with smoke gun spraying you, and they’re pushing you around, and make you do pushups, and they smashed a guy’s phone on stage. They said, “No fucking phones.” And they took the guys phone and smashed it in front of everybody. It was awesome. The opening line of the event, now I’ve never seen Garrett White before. I never watched him.
Stefan: The opening line of the event, the trainer gets up on stage. He says, “Stop fucking lying.” That was the opening line of the event. He’s just assaulting your belief system right away because everybody says, “Oh, I’m so honest. I’m so ethical. I’m so moral. I’m so Christian.” Whatever. He comes up and he says, “You’re all fucking liars. No lying. Stop lying.” It was such a trip right away because I think we’re in business, and we’re hustling, and we’re trying to be honest. We’re trying to say stuff that’s true, but ultimately in our life, the things that hold us back are lies. We have stories we tell ourselves. Somewhere in the story is a lie. Wherever the lie is, is what holds us back. Would you agree with that?
Colton: Absolutely. I mean, here’s an example of that, 70% of American’s today say that they cautiously take care of their … or that they eat healthy, right? Something along those lines.
Stefan: What does that mean? Wonder Bread? Wonder Bread and a hot dog.
Colton: Yeah, so check this out though, but 67% of American’s are obese or overweight. Someone’s fucking lying out there. Someone’s lying to themselves.
Stefan: Bro, I’m doing a book called, You’re Fucking Fat. It’s You’re Fucking Fat. That’s the book title. Deal with it, you’re fucking fat.
Colton: You’re fucking fat, deal with it. Do you know what? That’s funny because I was at a mastermind right after my friend Mike had passed away and a good friend of mine Brian, he looked at me, he’s like, “Dude, you’re fucking fat. Get your shit together.” That’s all he said to me. That’s all he said to me and he walked away. Shortly after, I started working with Thomas and I changed it. I shifted it, right.
Stefan: Bro, I’m giving a gong for you’re fucking fat. You’re fucking fat. We’ve got some listeners at home that turned off the radio station. They’re like, we’ve had enough of this. But hey man, if you hide, that’s too bad.
Colton: You got to deal with it. I actually changed my value system from honesty and authenticity to just authenticity. I am authenticity because honesty is like, who’s level? Who’s standards, right? Honest might just be on an operating system. I honestly gave it a good go, but is as still lying to myself, right? Authentic is what we have to be. We have to be vulnerable. It’s very challenging for me and women today. Men, we kind of were raised up in this situation there, we didn’t really know how to be men. We were almost being created with this feminine mask around us and then we tried to discover how to be men.
Colton: And then, we wrapped ourselves with a masculine mask, right? But, women are the same thing. I’m might say something that might offend people today, but this feminist movement is really just …
Stefan: Bring it, bring it.
Colton: It’s a woman with her feminine energy has been wrapped around with a masculine energy, wrapped around with another feminine mask on top of it. What’s happening is this equality.
Stefan: I’m giving you a gong for that. Oh, boom. Can you say that again? That is like, the feminist at home got to hear that. I’m like an antifeminist over here. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about.
Colton: Yeah, at the core of a woman is feminine energy, for the most part. For the most part, it’s feminine energy.
Stefan: 80% of them.
Colton: And then, what happened is, is because of the way they were raised, then they were wrapped with this mask of masculinity around that, but because they know that they’re a woman, they then don’t quite sure how to tap into their full feminine energy, so they wrap a fake mask of femininity around that. Here’s one of the things is like, we want equality. No matter what way we fucking spin it, a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis. You can’t equally … it just doesn’t shift, right?
Stefan: And the penis and vagina really can’t be friends. They can’t be friends, man. They’re just] each other, yeah.
Colton: I’m saying this is the most awesome way because if feminine energy needs masculine energy to enhance, right? So me, as a man, I am whole and complete in my full masculine energy. When I’m with a woman that’s whole and complete in her feminine energy, when that masculine or feminine energy connect and collide, and ignite, it enhances evermore. It doesn’t complete each other, it enhances each other. Some of the signs of what a man needs from feminine energy is number one, they need to be praised. Too often today, this feminist movement is criticizing man. It’s not making him feel like a hero.
Colton: The second thing that the masculine energy needs is playfulness, and fun, and sexiness, and it’s not be confused with fucking, like what’s going on with the dating world today.
Stefan: That’s like flirting and stuff.
Colton: Right. It’s fun. Men have to be fun and playful. They need to slow down. Men need this playfulness. The third thing is, they need unconditional, consistent, unconditional … and what women are doing today and not be consciously doing it, but they’re holding love from them when a man, who clearly thinks completely differently than a woman, makes a mistake in any which way, the woman then pulls away and holds love from him. But, the feminine energy needs stuff too. So, for you guys listening. Number one is, she needs to be uniquely seen, uniquely heard. She needs to feel special. You need to take the time to slow down, to just to be present, and look in her eyes, and let her know she’s beautiful.
Colton: The second thing that she really needs is, she needs to be understood and validated. So often, what happens is a woman will get upset and this was in my marriage all the time. Shed get upset because I’d do something and then as a man, I’d go to fucking myself.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: I’d go to defend my purpose and then it’d actually create more resistant and pull us away. But, what I’ve learned is, is that no. It doesn’t fucking matter why I did what I did, or I said. What matters is how does this woman feel right now? What’s she experiencing emotionally. The third level of love is we can take responsibility for our emotions and our partner’s emotions. Too many of us are being so selfish, it’s all about us, or we’re just leaving it for them to deal with their shit. People really, listen, healing happens through community. Success happens through community. It doesn’t happen myself.
Colton: The third thing that these feminine energy’s need, they need to feel protected and safe. I don’t know about you, I’ve never had to walk through a parking garage and feel threatened like I’m going to get raped, or taken advantage of. Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in today. Do you know what? I’m not saying that if a woman is raped that it needs to define her entire life, and she needs to play the victim, but at the same time, women can’t necessarily walk through parking garages today and probably not feel completely safe.
Stefan: Yeah, but dude, the thing is, women, let’s be real with history. 10,000 years of human history, women have never been able to walk through parking garages.
Colton: Well, sure, 100%.
Stefan: You go to Saudi Arabia, you go to like Brazil, you go to Mexico, Russia, dude, they’re not walking through any parking garages anywhere. We just have this magical world … safe here.
Colton: 100%. That’s why women need to feel safe around the presence of their man.
Stefan: Right, well they need men for escorts. They needed their dad, their uncle, their brother, their husband, somebody to protect them in all those places because men are vicious. We’re vicious beings who attack, rape, kill, steal, all sorts of things and that’s why we have police, and that’s why we have all this stuff, right?
Colton: Right, right. That’s part of the energy. I don’t want any woman that’s listening just to think you can’t be successful with your business out there. One of my great friends, dude, she runs a $3-million a year business called, Hungry for Happiness, dude. She certifies coaches and trainers out there. She’s a fucking woman CEO crushing it, but she is so playful, and she’s of funny, and so goofy, and so in her feminine energy.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: In fact, that’s what she teaches a lot of. This idea is that I don’t have … the equality with men has nothing to do with the feminine and masculine energy. I do agree though, yeah, there should be equality in the workplace. Why the fuck not? Why not give women the opportunity to succeed in a financial level? In fact …
Stefan: What’s interesting, dude, I say …
Colton: I think women are better business owners than men by the way. I think they really are because they can be more flowy.
Stefan: Yeah.
Colton: Men go like, “It’s got to be this fucking way.”
Stefan: Well, they’re community. Women are all about community. They put everybody in a circle. That’s community. Men are hierarchy. We go hierarchy like it’s the military.
Colton: Yes.
Stefan: Women are all about being. Men are about doing. I’ve been do, do, do, do. Like this show, Respect the Grind, is a lot of do, do, do, do, do. It’s masculine, do, do, do, do. 88% men, 12% female living as men. The women, it’s all about being. I’m going to get my nails done. I’m going to get my hair did. I’m just going to be radiant. I’m going to wear this dress and it’s who am I being. The being and doing have to go together. I think men and women are complementary, reciprocals. They’re two halves of a whole. If you have one half a pair of scissors it’s no good. They go together. They balance each other out.
Stefan: I’m writing a book right now called, The Oracle. Women is the oracle of man. She guides him into the future with her intuition and discernment. Man needs an oracle. He needs that woman to say, “Hey, stop masturbating and playing video games all day. Stop that. You’re off purpose.” That’s what women do. Women are the oracle and they tell man where the future is. Men will do anything to have that future because women represent the future. Without the womb and the oracle, there is no future. A bunch of men, they die. They’re dead in one generation, but you have a woman, now there’s a future.
Colton: Yeah, well and men even get confused on what their purpose is because often times we think our purpose is just growing a business. It’s making more money. It’s having more success. That’s kind of what we’ve been trained to be. Success is more money. More success in the business.
Stefan: Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
Colton: Do you know what? Often times, that’s why I love prayer and meditation. I spend at least an hour every day in prayer and meditation and breath work. It’s because that’s what it [inaudible 00:30:44] to be. That’s when I don’t have to fucking, I don’t have to do anything except for be right there in that moment. That’s what’s cool about that when you can get with a feminine energy that’s just in her feminine self because then dude, it calls the masculine energy and you forget about the other bullshit and you’re there with her. You’re there in the moment. It’s exciting.
Colton: That’s what we’re talking about. The moment and now is right fucking now. It’s not someday, it’s not one, it’s not tomorrow, it’s not even past. In fact, I have a belief and this is so fucking far out there and I cannot scientifically prove it, but I believe past, future, and present all exist simultaneously. It’s all a fucking illusion.
Stefan: Oh, dude. Okay, okay, let’s do this. Let’s do this. Yeah, past, present, future all at the same time. Let’s talk about it. Quantum physics now.
Colton: Yep. Here’s where it first got me thinking about it. I started doing a lot of work with dark shadows. I did this exercise where I did an hour of [inaudible 00:31:38] tropic breathing and then I commanded my subconscious, my own conscious mind to take me to the dark shadows that I had hidden. There was three different times and I’ll go short with this, but there were three different times. They were all times that I got my heart broken by a woman. Each time was fucking a needy little mother fucker. Women do not like neediness, neediness from them.
Colton: There was one time in 2007, my girlfriend at the time dumped me on Christmas day because I was a needy mother fucker, right? I was being a fucking fake man because I didn’t fucking know how, and so I was being a pussy. She felt that, right? But, during that time, it was very painful. It didn’t change that I was painful. Like, I was in a painful statement.
Stefan: An oracle womb.
Colton: Right.
Stefan: The womb knew. It knew.
Colton: The womb knew, right? In this experience, I revisualized that 2007 self, Colton in a round conference table and I just gave him love, and support, and advice, and I said, “One of the things, Colton, you’ve got to go discover is transcendental meditation. And then, I got out of this visualization. I finished it. I was done. And then, I started writing down my experience afterward and then I started going through my timeline. I actually realized it was actually January 2008 when I met a guy named Lynn. That was the only guy at the time that I could find that was teaching transcendental meditation.
Colton: You can call me fucking kooky, or weird, or whatever, but it was like my future self, which is my present self, was talking to my past self. And then, I started identifying all these different times that actually I heard this little voice back in my past and then I realized, do you know what dude? It feels like it was kind of me talking to my past self. If I’m talking to my past self, more than likely, my future self was talking to me and talking to me, right? And then, I realized that I could go to these deep states of visualizations because the mind doesn’t know the difference between three dimensions or imagination. I could actually see that experience and feel that experience again, but I could feel it with a different emotion. I could make a different decision.
Colton: When I made that different decision, in that moment, all of a sudden, my entire fucking life just changed. It went from, I was happening to me, to happening for me. Like, Tony Robbins talks about, right. I can find out that these biggest moments of pain, like when I broke my leg at two and a half years of age, or when my parents forgot me in the car at one and a half in the middle of fucking summer, or when my parents beat my ass for spilling red juice on their brand new carpet, or when I was in that car wreck when I was 15 years of age, or when I was high on four grams of fucking mushrooms in the middle of the mountains, and they flew in life flight to get me. All these different things of pain that I realized those were actually the greatest fucking gifts.
Colton: This was God’s grace. Somehow, some way, I exist on a planet with 7.5 billion people, close enough to the sun that I’m not freezing, but far enough that I still exist, and I’m not melting. As far as I can see, I don’t see any fucking planets around me that exist. This is a fucking miracle. I expect and receive miracles. All of a sudden, my entire mind shifted and anything becomes possible, and any experience becomes possible, and any emotion becomes possible. The question is, what am I going to choose to experience?
Stefan: That’s some high-level trippy stuff we just talked about there. Some people at home are like, what’s this dude talking about? Some people are like, oh, yeah, it’s cool. What did you call it? That was transcendental meditation where you went back through your timeline and all the pain? Is that what you did?
Colton: Yeah, so transcendental meditation is the state that you go in and you have a mantra. It’s taught in India. It’s one of the oldest forms of mediation. It’s just complete stillness. What I did is what I call time travel. After the transcendental meditation, and you’ve calmed the automatic default network in your brain. You got the aphids going, and you can go to your core self. You can command the subconscious mind to take you to different times, and your experiences, and [inaudible 00:35:04]. When you go there, you can reframe things.
Stefan: Wow. Dude, I want to talk to you. I want to talk how do people do that? How can people go and learn that? Is there a program? Did you go and like go up to the mountains with like an Indian holy man, or what?
Colton: Dude, so I have … you know, transcendental meditation has become more popular. You could probably learn that on YouTube now. If you really want to dive in deep, go to India, or get with someone here locally that can take you through a course. But honestly, it’s a lot of added up of different things. As I was searching to find my soul, in the end, I realized it was already found. It was inside of me the whole time. But, I’ve met with the Native American church, through grandfather peyote. I’ve met with the Lakota Indian tribe, and Joshua Tree, to go through sweat lodges. I’ve met with master to go through Kung Fu outs. I’ve gone through four grams of multiple times.
Colton: I’ve gone through tropic breath work with people that fucking, the best hallucination I’ve ever had was on pure oxygen, and just bliss, and freedom. I’ve done all these different things and it kind of lined me up to realize, do you know what? Everything boils down to what story I’m creating in my mind, and the story is created based on my state. If I can shift my state, I can shift my story. If I shift my story, the how to figures itself out. Most of our stress here in life is because things didn’t happen the way I wanted it. But, what if I just stopped fucking caring so much and stopped accepting that, or start accepting that it’s not going to be your way.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: What if your way is fucking just a shit way and what if there’s a better way out there for you? What if you could surrender to that? The more I found that I surrounded to God’s playground, just unfolding for me, I’m a better guy. And it was actually better than I was even creating on my own ego mind because I was craving for my soul. I was connected to the source.
Stefan: Wow. Do you know what, Colton? This is one of the best shows we’ve ever done, dude. I love what you’re saying about the ego. You know, the ego … I always say this, you either say it’s I or it’s me. I, I, I, me, me, me, is the ego and that’s like the lowest level of communication. That’s like you trying to hijack and take over whatever happening. I pulled one of my sales guys aside yesterday. I got a couple sales guys next door on phones and he was selling nothing for three weeks. He’s been here for three weeks. He’s not sold a freaking dollar. We got books for like a $1.99 you can sell. We got low ticket, we got high ticket. You can buy or sell whatever.
Stefan: This guy has been here for three weeks, sold nothing. I said, “Look bro.” I sat him down. I said, “Look, man. I want you to go back to your job as a mechanic and I want you to take this box of books. I’ve got 48 books. I want you to sell them, keep the money, and once you’ve sold them, come back and let’s try again.” He’s like, “No, no, no. I, I, I, I, I, I, I don’t want to do it. I, I, I.” I said, “Man, you’re talking about your ego.” I said, “Your ego made you zero dollars in the last three weeks. Tell me more about your ego.” I, I, I, I, I don’t want to go back. I’m scared. I don’t want to be a mechanic. I told my wife … I, I.
Stefan: I said, “No, no, dude. You’ve got to understand, not all the baby birds make it out of the nest. Mama bird hatches some babies. Some of the baby birds fly, some of them fall down and break their necks. Whatever happens here is right. If you succeed, I said, “You’ve got to make $500.00 by next Friday. If you make the $500.00, this is right for you. If you don’t, whatever happens, if you become a mechanic again, that is right. Understand that both are right. You can’t be wrong here, man, because whatever happens, happens. You got to surrender your ego to that because sales might not be for you, man. Maybe you are meant for something bigger and this is just a blip on the radar. So, surrender to it. Let go. Let the ego out.” What do you think about what I said to that guy?
Colton: I mean, I think your experience, first of all, and whether he takes it with, he believes you’re not, it’s totally up to him, but I do think that we have to embrace the failure. We have to embrace the mistake. If I go and I try to be a salesperson, and I fail, and I don’t make it, the real failure is not getting back up and shifting. One of my mantras is I correct and continue. I say that to myself, my daughter, all the time, I correct and I continue. And you look at Michael Jordan, right? He was one of the most amazing basketball players of all time. He’s also one of the most field goals out there. Him and Kobe Bryant, right?
Colton: He’s been entrusted with how many game-winning shots and missed like a shit ton of them, right? Even you look at Babe Ruth, one of the strikeout leaders. He’s known for his home runs. We have to be willing to make mistakes. I share this with my kids all the time. The greatest mistake is not being willing to go make one because we’re afraid of what other people are going to judge us on. The truth is, people are going to fucking forget about it in about two seconds because we’re so ego-centered. We think about ourselves way more when we think about when you make your mistake.
Colton: Our biggest problems as human beings is that we think we can live in a life without problems. It’s not going to fucking exist. What we have to learn to do is fall in love with the problems. Embrace the shit out of them. It’s what Jerry [inaudible 00:40:06] calls, fall in love with the shit day, right? Where we can fall in love with the bullshit, the stuff that sucks, because that’s what a lot of life is made up of, all of a sudden life turns to joy. Life doesn’t have to be fucking rainbow farts and fairytales all the time. We are meaning making machines. What meaning are you making with it?
Stefan: Oh, bro, bro. I love that. I’ve been noticing this. I wrote this book. I have it published. I’ve written five books now, Colton, and the sixth book I’ve written, it’s called, Letters to a Scorpion. I had this girl and she had a boyfriend for the whole time that I was chasing her for three years. We dated. We did all sorts of stuff and then I found after, oh man, she had a boyfriend the whole time. I wrote all these letters to her. It’s a series of letters. It starts with, “Oh baby, I miss you. I loved you so much. Why did you this to me?” And victim, victim, victim. I stopped after so much time. I wrote so many letters and I stopped and I was like, okay. Don’t really want to face this.
Stefan: I let it sit there for about six months. I was like, okay, I don’t know what to do with this, so I let it sit there, but I kept thinking about here. She kept existing in my mind and then finally, I said one day, “I’m going to write you letters until you die.” I kept writing and writing, and she kept transforming and the situation and the story kept transforming and finally, at the end, I said, “Wow, thank you for the experience. I’m done.” She transformed, and she transformed, and she transformed because the story kept changing. When you change the story, it changes your beliefs because the stories are the base of your belief system, which is the most interesting things.
Stefan: I mean, what are religions, but a collection of stories? What are your beliefs, but a collection of stories? You can say, you know, people have excuses, that’s a story they invented. Well, you can change that excuse and that story into an empowering story. You could say, “Well, I’m going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger today and go lift weights.” Or, you can say, “Well, I’m too fat. I’m too sick. I’m too tired. I’m not going to do that.” And they both are right.
Colton: Yeah. It’s like Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” We have this optimized version of yourself. I remember Rod was talking about this on my podcast and he says, “I’ve got this optimized version of who I want to become and as I optimize as the actual man that I am, the optimized version optimizes and shifts even more.” Right? So, imagine if you could go to your past and rewrite your story? Experience is, I mean, really, do you really fucking know what happened when you were five years old? You don’t fucking remember. You think you remember, so just go back and tell a new story.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: Because who even fucking knows if you existed at five years old. I’m just to that point. I don’t even know anymore, man.
Stefan: Right. You’re just like, your conscious just living in the present, the past doesn’t exist, the future doesn’t exist.
Colton: Right.
Stefan: Colton, I’m mean, we’re getting pretty trippy here, man. What happens when we die?
Colton: Let me share this. Do you guys want a really cool activity to heal?
Stefan: Yeah.
Colton: Brainstorm 25 of the most memorable things that happened in your life. It could be when you were … for me, it was high on. It was when I broke my leg. It was when I was in a car accident. I wrote down 25 that like most affected me with pain and then I went, and I just wrote the story that I could remember. With the story that I wrote, I wrote down the top ten lessons that I learned from that experience. When you tell that, number one is you get authentic with what really happened, but number two, is you start to learn how that experience was actually a gift for you and the lessons that you learned. If you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t have had those lessons.
Colton: That’s been something I’ve been doing for about a year now. It’s been freaking amazing. I get to tell the story of my experiences to myself. I get to frame it. When you write a story about yourself too, you want to make it a pretty awesome story. So, go in detail, go in depth with it. What happens when we die?
Stefan: Yeah, bro, what happens?
Colton: Dude, I don’t know. I’d like to believe that we go to a happy, fun, cool, this warm loving place. Exactly what happens, I don’t know. I do believe though that we never cease to exist. I mean, I can barely remember what I ate for lunch a week and a half ago, so why would I remember what I was doing 40 ago before I was born?
Stefan: Right.
Colton: it’s just ridiculous, right? But, I do have absolute certainty that I exist right now in some shape, some form. It is very plausible that we go to the source energy of all creation. I believe that we are all one and all connected. I think there’s, it’s almost like there’s the sun, right? And then, there’s the sunbeams. The sunbeams, I’m a sunbeam, you’re a sunbeam, everyone’s a sunbeam, but we all are connected to that source energy of the sun. That’s how I see it. I could be so fucking far off on this, but that’s the way I choose to believe it. I’m just going to go to a pure place of love, and joy, and ultimate creation. And then, I’m going to say, “Okay, what do I want to go create now? I just created that epic journey. Let’s go create this now.”
Stefan: Yeah, well it’s crazy, man. I’ve had some people do some meditations. They talk about their past lives. Like, you know, how they died. They were murdered in the 1400s, and then in the 1700s, they were reincarnated. I’ve heard like some really wild stuff. I’m fascinated by the past lives and stuff that people have. Do you think that’s something real or is that just?
Colton: Dude, listen. I don’t know whether it’s real or not, but I definitely think it’s possible. I think we talk about and this … a lot of people watching this podcast are probably really into personal development. That seems to be a pretty common theme in today’s business world. But, what if you went a step further and you were in soul development. Souls develop over fucking thousands, and thousands, and thousands of years. Why couldn’t you be on your 674th life? Why couldn’t you have been developing your soul? I could tell you this much, dude, I didn’t just fucking understand all that I understand with my soul and my spiritual side overnight.
Colton: There’s very, very, difficult for me to imagine that it happened in just 34 years, maybe over 34 lifetimes. Do you know what I’m saying? I definitely believe it’s possible. I don’t know how it works out, or whether we are reincarnated, or anything like that, but I think it’s … I think our souls are definitely are always developing for sure. I think it’s always developing.
Stefan: Yeah, it’s interesting. I used to have this app on my phone. It was numerology. You put in your name, and you put in your birthdate, and then it would give you all the numbers, like your life path, and all these things. One number that I thought was interesting and I think it was your name your birthday put together somehow, it would give you your karmic lesson. The karmic lesson was the lesson that your soul needed to learn in this lifetime to be able to advance to whatever’s next. It’s interesting because you do it and like for me, it was number seven, which is spirituality. I need to learn spirituality in this lifetime. That’s like the karmic lesson that this soul must learn in this vessel in this life, which is super cool.
Stefan: Other people, I remember girlfriend at the time, she had like two, four, six, and eight, so she had to learn harmony, hard work, family, and like money or something. That soul is like a young soul. She had to learn like so many things. Do you believe that? Do you think that you’re here on this earth for one major lesson and this is like the one things you got to learn in this life?
Colton: I don’t know, to be honest, if I believe that or not, but I do believe that I’m here to light up other souls. I do believe that I’m here to light up other souls for sure. It’s like that old saying, is light up the darkness because what happens is, it’s like our soul, because of experiences growing up, gets this little wall built around it. It’s calcified in there and as it gets built up, our light can’t shine through it. We have these … if we choose to face pain, which a lot of people don’t. They choose to avoid it through the things that we talked about earlier, drugs, alcohol, sex, avoidance, whatever, right?
Colton: If we can face the pain, the pain will crack that wall open, and our light will start to shine through. When we let it shine through enough, it’ll rip that entire thing off until we become just this fucking lighthouse to our core. For me, my belief is once I’ve discovered that, which I clearly have, my goal is to go light up as many other lighthouses as possible. As cheesy as it sounds, love is the fucking answer, man. Dude, our whole life is a playground and love is our legacy. When we can start to just share that with other people, they can feel bliss.
Colton: Unfortunately, we get focused on a need basis of growth within our businesses and if we can shift it to a need basis of love, then the money will find us. I mean, you think about it. You’re obviously you’re in business. Teaching someone how to make money and making money is the easiest part, enjoy it.
Stefan: Well, it’s mechanical. It’s mechanics.
Colton: Right.
Stefan: It’s mechanic. You do this, you get this. We’re talking do verses be. You and I having a be conversation about the spirit and then most people listening to this want to have a do conversation. Respect the Grind is a do, do, do thing. We’re talking about be, be, be and do and be sometimes, people in the do conversation don’t understand the being. And the being people don’t understand the doing.
Colton: I believe life is 10% doing and 90% being your emotional self.
Stefan: Bro, I’m giving you a gong. That’s a gong right there. Instant replay on it. Can you do it one more time for the kid at home?
Colton: I believe life is 10% doing and 90% being, the emotional state side of it. If that’s the case, what we need to do, even you guys as listeners is stop spending so much time on the doing. I’m not saying you don’t need to do because a lot of you do need to do and get doing the right things to make money, or you’re going to go broke. Money is not real. It’s fake. It’s an illusion. A lot of times, what you need to do is the be. You need to go do the meditation consistently. You need to go do the breath work. You need to go do the therapy. You need to go do the event with Garret White or Tony Robbins, or someone, right?
Colton: You need to get being. And being is so much different than learning because then you’ve got this other stage of people out there that they’re always listening to podcasts, always reading books, but they never get anything accomplished, right? You know, the book, The Secret, is one of the worst books on the planet because it’s like, oh, I can just think about it and it’ll come to me. My right? No.
Stefan: Well, that’s be, be, be with no doing. That’s we’re just going to be, man.
Colton: Right. Yeah and so you’ve got to get action. Action is the key to receiving. The question is, don’t hold so tight to what you’re going to receive. Don’t be so fucking greedy in what you’re going to receive, and so entitled to what you’re going to receive. If you just loosen up a little bit, and you’re open to what you receive, no matter what it is, you’ll find out that the universe and God has something way better in store for you than you fucking thought in your ego self.
Stefan: Yeah, man, wow. Dude, do you know what? I got to listen to this conversation again. I think I’m going to have to like record this. I’m going to have to put it back and listen to it again because you’re dropping some like heavy stuff. Now, I’ve got a question for you here, Colton. By the way, I’m very grateful that we met today. Thank you very much. This is a good conversation.
Colton: Hey, I appreciate that.
Stefan: I needed to hear this and I hope that there’s thousands of people out there that had to hear this as well. A lot of us, we get wrapped up, like you said, 31 financially free, 32 miserable because you’re good in the money side, but the body, being, balance, as Garrett White says, the other parts of your body are falling apart. Let me ask you this. Love and gratitude. I was reading a Tony Robbins book on money. He had some super big hedge fund guy. I can’t remember his name, but one of the biggest hedge fund guys, he said, “What’s the … ”
Colton: Ray Dalio?
Stefan: I think it was, is it, Paul Tudor Jones?
Colton: Yeah, probably Paul Tudor Jones.
Stefan: One of the biggest dudes, one of the biggest dudes and he said, “What’s the secret to wealth?” And he said, “Gratitude.” Gratitude is the secret to wealth. Now, I got a question for you. Is love and gratitude the same thing? I find when I appreciate someone, it’s usually … it feels like love. When I give gratitude, when I give appreciation to someone, it wires me up in the love emotion. There’s love and there’s fear. You either love something and move towards it, or you fear it, you move away from it. Is love and gratitude the same thing, do you think?
Colton: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. Here’s what I see it as. I see there’s two major spaces of emotion. One is the feel-good zone and one’s the feel bad zone. We’ve got about seven emotions in that feel good zone. That’s love, that it’s joy, it’s appreciation, it’s excitement, enthusiasm, contentment even is up there, but then we got a bunch of others, boredom, pessimism, frustration, impatience, irritation, depression, jealousy, fear, powerlessness, right? All these annoying feelings. If we take a look at the upper space, the feel-good zone, there’s really two major spaces there.
Colton: One is the excitement and enthusiastic space, but one is the peaceful side of it. The tranquility. Although a lot of entrepreneurs, and business owners, and personal develop people, they experience a lot of excitement and a lot of enthusiasm. What they don’t always experience is peace and tranquility. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but that was my experience, right? And so, when we look at this, I look at okay, if I can choose gratitude and appreciation, it allowed me to actually experience love. I felt like love was a byproduct of sharing gratitude, of being peaceful, of appreciating others.
Colton: When I look love, I look at is as kind of love and warmth. That’s my number two value. My number one is health and vitality because if I’m dead, or fat, or overweight, I can’t be my best self. I can’t help light up any other lighthouses if I’m fucking dead. The second one is love and warmth. That’s usually love, warmth, and compassion. It’s actually love and warm now because what I realized is compassion was when I could see another person for all the love that they truly are at their soul and I can disconnect their operating system. So often, we choose their operating system, that they’re operating on. We put these stickies on them like that’s how they are. We create their identity.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: But, that’s not really who they are at their core. To me, at the core, that is love, it is joy, it is this beautiful state that we can choose. I think that stems from when I share gratitude, I feel even more love. When I’m compassionate with someone, I feel even more love. When I appreciate even more of this moment, I feel love. When I act with courage and faith, I feel even more love. When I’m truly present and I’m patient, I feel even more love. It’s like all of these things are pieces of love that drive into that. When we look at what we truly are, the only thing that really exists is love, right? All these things add into it.
Stefan: Bro, we’re getting like, we could stay up all night here. It’s not night time, but this is like some staying up all night kind of talk. Now, Colton, I got to wrap up the podcast here. By the way, I really appreciate having you on, man. This is a different flavor then we normally have. We normally got guys like hey, make your calls. Hey dude, make your offers. A lot of people, how do I make more money? How do I make more money? This is like what you’ve got here, what we’re talking about today is like the opposite half of the grind, the being side.
Stefan: I feel like there’s two things in life, there’s grind, which is doing and then there’s do less, which is like what you’re talking about, the being. Now, a couple of questions I ask everybody.
Colton: Real quick on that, right? When we look at this, at this doing side, we have to do the real work, which it is to be. Don’t get me wrong, we have to do. We have to take action, but it’s the action that dries us up. What action are we taking? The action is a drug too. What drug is your drug of choice?
Stefan: That’s money.
Colton: This doesn’t happen until you’re willing to face it sober and sober is not just … I know a lot of your guys might not use drugs and alcohol, or pornography, or whatever, but you’re using something to avoid. You’re lying to yourself about whatever it is. Until you can stop lying to yourself about whatever it is, and truly go to the pain when you’ll be able to crack it open and feel the love.
Stefan: Yeah. Now, Colton, the question I ask everybody on the show because I like to ask a couple of questions to everybody because I just think their funny questions. The first one is, if you could back to the beginning, I don’t know how old you are today, but if you went back to let’s say, 18 years old, 15 years old, what’s a piece of advice you would give 15-year-old Colton?
Colton: You know, it’s funny, I do this visualization exercise called time travel with people. We go back to our 15-year-old self and we give them advice. For me, it would be man, fricking everything turns out okay, just hold on right, enjoy the ride, everything turns out okay, man. That would be the advice I’d give myself.
Stefan: That’s incredible, man. I love that. The top three books that changed your life?
Colton: Oh, how about the top 300 books that changed my life. You know, Untethered Soul, hands down, one of the absolute best books, The Things You Can See When You Slow Down, is another great book Ask and It Is Given, is a great book. Think and Grow Rich. Man, I could just go on and on and on. Untethered Soul, if you haven’t read that book, that’s a must-read.
Stefan: Wow. All right. I love it. That’s not the … usually, people are like Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody says that. I love it when people give me flavor on that question. Now, if you could give a piece of advice to the young generation, the 18-year-old’s coming into maybe university, college, the workforce, people coming in right now. They’re coming into the game, they’re 18. Maybe they go to a college, university, get a job, whatever, what’s a piece of advice you give to the young people who are just coming into the game at 18 right now?
Colton: Presence and patience. Be present and be patient because you’re going to wake up one day and you’re going to realize that your life is passing by, right? It literally is. Be patient. Enjoy this freaking moment. Too often, the younger generation they want it now. They want the million followers now. They want the big business now. They want the financial freedom now. You know, social media is kind of fucking up the younger generation in the sense of, we put these best-optimized version posts up. We have to put the right filter, the right text, the right message, but no.
Colton: Be patient. Be okay with being fucked up. I don’t mean you’re fucked up, I mean be okay with your operating system being jumbled because every person on the planet has a jumbled operation system at some degree. Be patient with the process and be present with the process. You know, if you can do that, your life will be an amazing experience. It will be just fucking beautiful.
Stefan: You know, it’s the biggest thing now. It’s harder to get in the moment than ever. I have these young kids working for me. One guy’s 18 and he says, “I can’t have my phone. Whenever I have my phone out, I get distracted.” I’m like, “Yeah, bro, it’s crazy. Like, people live on their phones.” It’s just a distraction, distraction, distraction. I think it’s interesting the biggest guys with tech companies, like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, won’t give phones to their kids. They’re like, you can’t have an iPad. You can’t have a phone. They know the addictiveness of that. They know it’s going to fuck their kids up. They say, “No, here’s a pen and paper. Here’s some rocks. Go play with the rocks and sticks.”
Colton: Right. Yeah, well, I mean if you think about it, presence too, you can actually be present on technology if you use it the right way. We’ve been on technology for the last little while and we’ve been pretty dang present. We’ve had an amazing conversation, right? At the same time though, what is with this phone that you guys have, which is probably an iPhone, more than likely, is you’ve got the vibration on. You have the little red dot on your text message on, you have the push notification on, you have a ringtone specified for someone. Do you know what I mean?
Colton: One of the things that I did with my phone, is I turned everything off. Everything, so you can’t get a hold … like it doesn’t beep. It doesn’t buzz. It doesn’t vibrate. It doesn’t light up. It doesn’t shake. It doesn’t wiggle. It doesn’t do any of that. I use it as a tool, as a device.
Stefan: Right. You’re active with it. You’re using it to your whims, not other people’s whims coming in and messing up your reality.
Colton: Right. I mean, business has always been the same. It’s content creation. Today, we just have an opportunity to use it digitally.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: You know, 20 years ago, we just had to do it through the newspaper, or through a classified ad, or through a mailer, or something like that.
Stefan: Right.
Colton: It’s the same thing. It’s all content, it’s just now we can deal with it differently.
Stefan: Yeah, man. Dude, we could have whole other business conversation. Well, Colton, it’s been an absolute pleasure, man. How can people get a hold of you if they want to know more, they want to go deep?
Colton: Yeah, so you can check me out on Instagram, theWGR, T-H-E-W-G-R, or you can go check me out on the internet, just search Colton Lindsay. Even my website, coltonlindsay.com. But the best is get on Instagram right now. Bro, for those of you guys that really want to grow your business, Instagram is where it’s at, especially if you get over 10,000 subscribers. You got the swipe material. What we’re seeing is that it’s over probably 60% of all paid advertising is going to be going through Instagram in the next year or so.
Colton: Facebook is kind of a thing that it’s still going to be great there, and there’s going to be an opportunity there, but Instagram is the place where you’ve definitely got to be. Be there, go follow me on Instagram, theWGR. You can check me out on YouTube if you’re in real estate. I’ve got a lot prospecting videos up there as well. Or, just search me on Facebook, just Colton J Lindsay.
Stefan: Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show, Colton, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Respect the Grind, my friend.
Colton: Thank you.
Get Connected with Colton:
Facebook – Colton J Lindsay
Website – http://www.thewgracademy.com
