Mark Divine 0:24

Right.

Lion Goodman 0:24

Even though it’s only an hour away. Got my degree in physiology and human consciousness. 

Mark Divine 0:30

Wow.

Lion Goodman 0:30

And as far as I know, it was one of the first degrees in consciousness studies ever granted, that was a in 1975.

Mark Divine  0:35  

Was that the University of Colorado, Boulder, or what school was that?

Lion Goodman  0:38 

Yes the University of Colorado. 

 

Mark Divine 0:39

That is really impressive that they had that.

 

Lion Goodman 0:41

Well, I created it, actually, they had a program where if you were one of those wild kids that they couldn’t satisfy with a regular program, you could create your own major. So that’s what I did. I ,said, these are all the classes I want to take. This is what makes up my major. They said, good get some professors to approve. So I went around, found three great professors, and they went yeah, sure go ahead. So that was great. I really crafted my own education.

 

Mark Divine  1:04  

So did you go from there, right into coaching or what, what was your, like the career path look like?

 

Lion Goodman  1:11  

Well, nobody was hiring people with degrees in consciousness studies at the time.

 

Mark Divine 1:16

Yeah, right.

 

Lion Goodman 1:17

Cause, there weren’t any. So I actually went on the road selling stuff for people that sold jewelry and gift items. And because I really didn’t know what else to do, and I traveled for about a year and a half around the Southwest United States. Until one day I picked up a guy whose car had broken down in the Mojave Desert, make a very long story short of three nights later, he pulled out a gun and shot me in the head four times. 

 

Mark Divine 1:41

What? 

 

Lion Goodman 1:42

Yeah, that was my response as well, when it happened. Like…

 

Mark Divine  1:45  

I can imagine Holy shit. While you’re standing here, so obviously, this isn’t like reincarnation. So you survived it.

 

Lion Goodman  1:55  

Well, it felt kind of like a reincarnation only it didn’t have to go through the diaper stage again. 

 

Mark Divine 1:59

Geez.

 

Lion Goodman 2:00

So I not only survived, but we ended up talking for eight hours after the incident. 

 

Mark Divine 2:05

God.

 

Lion Goodman 2:05

That’s a whole story that’s been written and published widely and film has been made about it. But it was one of the things that happened was I was out of body, looking down at the scene, thinking, how amusing these two people are in this van. You know, one of them’s shooting the other one. So that was a big shift in consciousness. Because I realized, Oh, I’m not my body. And as much as I had studied consciousness, this was the first time I was completely conscious out of body that set me off back into the study of human psychology, neurology, spirituality. I ended up taking more than 100 workshops, trainings and studying with teachers of all kinds over the next 30 years. And at the same time, I became a professional headhunter, which is kind of ironic after having my head hunted, but..

 

Mark Divine  2:55  

Abad joke…

 

Lion Goodman  2:58  

Yes, but that was my career for 25 years all the time while I was also exploring these other things.

 

Mark Divine 3:03

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 3:03

So it wasn’t until the economy took us down during the dot bomb, that I, my headhunting business, went out of business. And I didn’t know what to do. And I, a girlfriend of mine said, Why don’t you become a coach? I said, I don’t know anything about coaching. She said, yeah, you do, you’ve been coaching executives for 25 years, and you’ve done all this inner study, you can become a coach. So that was the beginning of my coaching career about 20 plus years ago, and I fell in love with it, because it’s exactly what I want to do. And I also teach other coaches, my methodology.

 

Mark Divine  3:37  

Coaching is back then it was pretty, I mean, what year are we talking about, like the early 2000s? Right? 

 

Lion Goodman 3:43

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 3:43

 

Lion Goodman 3:44

2001.

 

Mark Divine 3:45

Coaching, you know, was like high end executive coaching, or nothing back then or therapy, right? Life Coaching was kind of a very nascent thing. I mean, there was some kind of new agey stuff going on, but not a whole lot. And even fitness coaching was relatively new, and there wasn’t much in between. So what was it like for you? What did you get certified? You find a methodology or just kind of like, create your own coaching process? Or what did that look like for you?

 

Lion Goodman  4:13  

I used everything I had learned in personal development in my coaching, and I also knew about business and careers, because I’ve been coaching in that field. So it started off with people interested in changing careers. And then I started getting deeper because I was fascinated by depth. It’s like, what’s underneath that stuff going on in your life. And so I began applying all these tools I had learned until I realized, oh, my gosh, I have a whole methodology here. And the methodology that actually goes down deep into the subconscious mind clears out what’s in the way and frees people so that they can actually accomplish what they want. And I got so interested in it, I put a real study on beliefs themselves. What are they, where do they come from? How do they manifest? How do they work? I tried lots of different belief change technologies because I realized that The greatest leverage when I could change somebody’s core belief, they could change everything in their life. That’s what got me focused on that particular area.

 

Mark Divine  5:08  

So let’s before I kind of get into like that process, I would like to talk about coaching a little bit more, because I think, a lot of people, especially since um COVID, and you know, with a great resignation, I’ve looked for more freedom, autonomy, and for ways to make a living and earn, you know, to find meaning without being tied to a job. And so coaching has suddenly become really interesting to people. What does a great coach do? And um, what does it take to be effective? As a coach, from your perspective?

 

Lion Goodman  5:40  

I think there’s two kinds of coaches, there’s coaches that traffic in information. And coaches that traffic in transformation. And the ones that are that are involved with transformation, they’re really trying to help the person change their lives completely, and clear out what the problem areas are. Most coaches are not trained for this, however, because coaching schools, basically have the philosophy that we only deal with the present and the future. Where’s the personnel? Where do they want to go, we’re going to help them get there to the future. Let’s leave the past to the therapists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists of the world, we’re not dealing with that stuff. The problem with that philosophy, and that’s pretty common among coaching schools, is that the stuff that keeps people from moving forward, all was formed in the past. And so my methodology is a coaching methodology. But it’s one that has tremendous therapeutic value, because we go back into the source material, where that belief or pattern started, and we clear it from the subconscious mind. And we clear it not just from the mind, but from the body, the spirit, the emotions, so it’s a complete cleansing of that particular pattern. And the person doesn’t have the pattern in their life anymore afterwards. So that’s what makes the transformational shift is they’re basically a different person, because they’re believing something different about themselves, or about the world or about other people.

 

Mark Divine  7:07  

How would you define a person? Most people think, well, that’s a silly question. A person has a body, right, but it’s not a body, right? What is a person? What was the person of you that were looking down in your body? I mean, that’s a unique perspective.

 

Lion Goodman  7:19  

Exactly. Well, I talked about the fact that we are multidimensional beings, like right now you’re seeing, hearing, feeling touching, you’re in your body, you’re experiencing your experience, and I’m over here experiencing my experience. And we’re looking through this technology that allows us to connect, so we are physical beings, emotional beings, mental beings, spiritual beings, relational beings, energetic beings, we have all of these things going on at once. And so for me, the true self is the whole self with nothing left out. And there’s a lot of people focused on one area. Like, I’ll do health coaching and help their body or I’ll do emotional coaching, and they’ll beat on a pillow and get their emotions out, or I’ll change their mind with this mental technology. But until you see the person as a whole, with all their systems, that are all integrated and part of something bigger, then you’re going to be missing something, you’re going to not be seeing the whole person. Because we do also belong in an environment where environmental beings, we’re in an ecosystem, we’re connected to nature, we’re connected to everything. And it’s the delusion of separateness that really screws with us when we believe that we’re separate beings, because then we, we lose our connection to everything around us.

 

Mark Divine  8:39  

All right, so you just brought up a really interesting point, that has nothing to do with coaching. The idea of a separate person versus being not a separate person, because my experience is that as well. But my perspective is that because we’re not separate beings, we also have no separate self. What there is, is basically consciousness streaming through this instrument that has unique conditioning, that we mistake to be an individuated self, AKA a person. And this is what is the cause of suffering in the world. This is what causes it’s a mistaken identity. 

 

Lion Goodman 9:18

I couldn’t say it any better myself.

 

Mark Divine 9:19

But it’s very hard to go there in a coaching relationship when someone is so, because I mean, 99 points, you know, 10 digits to the right percent of humanity is completely conditioned to believe that the separate self is existent, extent. There is something called Mark in this body and they think it’s a soul or it’s, it’s it’s unique spirit or something. But the more work you do and the more spiritual development, the more you realize that that’s false. But you can’t start there with somebody, right? Because they think you’re nuts. How do you engage in relationship to get someone to really break down their ego structures when they spent their whole life building those ego structures up?

 

Lion Goodman  9:59  

Well, first of all, If your job is to break down ego structures, you’re gonna get in trouble, people are going to nail you to a cross or hang you, or run you on a rail outside, or other.

 

Mark Divine 10:10

Sure, alright.

 

Lion Goodman 10:11

So you can’t change somebody’s beliefs or, or commitments without their permission, because otherwise you’re violating their free will. 

 

Mark Divine 10:19

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 10:20

On the other hand, what I’ve found is that I can help a person see their own subconscious mind and how it works.

 

Mark Divine  10:27  

So they can begin to deconstruct on their own…

 

Lion Goodman 10:29

Exactly 

 

Mark Divine 10:30

What’s not working for them.

 

Lion Goodman  10:31  

Exactly. And that can be done through inquiry and philosophical discussions and guided imagery. And that kind of tools we use to help a person recognize, okay, I’m more than just my conscious self, there’s a lot going on at the subconscious level that is driving my behavior, driving my conditions, driving what I choose, and why I choose it. And now I can begin seeing that I am more than my conscious ego self. That’s the first crack in the concrete. And then that process can keep going, and go wow, I’m not just my subconscious and conscious mind, there’s also a superconscious mind, there’s also something beyond me that’s higher than me that’s grander than me. And so this awakening is really the purpose of what I do, is to take people through processes in which they do awaken to who they really are. And that is always beyond the ego self. 

 

Mark Divine  11:24  

And the ego self is simply in the identification with the beliefs, the mental models, the constructs, the biases, all that conditioning, and identifying that as me.

 

Lion Goodman  11:36  

Exactly. And that’s what I refer to as beliefs. But all those other words function for the same thing, the paradigms, the frames, the maps of meaning.

 

Mark Divine 11:44

Yeah, yeah.

 

Lion Goodman 11:45

So that’s the infrastructure of consciousness, it’s down at the infrastructure level, it’s like the pipes underneath the ground, we don’t see them, but they deliver water to our faucets, you know. So this infrastructure of consciousness, the belief structure, is the machinery of the human operating system. And that’s where things are being driven 95 to 97% of our choices and actions every day are driven by that subconscious programming. So when you start examining your subconscious programming, you’re getting to see a bigger part of yourself who you are. And you also get some choice in the matter. 

 

Mark Divine 12:22

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 12:23

Because you say, Oh, wow, that’s my machinery, I don’t have to do what my machinery tells me to do. 

 

Mark Divine  12:28  

The tricky part about this Lion is, you know, the term subconscious, you know, leads you to think, okay, it’s beyond my consciousness, it’s beneath my consciousness, right? So therefore, I’m not aware of it. So how can we examine something that we’re not aware of?

 

Lion Goodman  12:41  

Well, it’s like a submarine subconscious means below the surface, right? So you can actually do it quite easily. I have lots of exercises that I give to people to begin examining their beliefs. One of the simplest is called the belief self diagnosis, which I have in my eBooks, I give this away by the 1000s. Because it’s so effective. You take a topic that you’re having problem with, like love. And you simply say, what I believe about love is, and then you listen to your mind, things will start popping up and you write them down. What I believe about love is it’s really hard. And you write that down. What I believe about love is, I’ll never find it, write that down. What I believe about love is, it’s a joke, you write that down. What I believe about love is it’s the most important thing, and you write that down. And if you keep…

 

Mark Divine  13:26  

But aren’t those conscious, I mean, if they’re coming to you, and you’re aware of them, then that’s conscious, you’re consciously thinking about it.

 

Lion Goodman  13:33  

You are bringing them from the subconscious up to the conscious mind. That’s what this stimulus does is it invites your mind to respond, because it’s all there. It’s just sub, it’s below your conscious level. But it doesn’t take a lot to bring it up from the subconscious.

 

Mark Divine  13:49  

Interesting. I don’t want to get stuck in semantics. And I agree with that. I mean, you’re using the common the accepted language. And for me, I believe consciousness is that is the totality of experience, right? It’s the it’s the lifeforce, the pre prana, the Chi that is flowing through you, it is both intelligent as well as energizes or innervates the body. Whereas what you’re talking about as cognition, right you it’s what is cognized by the brain, which means you can create language or meaning around it. There’s cognition that is cognized with the brain, there’s cognition that is cognized with the heart, which has neurological processing capacity and the biome, and then bringing it all together is what you called whole man, right? Being able to utilize those different intelligence capacities and make meaning out of them to be able to verbalize and understand certain things. 

I don’t know it’s semantics. But um, it’s interesting to me because this whole, this whole field of can get kind of murky and a lot of people use different language and so then people get turned off because like, I don’t even know what the hell we’re talking about. Right? 

 

Lion Goodman 14:56

Well language…

 

Mark Divine 14:56

Except conscious, super conscious. And you could say, well, that what do you mean by superconscious its like, is there a is there some sort of like, overlord in my mind that’s like, it’s like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other is that what we’re talking about or, super consciousness is just basically getting your ego out of the way and allowing, you know, the pure awareness to flow through. And you know, and it’s all it’s all their love bliss satchitananda, you know, this is a more Eastern concept. It’s not something that is part of your intellect. It’s just your very nature, as a being.

 

Lion Goodman  15:29  

There was a statistician named George Box, who said, all models are wrong, and some are useful. It is semantics, because we are language based humans. Language is a particular behavior set that we all engage in.

 

Mark Divine 15:44

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 15:45

But when you start forming before you have language, a baby in the womb can recognize the difference between the mother and father’s voice. And it’s the pattern recognition system that begins to build a self. This is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I respond to people. And so when I talk about beliefs, I’m talking about all of the patterns that were set from your womb, and who knows possibly in past lives too, you know, we don’t know about that. But these patterns can be recognized, they can be brought up from the subconscious mind below conscious. 

 

Mark Divine 16:22

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 16:23

And then there’s also universal patterns we call archetypes. Carl Jung talked about this. There’s great myths and stories. And we have a king in us. And we have a queen in us, and we have a joker in us. And so those are also patterns in the culture. Because we’re not just individuals, we’re also part of our culture.

 

Mark Divine 16:37

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 16:38

And those archetypes are also useful to use, when you’re examining yourself. To know thyself.

 

Mark Divine 16:44

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 16:45

That’s what it said, you know, in the great Greek temples, and that’s the goal is just get to know more and more and more and more of yourself. And that self becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, until it encompasses the whole world until it becomes pure awareness. And then you can hang out there, at least for a little while, until you have the next thing to do.

 

Mark Divine  17:04  

Or you another way you could say that is that the self that you thought you were it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until the universal self is the experience.

 

Lion Goodman  17:14  

Sure. And we also have to function in the world.

 

Mark Divine  17:18  

With your system of clearing beliefs. The beliefs, to me is like one piece of what we’re talking about, because language is another one. You know, I use the term background of obviousness, that came from computers and cognition. The idea is that all of this stuff, all this conditioning, you talked about, is so baked into your sense of self and your perceptual capabilities. That is you’re completely blind to it, but it’s obvious to others. 

 

Lion Goodman 17:46

Yes. 

 

Mark Divine 17:46

So language is a part of that, how we construct concepts, mental models, like you said, and then, but what traditionally people think about beliefs are like beliefs about money, or sex or relationships or something like that. But there’s so much more to it than that.

 

Lion Goodman  18:00  

When I use the term beliefs. I’m talking about that infrastructure, the pattern recognition and making use of patterns system, it is the, the word I use instead of mental models. But it doesn’t matter wheat you call it, we’re all operating on those mental models.

 

Mark Divine 18:15

Right, right.

 

Lion Goodman 18:17

And we’re operating through them, because we see through them we perceive through them. And that’s why turning the light around and examining them is so useful.

 

Mark Divine 18:24

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 18:24

Is because you can see, wow, I’m perceiving that person through this lens. And that’s causing me to react to them in a certain way. And that changes behavior.

 

Mark Divine  18:35  

What are some of the most important or common models or beliefs that people have challenges with? I’ve mentioned a few, obviously, relationships and sex and love, obviously there. But what else have you found that are like the big rocks, that if you can turn over those rocks and do some excavating underneath that lead to big transformative changes?

 

Lion Goodman  18:57  

But we do use the term excavation, because that’s a lot of what it feels like and sounds like. The most common belief I’ve found all around the world, and I’ve lectured and talked to all around the world, is there’s something wrong with me. I have a suggestion for you in the audience, if you’d like to try something out. 

 

Mark Divine 19:14

Sure. 

 

Lion Goodman 19:15

Okay, so close your eyes for a moment, and feel what it feels like to hold the belief, there’s something wrong with me. Now, another part of you knows that there’s not but just feel it as if it’s 100% true and see what it feels like in your body. There’s something wrong with me.

 

Mark Divine  19:30  

Yeah, it’s a negative belief. And so it’s going to or feels contracting, limiting. And de-energizing.

 

Lion Goodman  19:37  

Yeah, and most people experience something like that. They may have it in different parts of their body, but that’s pretty common. Okay, so like, take that off as if it’s a piece of clothing that made you feel lousy and throw it to the side. And now close your eyes and feel what it feels like to hold the belief. I am a sacred and worthy being. What does that feel like?

 

Mark Divine 19:56

Light energy releasing expansive. 

 

Lion Goodman 19:59

So we’ve just proved the that our beliefs create our experience. And you can try on beliefs and see how they feel. And you can try on the beliefs that you have and try on the beliefs that other people have. It actually makes you more empathetic to other people who are holding those beliefs. But once you feel it, you can go, Oh, now I recognize it. So the belief, there’s must be something wrong with me is very ancient. Because when you’re an infant, you’re looking around at other people who can feed themselves, but you can’t, they can walk and talk, but you can’t. And infants come to this conclusion, not verbally, because it’s pre verbal, but they come to an experiential conclusion. Well, there must be something wrong with me because I can’t do that. And so that’s one of the earliest beliefs we take on as individual selves, is comparing ourselves to others, and thinking that it’s our problem. Now, if you have a great parent, they pick you up and go, it’s okay, honey, you’re a baby, you’re going to be growing and learning and being able to do all these things, you’re fine, just relax, you’re okay, this is the process. But most of us didn’t get that, we had to figure it out on our own. And beliefs should have expiration dates, like me that the meat counter, this belief will expire in five years, or when you can talk, whichever comes sooner, you know. But they don’t they just get pushed down by other beliefs into the subconscious mind. And so we have these, like, if each one’s a snowflake, we have these snowdrifts of beliefs that we’ve taken on or concluded or have been programmed into us. And those get piled on top of each other. And so there’s a lot of excavating to do.

 

Mark Divine  21:32  

Yeah. That’s interesting. And what about the Eastern concept of like of samskaras that you bring into this life? Do you work with that at all? Like, I’m not talking about past life stuff, particularly, but like, broad arc energy, right? So you bring into you know, stuff that’s epigenetic or may not be a belief that you’ve picked up but is literally part and parcel of the arc of your life?

 

Lion Goodman  21:57  

Well, speaking of epigenetics, we know that trauma, for example, can be passed down through four generations, even if those next generations are traumatized. So that’s a part of it. That’s the biological part. We deal with a lot of memories and experiences that don’t seem to come from this lifetime. We don’t have an opinion about it, or a philosophy about it or belief about it, we just say it’s stuff that comes up, let’s work with that stuff that just came up.

 

Mark Divine  22:21  

Same thing with like addiction patterns, a lot of addiction can be multigenerational a physiological issue that there’s no belief around.

 

Lion Goodman  22:30  

There’s usually trauma at the core. And that trauma may be the child’s it may be the parents that passed down into the child, it may be a whole, multi generations that have experienced that. And addiction is really just a solution to another problem.

 

Mark Divine 22:45

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 22:45

Like, if I do this, I won’t feel as bad.

 

Mark Divine  22:48  

Okay, so from a process perspective, you know, you’re working with a client, and they use some of these tools to kind of uncover a trauma related belief that’s triggering some behaviors that are unsavory. What do we do now? I mean, shining, you mentioned shining the light of awareness. And I’ve heard that, you know, that’s the first step. And sometimes, you know, that’s enough for people, but most of the time, it’s not. So what do we do? How do we clear these beliefs?

 

Lion Goodman  23:12  

I’ll give you a great example. I was working with a multimillionaire and he was a multimillionaire, because he made millions and lost millions and made millions and lost millions over and over again. 

 

Mark Divine 23:21

That’s a great one.

 

Lion Goodman 23:22

He couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t able to just maintain his wealth. And so he came to me and he said, This is my problem. And I said, okay, let’s do the work. And I began taking him back into his past, which is one of the things I do looking for the source material. And we got down to an experience that he suddenly remembered he, this has not been in his conscious mind at all. But he suddenly remembered being three years old, walking on the streets in New York with his mother hand in hand, and he saw a shiny penny on the ground. And he got very excited and he reached down to grab the penny and his mother jerked him back and said, don’t touch that it’s dirty. And he suddenly realized in that moment, that the reason he couldn’t hold on to his millions was because it was dirty, and he shouldn’t touch it. That’s an example of the kinds of things that we can find source material. Now, once we find that sometimes the light of awareness just blows it apart completely. He didn’t have to lose money after that. 

But then we have processes, let’s say the belief is, there’s something wrong with me. We have specific processes, we use guided imagery, voice dialogue, many different technologies to help the person go back and change that old belief out for a new belief. First, you have to clear the belief from all the systems of the psyche, from those that multidimensional self that we are, and then you have open space and you can then create a new belief in its place. If you wanted to garden you wouldn’t take seeds and throw them on rocky weedy ground wouldn’t grow much. But if you were if you were a serious gardener, you’d first clear the rocks and weeds, you know, amend the soil, make a good place for those seeds and then you plant them in the right way, at the right time, and water, and nurture them, and then they’d be able to grow and blossom and fruit. So that was the discovery I made is that we have to clear the old stuff first. And then we can create a new belief. And then when it’s planted, it just naturally blossoms, it’s not fighting against all the other old beliefs that were there before. It’s not fighting against the weeds that were planted earlier than that. So that’s the process, it’s a process of clearing, the process can take 20 minutes to an hour, we clear the belief that we’ve discovered through finding the core belief, and we replace it with with a positive belief, and the person from that point is living in that belief instead of the old one.

 

Mark Divine  25:38  

And then they’ve got a water it by nurturing it and doing things that support the new belief as opposed to like, backtracking or, you know, their deep need to overcome the pattern right away, you can change the belief and the pattern may still be there. It’s like a flywheel. It’s gonna, you know, slow, it takes a while to slowly spin down.

 

Lion Goodman  25:55  

Here’s my philosophy, you actually can clear it completely and quickly, and then it’s not there anymore, the pattern disappears along with a belief when you’ve completely because that pattern was made of the belief.

 

Mark Divine  26:08  

If you have a belief, that’s cognized. How do you clear from your body?

 

Lion Goodman  26:12  

So one of the techniques we use is called the Give Back Ceremony. So a lot of our beliefs were given to us by our parents, because of their circumstances and their beliefs and their philosophy of life and their culture. And so we have a process in which we feel the belief, let’s say, there’s not enough money. That’s the core belief, right? There’s not enough money. And so we go into the subconscious mind, the what the imaginal realm, the place where we dream, and we imagined, because to the brain, the imagination is pretty much like experience, the brain doesn’t have a big distinction between what we imagined and what we experienced. That’s why imaginal work works so well. 

So we go in, and we actually feel that lack in our bodies, there’s the physicality of it, we then use a process to visualize what it looks like that belief, there’s not enough money, and then we bring in the emotion, what does it feel like to not have enough money? How has it impacted you throughout your life? What are decisions have you made, so we’re bringing in all the different aspects of self. And then we take it off, we tell people to just take it off, and let it fall to the ground as a physicalized imaginal thing. And then we bring mother and father into the space. And we pick that crap up, we walk over to them and say, Mom, Dad, you gave me this belief. It’s not mine, it was never mine, I don’t want it or need it anymore. And I’m giving it back to you. And then we have a ceremony in which we give it back to them, and send them off with it. Now what that does is it takes it out of all of those systems inside of us, and hands it back to who they belong to. And now you’ve created space. When you clear something that’s old, you’ve got created space. Now you get to decide what seed do I want to plant. Life is abundant. I look around and I see millions of leaves on trees, the trees don’t talk to each other, say, hey, it’s a bad economy, let’s make less apples. So now we can see the evidence that was there all the time. But that belief was in the way. So now we have a different experience of life. And we can feel it, we feel it, we see it, we imagine it, we can make decisions based on it. So it is a complete shift. It’s a true transformation, Caterpillar to butterfly.

 

Mark Divine  28:36  

I think it’d be helpful for listeners to kind of differentiate between what you’re talking about, and hypnotherapy and like Neuro Linguistic Programming, because, you know, these different modalities really all kind of overlap. And some of them, you know, are almost very quite similar, just called something different. So what’s your perspective on hypnotherapy? And like NLP versus or compared to what you’re talking about? Or we’re talking about?

 

Lion Goodman  29:02  

Yeah, first of all, I’ve never studied NLP or hypnotherapy. 

 

Mark Divine 29:06

Ok.

 

Lion Goodman 29:06

But I’ve trained over 600 people around the world in 45 countries, and many of them have been NLP masters, NLP trainers and hypnotherapists, you know. And so they come and take my training, because it’s an integrated training. 

 

Mark Divine 29:20

Got it.

 

Lion Goodman 29:20

And they all say, wow, there’s a lot of similarities. But I learned things I didn’t know it integrated everything I knew before. And now I’ve got a complete system. So we encourage people to come learn the training, look, learn the techniques, and then take them into their own lives and integrate them with the other stuff that works that they know. It just happens to make everything work better, because it’s got an underpinning of scientific and philosophical foundation that everything else builds on. Like it took me 45 years to figure this stuff out. And so, so I’ve basically put everything I know into the training, an understanding of how mind works, not the mind and our mind.

 

Mark Divine 30:00

Yeah, yeah.

 

Lion Goodman 30:02

How our experience works to, to become our beliefs and how to clear them.

 

Mark Divine  30:05  

Well we certainly share that notion that integrated integration, whether you’re talking about clearing up your past or developing a better future is really important in our whole culture has been one of disintegration in the whole scientific materialistic kind of parsing everything out to a gnat’s ass and breaking it down into smaller, smaller, you know, domains of knowledge, and then making a whole thing out of that. And then people have built entire systems out of these little tiny niches that it’s really confusing for people and it leds, it leads to this really disconnected, almost fractured sense of existence.

And then, of course, just living in our fast paced culture just exacerbates that. So reintegration or integration, which includes healing the past and identifying who you want to be in the future and working in those modalities, right, is really powerful, and I applaud your work. It’s fantastic. You work with a lot of people, a lot of really successful people and who want to be better. You know, and that’s not common, as you know, like, you know, people who are successful, who want to be even more whole, that’s the Holy Grail, right, so it’s awesome. 

Yet we have this, like enormous challenges going on in our culture, right. COVID, you know the great resignation VUCA world accelerating technology, concerns about war and nuclear weapons and environmental degradation. And when all you know, list goes on.

 

Lion Goodman 31:35

The world’s a mess.

 

Mark Divine 31:36

It seems like it’s a mess. Is it really a mess, or, or is this just like, kind of part of the human condition that we always think we’re running the edge of everything going to hell in a handbasket, including our own lives. And we’ve got to do something to fix it. Because it seems to me that’s part of our story, like that’s baked into our story. And it always has been baked into our story. Because you could also make the claim that everything is in perfect balance. And you know, you we are the creators of our own universe. So we’re there’s not one world out there. There’s a consensus world, but there’s a billion worlds created by 8 billion different minds and consciousness. So my world is pretty damn good. I don’t see things going to hell in a handbasket. Right? So I’m just curious what your take is on this is that is that baked into the human psyche to think that everything’s fucked up? And we got to fix it? Or is everything really fucked up? And we got to fix it?

 

Lion Goodman  32:27  

Well, if we look back at our evolution, that’s a really good question. If we look back at our evolution, you know, back in the days of 16,000 years ago, when humans were walking around and changing continents, you know, they were, they were dealing with an ice age, and they were dealing with mastodons and they were, they’re dealing with the saber toothed tigers and the saber toothed tigers were real. And if you didn’t look out, you were gonna get eaten. And going back further to monkeys and apes. If you got pushed out of the troop, you were dead meat. So the idea of belonging and figuring out how do I be in the social system was crucial. How do I be in this environment and make it safe? So these ideas of looking around and seeing the problems and then solving them was crucial to our development as humans. 

 

Mark Divine 13:13

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 13:14

So that’s baked in is our ability to see where the problems are, and then to solve them.

 

Mark Divine  33:19  

That’s kind of supporting what I’m saying. So we’re always looking for problems. 

 

Lion Goodman 33:23

Yep.

 

Mark Divine 33:24

Instead of looking to see that everything’s okay.

 

Lion Goodman  33:26  

Well, my favorite saying that I’ve heard is things are getting better and better, and worse and worse, in more and more places faster and faster.

 

Mark Divine  33:36  

Or at least we perceive it. Because ultimately, time is, is a construct as well, that’s just part of the mental makeup. Right?

 

Lion Goodman  33:43  

Well, that’s good to say if you can see it that way. Most people can’t.

 

Mark Divine 33:47

That’s right.

 

Lion Goodman 33:47

Most people are living in the time stream. And they don’t have that perspective. Once you get that perspective, it’s much easier to say those kinds of things. For most people, they’re struggling with their daily life, they’re in survival, they’re trying to do the best they can. They’re trying to be successful. And they do have real problems because the culture does not support them in being who they are, giving their gifts to the world. The culture is a you know, an alligator chomping at your heels, and with big sharp teeth. 

 

Mark Divine 34:15

It’s fast.

 

Lion Goodman 34:16

And you’re trying to out run it. Yeah, exactly. So so there are cultural issues, there are social issues, there are environmental issues, these things are real. It’s just that we’ve got more and more and more information about them. 

 

Mark Divine 34:29

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 34:29

That’s coming in faster and faster. And now we get to the place where we’re overwhelmed. Because it used to be that change happened seasonally, you know, okay, it’s spring, let’s plant.

 

Mark Divine  34:39  

Just that awareness of this conversation can point to, you know, a big issue that a lot of people are having, and that’s overwhelm, which is a story, a belief that can be deconstructed.

 

Lion Goodman 34:50

It’s a real experience. 

 

Mark Divine 34:52

Well, it’s experience based upon a belief, the belief is that you have to be plugged into that information. That’s a story. You know, I haven’t had TV in my house in 25 years, I don’t watch network news. I don’t plug into the news every day, I don’t experience that speed because I recognize that story is false. That’s not my story. And it’s not my need. It’s the need of the consumers and the government to just pump all that information. And they say, you know, people couldn’t imagine not having a TV and having it on all the time. That’s a story.

 

Lion Goodman  35:21  

Okay, I like what you’re saying. And overwhelm is an actual physiological experience, there’s too much information coming in right now, this happens in trauma to. Trauma is overwhelming, the nervous system, which is meant to handle one thing at a time, suddenly, I’m being beaten within an inch of my life. And it’s overwhelming my ability to handle it. So overwhelm is an actual feeling. But I want to acknowledge that overwhelm is real for people’s experience. And they can make different choices.

 

Mark Divine  35:51  

Well any belief is going to lead to some sort of physiological experience. 

 

Lion Goodman 35:55

Yes.

 

Mark Divine 35:55

Right. Because it’s going to affect your, your body, it’s going to trigger your sympathetic nervous system, it’s going to do you know, it’s going to cause all sorts of hormonal changes or imbalances. So I agree with you, I’m just kind of pointing out that it’s a choice, when you can begin to dissemble a belief, you start to see the choice that you have now as an autonomous adult. You know, what information you choose to take in, for instance, with this overwhelm.

 

Lion Goodman  36:21  

Here’s the problem with that you like a lot of people that I work with have a very strong and powerful will. And you can make choices from that place of will. Most people don’t have that strong will, because their will has been stripped from them from a very early age.

 

Mark Divine 36:37

Right.

 

Lion Goodman 36:38

And so they’re operating mostly on automatic. And so when you say to somebody who’s operating on automatic, hey, you could just make a different choice. It’s not helpful, because they can’t.

 

Mark Divine  36:48  

This is why probably cognitive behavioral therapy doesn’t work for a lot of people.

 

Lion Goodman  36:52  

Exactly. So, so both our goals is to expand awareness, expand awareness of who we are, what we’re made of what the machinery is, and then you can start having choice, then you can start having different experiences, because you don’t have to operate on old patterns that have been there, your whole life.

 

Mark Divine  37:10  

Lion, this is great conversation. I gotta wrap it up. So I gotta move on here. And I know you do too. But you have a website and social media, and I know your book is um, Clean Your Beliefs. Where can people reach out and find more about you?

 

Lion Goodman  37:22  

I have a few websites clearbeliefs.com is my training website. If people are interested in learning my methodology. I have a personal website, LionGoodman.com where people can get coaching, and then social media. Just look up Lion Goodman, and you’ll get way too much information. 

 

Mark Divine  37:39  

And it’s L i o n, Lion Goodman,

 

Lion Goodman 37:40

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 37:41

Awesome, Lion. This has been a great conversation. I’d love to follow up and chat with you more and you’re doing great work. I really appreciate it. And we’ll keep on changing some beliefs and maybe co creating better consensus reality.

 

Lion Goodman  37:55  

It’s a great quest. And I’m happy to be on it with you. 

 

Mark Divine 38:00

Absolutely. 

 

Lion Goodman 38:00

Thanks for having me on.

 

Mark Divine  38:01  

Yeah, Hooyah! Thank you very much.

 

Transcribed by Catherine and https://otter.ai