Episode 295: How To Become an Expert In YOU with Brandon Hawk

Hal Elrod: Here we go. Goal achievers, hey. This is Hal Elrod and it is my great pleasure to connect with you today and to introduce you to my friend, I would say a new friend but we’ve been friends, we’ve known each other for about a year, Brandon Hawk. In fact, here’s how I met Brandon. Another friend of mine, JP Sears, a friend of ours I should say, JP Sears, you may know the YouTube famous conscious comedian who’s traveling the world right now, inspiring people through comedy and elevating consciousness through comedy. So, JP says, “Hal, hey,” he just moved to Austin, JP did a while back and he said, “Hal, I just moved to Austin and I’m going over to a friend’s house, Brandon and his wife, Ginny Hawk, and their lovely children, and we’re going to have some food and love for you to join us. And so, my wife, Ursula and I, went over to Brandon and Ginny’s beautiful home overlooking Lake Austin and we stood in the kitchen. Well, there’s little small talk. We’re getting to know each other a little bit and there was a handful of couples there. And Brandon says, “Hey, everybody, I’d love to invite you all in the kitchen together around.”

And so, we all stand in a circle around his center island. It’s been about a year or actually probably more than that so I don’t remember word for word what was said, of course, but generally, Brandon, I’ll kind of paraphrase, basically, he talked about how grateful he was for all of us to be together and what an honor it was for him and what a beautiful experience it was for him and his wife to have us in their home. And the gratitude and the acknowledgment of each of us for being there and the way Brandon just shared, I mean, you’ve never heard anybody speak from such authentic love and appreciation for life and for people and really for the moment, really for the moment that we were all sharing at that time. And I just remember thinking, I remember what I was feeling. I was feeling like, wow, I love this guy. Yeah, I just felt a deep love for Brandon. And, yeah, you receive that, brother?

Brandon Hawk: I received it. I’m getting it right in my heart here, getting a big old heart on just hearing that.

Hal Elrod: Awesome.

Brandon Hawk: Heart’s swelling up.

Hal Elrod: Okay. A heart on, H-E-A-R-T. Got it.

Brandon Hawk: Yeah.

Hal Elrod: For a second I went, “Wait a minute. Did I hear it right?” And I remember thinking that I want to be like Brandon. I thought I have people over my house all the time. I never really, I don’t ever stop them to just to acknowledge the moment that we are all sharing together. And so, Brandon, you know what, because in true Brandon fashion there, I was about to do this on my own but I thought, “No, I’m going to invite Brandon,” and he was not expecting this. I just literally thought of this in the last two seconds. Brandon, would you say some form of Brandon Hawk-esque acknowledgment moment that you, I, and everyone listening is sharing right now?

Brandon Hawk: Yeah, I’m in it. I love that. That’s what you asked and hello, everyone. Hal, thank you like thank you. That’s what comes up inside of me right now is just a real thank you to you for what you’ve created on the planet. The miracle that is you and awake, that I feel like I’m living in now as an author because of you and I really want you to hear that I have a deep gratitude in this moment for the wake that you’ve created for so many. And I hope you understand that and everyone understands how easy it is to follow behind a boat that’s already going and just to get into that groundswell and that wake that is you. It’s an honor to be on this podcast. It’s an honor to be connecting to you. It is an honor that, yeah, you’ve opened up your world to me and it’s not something I take lightly. And, yeah, I feel a deep gratitude for this moment. I feel a deep gratitude for you and I hope you feel it, the success that you have had and the transformation that you have created for so many.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I do. I receive that very much. Now, by the way, are you at your house just like a mile from me right now?

Brandon Hawk: You know, I’m not. I am in Abilene, Texas today.

Hal Elrod: Got it. I was going to say, why aren’t – we should’ve done this in person but either way. So, let’s get into I want to I want to introduce the audience to you. I want to hear about you. So, I heard one of your CEO clients hail you as some sort of hybrid of Tony Robbins and Martin Luther King Jr. And I thought, “Wow, that’s quite…” I don’t think anybody would not want to be associated with those two individuals and be a combination of the two. You’re an expert in human potential. That’s how I know you, the work that you’ve done with JP and Brandon is not only a friend of JPs. He’s coached JP but you’re a world-class expert in human potential. So, I would love for you to share a little bit about yourself and your history on the US Olympic team and how you got to doing the work you’re doing today and writing the book that you wrote.

Brandon Hawk: Awesome. Yeah. Speaking of JP, what an amazing person and his meteoric rise has just been phenomenal to be a part of, to watch, and to be connected to. So, for all those out there that don’t know JP, where have you been? And you’re needing some, which we all are, humor in our lives. Check out JP Sears.

Hal Elrod: Go to YouTube and just type in JP Sears and you’ll go down a rabbit hole of joy and laughter

Brandon Hawk: Yes, yes, you will for sure. And, yeah, where it started for me, son of a bull rider. My dad was a professional bull rider, grew up in West Texas and my dad didn’t want us to go down that path but he was a sports fanatic and put us in many sports. And at an early age, I was very successful in tennis. I was one of the top players in the nation at a very early age and made the US national team at 14, traveled all over the world at the age of 14 with the US national team, and at the age of 17, won a round in the main draw the US Open and my dream was to play in Wimbledon. Played in Wimbledon. I was speaking in Boston. I was a freshman All-American at the University of Texas. Just had a lot of great moments with tennis and the biggest thing that tennis gave me was the ability to travel all over the world and see life and see how the world lives and to broaden my perspective. And then the other thing that that tennis gave me was success at an early age and an understanding that external success didn’t complete me. And that, actually, accomplishing my goals was awesome but it was not the end result. It wasn’t the savior of my life, per se. And I had a goal to play in Wimbledon since I was like 10 years old. I did it at the age of 20 and you would have thought that that moment would have been you would have thought it would have been this great moment. But I remember going back to my flat and experiencing just an immense amount of pain, especially pain on an emotional level. And what I was able to look back on is all the years of bypassing myself to create a result.

Hal Elrod: What do you mean by that?

Brandon Hawk: You know, bypassing my heart, overgiving, overperforming, overdoing, doing for the approval of my father, playing and achieving, being a hyper achiever. I work with high-level CEOs who escaped through achievement. And being a hyper achiever is really an escape for emotional pain and there is nothing wrong with achieving and success and accomplishing goals. It is amazing and awesome and I don’t want to throw shade on that in any way. There’s just a new game in town, Hal, and that game is doing it in a connected fashion, not overgiving and overproducing and bypassing our heart to produce a result but bringing ourselves and our heart along with that success. And for me, I bypassed a lot of myself at an emotional level to produce results and I was a good producer, a great achiever, but I would do that at the cost of how I felt. And it produced a person that when he accomplished his biggest goal had to pay the piper emotionally. I had to feel all those places that I had been bypassing. And so, it was a beautiful moment for me. Maybe one of the hardest moments of my life was to be on that floor crying my eyes out.

Hal Elrod: And that was at what age?

Brandon Hawk: It was at the age of 20.

Hal Elrod: Got it.

Brandon Hawk: So, I get to experience that very early that external success is amazing, but it doesn’t have to come at the cost of myself. And that I don’t have to abandon my heart to produce these results. And, yeah, now I’ve been on a journey of I retired from tennis, I went back home. Instead of capitalizing on my tennis career, I went back home with my family and started asking all the questions. And like why can we achieve together but we can’t be together? Why can we do a lot together and produce and perform but we can’t be sad with each other? And why is sadness not a part of our life? Why do we escape through impenetrable optimism? Yeah. Why is it easy to do religion together, but we can’t do real-life together, we can’t hurt together, we can’t be with each other emotionally? And we have to even agree to get along like we can’t just celebrate the diversity that is us. And so, I started to go there and ask all the questions and from that place, I had started a college ministry. And that college ministry turned out from seven guys to 500 college students coming to hear me speak every week.

And so, I did that for a few years and if you can draw people, surely you need to become a senior pastor so I became a, I hope you can hear the sarcasm in that, I became a senior pastor of a church in West Texas at a very early age, at the age of 27 and grew it to a very large place, also growing my dad and our family business as well. And so, I got to experience in that moment that I was not a great pastor but I really enjoyed leading leaders. In that process, I created a school of transformation that I turned into – I left being a pastor and I turned my school of transformation into a for-profit coaching company. Yeah, for the last 10 years, I’ve been working with high-level CEOs, professional athletes, entertainers on the business of themselves, and helping guide them back home into their heart so that they can produce connected success.

Hal Elrod: Alright. Yeah. I want to explore that and we can even do it in the context of your book. So, the new book, it’s called YOU. I love that. That’s like the best title ever. But the subtitle though I think gives us more of a glimpse into what we’re going to talk about today and what we’ve already been talking about which is it’s A Guide to Deeper Connection, a Lifestyle of Ease, and Massive Results. So, we can go anywhere that you want to go but I’d almost say breaking down that all three of those, a guide to deeper connection. What is deeper connection look like with ourselves, with the people that we love, with those that we lead? What does a lifestyle of ease look like to you? How do you define that? How do we create that? And then again, like the massive results is at the end because it’s like maybe you’ll speak on this but it’s like the other two I feel to me it feels much more important. Having a connection with ourselves and others, having a life with ease and then from that place of being connected, coming from ease, we create massive results. So, yeah, take it over.

Brandon Hawk: Yeah, we can have all of that. I know that I grew up, you could only have massive results if it was going to be hard and heavy and disconnected from yourself. That’s how I grew up like you got to suck it up and you got to grind harder than everyone else and it’s got to be hard and it’s got to be heavy. And that’s the only way to results. But then you go into the other side, if you’re going to live a lifestyle of connection and ease, well, then you have to be void of results and success. And I wanted all of that and I still do and that’s been the journey I’ve been on is let’s bring these two worlds together. Let’s bring the soft and the hard together. When I mean soft, self-love, heart connection, and let’s bring those together with US Open, Wimbledon, quantum results, selling companies, you know, those big-time achievements. And what I found out we can’t have both but it does start with deeper connection. And where I like to go is just deeper connection with myself because I can’t give to another what I don’t have. And I’ve got three beautiful children, when dad’s not connected, the environment that I create is a disconnected environment but when dad is deeply connected with, Brandon is deeply connected to himself, man, the environment that I create for my family, the environment that I create for my employees, the environment that I create in my world is just so alive. So, intimate, right? You could you experience that at my home. There’s a level of intimacy that I bring when I’m in that place but it has to start with me.

And there’s three questions that I ask myself every morning. I ask myself what do I want to feel today? What do I really want? What do I really want? And I get selfish, right, but it’s not selfish. It’s being self-full, being full of myself as a good thing. What do I want to feel? What do I really want out of the day? And then what am I willing to do about it? What’s the inspired action that I need to take so that I can have what I want and I can feel the way that I want to feel? Because when I’m that intentional about how I want to feel, and what I want and the inspired action that I need to take, well, I’m creating a life that really rewards me. And when I create a life that really rewards me and a life that fills me up, what do I do? I overflow onto my world. And when I’m feeling tapped into, when I’m feeling supported, when I’m feeling connected, I mean, it is just a natural overflow of my life is to outpour onto everyone else around me. But when I’m bypassing me, man, my giving becomes taking. I talk a lot about this in my book, Hal, that most giving if giving happens from a depleted place, it’s really taking in disguise. And I speak to a group of high achievers or group of achievers and to a society that over-gives, that gives beyond their capacity, their true capacity, and when they do that, they turn the people that they’re giving to into thieves. They end up resenting them. They end up blaming them. They end up, yeah, and it creates demonization, and then ultimately disconnection and separation and divorce. And I am big on giving within capacity protects connection with our self and it protects connection with others around us.

Hal Elrod: How do you connect deeper with yourself? And when I say you, I would say how do you, personally, and then what would you encourage others to do in terms of being able to connect deeper with yourself? What does that look like? What’s the practice? Is that through meditation? Is it through prayer? Is it through both? Is it through something else? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Brandon Hawk: Yeah. I have a process called the five As that I take my clients through that they now take their businesses through and their world through and it is a process of connecting with yourself in the morning and how to flow your emotional energy and how to really connect into yourself at an emotional level. And the first one is awareness, just getting aware of what’s happening inside of your body so I spend five minutes, five to seven minutes just getting aware of what’s going on in my body aka just meditative state, no thought, just kind of just feeling what’s going on connecting to the aliveness and energy that is me.

Hal Elrod: Okay. Awesome. So, awareness, getting awareness, going on in your body. And when you say in your body, you mean physically and emotionally, mentally and all the things automatically?

Brandon Hawk: All of it like let’s just take maybe I’ll wake up one morning and I’m feeling some real density in my chest, right? Like, I’m just feeling like, oh, some heaviness in my chest. So, we’re taught to just act like that’s not there, but we know that what dense emotional energy dis-ease turns into disease. Unless that is accepted and flowed, it turns into hardened energy that we then have to deal with later on in our life or even in our younger years. I had a tumor in my colon that had to be removed. That’s where I held all of my anxiety and it was the size of an orange. It had to be removed and it’s just dense, hard energy, bypassed emotional energy in my stomach. Yeah. I didn’t even know how to connect to. So, I started then my morning and I started connecting and getting aware of what’s happening inside of me. Number two is acceptance. I just start to accept it. I don’t judge it because we have a tendency to judge especially dense energy as right or wrong but I don’t judge it and I just come into a place of fully accepting it. I believe that what you accept, you can heal and transform what you deny. You can’t. And I come into this place of deep acceptance of what is and what is happening inside of me without any judgment. And I am that part with just saying, “I’m here. I’m here. I’m here for you.” Whatever is showing up, whatever it is, let’s just talk about that dense energy in our chest or in our stomach, got a knot in your stomach. And I’m just like, I’m here. I’m here.

Hal Elrod: Okay.

Brandon Hawk: Number three is amplify. Instead of running from it, instead of escaping into my phone or escaping into manic action or hyper-productivity to avoid it, I connect to it because I know that dense emotional energy I call lead, I love to turn lead into gold. You can use that lead, that dense emotional energy and you can transmute that energy into greater clarity, inspired action. There’s so much fuel in the density. And so, I take that density and I amplify the energy. Okay. I amplify it. I amplify and I bring it up and out and I go up, up by putting my full focus on it, full amplification. I come up, up, up, up, up, up, up, all the way, up, up, up, up, up, up and out, all dense emotional energy wants one thing. It wants resolution. It wants resolution. And so, I resolve that energy by acknowledging it, by getting aware and accepting it and then amplifying it. What happens when you bring that up, it’s called emotional fitness, right? You start to sweat. You actually start to sweat because you are shifting your state. So, my state has been shifted by coming up and out with the energy by amplifying it.

And then from that place, I stepped into affirmation. I start to affirm myself. I’m like, “Man, whoa, look at you. Look at you be hot.” I start talking third person, right? “Look at you. You came through for yourself. You did not bypass you.” I mean, you feel the new state change. “You’re so strong, you’re so powerful,” and now you’re actually feeling the affirmation rather than just saying the affirmation without the feeling. That’s fine. That can do some things. But, man, where you want to see the true power is when you say your affirmations from a state of feeling like you truly feel it.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No, I couldn’t agree more. I write about that in the Miracle Morning that if you just repeat an affirmation, kind of mindlessly without feeling behind it, I like looking at kind of an example or a parallel where if somebody says, “Brandon, you’re stupid,” where I go, “Okay.” I have some thoughts about, “Well, that person is not very nice or they’re kind of a jerk.” But if somebody got in your face and screamed with intensity, those same words, right, you can put any words in that. The experience you would have emotionally, the impact it would make on your psyche both in that moment and long term are radically different. And so, to me, that’s a parallel in the same way, that the way we utilize the words that we say to ourselves with the intensity, the emotion behind it determines the impact that has on our immediate psyche and our immediate well-being as well as the long term. So, anyway, I’m just echoing what you’re saying.

Brandon Hawk: And this is the hardest part with like understanding what’s happening to you on an emotional level. You can’t selectively open emotionally. So, if you’re going to open to, like, man, I’m awesome, and this is awesome and joy and celebration, you have to also be willing to open yourself to the density, the wrongness, the shame, the guilt. And so, that’s a part that I don’t think is talked about enough is that if you’re going to live in a truly emotionally open and connected state, you can’t selectively open and most of our society is built around emotional pain, denial. And if you have a belief that emotional pain is wrong, then you’re going to numb yourself out and you won’t open yourself to celebration and joy either. And so, you have to be willing to experience both, the density and the gold. So, amplifying the energy, number three, brings you up and out into a place of true affirmation where you like feel it like I came through for me. I showed up for parts of me that that have been stuck. I didn’t abandon me when I needed me most. Man, I am badass, right? I am powerful. And you’re in this now. You’ve totally shifted your state from feeling heavy, dense energy in the morning that you are about to override with caffeine and manic action and now you have truly shifted your state and now you’re in an affirm connected state to your highest self and from that, number five, is inspired action.

Now we’re listening. Now we’re listening. Okay, what is the inspired action today? What is the inspired action? “Oh, okay, make that call. Oh, okay, make that sales call.” Boom. “Okay. Reach out to that person. Oh, okay.” Boom. Now, we’re in an inspired state rather than a manic state and most people, the action movement, most people take action out of mania, out of unprocessed fear they’re bypassing themselves. So, I’ll just take action and maybe my action will remedy this feeling and it never does. You end up like Brandon thinking that Wimbledon was going to fix you and it didn’t. And I’m a big proponent of not taking manic action but taking inspired action. How you take inspired action is through connecting with yourself through connecting with your heart. And so, those are the five As.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I missed the – oh, there it is. I’m sorry. I’m formatting Word on my computer. Awareness, acceptance, amplify.

Brandon Hawk: Affirm and then inspired action which is IA but we can call it.

Hal Elrod: Got it. Will you just put the Is in print or the inspired is in parentheses and then it’s (inspired) action. That makes sense. I love that. So, that’s your process that you do in the day. So, let me get this back to you and tell me if I got any of this. If I’m off or anything to clarify here. So, with awareness, I got that you spend some time I think you said five to seven minutes getting aware of what’s going on inside you energetically. So, mentally, physically, emotionally, right? What’s inside? How are you feeling, listening to your body, listening to your emotions? The second acceptance is to accept what’s happening inside of you, without any judgment, or resistance. And then amplify, instead of avoiding this, I like this one, this is where I think I got I got the most out of on the amplification, this third one is instead of avoiding your inner feelings such as by being busy or grabbing your phone or turning on the TV or just tuning out, you put your full focus into those feelings and really feel them, amplify them versus avoid them and push them down and then like you said, they manifest later as disease or…

Brandon Hawk: And let me just say emotions are what energies in motion. So, we really personalize them like, “Oh,” we put language to it like I’m scared or I feel afraid. What are you really saying? That is just dense emotional energy that is in motion in your body, energies that are in motion in your body. And so, I like to even stay away from personalizing those energies.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. Have you read – I’m reading right now and it’s a book I started a long time ago and for whatever reason I put it down and now that I’ve started to pick it back up, I go, “This is the best book I’ve ever read. How in the hell did I put this down?” The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer? Have you read that one?

Brandon Hawk: I’m a massive Michael Singer fan.

Hal Elrod: You are? Okay. So, your work really reflects a lot of the wisdom.

Hal Elrod: And his book, the surrender in his book, The Surrender Experiment, really his life story of how this all process looks has played out on an external level is a beautiful book as well.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I’ve got that on my – it’s in my wish list in my cart. So, let’s go into the next. So, again, the book, Brandon’s book, YOU: A Guide to Deeper Connection, which we just covered the way you handle that first piece to connect with yourself every day is through the five As awareness, acceptance, amplification, affirmation and inspired action. The second piece of the book is a lifestyle of ease. How do you define that and how do you create it?

Brandon Hawk: I like to call it the law of least resistance, right? There’s a law that governs the universe, the least produces the most, smallest seed produces the biggest plant, and a lot of our, the things that we do are just blah but they’re not the real thing that’s producing the result. Actually, oftentimes, it’s the thing that’s hindering the result and while we overdo and overproduce and overwork is because we’re not good with ourselves. And we’re not good with being with ourselves in the stillness, when we have nothing to do. I call it white space, but you can’t create a masterpiece if you don’t have white space. And it is so important for me to have white space so that I can create masterpieces rather than just living my life in busyness. And so, the law of least effort is this, yeah, it’s a spiritual law that truly governs our universe that this least or ease, this thing of non-attached doing, potent doing produces the most. And it’s really something that has been a shift for me that life does not have to be hard, life does not have to be heavy, and that the promise of all great masters, Jesus, even Buddha I mean they had an idea and an understanding of, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy-laden for I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me for it is easy and it is light.”

So, the life that we’re supposed to live is not hard and heavy but easy and light and if it is hard and heavy, you’re carrying a yoke that you don’t need to be carrying. And I’m really starting to lean into that that life can happen that way and the small seed, the small potent seed can produce a massive result. And with my coaching company, I’ve been able to make millions of dollars with my coach. I’m one of the highest-paid coaches in the industry and I work four to six hours a week. When I say work, you get what I’m like…

Hal Elrod: Sure.

Brandon Hawk: But I’m saying actual work hours, four to six hours a week. And so, I have an experience of working 80 hours a week hustling and grinding and making it hard and heavy and getting paid a certain amount of money, getting paid 60,000 to 80,000 and now, I have an experience of working four to six hours a week and getting paid $600,000 to $1 million a year personally. And so, I have an experience that the least can produce the most. And this is the hard rule of… Go ahead.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. For anybody listening, I’m sure that caught their attention like, “Okay. Well, I want to work four to six hours a week and produce $600,000 to $1 million a year in income. Can you give a little more clarity like give us a peek behind the curtain? What does that look like?

Brandon Hawk: It’s a perspective shift. It’s a perspective shift in what comes the easiest has to demand the most value. But that’s not a reality that most people live in. And for people that really understand like if you hear me anything today, like get this right here, what you do the easiest like what you do in your sleep, what you would give away for free, charge the most. If you’re getting…

Hal Elrod: Because I do this… Let me just say this. I just have to say this because I have my own experience. My favorite thing in the world to do is speaking, right, to get on stage and to inspire an audience in person and connect real-time. That’s what I’m paid the most to do and it is the easiest thing for me to do. So, wow, that struck me when you said that so keep going.

Brandon Hawk: And that’s why you live the life you live, okay, because you’ve tapped into that and that’s why you do have financial surplus in your life. And money’s just energy. That’s why you have energetic surplus is because you’ve tapped into that. And I want to say this and this is not to demean anybody. This is not to demean a profession. This has nothing to do with demeaning someone working hard. I’m not talking – I love to get my hands in the clay, right? I’m not talking against that. What I’m talking about is a lifestyle flow, a lifestyle that feels good, a lifestyle that is connected, a lifestyle that is potent. If hard work produces the most money, the guy that does my pool and the guy that does my yard would make a lot more money than me because I can guarantee you, they work hours wise way more than I do on actual hours. But it is about perspective. It is about, okay, what I would do for free, now I need to put the highest price tag on it rather than selling what is hard to me. And where does that come from? And that’s what I get to in my book is why do we charge the most for the hardest thing? And why do most people spend their time doing stuff that they don’t really like to do but they charge for it because they feel deserve it? They feel they feel deserve it and worthy of getting paid for the hard stuff.

Hal Elrod: Well, you know, what came to me is artists, right? You know, I think like Picasso, I don’t think that painting was hard for him. I think it was probably the easiest thing in the world for him to do, right?

Brandon Hawk: That’s right.

Hal Elrod: I mean, I don’t know him personally, but yeah.

Brandon Hawk: I think if everyone in here would go to a place of finding out what is your genius, what would you do for free, and then going, “Okay, I’m going to stand in the emotional tension of putting the highest price on that,” and there’s an emotional tension that emerges. You know how it is. When you up your prices on your speaking, there’s a little bit of an emotional tension that comes up.

Hal Elrod: Completely.

Brandon Hawk: Are they going to really pay for that? Am I really worth it?

Hal Elrod: Yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hawk: You have to deal with that emotional tension. If you don’t deal with that emotional tension, what will you do? You will stay in the same price. You may even lower your price. So, a big key to charging what you’re worth and stepping into this lifestyle of ease is having the ability to deal with emotional tension that comes up in your body.

Hal Elrod: I think the practices that you gave us today help with that, right? Because it’s all about how you feel inside. One thing I haven’t shared on the podcast, I don’t think, and we won’t go deep today, but I’ll probably do an entire episode on this but as a result of what the chemotherapy I’ve been taking for my cancer has done to my brain, they call it chemo brain, for the first time in my life, I’ve been dealing with increasing, I mean, anxiety, depression, and even thoughts of suicide. And I wouldn’t do it in a million years but I understand now, “Oh, this is what it’s like to be in such a dark place that you don’t want to live anymore.” I’m like, “Damn.” And, Brandon, here’s the crazy thing. If you look at my life, it checks all the boxes. I’m living the life of my dreams. I have the family that I love. My wife and I are doing really well. There’s almost nothing I would change my life. It’s exactly what I wanted, but whether it’s because of the chemo or somebody else is suffering from some other, whatever the reason is, if you don’t enjoy your life, if you don’t free yourself, and I love the process that you gave these five As, I’m going to implement these in my own life.

And the three questions, what do I want to feel today? What do I really want out of the day? And what am I willing to do about it? I mean, those are the three questions that, number one, let me connect the dots here, make sure I’m doing this right. What do I want to feel today connects with you’re the first part of your book, A Guide to Deeper Connection. Connecting. What do I want to feel? What do I really want out of the day? That’s a lifestyle of ease. What do I want? Not what do I have to do? What do I really want? And the third piece, what am I willing to do about it? That question leads you to your massive results, which did I connect the dots on it?

Brandon Hawk: Oh, you got it, man. You did great. I would say your brains function really well.

Hal Elrod: That’s what people do. My brains not working. They keep saying, “It seems to be working.” Well, so I’d love to keep chatting with you but I know we have a time restraint. Anything to say before I remind everybody of what the books about, where they can get it?

Brandon Hawk: I’d love to say this to you on what’s emerging in your life, the depression, right, the deep rest. That having a season of we call depression bad and wrong in our produce-for-value society, right? We live in a produce-for-value society that the more you produce, the more valuable you are. And so, we demonize depression but I think depression is a beautiful gift of integration that’s wanting to happen in most people’s lives, that if we will surrender to the deep rest that is depression that our body is just wanting to rest or wanting to just like, ah, like, get into that deep, deep rest state. And if we won’t judge the depression and lean into it, what happens is we get these deep, deep restful moments, and the potency that comes from that, the creativity that comes from that is massive. The hard part is most people were scared of the depression because how deep is the well. “Well, Brandon does that mean I’m just going to lay in bed for three months and I can’t pay my bills?” You know, we go into all this future stuff that’s not really what it’s all about.

It’s really about listening and leaning in and accepting fully what is happening. And for you, your body is saying, “Hey, Hal, like rest.” Just lean into this deep rest. Don’t demonize it. Don’t call it wrong or bad. Like surrender into it and what I want you to know is the energy, the connection, the results that will emerge from that place of surrendering to the deep rest, yeah, it’s even bigger than what you’ve created in your life now.

Hal Elrod: I needed that, Brandon, and I have a spiritual coach that I spoke with the other day and she said in her own way, similar to what you just said, but you really, really just helped tie kind of a bow on that and thank you for that. I really appreciate that.

Brandon Hawk: Yeah. Thank you for this and that’s the biggest part of the final part massive results, right. I’ve experienced from my season of deep rest that never have been more prosperous. And it didn’t have to come from a place of abandoning what was trying to happen, a place that I had to override resting and it came from rest and living from rest. You know, the law of rest is for those who rest, the desires of their heart will manifest and it’s Psalm 37, “Wait patiently upon me and I will what give you the desires of your heart.” And I know everyone on this podcast comes from different religious backgrounds. And that is, to me, that is a spiritual law that when you learn to rest and wait patiently that the true desires of your heart will manifest. So, that’s what I’ve experienced with the massive results. It’s not something that’s a theory or conceptual. This book is experiential and it’s experiential for my clients. And, yeah, I’ve been so excited to birth this thing and get it out to the world and really honored that you gave me an opportunity to, yeah, share and to connect to your world, Hal. Yeah, I’m deeply thankful.

Hal Elrod: Well, like I said, you’ve added a ton of value to my life during the last 45 minutes that we’ve been chatting and imagine for the listeners of the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. So, everybody, the book is YOU. It’s called YOU: A Guide to Deeper Connection, a Lifestyle of Ease, and Massive Results. It is by my good friend here, Brandon Hawk, and you can get it on Amazon.com in a couple of different formats. So, I highly encourage you to do that. If you enjoyed Brandon’s wisdom today, I’m sure you’re going to love the book. So, Brandon, I can’t wait until next time we run into each other here in Austin.

Brandon Hawk: Yeah, brother.

 

Hal Elrod: All right. Love, buddy. Take care.

 

Brandon Hawk: All right. We’ll talk soon.

[END]