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Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Darkness Retreat: 121 Hours in the Dark with Matthew Stafford
Matthew Stafford takes us on a compelling journey of self-discovery, revealing how mastering the "six inches between our ears" can redefine entrepreneurial success. After confronting deeply rooted emotional barriers from his childhood, Matthew shares how alternative healing modalities like hypnosis and somatic work have empowered him to navigate life's challenges with resilience and insight. His experiences underscore the significance of self-awareness and mental health in crafting a rewarding entrepreneurial path, offering invaluable lessons for anyone seeking personal growth.
Imagine unlocking hidden emotional patterns with powerful plant medicines and therapeutic practices. Matthew recounts transformative experiences at an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica and a profound encounter with MDMA therapy, emphasizing how these journeys have led to emotional healing and a deeper self-appreciation. Through personal anecdotes, we explore how recognizing emotional triggers can serve as gateways to introspection and healing, ultimately fostering a more profound sense of calmness and self-worth.
Venture into the transformative realms of solitude and reflection, where darkness retreats offer a unique environment for mental clarity and presence. Matthew shares insights from these experiences, revealing how sensory deprivation sharpens focus and enhances self-understanding. From practical tips on managing distractions to the profound benefits for personal and professional life, this episode offers a rich exploration of how embracing solitude can lead to significant emotional release and self-improvement. Join us for an enlightening conversation on the power of introspection and alternative healing on the path to personal transformation.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. In today's episode, matthew Stafford once again joins us. If you didn't catch it, matthew was a guest on episode 252, where he highlighted seven ways you could make more money with your Shopify store If you run your own D2C website. This is an episode that will have an insanely high return on your time invested in listening to it. Today we welcome Matthew to the show to discuss a different topic. Over the past five years, matthew has gone on a journey of self-discovery, healing and deep work. He has come out on the other side a changed man, ready to tackle any obstacles thrown his way.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, we are going to dive deep into Matthew's journey and how entrepreneurs can work on the six inches between their ears, as Matthew likes to say, and live a more empowered and fulfilling life. Matthew, really happy to have you back on the show. Welcome, thank you. I'm glad to be here. Really happy to have you back on the show. Welcome, thank you. I'm glad to be here, absolutely so. I've heard you talk about the six inches between our ears and that's such a powerful metaphor. Can you unpack what you mean by that and how it impacts entrepreneurs specifically?
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me. I'm going to start with a little story. It might take us four or five minutes, but I think it will set us up for the context of how I went about this. Because, to be completely honest, once I made this discovery, I had already been working on websites and breaking down data and doing things of that nature. That's just how my brain works, and so when I was invited by a friend that I trusted to go to this emotional intelligence experience and it consisted of like three different weekends you'd go for Thursday, you'd get there Thursday night, go Friday, saturday, sunday, after the second or third day we had this experience that we had to do, where we had to act out our mother and our father Well, my childhood story and just spread the details.
Speaker 3:It was extremely rough, it was very violent, and so I had developed a lot of unhealthy stories. And so I had developed a lot of unhealthy stories, and my belief was the reason why I struggled in the feel good about myself or feel good enough, or like, if you achieve success, that you'll be happy. Struggle came from. My parents always said they loved us, and it was a very religious household, but then my dad was extremely abusive, and so I just thought like, oh, I don't have a good understanding of what love means because of that. And so my whole life I looked at that area. Well, I'm very I would say 99% of the time I don't have a temper, I'm very controlled, which took work because that's not what was modeled to me. You got to witness me yesterday angry when we had a few minute conversation, which is I'm sure I'll bring back up later because it's such a good. Those triggers are actually opportunities for us to go start working at that, six inches between our ears.
Speaker 3:So back to the story, get into this experience. You have to act out our mother and father and uh. First one I did is I acted out my dad, acted angry, pretended like to smack my you know my participant a couple times, uh, and then uh. The next part of the experience was act out your mother, and I was really grateful that this lady that was sitting in front of me she was probably close to my mother's age, sitting in the chair. It was much easier for me to visualize her as my mom than her as my dad. But what was really weird was we were over by the wall, probably three, four feet away from it. And when I went to um act this experience out with my mom, for whatever reason, I turned around and walked over to the wall instead of looking at her and I was like I remember clear as day. It's like a video playing in my head.
Speaker 3:I'm like, oh, this is really strange, um, and the words that I said was my mom never hit me. And and then I said, oh, my mom never played with me, my mom never took us anywhere, my mom and it was like this, just this, like huge epiphany, oh, like my mom was checked out, like she didn't have any connection with us at all. And so that was like this, like aha, wow, for 48 years, 47 years, I've been looking in the wrong place. No wonder I couldn't fix this feeling. And then I started going, wow, if my brain was able to hide that from me for 40 some years. I wanna understand my brain like I do a website and I went and learned how to do hypnosis and studied somatic work and a bunch of these things, and each time that I did that I felt better. I felt, you know, I started kind of pulling away the layers of the onion that I had put over top of it In that process.
Speaker 3:After about a year of different things maybe a little over I started telling my story. I actually got to a point where I felt comfortable sharing my story, where before that I was always just very ashamed of it and so I never shared it and I didn't want sympathy for the details or any of that. So it was more of like I just didn't say too much about it, and most of the time everything that I said was very edited because I needed to get right. I can be wrong, and you know there's I had a very strong sense of needing to be right and that I was wrong as broken bunch of this other stuff that never served me as I started telling my story. Obviously I hang out in entrepreneurial circles telling my story. Obviously I hang out in entrepreneurial circles, and so 99% of my friends are entrepreneurs. Everyone else started sharing their story too, and all of them, like I, didn't have a single one that said oh no, I've never dealt with that. Oh, I don't know, my life was perfect, and so it was really strange to me. I'm like why is it that all these entrepreneurs have that? And so again, me and my analytical brain. What's the anomaly? And this is my conclusion, and I've shared this with now hundreds of entrepreneurs, and they all agree. I'll agree there seem to support it.
Speaker 3:If you think about it, the definition of trauma is a feeling of loss of control. You are out of control or you can't control the situation. It's scary. You create a belief around whatever happened. Your brain stores that Its job is to keep you safe. So now, in those unsafe environments, you now have a coping mechanism that you'll unconsciously use in order to deal with that, because most of us during that trauma, a lot of times it's repeated when we're little, and so we developed this place of a coping mechanism.
Speaker 3:For me it was a retreat to my head, don't feel my body, and so that's very typical of men, because we're taught not to feel our feelings. We're taught to think our feelings because if we share our feelings there, a lot of times we get teased or made fun of or told to suck it up or be a man or all these different things, and so it's very, very common for men to just go to their head, feel safe. They can think it all through, and we don't realize how detrimental that really is, because what happens is every one of those new traumas that we then go to our head and we think we resolved, we've never released it from our body, we have a coping mechanism and then. So this ties me back to the entrepreneurial wing and then, and then you can go ahead and start asking me questions. But why do I think it's so prevalent?
Speaker 3:Because, if you think about business in general, when are you ever in control?
Speaker 3:There's always things going on. In fact, I would venture to say that business is the ultimate self-improvement game, because it is going to constantly show you where you're not showing up, where you're not doing a good job, where you need to increase your skill, where you need to get better at marketing or whatever, and it's always going to show you where you're not good enough. And so, learning to deal inside of that environment, if you don't already have a coping mechanism for trauma, it's not going to be appealing to you. And so, when you think about it, why do people choose to live inside of an environment that is so volatile and never, you know, stable? And it's because they already have a method, whether it's healthy or not, of how to cope inside of that environment, where the employee looks at the owner and sees all that stuff and they're like no way I want to check out at 4 pm, go home, you know, and play or do whatever, and I don't think anything about work. That's just not how our brain works.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting and thank you for sharing that story. You know, I have found, you know, with Firing the man podcast we've been doing we're in our sixth year and have interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs and that observation about trauma, not all of them share it, but I have noticed that it does seem like more entrepreneurs seem to have that background than non-entrepreneurs and I never really formed a link between the two of them but I I think that that's really interesting and you know there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this show that are probably relating to to what you're saying and and and have developed those coping mechanisms.
Speaker 3:I think another caveat that makes it so prevalent is, if you think about it, the overwhelming majority of people that go through that type of environment develop the belief I'm not good enough. And so you find that they try very hard in their business to keep on making it more and more and more successful to feel good enough, to keep on making it more and more and more successful, to feel good enough. And eventually they realize like, wow, no matter how successful I am, no matter how much money I've made, that hasn't made me feel good enough. And so you think that the business is a vehicle to feel better, and what you end up finding which actually I think adds to the trauma a little bit is, wow, I've done everything that I thought I was supposed to do to feel good and it's still not working. Now I'm really lost, or now I'm. I'm just unique and everybody else figured it out because they share their highlight of realism, but I still feel shitty inside their highlight of realism, but I still feel shitty and tired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a quote that I heard on modern wisdom that has stuck with me, and that quote is you've already achieved things that you said would make you happy and that when you really digest that, I know for me personally that one stings because there's so much truth in it. It's so much truth in it and so you know, for entrepreneurs that are listening, what would be the first step? You know, you acknowledge that you have past traumas. You're running a business. What would be the first step in, you know, in taking this and turning it into a positive?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I actually believe that there's a lot of positives that can come from it. Our growth comes from the painful things that we go through. It's not typically when things are going great that you are learning. You know the lessons that are going to make you wiser and and stronger, and I would say, uh, more of a broad spectrum human Sounds good what?
Speaker 2:what role does self-awareness play in addressing some of these internal challenges and how? How can entrepreneurs take that and cultivate it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I will tell you the quickest way. This is the cheat code, it's the shortcut, which is what we all want, and but it's the last thing that you want to hear. It is it is always me, it's always me, no matter what. Every single time it's me. Uh, and we can go back to yesterday, our example of the trigger. We've had a client, um, we've legitimately had a home run for them and, uh, they came and nitpicked a typo on the contract and it saves them 11 grand. The issue with that is it's not the 11 grand, um, even though that's important, like, obviously we do this to make money Um, when I thought about it cause, after I get over, you know, when I get triggered, the very first thing I do, or I try to this particular case, I was a little more triggered than normal, so I didn't, but I recognize that the trigger is mine and that's an opportunity for me to look in and see why I'm so angry or why I'm sad or why I'm, whatever the emotion is, and then that gives me an opportunity to see a part of myself that I haven't healed yet.
Speaker 3:So for me, when I actually sat down and did some work around that, I recognized that I felt not appreciated because what we had done for that and we had taken them from less than a hundred grand a month to seven 800,000 a month in a six month period they're crushing it.
Speaker 3:And then I felt like, wow, that's such a lack of appreciation for what we did. He didn't see it that way. He saw it as like this is what it says and this is how I interpret it, even if that's not how it's meant to be. I interpret it even if that's not how it's meant to be. And so we gave it into him and I, you know, I said, okay, cool, how can I learn from this? I can understand that one. I can still appreciate the work that we did for him, whether he recognizes it or not, and that instantly allowed me to calm down quite a bit, because now my you know, my ego isn't agitated because I gave it what it needed. Hey, you guys have done a really good job and cool. Whether he realizes that or not, that's, it's not for me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Absolutely. Now, in the intro I had mentioned that you've spent a lot of time doing deep work and interested what. What all does that entail? And out of all of those different types of practices, what has been the highest impact?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know what you're listening to audience, how much they're open to all the different modalities, so I'll just share everything I did and go through it that way and end what my experience was with it. So my very first experience ever was a friend that I had. That was a client. He had been, you know, we had consulted him with his e-commerce stuff for several years. He'd done really well and he said hey, I really think that you would benefit from this seven-day retreat we're going to do down in Costa Rica. We're going to do ayahuasca and it would be three days out of the seven really clean food, da, da da.
Speaker 3:And I had never done any like. I grew up in a very religious household. I've never smoked, never done anything. I think the first time I ever had a buzz, I was like 24 years old. Just, I was very, you know, naive when it came to that stuff. If I didn't really trust them and know them for as long as I had, I wouldn't have done it. I went and did it. First day was great. The other two experiences were not great, but it like cracked me open enough to go oh okay, there's something here. I didn't realize how um locked up. I was like I was pretty well, I was well, I'm pretty tight. So, um, yeah, that was. That was my first experience.
Speaker 3:The next one I was at a mastermind and a friend of mine who's a Navy SEAL got up, gave a presentation, got off the stage, him and I started talking. I'd known him for a couple of years and he looked radically different than when I had first met him. When I first met him, he genuinely looked like someone that was dead but was walking around. He just was dark, like. It was hard to explain how dark he was and when I saw him give his speech I was like, wow, he looks really healthy and man really, really bright. And so we started talking and he had been on a two-year journey of trying all these different plant medicines and the whole nine yards and then took me or offered to do this four day or three day experience with me using MDMA, and so I signed up for that and said, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3:That was the most pivotal moment. That was, um, that was when I could find I knew all the stuff was messed up and I understood that, like my mom, um had never formed a relationship that you know felt closer, safer, connect, all of that stuff, but I didn't know how to like access, how to heal. Um, when I did the MDMA, uh, he came there was actually five men, we each did it and then the next day he came back and his gift is that he just recognizes patterns. And so, from the conversations that we had when we were using the MDMA, he had wrote down what our trauma patterns were, and then he gave us three sentences that each of us had to repeat back to him, and what was really odd was the sentences were super easy and I could repeat back every sentence that he gave to everyone else, but the ones he gave to me.
Speaker 3:I couldn't do it, and so I watched each person struggle. I mean, they would get mad, they would literally start sweating, they'd start crying from these really weird, like normal sentences to us. Until he got to us and what it was and that was the first time I was like, oh my God, our subconscious is so strong we literally can't even see what our issue is Like we have. It is so good at lying to us and so good at protecting us that it thinks if we discover what the actual problem is, we'll change and that might kill us. So nope, you don't get to see it. And so that that was when I really was like, okay, I really got to work between the six inches between my ears because everything's there like 100%, and hired a coach outside.
Speaker 3:Coming out of that experience, and that was the best thing I ever did, because he can see things that I can't see for myself. And now, after spending the last four or five years, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on trainings and learning how to do stuff and all these different things, and now I actually coach some people that are really big names in the coaching world because of I've been through a lot of what they've been through and then I can sit with them and go through that. I've been through a lot of what they've been through and then I can sit with them and go through that and but just, yeah, it's been such a blessing to learn that and understand where it comes from and how it works. So that was my MDMA experience. From there I tried mushroom psilocybin. Psilocybin um, um, five MEO DMT, which is another like a, and you inhale it. It's a poison from a frog um, that you take and it's. That was. That was pretty, that was a pretty solid experience. I felt like I got a lot from it and it was, and it was very enjoyable. So it was both Um and then, uh, about eight days ago, I just got out of 121 hour dark retreat and I can tell you, um, I was pretty much done with the plant medicines, cause I don't, um, I've always had the feeling, if you're just doing it to do drugs, cool, that's cool, but I just not into that.
Speaker 3:Um, so, for me, I always had, um pretty strong intentions when I'm going to do it, like in, in, in the environment, that I'm going to do it, that my intention is that I'm trying to heal or, you know, you know, enhance my life in some form or another, besides just get high or, you know, have drugs. So, um, I I kind of was at a place where, yeah, I've tried them, done them, had guides with all of them. Um, I feel really happy, I'm super healthy. Um, now the next journey was, uh, learning how to like really understand my brain as far as how it thinks, and, uh, no better way to do that than go into the dark and get rid of all distractions.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and and I want to dive deeper into this, but but before I do, I want to talk about some of those alternative modalities and thank you for sharing your story. I think the conversation on these has really changed. You hear people like Tim Ferriss, aubrey Marcus, andrew Huberman. You know there's federally funded research through the MAPS Institute that is looking at a better way, a better way to help people essentially, Let me give you a really interesting stat.
Speaker 3:And then keep going Talk therapy people that need therapy. If they go twice a week, they consider it a success. If you can drop down to once a week in your talk therapy, they consider talk therapy was successful. If you've been talking to your therapist twice a week, you drop to once, that's successful and they consider a 30 to 40% good. So out of 100 people that do it, 30 to 40 can cut their therapy time in half and they consider that a successful therapy therapy time in half and they consider that a successful therapy.
Speaker 3:Mdma has a documented history of 80% success rate. Success rate with MDMA therapy means if you see your therapist twice a week, you no longer need therapy. If you see your therapist once a week, you no longer need therapy after three sessions. And so 80% success rate. The only reason why it's not legal is because the government wants to, you know, regulate it or tax it or do whatever, and I do believe with the new administration it will happen. It will happen. But yeah, like the moment that MDMA is allowed to be administered by, you know, health practitioners in a safe environment, I do believe the economy and really make change and all of that. So, understanding all the things that we've talked about up to this, I believe that that will be groundbreaking when that happens.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And you feel the trend. You really feel the trend, and people are. Every year it seems like more and more people are coming out and talking about it and you know, as a data person, you can't argue with those statistics and so, no, I absolutely love that and appreciate you sharing that. So you had mentioned a dark retreat. Tell me what is that?
Speaker 3:What is a dark retreat? Yeah, retreat, tell me what. What is that? What is a darker treat? Yeah, so, um, great question, because I tried, like I had a friend, aubrey marcus, I'd met him and then he went and did that afterwards and so I kind of followed the story, watched the video and I was like, oh okay, very cool. And he like, over the following 12, 18 months, really, you could see the difference.
Speaker 3:And what I tell people to do is, once they watch that video, go back and watch some of his podcasts from a couple years ago and then watch his podcasts after the dark retreat. He is fundamentally different in the amount of presence that he has. Before he was good and he asked lots of questions, great podcast host. Um, afterwards, like you see him and it's literally like, um, it's almost like he's enjoying the words and like he's so present and I really do think, um, after going through that, uh, that that's where I'm going to get to as far as like the clarity and the lack of distraction, all those different things.
Speaker 3:So what the dark retreat is is you are put in an environment no noise and no light at all, no light at all.
Speaker 3:And so, if you think about it and the way that I describe it to people is if I'm looking at you right now and don't move away, I can still see the two lights up here, my microphone, my tea, my laptop, some stuff on my desk, this doorway going out into the rest of the apartment and all that stuff. So my brain's always processing that, even though I'm looking at you right now, when you go into that darker tree you can't see any light, like nothing, and so the moment all of that shut off, your brain's no longer being distracted by that. There's no noise, no sound. So now, all of a sudden, there's no distraction there. What is there to do other than to literally observe your thoughts? You can see the little voice talking in your head. You can watch your brain like lie. You can see your brain detox from the distraction. It's unbelievable how, when you shut off all those other senses that distract you from being focused and clear uh, how clear it gets.
Speaker 2:Outstanding. So I really want to dive into what your experiences was was like in some of the key takeaways. But can you help me picture what? What does this look like? Are you in a is? Are you in a tank, are you in a room or are you in a house Like? What does this look like? Just to kind of set the scene.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So for me, um, it was, uh, it was, it was kind of yeah, I hate saying this, but it was a hippie commune, Like that's what kind of what it was, but they call it a resort, um, and uh, the place that I had signed up for, uh, let me know that my dates were coming. So I booked all the time on my calendar, did a whole bunch of stuff and then, when I emailed them back and said, hey, can you give me more details so I can get my flights booked, they're like no, no, that's for 2025, not 2024. And I'd already waited a year. So I was like, oh, wow, that really was a letdown. So I got on, started Googling. Third option I had already. I paid for another one. They said, hey, someone booked at the exact same time here, refunding your money. I was like man, I don't know if I'm going to make it. I finally found one. Boom, it was in Mexico, great experience.
Speaker 3:But essentially they have a bunch of outbuildings and they're all concrete and it's round which I'll explain why that matters later Round and every wall inside solid concrete and the concrete floor and it is pitch black. The only thing that you have in there is a bed to sleep on, you have a bench to sit on, you have a yoga mat, and then you have some towels and soap to take a shower and go to the bathroom and brush your teeth, and so, yeah, that's essentially it. Uh, there is a food shoot where you can pass food back and forth without any light getting in. And then, um, for they also had a notepad with a pen so I could write in the dark. I couldn't see what I was writing, but I do the best I could stick it in there and uh, you know, on the second day, I said hey, I'm going to fast, uh, which I fast a lot.
Speaker 3:Um, didn't think it would. I thought it would be a good experience, cause he said um, yes, you'll go deeper and it'd be more intense. Um, so I fasted 71 hours of the 121, um, to do it over again. I probably would change that a little bit, because the fifth day there was nothing to interrupt the natural DMT that your brain produces, and my fifth day was a nightmare, like every minute felt like hours. It was just extremely hard. But the first four days were amazing and if you asked me to describe it in one word, I would say, transformational.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of things that create awareness, but then you have a lot of work to do in order to follow up on that awareness. And I will tell you, what has seemed to happen over the last eight days is a lot of the realizations and a lot of the stories that my brain had that I could now see it naturally, like, said, oh, that's not accurate, and upgraded it to my new, wiser version, my new, wiser version, and it feels like every day I feel a little lighter, a little heavier, a little healthier, clear, less distracted, and so I do believe that over you know this this will keep changing for the next few months, because the stories have changed, and I think the stories is literally what is how we create our life. The reason why one person has a different resolve is because they have a different set of beliefs and a story that drives them, and once you can see that story, there's no unseeing that.
Speaker 2:I really like that and I appreciate you sharing your experiences there. This is as I've heard you talk about it. It's something that seems really interesting to me. It's like something that I would want to do. However, as I think about it and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners I like feel a little nervous and scared. Like feel a little nervous and scared, like I don't know if I am comfortable being alone with myself and, as I say that out loud, I that doesn't like. Why should? Why am I uncomfortable being with just myself, without distraction? And so what was there like when you, when the light turned off, like in that first 15 minutes, like what's going through your mind and what like? Take me through like that first day as well.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll do that. I want to point out something that just happened that is super noticeable to me, that you won't realize, but it might be a benefit to your listeners. So, as you were describing it, you started going oh, that sounds really weird and wanted to edit what you're feeling was so the original fear is the subconscious story. And then, as it surfaces, it's not matching your logic and so you try to edit it to fit your story of what's okay. So the fear of being alone with yourself, shut off from everything, is actually a story that's going on in the background. As you started to share it out loud, your brain heard it and goes oh I need to edit that to make it okay. So it fits within my bubble of what's okay.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, that is what happened, yeah we literally just got to watch your subconscious catch it, try to share, and then your brain stopped it and corrected it and said, no, get back in there, you shouldn't be scared yeah, yeah, you're, you're right, that is what happened.
Speaker 2:that that is what happened. I appreciate you calling that out. I appreciate you calling that out, so so, I'll give you the first day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah it's. I'm just a very structured. So I you and I are friends outside of this. You understand like I break my life into four categories my fitness, my relationships with myself and God, my relationship with others and then the business. And so I'm thinking, hey, I got five days or full days and two half days on each end. I'm going to work on one category each day and I got it all planned out in my head. This is what's going to happen. You know, I talked to my coach and dah dah, dah, you know, he said the first two days were boring really hard for him. Then the third day, and he gave me this whole experience. I kind of thought that's how it was going to be. And Aubrey's was very similar. First two days was pretty uneventful. Third day has the natural DMT and then did the work the rest of the days, and so that's kind of how I saw mine playing out.
Speaker 3:It didn't play out that way at all. The very first day I get up, actually she says and this is where things get fuzzy and you realize how much we make assumptions without actually understanding and we just fill it in with our own details. And so she said typically you'll fall asleep right away and you're going to sleep a lot longer than normal, so I'll bring your food later in the day. Not to me, like, oh, okay, like 10 AM, cause I will wake up at eight, maybe I'll wake up at 10. Now she'll bring my food around. Then Dada Never asked, never anything. I realized later that's what I thought, and and and remind me to tell you why that's important, Cause by the end of the fifth day that becomes really important. Um, go to sleep, like literally she's we blow out the candle. She filmed it so that I could post it, you know, because I wanted to document my thing. She goes outside, closes the. There's two doors, um, so the one's closed on the inside, that's all sealed. She closes on the outside, that's sealed, and then she duct tapes it. I can walk out at any time I want, she just can't walk in and uh, so, um, that's, that's it. She did that way. She goes, no talking until you know it's over, which is five days later.
Speaker 3:Uh, I, I got tired immediately. I had left from tampa in the morning um 7 am, flew to dallas, then from dallas down to middle of mexico and then a place called oaka, and then a two and a half hour car drive to the, to the beach, you know, to the um ocean. I had enough travel. I was like I was tired and so, within 30 minutes of her going out and it was probably six o'clock their time, which is like nine o'clock my time Um, I go to bed nine, 30, 10 o'clock. I'm tired.
Speaker 3:I was out, like I just I literally laid down and I fell asleep immediately and I had four of the most vivid dreams I've ever had in my life. Like, and she said that she goes, you might have some real strong dreams and she goes even on the other days when you're sleeping, you're still going to be processing stuff. So, you know, there's a good chance. You have a lot of dreams. I'm like, all right, cool, no big deal. Uh, these dreams were crazy, like they were. It was so real.
Speaker 3:The first two, um, I had dreamt that I had left the building, walked out and and ruined the experience. I had like, uh, you know, I didn't make it in my head like that was a big deal. And the second one I walked back to the, to the hut, and I looked at the door and it was still duct taped. I'm like, oh, that's weird. I didn't come out the door. Where did I get out? And I'm trying to think of where I could have exited this hut, because you can't, like, there's nowhere but that door. And then I was like, oh yeah, I have an eye mask on and opened it and oh yeah, I'm in the dark. Okay, I'm in the dark, okay, I'm laying on the bed.
Speaker 3:That I woke up and realized that was what had happened, and so I ended up sleeping really good and really really good, woke up feeling amazing, super refreshed, and like within an hour she brought my food and I was like, oh, wow, perfect timing, everything's good. I ate the food, eating in the dark for the very first time, when you have no idea what she gave you. There's a fork with a napkin. I'm a little weird, so I don't want to touch food with my hands and get all sticky, and because it's hard to find stuff, and you know, I just wasn't acclimated to the dark yet and so I just used my fork and stabbed and what I discovered was it was pineapple and some apple chunks.
Speaker 3:And when you eat in the dark and you have nothing to see, nothing to hear, and you feel the texture of the fruit when you like. I could. I knew, after a couple of pieces, if I had stabbed a piece of pineapple, if I stabbed an apple, and I could feel the difference. And then when I would eat it, like you could taste the flavor was amazing, the texture, because nothing else is there to distract you. You're a hundred percent absorbed in that experience. So that was another lesson how many things we miss every single day because we're doing several things at once instead of just actually paying attention to what we're doing. And that can apply to our work and apply to how we eat, apply to our conversations with each other, all of that. So that's been a huge shift for me too.
Speaker 3:Then I'm like all right, great I'm, I'm well rested, I ate my food, I have all day in front of me, I'm going to, I'm going to get into some work here, and and that was the reason why I did it Like I'm going to make good use of the time and within 10 minutes I realized, like this is, this is not going to be easy, like this is actually gonna okay. I remember actually going, and I repeated this mantra to myself so many times no, go deep, don't go wide, because your brain literally doesn't want to go deep on anything. The moment that you start thinking about something with accuracy, it'll distract you. And so I spent I'll be an hour fighting with myself going wow, this is like I literally can't, I can't stop being distracted. And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to go over to the yoga mat and I'm going to do some exercise. And I always say, you know, like, tire out your body and your mind will calm down. And so I love you know exercising really hard when my mind's going crazy and it calms me down. So I went over, did that. It was perfect.
Speaker 3:It went over late on the bed and probably were laid on the bed and probably, yeah, I had four or five hours of just really good like good, solid, crystal clear thinking. And what's amazing is you don't realize how good your memory is when you have no other distraction. Your memory is actually really really good. Out here, my memory is not near as good because I'm distracted by a bunch of stuff. It just it doesn't have the same amount of focus or leveraged thinking. So that was another realization. Okay, cool, the dark is actually your friend. It's amazing, and I was like I want to become friends with the dark because in my business I will think so much better. I'm going to learn how to get good at this.
Speaker 3:So that was my first day. I ended up mentally being drained tired. I had worked out, did my breath, work, fell asleep pretty uneventful, went to sleep that night night, slept really good again, really good. I don't remember if I dreamt the second night. If I did, I think I dreamt every night, but I don't remember the dreams like I did the first night. And, yeah, I woke up the next morning and thought like, okay, cool, go deep, don't go wide, like the rule. Let's. Woke up the next morning and thought like, okay, cool, go deep, don't go wide, like let's get into the next category.
Speaker 3:And what was weird was I was very distracted again, except for this time it was my body, and I've done a lot of research and I actually have another friend that lives in Austin and he had done a lot of work when he was getting rid of mold in his body and just realized the link between the chemicals that your brain produces and the addiction that your body has to those chemicals, which is the reason why most people have such a hard time changing the habit because mentally you can go. Okay, this habit's not serving me, I'm going to change it. I'm going to go to the gym now, five days a week. Well, what happens is you go to the gym, your brain stops producing that old chemical that your body was addicted to and it doesn't like it. And so your body tries to talk you out of going to the gym. Oh, you don't need to go this morning. You went yesterday. Oh you're sore, like stay home, because then your brain will produce the old chemicals that it wants.
Speaker 3:And I literally could witness, with zero distraction, I could witness my body distracting my brain from thinking Like my leg would hurt, then my hand felt like it was on fire.
Speaker 3:Then all of a sudden my sciatic nerve was bothering me and that was the one that actually I recognized it because a few years back in my healing journey I had issues with my sciatic nerve and went and did acupuncture, a bunch of other stuff, and none of that worked and it ended up it was all tied to a particular trauma that I had dealt with. When I dealt with that particular trauma, I never had an issue with again, never didn't need any therapy with like acupuncture or anything. So I'm like, oh wow, this is that experience. And I just sat there and started observing it, instead of trying to make it go away, or that it was good or bad, bad, and literally laid in bed for three to four hours and every single sensation that came up I didn't make it right, I didn't make it wrong, good, bad, whatever I just sat there and observed it.
Speaker 3:I sat with it until it went away and every single one did and after about four or five hours, like I can honestly say, like I was trying to think of bad experiences and seeing if it would bring things up and just do that, and after several hours, it's like I had went through every single thing I could think of in my body, just felt like this, like ball of energy. It was amazing. And had an amazing second day, worked through tons of stuff in my relationship with God and myself, and just the conversations were amazing. It was absolutely one of the coolest days. Yeah, it was the coolest day of the five days. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, that's really, really neat and you're absolutely right on the brain, throwing distractions your way and not wanting to go deep and oftentimes I can say this for myself is that I don't necessarily call those out all the time and it seems like that the absence of light, the absence of sound, gives you the ability to kind of call that out or recognize that when it's happening.
Speaker 3:And so-. The best part is now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it, so now I can recognize it, and so that alone, I think, why we'll keep on transforming who I am, is because the more I catch myself and my brain upgrades the story to what's accurate instead of the eight or 10 year old version that was scared and had to protect himself to now, like nobody's trying to beat me up, you know someone not paying us the full amount, like none of these things are going to kill me. And so the reaction when it outweighs the trigger, you realize okay, there's something deeper than what just happened. Let's just do a little bit of deep dive and figure it out and adjust it, and then your body lets go of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very, very nice. Well, I, prior to this interview, did not know a lot about a darkness retreat. I certainly heard about it, but but not to that level, and so, for people hearing this and interested in exploring it on their own, any advice for those people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, because I did do a lot of looking around and trying to find people's stories and there are very, very few and I do think it's just now becoming, um, like you said, uh, more, more and more popular and accepted. Um, I'm I'm actually writing a documented journey of all five days, um, and I'm going to share it on my LinkedIn. Um, I'll also share it on my social, which you guys have, um, on my LinkedIn. I'll also share it on my social, which you guys have in the show notes, so it'll be very obvious to find it and it will be. It'll be released in five days. Each new day will be sent on his own, so it'd be five straight days and so, yeah, you can do that or you can email me. You can do that or you can email me.
Speaker 3:I will tell you this I have made a commitment to myself and my business and the team that I'm going to go again in three to six months and the original one that is next November. I'm going to do that as well and I'm going to do the experience three times, all different, different ways, and try to keep optimizing it, just like I have done everything else, and get the most I can. If you're interested or you want to have a conversation before you go, you can email me at matt at buildgrowthscalecom. I will share anything that you want to know. I will tell you that there's three or four things instantly that I would do different One I would probably fast going in and then have a little bit of food each day. If we tie this up to, I said, to remind me about the food, um and the fast uh, by the fifth day, uh, when I thought I was going to be able to really go deep, um, the naturally produced DMT in my brain uh was so strong um that I literally for 22 hours, almost 22 hours, uh hallucinated and couldn't get out of this experience. And it was just, it was brutal. And so, um, after you know, after the experience and debriefing it at the host and stuff, we both decided, yeah, it'd probably be a good idea to just have like a little bowl of fruit or something whatever. You know people choose each day Um.
Speaker 3:The other part about that is, um, I found out what time she brought my food on the first day uh, which she brought it at around two o'clock and I had woke up an hour before that, so I had slept from seven, seven ish PM till um, till almost one 1 PM, which is I've never done that in my entire life. Ever I slept that long. And then the next day, when she brought the food, she brought it at 11 am. So my last meal was on Friday at 11 am.
Speaker 3:But you don't have any reference of when people are coming or going or doing any of that, because if they're not bringing you food, there's no inner, there's not even that pattern, and so a whole bunch of things. Your brain just makes assumptions and timelines and you don't know if it's day or night, or there's no way to know, because there's nothing like, there's just no reference, and by the end you don't know if it's daylight or if it's dark, or you know, you think they're coming any minute and hours later you're like, oh man, well, it's been hours, now it has to be any minute, and then it feels like hours longer and you're like I have no concept, I have no idea what time it is, where I'm at, what I'm doing, and so, yeah, there's several things I would do differently and I would be happy to share those.
Speaker 2:Outstanding Well. We appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your story and really look forward to reading more about your journey. As you put pen to paper and get that posted, We'll be sure to share links with our audience and also put them in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually think it's going to make me a lot better at my job too. So, like uh, people's websites will benefit, uh, because of the lack of distraction and the clarity and and just like it's, it's amazing, Um, how, when you peel back some of those um old stories that you just don't even realize, like you didn't realize this fear that you have in back of your head. That's a subconscious story that's running 24 seven, Um, when those go away, uh, to feel, you feel transformed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. And last thing I want to mention and I can personally testify to this uh, matt, you and I have done some work together and where we have went back and looked at some of my previous traumas. For a decade I have been a horrible sleeper, probably one day per week. For the last decade, I've been awake all night, tossing and turning, and for people that struggle with sleep, they know what a miserable experience that can be. I started working with you about oh, two months ago and have slept through the night, probably going on 60 days in a row, which has had an incredible impact on my life, incredible impact on my wife and my children's life and how I interact with the world, and just want to say thank you for that. And if people are interested in some of that type of coaching, is that something that you're? Are you actively taking on clients right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, obviously, with BGS, there's so many that I can do, but, um, all you gotta do is is reach out to Matt at build grow scalecom and, uh, yeah, we'll talk about it and figure out a time that works. And, yeah, to be honest, um, I've never, ever, done anything that fulfilled me as much as, uh, something like that, where it was you and I worked and had worked together less than an hour for that initial experience and for it to literally have a life-changing impact. It really is. It really can be that simple. I don't know if you're willing to. I don't think you need to give any detail, but you give a cliff note and say that experience was a 10 out of 10, or it was a five out of 10. And you were able to go through it and experience what you needed to experience. At what level?
Speaker 2:Oh, it was 10 out of 10. And I and I don't mind going into detail I, we unpacked the worst day of my life um, that happened when I was, uh, 11 years old that I've carried with me in my body and I did not realize the weight that it had, and how, how hard was it for you so?
Speaker 3:so this is the reason why I'm asking. I'm kind stuff that I do, um and other practitioners do. Um, you no longer need to talk about it. You don't need to relive it. Um, that is old technology and um, just like everything else that evolves and gets better, um, legitimately, uh, you can say it was the worst For you, it was the worst day of your life that you're reliving, but at what emotional level did it take you to go through and process that and be done with it?
Speaker 2:Not a lot, right, not a lot. Not a ton of heavy lifting and incredibly outsized returns.
Speaker 3:I mean like and so the way I describe it to people is uh, the trauma is a movie, uh, you know it can last your whole life and it's always playing. Um, then you have like a trailer, which is a two and a half minute version of of a movie, and so you kind of get the gist of what's going on. And then you can also have like a cliff note or an ad with the picture and some words, and really, uh, that's the most that I ever ask is I want the cliff notes of the trailer, um, so that we can basically have an access point, um, and then from that point forward, it's non-disclosure. You don't have to tell me a single detail. It has nothing to do with that day. It has everything to do with the feelings that your body has stored, that you developed through that experience. And once you feel those, your body will let go of them, and now you sleep better, your body will let go of them and now you sleep better, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It was an incredible experience and something I did not anticipate the amount of returns I would get or the amount of benefit and it was life-changing. I mean, that sounds dramatic and it should, because your sleep is. I will live longer. I was going to die younger because of my poor sleep habits. This provided a solution to that and I will always be grateful for that, matt. So thank you so much. Yeah, awesome, yeah, yeah, thank you everyone for tuning in to the Firing the man podcast.
Speaker 2:This has been an outstanding episode. Matt's a friend of the show and we're going to continue to have him on. If you're interested in getting in touch with Matt, we'll post links to all of that in the show notes and if you're an entrepreneur with a D2C website, you've got to go back and check out episode 252. It was a different type of conversation than the one that we had today. It was very technical in nature, very data-driven, and there will be a very high ROI on your time spent listening to that, as you have listened to this one and made it to the end of the episode. So thank you everyone, thank you Matt, and we'll see you next week. Yeah, thanks for having me.
