In this interview Dr Demartini talks about the fundamentals of success and achievement. We talk about the journey of Jessica Watson, the 16 year old sailor, who has voyaged around the world in a yacht, SOLO!! Be inspired by this interview. And leave a comment if you like. For further information on Dr Demartini visit his website on www.drdemartini.com 🙂
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Transcript of show
Dr JOHN DEMARTINI talks about success and achievement
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JOHN PETROZZI: Hi. Welcome to Living Is Easy. I’m John Petrozzi. Today, we’ve got Dr. Demartini on the line again today. I love having Dr. Demartini on the line because he always got some great insights about life in general. He seems to be more of a philosopher than a coach, but he’s a success coach and he is a specialist in human behaviour.
Today, I wanted to talk to him about Jessica Watson, who was the young Australian girl, 16-year old girl, who sailed around the world on her own in a little boat called Ella, and she’s only just gotten back into Sydney Harbour. I’d like to talk to John just about success and achievement.
Hi, John. Thanks for coming on the show again.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, thank you.
JOHN PETROZZI: This young girl, Jessica, she amazed me. I watched her come in through the harbour and she had fanfare, she had a huge amount of people in boats waiting for her at the Opera House. She had the New South Wales Premier waiting for her. She had the Prime Minister waiting for her. What is it that gets people driven to achieve such success?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, I think that somewhere in their life, they either get a vision that inspires them by observing other people that touches a heartstring inside them, or awakens a hidden void in their life that they want to fulfill. But once they access what’s really most meaningful to them and what really truly inspires them, a surcharge of clarity and creativity emerges. In her case, obviously, she had a vision. I don’t know all the details but I’m sure she had a vision to be able to pull off such a feat. That is an inspiring feat.
JOHN PETROZZI: It is, isn’t it? Actually I’ve got here, I just wrote something out that she had said at her homecoming. She says, “I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m an ordinary girl who believed in her dream. You don’t have to be someone special or anything special to achieve something amazing. You just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard.”
So in terms of making yourself a dream, is it more to do with passion, or is it a desire, or is it a love of something, do you think?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, I would say that when something is truly inspired that is aligned and congruent with the highest values of an individual, they don’t let themselves down on it. They’re inspired from within; they don’t need outside motivation. They’re called from within to go do it.
Apparently, she was inspired by the idea of traveling around the world and sailing it. I don’t know all the details, but from interacting with people who have done such feats, they obviously got inspired by visions of other people’s actions and probably, a long-sought part of their own dream just from their own experience working on, obviously in her case, sailing.
So here’s a person that’s obviously, as she says, is an ordinary person. Obviously, that’s being humble, but that’s extraordinary.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah.
JOHN DEMARTINI: And I find that it’s true, that anybody who perseveres toward something that they never give up until they achieve things. I think that Albert Einstein said that perseverance is the greatest key to success. She never gave up on her dream and endured whatever obstacles and challenges. I would say when you have an immortal vision, nothing mortal interferes with it. When you have clarity, a human sovereign clarity, divine providence steps in to help you fulfill it.
Apparently, she is one of those individuals that trusted her heart, was willing to diligently pursue it, studied whatever was needed, trained in whatever was needed, and endured whatever obstacle was there to fulfil the mission.
JOHN PETROZZI: In terms of achieving such great feats like she did, you have to give a certain amount of control away, because she had quite a lot of preparation work to do for the trip. She had her parents on her side, they helped organize things, and she had sponsors. Can you give us some suggestions as to how they can let go a bit of control to allow things to grow bigger than we could actually imagine?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, there is a principle that says that any space and time that we don’t fill with high-priority things will get consumed by low-priority things. And any time we don’t concentrate on what we do best, the competitive advantage that we have, we get subsumed, if you will, by low-priority actions that hold us back from greatness.
It is wise to prioritise what we’re capable of doing and to enroll other people and delegate lower-priority things and engage other people in our cause so we can get on to doing what we’re most specialised and more capable of doing and allow other people who are specialist who are inspired by doing their part to catalyse a collective consciousness to create greater outcome than any one individual could do.
JOHN PETROZZI: And in terms of, you mentioned enrolling people in your vision, what’s the best way to get people involved in on the side?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, I believe that when somebody is inspired by something, they have an ability to articulate with an enthusiasm and a clarity that automatically enrolls. You know, I was in San Diego, California many years ago, and I ran into this lady at this place called [Swammies], which is a surf spot. This location is right beneath a centre called the Self-realization Fellowship Center, Yogi Nanda had initiated many, many years ago, who’s kind of a religious Eastern mystic.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yes.
JOHN DEMARTINI: And I asked her—she was in her 80s—what is it that initiated him to have over 1200 centres like this around the world? She said, “When you met him, you couldn’t help but want to participate in his dream. He was so inspiring and so clear, so vitalised by the possibilities of service to the world that you want to participate and bring your talents and your skills into the cause and initiate a greater momentum than any one individual could pull.”
I think that this woman endured the challenges of going around the world in a sailboat, obviously enrolled the hearts of thousands of people across the world who probably rallied and were living vicariously through her, and they did whatever they could to assist her in fulfiling it. Because everybody wants to achieve greatness, and when they see somebody do it, they rally around it because they want to bring that out of themselves.
JOHN PETROZZI: So do you think success has got more to do with a pure passion, or is it a burning desire, or is it love? Because they are all different, aren’t they?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, passion, by its true etymology, means to suffer. It means to be ungoverned and out of control. Now, today, the common vernacular, when we use the word “passion,” we think of somebody that’s driven to do something. But it also meant somebody who was striving for that which is unattainable. But I love the word “inspiration.” I think a person who is inspired by something and is willing to endure whatever obstacles along the way, is a better term for it, by the true etymology.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Because now they have the spirit within them to override the material obstacles that they experience. I think that is more lasting. I would say when you’re living according to your highest values, you’ll endure pain and pleasure in the pursuit. But when you’re not, you’ll go passionately after something momentarily and then burn out and only be transiently inspired or transiently moved.
So I would say that the power of inspiration exceeds all others. For some people, they call it a burning desire, but I think it’s just called a calling. It’s a calling from within. If we require any outside motivation to do the things that we’re to do, somehow we’re not tapped into what’s most meaningful, most important to our highest values in life.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah. Well, it takes me to actually another great point, which is, “How do we clarify what we want in life?”
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, if we look carefully what our life demonstrates, not necessarily what we verbalise, but what our life demonstrates. We are automatically dedicated to doing something—now, maybe being that couch potato watching TV—but whatever it is, there is a desire to do it and a love for doing it. And finding out what that is and looking what that is and organising your life in such a way that you can do what is most meaningful and inspiring to you is the secret of fulfilment.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Because anytime you subordinate to outer influences and try to be somebody you’re not, you’ve got the brake on, and you’ve got unrealistic expectations in yourself, that lets you up for self-defeat and even depression. So I always say, “Find out what’s truly inspiring to you and be willing to do what it takes to go after it and never give up on it.” This is the secret of a great achievement.
JOHN PETROZZI: Well, when it comes down to people who, I suppose, had a job which has been delegated to them from, let’s say, the person that inspires them, or their leader, how does that person do that job with a limited amount of motivation? How do they get inspired? What is it that inspires them to keep doing the work for somebody else?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, when I work with corporations—this is a daily thing that corporations have to do with employees that may not be inspired. But you see, nobody goes to work for the sake of the corporation. They only go to their work to fulfil whatever is highest on their values. So they’re not committed to a company; they’re committed to fulfil what’s meaningful to them.
If they can see how the job description and the vision of the company fulfils that, then they are what McGregor in 1960 called “Theory Y” people. They’re self-reliant, they’re disciplined, they’re focused, and they get great productivity done. But if they can’t see that, then they’re “Theory X” people. They need outside incentives and motivations just to keep them making mediocrity.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah.
JOHN DEMARTINI: So the key is to have an individual, who may not be inspired about their job, to ask the question—because the quality of our lives is based on the quality of questions we ask—to ask the question: How is whatever I’m doing, whatever job description I’m doing, how does this help me fulfill what is truly demonstrated to be most important in my life?
If we answer that question and keep answering that question, we develop links and bridges between our daily activities and our mission, what’s inspiring to us. All of a sudden, we now are going to work not because of the company; we’re going to work because we’re fulfilling what’s meaningful to us. This automatically emerges a greater creativity, innovation, productivity, loyalty, in a sense, a greater pride for the company.
So when I go into companies, I initiate this questioning process and elicit inside them an awareness of what they’re doing and how it fulfils them. Once they do, they don’t need outside motivation to go to work. They can’t wait to get up and go to work to do the work. And when they do, people can’t wait to get their service.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah. I did that workshop, Demartini Method. I did it a while ago, and I tend to use it a little bit with patients. Being a chiropractor, people come in, not just with aches and pains, as you know, but they come in for maintenance. I had this patient who’s in property development, a very, very successful guy, but he got quite down on the fact that he hadn’t deal with certain people that produced the massive roadblock for him. Through your Collapse Process, he was able to reframe that and figure out that he actually had some fantastic positives in those downsides, which allowed him to run his life the way that he chose.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, any time somebody sees challenge to their highest values more than support, they kind of withdraw, and their reactivating system shuts them down. If they don’t listen to their intuition and awaken that questioning inside themselves to see the blessings to balance it, they can be curtailed. To ask the proper question balances the mind and allows them to see the blessings in the crisis, the opportunities and the challenge, they automatically forge ahead again with inspiration.
I would say a balanced mind opens the heart, and when the heart is open, love and inspiration come out. Love in the heart and inspiration in the mind, and enthusiasm of the body. So whenever somebody stays with a thing that they label a crisis, the wise thing to do is to look for the other side of the equation and see the blessings. Once the blessing is equal to the crisis, they’re freed; they’re not in bondage to the misperception and they’re liberated into the activity that inspires them again.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah. I had a case study I want to talk to you about. I thought it would be nice for you to help me and help us rebalance a picture that I often come across. I got to see passionate environmentalists and advocates sort of becoming very, very vocal about protecting a certain species or something, but then I’ve seen them become quite depressed because they can’t get their message across to the greater population. And whether it’s the environmentalist or someone who’s got an inspiration or desire to achieve something, how can someone who becomes depressed start to work out of that sense of depression?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, depression is a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy or nonrealistic expectation that you’re hoping for. If it’s unrealistic and it’s not real, then you’re going to stay depressed. Depression is actually a feedback mechanism to our consciousness to set real goals, realistically.
So whenever somebody like a conservationist is running into resistance from people that they’re trying to convert, it’s wise to realise that if you project your values onto other people without considering their needs, their values, their priorities, you’re going to just bang your head against the wall.
So if a person is saying, “I want to raise money for the saving of an animal or something,” the people that have money are usually interested in making money and keeping money. So unless you can show them how saving the animal is going to help them make more money or assist them in their business in some way, they’re probably not going to listen too much. You got to make sure you find out what the other person’s needs are. Whenever you’re selling an idea or a product or service to anybody, they’re only going to buy it if it will fulfill their needs.
So when a conservationist has to go, which I’ve consulted with in many cases, to get funds, to get people involved in their cause, if they don’t consider the people that they’re asking from, they get nowhere. So they have to make sure that they don’t condemn the capitalistic endeavours that they sometimes condemn, but actually see that it is what they need also. Sometimes, it’s a representation of a disowned part of the individual, as I say.
So the wise thing to do is to always consider what other people’s values and needs are whenever you’re asking and requesting anything from them, because they’re only going to be receptive when they get their values met. People just want to be loved and appreciated for who they are. They want to fulfill their values. If you help them fulfill theirs, they’ll help you fulfill yours.
JOHN PETROZZI: So what are the best ways to figure out somebody else’s values? Proper listening, is that it?
JOHN DEMARTINI: You know, it’s like “To sell is not to tell. To sell is to ask questions.” So you got to ask questions what their needs are. To make presuppositions just because something is important to you that it’s important to other people is foolish. But to actually elicit from them by questioning—what are their needs, what are their concerns, what are their problems, what are their voids in life—is the first step.
Before you sell, there’s like seven or eight steps in selling. The first thing is to greet and introduce yourself. The second thing is to establish rapport; find some common thread that you have that you start to open up a dialogue with. The third thing is to establish a need; that means you have to ask questions to establish what their values and voids are and what is important to them or what they think they need in life. You can never sell until you got that.
Then the fourth step is to confirm that need. Never offer a service to somebody until you confirm the need that they have, because otherwise, you’re going to get a no, for sure. Then once you confirmed it, now you can offer a service, as long as it really truly fulfils a need, you can offer it; otherwise, you’re wasting your time. You’re going to get a guaranteed no.
Once you’ve offered that service, you can then close the deal and say, “Well, then, if this is what you want, can I be of service to do that?” you can then service the deal by doing the service, and then you can ask for referrals or ask for additional money or whatever it is you’re asking for.
But the key is to make sure that you’ve established a need before you ever offer service to people. Otherwise, you’re guaranteed to get no.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah. And asking or trying to elicit needs is as simple as saying, “What do you need?”
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, I would say it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re trying to do a sell, you just got to ask and establish what their challenges are, how their business is doing, are there any challenges or they feel that they’re reaching the potential that they want. You have to establish that.
But if you’re working with somebody in your family and you want to know what somebody’s values are, I have what I call “Dr. Demartini’s 12-Value Determinants” to help people do that. I look at how they fill their space, I look at how they spend their time, I look at how they spend their energy, what they spend their money on, I would know what they think about, I look at what they’re most organized in, I look at what they’re most disciplined at, I look at what they visualise or their dreams, I listen to what they say to themselves when they internally dialogue, I listen and pay close attention to what they talk to other people about, I look at what inspires them by their energy levels, and I look at what the goals that they keep working towards.
By looking at the common threads to those, and prioritising those, I get at least a feel for what’s really meaningful or what their life demonstrates as important. Because what they say may or may not match all those other variables, but what their life demonstrates is always the key.
JOHN PETROZZI: You read my mind, because that’s exactly what I want to talk about. This “filling space, time, thoughts, environment” was one of the things you spoke about a long time ago, which kind of clicked with me, because at that time, I wasn’t quite very clear on what I wanted to do. Going through that process of trying to figure out what it is that I should spend my time on, what I read, what I studied, and people I spoke to seem to make a lot of sense, in terms of trying to figure out what my values were and that hierarchy of values that you often talk about.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, you know, our life is demonstrating it, because every decision we make, consciously or unconsciously, is based on the hierarchy of our values, the set of priorities that we live our life by, the things that are most important and the least important. So all we have to do is watch people; their life demonstrates it.
You know, I spend pretty well full time researching, writing, travelling and teaching – four basic things I do. I do half a million miles in travel, I research and read books constantly, I’m writing books all the time, and I’m speaking fulltime. So if you look at my life, it’s kind of obvious what’s important.
So if you demonstrate it, it doesn’t matter what anybody says, if it doesn’t match with what they’re doing, something’s off. I’d go with what they’re doing.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah.
JOHN DEMARTINI: And if you look at my space right here, it’s got computer and research materials and books. So I think that’s pretty obvious what I’m up to. So if you look at what people do, their life speaks so loud that it overshadows anything else.
JOHN PETROZZI: How do you help someone who’s, say, on the streets and hasn’t got much going for them? What do you do in terms of helping someone get out of that, if it is indeed that’s what they want to do?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, first thing you want to do is make sure they want to get out of it. Because in their mind, the reason many of them are there is because they perceive that there’s more advantage than disadvantage being there than their options. Maybe they have learning problems, maybe they have education issues, maybe they don’t have confidence in themselves, maybe they’ve been in their mind wounded psychologically or something, or maybe they have difficulty holding jobs or they’re angry at authorities. I don’t know.
I’ve been down the streets when I was a teenager. The reason I was on the streets is because I dropped out of school. I couldn’t make it in school, and I want to surf. That was in the 60s, so I had reason there. Then when I had a reason to change it, I changed it. I went a different direction. I went on to be a scholar, I went on a different direction. But while I had that void to do it, I found it quite an experience, an adventure, and meet amazing people on the streets.
So people who are there, you want to first establish that they really want to leave there. You don’t want to presume that it’s what they want, because sometimes you try to help them away from what their real values are.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yup. I suppose, it takes me to another question, how do you make a judgement without being judgemental?
JOHN DEMARTINI: You don’t. Every human being has moments of judgement and moments of unconditional love, and whenever our values are supported or challenged, we’re going to make a judgement in our perceptions. Whenever we see things balanced, we’re judgeless. So our job is to ask questions to balance our mind to liberate ourselves from our judgements, but then the second we do, we get promoted to the next judgement. That’s our growth process.
So I think it’s unrealistic to expect yourself to never judge. I don’t know of anybody in the world that’s not judging something, except in moments when they have kind of a spirit of unconditional love. They have a moment of grace. But in those moments, they’re transient, and even the most illuminated spiritual leaders in the world only have moments of grace. Most of the time, they’re in their dualities and judgements, reacting to their outer world.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yeah, I can see that. In terms of family businesses—I remember what you once said—please correct me if I misquote you—you said, “Don’t work with family,” or it can be challenging to work with family. You got, I think, your daughter is now helping you out in the States as one of your PA’s?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Yeah, I have two of my daughters in my company.
JOHN PETROZZI: How’s it going?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, my daughter, Elena, is assisting me in schedules and itineraries and also hosting, working with hosts around the world. And then my daughter, [Brixia], is involved in product management sales. I mean, I never asked them to work there; they just want to work there. I said, “If you want to work there, you got to do just like anybody else, and you’re paid exactly what that job offers.” But they seem to have a desire to work there, so I said, “Great! As long as you produce; if you don’t produce, you’re out.” But that’s how it works, and they, so far, have been there.
I got a son also who’s a scholar at school. He’s head of the philosophy club there at a university in Texas, and it’s quite interesting to see him emerge. He sometimes writes dissertations and studies philosophers for me for research. So I guess I got my family kind of indirectly, even though I’m not always with them in physical. I’m certainly with them on Skype and interaction pretty well daily.
JOHN PETROZZI: And it takes me to the point you always said in the past that you’ve always got everything around you, and you’ve got a love for your family and your kids, yet they’re not there physically with you all the time, but you are actually in contact with them all the time.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, I didn’t say all the time. I mean, some days, the time zones don’t match where I can reach them. But either in email, we can send an email or Skype message, or sometimes, we get to have a Skype conversation. It’s interesting because of my travels and my distance, sometimes I think our relationship has been closer than many times people that are there every day. Because sometimes you’re there every day, you kind of take each other for granted. So there’s something unique about our dynamic that I’m blessed by. But you know, like I say, I’m grateful for what I got.
JOHN PETROZZI: Yup. You sure are. We’re almost out of time. Do you have any closing remarks for the listeners?
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, that whoever is listening, just know that whatever deep inside that is truly important to you and meaningful to you and inspiring to you, give yourself permission to go and bring that to the world. Don’t ever subordinate yourself of outer influences and let the world on the outside dictate your destiny.
I always say “When the voice and the vision on the inside is greater than all opinions on the outside, you begin to master your life.” Give yourself permission to do something extraordinary with the world. Deep inside, you have a desire to do so. Deep inside, you have a calling to contribute. So allow that to come out, even if it may take you weeks or months or years or decades to have that fulfiled. It’s better to work on something that inspires you than to go through life and miss it out. I’d rather shoot for the stars and reach just the sky, than have no guiding star to guide my life by. So give yourself permission to go for it and know that no matter what you’ve done or not done, it’s a journey, it’s a feedback mechanism, and you’re worthy of life.
JOHN PETROZZI: That’s great. Thanks, Dr. Demartini for your time again.
JOHN DEMARTINI: Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to share.
JOHN PETROZZI: It’s always great to have you on the line.
That was Dr. John Demartini. Just go to our website and there’ll be some more information about Dr. John’s causes and more information about his achievements and success.
Thanks for joining us today on Living Is Easy. To listen to this and other podcasts, go to www.livingiseasy.com.au. I’m John Petrozzi. Until next time, stay well and stay happy.
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