The Six Most Important Lessons I Learned At MIT: #3/6

In this talk (#3/6 in the series) we'll dive deep into a simple teaching I learned at MIT from martial arts - not the classroom! - that has helped me avoid many of the worst pitfalls and mistakes that can ruin your life: IF YOU DON'T DO ANYTHING STUPID, YOU PROBABLY WON'T GET HURT (It is ironic that I've often said I learned more valuable life lessons from my MIT Tae Kwon Do teacher than I did from the professors!)

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Brent Michael Phillips and welcome to our series on the six most important spiritual lessons I learned when I was at MIT.

So the lesson for today is a really interesting one because this is not something I learned from a class or a textbook or a professor.

I actually learned this in Taekwondo class and it was from my teacher Stee,

The same one I talked about the other day when I was talking about the MIT Blackjack Club.

He had been a member and I remember talking to him one day about going to a tournament and trying some of my new techniques and breaking boards and bricks.

And I said,

Hey Stee,

Can you please tell me how much I can do?

I want to do something awesome,

But I also don't want to hurt myself.

The advice he gave me was this,

And this is our lesson here.

If you don't do anything really stupid,

You probably won't get hurt.

So that's pretty straightforward,

Right?

Unfortunately,

I didn't always listen.

There were a few times when I was going to do crazy stuff in Taekwondo.

There was one time I was going to take a flying leap over a hedge and try to roll out of it.

There was one time I was going to try to break two bricks that I thought,

Hey,

That's probably not a good idea,

Right?

So it did save me some pain and injuries,

But I did not embody the lesson.

And this is truly what caused me to go bankrupt.

It's what caused me to lose my two multimillion dollar software companies in the nineties.

And if you know my story,

I've suffered million dollar or more losses twice in my life,

Once with the software companies,

And then from an investment scam.

How did it happen?

Pretty simple.

The reason we do incredibly stupid things is out of arrogance,

Out of blindness,

And nearly always it's because we think we know better.

We think we're too good.

We think we're too advanced.

And so when I got bankrupted,

The reason was simple.

I got sucked into an investment scam and honestly,

I should have known better.

What happened was I had a good friend of mine that I'd met through energy healing,

And he was really into investments too.

He was a mortgage broker and he had found out about this investment group that a guy was running and he got invited in and he convinced me to put in all my money.

He went and took a second mortgage on his house and drained all his investment accounts and bank account and put in the money and convinced me to do the same.

And I thought,

Hey,

Let me hire a private investigator.

Let me research into this guy.

And he talked me out of it.

Instead,

He said,

Brent,

Let's just muscle test it.

So what does that have to do with this?

Well,

Here's the thing.

The reason I got scammed,

The reason I lost everything and went bankrupt just ahead of my 40th birthday was simple.

I thought I knew better.

I thought I was too smart.

I thought that I was too educated,

That I couldn't fall for that kind of thing.

I was wrong.

All of us have blind spots.

All of us get blinded by our internal mythology.

Our traumas,

Our blocks,

Our fears rise up and prevent us from seeing the truth.

I had actually said to my friend,

Hey,

Let's hire a private investigator.

He said,

No,

Let's just do muscle testing.

And I was like,

Oh,

Yeah,

That's brilliant.

Well,

I was misusing it,

But I didn't know it at the time.

And here's what happened.

I had learned through energy healing that you can do muscle testing to check beliefs in the subconscious.

And it's really good for that.

A lot of naturopaths and chiropractors and healers use it to pick supplements or foods.

Why?

The body tells the truth.

So I figured,

Hey,

We don't have to go do an investigation.

We don't have to hire a private detective.

Let's just do surrogate muscle testing.

That's when you use your own body to surrogate for someone else's subconscious.

And it actually works.

Why?

Because we're all one,

But more on that later.

So long story short,

We got together and I ran a bunch of muscle tests on him and convinced myself that this was a real investment opportunity.

It wasn't a scam.

Then we did a bunch of surrogate testing on the guy running the investment group and all the results came back telling us this was legitimate,

This was real.

But it was wrong.

Why?

Here's what we missed.

Muscle testing will only tell you what someone's beliefs are.

They're not an indicator of perfect truth.

And so both my friend and the guy running the investment circle really believed in what they were doing.

Neither of them believed that what they're doing was a scam.

It was actually a Ponzi scheme,

But that's the subtle point.

I thought I knew better.

I thought I was using this great metaphysical technique to give me an edge,

But I was wrong.

It was a Ponzi scheme.

And here's a subtle point.

If someone tells you something that's false,

But they really believe it,

It'll muscle test is true to them.

That's what tripped me up.

Now,

Don't worry about the details of muscle testing.

I'm just using that as an example.

What happened was I got blinded by my arrogance.

I thought I knew better.

And so I went and did something really stupid and it ruined my life.

There were similar reasons how I ended up losing both of the software companies I had founded back in the nineties.

Both the website company and the game company.

I had founded and built up two multi-million dollar software companies on my talent with my blood,

Sweat,

And tears.

And I did stupid things and they were both taken from me by my lifelong best friend.

And I don't want this to happen to you.

So of course,

You have to be really careful with who you trust.

But more importantly,

Just understand that we all have huge blind spots and it's all based on what's in your subconscious.

All of us are subject to greed.

All of us are subject to FOMO,

Which is known as the fear of missing out.

So what do we do?

Well,

How do we avoid doing really stupid things?

It's pretty simple.

First,

Accept that we all have giant blind spots created by our own personal internal mythology.

One of the things my late mentor would say frequently,

So powerful is this,

When you are at the effect of a story or mythology,

It will be invisible to you.

In other words,

We all think we're being clever.

We all think we're being logical.

We all think we're doing the right thing in the right way,

Even when we're not.

It's very similar to one of the great lessons I pulled from Neil Donald Walsh,

Where he says that everything everyone does,

At the moment they do it,

They believe is the right thing.

So just know that no matter how convinced you are of how right you are,

How clever you are,

Of how smart you are,

We all have blind spots.

So how do we account for that?

Well,

There's two really powerful ways.

One is ask for help.

Enroll other people.

Ask your friends,

Ask your family,

Ask experts,

Hire consultants,

Hire coaches,

Hire healers.

They can see things that you don't.

They're looking at the situation through a different lens.

They're not applying the same distorted beliefs and mythologies that you are.

Not that they're necessarily better,

They just have differently distorted beliefs and biases based on their internal personal mythology.

When we do the movement feedback holography,

One of the fascinating things that happens is a lot of the time,

It's easier to read the energy on the video than it is looking at someone live.

And that seems crazy,

Right?

There's a reason for that.

A camera has no agenda.

A camera simply captures the light that comes in.

It doesn't judge it.

It doesn't filter it.

There's no bias or prejudice.

It simply captures the light and then replays it later.

So sometimes by getting feedback from others,

Especially if you put it on video,

You can see what's really going on.

And that's one of the foundations of the modality of the movement feedback holography I learned from my late mentor.

That's part of the reason it's so powerful.

It lets you see what's really going on.

As one example,

I remember through most of my childhood and my life as a young man,

I had a lot of people tell me,

Hey,

Brent,

You're a great guy in a lot of ways,

But you're so arrogant.

You're such an arrogant prick sometimes.

And honestly,

I didn't see it,

Not at all.

I was confused.

I did not see it at all.

And then I did a slack line one day with my mentor,

Which is where you go down and walk on a tight rope and video record it.

And we were watching the recording and I saw it for the first time.

I was like,

Oh my gosh,

I had this incredibly arrogant look on my face.

I wanted to reach out and punch myself in the face on the video.

And I got it.

Why?

I had an objective perspective.

I had people tell me it was there and then engage in a process where I could see it for myself.

So that's a lot of the more advanced work we do with the movement feedback holography and the quantum field entrainment is learning how to turn up the energy to see what's really going on in your life.

The second thing we can do to get past these stupid mistakes is to learn how to tap into your intuition.

This is really important.

So here's how it is with life.

None of us is smart enough or has enough knowledge to come up with a perfect algorithm for life.

There is no flow chart or AI program that's always going to make the best decision for you in each circumstance.

So we need to learn to tap into our intuition.

And one of the reasons I made so many bad decisions as a young man,

I pissed away a million dollars plus,

Not once,

Not twice,

But three times.

Twice with my software companies and then once with this investment scam.

Why did I do that?

I was totally stuck in my head.

I was not nearly as clever and smart as I thought I was though.

I did not have any ability to receive my intuitive guidance in the way that I really needed.

So I was blinded by my own mythology.

I was blinded by my own fears,

My own traumas,

My own biases,

But I didn't think I was.

That's the point.

When you learn to tap into your intuition,

It's like a double check on everything you do in your life.

And here's the thing,

Don't think that intuition is incompatible with rational thinking.

It's not.

One of the crazy things I've learned is that all the greatest scientists in our world,

They weren't just really smart,

They knew how to tap into their intuition.

So for every scientist you've heard of,

Tesla,

Newton,

Einstein,

Etc.

,

There's thousands or millions you've never heard of.

Now those people you haven't heard of,

They're not necessarily dumb,

They're not lazy,

But they haven't combined their rational mind with their intuition.

That's what makes even a scientist great,

Is this combination of rational thought and intuition.

This is similar to what I talked about earlier in this series on balance.

We got to get both sides of the brain working,

People,

If you really want to surge ahead in life.

So you have to tap into that intuition.

And I remember looking back on my life when I was learning energy healing and realizing,

Okay,

The reason I did so well in school and accomplished so much in engineering wasn't just because I was really smart or worked hard.

It's because I had some intuitive connection to the laws of the universe,

That I had this ability to look at something and have a sense of how to make it work,

How to build it.

And it's funny,

When I had my software companies back in the 90s,

I actually had a reputation as being brilliant with software and design and the engineering,

But I was a bad manager.

Why?

Because people would come to me,

My employees,

With problems that go,

Hey,

Brent,

How do I solve this?

And I get annoyed with them.

I'm like,

What's wrong with you?

How do you not just know how to solve this?

I'm like,

You do this,

This,

And this.

Here's a book.

And that ticked people off.

So here's the thing,

We all need to develop that intuition.

And we all have a natural talent for it in one area of life.

Mine is around engineering,

The laws of the universe,

But I did not know how to tap into it in terms of reading people,

In terms of reading energy,

A feeling of something was good or bad for me.

And we need to do this.

And some of you may be the opposite.

You may have great intuition around people,

But terrible intuition around electronics or mechanics or engineering or technical stuff.

So that's all I got to say for today.

Please take this lesson seriously.

It seems so simple,

But this is life-changing.

This could prevent you from making life-wrecking mistakes.

If you don't do anything really stupid,

You probably won't get hurt.

I'm Brent Michael Phillips signing off for now,

And I hope to see you very soon,

Maybe in one of my live events.

Until then,

Take care and namaste.