If you then prioritize your life and allow yourself to go after what’s most important, most meaningful, most inspiring, most fulfilling and learn the art of doing that in a way that serves people so you can be remunerated to do what you love. And then learn the art of delegating the lower party things that devalue you. Because anytime you do something lower on your values, you devalue yourself. Anytime you do something high in your values, you value yourself. Mhm. Your confidence, your belief in yourself will go up because you’ll be disciplined, reliable, and focused in the highest. You’ll procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate in the lowest. So, if they’re having difficulty, this is Wake Up with Marcy, a space for honest conversations about healing, recovery, and women’s wellness. I’m Marcy Hopkins. Take a breath. You’re safe here. Let’s begin.
Hello all and welcome back to Wake Up with Marcy where we have real conversations, ignite radical healing, and wake up to our worth. I’m Marcy Hopkins. I’m your host, and I am so grateful that you are here today with me and my amazing guest. I am honored to sit down with one of the most respected voices in human behavior and personal transformation and that is Dr. John D. Martini. Dr. Martini is a world-renowned human behavior specialist, educator, and the creator of the D. Martini method, a powerful tool to shift perception, dissolve emotional baggage, and align your life with what truly matters. We’re going to explore what keeps us stuck, how to reclaim our purpose, and the importance of knowing our true values. If you’re ready to stop living according to someone else’s expectations, and finally wake up to your worth, this conversation is for you. So, Dr. Debariti, thank you so much for being on Wake Up. Thank you for having me.
So, we were just talking a little bit. You’re there in Houston, Texas, which is where I am from. And is it is it a little cool there right now? It’s actually pleasant right now. It’s uh quite it’s warmed up quite a bit. I I’m not sure what the temperatures. I haven’t been out yet today, but I would say probably mild. Mild, not cold. Not cold here, which is good because for all those out there that don’t know, Houston, Texas gets extremely hot. Like it gets to a place where you can’t even breathe. Yeah. You don’t have to have a skillet. You just put your egg out on the street and it’s taken care of. put it on the street or the car, you know, either way. You said on the hood or the car.
Well, listen, I want to jump into this because we are going to talk about something that’s very important, but I want to talk a little bit about your personal story because it’s incredibly powerful. Can you take us back to the moment with what what sparked this journey for you? a journey of self-discovery and once you started discovering yourself and what was important to you, what shifted for you internally? Well, when I was born, I had an arm and leg deformity and I had to wear braces at about a year and a half to about four. And the constriction that constriction made me want to be free, which is probably why I travel and lived globally. Yeah, that’s incredible. Yeah. I also had a speech impediment and about one and a half years old, I was going and putting strings and buttons in my mouth and doing all these exercises to try to make sounds properly. Mhm. And I did have a speech impediment. Mhm. And that when when I went into school at age five and six, that became very evident. And then I found out I had dyslexia and I wasn’t able to read and make sense out of words and I would put things in reverse and things. So I was told by my first grade teacher in front of my parents that I’m afraid your son’s never going to be able to read, not ever going to be able to write properly because I had I had my I wrote kind of backwards and um probably not go very far, not amount, not you know become something. So just face that. So that was the perfect void for me. Yeah. Because today I read, I write, I full-time travel. I’ve become very fortunate financially and uh I’ve spoken to billions of people and you’re saving lives. I mean, you are changing lives. Some people would debate that, but that’s but the reality is that that that void I wish I could give my arms around that lovely teacher that made that statement because that became the void that became later 10 years later a very important drive.
So I ended up asking kids in the school questions. What did you get out of that class? What did you get out of that book? And I learned to ask questions. And if people told me things, I can attain a bit. So my strategy was to befriend people and I learned questions. I’m known for my questions today. Yeah. Perfect. You got curious. You got curious. Yeah. Anything you can’t say thank you for in life is a baggage. Anything you can say thank you for is fuel. So these challenges were actually opportunities that some I didn’t discover immediately. Some later I did. Mhm. I ended up moving from Houston, Texas to Richmond, Texas, which used to be in the country. Yeah. And um went to a small town in Richmond, lived in the country, and there was kind of a low soioeconomic area where I was. And I didn’t have a bunch of smart kids to ask questions to when I went there. I started failing, and I ended up dropping out of school. So, I left home at 13. Wow. and went to Freeport, Texas to surf. Yeah. That wasn’t the surf capital of the planet. You had to have a storm to do surf there. Yeah. So, at 14, I hitchhiked to California and down into Mexico with my surfboard. 15, I moved over to the north shore of Aahu and lived under a park bench and under a bridge and whatever I could as a, you know, teenager. I just wanted to surf. I ended up being big wave rider. got in three movies and surf magazines and books and stuff like that. Did pretty big big waves, 40 foot waves and then I nearly died. And in the recovery of that process, yeah, I was led to a a little health food store and then a yoga class and that’s where I had a guest speaker named Paul Bragg acids and he was a guest speaker there and in one night this one man in one hour with one little message really got to me and what he said made me believe that maybe just maybe I can someday they become intelligent. Maybe I could learn to read. Maybe I could learn to, you know, be not just a surfer. Not not that a surfer wasn’t intelligent. You didn’t make a lot of money as a surfer then. Now they make good money now. Yeah, they do. Yeah. But I saw a new possibility for me November 18th, 1972 when I was 17, just about to turn 18. And he basically guided us through this guided imagery experience. And I saw myself speaking in front of this big crowd. Wow. And and I was like, whoa, that’s not what I I had no idea that was going to pop in my head. Right. That that has been painted and it sits in my office. It’s a 5×4 foot painting today. Wow. But that started me on a journey to want to go and see if I could overcome the reading problems and speaking speech problems. I eventually flew back to California and hitchhiked back to Texas. I took a GED because I dropped out. I said something that Paul Bragg told me to say to myself every single day that he said it would help me. What was that? He said, “I am a genius and I apply my wisdom.” Now, that was the farthest thing from my mind, but that’s what he told me to say. So, I’ve never missed a day since. Yeah. And I miraculously, that’s all I can describe is I passed this test. Yeah. Guessing I closed my eyes. I said, “I’m a genius and I plum wisdom. I just went with my intuition and dotted in a dot, right? And I passed this test. Wow. And what that do for you? Wow. I felt like there was some sort of higher something going on guiding us. Yeah. So then I decided, my parents said, “Well, now that you’ve got your high school equivalency test, GED, why don’t you consider until the surf comes up in October, why don’t you consider taking a class in college, Wharton Junior College? Maybe. You know where that is? Yeah. Yeah. So, I went to Wharton Junior College and I tried to take a class on English and history. Mhm. And I didn’t know how to take notes. I wasn’t up to date with things. Sure. I went in there and I thought the same miraculous thing was going to happen again. And I got the test results on the first test and it was a 27. Yeah. And I looked my name. I thought it was going to be alphabetical and I just kept looking. I didn’t see my name. It was It was the the at the bottom. Yeah. way down there, this big gap between people at 75 and 27. And uh so I ran to my car crying. Mhm. Because this I was on a momentum direction of thinking I was going to someday overcome these things, right? And then I got that and I really had a sulking moment. I ran to my car and I cried in my car driving home. I curled up in a fetal position under this Bible stand that my mom had in the living room at the house. Yeah. and just was trying to grasp the idea that maybe that was a delusion and maybe I better go back to surfing. At least I can stand up on the surfboard pretty good. Yeah. And my mom came home from shopping. Yeah. And she saw me crying on the floor and she hadn’t seen me cry since I was a kid. She said, “Tom, what happened? What’s wrong?” I said, “Mom, I blew the test. I guess I don’t have what it takes. I guess I won’t be able to read or write or communicate or mount anything or go over very far. I repeated the first grade teacher. Yeah. And she paused. Mhm. And she put her hand on my shoulder and she said, “Son, whether you become a great teacher and travel the world like you dream, whether you go back and ride big waves and surf on the Northshore or whether you go back onto the streets and panhandle as a bum, which I had to do as a kid.” Yeah. I just want to let you know your father and I are going to love you no matter what. When she said that, my hand went into this fist and I looked up and I saw that image I saw the night with Paul Bragg standing in front of a group of people and I said to myself, I’m going to mask this thing called reading and studying and learning. I’m going to mask this thing called teaching and healing and philosophy. And I’m going to do whatever it takes. I’m going to travel whatever distance. I’m going to pay whatever price to give my service of love across the planet. I’m not going to let any human being on the face of the planet, not even myself interfere with this. Now, I went to hug my mom. I went into the room, my my bedroom. I got a Funkin Wagnel’s dictionary out. Yeah. And I made a commitment to memorize the dictionary. Wow. So, I Uhhuh. I took 30 words a day. Okay. And I wrote the word out. Uhhuh. 20 times. I pronounced it 20 times. I put it in 20 times to give meaning to it. And I recited it and memorized those 20 words every day. And my mom would test me on those words every night. The next day, the next 20 words. So my vocabulary grew 20,000 words in two years. Amazing. Yeah. And I went from the bottom of the class to the very top of the class. Amazing. It’s incredible. I realize that the labels that people give may not be the the final story and they may be the v the very catalyst that’s needed to give you something amazing in your life. It’s not a mistake. It’s on the way, not in the way. So today, the very things that I do are the things I was told I wouldn’t be able to do. And not something supernatural. It was a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. And and what a powerful story. Very touching. and you have done everything that you’ve put your mind to.
And I want to go back. There’s a lot that I’d love to unpack from that story and how others can gain from your story. The first is our words matter so much. The impact of what we say can form the opinion of any child in how they think about themselves. Absolutely. And you know that is the most vital time in our lives because that is when we are forming the thoughts about ourselves, our story, our identity. So, let’s just say there is someone right now that that’s struggling with that that same voice inside themselves that they were told that they would never amount to anything, they would never be enough. How can they start to recognize that they do have that power in themselves to reshift that story for themselves? Well, every human being, regardless of gender or culture or age, has a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most least important in their life that are fingerprint specific to them. And whatever is highest on that list of values, they spontaneously act and inspired to act on it. Whatever is lower on that values, they require external motivation to keep them acting on it. Mhm. If they discover what those values are and I I’m going to let people know that on my website drdartine.com there is a free value determination process for anybody. Millions of people have used it. Yeah. Please consider it because it can help you determine what that priority may be. If you then prioritize your life and allow yourself to go after what’s most important, most meaningful, most inspiring, most fulfilling, and learn the art of doing that in a way that serves people so you can be remunerated to do what you love. And then learn the art of delegating the lower part of things that devalue you. Because anytime you do something lower on your values, you deval yourself. Anytime you do something high on your values, you value yourself. Mhm. Your confidence, your belief in yourself will go up because you’ll be disciplined, reliable, and focused in the highest. You’ll procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate in the lowest. So, if they’re having difficulty putting a a statement together that matches what is truly most important, creating a visual image of what that really looks like, as Michael Phelps got 20 something medals doing, articulating that and surrounding yourself with resources and people that can help you fulfill that and putting executive strategies together and take action steps every day towards that just increases the probability and odds that if you never give up, it’s yours.
Right. But do you think sometimes the things that we really want, we put lower on our list because we are afraid or fearful of it? Yes. We have the fear of not knowing enough. We have the fear of failing at it, not succeeding at it. We have the fear of losing money at it, not making money at it. We have the fear of, you know, our loved ones won’t understand or respect us for doing it. We have the fear of rejection. We have the fear of ill health, dise disease or not having the beauty to fold it up, pull it off. We have the fear of breaking some morals and ethics or some spiritual authority that that we hold on to. And these immobilize us and when we do, we subordinate to people that we admire, inject other values and cloud us even further. Yeah. And then we try to be second at being somebody else instead of first at being ourselves. And we try to live in a shadow instead of stand on our shoulder. So yeah, giving ourselves permission to do that and uh taking incremental baby steps that you know it’s the little bitty steps on a daily basis. Yeah, if I would have just done two words a day, I still would have accomplished it. It would just take longer or even one word a day. But if it’s a little incremental baby step every state every day, a big dream is yours. It’s just a matter of staying with it. perseverance and if it’s not important enough to stay with it, it’s not really important to you. Well, I always talk about these little micro shifts, right? These little baby steps like you’re talking about to create the change and and you may not see it right away, but if you stay with it, it will happen. And and it we we’re wired a certain way. It’s going to take quite a while for us to change that wiring, right? And neuroplasticity actually occurs pretty rapidly, but the momentum that building behaviors can take a time.
Can I share something one more thing about it about what people say? Yeah. About a year into almost a year after I met Paul Bragg, when I was in school and my vocabulary was growing and I was starting to rise in the class, I started having students asked me to tutor them, which was a dream come true. Yeah. And they they there was about 17 people that came in the library and gathered around and pulled up chairs around the table. And now I’m having the opportunity to to share and tutor what I’m learning because I was rising in the class. And as I was answering questions, I heard this one guy whisper to this other guy. He said that that dang D. Martini, he’s a freaking genius. Wow. And when I heard that, I couldn’t help it. I cried. Yeah. Because Paul Bragg said to me, “If you say this statement every single day and never miss a day for the rest of your life, which I’ve never missed a day.” Yeah. Sooner or later, the cells of your body will tingle with it and so will the world. So that night, I thought if that statement is already having some sort of impact, I wonder what would happen if I was to write out hundreds or thousands of statements of exactly how I want my life. Yeah. So, I have probably the largest collection of internal dialogues of anybody I’ve ever met. I wrote out a 26page non-stop phrase or sentence system that night and I started reading that every single day and memorizing it. About 99% of that is my reality today.
Well, so let’s talk about that because that brings me to affirmations, right? And and a lot of people don’t believe in affirmations or they don’t realize the power of of the words that you are telling yourself and like you may not believe it at first but then you say it enough until you feel it within your body and you start to see those things shift or feel those things shift and then life begins to change. Can you share with us what’s happening with the words that you’re saying or these affirmations? I think that if you make up an affirmation that defies the laws of the universe and it’s fantasy and it’s not really congruent with what your highest values are, you’re probably going to feel defeated and it’s not going to manifest because it’s delusional. But if you set up a statement that is congruent, that does have a strategy, uh that is you’re willing to take the actions on, really is meaningful. Yeah. What it does is it makes your mind concentrate on that and focus on that instead of all the distractions. If you don’t fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, your day fills up with low priority distractions that don’t. That’s Parkinson’s law. If you don’t uh concentrate on how you want it, it and don’t plant flowers in the garden of your mind, you’re going to be pulling weeds. So, what it does is it plants a flower and when the flower is planted and nurtured and focused on, the weeds don’t have a place to grow and you end up with a beautiful bouquet of opportunity. So, yeah, it’s it’s about concentrating on that. And if it’s truly intentful and really meaningful to you, the pulvinar nuclei in the phalamus, which is a subcortical area, filters out of your reality, out of your sense of reality, whatever matches that and you spot them in the environment and you see these synchronicities and you access the resources, the people, places, things, ideas, and events that make that more probable. And so it’s increasing. It’s like people who read a goal have a higher probability of making that goal come true than people that are never even writing it. A short pencil is better than a long memory. In other words, yeah. So, I’m a firm believer that that you might as well use those subtle daily tools to your advantage and concentrate how you want it instead of focusing on down. But don’t set up fantasies. There are people that set up fantasies. I I’ll give an example. I had a lady that when the secret came out many years ago, 20 years ago, yeah. A lady came up to me and she said, “Dr. D. Martini, I I need your help. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I read the book six times, The Secret, and I watched the movie 20 times. And every day I go out to the mailbox and I’m expecting a million dollar check, and it just doesn’t happen.” Oh, and I said I said, ‘Well, what might increase the probability of that is doing something that’s worth a million dollars to people so you have a opportunity to earn a million dollars. Yeah. Or hope that you’ve got an uncle or aunt that’s about to pass or something. But these are improbable fantasies. My experience is if you want to become, you know, financially more viable, consider doing the action steps of service to provide a value to somebody that increases that. Just going out to the mailbox, I might go there for the next 20 years and not find a million dollar check in it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I sometimes people set up fantasies and they they they want the dopamine fixed from the fantasy instead of something truly meaningful that they’re willing to do what it takes to to something very meaningful and keeps you grounded in your reality in probability. You want probability in your favor. Yeah.
So, we’ve spoken about this and and I really want people to hear about this because we we stay stuck in a story that we keep telling ourselves. And what I’ve heard also is, and I’ve had to do this, is quieting the chaos so I could change and heal from all of the things that I had to to heal from. So, we create all of these distractions so we can stay stuck in that story. So, how can we begin to change the chaos, stop the distractions, and reframe the narrative, right? The story we’re telling ourselves. First of all, chaos or disorder sometimes called according to information theory is missing information. That’s what it’s called, missing information. Okay? which in yian psychology is called the unconscious, your unconscious information. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re a a young man or young woman and you meet somebody that’s very attractive and you’re a little infatuated at first and you’re conscious of the upsides, but you’re have a disconfirmation bias on the negatives and you’re you’re not aware of them. So, you’re infatuated. You got the dopamine rushing and the oxytocin going and you, you know, you’re fantasizing when you’re sleeping at night and they’re occupying space and time your mind and you’re having intrusive thoughts, fantasizing where this is going to go. You’re unconscious of the downsides that are inevitably going to surface over the next six months. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, as a result of that, you’re missing information. And now you’re distracted by an impulse of immediate gratification and fantasy. If you meet somebody that you dislike that reminds you of some past wound and I don’t trust that person. I don’t I I don’t like that person. Now you’re conscious of the downside and and unconscious of the upside. Now you have that occupying space and time your mind with intrusive thoughts. Both of them cause insomnia. Nightmare or fantasy. Yeah. And so the chaos is incomplete awareness. It’s missing information. Because when you get to know somebody in every relationship, they have things you like and dislike. You’re not gonna be positive, not negative. Yeah. When you get to know your enemy, you’re going to find out that they’re also a teacher to you. They’re teaching you what you haven’t loved in yourself and are too proud to admit it. And so, you’re going to discover that they’re actually catalyst for your independence and your pursuits and your autonomy and your individuality and non-conformity. So once you see both sides, you feel love for them and you feel poised and the chaos isn’t there. So now you can have the wisdom of the ages with the aging process and learn slowly. Yeah. Trial and error or you can ask quality questions. What is the downside to that person? You know I I I had a girl recently that came to my seminar and the breakthrough experience and she said I found that one. We have the same number of arms, the same number of legs, the some number of eyes, the same number of teeth. We must be soulmates. And I said, you might want to ask, what are the differences? What are the drawbacks? What are the downsides? Because right now, you’ve lost your identity. You’re subordinating to him. You’re living in a fantasy. And you’re going to fear the loss of him. You’re going to be devastated when he doesn’t match your fantasy. Mhm. So the wisdom is to ask what is the downside to calm that down so you don’t lose yourself in this fantasy or what is the upside to the thing you’re resenting? If you ask those questions and balance the equation, you restabilize yourself and you don’t have the chaos, the missing information. You now have the hidden order that was there the whole time but it was hidden from your awareness. So that’s the quality of your life is based on the questions to make you accountable to see what you’re overlooking because really truthfully I’m not a nice person or a mean person. I’m a human being with a set of values. You support them. I can be nice as a pussycat. You challenge them. I can be mean as a tiger. I’m both sides. I People come up to me and think I’m nice or mean. I I’m all that. I don’t need to get rid of half of it either. I’m okay with all that. So that’s one.
Then the other thing is how do you reframe it? That’s simply asking a question and holding yourself accountable to look for what you’re overlooking and become cognizant of that. Now a meditation sometimes can help you see it. Breathing can help you see it. There’s many things and tools that are out there that can help you do it. You can have an affirmation that says, “I am objective. I see both sides of people before I react.” You can make statements to remind you to do that. All these things are useful tools, but ultimately anything that you have an imbalanced ratio perception on is going to occupy space and time and mind. It’s going to run you and you’re going to be externally driven instead of internally called. As long as you do that and you’ve created the chaos because of your it’s not because of what happened out there or who those people are. It’s your perception of it and the expectations you had about those people. If you expect them to only be one side and not both sides, you’re gonna have an unrealistic expectation. You’re gonna imagine that they’re worse than what you actually are in front of because you have an fantasy expectation about it. So the expectations and perceptions can be altered by the the questions we ask to make us conscious of what we’ve been unconscious of. So on a on a cognitive level, we can do that. On a meditation level, we can meditate and get beyond our reaction, go into executive level instead of the primary amydala level and start to see more objectively this wholeness of this individual. But ultimately, whatever we’re judging out there is a part of us. It’s our projections. So, we have to have to be accountable for those projections. Otherwise, we’re going to be caught in blame and credit cycles, right? This little demon over here. And I I love this little angel over here. And we’re caught in this dissociation state. I believe that a lot of times you are a mirror of things. Yeah. That they see in themselves. And and that’s when they like put up the walls and they make the judgments. They’re too proud or too humble to admit what they see in others inside themselves. And that’s that’s where the chaos is. Yeah.
But like for me and in like that story though, I completely understand about asking the questions and and missing information, but like let’s say I’ll use myself as an example. If you have and I and I I was listening to some of your videos to be clear on like don’t just say I have trauma, right? But there was sexual abuse, there was inappropriate touching, there was abandonment. My mother in my eyes as a little girl chose men over me and my father never chose to show up and there was a lot of anger by my grandfather within the home. So I had a lot that I was coping with at a very young age and I began to use alcohol. I started mirroring what my mother was doing, drinking and using alcohol to cope. I found that escape there and then I also lived in this victimhood for the very the longest time, right? So not seeing my part in it, not seeing how I was creating these negative relationships within my atmosphere, right? Because it was always their fault, right? So, and I know that that’s a lot of what you’re saying, right? like be that awareness and right and asking the right questions of yourself but how do you if that is something that you’ve gone through like that now through my books and the work I’ve done that is something that happened to me it doesn’t define me I don’t it doesn’t hold on to me the way that it used to right but there are a lot of people out there they’re still trapped they’re still trapped so how can they begin to help themselves and and get unstuck and rewrite that story. Can I share some stories around that? Yes, please. Okay. So, I was in Florida teaching the breakthrough experience, which I’ve done 1,256 times. I’ve done it a bit. What was it called? The Breakthrough Experience. Uhhuh. And there was a lovely lady, I think she was 39, who came in with a narrative. My mom abandoned me. Yeah. I said, ‘Okay.’ And she wanted to run the story, just keep running the story and run the story. And she’d been going to a therapist since four, 35 years. And much of the story was the therapist’s language. So, it was a narrative that they I guess the therapist got paid by somebody to to keep going. So, I asked her a question because I I crack narratives pretty good. And I said, “Let’s go through and identify what you think you missed out on because your mom wasn’t there. and she said guidance and physical attention and affection and we listed about I think nine different items that she believed she didn’t get great after we listed that I asked her a simple question when the window shuts the door opens so who provided you guidance nobody I said you answered that in 100th of a second without even deeply looking or reflecting let’s look again Yeah. So truly a life emerged to give you guidance. And finally she said my aunt. Great. Who else? My grandmother bit. Okay. Who else? My best friend’s teacher. Another best friend. No. Best friend’s mother. Another best friend’s mother and a teacher. Yeah. I said, “So the quantity of what you thought you didn’t get from your mom, you can account for?” She goes, “Yeah.” Okay, great. What’s the benefit of their providing it? those individuals providing it. Let’s go to your aunt. What was the benefit of that? I learned a second language. She had more income and higher means to allow me to go places, do things, take vacations, etc. And we stacked up a bunch of benefits. So, she got a little tear in the eye. Yeah. I said, “What’s the benefit of the teacher being there?” Well, I got kind of special attention and it really helped me do well in school. And what was the best friend’s mother? I got to be hugged and cuddled at night and thought I was special. I got everything that I was wanting from my mom. I said, ‘Great. So, can you see that what you thought was missing wasn’t missing? Yeah. At the level of the soul, nothing’s missing. At the level of the senses, things appear to be missing. And the reason they appear to be missing is because we’re too proud or too humble to admit what we see in others inside us. And we project our values onto others and expect them to live in our values. So a child has a set of values and expects mommy to live in those values, but the mommy may have business and have to make money because there’s no father. There’s many other things that the child’s not ready to see. Yeah. Then I asked her the question, if your mother had provided that, what would be the drawback? Because even the traits that we like about people become the pecadillas that we also get frustrated by. Sometimes you get a man that’s intelligent, he’ll argue with you. Get a man that’s good-looking, there’ll be lots of girls around him. There’s always something that goes with it. Yeah. So, what would be the downside of your mom if she had done that? At first, she said, “There would be none.” I said, “Well, then that’s a fantasy.” A fantasy is a negative, a positive without a negative. What exactly would be the downsides? And she paused and then she stared and then she cried. I said, “What is it?” And she said something my aunt said to me when I was four that right now has meaning that I couldn’t hear and refuse to hear and cut it out of my mind. I said what is it? She said my mother had bipolar condition. My mother right before I turned four put me in a bath, told me to take a bath, put on the water, didn’t regulate it, and got hotter and hotter and hotter and I got scalded. Oh god. Not burned but just scalded. Yeah. Yeah. And I almost drowned in the water. Mhm. And she came back and found me and freaked out and said to her sister, “Because of my condition, I almost killed my daughter. I am not worthy or capable of handling this child. Please help me.” Yeah. So she didn’t abandon. She cared enough to provide a better opportunity than what she could provide. So that was all obliterated out of her mind in that story. Now everybody’s story is different, but that story. So then all of a sudden she went, I’m not less. I’m not a reject. I’m not a nobody. I had a mom that cared enough about me to give me an opportunity that she couldn’t provide. My mom did not have an income, decent income. I would have lived in poverty. She was having to date strange guys. I probably would have been incested. I realize now that I had a better life. I never realized until this moment I was given an opportunity. Yeah. Now when she was through with that, the narrative changed. She went on to write a book. She went and found her mom. She included the story from a new perspective. the love of a mom in ways you never imagined. Wow. How about that? So, her her weight went down, her looks changed, the guys she allowed herself to date changed, her self-worth and image changed. Yeah. Because she had a change in perception. Nothing mom did different, but she had a change in expectation and perception that moment. Yeah. So I see people that are running narratives, but if I go back and cognitively repairs what actually occurred and have some questions, that can be completely transformed, not in days or months or years, sometimes in minutes. I know. And and and when the window does shut, somebody else shows up to fill it in. And you may in your life have had different people that played out a mother’s role and mentors and a father figure that came into your life that became books. I don’t know. It may be mentors or teachers or something out there on YouTube. I don’t know. But whatever, when you find it, you’re grateful for the experiences and the narrative changes. That’s that’s I’m just interested in helping people because anything you can’t say thank you for is your baggage. anything you think they thank you for is your fuel. And it’s easy to be moralist and and be almost hypocritical and thinking, well, I point my finger out there and I don’t look at myself. But the reality is, as it says in Romans 2:1, beware of judging for what you see in others, you do the same thing. Yes, I find it helpful to find where have I done the same things? Where have I didn’t have time for somebody? Where did I choose somebody over somebody else? Where did I uh pick crazy guys or girls or whatever in relationship? I try to find that so I have reflective awareness instead of dissociation from my own reality. Awareness, self-awareness. That’s one of the hardest things. That takes inquiry and questions. The quality of your life is based questions. If you can ask those questions and answer them and not want to run the narrative, yeah, you make progress. But running the narrative sometimes just gets you stuck and you get in the blame games and you just, you know, run the story. Sick. You’re just like running in circles. Emerson said it really nicely in one of his quotes. Ralph Waldo Emerson. He said, and I’m I’m kind of may maybe off a tiny bit. We uh cry with them foolishly instead of shocking them with rough electric shocks, putting them in touch with reason. We sit and sympathize with people. Usually a person that had the same issue that they’re still wounded by are the people that have the so-called compassion and support and sympathy for the person that does. So pity once a party instead of somebody who sees it from a new perspective and helps people expand beyond it and be thankful for it. It’s a stepping stone. You m might not even be doing what you’re doing and touching the lives if it wasn’t for those backgrounds. Those are my backgrounds. I’m grateful for those backgrounds. I do what I do because of those backgrounds. I do too. Like today, I do I do thank God and know that there was a purpose for me to go through what I went through. And when it came to forgiving my mother, I I had to look at my mother as a person instead of the idea of what I thought my mom should fantasy she was supposed to be. I always say forgiveness is thank you for giving me this experience. Yeah, that’s a great way to to look at that.
Tell us about the uh D. Martini value determination process. Well, at age 23, I entered into professional school to be a doctor. And I asked myself a question. Why do some people walk to talk and some people live their life? Why do some people flourish under flounder? Why do some people do what they say, others don’t? What is the distinction? And then that led me down a path of looking at axiology, the study of value and worth. Mhm. And I read every book I was available in English at the time on that and I realized that much of the values that people believe they have are what they think they ought to have, should have, supposed to have, got to have, need to have according to society’s moral hypocrisies and rules. But that’s not what people’s real values are. That’s just what they have as an idealism and think they should. And sometimes those are real unrealistic. There’s a gentleman that David Hume that basically a Scottish philosopher that said that there’s an is versus ought. There’s ought to be values and there is. And so I made a value determination process which I’ve been using for millions of people around the world ever since for 47 years to help people identify what is what are their values. Not what they ought to be, not what they think it should be, not what they wish it would be, but what are they? What what what are the things that are important to you that you’re making decisions by every day that your perception, decisions, and actions are abiding by? Yeah. What are those? So, I created a 13step questionnaire. How do you fill your space? How do you spend your time? What is it that energizes you? Where is your money being spent? Where are you bringing the most order and organization to? Where are you most spontaneously disciplined? What are you thinking about, visualizing, and affirming about how you want your life that is coming true? What is it that you keep wanting to bring conversations to and engage in? What inspires you and brings tears to your eyes thinking about? What is it that you have that are goals that are persistent, consistent, you don’t stop on, you not you never give up on? Mhm. And what is it you spontaneously want to learn and feed your mind? And they indicate what your life demonstrates is important to you, not what you think it should be and not what somebody else you envy and try to imitate is but what your life is about. Yeah. And that’s free on the websites complimentary for anybody that wants to do that. Millions of people it but if they go through that it’s eye opening because they go I say I want to be wealthy. Yeah, but the second I get money, I buy things that go down in value, and it never I never have anything that’s going and working for me, right? I say I want to work out and lose weight, but I’m I’m too busy doing what I’m really doing, socializing and doing these other things. I say I want to go and build a business, but I have no evidence of it. What people say is very meaningless, right? People do tells me everything, right? So that’s what you do to determine the values because if you don’t people have a delusion about what’s important to them and I’ I’ve asked people how many want to be financially independent every hand goes up but when I ask if they are 99% of the hands go down so what they say is not what they’re living because the people that really have a value on it they find a way of getting it accomplished when the why is big enough the house take care of themselves right so if you but if you feel like I don’t know how I don’t have enough self-confidence and you really don’t have that as a value because you will learn it. You will learn things that are valuable to you. Yeah. You you you I am certain from what I I’m picturing from this that you have put a lot of effort into learning about the personal development journey. Yes. Because it was important to you, right? And now you’re serving millions of people doing that. I don’t know if you’re giving a percentage of what you earn to your father, your mother, or whatever for their contribution to that, but they might be part of your royalty royalty package. I wish I I don’t have my parents in my life anymore. And my grandmother was my rock and my savior. So, she was the gift I got. She was the mother figure that gave you the mother figure. The stability that Exactly. And she may have even played a little bit of the father, but that’s okay. I got my aunt. She was one who who also participated and has been there a lot in my life and and when you look back you go they did a good job some of those things. Yeah, they did. They did really. I really am grateful for them. I just had this hope and idea of course what what I wanted my mom to be right. The love and and giving me what I wanted or I needed, you know. Yeah. But that that may have been the love you actually got to help you on your mission. That’s the thing. Yeah. Yeah. And then I thought I wasn’t lovable for so long. Yeah. Like like the lady I mentioned. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And and that was just my own inner voice telling me that that I was stupid, not lovable and all the things. But we can be victims of history. We can be masters of destiny. It’s purely a choice of the questions and answers. It’s it and I had to make a choice. You did. Was I going to continue living the way that I was or make a difference? And and then when I said I am done living the way that I am living great because it is no longer you became you became independent. Yeah. I was like it is time to the definition of a successful parent is did they live. Yeah.
Oh goodness. Well, I I want to tell about uh breakthrough experience. Uh real quick, if you can tell us what that is and how does it help someone go from awareness to lasting change. Well, the breakthrough experience is something I’ve been doing since 1989. It’s going on this is the 38th year, I think. Wow. 37 38 years. I’ve done it 1,256 times. It’s a weekend experience. I’ve done them, I think, in 92 countries. Wow. It’s my way of doing what Paul Bragg did for me. Yeah. It’s my way of helping people come in with whatever the story is and when they leave, they don’t have that story. Break it down because because I have developed methodologies, the D Martini method is just one of them to hold you accountable to ask the questions to transform the perceptions. And when they’re done, the story I ask people, how many of you right now have the same perception of that that individual, not one hand, unless they ran out and chose not to work. That happens about one out of 2,000 people. Yeah. But most of the time they they they look back and they go, “It’s time for me to contact this person and thank them. I didn’t see it till now.” and they liberate themselves from the narrative and the self-depreciation because you cannot judge another person without self-depreciating yourself. It’s the way it is because it’s you. Yeah. And when all of a sudden you liberate that and you liberate that self judgment on yourself, you give yourself permission to go after what you really want. Yeah. As an autonomous individual and that that’s what breakthrough is. And I jokingly say that it’s called the breakthrough experience because I hardly give any breaks to the whole experience.
Oh my god, I love it. I I tell you, I could talk to you all day long, but for everyone out there, please go to dr martini.com and check out everything that that Dr. John is doing. and I’m just so grateful that you’ve come on the show and shared your wisdom and your experience and your story. You really touched me and I really appreciate you coming on to Wake Up. Well, thank you for having me. Another fellow Houstononian. I’m I’m originally from Houston also, but I don’t live there now. I live on a ship now that sails. So, I know that’s incredible. That’s incredible that you do that. But we we have that in common. Little Houstononians over here. But um for all those out there, please don’t forget to subscribe to Wake Up with Marcy. Leave a review and uh share with us, share this story, share this episode with somebody that needs to hear it because we need to help one another. We need to share our experiences and this is how we can do it. So, thank you again so much for coming on the show and I will see you all next week and remember to wake up to your worth. Bye everyone.
