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Preston Smiles

Episode 15 · 17 March 2025 · 1 hr 46 min

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What Is a Spiritual Millionaire? Preston Smiles on Abundance Blockers and Living Fully Awake

What does it mean to be a Spiritual Millionaire? Coach and author Preston Smiles joins Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen to talk about the blockers that keep us from abundance, and how he learned to feel rich long before he had money. This conversation was re-released as Episode 49.

Preston opens with a four-day vision fast alone in the woods and what it showed him. Then he explains what he means by a Spiritual Millionaire, and why more money on its own can just make you "a sophisticated addict."

He walks through the abundance blockers he sees in clients (unprocessed grief, fear and shame) and the practices he uses to clear them, from listing your "withholds" with the people you love to forgiving yourself and others. He also talks about being in proximity to what you want, and how the stories we inherit shape what we believe about money.

He also shares his own story: growing up in Los Angeles, the words from his dad that changed his path, losing a friend at 15, college and a heart diagnosis at 25 that became his life's work. He closes with how he and his wife met, "joy alarms" and what the ants in the woods taught him.

Abundance Blockers, the Spiritual Millionaire Book and Preston's Story

What you'll discover:

  • What it means to be a Spiritual Millionaire
  • The abundance blockers: grief, fear and shame
  • Listing your "withholds" and forgiving yourself and others
  • Why proximity to what you want matters
  • The heart diagnosis at 25 that became his life's work
  • Joy alarms, gratitude and being present for your kids

This episode is for educational purposes only and isn't medical advice.

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen with Preston Smiles
  • [02:15] A four-day vision fast alone in the woods
  • [05:52] The 2005 heart scare, life coaching and becoming a "spiritual millionaire" again
  • [09:30] What the fast revealed: 10 years sober and vegan, then slipping, then returning home
  • [11:50] Can people really change? What it means to be a spiritual millionaire
  • [14:59] Abundance blockers: unprocessed grief, fear and shame
  • [17:20] Shame, porn and learning to self-source your power
  • [21:14] Loneliness, the "nuclear family problem" and why you can't legislate love
  • [26:33] Cleaning up your side of the street: the list of "withholds"
  • [28:19] Forgiving yourself and others
  • [29:53] How people change: the four aspects of being human
  • [33:00] "You can't disown what you've never owned"
  • [35:53] "Am I bad with money?" Coaching a client through her story
  • [37:42] "You can't spin around fast enough to see yourself"
  • [39:08] Preston's childhood: learning struggles and feeling like a burden
  • [40:48] Gangs, weed at 11 and his dad's 24-hour challenge
  • [43:58] "You're a leader": the words that changed his path
  • [45:32] Intuition, and the night his friend Scott was killed
  • [50:10] Fear, grief and changing schools
  • [51:50] The only Black male at an all-white school, and impostor syndrome
  • [54:49] A mystery skin disease in college
  • [56:34] His mom's call, and auditioning for the lead role
  • [59:42] Graduate school with straight A's, and an urgent trip to the cardiologist
  • [1:01:17] The heart diagnosis that changed his life, and how it became his career
  • [1:04:19] Marketed to believe in lack, and the "inner roommate"
  • [1:07:15] Coaching through grief, and speaking for your father
  • [1:10:43] Being a living demonstration for his kids
  • [1:12:12] Being direct with love, and not knowing you're "supposed" to feel poor
  • [1:14:48] Austin, Barton Creek Mall and the macro of the micro
  • [1:18:24] Human design at a Venice Beach party
  • [1:21:34] A message from London and the blind-date story
  • [1:29:17] Listening beyond the personality, and "the fruit does not belong to the tree"
  • [1:32:17] Where to find Preston, and the Spiritual Millionaire Academy
  • [1:35:43] John's question about self-talk, and "joy alarms"
  • [1:40:15] The ant mounds: what the woods taught him about what matters
  • [1:43:17] Being present for his kids, and becoming an elder
  • [1:44:53] Thanks and wrap-up

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About Preston Smiles

Preston Smiles is a transformational coach, speaker and author. After growing up around gang life in Los Angeles and surviving a heart condition at 25, he built a coaching practice and community around what he calls being a Spiritual Millionaire, including the Spiritual Millionaire book and Spiritual Millionaire Academy.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:07] John Oberg and joining me as always our co-host Randy Lorensen Randy how are you today doing great yourself you know I feel like a little extra energy today little extra energy good yeah all right you've recovered yesterday you weren't you weren't so healthy yeah yesterday was a mess we can get into that some other time but that was I did I I man it was evident to everyone here hopefully not to the listeners but it was not not not a it was 100 % day today's 110% day how about that there we go joining us today Preston Smiles Preston I can't tell you I you might be the reason I have the extra energy today I've been looking at the content you put on the web I you know we've never met before today but super excited to have you here welcome thank you yeah I'm pumped it's it's cool to be in the midst of um how do I say this without offending um Elders you guys aren't that much older than me yeah we are that's okay we'll take it we're talking about five six years that's not that much older but um I love when someone can can Spar and has some life under them where it's not just surface conversations and it's clear you guys actually like each other and like it's there's a a beautiful Essence in this room and and that feels good to me wow great we I'm I like Preston this is the Preston smile episode number one we'll be doing number tomorrow this feels great yes that's awesome well you know we were talking before the show I think there are so many things that I want to dive into with you like you have such an interesting life uh so full already and uh you know not even not even at the halfway point in all likelihood and so I want to hear about the you know how you went on an eight day kind of experience for yourself that but I also want to know about this idea being a spiritual millionaire like these two things both grab at me like like flip a coin take me One Direction or the other but let's let's dive right into it like let's just go straight in yes yeah I love that yeah there's a lot of overlap in both of those conversations so they'll find their way to each other but I'll start with uh we were speaking off camera about how we ended up in this room together and I was sharing with you that I did what you could call a Vision Quest or a vision fast where I went into the woods for 8 Days uh four of those days uh I was alone no tent in the middle of nowhere um with two gallons of water and myself and a journal and it was one of the most uh transformative life-altering things for me for a multitude of reasons one being I'm an LA kid so I grew up not in the woods not doing stuff like that the concrete jungle correct right A different kind of jungle and so there was just immediate fears that I had to overcome to be able to sit in the darkness and hear the coyotes you know at at night and and to to be with the spiders and the Ants and the things the mosquitoes trying to murder me all night that that took a lot where were you yeah that's exactly my question where were you yes so I was in uh what is it called Sam Houston National for the biggest forest in Texas okay and what time of year uh it was let's call it March okay yes okay yes it was wild was this like was there someone watching from afar where you supervised did anyone know you were there yes so there was a small group of us that went together we all went to do the same thing and so the first four days we were just acclimating and finding our spot and so they knew the general area that I was going to be in and we sort of mapped out hey you don't leave this area um and if there is an emergency we had exact uh ways to contact each other and all of that stuff but the the point was to find your space and not leave that space and so over the first four days we're just acclimating and understanding where we are and then eventually you pick your spot and or really the spot picks you and then that's it now we're you know you're in wow I'm fascinated by this so wait four I want to make sure I heard this right four days yes the or eight days to but the first four yes no tent no the whole time you and oh the whole time no tent well yes I had a tent the very first night okay after that they take it all away do you have cooking supplies do you have there's no food so you're okay so you're on a total water only fast and frankly not much water no because they give you four G G I only drank two I came back with two extra gallons wow I'm trying to get my head around this cuz I've done I've done one three five seven day fasts but I drink a lot of water yeah like a lot of I'm I'm sure I drink a couple gallons a day yep so for clarity sake the fast doesn't start until you're by yourself so it was only four days for me not eight prior to that I'm eating beef sticks and okay doing things and and so the moment 5 a.m. we walk out of that camp and I go to my spot from that point forward four days four nights I had two gallons of water no food no contact with other humans all right I'm more intrigued so what's the takeaways from all this oh my god there were so um well I think one of the most important ones for me was uh you know over the years so just to give you a little bit bit of backstory in 2005 I had a heart condition come up and out of a fear of death I changed absolutely everything about me at some level and what came forward was this uh deeply spiritual tapped in tuned in version of myself that then became a magnet for other people and I became a life coach before this was a popular word before there was Instagram before there was influencers and I was still in La acting modeling um surfing and doing my thing but people kept coming to me and they said hey I knew you before this moment and now you know 6 months later you're levitating what are you doing and so I started coaching and supporting without knowing that it could be a calling right and that turned into something something bigger and bigger and bigger and you know at this point I'm a multi-millionaire and have all the things and all the toys and all that stuff but I got Intoxicated by the success and I leaned out of the thing that got me to the dance and I began to be much more calculated and use the king archetype and the warrior archetype more than I use the the Mystic um and so while I was out there it was as if to me God was saying and and speaking through the trees and the wind and the birds at dawn this is who you are you want to go to the next level it's actually a returning home and so the biggest lesson I got in there was to to come back to the part of me that is ancient and um deeply spiritual and guided and guarded and protected by something deeper than the materials of this world and so in that moment I became a spiritual millionaire again does that make sense so now A friend of mine was a Hermit he was he's a Catholic priest and he lived in a Catholic Hermitage for a while and he said one of the most frightening experiences was that when you're a Hermit the first person you meet on the journey is yourself and and it I think really spoke to me when he said that did you have that moment of fear facing yourself in the Darkness in the quiet was it was there was it a because it sounds great looking backwards right but there was hard work in that in those moments I'm guessing um I've been really good at self-reflection MH um for quite a long time so that wasn't the fear the fear for me was um what I would be asked to do whoa right yeah I I I I knew going in hey you're you're opening up a portal again and you might be asked to let things go you might be asked to walk away you might be asked to because you know I've been teaching for years elevation requires separation yeah so okay that sounds awesome as an Instagram quote but are you willing to actually separate from things that are no longer serving you and here's the crazy part one of the things that was spoken to and through me during that that uh Vision fast was hey bro you did 10 years um no alcohol you were basically a vegan and you were on it and slowly but surely you you're eating bacon and drinking beer and having margaritas and you've become sort of in some ways a regular person and that the two don't mix you can't ask for something big you big life big challenges and so the the message was hey you know to to much is given much is required and for you and the path you're taking it's going to require you letting go of these things that are like poison to you and guess what I didn't ain't nothing wrong with beer B by the way Bacon's a food group I mean bacon W bacon is one of my favorite things so I didn't listen for basically a year and uh I went to a Bea recently with some friends oh yeah the home of like bacon and beer and margaritas and maybe a couple other things and by the time um we were leaving the hotel I started counting and I was like I think I've had about 58 drinks in this three days and I just had a moment where I was like done I may be done for life but I'm definitely done for the year and that was August and here we are today and you know I was in Vegas last week and doing all the things and it's just done yeah and so i' I've slowly but surely I'm home when was when was this 8 day visit to the forest it wasn't recent no it was two years ago okay yeah yeah that's amazing you know what's inspiring about that too you know there's that old idiom about old dogs and new tricks that people can't learn it and you know what I talk to my kids about is like lifetime learning is a thing like you can be a lifetime learner you can get better and grow at every stage of Life all the time but you have you have to that's a skill you have to you have to learn how to learn and so I really believe now that that leads me to a place where like people can change right and some changes are harder than others but you're a coach you're a life coach so you know like change C be very difficult MH and so um you've talked about things that get in the way of that so when you're guiding people toward whatever their path is does everyone have a a path to be a spiritual millionaire like can everyone do that on a different path and and what how do you define spiritual M millionaire yes um so in short it's loving what is and what you have like it is the best thing that's ever occurred to me that's a spiritual millionaire no I love that and that and that's that's your kids that's your house that's your current car that's your current partner that's everything so that's why I said I became a spiritual millionaire again yeah because when I was teaching surf lessons I had a moment where I was like I'm living the dream like I literally get to wake up teach these lessons then I surf then I play Scrabble with my buddy Josh then I skateboard down Venice Beach then I go read conversations with God or whatever book I'm into at the point and then I go hang out with whatever girl I'm dating at the time and like it's I was like yo I'm winning that is winning and then like to to know that I was winning made me a spiritual millionaire and to me a lot of people get caught up in numbers right some people are so poor that all they have is money and I've gotten to the point especially when you get to the other side and you realize okay you could be making 30 million I could be making seven we both are G to fly first class yep okay so okay uh we both get a big house right like what more numbers just makes me a sophisticated addict now I'm just chasing the next high so I'm no different than the meth addict it's just socially acceptable and so it's not that we don't chase it's where you do it from right context determines the content of our lives so my context is God yes and thank you let's do it and this isn't my God I will not make the numbers my God I will not make the the the Adoration my God cuz if it all went away I'd still be dope I'd still be such a beautiful human yeah that's the piece to me that's that's what makes someone a spiritual millionaire and and therefore everybody can be one that's how you can drive through any you know i' I've been to parts of the world that are well we were traveling with our family to Jamaica at one point we went to some of the harder parts of Jamaica to drive through with them because we wanted them to see that not just the place we were staying and and they you know they they immediately jumped out of the car and started playing with the local kids and we had these games we jumping off bridges into the river and all this stuff and the lesson we came back with like happiness man like what did that what what did it cost for happiness today and it was a bridge and a river and and we were swimming with our shoes on you know it's like and and and it was like like that was like real joy and so I think I think what you're saying is just you got to find that path for everyone is's you find that gratitude with what you have I love that M yeah that's amazing yep okay so spiritual millionaire now you also talk about there's things that can get in the way mhm what what are the abundance blockers you talk about oh there's so many um I think one of the most important ones is not dealing with unprocessed trauma shame and guilt I think that that's that kills everybody um unprocessed trauma guilt and shame and um I was doing a discovery call with someone recently and uh this person was saying how oh yeah I've had a perfect childhood no trauma here I said okay let's see let's find out right and I explained that like to meet them yeah exactly you know it it's some people don't know they're they're like a fish in water and the moment someone has enough awareness and how to lead them and how to do it in such a way that it doesn't feel jarring then they can start to see what's really occurring cuz you know in my workshops uh we often say that's not who you are it's who you became most people identify as shy or I'm just an angry person or I'm just bad with this no that's not who you are that's who you became that's a strategy that you took on as a child to stay safe and now that strategy and that mask no longer serves you and yet you don't know how to take it off because you've been wearing it for so long long and so the fear becomes if I take this off who what what what will be left what if right what if I fail yeah right that's an abundance blocker what if I what if I mess everything up if I stop being this person what if what if I take it off and and it works then I'm on the hook yeah I'm more responsible another abundance abundance blocker right fear of success what if I take it off and I can't stop crying and feeling and there's too much grief and it overtakes me abundance blocker right so to me the most important one addressing the sort of elephant in the room of what happened right what happened to you and what' you do what' you do to people that you've been trying to hide because you know we know most dudes jack off the porn that's a thing um and I like to look at the symptom but I also like to look at the root and if you grew up in a western culture there's more than likely you grew up in a household that unconsciously taught you to Outsource your power so when mommy's happy with me Daddy's happy with me I'm getting good grades everybody I get the love if I'm um outside of the sort of like Christian ideal good boy or good girl then the love gets taken away okay well I'm four easy I'll just turn into a chameleon and do whatever they want and then I because I'm four and five and seven and 10 and 15 I can't beat my biology so my dick's going to come online my the part of me that the urge to merge is g to be there but I will hide those parts from Mommy and Daddy and play the game okay but I can't beat it which means it has to come out somewhere oh okay now I'm in the digital age where I can just get to porn or get to something that makes me feel alive oh I got my little secret over here well we can judge that and go oh those guys are sick and those people are this and those people are that we don't understand the root of it is this this is a person who's never been taught to self- Source their own power and feel their thump and their their backbone and their masculine vibrational energy in a healthy way so it comes out in unhealthy ways and um to not a conducive way to feel free again I work with people and I've had I've had clients who make a hundred million and I've literally looked them in the eyes on a zoom call in the middle of our first conversation I'm like you realize that I'm richer than you right and this [ __ ] like holy [ __ ] you are right and it's because of your secrets you're trapped by your [ __ ] secrets you realize that I know I know the secret everybody else Praises you for that money but it's not enough it's not enough cuz you're not free that to me there's so many people if we walk out this door and we walk and we walk in and and stand in front of a thousand people to me 98% of them have guilt and shame and things that they have not addressed they have tucked them away and they said nope no no I won't look at that thing I'll just be a better human over here no it sits in the room it sits sits in the room it sits in the space and so you can have it all but you don't have it all as a society we we choose to like treat that after the fact and now we talk about not enough therapists not enough whatever and I but we don't talk as a society about what to do on the front end other than things like you know and look I'm not I'm not defending the porn industry at all but but but I I there I'm and I'm not a I'm a pretty devout Catholic by the way so you're talking to the guy who and I'm a I'm a Catholic that converted you know a few 2007 so that gives you an idea of who I am right yeah but at the same time that like regulating this stuff is not the same as loving people into where which is what you're talking about it's like that's like you can't make a policy about this correct like we've got a nuclear family problem right now where people aren't loving people and the surgeon general's calling it out he's like hey the number one health problem in the country today isolation that and that's in the home Parents Without fathers or I'm sorry kids without fathers you know um policies that are sending people to jail when maybe they should like there's all kind but the real the real issue if we say hey look the policy problem is a policy problem we know we need to solve we don't know how how do you solve it today it's finding a way to love people right so you've got kids we talked about this before we started you've got young kids they're not at the place where they're quite to the place you're were talking about what are you going to do as a dad what are you going to talk to him about MH well it starts now yeah this is the thing like um one of my sons right now is really into his penis right like just it's out every day seven times a day kids kids are all less than eight right now just to give listeners yeah okay so um not talking about 18-year-old yes your word yes yes so these are my young kids they're all under under seven um and I got four of them and one of them is just super into his penis and we never shame him about that yeah he's like yeah bro that's it's awesome right um each of them has had a moment where they're like ah it's so hard and then they'll just keep hitting it and I'm like bro yes that's GNA happen um and it's going to feel good at times but you got to take your hand off of it if you don't want it to keep going right and like um to me this is the stuff that most of us didn't get as children you know uh I have a sematic based nervous system training called the bridge experience and I've been doing it for over 10 years with my wife all over the world and we have an exercise that we do that is very confrontive and very revealing and I'm going to ask you guys to answer this um we've done in Costa Rica we've done it in London we've done it in all over Canada all over Australia all over the US done it in Africa done it a bunch of places what do you think the percentage is of people who have sexual abuse in those rooms oh it's a big number it's big it's over 50 I think yeah I think it's probably like um in all those areas I'm going to go north of 67% more than two-thirds anybody else want to guess you want to no just is just our rooms I can't count for everybody else rooms we're at 90% just it's just everybody body and there's varying degrees of it right there's like rape my grandfather raped me when I was four and then again at 7 X Y and Z and then there's like oh yeah me and my cousin were in the bathtub and I was discovering my my stuff and I looked at his and I touched his and and then my mom walked in and she yelled and screamed and and shamed us and and that imprinted the body right it there's so many degrees when the me too movement happen I had a moment where I was like I'm going down I had a moment and the interesting thing was was every woman that I felt like I had done wrong in some form or fashion and there was one in particular at LSU that we had an agreement to go to this particular bar drink and then come back and have you know relations and in the middle of those relations she just fell asleep and whether she knew it or not there was a part of me that was like I went too far I kept going and it's things like that that just sit in people's Consciousness yeah that haunted me for years and and especially now that I have a daughter it it it just takes on a new level of like oh [ __ ] that was to me it was a violation I have since spoken to her and cleared the air and all the things and she was like we both were young drunk kids going for it um but there's so many things like that that block people's abundance because they don't feel worthy of it they feel like they must be punished for the things they've done in the past and it just sits in their energy body and and the body of their Affairs and and they move around from this particular space this is why to me personal freedom is the most important thing on the planet outside of Health well it's hard to clean up your side of the street and that's the language we use in my family we talk about cleaning up your side of the street yes you know what what are the things you think that get in the way of people clean like cleaning up their side of the street because that that does seem to be the hard part like everybody want my experience people want to clean up other well they want other people to clean up their side of the street and they want to tell them how to do it you know that's the whole like the log in my eye versus the Splinter in your thing so it's like what what do you think stands in the way in your experience the most with the people you've worked with like why aren't people cleaning up their own side of the street when they know it there's a few things um one of the biggest abundance blockers and I have my clients do this all the time I have them make a list uh of all the withholds they have with people they love so I'll say hey list you know the top five people that are important to you say oh it's my mom my dad D my you know my husband my sister my brother-in-law or whatever and I say okay I want you to make a list of all the things you have not shared with them that is true for you but you haven't shared out of a fear of fighting hurting their feelings or it could be really beautiful and you just don't know how to say it and they'll make like how how about telling the top five they're in your top five that's vulnerable yes exactly right so so I have them make that list and then once they made list I'll say okay I want you to pick one from each person that is the safest thing you can share I'm not asking you to share hey Dad you know I felt like you were a shitty dad my whole life like that's that's kind of hard to start with right but what's what's a safe thing that you can bring to your dad to to build a bridge so that there is compassion and space right the other thing I have them do one more list is a list of all the people and things they forgiven and then we just spend time forgiving and then I have them include themselves on that list and we spend you know 10 minutes a day just sitting with one or two of them and just like how can I release myself from like Jesus said when he said forgive them Father for they know not what they do yeah right like how can you forgive yourself like I was I was dumb I was young I had no Direction my parents didn't teach me yeah so do can I have compassion for me and the moment I can have compassion for me I can have it for other people and so to me it's again it's about getting this stuff on the table and and not pretending like it's not there everybody wants more money more success more adoration all the things and they don't understand that one of the fastest ways to that success adoration and freedom is by addressing the stuff that they've been hiding well you don't always need you don't need everything you think you need along right I mean that's corre you know what was the research like if you have a100 million or hundred billion dollars you can't buy more like as long as you're willing to rent you can't and and then $80,000 you declining you know declining utility for happiness everything past $80,000 so correct like yeah such a powerful message I didn't mean to cut you off Randy sorry about that no I was just I wanted to follow so I think there's a lot of power here uh and and the people forgiving themselves I think for most people is the hardest one right like they just they're they're it's easier for most people to forgive others have compassion for others and deal with this so how do you get people like we're talking about this an abundance blocker but I think this is hard for people right and like what have you seen work how do you get people to go through these steps cu this is imprinted in our subconscious right and the example you gave if you know the two kids playing with each other and the mom comes in they stop doing that or at least getting caught doing it as a defense mechanism and it's your subconscious saying hey this is what's safe so that's hard like like what have you found that's worked what do you tell people or how do you how do people get by that yes so principles that I live by is you can't intervene in a world you cannot actually see said differently we can't disown that which we've never owned and so a big piece of my work is showing them how they got where they are and and there's four as ects of what it means to be a human being according to me um and my wife number one we're biological beings right it's pretty clear we're in these physical bodies the bodies react and respond to our thoughts feelings actions and outside stimuli the things we put in our body perfect number two we are linguistic beings which means we build worlds with our language we without the the the the language of door and door knob and room it would be challenging to get out of this thing but but with language we open world okay fantastic number three and this is the one that touches all of them and I'll skip to number four for a second number four is we're Quantum beings right there's something beyond our current understanding which is a part of why we have religion and things of that nature like what the hell is this right but let me go to number three because this is the one number three is we are social and historical beings social and historical beings meaning we were all born into interpretations and beliefs born into them so social being I come from a womb right into a family structure whatever that structure is the people in that structure have their own beliefs ideas interpretations here's what a woman does here's what a good man does here's what a X Y and Z this is how you do r with money whether we say it or or they just experience it these are imprints that are just overlaying we're swimming in this soup well we also know biologically scientifically that our prefrontal cortex does not come forward until about 12 years old so I am basically a sponge from zero to 12 I'm just taking in everybody else's intervene in a world you can't see you can't disown that which you've never owned so some of the biggest work is to go okay well what was I born into because I can't beat the game if I don't understand what what what the game is I don't if I don't understand I'm in water then I can't make a choice about anything else I'm I'm a fish in water that doesn't know you take me out holy crap this is different right so I'm I'm in the business of taking people out of the water that they're in and having them from an empowered Place us look together and go okay all right you got the whole money story thing mainly from your dad because he was a big spender and he then lost it all or X Y and Z okay the whole quick to anger thing I can see can you see that you got that from your mom okay awesome your idea about what a a good Spanish woman is you got from the culture right you you went to Catholic school so you got this idea that you are ex or or you and and again I'm not here to offend anybody everybody's god is perfect and beautiful but just just sit with it right you got this idea that you are a dirty sinner you were born in sin and you're bad from the beginning or whatever the case may be um all of that is a part of your programming now together from responsibility from adulthood let's look together and decide what we want to keep and decide what we want to let go the moment I have that choice oh I am instantly empowered because now I have an option okay all right well I kind of like the competitive thing that I got in sports and growing up and in LA and that I'll take that that feels good to me but the whole like scarcity thing that my mom sort of operated from because she was born in the ghetto and she had this experience and my grandmother had this experience and her grandmother had this experience I'm done with that because that can only get me so far now there's there's a step here though about self-awareness like you just went right over like You're great and you're very self-aware but yes I got to imagine some of your clients don't come in that self-aware no I I walk them through it this is here so when you see something they can't see do you just you just hold the line I ask them questions I it happens all the time I I have um a boot camp called the spiritual millionaire Academy every Tuesday I'm coaching people will come in and they'll say what like for instance I had a woman from Arizona and she was like why am I so bad with money she was in her 50s and I said now I'll make her name Susan I said Susan um let's talk about that let's find out cuz I don't agree with what you're saying but let's just see so I'm going to ask you some questions and then you let's you and I discuss and figure out if you're actually bad with money so I saidy Susan you're 50 something years old how many times have you lived on the street well none okay um Susan you're 50 something years old um at what point in your life have you not been able to watch movies do entertaining things go to concerts have a good you know have a iPhone things well never okay Susan let's go deeper you 50 something years old if you never lived on the streets that means that a mortgage or rent has been paid for quite a long time give me a ballp park average about how much money has gone through from your account or someone's you manifested it to pay for you to live now light bulbs are going off she's like well if I'm really sitting with it at least a million because you came to me and said I'm bad money given that you've manifested at least a million dollars to pay for rent given that you have iPhone 78 and you have a car and all the other things is that still true to you now she's having her own light bulb moments are you guys following yeah so I I challenge their paradigms and World Views and then but I do it as a team it's not me versus them it's like that's why they're here it's really hard to do a loan for somebody I guess for the listeners I say like you know it I tell people all the time like the best professional athletes have the most coaches the best professional musicians have the most coaches the best actors most coach like it's if it's hard to perform at your Peak without I had a therapist once who was great he he said John you can't spin around fast enough to see yourself like I was just like that's amazing and so what you're doing is you're holding up a mirror for people right that's great yep y that's really cool I have coaches I have a men's group I'm in I get challenged by so many people anything I you know it's it's just common sense if I want to be a firefighter the best thing I could do is hang around firefighters I want to be a police officer best thing I could do is hang around police officers if I want to be good at business hang around epic business people one of the biggest uh abundance activators is being in proximity of that which you desire yeah they say that you're you're the average of the or the yeah you're the average of the five people you hang out with the most I've heard that before mhm so smart I love here right nope I mean you started as a kid in La ring your bike to the mall as we talked about I mean what I mean take us to the journey of how you got this wisdom like like like there has to be more there and maybe the journey before the wisdom too that sounds like a fun story yeah yeah yeah it's been interesting man um my parents used to argue when I was I think I was about five when they started going back in Forth about whether I was needs they were trying to figure out if I had Asbergers or something of that nature and uh I went to president AV in in uh Harbor City and uh I think it was first grade that uh I maybe got 12 days into the the the the semester and they came and got me and they walked me from upstairs in Miss herl's class downstairs and I thought my parents were picking me up early or something of that nature um but they walked me out of the building and they started to tell me that I was going to have a new class and as we started walking towards the Bungalows I had a realization and no longer heard anything they said because I realized that they were walking me to and this is 1987 to uh the [ __ ] kids class and so I went from the class with 30 kids with all my friends to the class with the kids who have Down syndrome and Aspergers and all the different things and there was like five of us and in that moment I died a little bit because I had this realization that I was I was different um and and clearly the way that special needs classes were set up especially in the 80s was you you're clearly off and I it was it wasn't neurode Divergent back then that's for sure correct I interpret it as I'm dumb and so that was like a mini death for me and not long after I ended up joining the gang and started smoking weed when I was 11 and I had all these things sort of circulating because I felt like I was a burden to my family at that point now I'm the dumb one in the family I have a hard time learning etc etc my sister's Straight A's perfect all the things so older sister yes yeah so then I become this out of the way kid now again this is what we talk about when we talk about strategies my strategy was I'll be so out of the way and have no more needs because I'm so dumb because I messed this up for you guys I will make sure that I don't add anything after ask for anything need anything my mom would say do you want $5 for lunch I'd say I'm I'm okay give me 250 I just always undercut it just no I'm good well of course that's a thing that people praise me for even now right this is sort of generous no need thing but it came from a deep wound right now fast forward to um 11 years old my dad catches me smoking weed he sits me down and you know my my dad had been a functional drug addict my whole life and it got worse as life went on um and he still ended up dying from that thing that I didn't want him to die from since childhood but uh my dad did a lot of really epic things and here's one of them so he catches me smoking weed um sends all my friends home brings me upstairs sits me down and he says okay let's talk I'm 11 he says stoned at this point yes yes yes okay yes yes he says I want you to take 24 hours and think about everybody you know who smokes weed and then I want you to think about the life you say you want because if you do what they do you're going to have what they have you told me you want to be like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and and that was the thing you wanted to do but if you do what those boys on the corner are doing you're going to have their life so you think about it don't talk to me just go into your room so 24 hours goes by I'm in my room like this dude's about to take all my toys my bike's gone I'm not going to be able to I'm be on punishment he's going to whoop me like I am going through it in my head but I also think about what he said and I think about some of my uncles I think about some of the little gangsters on the corner and I'm like I don't know if I want their life like genuinely right so he comes back and he says all right what you what' you choose cuz whatever you choose I'm going to I'm going to um I'm gonna uh take care of you no matter what you're my boy I love you right now just ninja this is ninja parenting because he's instantly like calming my nervous system because I'm in hypervigilance I'm like yo I'm gonna die like this is it so he I love you got your back no matter what what do you choose I said well I don't think I want those boys' lives so I think I'm probably just not going to smoke anymore he said you know what that's a good choice and so let me tell you something else about you you are a leader and you're such a leader that if everyone else is going left but something in you says go right you go right that's who you are Prest you're a leader so that's it I'm like that's it he's like that's it go I get up he puts his arms out hug it out and I leave that was it 11 years old so I stopped smoking weed at 11: in that moment now fast forward 15 years old my friend Scott calls me to go do these things called runouts uh oh one of the things my dad said to me in that time he said I know you're going to be a boy and I know you're going to do dumb things but you're such a leader that if everybody else is going left you'll go right that was it that was the exact statement so Scott calls me to go do these thing called runouts which I used to do I have done I've uh since went to every liquor store and paid what I stole so a runout in La is you pull up to the liquor store we're all 15 16 17 and you pretend like you're 21 you grab beer alcohol and then you get to the counter and then the thrill is how fast you can run out without getting hit by the store owner so we do that I did about 20 of them this night Scott calls me same scenario let's go we're going to jump in Rudy's blue Astro and we're gonna go do a runout we all have basketball tomorrow um but we're going to do it just for a little bit and I could not have spelled intuition in that moment but something said don't go and I literally just like a wave was like don't go I was like no man I think I'm going chill tonight he was like what hell no you going don't be a [ __ ] and I'm like no I think I'm going to chill and my dad's voice it's running through my head you're a leader 15 years old 15 wow you're a leader everybody else is going left but something doesn't feel right you will do whatever you need to do to go in the opposite direction so I don't go I hang up the phone Scott and I used to fight over front seat shotgun shotgun that whole thing and they pull up to a 7-Eleven in California and there was a gentleman who had just got out of jail who's uh partner had broken up with him I think she was cheating or whatever the case may be but he's sitting in his car next to the blue astrov van so here's these high school students pulling up this guy's sitting in his car and he's going through whatever he's going through and pull up and they're looking in trying to figure out how they're going to do it and Scott looks over at him and the guy says what the [ __ ] are you looking at and Scott being a 16 and 1 12year old dumb kid he says I'm looking at you [ __ ] turns back talks to Rudy emanuel's in the back I would have been in there and guy gets out with a gun Point Blank boom shoots him in the head reaches across boom shoots Rudy shoots in the back shoots Emanuel everybody shot Scott dies in that moment obviously you get shot in the head and my life is never the same other two people shot killed shot hurt they live they live that was such like survivors guilt like it just layered for me I'm 15 oh man um it hit me so hard that I didn't even cry take us through that so how did you hear about I don't want to be too this is I mean Amazing Story it was tough um I went to the basketball game the next morning I still didn't know anything had happened um as we're driving to the game um my dad had one of those he had uh a 750 BMW I was I was like a semi-rich kid at that time eventually we lost everything and they boarded up the house and they took everything he lost it drugs took it all right but at that time my dad had 750 uh BMW and he had one of those big giant phones in it yeah right you guys are old enough to remember this stuff right yes I'm old enough to have had a pager yes yes I had one too so uh we get a call in the car and he picks it up and I could just feel the room in the change and he hangs up and he says hey P um Scott was killed last night that's all we know right now do you want to still go to the game or do you want to go home and I said no I'll go to the game and I'll play for him I don't cry I'm just kind of like yes game starts maybe two plays in I go to the basket I get fouled I'm on the free throw line and he just pops into my Consciousness and I just break down and fall on the ground and cry and they ran out grabbed me put me in the car drive me uh my mom was there my mom took me cuz I had a stepmom at that point too my mom puts me in her white Camry and we drive straight straight to Scott's house and this is the Eerie part and especially as a parent this really [ __ ] me up now thinking about it we're driving to Scott's house which is in the projects in Carson California and as we start to turn the corner I have my window down in the back seat we live in LA and the weather is always good my window down in the back seat I'm just sort of looking out and we my baby they took my baby she's crying and grieving and screaming this is blocks away I can hear her and as we get closer and closer you see her and the whole Community is around her and she's just losing it h this one messed me up man I uh I just kind of went internal and uh I ended up uh asking my dad cuz I that school cuz I just was in fear of everything like I'm next other people had been shot and killed in my neighborhood and around but nobody was my best friend right that like hit different you hear about oh yeah hold just I don't want to blow past that like the number of people who have to say other people have been killed before yes but now it was my bet like that's heartbreaking yes first yes like I mean just like I don't want to normalize any of that correct and and other people in your school this it happened to yes it's a thing it's a thing and like early because remember this is 80s 90s this is the height of gang activity La is not a safe place at that point right um so you have to be uh extra hyper Vigilant this is why I do this work I do because I know what it feels like to be so hypervigilant and now we're going to I'm going to fast forward to the story where my heart decides we're just G to give out right because you're so stressed that 25-year-old you basically are a 70-year-old right now and I've I've reversed my aging by removing that level of stress and understanding what's really happening in any given moment so I asked my dad could I leave he sends me to a high school in Pennsylvania where his high school sweetheart is uh Shirley Russell she takes me in I'm instantly go to this allh school uh I'm one of the most popular kids cuz I'm the only black male there and and I have this realization in this kid uh Brad's BMW we're going to a party sitting in the back seat all of their seats are like laid all the way back cuz that's what you did back then we're listening to Outcast Tupac and Biggie but at this point it's Outcast playing the Wheels of Steel I have a 40 in my lap they all have 40s they're smoking weed I don't smoke weed anymore and I'm sort of looking out the window and I have this moment where I'm like holy [ __ ] these kids are doing the exact same thing as the kids in but they're they're expected to go to Yale and my old friends are expected to go to jail and I sort of like pulled back again you can't intervene in a world you can't see I instantly saw the world holy [ __ ] they listen to the same hip-hop they're smoking weed and drinking they're listening to it but the expectation is this group H this group this is a phase and so I went oh Life's a game I got to win the game you saw the rules that day I saw it instantly don't have to like the rules but knowing them sure helps it changed everything yeah right so now I enter back into the world with like a different lens and now it's how do I win at all cost so I go to I go to I get into college but I still have the the nervous system and the and the Paradigm of you're dumb you be here you're an imposter right and a lot of people have that right now for specific things right you're an impostor but you got into school I got in which school did you go to Southern University yeah which is all black College in Baton Rouge Louisiana and I ended up getting an MFA from Louisiana State University graduating Straight A's and all that stuff so I get hold on you blow past that again I just want straight A like that's I mean it's a lot about narrative correct correct hear this so I cheat all the way when I I say all the way I cheated through all of college ba my undergrad I have a moment going into my Master's Degree where I say okay I just want to see I just want to see if I'm not as dumb as I think I am because I would study my face off and then I would still cheat because remember Life's a game and this whole thing isn't set up for me to win but I'm going to win at all costs because I need to save my dad who's still on drugs I need to save my mom who's extremely stressed out and has no Exit Plan I need to save my sister who's awesome but will never blow up like I possibly can and so I have a strategy I'm not just a college student I tell friends all the time I never broke a bone as a kid not because I didn't want to do dumb [ __ ] it's because I was so calculated because it was riding on me so you're like still less than 25 heart problems still building right now yes yes so watch this the first year of college I get a skin disease that nobody can explain I went to like five dermatologists nobody could explain it and the last one said you have something called photod dermatis that's all we can do and we'll give you some steroids and what photo dermatis me meant was you're allergic to sun huh what was really happening because the body remembers what the Mind forgets what was really happening was my stress levels my entire your body was on fire from stress and the body will send signals it'll say hey you don't listen I'm going to give you cancer you don't listen I'm going to give you this you don't listen I'm going to shake you awake or I'm going to kill you so now I'm an 18-year-old I have scabs and scars all over my face which is this is a whole another beautiful story right because I I already felt ugly as a kid then I start I I'm allergic to the Sun and everywhere the Sun hits I get boils and and hives right so now I have it all over everywhere fingertips everywhere I took one two pictures in in a span of two years and I still have them and I keep it as like a holy crap bro like if I think about my children at 18 like what I had to hold oh I'm about to cry right now um it was [ __ ] a whole world in my [ __ ] them I wear gloves when I'm driving I'm like I wear hats all the time it's like a whole thing by the grace of God um my mom calls me she has a moment of uh maybe guilt but she calls me when I'm in college I'm about to graduate in three years and she says hey baby I know you went to college for me if if you were to just do what you wanted to do what would you do I said oh I'd be an actor I was studying journalism at the time she said baby I want you to do that I want you to do exactly what you want to do and I will support you no matter what so I'm 20 um I'm 20 years old and I hang up the phone and I literally that moment I can see it right now in that moment I walked to the theater office I'd never even been in the building I walked in there's a guy named Dr Burger back in his office and a secretary with a little thing across and she said can I help you and I said yeah um my name is Preston and um there's a part of me that thinks I'm supposed to be an actor my mom just gave me um I love to just figure out how to audition for something and she said oh well here we're we're doing a play called love letters and we're auditioning for the lead role um could see Dr Burger in the back sort of taking me in um here's the here's the play you can get the book right there and I bought the book from them I went and I think it was four or five days later I auditioned and I booked the lead role over all the theater kids everybody just straight to the top Dr Burger his son was on ali mcbill um Greg German and uh he just sort of took me into his RNG and he said I see I see what you are there's this thing in Chicago I want to sponsor you there's this thing in Chicago where you audition for grad schools for Yale for NTC for cow arts for all these big schools I want to sponsor you and send you you have a talent and something that's different than what I see in this off in in this theater department so he sets me up I go there I addition I get into five or six um one of those schools was Louisiana State University and all of them said we'll give you a partial scholarship but LSU said we'll give you a full scholarship and we'll pay you $1,000 to teach at our school so okay we don't have money we got to figure it out I take it I take the scholarship I go back to I graduate I spend a year at LSU working in the theater department for free not even in school just learning then I get in I become there's eight of us in that graduate class um only two graduate with straight days I decide not to cheat on anything and I do do so well that I'm like the star of LSU and I'm booking all these things I'm doing Colorado Shakespeare Festival and I'm just everywhere moved to LA this is where I'll end the story and I'll let you guys jump in I moved to LA I get a job at abian fit uh instantly this manager discovers me now I'm at Willamina as modeling and I'm I'm in these big agencies and it's happening and I'm sitting there in front of ABI with my shirt off and I keep telling the girl who I'm sitting with I'm like my heart keeps doing this funny thing she's like what do you mean like I don't know it just kind of goes really fast and then extremely slow and it just feels like something's off she's like oh you go to the doctor I'm like no I'm I'm black I don't really do doctors right this is social programming right she says hey I think you should probably go so I go to my childhood doctor and she runs a couple tests and she says Preston today you need to see a cardiologist this is at from what it feels like you're at an emergency and I'm like today she's like today so she writes a referral I go straight to a Cardiologist office and they run some test uh one thing that they found over the days was I had mold all over my heart which was like what number two and this is the one that changed my life forever he said and then remember this is before influencers before healthy eating before any of that stuff he says you know as a doctor I'm supposed to give you these pills to regulate your heartbeat we got to figure out how to get this mold off etc etc um but as a concerned citizen as a father as a husband I think you need to look at your diet and your stress levels and I said what are you what are you talking about he's like tell me about your diet I tell him I like oh I still you know I eat McDonald's I Burger King Popeyes he's like that's not food I'm like brother man you can't tell me that's not food it's on the commercials Everybody Eats it my whole family does this is not like that's food it say is food so I have a moment where I'm like [ __ ] okay tell me about your life I start explaining some of this and he says young man you are highly stressed and um I don't know if this is still the case but uh he said that uh stress which leads to heart failure is one of the leading causes of death and he put enough fear in me at 25 that I walked out of that office and made a decision that I would not be pill on pills for the rest of my life and that I would get under all of the lies that had been sold to me that had me like that and little did I know that would become an entire career and I would serve and support hundreds of thousands of people over the last 15 years from that wow so all I got to say is wow I think it's a good time for a break Y and we'll come back and and rejoin this conversation yeah Preston talked to everyone after the break thanks so much all right we're back and uh that was a uh powerful power F first half Preston I think there's again I feel like we could have you on for eight or 10 hours rather than the limited time we get with you today um you know we started by talking about some abundance blockers and what it's like to be a spiritual millionaire you've taken us through a lot of your journey but I I think a really interesting part of your story we haven't really even touched on uh We've touched on it but not deeply enough and that is how you help other people like you've you've taken your journey and you've found a way to like create a lever in a fulcrum and and push people where you can say hey I can now take what I've learned and I can help you in in in terms of what you do and forgiveness and creating hope and and so we talked over the break little about Hope tell us about how you're helping other people kind of create hope for themselves and for the world we're we need more of that in the world yeah I think um it's just to sort of go back to it all day every day we are being marketed to to believe in lack limitation and scarcity all day every day and so what I do when people come into my space is I create enough spaciousness with the voice in their head which we call the inner roommate or the inner critic and the invisible opponent this we're talking some deep stuff here between even those two and the social and historical programming that created those two things so I'm constantly helping them and creating spaciousness of okay my mind tells me I'm so fat I'm so dumb I'm so stupid I'm messed up again why am I here I'm in my 30s I'm in my 40s and I'm still struggling X Y and Z this debt blah blah blah whatever the stuff is saying I help them create spaciousness with that voice so that they can go ah this is not who I am this is the voice of marketing this is the voice of the machine that wants to keep me striving for the next thing that next carrot that will partially satiate me it's like it's like eating the menu instead of the food and I think a lot of people are fed up that's why they even come to me um any program I have I say you must be nuts because for you to come to someone like me I'm a very direct heavy-handed straight through the- middle type of person very loving but also we're not going to do fluff and fluff is awesome and important but that's not not my Lane my Lane is shake your tree with your help so that all the stuff that does not belong to you falls off and your tree is healthy and pruned because I say and this is true for me Spirit can only do for you what it can do through you so our job is to become the most lious possible so that all our desires can come true because this whole thing at some level is stupid and meaningless you're going to die we all do everybody you know is going to die your dog's going to die your cat's going to die everything's going to go away and before that date and that moment and that minute how much of Life can you take by the horns and actually feel it and most people are so entrenched in um trying to get there that they mess around and get to that last minute that last moment and go holy [ __ ] you know this is a really hard story um and I'm reticent to share it but I do want to share it I just won't use her name I have a student who recently died like recently um who she was a close and she decided that she was going to take a pill with her partner uh before 2025 happened so she said sent her kids to her mom's house and she was going to do this one last pill to feel good and party with her friends and her brain hemorrhaged and died and now um two years ago I coached her through the grief of losing her husband so the kids lost their dad two years later mom doesn't know that she's GNA die from this innocent thing that a lot of other people do and she dies and so for me I had been already talking to her and all my students it's going to come and it's not going to come when you think it is there just imagine if there was a clock right here and it had as many the the hours and and the days and when that thing is at zero you're done and it'd be nice if we're all 89 and and laying in bed holding our partner butts but more than likely it's going to be some stupid [ __ ] that you don't want to happen and so to me I'm I'm the like reality check I'm the like oh I came when I found my way to Preston that's when I want to actually live in abundance not just get things yeah I want to feel abundant I want to be alive I want to cross those bridges I have a client right now who grew up in a Chinese culture Chinese culture is about success achieving achieving oh you're the firstborn son you have to be this and I say bro how does it feel to not really know dad it's like when I let myself feel it it's it hurts I said how do you think it would feel to build a bridge and to share some of those withholds what do you think the gift would be and he spoke about it for himself and I said now speak about it for your dad because your dad had a had a dad and a mom and a culture you think it would feel good do you think it feel good for him to feel his son Reaching Across that divide do you think he wants to yes he wants to do you think he knows how no cuz it feels like Mount Everest to him okay so then you've been pass to Baton and the Baton is yes for your kids and the future Generations but it's also to look back at your dad and go thank you I see you you [ __ ] up but you also did a lot of good I love you so much that moment when I was 12 and I fell when you picked me up and you kissed me and you said you love me that meant the world to me right what does that do to a man whose heart has been hardened I think you guys get this because you are these kind of men but like again I hang out with really rich people and I always feel like the richest in the room because of this stuff not because of what's in my bank account so so my work is the like oh let's do the ugly stuff so that we can have the most beautiful break breaking the cycle man that's that's so heavy so important right I mean and it's hard yes it's hard I mean some of the Cycles are good we don't want to break them correct correct but a lot aren't you know there's uh information there's transformation and then there's demonstration and for me um just personally I want them to say and my kids to say daddy was a walking talking living demonstration of the he talked he didn't just he didn't just know stuff he was he was living it right um I kiss my kids probably 20 times a day and now it's the whole game where they're like oh you could only get your daddy hug but you can't get your daddy kiss or you got to tickle us first or you got to throw us or we got to jump on the trampoline or whatever the thing is but like for and go what what would I have wanted what would I have desired if I had the Consciousness and the understanding to to speak to it as a child and my dad really he was really good at saying I'm proud of you I love you and you know my dad kissed me on the lips till I was 15 years old um and until my friends were like oh you guys are [ __ ] like you know and then and then I became self-conscious of it and I'm like oh yeah maybe he shouldn't be doing that um but like I want my kids and their nervous systems to to be built in such a way that they they feel safe in the world safety is the key to creativity it's the key to love it's the key to everything it's that unconditional love you want them to feel right that's yeah it's a hard one too it's uh big yeah big you know one of the things you said a minute ago when you were talking about being direct with people was about you you help them see the world as it is and then and they get to separ and you said this before the break too they get to separate and decide what they want to keep what they don't want to keep and you talked about marketing and how we like I think a lot of people they they hear a message enough times and they assume it's true Burger King McDonald's like you were saying earlier right like we and not to you know I don't want to call anybody out in particular but marketing broadly that's their job their job is to sell something and and so but we don't always take it in through that filter particularly when you're young right yep it's that's the okay so um clean water wells with my wife for about 10 years and one of the things that I love about being in the bush and seeing how they operate is that they don't have all that Marketing in their space they don't have Billboards they don't have things telling them what they aren't and so um I'll never forget it was like the fifth Village we went to deep deep deep in the in the bush they have no water um but they greeted us singing this song a which is like thank you for coming you are welcomed here in our home and it was so beautiful because they had their clothes were all tattered and stuff like that but I was looking at them and I'm like you are richer than me yeah you stand in a regalness you don't know you're poor you don't know your your supposed to feel a certain way about yourself you don't have impostor syndrome because that hasn't been introduced into your culture and you know I was watching regular TV the other day in Vegas because I don't Gamble and we just had a moment where we're just in the hotel and I swear to God in like a probably a 30 minute time frame I saw about maybe 10 to 15 drug commercials right take oyc and it's like the person and then the next commercial is like take this and side effects are you could die and maybe you'll bleed to death and all these things and I'm like the whole thing is marketing even Vegas is a uh a a big outward show it's it's the macro of the micro that we have here one of the things and I know you live there um that I loved when we first moved here I moved and lived on the lake on Lake Austin in West Lake so we lived off 360 and there's this big uh church and then Elementary School here and we lived in the back um Matthew mccon lived right here and I lived right here it was beautiful and I didn't even know like literally we were there for a month and a half and I was like something's different and I was talking to a friend back in LA and they're like what is it I'm like I don't know I just feel calmer and and you guys have driven down 360 there's no Billboards it's just a lot of there's even a mall an entire gigantic mall that I did not know was there for like 6 months because there's no big sign that says Barton Creek mall think about it drive by there again and see if you see a sign there is none it's trees you kind of just blew my mind because I've literally never there's signs for for businesses even that is pushed back right but there's no you're right there's no billboard never thought about that till now zero huh did you know you lived over there did you know yeah I live I Liv drift across I lived on the inside of the part of the loop you on the outer part of the loop I was on the inside of the loop just over so yeah yes but yeah no the only thing that bothers now is the construction like it's like La now it's got like the next 10 years of construction but it'll be soon it'll before it but yeah no you're right there's no there's no Billboards at all along that road uhhuh yeah and I didn't realize what was happening to me but but it was the pollution that was missing I was like oh my God I'm just seeing trees every day and like interesting did you ever see that movie Ready Player one yes there's this one little like cut scene that you just it goes right past you and the guy the the evil villain guy is like we figured out in the glasses how to maximize advertising just before the point you give them a seizure we can get 70% coverage or whatever it was and it was just like oh man it it just it's just a really quick like little snippet but I was like wow that's like ouch mhm mhm ouch that's it that's it so it's again you can't intervene in a world you can't see you cannot disown that which you've never owned and so once you start seeing yourself and then and then you start to look at the other worlds right even marriage marriage is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life harder than all the things we already talked about and the big piece is how how can I find her and and like REM meet her you know 11 12 years in just see her differently 12 years in right now yes that's great right and and to like ReDiscover my wife and take her out of the box and the history I have for her and to re enter the room when I'm mad and and all the things even just emotionally right A lot of times we we stay in the room but we're not in the room right and I'm doing the thing and like marriage has been the biggest workshop for me in the whole World um you guys work together yes and we work together yeah it's a whole thing that's hard yeah it is how long you been work you've been working together a long time it sounds like since 2013 how did you guys meet oh man it is the craziest movie story ever in the history everybody who hears it is like what oh my God it was ridiculous but I'll give you the cliff notes I um was at a party in Venice Beach and this is this new thing comes out there's 14 of us at the party and this woman at the party says oh I just started doing this new thing called human design and everybody's like oh what is it so they all do it and then I text my mom I'm like what time was that born let's see right so the woman does my human design I'm the last one she's like oh my God this is interesting one you have all of your brain lines lit up this is very unusual for people because most people just have like one line in their brain but yours can move really fast and take a lot of information and do stuff with it she was like two and this is even more interesting given that you're pressed in Smiles the guy who runs the love mob and I was doing these organized acts of love and I was already popular and like on my path at this point she says you know the way I'm interpreting this it's basically saying you won't be as powerful and as um big as you could without your counterpart that you are meant to have a C is this your future wife telling you this okay all right I okay I just checking I just checking yes this is random all right person okay right so I take that in right like I take most things in and I'm I'm really like oh God that was interesting I wasn't thinking about having a wife in that moment but okay I'm 30 31 32 interesting okay so next day skateboarding down Venice Beach I see this guy out with a digy dud just classic Venice Beach stuff and his name is Richard I pull up and he's like what's up P what's up Richard he's like man what you been up to he's like oh man I just got certified in this thing called human design have you done it and I'm like nope I lied CU I wanted to see if it was bull crap right so he says oh man you know what time you were born I'm like yeah I can give it to you you happen to know right now yes I know exactly I just talk to my mom about it yes so he does the thing and he's like oh huh and he's going through the thing and then he's like this is interesting what it's like well the way I'm kind of seeing this and these things are all up to interpretation is that like there's a person out there for you like okay bro thanks for sharing interesting so I go about my day at that point I had been reading conversations with God religiously over and over and over again and I got to a point where he was talking about relationships and the utility of them and all these different things and I'm like okay that's three that's three so do you need a 2x4 yeah yeah exactly right yeah so now I'm like all right what are you doing what are you doing right my whole life has been guided like this including when my friends got shot like there's all these things where I'm like why are these puzzle pieces moving their way into the space and so I make a decision that I'm going to do six months of celibacy and I'm going to open myself to calling in the one so I take off all masturbation everything everything's off the table me my smoothies my surfing my mission just in and 6 months go by I come out of it I start dating people here and there and while I've uh going on dates I get a message on Facebook from a dude who I have not spoken to for years and he says Hey Preston I'm in London um and I'm meeting up with my girlfriend she is awesome you do all of these things and help people in the Name of Love and do flash mobs and all that stuff she does clean water wells in Africa and is awesome and a Powerhouse and she's dating my friend so this is not that but I think you guys should work together can I put you in a message I said oh yeah of course bro put us in a message so he puts us in a message I click on her profile I'm like oh she's beautiful interesting right but she's in London and she's dating this dude so it's not my girl so I message her hey nice to meet you if you're ever in LA hit me up she writes back yeah thank nice to meet you and I send her my number and I'm like you know X Y and Z she ghost me not a single word so now let's call it a month goes by and I have a blind date set up with this girl named Eva so the morning of the blind date the morning 6: a.m. I'm sleeping bang I wake up and I instantly know I'm going to meet my wife soon so I go on Facebook and Instagram this is still to this day this is still on both of those pages I I I screenshot a picture of two wolves kissing and I put it on there I have no clue who this is going to be and I say I can feel her coming # wifey asthe Queen is on her way no clue 6 a.m. now I had bought tickets to a show um uh a poetry show in Venice Beach I was living in Hancock Park at the time so these are not close to each other and Eva comes it's now the show starts at 7:30 she shows up my door let's call it at 700 knocks on the door I'm like oh man is this the moment where I meet my wife knock knock knock I go down I open the door I look and I'm like nope that's not my wife instantly I'm like well that ain't it so I invit her upstairs and I was in a a class called The Power of prayer at that point because I was studying to be a minister under uh Church of religious science at that time I have a lot of overlap crazy stuff so in the class class we were taught to before any decision to just ask so I leave her in the living room I go in my room I say hey God am I supposed to go on this date resounding yes yes now I go back hey God now I'm reasoning hey God but for real because this ain't it like why am I going on this like come on right yes again clear I know you know we all know you have hits in your body in moments where it's like this is not even negotiable this is a yes so I'm like damn okay get dressed jump in the car we're driving and every red light on Lincoln Boulevard I hit and I'm like what is happening so now we're late every single red light and I had done a video on YouTube talking about the people at 911 who missed their flights the people who left uh the Trade Center because they were sick and they didn't go to work that day yep and so I had this moment where I was like oh man something's happening something is happening I don't know what it is but I Surrender so we get out of the car we run over to the thing they say hey we're sorry we sold oversold The Show by 10 seats um you we can give you your money back you can come back tomorrow or you can go in I look at her and she says let's go in okay so we walk in they pass us to another guy the guy starts walking Us in the whole thing is packed um there's people all on the side of the wall he walks us past those people to the front and he says you two right here he takes two steps he stops as if a lightning bolt hit him and he says actually you two come here he takes two seats and he puts him he says this is a fire hazard so if anything happens I need you to jump up really quickly okay he puts two seats down on the front row puts my seat here my date seats here I sit down she sits down I look at the age I look at my date and right next to her my wife and I have a moment where I'm like Alexi she's like Preston and I'm like yes I'm like but you live in London she's like no I live in LA I just moved here and I'm like wait what and then instantly my mind goes and I've see the wolves kissing and I'm like literally the show happens now the a little bit of backstory she the dude she was dating who is a superstar actor right now he's been on HBO shows he was in Top Gun if I say this person's name you might know him but if you look him up you would definitely know him this guy missed his flight and so his his friend his best friend picked her up from the airport who was my college roommate he missed his flight they hung out he put us in the message because he missed his flight I got a wife and so that's even deeper into the like rabbit hole and then she had tickets to the saturday night show but her friend Felicia booked a roll on TV and said can you switch me so now it's like the whole world put us right next to each other did you switch seats with Eva no just had she tried to kiss me at the end of the night um and I said I I genuinely think I just met my wife and she was like like okay and I did I wonder what story she's telling today on a podcast she's she's a influencer and she's like she we've talked before she follows me she follows my wife she has three kids um she got her person I got mine that's great yeah great you guys keep up about that too like what a great story it crazy absolutely crazy she didn't even think I knew it was my wife Alexi did not know that she we were supposed to get married she thought it was a business deal so like even how long until you started dating after that uh it took about two months but we just were hanging out with each other every day she had three different guys including there was this superar model back in the day named Tyson Beckford you guys know who that is he was name sounds familiar Ralph Lauren model he's been on Oprah and all those things so he this other Superstar actor guy and then this other dude all three of them and me the skinny broke dude who had just moved in with his mom all of us wanted her at the same time and each of us knew knew about each other and I just was like this is it and like she could have went with the money and the spame and all that but she felt it we knew and you know at some level I'm richer and more you know it happened anyway she got everything you know so you have a history I mean there's a thread through this of following God your heart your instinct whatever want to call it right all the above mhm I mean is this back to your dad saying when everybody says go left you go right is it I mean tell where did this come from how how did you get this I guess Faith yes that that's the origin of listening Beyond personality my dad taught me something indirectly that he did not know he was teaching me which is beyond the personality and what's occurring in the moment he taught me to globally listen to like listen with the with the heart listen with the body listen with the because there's we know that we are not that voice because we can't stop the voice and so I can to this day distinguish between the wounded part of myself that says you are this and you're not this and you could be better at this and X Y and Z and the still small voice that is the truth of my being and when that thing comes forward it's not halfway like I can you know this is a muscle too I've trained the muscle to be able to listen to it and um you know if you've heard my story before I I it's happened so many times that there's no way it's not a thing for me yeah and so now it's just about okay how much am I willing to listen again we started this by saying I didn't listen I got I it got me to the dance and then once I got to the dance and I started seeing all the fame and the money and all that stuff I got Intoxicated by this part of me that wanted to control it from the from the personality and like wrap a business around it and make it something and that's not wrong or bad but the thing that is the magic was the other thing and so I've been slowly and powerfully in reintroducing that aspect of me back into the space and it it the proof is in the pudding you know because to me this is the a big message I have for everybody the fruit does not belong to the tree the fruit belongs to the ecosystem our job is to produce the fruit for the sake of this beautiful dance and these happen stance if if if you come under my tree or I come under yours out of 8 billion people people in an entire world I get to to to swim in your energy and your gifts and talents and abilities oh my God that's a that's miracle and so okay so I really have one job and that is to make my tree as healthy as possible and to trust in the seasons of life because the farmer never you know gets you know a season and goes oh it's over let's burn the whole thing down the farmer knows exactly what's going to happen if I keep watering weeding and feeding these crops it will produce again and again and again this is the story of The Golden Goose right like I got to get it out now yeah so there's a lot of people listening and some of are probably thinking like how do I get under Preston's tree like and it sound I mean we talked to the break a little bit there there's a number of ways to do that you know if they want to whether it's read your book or if they want to listen to your podcast or if they want to be a part of one of your groups or talk to you individually like like any like anything's on the table right and and so how how does someone find you yeah at Preston Smiles on anything but the the the best place would be Preston smiles.com because you can kind of be directed anywhere from there and it's really for anybody I mean it's it's it's not a lot to listen to the podcast it's time right and to read the book which um and and there's more coming right yes sir yeah yes sir yeah yeah how what what is it like to be a part of the you talked about the spiritual Academy a couple times like take me through it what's that like yeah I'm asking for a friend yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly um it's beautiful because um we are social beings y so a lot of people think they can just listen to podcasts and read books and their life will be different but left to our own devices we will always go back to homeostasis we'll always go back to the devil we know and and where we're comfortable yep the the the times where that doesn't occur is when we are in scenarios where we are held accountable and we are in proximity to people who are moving in a direction that we desire so um in the spiritual millionaire Academy I have you know a curriculum 8we curriculum but outside of the curriculum there's the community there's the the weekly coaching and accountability right I coach people and stuff and and we'll put them on challenges 7-Day challenges um and then we say okay next back we'll we'll meet back here on Tuesday did you do what you said you would and if you didn't what got in the way and what do we need to do to support you right we had a woman um this past Tuesday Anna uh in Argentina she's been smoking for 30 years and she's on week two of no smoking and the reason why that's working is because she still has to come back to the class and if she comes back and says I smoked a cigarette we say okay Anna what we need to do here CU that's not who you are that's who you be came and that's the marketing [ __ ] those cigarettes and you going to let the cigarettes win what we need to do right I I had her post a picture of herself eating a vegetable for seven days in a row every day a vegetable or fruit and that level of accountability inside of this group produces that's how I got where I am I didn't do this by myself every step of the way I have put my money into things I moved in with my mom at 33 so that I could use the money to invest in support that's why I moved in with her yeah cuz I didn't I I was like oh I'm spending 2700 on an apartment in Hancock Park what if I take that whole 2700 and every single month I'm in somebody's space who knows something and I started Gathering and then I became my own environment like all of us in this room and then you bought your mama house and brought her into your environment which was a really great part of the story correct yeah I brought my mom at 70 year old 70 years old my mom got her first ever brand new house yeah and it was quite the feeling to to walk into a place and say this is yours now that's amazing that's awesome y that's awesome what from we have to wrap this up soon I think we have time but from a selfish standpoint mhm one of the things I've been working on somewhat what successfully for months is asking God asking the universe what I should this is probably my single biggest takeaway from plant medicine and Iowaska Journeys is everything came down to hey dummy if you just ask yes I'll tell you what to do and all you got to do is do it like life's pretty simple if you just do that yes but that's much easier said than done correct right so you seem to have figured this out so I have experimented I've played I've been asking this question for months as John could ATT test to and I haven't quite figured out I'm better at it but I'm looking for tips I'm looking for shortcuts cheat codes the 8020 for what how do you H like I don't know you you get this feeling you listen you're open to it right some of it's just being open to it I think I'm open to it but I'm not I'm not very good at the at asking and slowing down how do you do that yes okay well short answer is you schedule it into your life it's not just a convenient thing that occurs when it occurs it's no 9:00 a.m let's go um that's one two uh again some people come to me a lot of people come to me they say I want to go from here to here and I say okay well let's talk about where you currently are so we know what we're dealing with and a lot of times and I'll use the sort of example of a lot of times people are in the ocean capsized they can see the land but they are capsized and they come to me at the capsized moment and say how do I get over here to building a mansion on the land and I say let's just get back to shore y Shore is the is the goal for right now we know we know we know the mansion's coming but right now you are doggy paddling and running out of breath so first thing first get yourself in such a high vibrational state that whether you get it or don't you're good to go that is the key is good with good without because I'm so full I'm so high on my own Supply that it doesn't even matter to me that is the Crux of what I'm sort of supporting people and and then what happens which is crazy is when you don't need it don't care anymore it makes it a thousand times easier to just flow into your space so okay next question how do you do that okay I have my clients do something called Joy alarms where you put an alarm three to five alarms in your phone every time the alarm goes off you burst into spontaneous Joy now one it just feels good and it's awesome two it recalibrates and tells your nervous system that there is something to cell celebrate that is cool so just five times a day I'm being grateful just bursting now I've had clients the the goal is reasonless Joy however I've had clients who had five you know three kids a wife and a dog and I say perfect each alarm is a kid a dog and a wife okay the alarm goes off you go to that kid oh Jason oh my sweetheart he's so crazy oh he's so beautiful and it's not just thinking because we are uh In-N-Out beings right we take water in water comes out we take food in food comes out we need to use our voice our bodies everything needs to emote because we're recalibrating the nervous system to something that is healthy from that Baseline now we're on Shore now I'm here anything I build from here is going to be magic and even if it isn't I'm magic so it doesn't matter does that make sense MH like you have to get to the point where you don't give a [ __ ] because you're so high I love it or you don't know any better which is the people you talked about in Africa who just they were wealthier than any of us because they didn't know any better not to be correct correct cuz their Baseline is already there yeah so it's like a lot to learn there yeah we can go get some stuff but it's stuff let me just say this last thing I was when I was in the Woods by myself there was these different ant mounds and I would observe them all day and I had a moment where I was like first of all there was so many cool things that happened like um at one point I watched this little baby worm uh come up and then there was like one or two ants over here and one of them sensed sensed they did not see the worm they sensed it and you could feel they're like oh there's food somewhere and they're going around and then he he found the Worm but but he's not big enough but whatever signal he sent another one sensed it and I'm watching this I have nothing but time so I'm just sitting there like oh my God right then the whole Army nobody goes back to get each other this is literally they're all sensing together right somebody signal goes off here signal signal signal signal signal boom everybody's eating the ant right but while that's occurring I'm also watching all these different mountains and I'm like this is us this is they're in this mound and they got their Gucci purses and their nice clothes and all the things but all it takes is one of these branches falling bam they're all gone it's it's stupid it's it's meaningless they think that those bags and that thing means something and they can because it makes it not boring but like let's be let's be real with each other that's stupid so then what is what what matters in this thing right what matters is how I'm living moment to moment cuz that can that can Ripple into eternity and I just started going okay this is us so I'll take all the toys right I got a G wagon I got a um 68 Stingray I got a 65 Chevy C10 I got the big house I got all the toys I'll take it let's freaking go it's going to be trash one day anyway or belong to someone else I'm going to pass it to my is I don't give a damn in that sense cuz it's going to not matter when I'm in the grave what matters is how I'm being in those things those cars and those things don't make me awesome I'm the awesome thing I bring the life into them that that to me makes someone Rich it makes them a spiritual millionaire because when I had the Prius that's how I felt right teaching surf lessons winning look at me I eat every day hang out with friends so for a guy who's so focused and you you do a great job of being present right here in the moment what does the future have for you like when you look out ahead and you look at you know your source of Hope in the future what are the things that you're thinking about 5 10 years from now you know it's all the small things for me like I I want to be the basketball coach and I want to be in at ballet and I want to be you know in the details of my kids lives and I'm in the process of setting up a scenario where I have so much Fu money that I just make everything free and um and I set up pods where I can be an elder I think a lot of people just never got the conscious dad that they needed yeah and the older I get the wiser I get the more I'm like that's my job right I know I still look look young whatever you want to call that but like I'm closer to 50 than I am 30 right or even 40 so I'm in I'm I'm heading in the direction so and you look closer to 30 than 50 you bastard I've been working on man it's nuts yes that's the the that's the piece I've been working on it right the everything we're talking about here is not theory for me yeah people come to my house they come hang out they're like dude you actually live this [ __ ] all the time jacked up stuff happens right yeah like my my life isn't quote unquote perfect but it's it's perfectly mine and I see the beauty in it yeah as people get to the end they're like yo I just wish I just I argued more I cried more I played more I just was full oh I'll just do that now I'll listen to your wisdom and do it now Preston this has been amazing man I got to tell you like just absolutely amazing I hope we can have you back at some point I hope you as a listener get a chance to go check out the book check out the website check out the social media check out the programs uh I mean just amazing you know obviously day one meeting you looking forward to a hopefully very long relationship of getting to know each other and uh what what an honor for us to have you here definitely thank you fantastic thank you so much been really cool man thank you so much again it makes a difference who you are yeah I've been on hundreds and hundreds of podcasts and everybody's on their journey and they're all doing the best they can but because you all in this room have so much lived experience and you can tell you love yourselves and your lives it makes a difference in the quality of question it makes a different in in in the conversation we can only go as deep as somebody can actually hold right and so thank you to every single one of you I I know the listeners get it but just hear it from somebody outside who's stepping in you've found the right people right when the student is ready the teacher will appear and birds of a feather often always flock together and so um I'm sure you're subscribed I'm sure you've left reviews but if have not do so because this is the type of podcast and the type of transmission that needs to go everywhere thank you thanks press it's been an honor yeah Preston smiles.com for more of this wisdom and we're going to work on the calendar bring him back all right everyone Tales ofun this.com you can find the show notes you can find links to all this stuff and uh you know like subscribe check us out and uh click through to Preston thanks everyone