Dana Wilde is an internationally known expert on how to intentionally and systematically change your mindset so you get better outcomes.
After growing her own business from zero to a million dollars a year in under 19 months, Dana can teach you how to make money by being happy and get paid for being YOU!
With over 100,000 followers in 110 countries, Dana is the bestselling author of Train Your Brain and the creator of The Celebrity Formula. She is featured in the movies, The Abundance Factor, The Truth About Prosperity, and Dream Big.
Fascinated by neuroscience and the power of the mind, she affects lives daily on The Mind Aware Show, where she interviews thought leaders, brain scientists, and celebrities about how to intentionally think wealthier, happier, and healthier thoughts.
Mindie: Welcome back, my friends. Today on the show, Sean and I are super excited because we are joined by this fabulous, amazing, awesome friend of ours and we were joking before we started the recording that this is pretty much why we started this podcast is just to have her on as a guest. So Dana Wilde, we love you, thank you for being with us.
Dana Wilde: Oh, you are so funny. I could not be more thrilled. This is going to be so fun and I love what you’re doing and the time has come. I’m so glad you’re going to be out there in the iTunes world.
Sean: I feel, Dana, the best description of you is a professor meets a five-year-old. Like the energy of a five-year-old, but the wisdom and the knowledge of a professor. So it’s kind of a merger there.
Dana Wilde: I think that’s the biggest compliment anybody could ever give me. I sometimes think of myself as like a little five-year-old just blown up, you know? Totally right. I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you for that. I’m going to, I think I have to change my business card.
Sean: Yup.
Mindie: You should put that on your business card.
Dana Wilde: [Laughing] I’ll give you credit the first three times I say it, Sean, but after that I own it. All right?
Sean: That’s how it works. I get it. I wrote the book on that.
Mindie: So Dana, as you know, one of the things that we want to discuss on this podcast is talking about the intersection of wealth and happiness. And I’m really excited to have you with us because you do this really, really well. But just to get that conversation started, I was wondering how you would define wealth?
Dana Wilde: Ooh, yeah. This is going to be a really hard interview, isn’t it? You’re going to ask me these questions. Okay. So here’s the thing. You know, wealth, most of us when we think about wealth, we think about the actual abundance that has to do with money or financial wealth. But I don’t think I’m much different than anybody else in the personal transformation space where the truth is, you know, wealth is everything that we consider abundant. You know, we have a wealth of love and a wealth of kindness and a wealth of friendship and a wealth of relationship goodness and all of this stuff. I mean, if you look around like the whole world is built around the concept of abundance. You know, look outside at the blades of grass, look at snowflakes, look at the leaves and trees. Go into even your kitchen and count the number of bowls that you have. And I know I did this recently. I’m like, okay, I can have 22 people over for chili and I don’t even look at this and think like there’s just abundance oozing everywhere you look. It’s wealth. We are rich beyond belief in so many ways, not just how many dollars do you have in your bank account.
Mindie: Yeah. I love that. It’s so fascinating to hear everybody’s perspective on this. One of the interviews we did recently with our friend Nathalie Lussier, she called it being “well-resourced.”
Dana Wilde: Oooh.
Mindie: Yes. And I wanted to tell you that cause I feel like you would get that. Like it’s just this feeling of being well-resourced with all variety of things.
Dana Wilde: Yeah. That’s a good one. I like that one a lot.
Mindie: That leads me to my followup question is how have you created that? And again, you know, not just the money, but wealth in abundance. How have you created that in your life?
Dana Wilde: Well, thank you for asking that question because this leads me to my number one favorite topic, which is mindset and how you think. For me, everything stems from the thought. Everything stems from the thought in your head. No matter what kind of work you’re doing. You know, if you want to do energy work or you want to do heart-centered work or you want to do meditation or anything we want to do in our physical world, you have to have the thought to do it first. And so the reason I like your question so much about how happiness relates to wealth, the premise of this interview, is because nobody really knows where thoughts come from. Like we don’t really know how they come. And I like to think of ourselves more like receivers. Even though my whole Train Your Brain world is all about creating your own thought and generating thought, the truth is what we can do is we can create the positive, happy environment that makes you a better receiver for the positive, happy thought. And so if you want to create wealth in your life, you have to think thoughts of abundance. If you want to create happiness in your life, you have to intentionally think happy thoughts. If you want to create a relationship, you think lots of love and so on and so forth. So wealth, it starts with thinking wealthy thoughts.
Sean: I’ve been doing this research just on my own and I’m really curious to see what you have to say about this. Mindie and I have fallen in love with the concept of what makes people curious and curiosities. And I have been asking friends and our guests about if you could list off, maybe the top… I think this will be easy for you, the top 10 things that you are just so curious about. Because I found, Dana…
Dana Wilde: The top 100…
Mindie: That’s how I am. I was like, what? I only get 10 or 20?
Sean: Curiosity I think is the cure for depression. I think that being miserable and depressed is actually a lack of excitement about learning new things. So what would be your top 10 things that you are curious about? It can be totally non-sequitur.
Dana Wilde: I love this and I’m not stalling, but I have to tell you, you know what’s so great about this idea of being the cure? Is that then if you’re curious, you’re asking yourself thoughtful questions that are creating thoughtful answers, which are bringing you to your happiness. So this is genius about the curiosity. So I’m curious about animals and nature and food and the nature of reality. Like, what are we all doing here and consciousness and spirituality and how to start a food truck. I would love to do that. I’m curious about that. I’m curious about how to do Facebook ads. You know, all of those things that are, I think it’s probably how I got into the Mind Aware and Train Your Brain. But all of those things that relate to what is consciousness, what is thought? Why do we even have an unconscious or subconscious? Are we right with quantum physics, you know, or are we moving in the right direction? Where are we not right? Can I stop now? Do I have to go on? Can I just talk about food ones for the next 20 minutes? Cause I’ve got at least 50 food curiosities.
Mindie: Dana, this is what I love about you. So I’m curious about, if you were to start a food truck, what kind of food would you serve?
Dana Wilde: I’m a vegan so it’d be a vegan food truck. And I would never do it because I’m not very good at cooking. But my man makes the most amazing food. And every time he makes something, I’m like vegan food truck. Vegan food truck.
Mindie: We would totally be your customers.
Sean: Absolutely. So, our team read Train Your Brain. And we discussed it as a team. I gave it praise online cause I really believe in what you’re doing. But I’m curious with the curiosity question, can you elaborate, in your opinion, on what does curiosity do for our mind?
Dana Wilde: Thank you. And thank you. I really appreciate your support and your kind words. It just means the world to me. You can’t imagine what a boost that is for me to hear. And with regard in regard to I’ve been, my audio guy has been busting me cause it must be a Minnesota thing where you say “with regards” and he’s like, you gotta stop saying that. Nobody says that. It’s “in regard to.” So you’ll see me editing here as we do this interview. I’ll continue to do it. So in regard to curiosity, what does curiosity do for your mind? I was alluding to it a second ago, and a lot of times people who are having a challenge with negative thinking or who are having a challenge with getting into their happiness or thinking those thoughts, they’re trying to say affirmations. They’re trying to find words to phrase that make them feel good.
Questions are a powerful way to do that. To phrase things in a way that feel better, help you to feel better. And curiosity, questions about things that are things that you’re passionate about, it’s going to make you happy and it’s going to elevate your feelings. So what happens when we get happy? Well, when we get happy, we open up the creative pathways in our brain. So we literally have access to better ideas. When we get happy, we show up as our best selves. When we get happy, we like people better, they like us better. We connect with the right people, we get in the flow, we do things faster and we do things easier. So if curiosity, the definition of curiosity, which I don’t know what it is, but my own definition would be if it’s exploring something with joy that you’re passionate about, you know, then what better combination of asking questions as well as getting into your joy could there be for ultimate success?
Mindie: Love it that you brought in joy. Absolutely love that. For you personally, where or when do you find yourself to be your most happy?
Dana Wilde: Well, I’ve got a lot of happy places so I’m going to try not to give you a whole nother list again, but I think most of them for me have to do with animals or nature or quiet time. But you know, it’s just kind of such a bunch of bullshit because I’m happy there, but I’m also happy social. I’m an introvert and this makes me happy right now having this conversation with you. And I’m happy when I go to a party and I’m happy when I sit down and watch some binge-watch Netflix stupid show. So it’s a challenging question for me because I really think happiness is where you find it and it’s a priority for me. You know, I wish I had a priority of some other things like physical fitness. But this is my priority. I’m going to have to bust myself. I’ll have to change that story so that I get my physical fitness on, but really it’s a priority so I’m happy a lot of the time.
Sean: Dana, we talk a lot about in our business that we’re always looking for the right fit clients. Yesterday I was talking to Mindie and I think I found the word that really makes that possible and I want to get your take on this word and what can we do to create more of this word in the world and that is “coachable.” Some people are wrong fit if they aren’t going to be coachable. What’s that about? Why do people not become coachable and how do we create more coachable people on this planet?
Dana Wilde: Well, I think first of all, what’s nice about the word coachable is that it fits so well with your word curious because to me the word coachable means open, interested, curious, wanting to learn all of those things that relate directly to what you just talked about. So my answer is always the same to every question like that. And so I’m going to give you my one answer and you can apply it across the board. Anybody who’s listening, you can use it for anything. How do you create a world that’s coachable? You start talking about it as though it’s already in existence. And so one of my favorite starting phrases for something like this is “it seems like.” It seems like, so I’ll always say things like, it seems like the world is getting more coachable. It seems like I’m coming across more people that are coachable.
It seems like I’m running into more people that are coachable. It seems like more and more I’m seeing people who are coachable. It seems like, you know, cause I don’t have so much resistance when just it kind of seems like. It’s not like I’m betting all my money or going all-in on it. I’m just saying it “seems like” people are more coachable now. And so that, for me, is where the shift begins. You know, sometimes you go out in the world and you hear people talking about young people who are disconnected now or young people who don’t know how to talk because of technology. And there’s this continual wanting to bash the progress, the direction we’re headed. This is the direction we’re headed. And so are you seeing the kids who aren’t connected or are you seeing the kids who are connected?
Because my niece, she’s got friends in Russia and Colombia and friends, they actually meet face to face cause they met through different things. She speaks Chinese, she’s 24 years old and she speaks Chinese because she’s connected. She’s connected to the world. So it’s that kind of a thing. You get to see the world you want to because both worlds exist. The world is getting more not coachable and the world is getting more coachable. And so which one do you want to see? That’s really it. And I’m not saying this directly to you of course, cause I know you guys get this, but it’s fun to have the vehicle.
Mindie: And you too. We were laughing about this. You do this on yourself, you’re like I have to bust myself. You’re coaching yourself constantly, which is so great. Dana, one of the things that I think is so helpful about your work, and I noticed with our team when we went through Train Your Brain and just other things that I’ve seen from you online, you make it a lot easier. You were just alluding to that where instead of stating a mantra as like this is what it is, the brain is sometimes like, Hmm, not yet. Or I’m not quite all onboard on that train at this point. So you have a lot of tools and techniques that really help bring it back a little bit, scale it back. So it’s like not yet. Can you just mention some of the other ones cause I find them so helpful?
Dana Wilde: I have a favorite one that I’ve been using like crazy lately, but I know you’re going to love and so here it is. The mantra is just like, it feels like something shifted, feels like something shifted because your brain knows what you want to shift. So it came up because somebody was on a call with me this morning and a group call and she was saying like, she wants to make more money.
She wants to feel good about her business. She wants to grow faster, but she feels too attached to the outcome. You know, she feels like she can’t make that happen, do a mantra around it. And so I said, your brain knows that’s what you want. So you don’t even have to do a mantra that sounds like “my business is growing easily and effortlessly.” You don’t have to do that. You can just start going, you know what? I think something shifted now. It feels like shifted. I love it. Something has shifted. I don’t know what it is, but it sure feels like something shifted. I love the shift that I’m having, you know, and your brain goes, ah, something shifted and it knows what that something is without you telling it. I take a page out of the Abraham Hicks book of talking to yourself or mantras or feeling good, which is: vague is most often better. You know, I think we try to make it too hard. And part of it comes like what Sean was talking about. We’re curious people, we want to figure it out and we want to wrestle it to the ground and there’s all this stuff. There’s all these questions. And so sometimes I think that the biggest answers come when you just go, okay, I’m figuring it out. It’s coming. It’s here, it’s happening, it’s all good. I’m on the path.
Sean: Dana, have you always been this happy?
Dana Wilde: No, I don’t know. That’s a good question. Let me try to give a thoughtful answer. I was a very serious kid. You know, my parents were divorced when I was 11. I was the eldest. My dad was an alcoholic. And so I was very serious about the world and about my responsibilities. I was very much a dutiful daughter. But I think what happened when I was 19, I went straight from high school into the workforce, never went to college. And when I was 19, I had an opportunity to go through a brain training course with a guy named Lou Tice. I was working for a major corporation, with a headset that looked very similar to the headset I’m wearing today as a matter of fact, in a cubicle. And one of the benefits, Lou Tice, he is from Seattle, very famous in the personal development space.
And I got 40 hours of training about how the brain worked. And that really shifted everything for me. And I thought, okay, if I can create my own reality, if everything starts with thought, then I’m quitting this cubicle job today. And off I went and I just started banging around and figuring it out. And I went through my very radical, angry feminist, get arrested all the time, phase. And then I went on the other end of that, I started getting into more of my traveling and I think that’s when things started to click, adding in bits of spirituality and understanding how the brain works more and more. So it’s been a process, but that’s a very thoughtful question. Thanks. I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me that, so I appreciate it. I think it’s been intentional. It’s practice. How do you get happy? You practice.
Mindie: That’s a super important point. Sean was just giving me a look, like what? Arrested?
Dana Wilde: I’ll send you pictures. I’ve got a long arrest record, but it’s all for social justice stuff. So at least it’s not like, you know, I was busted for crack or something.
Sean: Hey, we’re not here to judge, Dana.
Dana Wilde: I know, I know. I just revealed myself, didn’t I? Like what was worse or better? It doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s all good. If you were arrested for crack, good for you! If you’re here now, you’re all good.
Sean: Everything happens for a reason.
Mindie: Exactly. Dana, my question for you is, because I feel like a lot of people may have that similar notion of like, you know what, I’m going to go out and I’m going to do it and I’m going to make myself something and I’m going to get out of this job, I’m going to pursue my adventure, all of these things. And you and I had very different experiences in that launching point. You went to the moon and skyrocketed and just had a really powerful success story, I would say, early. And then some of us end up on the complete opposite end of the spectrum like living out of their office and bankrupt and all of this stuff. And yet, here’s my question for you because I think that a lot of the parts were similar. You know like we both knew about mindset, we both studied similar things and yet had two entirely different experiences. And I wonder if you could just speak to what occurred there or why maybe that was so divergent.
Dana Wilde: Well, Mindie, I would ask a couple of questions. I’m wondering, cause what I see happen to a lot of entrepreneurs is they come in and they’re full of excitement. They got the idea for the business and they’re ready to go and it’s like, Oh, this is going to be so awesome. And they start to have a little bit of success early on cause they’re so enthusiastic and people are like, Oh, we’re into this for you and it’s fun. And then they hit an obstacle and usually that first obstacle or that second obstacle, what it starts is a little bit of chronic thinking of like, this is going to be harder than I thought it was. You know, this seemed like it was going to be so easy, but I didn’t know this problem existed and it’s going to be harder than I thought it was.
And so when you start that train of thinking, then what happens is you start to focus more and more on that. And then the mantra is “this is going to be harder than I thought it was.” Now the reticular activating system, part of the brain, keeps matching up: This is going to be harder than I thought it was. And then you’ve got another hard thing and then the reticular activating system matches that up and matches that up. And so I don’t think it’s so much about background, why one path ends up one place of one ends up another one. I think it’s that stray thought that you don’t get ahold of and get aware of. You know, like the whole Train Your Brain program is about being so hyper-focused on that thought that’s creating the emotion that’s creating the result. And I could be wrong, but I would venture to bet you probably had something like that happen and you just got down that bunny trail before you knew it and then you hit that bottom and were like, okay, hold on. What happened here? And then you came back into who you knew yourself to be. Does that make sense?
Mindie: Oh, it totally makes sense. You know, for me it took a long time to get over and I would say from my myself, it was more some unconscious patterns, not necessarily even what was happening in the business, but familial history and lineage stuff and all kinds of other craziness. So it took a long time to kind of get to the point of awareness and then even from that point of awareness to say, okay, well now that I know that, now what do I want to do here? But I love all the different stories that bring us to today. Where we’re at right now.
Dana Wilde: But you said the key word I think, and I think the key word is “awareness.” I think it’s knowing what to pay attention to and knowing what… Literally, I’m telling you, my whole shtick is the reticular activating system. It’s the whole thing. Like if you realize you have a little matchmaker that sits in your head all day, every day, and listens to what you think about and talk about and just creates your whole outside world based on that, you start getting hyper-aware. You start really not allowing yourself those bunny trails. Unless it’s something you actually are okay with letting bunny trail, like I’m not a morning person. Who cares? I don’t care.
I didn’t mean to bunny trail. I’m busted like four times this show already, so might as well throw another one in.
Mindie: We’re not morning people either. Se we’re good with that.
Dana Wilde: There we go. Birds of a feather. But yeah, I like it, Mindie. It is interesting and I think there are a lot of paths to… I think it’s all good too is the other thing. You know there are people who are like, well you ended up on your couch, so you didn’t do as well as somebody who went to $1 million in three months. And I don’t believe any of that. I think we’re all on these individual paths because it’s all good. I don’t really look at the things that happened to me that are bad. I don’t label them bad anymore. It’s just feedback and it’s like, okay, okay here’s another thing. That’ll sort itself out. Let’s let that sort itself out. I’m not going to put my attention on that. You know, like it’s just, this is the amusement park that we’re in. You know, this is it. I think we signed up for what is human consciousness? What is it? Why are we here? Nobody knows any of these things. So we’re all just banging around trying to figure it out. Right?
Mindie: Totally. Sean has a great line. He says, whatever doesn’t kill you, raises your speaker fee. Because it’s all just a story.
Dana Wilde: [Laughing] I’m totally stealing that one too. I’ll give you credit the first three times though, Sean.
Sean: So, I’m going to give you another awesome question. It’s built into four parts and I really believe that it’s going to be exciting to hear your four parts because you’ve done so much work. It’s called H E R B. And the first part is about habits. What are the habits that you have to develop your happiness and your wealth?
Dana Wilde: Do you want me to answer that first before we go to the others?
Sean: Yep.
Dana Wilde: Okay. Mostly it’s my hyper-awareness. You know, I periodically have a morning routine now and again. I’m really pretty stringent about drinking water. Like I really think water is like the elixir of life. And that means, I know I can elevate my mood drastically, just with a glass of water or two. But mostly, the biggest habit for me is I was one of these kids I was raised in like that just bordering the 70s era when all those books came out like I’m Okay, You’re Okay. And all of that stuff. And so I was raised by a mom who was like, let’s live life for 10 minutes and then talk about it for an hour afterwards. Right? Like you analyze so many things. So I got really good at being present and thinking about thinking. And so the biggest habit I have I think is my ability to be aware and to pull myself into the moment and my ability to be the observer. And it’s consistent. I’m very consistent with it. Like every hour, multiple times an hour. So I think that’s the biggest habit. Is that what you’re looking for, Sean?
Sean: Yeah, I mean, everybody’s got different habits that they, you know, some people are very strict. Like I’ve gone through periods in my life where I have all my rituals, if you will, or habits and they’re all written out. I checkbox them as the day goes on. And then there are other times where I’m like, screw it. I’m not going to be that strict. And, you know, I personally believe the more we can stick to positive habits, the better the quality of our lives. So then that brings us to the E, which is our environment. What are things in your home, your office, your car, what do you allow in and what do you not allow into your different environments?
Dana Wilde: Good questions. Okay. So I wouldn’t say I’m anti-clutter, but I’m pretty good at staying on top of the clutter. I like things to be Zen and I’m kind of personally OCD myself. So I know it’s a story, but I am. I’m sticking to it cause it works for you. That anal-retentive thing. Like my way of meditating is I clean my kitchen, you know, I organize my kitchen and I clean my kitchen and it’s total Zen meditation for me. So, clutter is… I don’t have a lot of clutter in my environment. So that would be one thing. The other thing in my environment, I’m one of these people who, I have a friend who called it word art, where it’s like laugh or smile or you know, what’s this one back here say? Right? And my friend’s husband said, can we get some art that’s not telling me what to do?
I’m a fan of word art. You know, I like to have visuals around me that are positive and that help uplift. Pictures of things that are happy times. I get rid of anything that doesn’t elicit a happy emotion. Environmentally, the other thing is I almost can’t live in the city anymore. I’ve been in the country now for well over a decade, almost two. And so for me, I like to live out in the middle of nowhere and be in the middle of nature. Yeah, you too, Mindie? So those are probably the three environmental things that are important to me.
Sean: So moving to the R, which is resources, these can be books, courses, programs. If you could just rattle off the resources that you feel have really developed you into the human that you are and the success that you have.
Dana Wilde: This is the easiest, easiest one. First of all, I’ve consumed everybody and anybody, and I know I would leave somebody out if I didn’t. I mean everything from just watching your video of you doing your dance party to $2,000 courses designed to teach you this event. So I really, I can’t even begin to list them all, but I want to say probably now and maybe for the last 10 years, 15 years, the most important resource in my life has been Abraham Hicks. I listen to probably 10 hours of Abraham Hicks a month, maybe more. I’m on their glutton program. So whatever that is, and it keeps me centered and it keeps me like remembering that I am connected to source. I wake up every morning and I say “I am pure positive energy in a physical body.” I’m connected to source, you know, and I remind myself continually that this is it. We’re here, this is it. We got to physical. We did it. We’re here in the playground and so let’s make the most of it every day. So that’s my biggest resource.
Sean: Awesome. And then that perfectly slides us into beliefs, which is the B in HERB. And I want to know like what are some core beliefs that make you a money magnet?
Dana Wilde: Yes. Okay. My favorite one is: I’ll figure it out. I know that about myself. I can figure things out. It ties right back into your curiosity. I will figure it out. I know I’ll figure it out. And so that’s a core belief of mine. Another one is that things are always working out for me. Like I know that at the core of my being, even when things aren’t working out, they’re always working out for me and I always land on my feet. That’s another one. I always land on my feet. I have a high expectation for success and I think that that’s carried me far, but I was doing it unconsciously for a long time. And so now part of the thing that I like to teach people, you know, with like Train Your Brain for influence and some of the programs where we’re trying to help people to understand that successful people think differently than unsuccessful people or people who aren’t successful yet. And that’s something you can train people to do. You can train people to think with higher expectation. And so though the people that do that naturally, they take it for granted. And if you ask somebody, how did you get so successful, they’ll say, wow, I started using hashtags on Instagram and that did it. You know, they don’t realize that they’re successful because they have a higher level of expectation for success. So I’m trying to deconstruct that, if that makes sense.
Mindie: I could not be happier with that answer because, and you and I have talked about this on multiple interviews in the past, you can have all the techniques in the world and the best mentors and everybody, but if you don’t get that [mindset] handled, first and foremost, none of that stuff’s going to matter. So I love that. Thank you.
Dana Wilde: Well, and that’s what makes you two such powerful coaches too, is like, you know how to bring people to that space and bring them into their bodies and understand how their brains work so that they actually do that they have success and they become the people they need to become to have the success.
Mindie: Totally. Mic drop. As we wrap this up, what I would love, Dana, is if you could close your eyes just for a second and think about the listener that is maybe in a little bit of a struggle right now or at least feeling that way and they’ve just listened to all this great stuff that we’ve been talking about and they’re still just feeling the struggle. What, from your heart, would you say to that person right now?
Dana Wilde: Well, can I give you two answers? So the first answer is really it’s going to be okay. That’s the first answer. And that’s something like if you tapped into what the 10 year older version of yourself would say to you, the version of yourself 10 years or 20 years out would look at you right now and say things are going to be okay without a shadow of a doubt. So that is if I had to stop there that would be where I’d stop, but since you’re going to give me two answers, the other answer I’m going to say is: right now, starting today, just start saying to yourself in the back of your mind as often as you think about it and set a reminder on your phone and maybe put some, put up some Post-it notes that say to yourself “it’s going to be okay.”
It’s already shifting. Things are already shifting. It’s going to be okay. Things are going to be okay, things are going to be okay. I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out. Things are going to be okay. Things are shifting. Just start playing with those three or four phrases. And here’s the beauty… For 72 hours and at the end of 72 hours, what you’re going to see is your reticular activating system is going to kick in and you’re going to start to get evidence in your outside world that the things you’ve been saying are working. And when that happens, that’s when the light bulb really goes on. And when you realize that no matter how you’re feeling in this moment, you’re literally just a few days away from starting to get actual real results in the real world. So that would be the second piece.
Sean: Dana, I want to bounce one last theory off you. I’m always trying to match patterns amongst human behavior just to figure myself out, figure other people out. And so one of my favorite things to do is to try out my theories on smart people who do a lot of thinking on these topics.
Dana Wilde: This is so awesome. Can we start like a mastermind just on this where we can all talk about like big interesting thoughts and figure stuff out?
Sean: Don’t tempt me with a good time. So here’s the theory I want to bounce off of you. Human beings can get irritated by things. And I have a theory that all irritation is either projection. So the unconscious mind seeing itself outside of itself, like a reflection mirror, or envy that sees something it wishes it had the courage to do. So, I’ll give you a quick example and then you tell me how you process this and if you have something that you would add to it or take away. When somebody is watching a political conversation and they get super angry, I can’t stand that person. I believe either they have very similar qualities and they’re just in their blindspot. Or, they wish they had the ovaries to be like that person. They wish they had the courage to speak out. Even though they may not agree with it. The dogma being what they’re speaking about, but they like the idea that this person who doesn’t take crap, right? So they wish they had that. So with that theory stated, how do you take irritations in the human psyche? How would you modify that theory? How do you take it?
Dana Wilde: Very interesting. What’s really interesting about it to me is that I have always personally subscribed to, if I say something about somebody that I don’t like, I know it’s something I don’t like in myself. Without a doubt, 100% of the time. And I’m very conscious of that. And sometimes I don’t like to admit it or I don’t like to face it, you know, all of that stuff. The other two pieces I would add to this that I think are important and I’m sure you’ve probably bantered this around yourself, but in the work that we do with the emotional scale, one thing I know about irritation for myself and for many of the people that I work with is that when somebody is feeling irritated, it’s because 10 minutes ago they were feeling powerless. You know? And especially you use the political conversation. We live in a world where people still feel so powerless politically that when they watch debates about politics, it’s an easy place to get angry because you’re trying to get out of feeling powerless, so it becomes that.
And a lot of times with the people I work with, if they’re angry, I remind them, good, keep going. You’re moving in the right direction on the emotional scale. Now you’re not powerless anymore. Now move to frustration and move to hope and move on down the road. Right? To the other things. The other piece of it for myself personally when I’m feeling irritated is I know I’m not in my center and so I use it as a signal that, okay, I’m not 100% aligned right now. If I was 100% aligned, I wouldn’t be thinking this thing of that person or I wouldn’t be annoyed. My man has this habit where he… and I gotta quit using this example cause he’ll never get over this habit if I keep talking about it cause I keep holding this habit in place with this story, but he doesn’t rinse off the silverware before he puts it into the cup and it makes me crazy.
Who doesn’t do that? I hope neither one of you. But then you go like, okay, if this is bothering me like this? This is what I’m going to trade my happiness for? This thing? If this is bothering me then I must be overtired, or I haven’t eaten, or I need to like take some time off or… or… or… whatever the list of things are. So those are the two pieces I would add to it is that, you know, the anger is moving you away from powerlessness and if you’re feeling irritated, you’re probably off-center. You’re not in your center.
Sean: Do you think he gets a little bit of a rush out of seeing how much it annoys you?
Dana Wilde: I’ve wondered. [Laughing]
Sean: Because I have an opinion that your partner is kind of the childhood extension in some ways of your sibling.
Dana Wilde: Oh yeah.
Mindie: They like to poke at you.
Sean: Yeah, because as long as that button’s there, I’m going to keep pushing it. You need to get rid of the button. That’s not my problem. That’s your problem.
Dana Wilde: That’s funny actually and I can totally see you doing that too, Sean. That is so funny. Oh my gosh. Right, Mindie? I feel you. I told you “sister from another mister.”
Sean: Hey, if she didn’t have buttons, I couldn’t push them, right?
Dana Wilde: Well, and that’s what happens is that if I do react or something, which most of the time I don’t now cause I know it’s not my happiness, but he’ll be like, come on. Not that big of a deal. Right? But you’re totally right. That’s very funny.
Sean: So where do you leave the shit on the silverware in your life?
Dana Wilde: Where do I leave the shit on the silverware? Like what’s my thing? Probably my OCD stuff. Like that would make anybody crazy, you know? I mean, wouldn’t it? It makes me crazy. It must make other people crazy.
Sean: Are you sure you don’t have CDO? Which is OCD in the right order.
Dana Wilde: What is CDO? Compulsive.
Mindie: It’s the alphabetical…
Dana Wilde: All right. Is he a practical joker? Do you have to live with like a lot?
Sean: I’m not a practical joker. I am chronically sarcastic.
Mindie: And a comedian.
Sean: Yeah. Yeah.
Dana Wilde: You have obsessive sarcasm disorder.
Sean: Yes.
Dana Wilde: Or is it compulsive sarcasm disorder?
Sean: If there’s an opportunity to make something inappropriate or funny, I’m going for it.
Dana Wilde: Oh, that’s so good. That’s so good.
Sean: That’s just how I’m wired.
Mindie: She’s like that’s so good. I’m like, Ugh.
Dana Wilde: I feel you, Mindie. I’m telling you, we got a whole support group happening right here live.
Mindie: Thank you. This has been absolutely awesome. We love you. If our listeners are interested in like, wow, that was an amazing conversation. She’s so cool. I want to know more about Dana Wilde. Where would they go?
Dana Wilde: You know, if you go to DanaWilde.com/FreeTraining, everything is there that’s the latest, newest thing or just DanaWilde.com. It’s all good. There’s always fun little things coming out. I got a new quiz I’ve got out now that I’m just super psyched about cause I’ve always wanted a quiz. And I got one. It’s your marketing superpower quiz, so entrepreneurs, go find out your marketing superpower.
Sean: Awesome. Dana, I could talk to you all day. In fact, I think we definitely should have at least quarterly conversations with you, me and Mindie, and we would all just hop on a Zoom call with a good hot beverage, and just talk about life, so that’s what I’m putting out into the world. That’s what I’m saying: It seems like that’s shifting into a possibility.
Dana Wilde: I would love that. Solve all the problems of the world.
Sean: Exactly. Thank you so much for your time and your curiosities and how you brought them into the world. I know that you’ve had a huge impact on Mindie and I, and we are so grateful that you were on our podcast today.
Dana Wilde: Well, thank you for having me. This was so fun and you asked the best questions and I just know like this is going to be such a skyrocket of success. I feel so honored to be chosen. Thanks for having me.
Sean: Thank you, Dana.
Mindie: Thanks, Dana.
