---
feed: "DANIEL_ON_SLOPE"
codex_section: "S19"
source: VideoTranscript
title: "MENtrepreneurs Level One Series - Chapter02.08"
conv_id: "video-chapter02.08-2010"
share_url: "https://www.youtube.com/@MENtrepreneurs"
created: "2010-07"
message_count: 1
category:
  - "MENtrepreneurs"
  - "Level One Series"
  - "Chapter 02.08"
  - "Chapter Wrap-Up"
  - "Final Session"
summary: "Daniel Comp delivers the official wrap-up of Chapter 2 on Personal Transformation. He reviews the four keys to transformation: (1) The brain is resilient and designed for change (Jody Miller, Jill Bolte-Taylor, Eric Kandel, Ramachandran), (2) The mind creates the brain (Daniel Siegel’s nine middle prefrontal functions for a healthy mind), (3) Systems integration through emotional vocabulary, relationship skills, and being teachable (Anne Sullivan & Helen Keller, Paul Hegstrom), and (4) Practical daily application — balancing brain chemistry (oxygen, water, nutrition, sleep, sex, stress, learning), mirroring attitude and gratitude (Zig Ziglar, Jessica, Chuck Swindoll, Les Brown, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins), attention to intention (Daniel Siegel on mindfulness), and managing emotional state through breathing and affirmations (Denise Lynch, Dalai Lama). He challenges participants to join a mastermind, turn challenges into championships, and commit to lifelong practice. This session officially completes Chapter 2 and the core teaching of the Level One Series."
keypoints:
  - "Four keys to personal transformation: (1) Brain is resilient and made for change, (2) Mind creates the brain (9 healthy mind functions), (3) Systems integration via emotional vocabulary + relationships + teachability, (4) Daily practice (brain chemistry, mirroring gratitude, attention to intention, state management)"
  - "The brain was designed for change — even after hemispherectomy, stroke, or decades of dysfunction, new neural pathways can form through plasticity, mirroring, and consistent practice"
  - "A healthy mind emerges from integrated systems: emotional vocabulary + relationship skills + being teachable creates the nine middle prefrontal functions (body regulation, attunement, emotional balance, fear extinction, response flexibility, insight, empathy, morality, intuition)"
  - "Practical daily tools include optimizing brain chemistry (oxygen, water, nutrition, sleep, sex, stress management, learning), mirroring mentors (Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Napoleon Hill, Jack Canfield), and consistent affirmations/gratitude practice (Denise Lynch CDs)"
  - "Final challenge: Join a mastermind of men, turn challenges into championships, practice daily, and become the positive encouraging voice in your own life and the lives of those around you"
tags:
  - "men-trepreneurs"
  - "chapter-02-08"
  - "chapter-wrap-up"
  - "four-keys"
  - "personal-transformation"
  - "mastermind"
  - "mind-creates-brain"
monomyth_stage: "12 - Return with the Elixir"
gameboard_position: "Camp 9: Return with the Elixir / Chapter 2 Complete"
truth_score: 95
entropy_score: "Low"
tone:
  sentiment: "Synthesizing"
  emotions:
    - "Encouraging"
    - "Comprehensive"
    - "Challenging"
  sycophancy_level: "None"
  notes: "This is the official completion of Chapter 2 and the core teaching arc of the MENtrepreneurs Level One Series. Daniel synthesizes all previous sessions into four clear keys and provides a final actionable challenge. The tone is comprehensive, encouraging, and forward-looking. No AI avatars; pure founder synthesis and vision casting for the next phase of the journey."
related_events: ["video-chapter02.01-2010", "video-chapter02.02-2010", "video-chapter02.03-2010", "video-chapter02.04-2010", "video-chapter02.05-2010", "video-chapter02.06-2010", "video-chapter02.07-2010"]
syndication_status:
  arnie: false
  chris: false
  redmond: false
  clint: false
  pilot: false
ma5_inheritance: "Initium"
pre_silicon: false
voice_print: false
codex_candidate: true
phase: "Chapter 02 - Personal Transformation: Official Chapter Wrap-Up"
enriched_date: "2026-04-19"
---
![[Pasted image 20260425155215.png]]

### Original YouTube Description

[No separate description provided in source file. This is the official wrap-up of Chapter 2 — Personal Transformation — synthesizing the four keys and challenging participants to apply everything in a mastermind of men.]

---

### Cleaned Transcript

**(Music)**

**Daniel:**  
Welcome back to the Enterprising Cycle, Chapter 2 on personal transformation. This is Session 8, which is the wrap-up for the chapter.

Now, the goal of this entire chapter is not for you to learn how to offend people or put them on the offensive. It means it's defensive. But rather for you to become more transparent and far less guarded. To have the capacity of understanding in your mind to deal with changes in the market so that you don't have to become an offender. Using your strengths to wound other people.

It's really stinky in that helmet, that face mask.

Remember the umbrella? All these different pieces that we've got in this chapter so far. We've got my X-Factor, brain plasticity, arrested development, change thinking, distinction in emotional vocabulary, affirmations, gratitude.

It's like the spreaders, the ribs, the tube. The point here is to be able to get a handle on the application of all this. How to become discerning so that you can respond to the market changing and the life situations that you have changing. So that rather than being so bristly, you're more approachable and you're more understanding. And you're more responsive to change and the need of the market and people around you.

These are all fabulous skills that you're going to get.

Let's go back through this entire chapter and cover the key pieces that we're going to stitch together into a single unit. And a final thought for you to apply all of this.

You'll recall that I began this chapter talking about my X-Factor and the opposing demands that skew our beliefs over time. And I had the conflicting voices inside of me to be transformed by the renewing of my mind and to avoid any personality disorders.

So let's review those.

**Personality disorders** are defined as long-standing, deeply ingrained patterns of social behavior that are detrimental to those who display them or to others. Personality disorders often first appear in childhood or adolescence and may persist throughout a person's lifetime. Persons with these disorders have rigid personality traits and coping styles, are challenged by changing situations, and experience impaired social and/or occupational functioning. Most importantly, people with personality disorders may not perceive that there is anything wrong with their behavior and they are not motivated to change it.

Impaired social or occupational functioning — that defined my life. And yet I was to be transformed by the renewing of my mind?

I grew up in a fairly dysfunctional home. I wouldn't say that it was extreme, but it was certainly unusual. And I learned that the parenting styles and I learned models not to follow. Let me put it that way. Which left me clueless of how to be a parent.

There is no entrepreneur in the background in my family. I had no idea who to follow, what to do, where to go.

You see, the secret to personal transformation turns out to be right here, is what my friend says it, in this three pound mass of gray matter that we carry around behind our eye sockets.

You see, it's exactly there where this secret was hidden about our transformation.

**Chris (clip):**  
I study the human brain, the functions and structure of the human brain. And I just want you to think for a minute about what this entails. Here is this mass of jelly, three pound mass of jelly, you can hold in the palm of your hand and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity. And there is this peculiar recursive quality that we call self awareness, which I think is the holy grail of neuroscience, of neurology. And hopefully someday we'll understand how that happens.

**Daniel:**  
Let me be perfectly clear why I started with analogy of fencing.

You see, I have been struggling for three and a half decades with my boss, fighting my own self talk, struggling to find the keys to personal transformation in the dark, not knowing they were right here.

Here's the **four keys** that I want you to leave this chapter with.

**Number one:** The brain is resilient. It's adaptive. It was made for change.

**Two:** The mind creates the brain. We're going to look at again those nine traits and benefits of having a healthy mind.

**Three:** Systems integration — things like relationship skills and language skills and emotional vocabulary, things like that being integrated, tying pieces of our brain together so that we can actually think better, clearer, more distinctive.

**And then four:** Actual things to practice — ways of building on our skills. Having a balanced brain on our chemistry, mirroring good attitudes and gratitude, having an attention to intention, and then managing our emotional states with things like breathing.

Let's look at those one by one and revisit some of the experts that we've learned from.

So let's retract some of what we've learned about **brain plasticity**.

You'll recall the hemispherectomy in 1997 of young Jody Miller.

**Narrator (clip):**  
This girl is a testament to the amazing resilience of the human brain. Young Jody Miller leads an idyllic life as a nine-year-old girl. You would never guess that she has undergone some of the most drastic surgery imaginable.

**Daniel:**  
And from **Jill Bolte-Taylor**, we learned about the two halves and personalities of our brain.

**Jill Bolte-Taylor (clip):**  
If you've ever seen a human brain, it's obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain. So this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain with the spinal cord hanging down. And this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it's obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor, while our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus callosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres think about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities.

**Daniel:**  
And **Dr. Eric Kandel** from Columbia University. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000 for his discoveries about memory and neuroplasticity.

**Dr. Eric Kandel (clip):**  
If we carry on a conversation, or we have a pleasant afternoon together, and you and I remember that tomorrow or a week from now, it's because our brain has been modified as a result of that experience. The way nerve cells talk to one another has been altered, so we recall that. Storing memories is another of the brain's plastic abilities. When one neuron talks to another, they talk with a certain tone of voice. As the memory becomes stronger, the tone of voice becomes louder. If you remember something very briefly, like a telephone number or something that happens casually, you remember it for five or ten minutes, it's a functional change that regresses back to its previous state. What Dr. Kandel discovered is that long-term memories aren't stored in the connections between cells, but inside each cell, in the way genes express themselves. If something is very important for you, like meeting Dan Rather or having an opportunity to do something interesting, you remember it for longer periods of time, or if you repeat something many times, you learn it for a long time, that actually gives rise to anatomical changes. It wasn't that long ago that if you had a stroke on the left side of your brain and your right arm became useless, that that was considered permanent. You better start learning how to use your other arm. Right. It's the opposite. We want to tie up your good arm, so force you to use the other. It takes enormous effort on the part of the patient. We now realize that there is significant recuperative capability that is present in the brain if one puts sufficient challenge on the damaged area.

**Daniel:**  
And we learned about the value of **mirroring** to overcome learned paralysis from **Dr. Ramachandran**.

**Dr. V.S. Ramachandran (clip):**  
But however, about half the patients, this doesn't happen. They'll say, "Doctor, the phantom limb is paralyzed. It's fixed in a clenched spasm and is excruciatingly painful. If only I could move it, maybe the pain will be relieved." Now, why would a phantom limb be paralyzed? It sounds like an oxymoron. When we looked at the case sheets, what we found was these people with the paralyzed phantom limbs, the original arm was paralyzed because of a peripheral nerve injury. The actual nerve supplying the arm was severed, was cut by, say, a motorcycle accident. So the patient had an actual arm, which is painful, in a sling for a few months or a year. And then in a misguided attempt to get rid of the pain in the arm, the surgeon amputates the arm. And then you get a phantom arm with the same pains. Right. And this is a serious clinical problem. Patients become depressed. Some of them are driven to suicide. This learned paralysis carries over into your body image and into your phantom. Okay. Now, how do you help these patients? How do you unlearn the learned paralysis so you can relieve him of this excruciating, clenching spasm of the phantom arm? Well, we said, "What if you now send the command to the phantom, but give him visual feedback that it's obeying his command?" Right. Maybe you can relieve the phantom pain, the phantom cramp. How do you do that? Well, virtual reality, but that costs millions of dollars. So I hit on a way of doing this for three dollars. But don't tell my funding agencies. What you do is you create what I call a mirror box. You have a cardboard box with a mirror in the middle. Now I said, "Now look, wiggle your phantom, your real fingers, or move your real fingers while looking in the mirror. He's going to get the visual impression that the phantom is moving." Right. That's obvious. But the astonishing thing is the patient then says, "Oh my God, my phantom is moving again." And the pain, the clenching spasm is relieved. I remember my first patient who came in. [applause] My first patient came in and he looked in the mirror and I said, "Look at your reflection of your phantom." And he started giggling, he said, "I can see my phantom." But he's not stupid. He knows it's not real. He knows it's a mirror reflection, but it's a vivid sensory experience. Now I said, "Move your normal hand and phantom." He said, "Oh, I can't move my phantom, you know that. It's painful." I said, "Move your normal hand." He says, "Oh my God, my phantom is moving again. I don't believe this. And my pain is being relieved." Okay. And then I said, "Close your eyes." He closes his eyes. "And move your normal hand." Oh, nothing. It's clenched again. Okay, open your eyes. "Oh my God, oh my God, it's moving again." So he's like a kid in a candy store. So I said, "Okay, this proves my theory about learned paralysis and the critical role of visual input. But I'm not going to get a Nobel Prize for getting somebody to move his phantom limb. Completely useless ability, if you think about it. But then I started realizing maybe other kinds of paralysis that you see in neurology, like stroke, focal dystonias. There may be a learned component to this which you can overcome with the simple device of using a mirror. So that's the bonus. Now this technique has been tried on dozens of patients by other groups in Helsinki. It may prove to be valuable as a treatment for phantom pain. And indeed, people have tried it for stroke rehabilitation. Stroke you normally think of as damage to the fibers. Nothing you can do about it. But it turns out some component of stroke paralysis is also learned paralysis. And maybe that component can be overcome using mirrors. This has also gone through clinical trials."

**Daniel:**  
And now for the **second of the four keys** on how our mind creates the brain. Here's **Dr. Daniel Siegel**.

**Dr. Daniel Siegel (clip):**  
You'd be amazed, but a lot of people live their lives just having thoughts and feelings, beliefs and attitudes. Having hopes and dreams and memories and perceptions. All the stuff that we can use to describe the mind. Those aren't definitions. They're descriptions of mental activity. But they haven't developed the capacity to actually observe those mental activities as the flow of energy and information. As the mind itself. So there's something about being able to see and influence your internal world that creates more health. We used to think of the brain as pretty fixed. Now we're learning it's always changing. And a thought can change the brain. If you need to know the outside world, but your eyes are no longer bringing the input, we used to think, oh well, you're really in trouble. Your need to have energy and information flow about the outside world drives the brain to create a map of the outside world. For our purposes, understanding the power of this part of the brain, even through the pain of that family, is to look at the power of integration. So take a look at this list in your head or if you've written it down of nine middle prefrontal functions.

**The nine components of a healthy mind:**
1. It regulates body functions.
2. Makes you in tune to things like facial expressions and anchors you into relationships.
3. Gives you a balance to determine chaos and meaning.
4. Helps you extinguish fear.
5. Helps you to have a pause before reacting.
6. Self-awareness for behaviors of the past or projections into the future.
7. Empathy.
8. Compassion.
9. Intuition.

And how many of you think that that list of nine has a number of components that feel to you, just in your intuition, that this is probably a reasonable description of mental well-being? Let me see. Okay. Well, if you ask mental health practitioners, they jump all over this list and they say, "My God, where'd you get this list?" And I tell them, you know, from the clinical case and they go, "That's like a magnificent description for us of describing mental health."

**Daniel:**  
And now for the **third of the four keys**, we'll look at **systems integration**. And in particular, pay close attention to the mashing of emotional vocabulary with relationship skills, with being teachable. Those three factors are really, really, really important.

**Dr. Daniel Siegel (clip):**  
Certainly my own background as an attachment researcher and a psychiatrist, we see this all the time, that relationships shape the firing in the brain and when neurons fire, they actually change their synaptic connections with each other. And so the way we learn, the way we grow, the way we develop is by experiences in addition to genes shaping the synaptic connections in the nervous system. We know that relationships shape those connections. The proposal I'm going to make to you is that a healthy mind emerges from integrated systems. Integration very clearly defined as the linkage of differentiated parts so that when you have a nervous system that's integrated, you get these nine functions. When you see relationships in a family that are integrated, you know, where people are honored for their differences, but linked, they want to, "How are you doing? How are you doing? Okay. You like vanilla ice cream? You like chocolate? Fine. But let's go out for ice cream together." You know, that's a healthy adaptive family. You get flexibility, adaptability, even a sense of coherence if you look at the mathematics of coherence. So we're talking about relationships and a brain as systems of energy information flow that when they're integrated, they can move in this adaptive way.

**Daniel:**  
And here again is that excellent example of integration and overcoming by **Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller**.

**Anne Sullivan (clip):**  
When I saw Helen Keller first, she was six years and eight months old. She had been blind and deaf and mute since her 19th month as a result of an illness. She had no way of communicating with those around her except a few imitated signs that she had made for herself. A push meant go and a pull meant come and so on.

**Helen Keller (clip):**  
All right. Pump. No, she's not here, pump. W-A-T-E-R, water. It has a name. W-A-T. [water splashing]

**Daniel:**  
And of course you'll recall the dramatic story of **Dr. Paul Hegstrom** and his expertise at Arrested Development.

**Dr. Paul Hegstrom (clip):**  
Why do I do what I do? And that's probably one of the greatest questions that does not have an answer in mental health. Again, if I, and I used to say that, I spent a lot of money. I was spending a hundred and basically a hundred and thirty dollars for 50 minutes in 1979, 80, 81, 82, 83 with some of the top psychologist psychiatrists in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. My big question with my psychiatrist was why do I pick beautiful women in my life and I destroy them. I resented the fact that I would ask the question, and, and, well, how do you feel about that? What do you think? How do you think you need to stop? Why do I do this? Why do you think you do it? If I knew, I wouldn't be buying your cars for you. I would go to counselors, Christian counselors and pastors, and they would say, well, you need to read the Bible more and pray more. Well, I was, I was so whacked out, I couldn't sit down and read the Bible because at four or five minutes and I'd get bored because it wasn't, it wasn't adapting to what I needed, but I didn't know what I needed. And so we get these pat answers within the faith world and, and we don't even have the attention span to even sit down and do Bible study, that kind of stuff. The wounds of childhood will affect us for a lifetime. All children, because they don't have the chemicals, serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, they don't have the chemicals to see the whole picture. So everything that is not right in their life, every hurt, every wound, every loss, everything that happens to a child that doesn't feel good in the limbic system, the child says, what's wrong with me, that this happened to me. So child 100% takes responsibility for all the hurts and pain and losses in childhood. So what we do is we go back and show how the brain and how our behavior changes because of the wounds. Then we go back in and, and understand this wound produced this behavior. See, and when we're wounded, we think everybody in our world has an agenda against us. We think everybody can see through us. And so we end up failing in areas. We have tremendous talents. We are gifted in things, but we never can take advantage of it because we feel that we're flawed and defective. So our gifts have been neutralized.

**Daniel:**  
Two of my favorite quotes from Dr. Hegstrom:

"We don't see things the way they are. We see things the way we are."

And "If we are teachable, then it's fixable."

Now would be a good time if you need to take a break because we're going to start into the **fourth key**, which is things that we can do to create a healthy mind.

You remember getting a handle, getting a handle on the actual application of all of this learning and understanding. And there was actually four pieces of that.

You remember we talked about **balancing our chemistry** and **mirroring the attitudes and gratitude** of others, particularly by having a mentor or a group of mentors and a mastermind, and then having an **attention to intention**, and then finally, being aware to **manage our state**.

Okay, if you'd like to take a break, do now.

Otherwise, let's start with the fourth key.

**Balancing our brain chemistry.**

You'll recall there's at least seven factors that we can choose to manage: oxygen, water, nutrition, sleep, sex, stress, and learning.

Okay, the reduction of stress, managing your stress. I'm not an expert at it. I get stressed out just trying to produce these videos. But, you know, **Robert Sapolsky** is fabulously knowledgeable at it. So let's learn some things from him.

**Robert Sapolsky (clip):**  
If you're a normal mammal, what stress is about is three minutes of screaming terror on the savanna, after which it's either over with you or over with. Because what stress is about is somebody is very intent on eating you or you are very intent on eating somebody, and there's an immediate crisis going on. When you run for your life, basics are all that matter. Lungs work overtime to pump mammoth quantities of oxygen into the bloodstream. The heart races to pump that oxygen throughout the body, so muscles respond instantly. You need your blood pressure up to deliver that energy. You need to turn off anything that's not essential. Growth, reproduction, you know, you're running for your life. This is no time to ovulate. Tissue repair, all that sort of thing. Do it later if there is a later. When the zebra escapes, its stress response shuts down. But human beings can't seem to find their off switch. We turn on the exact same stress response for purely psychological states, thinking about the ozone layer, the taxes coming up, mortality, 30-year mortgages. We turn on the same stress response, and the key difference there is we're not doing it for a real physiological reason, and we're doing it nonstop. After a while, the stress response is more damaging than the stressor itself, because the stressor is some psychological nonsense that you're falling for. No zebra on earth running for its life would understand why fear of speaking in public would cause you to secrete the same hormones that it's doing at that point to save its life.

**Daniel:**  
And the **second point** of what to master: **mirroring a great attitude with gratitude**.

And you'll remember **Jessica** from YouTube.

**Jessica (clip):**  
Now, my whole house is great. I can do anything good. I like my school. I like anything. I like my dad. I like my cousins. I like my aunts. I like my Alice's. I like my mom. I like my sisters. I like my dad. I like my sister. I like my hair. I like my haircuts. I like my pajamas. I like my stuff. I like my rooms. I like my whole house. My whole house is great. I can do anything good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can do anything good, better than anyone, better than anyone.

**Daniel:**  
And from the perspective of a biblical scholar, **Dr. Chuck Swindoll**.

**Dr. Chuck Swindoll (clip):**  
Let me urge you to take charge of your mind and your emotions today. Hello, this is Chuck Swindoll. Let your mind feast on nutritious food for a change. Refuse to grumble and criticize and blame. Let your life yield a sweet, winsome melody that this world needs so desperately to hear. Not far-fetched daydreams. Not talking about that. Focus on things that are true. Not cheap, flippant, or superficial. Things that are honorable. Not things that are wrong and unjust, but things that are right. Not slander and gossip and put-downs, but things that build up and cause grace to flow. Take charge of that mind.

**Daniel:**  
And again on mastering an attitude of gratitude. Here is **Zig Ziglar**.

**Zig Ziglar (clip):**  
She almost started crying when she saw me. She said, "Oh, I'm just so glad to see you. I got this horrible job. I hate it. I hate everything about it. I hate everybody down there." I mean, you're talking about negative nails. She was it. She said, "Can you help me?" Now understand, I've only got about 10 minutes. So I looked at her and one thing I have learned, I don't do counseling, but I talk with a lot of people who do in psychology, psychiatry, and the ministry. And they tell me that everybody who comes to you with a problem are not necessarily looking for a solution. I couldn't understand that for a long time. Why do they bring you a problem if they don't want to solve it? Well, I can tell you why. They want to tell you about it, you about it, you about it, you about it, and you about it. And if you foul up the deal and solve the problem, they can't tell you again, you again. They want the attention that goes with the problem. And every company just about it has that kind of an individual. They want the attention that goes with griping and complaining. I said, "Ma'am, let me tell you what my experience in life has been. I've discovered that in 100% of the cases, no exceptions, people who won't take step number one never take step number two." You see, she had come to me with an impossible dream. Her dream was that nice Mr. Ziglar was going to solve all of her problems, and she would live happily ever after. Well, folks, I got news for you. I can't solve her problems. I can't solve your problems. But I will give you some steps that I absolutely, definitely, and positively will work for you, as it worked eventually for her.

**Daniel:**  
And now a few thoughts from a master of overcoming adversity, **Mr. Les Brown**.

**Les Brown (clip):**  
I've found that most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss. Most people fail in life because they're just like I was for 14 years. They aim too low and hit. I remember seeing the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote "The Power of Positive Thinking," and Robert Schuller, who talked about possibility thinking, and the number one motivational speaker on the planet, Zig Ziglar, who wrote, "See you at the top." How many of you like to help people? Raise your hands, please. I love to help people, and my heart would say, "I could do that." And then my mind would say, after I would leave there going to my car, "Les Brown, you can't do that. You were labeled 'educable middle retarded' when you were in the fifth grade, put back from the fifth grade to the fourth grade. Les Brown, you can't do that. You failed in the eighth grade. Les Brown, you can't do that. You don't have any college training. You never worked for any major corporation. Les Brown, you can't do that. You don't even know who your birth parents are." How many ever thought about something you wanted to do, and you talk yourself out of it? Raise your hands, please, if you understand what I'm talking about. There's an old proverb that says, "If there's no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm."

**Daniel:**  
And now let's consider how we can mirror an attitude of gratitude by modeling other leading men of valor. **Dr. Wayne Dyer**.

**Dr. Wayne Dyer (clip):**  
Rolling. Okay, we'll start with the transition from ambition to meaning. Great. It's a good idea. I can give you an example from my own life. It might be helpful. When I first started writing, I was very blessed to be considered "successful." My motivation very often became how much money was I going to make on this book? What was my next contract going to look like? How many weeks did it appear on the New York Times bestseller list? What position was it? Did you get on the Tonight Show? Did you get on the Donahue Show?

**Daniel:**  
And now let's revisit the transformational story of peak performance coach **Tony Robbins**.

**Tony Robbins (clip):**  
My life was touched because when I was 11 years old, Thanksgiving, no money, no food, and we're not going to starve, but my father was totally messed up. My mom was letting him know how bad he messed up. And somebody came to the door and delivered food. My father made three decisions. I know what they were briefly. His focus was, "This is charity. What does it mean? I'm worthless. What do I got to do? I'm going to leave my family," which he did, "the time when the most painful experiences of life." My three decisions gave me a different path. I said, "Focus on there's food. What a concept." Second, but this is what changed my life. This is what shaped me as a human being. Somebody's gift. I don't even know who it is. But my father always said, "No one gives a shit." And all of a sudden somebody I don't know, they're not asking for us to give them our family food, looking out for us. It made me believe this. What does it mean? That strangers care. And what that made me decide is that strangers care about me and my family. I care about them. What am I going to do? I'm going to do something to make a difference. So when I was 17, I went out one day on Thanksgiving. It was my target for years. Half of the money to feed two families. The most fun thing I ever did in my life. The most moving. Then next year I did four. I didn't tell anybody what I was doing. Next year, eight. I wasn't doing it for brownie points, but after eight I thought, "Shit, I could use some help." So sure enough I went out and what did I do? I got my friends involved and I grew companies. Then I got 11 companies and I built the foundation. Now 18 years later, I'm proud to tell you, last year we fed two million people in 35 countries through our foundation. All during the holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all the different countries around the world. It's been fantastic. Thank you.

**Daniel:**  
And to encourage us to not go it alone, but rather to surround ourselves with men of valor, here is some classic **Napoleon Hill** on the mastermind.

**Napoleon Hill (clip):**  
An understandable definition of the mastermind is this. It consists of two or more people who work in perfect harmony for the attainment of a definite purpose. Now here are some interesting facts about the mastermind which give you an idea of how important it is and how necessary that you embrace this principle and make use of it in attaining success in your chosen occupation. First of all, it is the principle through which you may borrow and use the education, the experience, the influence, and perhaps the capital of other people in carrying out your own plans in life. It is the principle through which you can accomplish in one year more than you could accomplish without it in a lifetime if you depended entirely upon your own efforts for success. I also know that the mastermind principle can give you absolute protection against failure, provided always that your purpose in using this principle is beneficial to all whom you influence. In my research while organizing the Science of Success, I had the collaboration of practically every outstanding, successful man this country has produced during the past 50 years. And I can tell you definitely that their success was due in the main to their knowledge and application of the mastermind principle.

**Daniel:**  
And now a reminder on the absolute value of learning from the champion overcomer, **Og Mandino**.

**Og Mandino (clip):**  
Let's take inventory right now. Did you possibly learn anything during all those years of school that you could apply starting tonight if you wanted to turn your life around or make it better than it is? You bet you did. You learned how to read with that one great ability that all of you have, the ability to read. You can work miracles in your life. Kyle Lauer many years ago wrote, "What we become depends on what we read after the teachers have finished with us." The greatest university of all, he wrote, is a collection of books. You will be the same person in five years as you are today, except for the people you meet and the books you read.

**Daniel:**  
To encourage us on how to find a mentor, here's the author of *The Success Principles* and the co-creator of the *Chicken Soup for the Soul* series, **Mr. Jack Canfield**.

**Jack Canfield (clip):**  
Here's some tips on how to find a good mentor. Every one of us needs someone who's gone down the path before us. Look out there in the world and see people that are already doing what you want to do. Maybe they're ahead of you in life, they're a professional and they're doing what you want to do. Maybe they're your boss. Maybe it's someone in another industry. Identify that person and once you've identified them, call them or write them and say, "Could I spend 10 minutes a week with you on the phone?" Start with a small request. What we've always found is that when you start with a small request, they'll let it expand if they enjoy spending time with you. But if you ask for an hour, it'll feel overwhelming to them. Just tell them you respect them, you admire them, and you'd like to learn from them.

**Daniel:**  
And a final thought on where to start on mastering an attitude of gratitude, here's **Dr. Charles Stanley**.

**Dr. Charles Stanley (clip):**  
You say, "Well, I don't know what to do next. I can tell you exactly what to do next." Here's what you do next. "Lord, I heard your message and I know it came out of God's Word. I don't know what to do at this point. I know that I'm a Christian, I'm a believer. I don't know what to do. Lord, what shall I do?" I can answer that question for you. You simply say this to Him, "Lord, I don't know what to do, but today I make myself available to you, to serve you any way you want me to. To individuals, to more people than an individual, I'll serve you any way you want me to serve you, however you want me to serve you. Whatever you call me to do, the answer is yes." Now, I'm going to need some help, Lord, and you promised that help, so I'm going to trust you to show me what to do. I'm going to trust you to help me. I'm going to trust you to enable me to do my best at whatever you call me to do. But Lord, from this point on, no more wasted time, no more wasted life. I want you to use me and I'm making myself available." You tell Him that and He'll probably wear you out. For the simple reason, what He's looking for are people who are available. Amen?

**Daniel:**  
Now, my whole house is great. I can do anything good. I like my school. I like anything. I like my dad. I like my cousins. I like my aunts. I like my Alice's. I like my mom. I like my sisters. I like my dad. I like my sister. I like my hair. I like my haircuts. I like my pajamas. I like my stuff. I like my rooms. I like my whole house. My whole house is great. I can do anything good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can do anything good, better than anyone, better than anyone.

Okay, I snuck a little Jessica in there to switch up our state because now we're going to switch to our **third point**, **attention to intention**, **Dr. Daniel Siegel**.

**Dr. Daniel Siegel (clip):**  
States become traits with practice. That's the whole idea. So what I'm suggesting to you is that here's — we define a healthy mind coming from integrated relationships and integrated nervous system. We've described its features, and now here's the last few minutes before we stop for questions is how do you actually do this? Well, one thing is you try to promote healthy relationships with other people. You tune into not just their thoughts but their internal world, their nonverbal signals. You combine in every way you can a way of attuning to people's internal worlds and respecting their ability to be distinct from you. That's a relational one. In the brain, you can actually on your own develop — and you can call it an integrative practice if you don't like the word mindfulness, but it's basically a way of focusing energy and information flow in a way that has you be aware of your awareness, pay attention to your intention, and basically build the muscle of the mind. We have every reason to believe what you're doing in doing that is strengthening the integrative fibers of your brain, in particular these middle prefrontal areas that I outlined for you. Now, when you do that, we know from research a couple of amazing things happen. People will shift the baseline activity of their brain to what's called an approach state. So when you do happen in life to confront thing that's difficult, instead of withdrawing from it, you actually approach it. Even just after an eight-week training when people practice every day, their brain changes. Your immune system function improves. People's approach state shift, which is called a left shift, it improves in proportion to the amount of increased immune cells that are going to fight off disease.

**Daniel:**  
And now, for the **fourth facet** on how to develop a healthy mind, this is about **managing our emotional state by being conscious of our breathing**.

Just as two examples, there's all sorts of domains of integration that can outline a whole approach to promoting a healthy mind, but one very direct approach, which has been around for, it turns out, thousands of years, was taught to me only very recently because I by accident used the word mindfulness in a book on parenting. And I said with my co-author Mary Hartzell that one of the most important things we can do is be intentional and awake in our parenting. We use the English word mindfulness.

It turned out, as you may know, that there's 2,500 years of specific mental training to develop mindfulness traits, which I wasn't aware of, but since that time, I was fortunate enough to meet people who have been spending their life in modern times studying scientifically the power of mental training to promote, it turns out, this totally blew my mind, it turned out to promote all nine of the middle prefrontal functions.

And the neuroscience lesson is that neurons which fire together, wire together. So if you have a practice, let's say 10 minutes a day even, where you are taking time to focus, let's say, on the breath, and when your mind wanders, return your attention to the breath in a loving and kind way, and then your mind gets distracted, return your attention, to have this practice where you're aware of your awareness and you're paying attention to your intention. We believe that those are the two fundamental things in every mindfulness practice.

When you do that over and over again, in that 10 minute period, you're creating what's called a mindfully aware state, a state of mindful awareness.

Blood pressure is improved. All sorts of physiological improvements happen. There have been studies that show empathy increases. Why would that be? Well, if you just think about what I said about the anterior cingulate and the anterior insula. We didn't talk about the anterior cingulate, but it's part of the middle prefrontal. When these two go together, the anterior insula's activation, which is what you practice when you're aware of your breath, hour after hour, day after day, you're going to strengthen what your anterior insula is doing. And all the studies that have been done, a lot of them at UCLA with people that I work with, have shown the higher degree of empathy, the higher degree of anterior insula activation. You see someone without much anterior insula activation, they're not in touch with their bodies, very low empathy. That's just what the research shows. Why would that be the case? We're not talking about mirror neurons, but there's a whole set of neurons to suggest that we soak in what we see in other people to shape our own body's response, and then the way we perceive that body's response allows us to know not only how we feel, but how they feel.

And you'll recall news anchor **Dan Rather's** interview with the **Dalai Lama** on the same subject.

**Dalai Lama (clip):**  
The Dalai Lama says his own meditation practice has brought him a sense of well-being and a reduction in the negative emotions that most people assume are an unchangeable part of life. Usually we consider every emotion as just part of our life, part of our mind. For example, fear, hatred, it just comes, we just consider normal. I think that's a mistake. He sees the studies coming from labs like Richard Davidson's backing up his own personal experience. Now one example is when we feel a certain sort of irritation, during that moment, if that person concentrate fully on the breathing, nothing else. Breathing, one, two, three, five, ten, fifteen, twenty. When you start breathing, mental state is irritated. But then after twenty, thirty sort of breathing, your mental state will be a little different, a little more calm. Since we are dealing with emotions, so the best method to deal with that is so-called meditation. Not for next life, not for heaven, but for day-to-day well-being.

**Daniel:**  
And then as a final thought on managing emotional state, let's take a few minutes and actually practice this. Take some deep breaths and follow me.

I found an excellent tool for cutting through decades of deprecating self-talk. **Denise Lynch**, certified hypnotherapist. She has an 8 CD set that will teach and lead you through the process of self-awareness and affirmation development. You can put it on your favorite device and listen to it all throughout the day.

Here's a sample with some Maui whale watching footage we shot.

**Denise Lynch (affirmations):**  
The following are affirmations designed to counter negative thinking. Sit back, breathe deeply. Allow yourself to absorb the following thoughts. Allow yourself in your own mind to repeat the following thoughts.

More every day. I recognize that I am worthy of my dreams. And I always have been.

More every day. I release myself from the rigid confines of self-judgment. And instead support and encourage myself.

More every day. I forgive myself for not always having the answers. And acknowledge myself for trying so hard.

I now free myself to respond to others rather than react.

More every day. I can imagine what the best possible outcome of any situation is.

I am becoming a positive encouraging voice in the lives of those around me.

I am now the positive encouraging voice in my own life.

It feels good to relax, to release others from unrealistic expectations. And instead send them some approval.

More every day. I feel ingratitude for the opportunity to live my life.

More every day. I hear the positive voices around me. And I remain unaffected by the negative ones.

I honor and respect myself for all I have been through.

**Daniel:**  
Well done. There you go. Decades of wisdom reduced to invaluable hours.

We have approached the subject of personal transformation by crossing all kinds of boundaries. We have stepped on the empirical and the mystical. We have delved into the faith versus fact. We have talked about being transformed by the renewing of our mind. And at the same time we have discovered that the mind creates the brain. In fact, through brain plasticity we learned that brain was designed for change all along. Our keys were hidden right here.

Regarding enterprising success, we know we are not supposed to go it alone. We are supposed to be part of a mastermind, a quorum. We are supposed to be mentored and be part of a minion. We are supposed to be able to mirror and model the attitudes of gratitude of those men of valor surrounding us.

You see, we can choose to model that and transform who we are. And at the same time be sensitive to the market changing and be responsive rather than reactive.

So my final thought, you can in fact teach an old dog new tricks.

Well done. It's now time for the chapter quiz and the final essay question.

**[Music]**

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**CODEX ENTRY**

**Date:** 2010-07  
**File:** MENtrepreneurs Level One Series - Chapter02.08.md  
**Monomyth Stage:** 12 - Return with the Elixir  
**Gameboard Position:** Camp 9: Return with the Elixir / Chapter 2 Complete  
**MA5 Domain:** Initium  
**Summary:** Daniel Comp delivers the official wrap-up of Chapter 2, synthesizing the entire Personal Transformation curriculum into **four clear keys**: (1) The brain is resilient and designed for change (Jody Miller, Jill Bolte-Taylor, Eric Kandel, Ramachandran), (2) The mind creates the brain (Daniel Siegel’s nine middle prefrontal functions), (3) Systems integration through emotional vocabulary + relationship skills + being teachable (Helen Keller/Anne Sullivan, Paul Hegstrom), and (4) Practical daily application — balancing brain chemistry, mirroring attitude/gratitude, attention to intention, and managing emotional state through breathing and affirmations (Denise Lynch, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Napoleon Hill, Jack Canfield, Charles Stanley, Dalai Lama). He challenges participants to join a mastermind of men, turn challenges into championships, and commit to lifelong practice. This session officially completes Chapter 2 and the core teaching of the Level One Series.  
**Key Insight:** The keys were hidden right here all along — in the three-pound mass of gray matter behind our eyes. The mind creates the brain, and through consistent practice of emotional vocabulary, affirmations, gratitude, and accountability with other men, we can literally rewire ourselves for transformation.  
**Narrative Significance:** This is the completion of the Level One Series. Chapter 1 diagnosed the problem (blind spots, arrested development, self-sabotage). Chapter 2 provided the cure (brain plasticity, emotional vocabulary, affirmations, and daily practice). This wrap-up delivers the final "elixir" — the clear, actionable framework that men can carry forward into their businesses, families, and lives. The series ends with a powerful call to join a mastermind and live transformed.

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**INITIUM.**