Go For It! with Marcus Bird

 

Listen to the podcast here:

Highlights:

01:29 Desk Epiphany
04:59 Meditative Healing Journey
11:17 Wellness With The World
20:05 Possibility Builds Hope
24:33 Hope vs Faith
26:52 3 Steps To Achieve Your Potential
36:59 Teach Children To Live Their Own Expectation
42:23 Believe In The Possibility Of Everything

 

Embrace the power of possibility. Join @myexpectation and @MarcusBird1 as they share how to make the impossible possible in your life. #healing #wellness #possibilities #hope #faith #potential Click To Tweet

 

Quotes:

06:24 “No one’s going to heal me except me.” – Marcus Bird

18:03 “Fear always stops growth.” – Art Costello 

21:19 “Embracing that possibility helps you embrace hope. And when you have hope, you have a future.” – Marcus Bird

35:15 “Our thoughts and feelings, emotions, and our actions create a resonance. That resonance goes out into the world.” – Marcus Bird

45:39 “One of the most joyful but important things in life is connecting.” – Marcus Bird

48:17 “The key is to dream big, then when you think you’ve dreamed big, dream bigger, and then go for it.” – Marcus Bird

48:41 “If you dream big enough… give yourself permission to go for it.” – Marcus Bird

Meet Marcus:

Marcus Bird is an International Award-Winning Entrepreneur and Innovation Expert and Medical Futurist. He has shared his wisdom on the art of change, making sustained success happen faster through THE CRAVE CODE across the globe to thousands of entrepreneurs and wellness business owners. He shares the future of the medical & wellness industry in his Well Futures keynote and shows medical & wellness business owners, associations and product specialists how they can thrive in a disruptive global economy by implementing the 3 Core Abilities of All Great Entrepreneurs. Marcus loves to inspire audiences to make a change and have more success by disrupting the status quo. As the co-owner of the Wellness Leadership Movement for Global Change and the author of The 3 Minute Coach and Crave, Marcus inspires and motivates audiences to take action, make a change, and achieve more success faster.

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• Telephone: +61 419 538 320

 

 

Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast, today, Marcus Bird is my guest from Melbourne, Australia. I love Australia, so we’re going to have fun today. As a wellness futurist, momentum expert and peak potential coach, he helps wellness business owners subject matter experts and entrepreneurs to build thriving companies and thriving lives. After helping thousands of people globally, he noticed that those that thrive crave success, they are hungrier, more determined and want it more than anything. As the owner of the Wellness Leadership Academy, and with over 35 years experience in the business, he helps the audience to reignite their desire to want to make success happen fast. He has a masters of entrepreneurship and innovation diploma of how scientists, and a qualified results coach, positive counselor and kinesiologist. He has been an international downhill ski racer, I didn’t know this, private pilot, and runner up in the international business planning awards. Welcome to the show, Marcus.

Marcus Bird: Fantastic. Thank you so much Art, it’s lovely to be here.

Art Costello: Can you tell us how this journey has gotten you to where you’re at today?

Marcus Bird: Wow. Yeah. It’s been a bit of a crazy journey really, because I started as a bit of a corporate jedi. I started climbing the corporate ladder, doing the things that I thought I should be doing, doing all the right things. I had the right job, I had the right car, I had the right wife, I had the right, everything. But really, based on my parents’ expectation, I grew up in a very lucky situation. My father was a very successful businessman, and I didn’t go with that in mind, but also what came with that was a pressure to do what was expected of me, or what I thought was expected on me. So I started climbing the corporate ladder which was fun until it wasn’t. And I realized at some point, and I think there was a moment, and I love how you frame this up as Shower Epiphanies, I had a desk epiphany. So I wasn’t actually in the shower at the time, but I had a desk epiphany, and I was sitting in my corner office in Melbourne, and I was a senior manager of a national company and doing very well by my dad’s standards. And I remember leaning back on my desk, and I put my feet up on my desk, and I got very egotistical and I went, wow, look at me unhide doing an amazing job. And then something came over me, I don’t know what it was, but something flashed over me. I put my hand on my heart and I said: “There’s gotta be more than this. Surely this is not all that is.” And two weeks later, I gave myself chronic fatigue syndrome and I pretty much spent a good two years, really just exploring life, the universe and everything. I couldn’t work any longer, I had to leave my job, I couldn’t speak to my friends, I couldn’t watch television, I couldn’t listen to the radio, I couldn’t have any stimulus whatsoever. And that was a really tough and interesting place because like you, I’m a very people person. I love talking to people, I love engaging with people, I love all of that. So I had to pretty much spend, I did spend two years trying to get well, and so, yeah, it was a crazy experience, it was really hot on one level and really fantastic on another.

Art Costello: How did you get well? How did you hurt your wellness journey?

Marcus Bird: Yeah, I think there were a couple of things that happened because when I got sick, I went to the doctor like most people do, and at the time I knew nothing about natural therapies, I knew nothing about alternative medicine or anything, I just knew doctors. And so I went, I went and saw a doctor, and we checked for everything because I thought, wow, am I dying? Have I got some crazy horrible disease? And after visiting three doctors and saying nothing’s wrong, I realized that the only person that was really going to heal myself was me. So I started going on this journey of self discovery, of trying to work out what was going on, and why I was the way I was. And I just started meditating, and I would meditate for two, three, four hours a day because I could do nothing else. And after a while, that led me from one thing to the next and I eventually connected with someone else who had chronic fatigue, and I self-diagnosed myself. And then I found a doctor who specialized in chronic fatigue, and nutritional medicine, and vitamin therapy, and his name was Dr. Brighthope, which I thought was a brilliant name for a doctor. And he taught me nutritional medicine. He taught me, Oh, just so much about my body and about the world. And yeah, I just went on this crazy meditative healing journey.

Art Costello: That’s amazing. One of the things that I noticed in you telling me that journey that you had several Epiphanes in there, and maybe not only the desk epiphany, but going to a doctor, and then having an epiphany that there was a different way of healing. That’s powerful because once we learn, and I think there’s some things that happened when you live to the expectations of parents, and society, and all that incorporate world, we live to their expectations, we lose our sense of self, and that I think can lead to chronic fatigue because we’re a symbiotic creature. Our mind, and our body, and our soul are so hooked together. Once your soul starts dying, and your mind starts wandering, and you lose that connection to what you’re doing in the passion for what you’re doing, a lot of people just stop. You have the epiphany to figure out how to go on and how to move on which is really, really cool because most people don’t do that. So you got yourself well.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, I suppose I was sort of lucky in a way that I sort of had to get myself well cause I wasn’t functioning like I couldn’t do anything. So I think the biggest epiphany I got initially was that no one’s going to heal me except me. Like I have to take charge of my body, and I have to take charge of getting well, no therapist is going to get me well unless I’m taking responsibility for that and I’m deciding to get well. So that was probably the next epiphany.

“No one's going to heal me except me.” - Marcus Bird Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yeah. And that actually is probably the first step into healing.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, I agree.

Art Costello: Yeah. So many people need to learn that because they get stuck in certain places and they don’t move, they’ve let everybody else tell them how to do it, and the answers always lie within ourselves. We just have to be open to see them.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. I think our bodies are incredibly wise and incredible amounts of information there about what we need and how we can heal. And I think we’d been taught often over generations to give our power away to this healer, this, whoever this healer is, whether it’s a doctor, or a naturopath, or any of those, we tend to give our power away and say, fix me, just fix me. That’s like, yeah, we can’t do that, part of getting well is to be empowered.

Art Costello: Yeah. It’s a huge part of it because once you empower yourself, the mind starts working. We’re doing research right now in expectations and cancer patients, because cancer patients quite often, when they hear the diagnosis, look at it in two fashions. Either I’m going to beat it and I’m going to do everything, and they get the positive side of it. Or they say, Oh, I’ve got cancer and I’m going to die. And the researchers actually showed us that they live almost seven, eight, nine years longer when they have positive expectations.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. That’s fantastic. I mean, I love, yeah, I love listening to some of your other podcasts, and you talk about expectation. I think that’s absolutely fantastic. I talk a bit about possibility and having a possibility mindset, that anything’s possible. Which is similar in different ways.

Art Costello: No, actually, one of the things that I talk about a lot and I’ve written about it is my belief in the possibilities of everything. It’s really a mantra of mine. I believe that anything is possible. There is nothing impossible to the human mind. We can accomplish anything we want. We just have to be willing to do the work to get there. We just have to be willing to do the sacrifice that it takes to get there, anything.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. And just allow our minds to expand and fall into that expansive mind that we actually do have, and I love the recent quantum physics research that’s going on around consciousness, and does consciousness actually create the universe? I mean, if that’s what’s happening, I just love playing with that idea that, wow, maybe if there’s no consciousness in the universe, there’s no universe. It’s like, okay, hang on a minute, what does that mean for me? If that’s actually what’s happening, Holy Moly, that’s amazing.

Art Costello: Well, just look, I don’t know about Australia, but I know in the United States. We have people that do nothing except go to work, come home and watch TV, get up the next morning, go to work, on the weekend they watch TV or they binge all week on TV programs. What kind of exists do you have? I mean, what kind of–

Marcus Bird: It’s not.

Art Costello: So your consciousness, we lose that consciousness when we do that because it becomes so ingrained in us that it’s, I don’t want to say it’s okay, but they think it’s okay to be that, but you don’t expand your mind. And expanding your mind is such a huge, huge part of just growing in the whole realm of everything. How does wellness, and I know that there’s vitamins like Omega 3’s, sixes, and nines that stimulate the brain. How does that all work in relation to what you do?

Marcus Bird: I think, I mean, my focus is a little bit like yours in a way that I’m here to help people to make shifts happen. And I think what we were talking about before, I think people tend to give up, they give up and just have a nothing life. They just allow things just to go on and they get lost in nothingness. And I think we have to have really embraced this something and not get lost in the nothing because life can be this incredible, amazing opportunity to create something for yourself, to create something for others, to create something for the planet. And I think we need to really embrace that. And yes, there are vitamins and herbs that can help bio hack our biology and help us support that. Because so often, a lot of these things are generated by hormonal and neurotransmitter reactions. And right now we’re sitting in a world that is addicted to this push button dopamine hit, and a lot of the online, and a lot of our I-phones and smartphones have led to this where we can lie in bed and push a button, and watch a movie, or download another game, or do something. So we’re just recording this addiction of fast hit, this dopamine hit, and it can be used for good, and it can be used for bad. And I think a lot of the time we use it to disappear, to vanish into the void of nothing. And the interesting part about it is I think if you’re open to it, even in that void space, there’s everything. Another bit of quantum physics from researches around this void, and what’s in the void, and everything’s in the void, everything starts from this place. So even when you get lost, if you open up, if you just open your mind, you don’t actually have to change anything. Even if you just open up your mind, you can start to see the possibility, you can start to see the expectations, and how to start stepping out of that. So for me, wellness definitely starts in how we view our world, how we’re connecting to our lives and to the people around us. And there’s this beautiful feedback loop system that happens in the world, when we think of something, something appears ahead, and if it’s not what we lie, then there’s only a couple of things to change. You change how you’re thinking, feeling, or what you’re doing, and that generally changes that feedback.

Art Costello: What does it mean to be a wellness futurist?

Marcus Bird: So one of the things I spend my time doing is looking into what’s happening on the planet from a wellness point of view. And wellness is one of the fastest growing industries on the planet right now. Billions and billions of dollars, and a lot of the big companies trying to get into the wellness industry because it is rapidly growing. So one of the things I spend my time doing is looking at, what are some of the advances that I have? What are some of the things that are happening in the wellness industry that people need to know about? Especially if they are wellness practitioners or wellness professionals. Because obviously that’s who I work predominantly with these wellness professionals, doctors, and chiropractors, and naturopaths, massage therapists, osteopaths, and all those people. What happens is they’re spending so much time doing their magic, which is what they should be doing? Working with patients, helping, sharing their magic, and they’re not looking out into the world, they’re not seeing what’s coming. And one of the biggest issues right now is that what happened in the music industry, what happened in the movie industry with black box or Netflix, what’s happened in the taxi industry with Uber is actually happening in the wellness industry right now.

Art Costello: I never even thought of that.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. And it’s potentially dangerous for practitioners because it’s actually going to change the landscape of how people practice. Right now, AI, Artificial Intelligence is going to take over the diagnostic component of the wellness industry. So if you’re a general practitioner or a diagnostic, predominantly diagnostic practitioner, that human interaction will eventually go. Because right now, we have AI machines that are learning. So for example, Watson, which is an IBM computer that was originally designed to beat humans at jeopardy, which they did, they achieved that. They then set up a job to research, all the cardiac papers ever written on the planet. So Watson has been spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, cumulating knowledge on cardiac issues to the point now that cardiac surgeons can go to Watson, they can put in the test results, Watson can spit out what’s going on with the patient and what the treatment protocol should be. And Watson knows infinitely more than any cardiac surgeon will ever know. It’s not possible for them to know. So this is happening with Allie, which is a psychology AI, return servicemen, you may have heard of. So there’s all these AI amazing technology that’s coming in. It’s incredibly intelligent. I mean, Ellie’s incredibly intelligent. She reads your facial expressions, you know what I mean? So I think one of the predictions that having that moment is that this diagnostic component of the wellness industry will disappear to artificial intelligence, and most practitioners aren’t even aware of it.

Art Costello: I mean, a lot of people are very worried about Artificial Intelligence. Actually. I am not because I think it just gives us an added tool to use, and it’s up to us to adapt to it and learn how to use it. Because the part of the medical industry, and one of the things the problem has been being able to diagnose accurately.

Marcus Bird: Absolutely.

Art Costello: I mean, I lost my wife to cancer in 2006, when she was diagnosed in 2003, her and I knew three years prior to that that there was something wrong, but they couldn’t tell us. No one could tell us what it was. And had they been able to, we would have been able to have a much better fight in fighting that cancer. So anytime that we have a tool that will help us, whether it’s a physical tool, or helps us physically, or it helps us mentally, or even with cars and everything else, that Artificial Intelligence is not a bad thing.

Marcus Bird: It’s not, I don’t think it is either.

Art Costello: Most people look at it through the lens of fear, because they fear anything new. And when you fear like that, it stops. Fear always stops growth. You’ll never see somebody grow when they’re in a space of fear. So you being a momentum expert, also in peak performance coach, you know that when people are in fear that it helps them.

“Fear always stops growth.” - Art Costello Click To Tweet

Marcus Bird: Absolutely. It definitely stops them, stops them in their tracks. And I think you’re right with Artificial Intelligence, it’s nothing really to be scared about. I think it’s another tool, as you said, and it’s an opportunity. What you’ve got to do is adapt. You can’t just keep doing the same old, same old. You’ve got to adapt to whatever’s coming to you, and I think you’re right, fear stops people.

Art Costello: Yeah. And those are the people that get left behind and they feel out of this, they feel left out, they become restless, they become disgruntled, and they become the thorn in the side of growth.

Marcus Bird: Absolutely, and inevitable, right? We can’t grow. It’s gonna happen, whether we like it or not.

Art Costello: I live in Austin, Texas. When I came to Austin back in the early 80’s, Austin’s population was about 125,000 people. It was a very small town. Now we go ahead 30 some years in 2019, Austin’s population in our total area is around 2 million. And the people that tried to fight the growth back in the 70’s and 80’s, they didn’t want it to grow. And it’s actually hindered Austin now because they didn’t have the foresight for highways and infrastructure, and we’re paying for it now, and people want to be here. I mean, there’s a massive amount of jobs. Our unemployment rate is like 2.5% or 2.2%, it’s crazy. But you’ve got to have the foresight, and you can’t have foresight if you don’t have vision and you don’t have hope.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, absolutely.

Art Costello: Can you talk about hope, momentum and potential?

Marcus Bird: Yeah. I think when possibilities shut down, we start to lose hope. When we don’t think there’s another possibility or we don’t think there’s possibility for a better life, or a better job, or a better, whatever it might be, then hope starts to disappear. And once that starts to happen, then we do start to disappear into devices, and we do start to disappear into a life and just become this sort of robot. So I think I will create things. I will tap into this what I call the power of possibility is critically important to continue to build hope. Hope that if you’re in a bad situation, when I had chronic fatigue, everyday I tapped into the power of possibility and had hoped that it would be better the next day, some days weren’t right, some days were n’t, some days were bad, but I hope that it will get better. And everyday I kept in that mindset, that really positive mindset of possibility. I kept imagining the possibility that it’s definitely going to get better. I knew it was going to get better. I integrated that with every fiber of my body, that at some point it was going to get better. Even if tomorrow wasn’t, even if the next hour wasn’t, it was going to get better. So I think embracing that possibility helps you embrace hope, and when you have hope, you have a future, right?

“Embracing that possibility helps you embrace hope. And when you have hope, you have a future.” - Marcus Bird Click To Tweet

The minute you lose hope, everything’s, I had my best friend committed suicide, 10 years ago now. And the reason he committed suicide I think is he lost hope. And it didn’t matter what you say, he was an alcoholic and that didn’t obviously didn’t help. And he became an alcoholic because of the expectations, because of the expectations of his father, and his parents, and the society, and all that sort of stuff. And he couldn’t fit into that the way he thought he had to fit into it. And then he lost hope and started drinking, and drank more and couldn’t find the hope. He just lost it totally. And eventually, of course, when you run out of heart, when the last drop of hope has gone, it’s over for a lot of people and suicide is so prevalent these days, especially with men, and it’s terrible. So I think embracing a possibility mindset, and I get people to ask a really critical question of themselves when their brains are fighting them, when they’re falling into that lack of hope and the brain telling them, no, you can’t do that and you can’t do this. I can get them to ask one question, which is what if it were possible? Just for a minute, what if it were possible? And what happens is the brain is a very amazing organ, it’s designed to solve problems, it loves solving problems, but if you don’t give it the right problem to solve, then it’s going to get you into trouble. So asking that question, what if it were possible actually gets the brain to start thinking, okay, what if it were possible? What would we do? How do we do it? What would happen? And that’s a big question I used to keep asking myself.

Art Costello: And that’s why I think expectations are so critical for people to learn how to manage them. Because when you learn how to manage, and it’s not the expectations of other people that count, that I always do to prove that is, take your left hand and put it over your nostrils, take your right hand and put it over your mouth, clamp down on it, and if you tell me you don’t have expectations, you wouldn’t breathe.

Marcus Bird: Yeah.

Art Costello: I mean, that’s how basic they are to our psyche. One of the questions that I had was thinking about when you and I were just talking about hope, do you have a definition of hope? And then do you have a definition of faith? What’s the difference between hope and faith?

Marcus Bird: I think there’s a different level of connection. I think hope in my thoughts, hope is a mental aspect is a more, and they’re intrinsically linked without a doubt, but I think hope is more of a mental process, whereas faith is more of a, I don’t know, that deepest of our heart, almost of soul thing. I just have an absolute faith, and I think if you want to heal, so when I had chronic fatigue, I had to do more than just hope, I had to believe so much that it was going to happen. So I had to have so much faith in myself and the universe, and I don’t know, whatever. Me mainly that it would be better, and it was going to get better. And if I wouldn’t be like this forever, and I had to not believe the stories of hundreds of other people, to have it five years, 10 years for life, and I said, no, that’s not going to be my existence. So I hoped that it would get better, but at a deeper level, I had unbelievable faith. There was no other choice. It was going to happen.

Art Costello: Yeah. Let me give you my take on hope and faith.

Marcus Bird: Yeah.

Art Costello: Hope is having the ability to think that everything is going to work out, and faith is knowing that it’s going to work out.

Marcus Bird: I love that. Absolutely. That makes sense.

Art Costello: Well, and a lot of people always confuse faith, particularly in the States, when we start talking about faith here, they get a religious thing, that you’re going to talk about religion. Faith is so much deeper than that. Faith has as many definitions as fear does. Fear can come in so many, and not definitions, forms. Fear has so many forms, and faith has so many forms because it can be religious, it can be spiritual, which is different from religious. I mean, there’s just a whole ton of them. But what it really does is it affects our performance. And that’s what I love about what you do is that I have a better understanding about being a wellness futurist, a momentum expert, and a peak potential coach because they all are intertwined, They are all part of it. So let’s talk about peak potential.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, absolutely.

Art Costello: How do people achieve potential?

Marcus Bird: I think that’s part of our destiny. If we are open to it, that is part of our destiny. Being here is to reach that, whatever that is for someone. And it doesn’t mean you have to start an Apple computer, or be a Bill Gates, or Mother Teresa or anything like that. It just means what it means for you. Your potential, what is your potential? And I think most people shut that down, that they shut it down because of the influences, expectations of parents and all that stuff. And I think our job is to really stick into that. So for me, there are really three key steps to it. First, you’ve got to align with your truth. You’ve got to align with who you are. You’ve got to align with your magic. What’s your thing that you hate to bring to the world? What’s that special sauce, that X factor that you uniquely have? And then I think the second thing you’ve got to do is allow, you’ve got actually to start to allow the possibility, start to allow it to be created, to start to allow it to happen. And then finally you’ve got to activate it. And you’ve got to really want it to happen. So align who you really are, then allow the possibility. So open up to the possibility and then you’ve got to activate it. And in the activation, this is where a lot of people lose it, they just don’t want it enough. I often ask people in the audiences I speak to, I go, how badly do you want this? Because often people can imagine what they want. They can have a dream of what they want. In a lot of cases, imagine the possibility of having $1 million, or a bit a loss, or a bit of job or whatever it might be. And a lot of the time they lose it in the activation phase where they just really don’t want it enough or aren’t willing to do what it takes to get it done.

And I often use the story of Aaron Rowling who fell down the cliff and got his arm caught between a rock and the cliff face. And he was there for I think 72 hours or something. And eventually he decided that he had to cut his own arm off to get out and survive. And I often use that. I go, okay, so you said to me, you want to do this, you want to achieve this? Okay, are you willing to cut your arm off to achieve that? I know it’s a bit drastic, but it’s like you know how much you’re willing to have it because often destiny and often your full potential takes work, it doesn’t necessarily just happen. You’ve got to work at it, you’ve got to do things, you’ve got to take action, you’ve got to, and it’s not about hustling, it’s not about killing yourself for it, but it is about taking action and being determined to push through the fear, and the phobias, and all of the things, the naysayers, all of those things that might stop you or hinder.

Art Costello: I think being at your peak potential actually happens quite often and we don’t realize it. We think of it in terms of aging and all those kinds of things. But you know, when I was young, and I think about Vietnam, when I was in Vietnam, one of my main goals in Vietnam was to survive. I wanted to survive, and I developed skills in Vietnam, and I actually had some great teachers. As we talked about before, I was with the Australian Rangers, part of the time. And I was with the Korean Marines, part of the time. And being with those, I learned so many different different skill sets, but that was such, I wanted to survive so much. My expectation was that I would, and I developed all these skills that I believe got me through it and got me there. Everything I’ve ever done in my life, I’ve always wanted to be the best. And it wasn’t about that I wanted to be better than anyone else, I wanted to perform at my highest level at everything I do. And I think when we get that mindset that it really is a benefit to us because, I mean, no matter what I’ve done in my life, and I’ve done a lot of different things, I’ve always just tried to learn everything I can and perform at the best of my ability. And it really, really served me well because I don’t ever do anything halfway. I just don’t, it’s just not in my makeup. And I think that that’s great.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. We have a similar attitude, if you’re going to do it, do it. I have a little theory where I say, if you’re going to do it, go hard. Go hard at doing the work, go hard at resting, really do it.

Art Costello: Yeah. And I think that that creates that hunger for success that you talk about.

Marcus Bird: Absolutely.

Art Costello: More determination and you want it more than anyone else. So when you have that, we manifest it. We manifest it in our subconscious, we really don’t realize how much truth there is in those things. A lot of people think it’s voodoo, and woo-woo, and all these other things, but if you’ll go to bed every night thinking, and dreaming, and wanting mentally visualize it, and then getting up in the morning and start working towards those goals, your life will change. Did that help you as a skier?

Marcus Bird: Absolutely. Absolutely. I spent a lot of time visualizing, and meditating, and imagining the possibility of winning something or winning the next ride solo doing really well. So yeah, that absolutely played a key role in what I achieved at that time, and as critical. And again, I came down to embodying that but also wanting it to be hungry enough, I call it craving, craving it enough. And I think these days, we crave the wrong things, so often we crave the wrong things, and we’ve got to learn how to recreate and crave the right things, the things that are going to benefit our loss, and that things are going to hand our loss and make our lives better, not the things that won’t.

Art Costello: And what you crave can’t be answered by anyone else. That is why you have to go deep and identify the things in your life that you really want. The first step of Expectation Therapy is that you identify what is really important to you at your core being. Because once you can identify that and you start working towards it, boy, life just changes.

Marcus Bird: It does. Yeah. It improves incredibly.

Art Costello: Yeah. And it just starts unfolding in such a natural way. And I believe in the vibrations that we put out these vibrations. And I don’t know how much you know about my story, but as a nine year old, I went to a mountaintop and lay down a mountain top because I didn’t know what was going to be coming at me because I had been abandoned and had to figure out life on my own. I believe that when I was nine and started putting out those vibrations, and started believing that the world was mine, and that it was up to me on how to handle it, and how to grow.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, absolutely. And I had the same epiphany when I was going through chronic fatigue, in the hours that I meditated, I had some incredible experiences around truth and what it was tapping into that. And came up with this resonance theory that our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and our actions create a resonance, and that resonance goes out into the world, and everybody picks up on the resonances sometimes consciously, sometimes not. And the resonance of things that attract or repel things in your life and help God or otherwise.

“Our thoughts and feelings, emotions, and our actions create a resonance. That resonance goes out into the world.” - Marcus Bird Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yeah, I call it the butterfly effect.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, I love that.

Art Costello: Because you just start putting out these waves of energy and they go somewhere.

Marcus Bird: Absolutely.

Art Costello: I’ve just been fortunate enough to live long enough to see them start to come around. Sometimes we need to be more patient, and that’s one of the things that I’ve learned in my life. Patience has been, I haven’t always been the most patient, I’ve wanted things now, immediately, and all of those kinds of things when I was younger. But now and looking back on my life, I start to reflect on it and I start to see that the patients that I’ve had over all these years, especially in later life have everything coming back to you. It comes back and it comes back in greater abundance, and the rewards are much more fulfilling when you absolutely find out what you’re supposed to be doing with your life.

Marcus Bird: I agree. All right. That’s the alignment patient. We’ve got to get aligned with that, and that’s a journey, that is a journey of self discovery and living life to some degree.

Art Costello: Yeah. And do you think that young people can actually see it?

Marcus Bird: I didn’t think it’s interesting because we’re growing up in the most impatient generation in history, because things can be bought or achieved instantly. And with our hyper connected world of Instagrammers and they see all these young people having everything really quickly and what seems to be easy, a lot of patients I think are being lost in that generation. But yeah, I think they are coming more connected, I think they have the ability to connect quicker and deeper. I see a lot of them coming already knowing what their purpose is. I remember my young daughter, I think she was eight or something, or maybe a bit younger, she turned to me in the car when I was driving her to school one day and she said: “Dad, I know why I’m here.” And she spoke about, she’s here to teach people about animals and how to look after animals. And it was a really interesting conversation that she was very crystal clear about it. I’m here to do that. So I think, yeah, I think they have a deeper connection to it if they allow us and allow that, and they are allowed to have that be fostered.

Art Costello: Right. And that’s where the expectation part comes in, when parents start setting their expectations for their children–

Marcus Bird: Absolutely.

Art Costello: –they actually stunt the growth of the child because what they do is the child is going to start living to their expectations instead of to their own expectations. And people will find themselves, human beings will find themselves much faster. They will find their purpose, they will find their direction more naturally when they can live to their own expectations and not to the expectations of others.

Marcus Bird: I absolutely agree. The Greeks had this thing called ‘telos’ and in their schools they used to teach everyone to find their telos which is their purpose, and they taught around that. They taught around that everyone had a purpose, everyone had magic and had a thing to offer. And part of the role of the school system was to help people find their telos and go live it.

Art Costello: Yeah. And boy, we don’t do that here.

Marcus Bird: The school system is still set up to set them up to go to university and then get the job or the career rather than find who they really are and what they’re really here to do.

Art Costello: Yeah. And they’re doing a disservice to so many kids. My middle son, when he was on his first day to go to college, he came home, because he was going to go to college at Saint Edward’s in Austin. And he came home and said, dad, had went to orientation and he came home and he said: “Dad, I don’t want you to be mad at me but I don’t want to waste your money going to college, I want to work with my hands.” So my only suggestion to him was to go find himself a trade or skill that he could pursue. And do you know he found his passion being an electrician. He became the youngest master electrician, the youngest journeyman electrician. He now owns a big solar company, and I’m so proud that he came and said to me that isn’t what he wants to do because he’s very happy and does exactly what he wants to do. He’s very independent and does it have to rely on anybody? And he’s got a trade that will always be in demand.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that he’s loving what he’s doing. And I think when you love what you’re doing, when you’re doing your passion, you’re going to instantly be more successful. That’s naturally gonna happen..

Art Costello: And he’s very innovative and creative. He looks at different ways to do things, and as long as they’re within the electrical code, he’s fine. But he’s very innovative. I mean, he’s created new tools and new processes on how to do things. So it’s really great.

Marcus Bird: He had a good role model and a good father to allow that possibility to appear right on time for him to have that insight and be confident enough to actually come to you and say, Hey dad, you know? Knowing that he wasn’t going to get caught in an expectation that you might’ve had for him or you thought should have.

Art Costello: Everybody at school and his mother also felt that he would become an attorney. He’s very, very smart, very intelligent. But I’ve always told my kids: “I support you no matter what you want to do to you.” I mean, as long as they keep it legal and nothing illegal, I’m fine.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. As long as they are happy out there.

Art Costello: It’s about being happy. My oldest son’s a therapist in Boulder, Colorado.

Marcus Bird: Oh, wow.

Art Costello: My daughter’s in retail management, which she loves doing. She’s a people person, so she loves working with people, it’s so important.

Marcus Bird: It’s great to say that, it’s great to see them doing that and being happy leaving their legacy, whatever that is. I think it’s brilliant.

Art Costello: I’ve got one more question that I’ve got to put to you that is an oddball, is everybody in Australia a private pilot?

Marcus Bird: No, unfortunately. You obviously met a few people who are.

Art Costello: Yeah, I have. Having been there and seen, I mean, I haven’t seen all of Australia and I would love to. Australia is a big country, a very big country. And if you’re going to get around Australia, you need to be a pilot, don’t you?

Marcus Bird: Well, it’s certainly, it certainly helps. I mean, just to give perspective for those that aren’t aware is that Australia is pretty much the same size as the United States, but with 30 million people versus 300 million or something. So there’s a lot of space in between cities and towns, there’s a lot of space.

Art Costello: I’d love to go to the interior. I just heard that it’s just amazing to go to the interior.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. The Outback is a pretty incredible place, it’s really amazing places to visit, and yeah, it’s an amazing place, definitely. And you guys have got amazing places there as well, and I would love to explore more and certainly some of the national parks, I’d love to get into more of that.

Art Costello: Yeah, the grand Canyon is beautiful. I mean, no matter where you go. And that’s another part of believing in the possibility of everything when you see how vast the world is and how big it is. And I mean, when I was in Vietnam, one of the things that struck me about Vietnam was the beauty of that country. I mean, it was sad to see some of the devastation that went on with Agent Orange and some of the defoliants that they use. But when you see the beauty of the world, and you’ve traveled it, and you’ve seen it, and you don’t get stuck in just this one space, we tend to, I mean, I know people here in Texas who have never left often. And I think, how can you have a world view and see the big picture of the world when you don’t have that?

Marcus Bird: So I think it does limit your possibility, expansive mind. I think when you do interact with other people, other cultures, other worlds, it naturally starts to open your mind up to other possibilities. So travel was really important.

Art Costello: Yeah, it does. I wish that more people would be open to travel, I mean, when economically they can’t afford to, you understand it.

Marcus Bird: Even exploring your own country, I know so often that doesn’t happen. People can afford to travel often, travel outside of their country and actually don’t even explore their back home, back yard.

Art Costello: I just had a thought. I just had an epiphany.

Marcus Bird: Right. I love it.

Art Costello: Some people don’t even explore their next door neighbors.

Marcus Bird: Yes, that is true.

Art Costello: And that’s the thing, you can explore the world and not have to leave the city you’re in, particularly now because we can do it on the internet. But more so when you start exploring with people, when you start exploring the possibilities that people bring, that is so huge and people don’t do it. You go to talk to your neighbor and they don’t even want to know who you are. I mean, to me that’s the greatest.

Marcus Bird: And it does have to be one of the most joyful but important things in life is connecting.

“One of the most joyful but important things in life is connecting.” - Marcus Bird Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Marcus Bird: And I think social media has been amazing to connect, but it leaves us a bit short on the deeper connection, the real connection. When you get to eyeball someone, when you get to shake someone’s hand or be in the same spaces is a much different connection than it is being friends on Facebook.

Art Costello: Do you know that that’s the greatest joy that I have about podcasting is the connection that I make with people, I get to hear their stories, I get to know them in a deeper sense of the word, it is just absolutely the greatest thrill of my life. I’ve enjoyed it more than anything I’ve ever done in my life, this podcasting thing is really great, and I think more people should do it. There’s room out there, there’s so many ideas that we have for podcasting. It doesn’t have to, you can explore your expertise. If you’re an engineer at a factory or no matter what field you’re in, a garbage man, or a seamstress, or whatever it is, you have knowledge that you can share. And that’s the greatest joy.

Marcus Bird: Yeah. Even just sharing your experience, your journey. There’s always insights that come, and I think that’s brilliant.

Art Costello: Yep. Well, we’re getting near to our hour and I wanted to give you time to where people can learn about how to get a hold of you, and where. And after we do that, then I’ll take us out of here and we’ll call this a beautiful experience because Marcus has been great. I mean, I’ve enjoyed this immensely.

Marcus Bird: Yeah, likewise. Likewise. I really am pretty sure, and thank you so much for having me on your show. And yeah, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. And really there’s two places I suppose to interact, you can go to marcusbird.net, you can go to wellnessleadershipacademy.com, or obviously on social media on Instagram, marcus@marcuswellnessleader. And I’m on Facebook and LinkedIn, you can search me on the Marcus Bird, and they are the best ways to get hold of me. And I’m always up for a conversation and to have a chat and say how I can support and help to inspire people to embrace the power of possibility and make the impossible possible in their life.

Art Costello: That’s great. And everybody in the audience, all this Marcus information, of course be in the show notes. Marcus, can you leave us with any parting thoughts?

“If you dream big enough… give yourself permission to go for it.” - Marcus Bird Click To Tweet

Marcus Bird: I think that the key is really dream big. And then when you think you’ve dreamed big, dream bigger, and then go for it, and make sure that whatever you’re doing you’re really connecting as deeply as possible with the thing that you’re really here to do. The passion, the magic that you’re here to share, and don’t let anything get in the way of that dream. Don’t listen or believe anyone who tries to tell you anything other than IT’S POSSIBLE, anything is possible if you set your mind to it, if you want it enough. And if you dream big enough, I want you to go for it. Give yourself permission to go for it.

“The key is to dream big, then when you think you've dreamed big, dream bigger, and then go for it.” - Marcus Bird Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Those are wise words. And I couldn’t think of anything more fitting to end the show on than those words, Marcus, because we all need to become not only dreamers, but doers. We need to do it. Nike says, just do it. Well, just go do it.

Marcus Bird: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s been a joy, and I really appreciate being here, and thank you Art, you’re doing a great job. The show’s amazing, I really love it. Thank you for having me on your show.

Art Costello: Well thank you. And we’re going gonna do this again, Marcus, you’re on my list now of repeaters.

Marcus Bird: Look forward to it. I love to, I love to have another conversation.

Art Costello: Well, with that being said, everybody, you know where you can get a hold of me, expectationtherapy.com, you are always appreciated here, and I want you to believe in the possibility of everything just as Marcus and I have said today, anything is possible when you put your mind to it. And with that being said, Heather White, can you take this outta here?

 

 

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