Matthew Ferry is a thriving executive life coach and spiritual teacher. For the last 26 years, Ferry has coached thousands of top performers to achieve Enlightened Prosperity™. His books, videos, audios and seminars utilize his street tested methodology called The Rapid Enlightenment Process™.
Among his many projects, Ferry manages a blog, hosts the podcast “Daily Enlightenment with Matthew Ferry,” spearheads The Ignite Mastermind, and teaches his unique process via Muscle Testing School. Ferry is also the author of Quiet Mind Epic Life, an Amazon Self Help and Spirituality best-seller in the US, Canada, Australia and Japan. Matthew Ferry and his family live in Southern California.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Matthew Ferry about helping others achieve enlightened prosperity.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How the enlightened goal setting process accelerates your peace of mind and brings joy to what you do.
- How there is power in investigating the motives behind your goals.
- Why getting connected to your most cherished experiences makes your goals hit the mark of true fulfillment.
- How inspiration is left where urgency disappears creating energy to fulfill your goals.
- Why clearing your mental state of survival motives positions yourself for true success.
Connect with Matthew:
Links Mentioned:
publishpromoreprofit.com/goals
matthewferry.com/app
mattewferry.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@mattew_ferry
Instagram
@matthewferryquietind
Facebook.com/matthewferry
Linkedin.com/in/matthewferrypublicspeaking
Rob Kosberg:
Welcome everybody, Rob Kosberg here, excited to bring you another episode of the Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast. You are going to love the guest today. Matthew ferry is a spiritual teacher, songwriter, best-selling author of the book, Quiet Mind, Epic Life, which is a fantastic book, Lucky Jet. For the last 30 years, Matthew has coached thousands of top performers to achieve enlightened prosperity, which is very interesting, and we’ll be talking about that. He’s the leader of the Ignite Mastermind, and the creator of a street tested methodology called The Rapid Enlightenment Process. Matthew, I’m super honored to have you today. Thanks for being on the podcast, my friend.
Matthew Ferry:
I am really excited. I think that we are going to get our listeners inspired and lit up to set goals in a whole new way today.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. I’m a big goal-setter myself, something that I do every single year, and generally quarterly, will also look at my goals, but I’m very intrigued by this entire Rapid Enlightenment Process. You have this amazing workbook which you sent to me. It is absolutely amazing. Thank you, by the way, for sending it to me. Everything you guys do is just extraordinary, the highest quality. And so let’s start there. In your Enlightened Goal Setting workbook, you talk about traditional goal setting versus this Enlightened Goal Setting. Can you talk to me about what is the difference between those?
Matthew Ferry:
No problem. Rob, as you know, I have been working with top performers for decades and decades, and one of the things that I ran into over, and over, and over in my one-on-one coaching practices that people would set goals, they would get excited about them initially, and then they would peter out, and they’d stopped doing them. That was one side. There was another side, which was much less understood, but something that I was very confronted with, and that is people would set goals, they would go through the process, they would achieve the goals, and they would literally say to themselves, “Really? Really, this is it?”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, onto the next goal now. That’s more like me.
Matthew Ferry:
Yeah. I was like, “Okay, well that was exciting. Now what?” There was, in this process, a deep sense of dissatisfaction, and it seemed like no matter how successful my client would get, the satisfaction, the hole that they experienced inside, like, “When am I going to feel certainty, and confidence, and peace of mind? I thought achieving all these goals would get me there, and they didn’t.” It didn’t work. I’ve been setting goals since I was five years old. My father, his mentor was a man named Earl Nightingale. Earl Nightingale sat me on his lap at five years old and took me through my first goal setting exercise. I’ve been a goal setter my whole life. Unfortunately, if you set goals the traditional way, you will one, not likely fully achieve the goals. That’s one side. And then two, if you are lucky enough to succeed and achieve those goals, you will have this incredibly disheartening moment where you discover it didn’t do the trick. It wasn’t enough. That’s traditional goal setting.
Rob Kosberg:
Heartbreaking, right? Like, “Wow, I actually did it, and I should feel great, but instead I just feel like it’s time to move on to the next thing.”
Matthew Ferry:
Exactly right, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I really appreciate traditional goal setting, and I’ve done it my entire life, but about 10 years ago, I started to realize that there was an enlightened perspective that one could adopt in goal setting that would massively accelerate your peace of mind, your joy in the process, your exuberance, your flow, and your love of what you’re doing. When I started to bolt that together, I would burst into tears of joy on a regular basis for no reason. I was just doing the same stuff I was doing before; it was just all of a sudden it totally changed the experience I was having of creating the life that I wanted, a life of purpose and meaning. It was really cool. That’s sort of the difference between the traditional goal setting and the enlightened goal setting process, is really the experience. Let’s be honest, when you’re lit up, when you’re stoked, when you’re excited, when you’re feeling good, when you’re energized, you’re more attractive, you’re more creative, you’re more resourceful, you’re more fulfilled. You pull people in. You can see things that other people can’t see. It’s ridiculous.
Rob Kosberg:
I totally agree. I want to dig just a little bit deeper on this, because I’m a bit of a tactician myself. And so, when I hear all this, I go, “Give me something.” Everybody’s got their five steps or six steps. You don’t have to lay everything out, but talk me through. I completely see the difference between the two. Talk me through how somebody wraps their mind around this enlightened goal setting, as opposed to the type of goal setting that can lead to dissatisfaction.
Matthew Ferry:
I think it starts by acknowledging the motivation behind the goal. Most of us are pretty embroiled in survival based ideas, and because we are top performers, and we are lifelong learners, and we hire the coaches, and hire the trainers, and listen to the podcasts like we’re doing right now, because we’re those kinds of people, we have had to language our survival motives to try and make them sound like they are thriving motives, but they’re not. The first thing that I assist people in doing is getting down to, “Are you trying to survive better through this goal?” Because if you are, you will never be satisfied or fulfilled. Greed, grudge, hatred, victim, illogical rules, humble, traitor, pride, victim, lazy, those are at the heart of almost all of our goals. Until we go through a process of investigation, which is what I ask people to do in my workbook, until we go through a process of investigation, it’s very difficult to recognize that I have taken a mud pie, I’ve slathered some ice cream over the top, and I’m calling this my exciting goal that I want to achieve, but really underneath there is I don’t want to look stupid. I want to be celebrated. I want people to think I’m amazing. I want to have a bunch of cool stuff. I want people to know that I’m awesome. Every one of those things underneath them is actually a survival motive, and when you accomplish it, you don’t have a thriving experience. Enlightened experience and thriving experience, they’re the same thing. So, step one would be to investigate, “What is my actual motive?” Step two would be to get connected to something called your most cherished experience, and this is where traditional goal setting blows it, because we actually think that our goals are going to create this ultimate experience for us. The problem is we don’t know what the ultimate experience is. We haven’t taken the time to figure it out. “I’m going to invest in this new thing. What do I think that that is going to actually create for me experientially?” It turns out that human beings are only experience oriented. That’s it. That’s all we have, experience. Everything that you say you want, everything you do is about the experience that you have. If you can’t get clear about that, if you don’t have clarity around your most cherished experience, then every goal you set will miss the mark, because you’re not actually trying to accomplish the thing. You’re trying to accomplish the experience. Here’s the crazy thing, once you go through that process, and I can’t remember where it is in my book here, but this book is for free. So, people can 100% download this immediately and have it for themselves. It’s on step number three in the book, which is most cherished experience assessment.
Rob Kosberg:
I know we’re going to give the link out at the end, but that was a very, very generous thing. This amazing workbook you can get at publishpromoteprofit.com/goals. You can get a copy of this workbook and go through it. I love what you have here.
Matthew Ferry:
Rob, let’s be honest. You’re an extremely accomplished person. You have achieved the goals that you’ve set out for yourself. You have created a very, very spectacularly successful business. Your business has served me really, really well. I have experienced incredible success because of the service that you are providing, right? So you did it. You accomplished. You said you were going to do X, and you did X. And then you’re like, “Okay, now what? Now what?” We’re not talking about, “Are you a happy guy?” Hell, yeah. Are you a satisfied individual? Yes, you are. But are you experiencing the profound levels of peace of mind, trust, and knowing, all as well? I don’t know. You and I haven’t got to spend that much time together to discern that. When you go through the Enlightened Goal Setting Process, where you end up, “Is this is how I experience deep and profound satisfaction?” When you know what that is, none of the other stuff matters. All of a sudden, your goals stop being imperatives. Urgency, poof, disappears. Now, the survival mind, which I call the drunk monkey, it says, “Urgency disappears? Holy smokes. Don’t do that. What are you going to be, a lazy bum living on somebody’s couch?” No. It is the exact opposite. When urgency disappears, inspiration is what is left. And there you are. I’m speaking to our listener now. You are a creator. You are a go getter. You don’t listen to this podcast because you’re a schlub. You listen to this podcast because you want to get out there, and kick ass, and do some cool stuff. Once we clear the illusion of urgency out of the way, what remains is this new energy inside of you, which is the energy of inspiration. The energy of inspiration is one where you don’t need to find your motivation again. You don’t care about going into down cycles, or up cycles, or whatever. You just go through them. You’re just like, “That’s just part of the process.” You’re not burdened by the drunk monkey in your head like, “You’re a loser,” and, “It’s never going to happen,” and, “You’re stupid,” and, “What’s wrong with you,” and, “Other people are better than you,” and, “How come you aren’t succeeding,” right? All of that stuff goes away. It’s pretty cool.
Rob Kosberg:
That sounds amazing, and I love the way you describe the first step. I guess distilling all of these goals that we have, whether it’s goals around something materially in our life, goals around our relationships, is good. I set, like you do and probably many other people, I set goals in many areas of my life, and in my faith, and my finances, and in my family and friendships, so many different things. Some obviously have kind of a material sense, others not material in the sense of a thing, but in the sense of a feeling. They’re qualitative about my life, and my relationships, and what that mean, but I love going at least one, and perhaps several layers deeper, and really think, “Okay, what is it within me? What am I fulfilling by achieving that goal two or three layers deeper?” I wonder if you can speak to that just a little bit more, and how people kind of discover that.
Matthew Ferry:
I think that the most important thing is to start with the process of discovering your most cherished experience. What you’ll find is that that immediately informs you and begins to tell you. There’s a little more complex way in the workbook, and I really want people to go and just download the workbook and go through it yourself. It’s my gift to you. A real simple way is to just take an important goal that you have, and to begin asking yourself some criteria questions, “What’s important about that?” Then you’ll answer. Let’s say you’re talking about your relationship with your wife, and you say, “I would like to have a dramatic improvement in my time spent, and the love that I experience with my wife.” Let’s pretend that that’s the goal. What’s important about that? You might say, “Well, I’ve devoted myself to this person, and I want to make sure that she is feeling loved, and that I’m feeling loved, and then it’s easy to be around her.” And you say, “Well, what’s important about that?” And go, “Oh. Well, I don’t do well when we’re in conflict. That actually distracts me and throws me off everywhere, and so I want to really work to be harmonious in my relationship with her.” Well, what’s important about that? “Well, god, I think that really, if I’m being honest, I want to feel loved.” Oh. Well, what’s important about that? “It just makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.” Well, what’s important about that? “Well, I think that that’s just a state of peace. I’m at peace when I know that everything is going to be okay.” Ding, ding, ding, ding. Where are you going after peace? There’s no place. That’s the top, right? Peace, joy, love, certainty, confidence, you get to one of those highest value experiential terms, and everybody is different. Not everybody is peace. Everybody has their own version. Knowing what that is then helps you to look into your relationship and say, “Okay. My relationship with my wife, to what degree am I experiencing peace there?” Now, that is very different. Now the quality of that goal transforms, and the probability of me experiencing success in that goal goes way up when I’m honest about what I’m actually trying to experience. It’s so ridiculously powerful. All the sudden, for example, in your relationship with your spouse, you may have been living in a set of illogical rules. So illogical rules are something that I talk about in my book, Quiet Mind, Epic Life, and illogical rules are essentially culturally indoctrinated rules that we follow that don’t actually empower you. So for example, happy wife, happy life. If you want to have a crappy life, follow that rule. The real effective thing to do is to make sure that my needs are met, and that I am satisfied, and fulfilled, and stoked about my life, because when I’m there, my wife loves who I am. If I try to help her feel better, I’m going to enter into the ultimate hamster wheel from hell, because there’s nothing I can do to get her to feel better, that’s on her. This is over the last 10 years specifically; I would say the process clicked in for me. Maybe the previous 10 years, I was like, “Ooh.” I was kind of dancing around it, but the last 10 years, I was like, “Oh, wow. This is it. This is it.” You need to remember, many of my clients, billionaires, hundred millionaires, CEOs of international corporations, some of the most powerful people on the planet, these people climb to the top of the mountain only to discover that wasn’t it. When we reoriented the way that they we’re setting goals, such that at the basis of setting the goal is the context, what I call an enlightened perspective, that all is well, that nothing needs to be changed now, that everything is whole and complete exactly as it is, the moment we change that, every one of their goals shifted, and all the things in their life that were degrading, and destructive, and nagging, and agitating, and like little rocks in their shoe, that stuff starts to fall away. The things that bubbled to the surface were the inspirational outcomes, and they became better in their relationships, and better at work, and better in their creativity, and better in their decision-making. It all cleared up, because your mental real estate isn’t getting all jammed up by survival motives. It literally sucks up your mental real estate.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s interesting. Going through the process that you just went through, which was very, very helpful for me, and I’m sure for many people, in some ways, the goal may not actually change. If your goal is, as you expressed in the beginning, that you want to have a deeper, more loving relationship with your wife, you may come back to that exact same goal. It’s not like you abandoned that. So talk me through the difference between in one sense the Enlightened Goal Setting versus the traditional. Is it just a matter of, because we’re getting to the depth of it, it is highly more effective? Just walk me through the differences there.
Matthew Ferry:
Yeah. You’re on it. You’re on it, Rob. You’re nailing it. Enlightenment is not a place, it’s just a modern and rational outlook on life. When one looks around in life uncluttered by the legacy biological and survival drives that all of us are burdened with, it is great. Over the last 100 years, we’ve come to a place where we’re not in survival at all. No one is listening to this podcast because they’re trying to figure out how to survive better. Everyone is listening to this podcast because they’re like, “Rob is the shit. He knows how to get things done. If I want to be an awesome author and have a best-selling book, I need to be aligned with him. The people that he talks to are going to help me with that.” That’s a thriving goal. That thriving condition is a representation of the experience that we’re having in life. I can do these dreamy, interesting things like write a book and publish it. I mean, come on. There’s no survival in that at all. Yet, if we examine the goals that we set, they are almost all wrapped in a survival motive. The enlightened perspective assumes that all is well, and when you assume that all is well, you free up your mindset, your mental chatter. The drunk monkey stops talking, your mind goes quieter, because when you assume that all is well, now you’re addressing the situation more accurately. That’s number one. And number two, you have this incredible surge of brain power and mind share. So now your goal, which you said, “I want to be in a loving relationship with my wife.” It used to be, “Because I don’t want her to leave me, because I want to make sure she’s going to be okay, because it’s happy wife, happy life. It’s family first, put my spouse’s needs above my own. Make sure that the family is going to be okay. Be a good man. Be a good provider, blah, blah, blah.” You want to make sure your life is terrible? Do those things. All of those things are how people are in relationship, and when they finally connect with the all is well state, those survival motives start to lose their grip. So, in the end, the most direct answer to your question is survival context, traditional goals, enlightened context, enlightened goals. It’s a contextual framework. It’s sort of like this, our ancestors used to think that the world was round, and it dictated so much. Sorry, the world was flat. Sorry. I was going the other direction. Some people still think it’s flat. Our ancestors used to believe that the world was flat, and that actually impacted their behavior. So, as a sailor, you didn’t go very far away from the coastline. If you looked out there, you said, “I’m going to fall off. I’m not going there.” Whereas as soon as we got a new piece of information, “Oops, sorry, everybody, the world is actually round,” the brave souls like our listener, not everybody, but the brave souls, the courageous creative souls, the adventurers like our listener, said, “Well, wait a second. If the world is round, I’m going to go see how far I can go.” Now, here’s the thing. They didn’t need any new skills. They didn’t need to learn more sailor tactics. They didn’t have to get a different boat. Everything was exactly the same, but they were able to travel farther, explore farther, discover more, open up routes that were never before available. The only thing that changed was the context. That’s the difference between traditional goal setting and survival-based goal, the context.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. What a great analogy. Love that. Very, very good. Again, just to mention, you are very generously giving away the workbook, Enlightened Goal Setting. Thank you again for sending this to me. I’ve already begun to dig into it, and that is at publishpromoteprofit.com/goals. Someone can go and get that at any time that you’re hearing this. Let me change gears for just a moment. We’ve been going a good bit on this. I like to talk to everybody on the Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast about their books, and in particular, how they are using their books to make a difference in the world, to grow their businesses, to grow their authority, et cetera. Your book has done exceptionally well, obviously, Quiet Mind, Epic Life, beautifully done, incredibly well-written. Talk to me about how you’ve used it, how you continue to use it. Any stories or examples to help our listeners would be great.
Matthew Ferry:
The thing about your book is that it is your stake in the ground. I’m a guy who has had many different stakes that I put in the ground over the years. You and I knew each other all the way back in the day from the real estate industry when I was in my family’s business, and my father, my brother, and I created one of the biggest real estate training companies in the country. The Mike Ferry Organization, that’s my father. It creates a lot of gravitational pull. It’s actually really, really difficult to expand beyond how people knew me. As you know, I would be on stage back in the day, speaking about real estate sales, but everything that I was speaking about was coming through this filter of being a spiritual teacher, which was really cool for some people, and really weird for a lot of other people. When I finally made the transition and declared, “I am going to do spiritually focused executive life coaching and mastermind training,” when I made that decision, it was a tough, tough transition to make. The single most valuable and accelerating thing that I did in that process was, Quiet Mind, Epic Life. The most important component of doing that, the most important part of the process was engaging you and your company. That was like a Slingshot. That was like being shot out of a cannon. I mean, it was nuts what happened when we went through your process, and the momentum that that created was a real catalyst for changing and transforming my life, and helping me to transcend and leave behind what was so successful for me in the past. It was really powerful. How I’m using my book? So, we sell probably anywhere from 150 to 250 a month consistently. They’re just going in the background, which is pretty exciting. In the book, I have a link to matthewferry.com/app. That app is essentially an introduction to me. In that app is all these free resources, and all these things that will assist the book reader in implementing even more deeply some of the tactics that I talk about. And so, for us, the way that we have used the book is as the beginning of a funnel, the beginning of a customer ascension funnel, and literally the exact same way that we’re doing the Enlightened Goal Setting. Right now, we’re in the phase of Enlightened Goal Setting of giving it away for free and getting it in as many people’s hands as we possibly can, and then the next phase will be that it gets uploaded onto Amazon, we reach out to Rob and say, “Okay, Rob, new book, let’s go,” and we launch that into the world, and that’ll be another front end of our funnel. We’ve been able to create a seven-figure business as a two-man shop, really man and wife. Kristen is the defacto strategist CEO, sort of making sure that everything looks world-class, and then I’m the sales and content division, but two people rocking a really, really successful business. That book has been a catalyst in making that happen. It’s just been incredible.
Rob Kosberg:
I love to hear that. Obviously, what an honor to work with you. I love your wife. She’s fantastic. You sent me some stuff, I went online, and I looked at it. I’m like, “Who’s helping you with this? This is some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen,” and you’re like, “Nobody. Kristen. She’s doing it.” I’m like, “Man, this stuff is good.” So, congratulations.
Matthew Ferry:
She designed the book, the book cover, she did all the illustrations in the book, and there’s the drunk monkey, for example, right there in the book. She had all those drunk monkey characters made. She did the full enlightened goal setting workbook. She is visual, and print media, and web design, and then I am audio, video, and sales, and presentation. We make an awesome team, but the book was the galvanizer. The book just brought everything together, changed the entire trajectory of our lives and our business, and really set me up to once and for all live the vision that had been inside of me, which is I can show people how to have this experience of being profoundly and deeply at peace while kicking ass and living a great life of purpose and meaning. I’m doing that right now. How do I get that message out there in such a way that it makes sense to people? Quiet Mind, Epic Life, bestseller publishing launch. The rest is history.
Rob Kosberg:
My friend, honored to have you on the podcast. Get a copy of the workbook, it’s at publishpromoteprofit.com/goals. And obviously, the things you shared about Enlightened Goal Setting, fantastic for people. I’m humbled and grateful for our relationship, and to have a chance to work with you guys. Thank you for being on the podcast, Matthew, and really excited to see what this next phase brings to the world of Enlightened Goal Setting.
Matthew Ferry:
Me too. Thanks for having me, Rob.
