Special Guest Expert - Steven Snyder.mp4: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Steven Snyder.mp4: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
What does it take to create a vibrant, thriving life? First, the sad news is that Thoreau was right. Most people are leading quiet lives of desperation, lacking in meaning, fulfillment, and vitality. But we choose more. We choose to create extraordinary lives and the art of vibrant living. Show entertains you with inspiration, empowerment and education to create your life into a masterpiece. It's time. Let's vibe up. Hello my friends. Welcome back to the show. And if I were to say to you, welcome back to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend. Come in. Would you get the reference? Okay, okay, okay, a bit obscure. It could be I am Daniel Aaron. I'm your host. I'm so glad that y'all are here. Specially today because oh my goodness, this is a show I have been looking forward to for ages. An incredible guest, Stephen Snyder, and I will tell you about him in a moment. First though, in case you are new to us, new to me, new to this show, this show, as the name would imply, the art of vibrant living is all about empowering you to create a vibrant, thriving, amazing life which is not something that typically happens by accident. There are forces in the world, gravity being one that tend to pull us down. So to create levity, to create vibrancy, it takes intention, it takes education, it takes some action. And that's what this show is all about, is entertaining you with the information and the empowerment so that you can make your life into a masterpiece. And our guest today, Stephen Snyder, is an amazing, amazing contribution to the world of vibrancy. He is has been a corporate seminar leader and a coach, and more importantly to me is he is one of the most genuinely positive, educated, excited people I have ever met who is one of the hugest qualities I know for vibrant living, for creating a youthful existence is the the active learning throughout one's life, curiosity, lifelong learning. And he is like the poster child for that. I could go on and on though much better. Let's get Steve up here and talk to him directly. So Steve, thank you so much for joining us.

Steven Snyder:
Hello. Hi, Daniel. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to this for quite a while.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, it's it's it's a great gift for you to be with us. You've got so much experience, so much education. And you bring it forward with, with such humility and grace and positivity. I, you know, I have the distinct advantage and pleasure from our audience of knowing a little bit about how you came to be you, which is not so different from a Spider-Man or Superman story with some unusual beginnings. So would you tell us just to tell the audience a quick word about how you got to be who you are?

Steven Snyder:
Well, actually, I got involved in this field at the age of two, and I really remember vividly how it began. It was one of my heroes, my mom, always one of my heroes. Mom would wake me up in the morning with a lot of energy. Good morning Steve, wake up and have a wonderful day. And then she'd go off to work, and every day, about 530, she'd come home from work just stressed out, and she'd sit in her favorite chair and pick up whatever book she was currently reading, and she would bliss out her. The age would go away. The lines. It was like, it's like watching the Wolf Man change back. It was amazing thing to see. And at two years old, I made two very important decisions about the way the world operates that have dramatically affected my life ever since. The first thing I decided was, I don't know what this work thing is that beats up my mommy every day, but I never want to do it. And I never had a job. I started my first business at 15. I worked for myself ever since. And the second thing I decided, I don't know what this book thing is that heals my mom, but I want to do that. And I jumped in her lap and I learned to read at the age of two. I didn't learn the alphabet. I just pointed at words and said, what's that word? What's that? And I just memorized all these words and I learned to read it too. And by the time I was six years old and went to school, I'd read 1400 books. I currently read 20 or 30 books a week. I've read a hundred thousand books in my life. Really, my career has been all about learning. I love, love, love to learn.

Daniel Aaron:
That's so cool. I love, you know that, like at the age of two to get those early. Associations, those early insights and and of course I have my bias in that. I also love books and love learning. Also have found myself to be unemployable on the level that I just always want to create my own thing with it. So I'm right there with you. So I guess the first question that comes to me then with that is, well, what is this thing with books? Why was it so healing to your mother? Why have you been compelled to read 100,000 books in your life? I believe I heard you correctly. That's an astounding figure for most people who struggle to read, you know, 5 or 10 a year, if any.

Steven Snyder:
Well, you know, I read probably 20 or 30 books a day when I was a little kid because they were little, teeny books, you know. But but I read 2 or 3 books every day, and there's really two kinds of reading, you know, there's there's pleasure reading and there's technical reading or there's learning reading, you know, and I love both. I love to read about the mind. That's always been my favorite topic, the nature of of the neuropsychology of it, the the way the brain works, but more importantly, the way the mind works, you know, different personalities and different ways we think and solve problems and make decisions and and how, how that how that process goes on. Human beings are so amazing. They're just mind blowing. And the other thing I love in terms of learning about the mind is reading fiction. Most people don't realize this, but. But the best way to really learn empathy is to read fiction, because usually you don't get a glimpse into other people's minds in the real life, you know? But in reading fiction, the author takes you on a journey into other people's minds, into the way other people think differently than the way you think. Most people think people think the way they think, but people don't think the way they think. And the more you understand that there's this amazing array of ways of thinking that and the more you can understand how that that differentiates us and makes us so, so unique. We're all unique just like everybody else. So once we understand that about ourselves and we're so unique, I think it helps us develop our heart. It helps us develop our brain. It helps us develop ourselves as as really special human beings.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, that's so nicely said and I love your perspective on fiction. One of my teachers I remember years ago used to say, you know, there's that expression that it takes a village to raise a child, and we often associate well, that's because, you know, child children need a lot of attention and there's a lot of work to do. And and that may be true, though his perspective was. Well, because if a child is just with. A nuclear family, say 1 or 2 parents, then what they learn is 1 or 2 sets of ways of thinking, or the way my teacher put it, they learn 1 or 2 sets of neuroses, and if they're in a village, well, then they get to expose to all these different neuroses, and then they can choose, well, I like that neurosis, but not that one. I'm going to take this one on. Or of course, if we flip it over, say they get to choose from what's brilliant about this person, what's amazing about the way this person sees the world? And I love that you bring that into fiction specifically because, you know, for me, since I was a little kid, I always read fiction and still do. And then there was a period in my life, maybe in my 40s, where I was just so hungry to grow and learn more and and better myself that I started thinking of fiction as. Almost like a guilty pleasure, right? That what I should be doing, you know. And of course, anytime we're saying should, we're in trouble right off the bat. But that was the thinking at the time. What I should be doing is reading these nonfiction books because they're going to make me smarter, more experienced and blah, blah, blah. And whatever field it was that I was obsessed with at the time. Yet I always maintained a level of connection to fiction because because I'm a writer, right? And writer being one of my identities, I can always justify as if I need to justify justify reading fiction, because that's the technique that makes me a better writer. So it's work when I'm reading fiction. What you said, though, it just makes so much sense, and I'd never thought of it in in those specific terms before that it's one of the best ways of learning empathy.

Steven Snyder:
Yes. And the nonfiction is one of the best ways of learning from people that are either dead or far away. And that's almost everybody. Good. You know, you don't often get to sit at the foot of the master. So, yeah, either kind of reading is is enormously valuable. And, and I just loved reading so much that I wanted more and more of it. So when I was a little kid, I started reading about altered states of consciousness, meditation and hypnosis and, and how how the brainwaves work, you know, how how when you're all stressed out, you know, the reticular activating system, the filter between the two minds is more closed and it's harder to get information. And as you relax and focus in a flow state, a meditative state, a zone state, then then the information flows more effectively back and forth within you. So I started studying that stuff and reading all about that. And when I was 12 years old, I took my two hobbies altered states and reading and put them together. And I invented this program I called Alpha Learning. Alpha brainwave state is a state of flow, the focused passion state. And I figured out this way of programing my mind to read the way I think, instead of the way I talk, like reading several words at the same time, instead of just reading one word at a time. And by doing that, by training my mind to automatically read groups of words at a time, I was reading three, four, or five times faster than I'd ever read before, and all of a sudden now I can start to read many more books and, and, you know, like, just just sit down and and read a book. I mean, not, not have to put it down. Just cover to cover. Just read a book. You know, how many people ever get to do that? It's an amazing experience when you can immerse yourself in the book, the whole world goes away and you're just in that book from cover to cover. And so I started reading faster, and then I started reading faster and faster, and and I got to the point where I was reading like a couple of thousand words a minute.

Steven Snyder:
You know, most people read 200 words a minute. I could read I can read 5000 words a minute. I usually only read about 2000 words a minute because, like, what's the hurry? You know, I don't like to rush, but but still just being able to take in information that fast. The problem most people have when they read is it's boring because their mind wanders. It's just not enough information to keep them occupied and their mind goes somewhere else. Well, when you're reading really fast, your mind is totally occupied and you don't wander off and you don't lose your focus or your concentration on the comprehension. And and it's just such a different experience reading, reading quickly now. Not like like John Wooden used to say, you know, go quickly, but don't hurry. You know, when you're not hurrying, but you're going quickly. It's, it's it's engrossing, it's involving and it's you become so passionate with the book. So it's an amazing experience. So that's that's what happened for me. I started to develop these accelerated reading techniques and, and then I started working on study techniques, how to how to make sure you learn it so you have it and memory techniques and test taking performance skills and stuff. And I started teaching at the age of 15. I started teaching fellow students how to be great students, how to be great learners. And so I started my career at 15 years old and I'm now 71 years old. I've been doing this for 56 years and it's been an amazing and wonderful ride.

Daniel Aaron:
That's that's phenomenal that at the age of 12, one, you already had this great love and obsession with reading that you had dived so deeply into these altered states of consciousness, and then it came to you to combine these in really a revolutionary way.

Steven Snyder:
That was the breakthrough of my life, that I basically had a dream where I came up with the idea of putting those two things together, and I woke up and I go, whoa, what a great idea. And that changed my life. It just that just created the direction for the rest of my life.

Daniel Aaron:
That's that's phenomenal. I mean, I can imagine if you had just woken up to that combination for yourself, it would have changed your entire life. Yet then it became something natural, of course, for you to share with other people. And and I want to let the audience know. I will ask Steve to share this, if you will just send a check in right now. No, I'm just kidding. Of course I'm going to solicit some of the information from Steve, because everybody listening, of course, is going to be like, how do I do that? Right. But before we get to that, you know, a couple of things I want to say on that one, right? I, I read your book, focus Passion, which is a really beautiful I was going to say compendium, not a word I use very often, but a compendium. I think of the of some of the thoughts and techniques that that you teach and employ yourself and. What you said, though, about reading. The way you think, as opposed to the way you were taught to read. And the problem for most people with reading is that it's boring. Like this is this is worth. I'm going to just pause and rewind for a moment worth like, I think, really clarifying because I know so many people that don't really read right, and so many people that don't read but think they should. Right. Which is never a great energy when we should. You know, that's sort of this moralistic, you know, I'm going to drive myself to do something I won't want to do that never actually works out. On the flip side, though, I think most of them genuinely want to read because there is this inclination, this feeling inside that, that it's that it's good for me, that it feels good, that it makes my life better somehow. We all sense that. And as you know, I think of it often like, well, we're spirit spirits in human form, and the spirit part of us is always wanting to grow and expand, and learning is just learning. And specifically reading is such a powerful way of doing that. So there's this natural yearning for it. Yet I think what does trip up so many people is they're like, they get bored, right? And they and especially these days when we're so used to the the speed of information and the the the noise and the stimulation that's all around us. Reading seems boring in comparison to the barrage of stimulation. So will you say that again and say a little bit more about how you created it? So that reading is is not boring, that it's exciting, that it's faster?

Steven Snyder:
Well, there's two aspects to it. One. One is to get into a state, an altered state, to get into a place where when you're reading, that's all you're doing. You don't hear the outside sounds and noises, they don't distract you. You don't have thoughts of other things that take you away and space out. You're just in the zone. You're just in the flow. You're you're in the alpha brainwave state and you're reading. And that's all you're doing is reading. Now that's that's part of it. But the other part of it is making sure there's enough information coming in to keep you occupied, because you're used to thinking that, like, it's not the speed of light, but, you know, very, very quickly, many, many times faster than talking. And, and when you're reading and you're just talking it to yourself, all you're hearing is like your voice at the speed of talking. Well, when I read, I don't hear my voice. I hear the characters voices. If there's a female character, I hear a female voice in my head. And if there's a sound of something happening in the distance, a car crash, I hear the car crash. I'm in it. It's like. It's like, better than a movie. It's like. It's like being inside of the movie. It's it's being a character within the movie kind of thing. So if you can get into that zone, that flow state, that focus, passion state, and then start to take in information at the speed of thinking instead of the speed of talking, and that means very simply reading groups of words at a time. If you're reading one word at a time, that's a talking speed. You could only say one word at a time, but you can think many. So. So most people, when they read, they're talking it to themselves. And so especially with English, which is a very strange language compared to most of the others, because we often put the words that modify the noun before the noun, like in the big old red rustic barn. So if you're reading the phrase in the big old red rustic barn, you read in, in the, in the big, in the big old, in the big old red and the big old red rustic, the big old rustic barn.

Steven Snyder:
Oh, now I know what we're talking about. But until you get to barn, there's no visual. There's nothing there, you know? So. So your mind wanders off because there's nothing to grab on to. But if you're reading all of that at once, you know the big red barn all at once. You instantly get a picture of inside of that big old red rustic barn. And so it's a real it's alive. It's more it's more engrossing. And so, so by training yourself to read groups of words at a time, you you pick up the information quicker. So that was the key. That was the breakthrough for me because most speed reading programs are about reading faster speed reading. Right. So so you follow your finger or you move your eyes quicker or whatever. But the problem is, the fatal flaw in those programs is that you're thinking about doing that at the same time as you're attempting to comprehend what the words mean, part of your mind is thinking about the process of reading. Part of mind is thinking of the content of reading. So what I invented this is one of my proudest moments. What I invented was this idea of creating, in your mind, an imaginary book that when you open it up, there are no words in the book. Every, everything. Instead of words, there's like three lines left, center and right, left, center and right. And it's like slot machine bars. And so you train your eyes in the alpha state to move your eyes left. Third. Middle. Third. Right. Third. Left. Third. Middle. Third. Right. Third. There's no comprehension. There's no words. It's just training the eye movement. Left center right, left center right. You do that over and over again until it becomes a habit. But how many repetitions it takes to create a habit all depends on one major thing, and that's passion. It's x number of repetitions and y emotional amplitude. So the secret to the exercise is how much can you love the book? You gotta love that book. You create an imaginary book that you love.

Steven Snyder:
It's solid gold or jewel encrusted, or it creates a world where there's never a war. Anything you want to do, but it guarantees your children will grow up and meet perfect mates, whatever you want to create. But some book that you just love and you move your eyes left, center, right in this imaginary book that you love. And when you pick up a real book to go read, you just read your regular old way. But after a while your brain goes, oh, wait a minute, I like this other way. Left center. Right way better. That feels so much better. And all of a sudden it just starts to do it left, center, right. And all of a sudden you go, I'm doing it, I'm doing it. You're not trying it. You're not efforting it. It's your new autopilot setting. And once it clicks, it's permanent. Just just like any habit, once you create the habit, it reinforces itself. So it's just a matter of doing this exercise in your mind over and over and over again. Enough times with enough passion so that you automatically begin to see groups of words, and then you can pay all of your attention to the comprehension of those groups of words. And that's the key.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful. And and I hadn't thought of it consciously. What you said about I have thought about how quirky English is. I had a period of my life where I was teaching Spanish or I was I was in Spain and I was teaching English as a second language, and I felt so badly for my students. And, you know, because I know what it's like to learn another language and there's challenge in that. And so what I would, you know, teach these people and they said, well, why is it like that? And I said, I don't know, there's no good reason.

Steven Snyder:
And there's English is crazy. You know, it's like it's like it makes no sense. I mean, it's not to haraganga it's through. How the heck do you get through out of that? There's so many words like that. So. So yeah, teaching English, if it's not your first language is really challenging. But but millions of people have done it. It's not that it's impossible, but but it does make it really challenging to understand if you're reading one word at a time and you read all these words that modify and now and you haven't even got to yet in Spanish, it would be barn, the big old rustic one, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't end with barn, you know. So so English makes it more challenging, but it's still doable.

Daniel Aaron:
Well and it makes makes perfect sense. Well, and the flip side, English is also a beautiful language, right? It's got more complexity, more options than any other language. Maybe not as beautiful to the ear as some other languages like I love Portuguese, for instance. However, the ways that we can express with English when we develop some level of competence or mastery is phenomenal. Now, what you said, I think is a huge insight. Like I never thought of it this way. That part of the challenge is we really order things in an obscure way, where it makes much more sense to know what we're talking about before we modify it, before we describe it. So the the solution here is brilliant, which is, well, don't don't think of it at one at a time. Think of it as a group. And so it's not a barn that happens to be red and big and rustic. It's a big rustic red barn. Right. And that's just one concept. Exactly. Which which of course, is exactly how we experience life. Right.

Steven Snyder:
Don't think it's not the way we talk, but it is the way we think. And that's the key.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Well, and I've thought about this a lot. I'm curious where this will land for you, because part of my life as a writer, one of the practices I've been engaged with for, gosh, more than 30 years now is writing practice. And it was, you know, from Julia Cameron's morning pages. That's one methodology for it. Or I had another teacher that would just say, you know, write 15 minutes every day, just get all of the stuff out. And and that was a really important and powerful process. And for years I did that longhand. I don't know why we call it longhand. I did it with my hand. Right. It's a pretty short hand, as it turns out. But, you know, I wrote it out this way and I could get pretty fast at that. But I remember when I moved into the computer era, and I'm lucky because my mother, bless her heart, had forced me to learn typing as a kid, and I grumbled about it. I didn't want to do it. Come on, mom, I want to go out and play. And you know, and I remember sitting in this little bedroom on an old typewriter. Right. And I know some people in our audience are like, typewriter. What's what's that? You know, it's an old typewriter. And I had a chart up on the wall that had the keyboard letters and and, you know, she made me not look, put a something. Over the keyboard so I couldn't look and I could only look at the letters. And I learned to type. So I had learned that. And then when I got into the computer era, I realized, hey, I can do these morning pages, I can write, I can type faster than I can write by hand, and which means that I get closer to the speed of my thoughts, which accelerated the power and effectiveness of my journaling. Does that make sense related to what you're saying about reading and thinking?

Steven Snyder:
Absolutely. Because again, you're you're writing a word. You're not writing letters. You're like the is da da da. It's not to do when you type the is a single thing. I mean, yeah, you're hitting one one letter, then the next and the next. But you're not thinking one letter, you're thinking the. And that's what you write. So it's really better, you know something I've proposed many, many years ago that never happened. But I don't think we ought to use a keyboard. I think we ought to use a court reporter keyboard, you know, I mean, like, why is so much faster? It's ten times faster, and it's just all phonetic, you know, you write the as to or the, the, the whatever. You just you just you just write the way it sounds kind of thing and it would make a whole lot more sense. It'd be ten times faster. But, you know, we don't learn that. But but to me, the most important concept with writing is that you can't write the way you talk. You have to write more brilliantly than you talk. I mean, if I say I live in a big house, you get it. But if I write, I live in a big house. You think? Three bedrooms. I've got to write huge or gigantic or enormous or gargantuan or I've got to use much more of a fluent language to be able to convey the same thing that my volume, intonation, inflection, facial expression, body language, hand gestures, all that stuff can convey when I talk. So writing is harder, much, much harder. You have to be much more precise and much more concise. And and I don't like doing it. It's hard work for me, right? Sitting down and writing is like effortful. I don't like writing. I love, I love having written, I love when it's done, and I wrote it, and I'm so happy that I wrote it. But the process of writing what I do is I just write what I was going to talk. I just write what I say, and then I go back word for word by word and say, is that the right word?

Steven Snyder:
I mean, do I have to say it in a bigger word or a different word because I don't have any volume or inflection or anything, you know? So to me, writing is easy editing, you know, I mean, rewriting or editing is so, so challenging. But boy, the end result, you know, you've created a permanent record of your brain, you know, a permanent record of your philosophy. And it will live. I mean, on the internet, it will live forever. It'll it'll live forever. And that's just what a thing can you imagine your your great, great, great, great great great grandchildren sitting down and reading a book you wrote, you know, I mean like, whoa, what an awesome concept that is. It will live forever. Whatever you say. It's going to go into the ethers and it's gone. But what you write down that's permanent. That's awesome.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, yeah, I love what you said. And I'm curious because it sparked something that came to me when you were speaking in the earlier part of our discussion here. About and you used interchangeably at one point the expression the flow state. Right. And I think you used it interchangeably with focus passion. Right. Early part of your, your 12 year old combining of these things and effectively the way I heard it and tell me if this is accurate is you learn how to access the flow state. Right. And one of the things we know about the flow state is it requires a certain level of skill and a certain level of challenge. Right. And if we have too little skill and too much challenge, well, it's it's it's overwhelming and we don't get into the state. But if we have too much skill and not enough challenge, well then it's boring and too easy. So we need just kind of the right level with it where we're, you know, matching each of those in our lives. And when I think of writing. Like, I've had this and I don't think I've ever spoken with anyone about this before, so I'm curious how this lands for you. I had the I've had the experience with writing a few times where it's like my my fingers are working fast enough that it's flowing out of my, I would say, my brain, but I don't know if it's my brain or if it's something beyond me. And I remember at times in my life looking at musicians, usually jazz musicians, not always. And they they're in this zone or the flow state. And when they're playing, like they're expressive on their face, but, you know, they're doing their thing, whether it's a trumpet or a saxophone. And you just see this kind of like it's like they're dancing with it. And I remember a few times typing and feeling my face like moving as if it was expressing it, and like the instrument was just the keyboard and it was coming out and I was like, wow, that's the flow state with writing. I don't get it very often, but it's sort of like when those things gel together. Does that make sense to you? Absolutely.

Steven Snyder:
It's it's like I didn't write that. That came through me. I didn't I didn't think that it just it it got thought somehow. And it's like channeling almost. It's like, I don't know that it's coming from another entity or anything, but it it doesn't feel like it's coming from you. It feels like it's coming through you. And that's that's the way I do a lot of things in my life. You know, whenever I get up on stage and I talk, I mean, I'm saying a lot of the things I've said many times before, but but I don't rehearse it or anything. I just move into that state. And in that state it works. In that state, it flows through you. And that's, you know, that's the way I speak professionally. That's not the way I talk, you know, daily, but it's the way I get into an entertainment mode or a flow mode. And I speak that way. And what I do, maybe one of the most important things I do is train people how to get into that mode quickly and practice being in that mode frequently so that when they need to be in that mode, they don't have to work to get there. It's a habit. So, for example, if you want to pay attention to something, instead of hoping that the thing you want to pay attention to is so fascinating and so interesting that it grabs your total attention instead. If you have a way of getting your total attention instantly and then you bring it to whatever it is you want to pay attention to, no longer at the mercy of anything outside of you to be interesting, you get interested and then you bring that interest to whatever it is you wish to to focus on. So. So by closing your eyes and taking a deep breath, that's that's so important, a deep breath, you know, one single deep breath, one conscious deep breath changes your brain. It's maybe the most basic premise in all of altered States work in martial arts, in yoga and meditation. One slow, conscious, deep breath. All of a sudden the external world ceases to exist. You are internally paying attention to only you, and you are.

Steven Snyder:
Your brain is now out of stress because if there were any real danger, you'd move into the fight or flight, which makes you hold your breath and tighten your muscles. If instead you loosen your muscles, let go of physical tension, anxiety, and confusion and replace it with relaxation, calmness, and clarity, all of a sudden you're safe. You feel safe. There's no real danger. Your brain knows there's no danger. One breath makes your brain know there's no real danger. And so, because when there is real danger, you can't relax. You know, it'd be crazy to relax. You could die. But if there's no real danger, it's okay to relax. In fact, it's optimal. So one deep breath, and then what I do is have them imagine someplace where they can feel safe, a peaceful place, a memory or a fantasy, or even just surrounded by the color purple. It doesn't really matter. Just someplace where they can relax and they practice doing that over and over and over again, many, many times every single day. So whenever they want to pay attention to something, they close their eyes, take a deep breath, go to that peaceful place. Now they're in the state of paying attention, and then they take that attention and apply it to whatever is important to do next. So instead of hoping that that next thing will grab their attention, they grab their own attention and bring it to whatever it is they want to put attention on.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, so that begs the question, Steven, and that begs like 40 questions for me. Every time you say something, I get 45 new questions, though, from what you just said. It's information and what happens for a lot of us and for me as a coach, this is one of the biggest things that I'm working with my clients on. Most of the time the problem isn't knowing what to do. It's getting ourselves to do what we know. Right. So what you just described is a practice, and you made it sound so simple and even so quick that, no, none of us could say, well, I don't have time for that or that's too complicated. I don't understand it. Right. So would you be willing to give us a myself and the audience, whether it's live or by rebroadcast, an experience of what you just said, so we can prove to ourselves that it's something that we can actually do right now?

Steven Snyder:
Sure, absolutely. If people are driving a car or speed up, speed up? No. So? So be careful. I mean, you're going to close your eyes. You're going to go into an altered state. It's really relaxing, just like falling a little bit of the way to sleep. But if you're operating heavy machinery, pull over. Okay. You know, don't do this while you're doing that. Just a little, you know, be careful. So get comfortable wherever you are in your chair or on the bed or wherever you're at finding yourself. And, and close your eyes. And I want you to start by taking a very deep breath. I mean very deep. Fill your lungs all the way to capacity and the hold at the peak. And now, as you release, relax and find inside your mind a quiet place of peace, a calm, serene, safe and tranquil scene. Here in your mind's inner space. Relax and find as you slow down your mind a quiet, peaceful place. You might see colors that surround you, or perhaps you'll hear the peaceful sounds, or just feel like there's beauty all around you and sense the love there that abounds. Smell the sweet, sweet scent of nature. Taste the freshness of the air in your mind. Find this safe and peaceful place and just pretend you're really there. Just pretend. That you're really there. And make it seem real. As you let yourself feel so relaxed in this quiet place of peace. Make it seem true. As you imagine that you are relaxing with the greatest of ease. Because you are safe and you know you're safe in this peaceful place, in this quiet space that you find inside your mind. This is the alpha state that you create. And as you do, you find along with focused passion comes peace of mind, focused passion. And. Peace of mind. Now bookmark this place so you can return any time you choose your mind. Your remarkable mind is such a powerful tool for you to use. And in a few moments, I'm going to ask you to return to Wide Awake. But from this experience, I want you to take your safe place, your peaceful place, and remember it crystal clear and bring every detail of your safe, peaceful place with you back here. Bring every detail of your peaceful place with you. Now back here. Take a deep breath and does it feel comfortable for you? Open your eyes and come back to wide awake. Wide awake. And that's an alpha journey.

Daniel Aaron:
That's an alpha journey. And how. How long was that a minute? Two minutes?

Steven Snyder:
Yeah. A couple of minutes, I'm guessing.

Daniel Aaron:
Right. And I have the feeling, from what I've read in your book that that actually that could be done in even less time. Is that true?

Steven Snyder:
Actually, yes. I think 20s is about the optimum amount of time to do it. Once you've done it a few times and you have a real clear sense of where that peaceful place is and what it looks like and smells like and sounds like and feels like, then you can just close your eyes, take a deep breath and go there. Just go right there and 20s. Understand to the subconscious mind. The mind that dreams at night. 20s is a long time to a mind that can have dreams that seem like they're hours long and a few seconds 20s is a long time, plenty of time to let go of tension and anxiety and confusion and replace it with relaxation, calmness and clarity. So by getting really good at going to that peaceful place, then whenever it is you need to do something else, you go to that place first. It's like you're neutral and you go there and you let go of everything and you're focused. And then now you take that focus and bring it to that thing. You have to do that, that interview you're going to do or that baseball you want to hit or that free throw you want to make, or that piano you want to play or whatever it is you you take the focus and bring the focus to the thing you're about to do.

Daniel Aaron:
That's that's awesome. And and I'm wondering about this, Steve, because something else I noticed in your book is that maybe it's a couple sentences that you use that describes the brief version of what we just did. You you start a lot of the sections of your book with that guidance, right? Go to that focus passion state and kind of like you just walked us through it. And I imagine that part of why that is such a frequent part of the book is because it's a reminder to all of us that we would do well to do this. Often to repeat this. Is that is that accurate?

Steven Snyder:
Right? You know, I started my career teaching meditation and self-hypnosis techniques that took 15 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes. And and those people that did it and got it loved it. They just gained so much from it. But most people didn't do it. It's just 15 minutes. They're busy. They forget, you know, so much. So I said I'd be more interested in a technique that was really more useful to more people. You know, even though it's not as good. 15 minutes of meditation is better than that was. But but it's better than nothing. It's way, way, way better than nothing. And so by inventing a technique that took like a 22nd meditation instead of a 20 minute meditation, I found that I got the vast majority of my audience, you know, sometimes the whole audience, to say, well, that's easy. I could do that. You know, that's so, so like once an hour, you know, just once an hour in your life, you take a little mini vacation, you know, you close your eyes, you take it to your breath, you go to this piece of place 1020 30s you know, nothing. It and then your, you know, your stress levels go like letting the air out of a balloon. You know, you know, your balloons empty and then you go back to life and it builds up again. But it never gets into the red zone, you know, unless there's real danger. You don't get high, high stress. You stay in low stress, which is where you want to be. So by by convincing people that this is the key to the whole thing, you know, if you don't do this, then none of the other stuff is going to happen for you. But if you do this, you now have the doorway into all the other stuff that you can do into physical health and well-being, into into happiness and mindfulness and so many other wonderful approaches and avenues. You can go down if you start by getting into this flow, into this zone state, and it's it's just 20s of your life. It doesn't really take away anything. It adds a tremendous amount to your life. So, so a big part of what I'm talking about is convincing people to do this. You know, just it's easy, just do this and you will see the benefits that you'll get from just going to this peaceful place. And I have lots and lots of ways of helping people do that. I'll, I'll I have 250 free self-improvement podcasts that are on my website, Penn Tools, and every one of them has a guided meditation that takes them into this zone, into this alpha state, in this focus, passion place. So there's so many different approaches to get in there, but go there and then from there, there's so many other places you can go.

Daniel Aaron:
That's that's amazing. That's beautiful. Thank you for that. And let's let's reiterate the website that you just gave 250 different free resources there, you said. And what's the site again it's Penn.

Steven Snyder:
Penn which stands for Personal Empowerment Network. But Penn to. No.com, no dot net, just pen dot tools. And you'll see a like eight categories. And each one has like 30 programs. And there's like you know 250 programs on every self-improvement topic. By my partner Michael Benner, he and I had a radio show in Los Angeles for many years. We put this together. I actually brought him over to Maui for five years. We spent every every week we sit down and do a new program. For five years, we came up with like 250 programs and and then I sent him back to L.A. Actually, he was ready to go home. But but it was a wonderful experience. And basically I consider it my legacy. You know, I wanted to put together on audio programs of everything that I really am passionate about. So all kinds of great stuff on that Pen Tools website.

Daniel Aaron:
That's great. Pen dot tools. Okay. And you, you mentioned something in there that I want to tease out a little bit further too, which is something that I run into a lot. And in my own experience, and especially with clients and students now for many years in the in the spiritual communities and in the personal and development worlds, often too, there's this big emphasis put on your morning routine, your positive rituals, your spiritual practice, and whatever that consists of. And that could be, you know, hours of conversation about what one puts into that practice. Maybe it's meditation, maybe it's movement, maybe it's the thing that I use most often with myself and my clients is a self creation process. But whatever way we describe it, it's this, okay, this is my dedicated time for myself, for spirit, for creating how I want to live my life. However we want to put it what often, and it's really important and valuable. I have tons of respect and appreciation for it, both as a student of it and as a coach. And one of the big challenges with that is for so many of us, we, you know, we can go really deep and get in this wonderful state and altered state in the morning, and then we get up off the yoga cushion or the yoga mat or the meditation cushion, whatever it is, we stand up and then snap back into what we could call a high beta state, or that state of like, I got to do this and I got to do that, you know, or stressful state the what we consider normal everyday consciousness and leave behind all this great work and all this beautiful stuff that we did. Forget about it for the entire rest of the day. And, and then the next day start the same thing over again. And so part of what I love about what you're sharing here is the combination is even better. Yes. If people have trouble doing 15 minutes of meditation or self-hypnosis 20s once an hour. Hallelujah! I mean, that's great if somebody is both is better, right?

Steven Snyder:
But if you can only do one, you know? Yeah. I tend to agree that most people who do this at all, they do it in the morning and then it's gone, you know, but it's not really gone. You know, it really is percolating in there. You know, it's still it's still there. But if you can reinforce that every hour, you know, with 20s, it brings it back, brings it all back. And it really helps. I think having a morning ritual is a wonderful thing. It's like starting a race with a great first step instead of falling on your face. You know, it makes a huge difference in the whole race, you know? So so for me, it's it's morning meditate. And I do like a I guess a count my blessings, appreciation, gratitude prayer kind of thing. And then the one thing I do that I don't know, not many people do this, but I do this every single morning and I have for decades is I bless my memory. I love my memory. I'm just so enamored with it. It's just so important to me. And I just pay so much attention to how great it is. And I compliment it and I pat it on the back and I honor it, and I just know that it's the most important tool I have. I mean, it's my, my, my knowledge and my education and my vocabulary and all because I have such a great memory and most people take their memory for granted. They only pay attention when it does something wrong and, you know, then it wants to do stuff wrong to get your attention. So I give it attention for doing stuff right, and then it jumps through hoops for me. So to me, the most valuable possession I own of everything is my memory. And I honor it. And I always have every morning. I always say my prayers and and be grateful for how wonderful my memory is. A big deal to me.

Daniel Aaron:
That's very cool. And and I'm with you. Unusual. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that. And it makes complete sense. That's very powerful. And so that leads to. Another question, but I'll tie two pieces in here and I'm curious to see what what will come to you in response to this? Something that I'm working on a lot for myself and working with students and clients on these days is speaking in the way I'm talking about speaking, public speaking or creating videos, but speaking in such a way that it's from being. In other words, it's from who we are, from our authentic state so that it's not necessarily a rehearsed kind of speech. It's not a performance, exactly, although it could have performative aspects to it. It's just it's authentic speaking yet effective. And of course, there are ways to work with this and ways to enhance that and make it better. And what you described about memory and the way. Well, and you haven't said this part, and I know we're both tuned into, well, what is memory really mean and how does memory work. And that's not necessarily part of everybody's understanding. So I guess two parts of the question would you one clarify a little bit. What does memory mean. What is it? How does it work. And recall versus memory. Because I know you can speak about that better than anybody I know. And how might that fit with authentic communication?

Steven Snyder:
Well, first of all, to me, the key to authentic communication is to get out of your own way. You know, it's like, get into alpha, get into the zone, get into focused passion and let it flow. And you have to trust yourself. Trust your memory that the information that you want to bring forward will be available to you. If you are afraid that you'll choke or that you'll forget things or whatever that takes you out of the flow state, it puts you into a worry beta state and then it doesn't flow. So trusting your that your memory will serve you, will function for you is the real key. And when I say that, I don't mean that you'll have things memorized. Memorization is not memory. Memorization is like a rote repetition of something you've heard. It doesn't mean you understand it. It doesn't mean that you have thought about what it means at all. It just means that you I mean, it takes so little intelligence to memorize something that a parent can do it. They have no idea what they're saying, but they're saying the same thing that you just said. The funny joke that kids kid lives in an apartment building overlooking a cemetery, and he hears the burial service over and over and over again. And he thinks he thinks they're saying to the father, to the son, into the hole. He goes, you know, you can memorize something without really clearly understanding it. So. So when I talk about memory, I'm not talking about memorizing, I'm talking about remembering. And that means that you get the idea, you get the concept, you get the the sense of the thing. And you can put it in your own words and bring it back out again. It doesn't mean you're saying the exact words that you took in. It means you're getting, you're comprehending, you're understanding, and with that understanding, you can put it into your own language. And then when it's time to do a public presentation, you can move into the alpha state and just let the information that you've put in, as it's synthesized in your own unique way by your mind, flow out, you know, and rehearsal is important.

Steven Snyder:
But not rehearsing the words, rehearsing the state, rehearsing, being in that flow. If you're if you're really, really good at getting into the flow and trust that when you're in the flow, your memory will function perfectly. And perfect is what I'm talking about. Not not occasionally work. It works perfectly. You remember more than a million things for everything you forget. It's already pretty close to perfect, you know, if you think about it. So just trust that you know, you'll remember what you need to remember. And you will. And so. So the main reason people forget things is to get stressed out and they move into that tip of the tongue kind of forgetting, you know, they they know it, but it's just not available because they're stressed. And as soon as they forget about it and relax and it comes out. So besides that, there's really only two other ways to forget anything. And one is a horrible trauma of some sort that creates a mental block. You know, most of us never experienced that, but it does happen. And the other only other way we forget anything is to program our minds to do so by saying, I have a terrible memory, or by saying I can't remember names, or I'm always forgetting things. If you're telling your mind that you forget things, it'll live up to that, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy. But but generally speaking, it's supposed to work. You know? It really. It's like if you type something on a computer, a question on a computer, and on the computer screen, it says, I don't remember. Wouldn't that freak you out? You know, that's that's just not not supposed to happen, you know. Well, it's not it's not supposed to happen. We're supposed to remember. It's normal to remember. And so by moving into the zone, moving into the alpha state, and then just letting it flow, that's really the key. All you need to rehearse in terms of content. Is the basic ideas I never rehearsed the words I'm going to say. I do rehearse the topics I'm going to talk about. You know, this is essentially what you and I are doing here.

Steven Snyder:
We didn't really rehearse this or anything, but we both have a sense of what we wanted to talk about with each other today, and we're doing it. We're just letting it flow.

Daniel Aaron:
Right. Nice. That's beautifully said. The the thing, the thing that comes to me about that is the quotation from Eisenhower. How does it go? Planning is essential. Plans are useless, something like that. And I think of that in terms of rehearsal because it's, it's it's our thinking about our communication that gets in the way of the communication.

Steven Snyder:
That's so true.

Daniel Aaron:
Right. So rehearsal to me is like practice for pressure because when we're talking to a friend, well, we just talk and it's normal and it's easy. Of course, you know, we're just communicating. Yet somehow, if suddenly the camera is on or we're standing in front of a group of people, then we start to clamp up because there's some perceived pressure to it. So one of the things I like to do with people is practice speaking in such situations that are a little bit pressurized. One of the ways to do that is by putting a timer on it, and when we do that, and then we get good at that and it's like, oh, okay, well, I can speak in this situation with a little bit more pressure and trust myself. Trust my memory. Yeah.

Steven Snyder:
That's so true. I have a challenge with this because I never had a problem speaking in front of an audience. I gave I gave a speech when I was in first grade in front of my first grade class, you know, and it was so easy, so natural for me to do that. And, and I never, ever had stage fright, you know? But it is the single greatest fear of most people. It is the number one. I mean, death is seventh. Most people would much rather be in the coffin than deliver the eulogy. You know, it's it's weird. That's a Seinfeld line, by the way. So, so, so the concept of having empathy for people who have stage fright is a challenge for me. I like, why is that hard? It's like, this is so fun. This is so wonderful, so easy. I do get it, though. I mean, I do intellectually understand that most people really most people freeze up. Most people get stressed out when they have to speak in front of an audience for fear of being judged or whatever. Lots of reasons, I guess, but. But I never in my whole life had a trouble, had any trouble doing it.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Well, that's and that's beautiful. And, you know. Oh, gosh. We're running out of time, though. I'll ask you this. Maybe this will be the last thing or second to last thing, because I'm with you. Speaking is communicating. Sharing ideas, information, feelings with people seems very natural. And yet we know it's this huge concern and fear for people. Yet we also know that so much of our success in life, whether that's in business, in relationships, in influence, whatever it is, depends on our ability to speak, to communicate. So what would you say? What would you know? What's what do you say in terms of the importance of it and how to help people come over that fear?

Steven Snyder:
Well, the. Importance is, you know, can't be understated. It's the most one of the most important skills that we have, both in relationships and in our business lives. It's huge. It's vital. But in terms of overcoming that fear, I've always found that mental rehearsal, you know, like picturing yourself in that scenario, whatever, whatever it is you want to overcome, whether it's a fear or phobia or it's just getting better at a sport or musical, whatever, anything you want to get better at, you practice, you rehearse. And again, as you pointed out, it's not rehearsing the words. It's rehearsing the feeling, the state, the confidence, the self esteem, the the feeling, feeling good, feeling like you can do it. Feeling and then rehearsing the being in that mindfulness mode in that that focus, passion, flow, zone. Rehearse those things over and over again so they become natural. So your brain is used to them. And so when you have to do it for real, it doesn't feel like you have to do it for real. It feels like you get to do it for real. And that's the difference. I don't have to do it. I get to do it. I look forward to doing it, wind me up and put me on stage. I'm a happy guy.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, that's that's beautiful. Really well said. Mental rehearsal, which is also emotional rehearsal. Really? Yes yes, yes. Okay, so time has flown along. Holy moly. Brings us to me asking you the final big question. Would that be okay? Can I ask you the final big question? Okay. This is an impossible question because you've got so much experience, so much knowledge, yet we have to put all of that behind because I'm going to ask you here, what if you were to give one piece of advice, one thing to our audience members to do or not do? What's the one thing you would say that is most helpful to create a vibrant, thriving life?

Steven Snyder:
Can I quote somebody?

Daniel Aaron:
Of course.

Steven Snyder:
This is from, I think, Justin Hayward and Graham Edge from the Moody Blues. They said, give just a little bit more and take a little bit less from each other.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, give just a little bit more and take a little bit less from each other. That's beautiful. Along the lines of in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. Yep.

Steven Snyder:
Or things work. Out best for the people who make the best out of the way things work out.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. And these are not just great song lines or what could be seen as platitudes. They're actually what we could call sutras from the, you know, from the Asian perspective of a sacred stitch, a pithy statement that describes a big truth.

Steven Snyder:
Yes, absolutely.

Daniel Aaron:
And Stephen, you are a master of bringing big truths into succinct and powerful delivery. So thank you so much for one, all the work that you've done to educate yourself to such a degree that you are such a light and a gift to the world. And especially thank you for being here with us today and sharing your wisdom in such a fun and easy to understand way.

Steven Snyder:
Thanks to you. Thank you so very much. It was a great pleasure.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. And y'all who are in our audience, most thanks to you for being interested in creating a vibrant, thriving life. So interested, in fact, that you took this time, that you invested this time. And now the thing is to take what you've learned and put it into action, knowing that as you do so, not only is your life getting better, you are making the world a better place. So I'm so grateful for you all for tuning in. Thank you. See you soon for a new show. And in the meantime, make your life even more of a masterpiece. Aloha!

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