JJ: Thank you, Dr. Davis. I’m excited about this conversation. Thank you for having me back.

Dr. Davis: Judging from past experiences with you, I know that you don’t need much prompting to launch into a very good and exhaustive conversation. So, give us your initial thoughts. Let’s say somebody does, let’s say, one of my programs and they’re always sabotaging themselves. So, if they’re following a wheat- and grain-free diet, for instance, they always manage to somehow nibble some of it at the office or at the mall. Or if they’re going to do something constructive for their microbiome, they don’t follow through with all the steps we know work. They only just do it spottily or inconsistently. What do you think of those kind of impediments?

JJ: Yeah. If I could just back up for one second. So, to give a mass overview, one of the things that interested you to bring me back was the topic of the Roadmap to Emotional Healing. And I want to do that in this context because what I have been learning through working with the physicians that I work with under the Metabolic Approach to Cancer with Dr. Nasha, with you and other physicians that I’ve talked to, interviewed, they’ve interviewed me, as I continue on this journey, I fine-tune and I get clearer and clearer about how I do what I do. And how I do what I do is in, let’s say, I’m going to use Dr. Nasha’s terrain 10 for a second. She takes 10 different things that they look at. And I’m sure with all the testing that you do, you’re looking at multiple things to come up with some kind of diagnosis to create a plan to address what is shown to you in this diagnosis, whatever the test may be, blood work, stool tests, GI map testing, whatever. So, it’s the same with the emotions. And I have sort of this step-by-step process to uncover what is blocking you. So, I call it the Roadmap to Emotional Healing. I created a course that people can do on their own called the Roadmap to Emotional Healing. But I’ll give you sort of the overview of the components in order to diagnose what’s going on, and then I’m going to make it real simple.

Actually, let me make it real simple first. The reason why people self-sabotage is because they don’t know how to accept more love, joy, success, and abundance. Gay Hendricks wrote a book called “The Big Leap,” and he calls it upper limits. To me, an upper limit in terms of teaching law of attraction, an upper limit, I consider like a temperature gauge. There is a degree or amount. Everyone has a certain amount of love, success, joy, and abundance they think they deserve subconsciously and allow themselves to have. We all want more than what we allow in. And that’s where we kind of go back and forth. When we hit that endpoint of “This is as much joy, success, love, and abundance, and attention on myself that I’m willing to receive,” then I self-sabotage. And again, it’s unconscious until you understand the pattern and until you understand how you upper limit and why you upper limit. All right. So, simply, in order for us to expand into allowing more in, which for some people means dedicating more time to themselves, it means treating themselves in a new way.

Most people can white knuckle, left brain, control some kind of diet plan for a short amount of time. Whether it becomes a lifestyle or they decide to make it part of what they do is dependent on the amount of love they’re willing to give themselves. I mean, that’s really the bottom line. It comes down to self-worth, and it comes down to what discipline is. Yes, it can be controlling and white knuckling and very left brain, but it’s the idea… And I’m not a big, like, “Okay, you have to do…” it’s rigid and it doesn’t have flexibility, but at the same time, we have to allow ourselves for how we feel. And it’s not about getting to the end goal. For most people that start a diet plan, they do it because they want to love themselves more. Pure and simple. Yes, they’re uncomfortable in their bodies. They don’t like the way they look. And they come in with that energy into a program or course, and they say, “Well, I’m going to do this because once I lose weight and once I feel better, then I’ll love myself, then I’ll be happy, then I’ll be able to go out and date, then I’ll be getting the raise.” So, you put your happiness and you put this in front of you as if it’s a carrot, but the problem is the carrot keeps moving and we haven’t done the work to allow in the results and the effort and the attention and the focus, because most people…

It’s funny, we were talking before we started recording about you being in Wisconsin, and I’m remembering a relationship, though maybe it was many years ago when I was in Wisconsin, and I was talking to a girl. She was a couple of years younger than me at the time. And I remember asking her questions, very basic questions about her job, about her, where she lived. And after I don’t know how much time it was, it was probably maybe 10 minutes, literally, mid-sentence, I was asking questions, she stood up, she walked away from me, and then she turned back to me and she said, “JJ, I can’t just sit and talk.” And I was dumbfounded. I thought, “Oh my god. What the heck was that about?” And the person I was with said, “Well, you’re so deep and you’re very intense.” And I said, “I didn’t ask for her astrology or what she believed about God. I asked her very simple, basic questions that any person would be able to answer.” There should be no pressure. But what I learned in that experience was my eye contact with her, my focus on her (and she’s overweight, very overweight) made her so uncomfortable. Being seen, being heard, being paid attention to. She did not have the capacity to receive the amount of attention I was giving her, so she had to leave.

And so, when it comes down to these self-sabotaging behaviors, it really comes back to how much love, success, joy, and abundance we allow ourselves to have and if we believe we’re worth it. And when we start out a program like yours or any program, we’re trying to love ourselves more or be better. That’s why I wrote Fit 2 Love. That’s why I started my podcast, because I kept trying to figure out who am I in this fitness space, because I really hate most of these things. I hate the focus. I hate the control. I hate the external worry about what you look like, as if that is important. I mean, it is, but it’s not. Why do we do this? And I wanted to connect what is my story. Because I didn’t lose 100 pounds and I’m like, “Oh, everybody, do this and lose 100 pounds.” I thought, “What the heck is my story?” And my story was that I used self-care to love myself, that my energy underneath doing it wasn’t about…

Because I would walk into a gym, I’ll never forget, and this was about junior. I was going to the gym at the time. It was in [11:22], and I was training, and I would walk in, and I would feel the difference between the people on the treadmill. I could feel them hating themselves as they were doing it. And all I could hear was “I hate myself. I hate myself. I have to do this. I hate myself. I hate myself.” It feels bad. And that kind of shaming never gives you results forever. They’re not sustainable, because then you equate this shaming, this punishment of exercise, with not loving yourself. But that was what my whole Fit 2 Love brand was about. It was like giving to yourself. It was investing in yourself. It was taking care of yourself on a level that feels amazing and good and because you love yourself. Because your self-care routine can be driven by energy of hatred and self-detest and waiting to love yourself, which is never going to be sustainable, or you can learn to love yourself and then do it from that point of view, which will be more sustainable and you will get the results. And it isn’t an all-or-nothing kind of journey. It does challenge you. But without doing the emotional work, you’re going to just bounce around from program to program, waiting for something to click in, as if it’s about just the food. It’s not about just the food, because it doesn’t matter if it’s exercise or food or self-improvement in an area, relationships. Until you uncover what…

And so, let’s go back now to the roadmap. So, for me, over the years that I started… I don’t know if I did this on my last show with you. I started my podcast to save my marriage, and all the things that I have learned had been because I wanted to figure out for me and for him how to, like, “What’s going on here? Why is this happening? And what do I do about it? And why do I hear things differently than he hears things? And why does he react to things that I don’t think are a big deal the way that he reacts?” And it’s not that I wasn’t already curious and already doing that to a certain degree, but man, did I take a deeper dive for 10 years to really…not master. No one masters. But to get to the point where I feel pretty confident about how I understand and see how all of these things play a role in someone’s interpretation, how they feel, how they see the world, what they’re looking for.

So, the roadmap starts with understanding, and the diagnosis is your core wounds. And I learned this in a therapy session using certain tools that I wanted to be using. I actually sought somebody out to use these tools. And when I did this exercise, I literally said, “Oh my god. Why isn’t every single person in therapy everywhere starting with this exercise?” This shortcuts, I’m telling you, five years off of therapy when you understand coming in what your core wounds are, because it gives you structure. You understand what you’re working on. I actually even did a talk called “The 3 Reasons Why Traditional Talk Therapy Is Ineffective.” And it’s a free 90-minute video you can watch. It’s on my website. I had to go, “Why do people hate therapy? Why do men hate therapy or don’t like it? Why do women not seem to get any different? Why are they still the same person after several years of therapy? Why do they still react the same way?” Why, why, why. And so, I’ve just been learning that.

And again, this core wound exercise is where we start, because until we know what your core wounds are, you don’t know what to do about it. You’re just throwing stuff at the wall, hoping it sticks. We have to have a diagnosis of the things that you’re searching for in life. When you understand what your core wounds are, you can make sense of every relationship, every job you’ve had, every breakup you’ve had. It’s super clear. And then I’ve now even made a map. I get better and better every time I do this. You get this core wound exercise, then you break it down into the map. And so, you now see, you boil it down to “When you get triggered, here are the three core wounds it triggers, and then here’s how you feel about it, and here’s how you react.” Anyway, I can go on. It’s super fun to make sense of, and to see a structure, and to see clarity around, and make sense of. I had a woman come to me. She listens to my show a little bit. I was doing a three-month beta program this year of a course that I do, a very deep dive emotional group course. Small people, like six people. And she said to me, “I’ve spent $200,000 on stuff like this. I’ve done Dr. Joe Dispenza’s workshop, blah blah blah. And I don’t know why I do this, why I feel this way, why I think this way. And I said, “Oh, you’ll get all that.” Oh, yeah. You’ll never ask that again. If you take this course with me, you will know exactly why you feel that way and why that happened, why you reacted that way.

When Dr. Nasha interviewed me for her doctors, and at the same time, I was being interviewed for another law of attraction podcast, both people who have bigger audiences than I do, that day, imposter syndrome came right in. Imposter syndrome of “Oh my god. Who am I?” My neck started to creak. My shoulders hurt. I thought, “Oh my god. I’m having pains in my body. What’s going on?” And I was nervous. And then, as I started talking, and as I started going through it, I thought, “Oh, no, no. I am the perfect person to do this.” “No, no. I do have a… I am… I know what I’m talking about.” But I was being put out to the world as a non-therapist to a bunch of physicians that “This is someone that we recommend you work with emotionally.” And jumping from that, and claiming that, and allowing that was super uncomfortable for me, even though intellectually I know it. But my body was like, “This is scary.” So, I’m just saying, everybody upper limits. When you know what it is, you know why you do it and how you do it, you can identify it, then you can find tools to breeze through it and allow more in. And you just know what’s happening, like “Okay, that’s what this is. All right. Time to allow in more. What does that look like?” So, I would say, people, in order to be successful on any kind of diet or weight loss program, they need to click into and love themselves before they do it, not after, because the after never happens.

Dr. Davis: What does the process look like, JJ, to get that process started?

JJ: Well, it’s using the core wound exercise or doing the Roadmap to Emotional Healing course, which goes through two exercises that I think everybody starts out with. And I’ll pull one over right now. We might have talked about this on the last show. And if we did, then it doesn’t matter because it’s worth repeating. I use an exercise based on the work of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, “Nonviolent Communication.” Terrible title. He has since left the earth. Otherwise, I would tell him it’s a terrible title. And actually, at one point, I wanted to rewrite the book with a better title. And I’ve taken my spin on it. I extracted this one exercise, because when you learn this, if you just learn this, this is enough for, like, six months and then for the rest of your life. And this is about getting your needs met, and this is about understanding your emotions and what your needs are that create the emotion. So, I’ll just quickly…

This exercise is taught in the Roadmap course, but I’ll explain it. And if anybody wants to get the free download of this list that comes along with a couple of documents, it’s jjflizanes.com/feelingslist. It’s free. And again, it’s this plus another document. But negative emotion only happens when there’s a need not being met, or the perception of a need not being met. It might be being met and you just don’t know it, but it’s, again, your perception of it that creates the problem. So, you’ll never do this exercise when you’re happy, but the exercise is to be done when you feel a negative emotion. And you start with step one is identifying the emotion. What is it? And most people don’t have a vocabulary for emotion. They think, “Oh, I’m happy. I’m sad. I’m mad.” Like there’s not that much. There’s 100 different feeling words on that list. And the reason why there’s 100 different feeling words is because there’s a very dramatic difference energetically between irritated and rage, but they both are under “mad.” They’re both under the angry category. But if you’re just irritated, then it’s a little intense. If you’re at rage, holy cow, look out.

So, you start with “What are the feelings?” And then you move to “Okay, so I recognize that I’m irritated. Why am I irritated? What need is not being met?” And then you uncover that with the 86 basic human needs on this list. And you’re not needy. You’re not dependent. You’re not less than. This is literally like… Under “play,” we’ve got excitement, fun, humor, joy, laughter. Under “physical,” we have air, hydration, movement, rest. Do you know how many people think there’s something wrong with them and all they need is a fricking nap? They’re so tired, and they try to solve the world’s problems, and they’re literally sleep-deprived. If you just rested, you’d be clear-headed and come back into your body, right? But most people don’t know that. They’re kind of like they’re on this momentum wheel of trying to figure everything out when their body doesn’t have any rest. Literally, they’re burning the candle at both ends, their adrenals are shot, their nervous system is shot, and they’re not going to be able to hear or get the download or the information because they’re not in a frequency to receive it.

So, rest, safety, shelter, touch. Safety is a basic human need most people don’t relate to until you dive a little deeper, like a job situation. Why people are so anxious at work is because they don’t want to lose their job because they need the money to pay their bills. And they have this illusion of feeling secure when you work for someone else, which we all know that is an illusion, because you’re a sitting duck when you work for somebody else, because they could fire you. Working for yourself is the best way to go if you believe in yourself enough to do it. But these are just basic needs, and we figure out… And it sounds simple, and it is, but it isn’t easy, because nobody thinks like this. People think, “Oh, two minutes ago, I was happy. Now I’m unhappy. What’s changed? You. Must be your fault. You must be the reason why I’m unhappy.” And it’s not. That person is just a mirror for you, to show you. And they tickle a core wound, and all of a sudden, your brain starts to interpret things and tells a story that’s not true, by the way, most of the time. So, step two would be figure out what the need is. And again, this takes some practice, because some people want to blame everybody else. “Well, my boss said this. My husband did this. My wife did this.” It doesn’t matter.

When you can figure out what your real need is, step three is to create strategies, more than one, to get the need met, that do not require anyone else to be different. And when you get that, the amount of empowerment and self-assurance and self-confidence goes up, because now you don’t feel like a sitting duck anymore. You don’t feel victimized by the world because you recognize, “Oh, I have many options to get this need met. Wow. Which option do I want?” And it doesn’t mean people aren’t included. Let’s say you want intimacy in your partner. You say, “I would like a little bit more intimacy. Can you help me with that?” Of course, you can ask your partner. But you also can’t say, you can’t demand that someone be different in order for you to be happy. That’s not how this works. So, this exercise is what we start off with. And I do it first because if you do nothing else, this will empower you to know that you have the tools and resources to get your need met, to shift how you’re feeling, to feel better, and to not be a victim to other people or circumstances.

And then we go to the core wound exercise. And the core wound exercise, it’s a seven-page exercise, and it takes probably about an hour to do. And someone would go through it, and then you would need me or one of my other strategists to help decode it. I mean, it’s in the course, so someone could try to do it on their own. But if it’s too much for their brain to put together, I try to simplify it as best as I can. I try to be really clear. But I understand my brain and other people’s brains do not all work the same. Then you would just pick out this map. We would make this core wound map that now tells you, anytime you’re upset, this is why. And if you want to heal it, you have to, number one… Let me go with “invisible.” I just had a VIP day with one of my mastermind members on Friday, and this is what we did the entire day. We didn’t do a thing of business because I wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty with this stuff, because she’s in victim mode with her husband and with her work and with her daughter. And I was like, “Okay, we’ve got to pull it in.” And even with other people that we know.

And one of her core wounds is invisible, feeling invisible. Her dad never acknowledged her. She loved her father and thought he was like the bee’s knees. She thought he was great, but it was like children should be seen and not heard. So, she didn’t have a voice, And so, now when she’s with someone who, let’s say, talks on top of her or might look like they’re bored when she’s talking, it triggers her feeling invisible. And what she does is then withdrawal. So, I said, “So now, instead of blaming other people for cutting you off or not being interested, we have to say, ‘Well, what’s happened has happened. You can’t change what has happened,’” meaning these things happen but we can change how you feel about it. The other issue with core wounds is how do we continue feeding it? How do we continue activating the wounds that are in us? So, for her, I said, “How do you treat yourself as being invisible?” And the answer becomes “Well, I don’t speak up for myself. I don’t advocate for myself. I keep my mouth shut. I allow other people to railroad me” or whatever. And so, then how you start to heal that core wound is to do the opposite, is to advocate for yourself, is to speak up, is to value what you say and to value yourself.

So, again, I take it thread by thread of what the wound is, and then how someone reacts, and then try to get them to do the opposite. And at first, that’s going to be hard because every system and every neural pathway in your brain wants to protect you and keep you the same, and it goes, “No, but this feels uncomfortable.” “No, I don’t want to do this. I’m going to be sick.” But you have to push through. But when you understand that you’re doing it for a reason, you’re creating new neural pathways, so now your body can start to relax over time and go, “Oh, this isn’t hard at all.” The first time might be really hard and scary. The second time, less hard, less scary. The third time, less hard, less scary. And onward until now it’s easy. But we have to push through to create neural pathways so that your physical body has a different reaction.

Dr. Davis: So, this can be an unpleasant process for some people, right?

JJ: Yes. You have to feel it to heal it. But that doesn’t mean you sit in it. That’s the difference. You can go to therapy. And again, many therapists are out there listening. I know that there are good therapists out there. I just know a lot of my clients come after five, seven years of therapy and they don’t get anywhere, like “Oh my god.” Two sessions and they just don’t see the path, or they keep telling the same story for five years, and they’re not any different. So, can it be uncomfortable? Yeah, but you don’t sit in it. And the difference is when you go to… Well, it was for me. I’ll speak for me. I’ve been to several therapy sessions with an ex-partner, and sometimes, because of the resistance in the beginning, by the time you get to the 40-minute mark, maybe now we’re starting to warm up and maybe get somewhere, now we’ve uncovered a problem, “Oop. Five minutes, you got to go.” So now you leave feeling worse than when you came in.

And that’s why I’ve always preferred coaching over therapy, because that never happens in coaching. In coaching, you come in with a problem, you may have an emotional release within that, and a discovery, but you’re always leaving feeling more empowered than when you came in. And you’ll never have that situation where you feel worse, and you’re sitting in it, and you’re stewing in it, and it brings it up, and now you have to carry it home. That’s terrible. I hate that. That’s why I want to differentiate why this coaching is different than therapy, because it’s very different. It is so freeing on the other side. And the amount of joy and love that you start to feel for yourself and allow in gets more and more, the more you do it. So, it’s like hiking up a mountain. Is it hard? Yeah, but do you turn around and say, “Ah, it’s too much. I’m done.”? You push through it because you know it’s a beautiful vista at the top of the mountain, and you believe you can do it. Emotions won’t kill you, okay? If you cry or scream, I promise, they won’t kill you. And if you’re not screaming or crying every quarter, you’re emotionally constipated.

Dr. Davis: I imagine you encounter people where they don’t want to get better. Is that a situation you’ve run into?

JJ: I think people are afraid to uncover… I have this theory, from working with certain people, that, yes, they don’t…because they think looking at it is too painful. But people will manifest cancer, back pain, all kinds of physical manifestations of their toxic negative emotions that will come out in their body. And they’re not all the same. Heart attacks. If you’re not taking the cues your body is giving you, your body will give louder messages until it literally puts you on your back or in the ground. And so, I think that the idea of these emotions, if you’re not comfortable feeling emotions, if you’re not comfortable in… So, I took a little trip yesterday. I’ve been experimenting with some brain-enhancing chemicals, let’s just say, to sort of dissolve the left brain and the ego, and to allow the right brain to be flooded with a different kind of reality. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, like I went down the rabbit hole. And what I’ve kind of concurred after coming out of it was that some people who are attached to their ego, attached to the story, attached to the pain that defines them, will be less likely to give that up. So, I think that depending on all of our protective layers that we think keep us safe, this is a good point to make: If you want more love in your life but you have closed your heart because you think, “Oh, but I don’t want to feel the pain,” when you close the door, you don’t allow in love either. The door is either open or the door is closed. If the door is open, pain is part of our natural human experience. And understanding and flowing through it, what I aim to help people exercise into and master is the ability to allow emotions in and out.

In Chinese medicine, each one of our organs represents an emotional center. So, your lungs represent grief. I’ve worked with many men as a personal trainer over the years who, when they lose a parent, especially their mother, they have bronchitis every time because they have unprocessed grief in their lungs. Liver is anger. So, people with back pain, how much anger are they repressing? People that smoke, people that overeat as one of their addictive behaviors to repress emotion, how many of you have back pain? Because you’re literally stuffing down the emotion you don’t want to feel. You’re so afraid of losing control and allowing the emotion out. But I’m here to tell you, it won’t kill you. It won’t kill you to let it out or feel it, but it will kill you to keep it. You are literally like drinking a toxic poison by stuffing it back down, because it creates cancer, it creates heart attacks. People go for multiple surgeries on their back because they think it’s something wrong with their back. And then seven surgeries later, they still have back pain. Why? Because it’s not a physical issue. It’s an emotional issue.

So, when you look at the wisdom of Chinese medicine and that cycle of emotions that we are supposed to be feeling every day, like air, in and out, in and out, calories, in and out, in and out. No one would think it was healthy to eat three meals a day for a week and never poop. You have to let it out. It comes in, it goes out. Same thing with emotion. It comes in, it goes out. When you hold it is the problem. But I promise you, I’ve had so many people come to a live event who’s like “Muscle. I’m not letting this out. I’m not going to cry.” And then they do, and they feel so much better. I want to make a shirt that says, “I’m not going to die today.” You’re not going to die today. Crying will not kill you, I promise. In fact, it will release a lot of you. And some of you just need a really good cry, but also with intention. Why are you crying? What are you letting out? What are you releasing? It’s energy and it does need to cycle. And some people cry too much. And I don’t mean too much meaning like… That’s their default, that’s where they go. Their brain is wired to think everything is going to fall apart. It’s doom or gloom. They’re in a different part of their brain.

And for those people, I do something called tapping. Most people understand tapping. Now it’s EFT, emotional freedom technique. And it is based on the same meridians as EMDR, eye movement desensitizing re-establishment. EMDR does fingers or pulses, or like if your eyes are open, or you can even do stuff in your hands. It’s a neurological trigger to sort of de-emphasize and re-establish a new neural connection so your body, when you get triggered, doesn’t go into shock, and your whole body doesn’t get flooded. And it’s very effective, but tapping is too, and it can be self-administered. I do tapping very differently than the average person. I look at your core wounds first. I make everybody do this core wound exercise. So, I tap on the deepest root and you have a breakthrough, so we can dissolve that. Now, it doesn’t mean you’re completely fixed after one tapping session or two, but now you have the tool. And if I teach you how to use it, you can use it on yourself when you’re starting to feel that physical sensation of an emotion that comes up and makes you feel crazy that you don’t know what to do, and all of a sudden, you just want to eat it away or drink it away or buy things or be on your computer or overstimulate yourself with technology, which is what most people do.

Dr. Davis: Now, I know you’ve changed the lives of many people using these methods, but are you willing to share what’s happened to your life?

JJ: Oh my god, yeah, of course. Yes. So, do you want to ask me a more specific question in terms of like what are my core wounds or…

Dr. Davis: If you think it’s not getting too personal, JJ.

So, in trying to save my marriage, I did this work. And I waited on this. It’s imago work from Harville and Helen Hendrix. And I thought, “Oh, I need a partner to do this work.” I literally held it there for as long as I could, thinking, “I want to do this work.” And when I asked him, “Do you want to do this work?” he’s like, “I don’t want to.” And it wasn’t until things got worse and worse and worse that I basically demanded that we do this work. And that’s when I regretted not doing it sooner, or doing it individually. So, when I did this exercise, intellectually, I understood that me trying to teach him wasn’t working. I understood that, but I didn’t stop doing it, because I thought, “Well, if I could just explain it differently, if I just show you in a different way, maybe you’ll want to do it, or maybe you’ll understand or feel better.” I was an ultimate rescuer. On the victim triangle, we have the rescuer, the victim, and the persecutor. And when you’re on the triangle, you will be one of each of them at all times. It’s getting off the triangle and realizing you’re doing it. But we all get into these roles in our families and in our situations where we’re the rescuer or we’re the victim or we’re the persecutor. And I was being the rescuer, trying to rescue and to teach. Why? Because I wanted someone to be able to reflect me back to me. I wanted someone who could see me for who I am, or who I was, really get me, really see me on such a deep level. I know I don’t have to say this, but I’m a very deep and intense person. I have a lot to offer, and I have never really felt anyone know that like I do. In fact, at one point, I did think I was kind of crazy. I had a healer that I worked with. Her first session with me (and she did not know me), she tapped into me, and she said, the first thing that came out of her mouth was “Oh my god. You’re so smart.” And I just busted into tears for a whole hour. I ugly cried for like an hour, because everything she said was things I would think about myself but never dare say, because who would I be to say that about myself? And I don’t know anyone that would necessarily agree. I’m sure the things I say would sound arrogant. Who do you think you are to say that? So, I never shared a lot of things going on in my head. And then she said all of them. Okay, I’m not crazy. Okay, all right. Good. We started there.

Dr. Davis: So, if I understand, JJ, your core wound was other people’s inability or unwillingness to acknowledge or recognize your strengths and your qualities. But how did you go through that, from recognizing, perhaps accepting that core wound, to tackling it, to conquering it? Was it just acknowledgment?

JJ: Well, yeah, the core wound isn’t about other people, but I would say the core wound is I’m trying to figure out another way to say it. It’s not not good enough. And it’s not invisible. I was paid attention to. And it’s not devalued because they didn’t devalue me. But it wasn’t being seen or heard for who I am. Yeah. And then there was a lack of connection. So, how did I… Unconsciously, actually. I didn’t even realize it until I did it. So, one of the things as a rescuer, most people do, is they want to help people not asking. That’s what I was doing. I was trying to help my husband who was not asking. And literally, when I’d give it to him, he’d say no. I wasn’t even taking the hint. When I saw all the core wound exercise and I saw the pattern down the page, “yell, teach, yell, teach,” I was like, “Oh my god. I’ve been doing this my whole life.” I instantly stopped doing it, which is interesting because he would tell me it didn’t work and I’d go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it doesn’t work.” But I kept doing it. And all of a sudden, I see my pattern from birth, and “Oh, this is big.” And I just instantly stopped doing it.

But what I did do was I… Again, this was unconscious, but now that I’ve done it and I can help people be way more conscious about these choices, I started a podcast. I started this podcast, and I put myself out there. When I first started Fit 2 Love, it was a six-day-a-week program. It’s because I had too much content to want to put out there in different categories: exercise, cooking, nutrition, alternative medicine, relationships, law of attraction, psychology. And that Freedom Friday piece, which is now my Spirit, Purpose, and Energy, it’s almost like how to get myself permission to do that. I couldn’t just step out into the world as “Hey, I’m going to teach you law of attraction.” I was like, “Ooh, I didn’t learn that yet. I don’t know about that. So, let me go with what my strengths are, what people expect from me. They expect fitness and nutrition and cooking and alternative medicine. But let me ease these other pieces forward a little bit.” And especially my Freedom Friday about law of attraction, I felt like because I was giving everybody five days a week of what you want, I’m going to take a day for me on what I want. And I honored that by speaking only about the things that I cared about. The passion and excitement I had for law of attraction and psychology and intuition and meditation and all the things that I talk about on that show.

And the magic that happened is when I rebranded and put it out as its own show. And I did that first because I had nothing to sell anybody. I’m like, “Okay, I’m just going to put it out there.” I really didn’t expect anything. And all of a sudden, I got emails. “Oh my god. This show is changing my life. I was like, “Wow. There are people that want this. They want what I have. They value me for the things that I value me for.” And it became this relationship and also a growing… because on YouTube, I know you’ve heard me say this when I have an interview on my show, which you’re going to be back on my show next year. I say, “Hey, welcome, everybody. This is my show. And if you don’t like me, that’s cool. Where can I find more about you?” Now, I did that because when people are searching on YouTube and they’re searching you (you’re a very popular person to search), they find me and they go, “Who is this? Shut up. I don’t want to hear from you. I want to hear from him.” And I get it, and I’m not offended by it because they’re searching you, and they don’t want to hear from me. They don’t know me. So, people understand it’s my show because they don’t understand how this stuff works. And that way, I can cut to the chase. And if they don’t like me, which I’m okay with, they can come find you. I’ve literally had people say to me, “JJ, can you please not talk as much?” I said, “No. It’s my show. This is my show. I produce it, pay for it, and give it to you for free.”

So, in terms of valuing, you have to get to the place where, again, it’s a constant working through your own value. In the beginning, I definitely would get triggered by negative comments. But I allowed those triggers to set the tone for the growth I needed. My biggest fear, my ex used to say this all the time. He’d say, “You are not qualified to say that.” Now, I know that when he said that, it was because he knew I was right and he didn’t want to admit to it. So, that was his block and his barrier. So, of course, the first negative comment that came through for me was “JJ is not a therapist.” And it hit me, and it hurt, and then I thought about it, and I’m like, “Damn straight I’m not.” And I’m really glad I’m not because most of the things I’ve seen and heard, you guys aren’t very effective. I can get it done a lot faster. Even sleep doctor, Michael Breus, came on, and he said, “You know, as a therapist, it could take me months to get someone to a new level.” And I was like, “It takes me two sessions.” This is the difference of the model that you use versus I use. Therapy takes too long. But I had to appreciate that, acknowledge that, and accept that about myself. I accept I am not for everyone, but that self-love path has been worked on through my business, through putting myself out there, through doing my show, or even having people recently, someone I met with who I knew we weren’t a match, and it felt bad for a minute, but then I reflected it back to if I’m not getting the love I want or the respect I want, it means I’m not loving and respecting myself.

So, it’s a journey. I’m still on it. We’re all still on it. But the fun part is when you do it as a community, when you do it as a group, when you have support, when you find the people and attract the people who see you for who you are. I mean, that’s the first step. You have to be the one to acknowledge. My client on Friday, I said to her, “You can’t expect someone… You’re waiting for someone else to tell you you’re worthy. That’s never going to work.” You are like the cell tower emanating your experience out into the world. That’s my whole Fit 2 Love book. You teach people how to treat you. And if you don’t love and respect yourself, you cannot expect anybody else to. It has to start with you loving yourself first. Then from there, you will be in alignment with other people, and you will subconsciously tell them how to treat you, because of what you’ll put up with, what you won’t put up with.

So, this journey, I love it. As you know, I could talk for hours and days on it because I think it is our human experience. It’s why we’re here. We’re here to grow. We’re here to expand. We’re here to be happy. Anything that blocks that is a lesson. And you get to choose if you want to learn the lesson to be happier, or are you going to stay in your shit, and you’re just going to twirl around, and you’re going to make excuses, and you’re going to be afraid? And I understand, yes, it takes courage, or for you to be so uncomfortable, so miserable, even on death’s door with cancer. Radical remission. How many people have to literally change their entire… These things are wake-up calls. They’re wake-up calls that your life is not serving you, and that your higher being knows there’s something better. And if you don’t heed the call, then we don’t know what’s going to happen. And it has to be in conjunction with the physical, but the physical is not the last stop. The emotional and mental and spiritual part is literally where it’s at. But we all are willing to change our diet. We’re all willing to take a supplement. That’s easy. That doesn’t trigger me in any way. But when I’m asked to change my behavior, when I’m asked to love myself differently, when I tell myself that “I’m important. Therefore, I am going to choose to stay on this program. And when I stop stuffing my face to stuff my emotions and I have another way to emotionally process, it gets easier.” But many people who do diet programs are battling that they don’t want to feel, so they use food to repress their emotions.

Dr. Davis: Thank you, JJ. And every time I talk to you, I learn something new. I always find it very enlightening. I value people and ideas that are novel and unique, and sometimes they’re hard to find.

JJ: My website because it’s new and everything is there. So, we’ve got three talks on there that you are welcome to be a part of for free. The first one is “3 Reasons Why Talk Therapy Is Ineffective.” The second is “How Emotions Create and Heal Disease,” so anyone who is dealing with that. And they’re very different talks. My podcast, you can find everything at jjflizanes.com. All my social media. There are tabs for the network. I now own the Empowering Minds Network. If you’re on Apple, you can type in “Empowering Minds Network” and you’ll see all my shows. Well, not all of them, but many of them. Or go to jjflizanes.com and you can find all the shows. So, lots of free stuff. The only thing you can’t find is the link I mentioned about the feelings and needs list. That is not public. So, that again is jjflizanes.com/feelingslist, and it is a free download, and you can get the instructions, and you can start using it today with no other help. My podcast is full of free content, so much content. And I know it works. I get emails from people that say my show has changed their life. And I’ve never met them. They never paid me. They’ve never purchased anything. I just give tools. I constantly give tools. And I do the next level deep dive for people that have used the tools that are ready for the next level because they can’t get there themselves. And so, I have all those tools also.

Dr. Davis: That’s terrific. Once again, thank you, JJ. Thank you for all your enlightening ideas.