Mind Shift with Erwin Raphael McManus

Good morning, my friend. I am so excited to be with you today.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and we're going to do some self-brain surgery today and change our minds.

I want to tell you a personal story. I was on the treadmill looking out over the North Platte River on a snowy, cold day in

late 2022, and I was listening to the audio book of a book called The Genius of Jesus

by Erwin Raphael McManus, and Erwin said something,

in that book that was so profound, I stopped the treadmill and went over to my desk

and with my sweaty hand made a bunch of notes and wrote some things down.

It's one of only three times I can think of in my life when I've stopped a car or stopped working out

because something shook my brain so hard that I had to record it or write it down right that moment.

Erwin Raphael McManus's books do that kind of thing to me. The genius of Jesus blew me away.

I immediately reached out to the publicist, and he, unfortunately, was already done with

interviews for that book.

It wasn't available, so I thought, man, I missed my chance to have Erwin McManus.

I had read one of his previous books called The Last Arrow, which was also equally profound.

Long-time fan of his work, Erwin McManus is a mind architect.

He's an award-winning author. He's an artist. His books have sold over one million copies.

He's the pastor of a church on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles called Mosaic.

His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

And he's the guy that CEOs and high net worth individuals reach out to, professional athletes,

world leaders, celebrities, people reach out to him for coaching when they're stuck with

something related to their mindset.

Erwin is the guy that's known as the passionate person who can help you unlock your internal

limitations and your personal genius.

He talks about mental toughness, mental clarity, and mental health and how they all have one

thing in common, the journey begins in your mind.

Can you think of a better guest for the Dr. Lee Warren Self Brain Surgery Podcast than

somebody who talks about the importance of changing your mind?

Well lo and behold, his new book is called Mind Shift and I got an email from his publicist

at Penguin Random House who said, Hey, your platforms are lining up around this mind change idea.

You tried to get Irwin on the show for his last book and we want to give you an advanced copy of Mind Shift.

It doesn't take a genius to think like one. I read it in two days and then he agreed to be on the podcast.

We actually recorded this a couple of months ago that he wanted me to hold it for his book

launch, which is happening on Tuesday, October 3rd.

And I couldn't be more excited to share this incredible book with you. Busy.

Basically a condensed guide to how you can change your mind and how you can change your life and all the things we talk about

on this show every day You can get a lot of that same kind of mind-blowing,

Life-transforming information from the genius that is Irwin Raphael McManus friend. I can't wait for you to meet him

I encourage you to go read his books the genius of Jesus and mind shift

Particularly have made a huge difference in my thinking my clarity of thought and have made a difference in my life,

And I'm excited and really happy to introduce you to a new friend today Erwin Raphael McManus and that really leaves us my friend,

with only one question Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule,

You have to change your mind first and my friend

There's a place where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense

Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place self brain surgery school,

I'm Dr. Lee Warren and this is where we go deep into how we're wired.

Take control of our thinking and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

So, before we start, would you mind saying a prayer for us, Erwin? Sure.

Father, thank you so much for Lee, and I just pray your blessing on his life, and that you

would expand his influence, expand his message, and that God, that you'd get his book in the

hands of so many people.

I'm so grateful for you, Father. Pray that this moment would just be honoring to you.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you. Friend, we're back, and I'm so excited to introduce you to pastor, author, mind architect,

Erwin Raphael McManus. Manis, welcome to the show, Erwin. I'm so glad to meet you, Lee.

I'm excited about today's conversation.

It's going to be fun. Tell us a little bit about, first of all,

what in the world is a mind architect? I love that. What is that?

I have a feeling that we work in very similar genres, but it's interesting.

A lot of people are interested in the brain, and right now there's so much brain science out there.

I'm really interested in the mind, which is a little different.

In fact, we were working on some images, and they brought me the images of the brain,

both sides of the brain.

I said, no, you got the wrong thing. I need an image of universe

because I'm not interested in the physical mechanism of the brain.

I'm interested in the universe that actually expands within us

and allows us to have, in many ways, unlimited capacity.

So for me, a mind architect is really a person that understands that every human being

has mental structures,

and those mental structures will either move them toward failure or move them toward success,

will actually either limit their capacity and potential or will unlock that capacity and potential.

And I know you have been going through MindShift because you got one of the early copies of it.

One of the things I talk about in MindShift is that, and I remember the day, October 26, 1990,

I heard someone say this phrase on sports radio about Buster Douglas and why he lost to Evandra Holyfield

is that some people are simply structured for failure.

And when I heard that statement, it shook me.

And I remember thinking to myself.

Do i have internal structures for failure and or am i internally structured for success and do i have a combination of those is my brain like a maze that some days moves toward failure sunday's moves for success and i haven't really paid attention.

Which path i'm actually choosing each day and so i'm all the way back to really when i was ten years old and a psychiatric chair.

They ended up testing me for neurodiversity, as they would say now, and back then, they

would just tell me I was retarded.

It's a different world. I do some of the new language better.

And frankly, I don't normally share this, but you're in a different space.

I'm 10 years old. I'm a straight D student.

I'm having a hard time connecting to the outside world, to reality.

And one of the things that saved my life was this psychiatrist who gave me all these IQ

tests and came back and told me that I had the basic structure of a genius.

And there was no tangible proof of that. And if anything, it felt like to me I was broken and that I lacked the tools to actually

connect to the human race.

And so what it did for me was it created an intense value in me because I thought to myself,

if there is genius in me, and I wasn't sure, but it was wonderful to have someone tell me that.

But I thought, if there is genius in me, it's trapped under a lot of rubble of my own brokenness

and insecurity and uncertainty and pain.

And I may never actualize that.

And so a huge value in my life has been this deep conviction that there's genius inside

of every human being.

I could have come out going, oh, I'm different, I'm special, I have genius.

That came out of is, I think everyone's like this.

And some people are able to access that genius and some people are able to actualize that genius and other people sadly died never having known their own genius and so i feel like you gave me my mission.

In life and yeah and then when i started studying philosophy and psychology at the university of north carolina chapel hill,

I had one of the top three psychology departments in the world, and I just instantly began studying neurodiversity from psychosis to neurosis to,

I was really fascinated with narcissistic and sociopathic behaviors, and so I spent a huge amount of my time trying to understand the nuances of the human brain.

And I've been to three neuro clinics in the world that I went as a patient, I didn't go as a teacher.

That's why people who are you a doctor know I'm a patient, which gives me far more expertise.

And in several clinics, I ended up becoming a test mouse when they did research in my

brain and so I ended up learning a lot about the neurological dynamics that I had to face

with and I have slow shutter speed and so I have a hard time keeping up data.

And so I get flooded with massive amounts. And so I don't have a sense of chronology like other people do.

And because when you have normal rapid shutter speed, your brain categorizes time and mine

doesn't and I have either I either have no filter to stop information or all information

blocks out at the same time.

And so my kids laugh because I'll say, oh, we should go see this movie.

And they go, dad, we were with you yesterday and in that movie and I'll have no memory

of it. It's the weirdest thing.

But then I'll meet someone, and an example, I was at this dinner like 15 years ago, and,

And the guy sitting next to me is a guy named Johnny Musso.

Any introduce himself and i said i'm a mcmanus and never met this guy my whole life and i said women johnny muso and said you played running back at the university alabama because yeah i did i said give me a second.

And i wrote down in my book and my notepad is number and i said your number was number twenty two.

And he goes, yeah, how could you know that? And I literally went through my mind,

I found a newspaper, I saw the photograph, I looked at the jersey and I saw the number there.

And so my memorization skills are cheating. I don't remember the way normal people remember,

I remember differently than other people.

And so I'm only giving you all this insensitive background because when you asked me what's a mind architect,

I had to spend my entire life learning how to take my liabilities and turn them into assets.

Wow. I had to learn how to take what I was essentially told most of my life were

inadequacies and flip them and turn them into superpowers.

And I'm convinced that maybe not everyone can do at the same level,

but I think everyone has a capacity to redesign their mind in such a way where they optimize who they are.

Wow. That's amazing. There's a little point that we didn't hit as you were telling that story about how important

it is to say things to people that are empowering.

We all accept these labels in our lives, but that psychiatrist when you were 10 years old

told you that you were a genius. What if he had said, hey kid, you're a moron?

What would your life have been like?

Yeah, it didn't even matter if he was right.

That's powerful, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. The power wasn't in the accuracy of it.

The power was in how it began to reshape my own identity of myself. Wow.

It says a lot about what we say to our kids and our spouses and everybody around us, doesn't it?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And just even the negative input.

That's why growing up, I've been married 40 years,

my wife Kim, and one of the things we really focused on was you don't ever tell a kid he's a liar.

Yeah. You tell him he lied, and you don't call him a liar. That's right.

You don't tell your child they're a thief. They stole, but they're not a thief.

And a lot of times we have the tendency to define people by their worst behavior rather than by their best behavior.

And I think it's so much identify bad behavior by identify by best behavior.

Wow. Yeah. I read a few years ago, a book by Brian Stevenson called just mercy and he talked about,

and they made a movie out of it later.

He was working in people who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes and given

death sentences and all that. And he said he was made an argument against capital punishment.

And he said something similar to what you just said. He said that we should all be defined,

we should never be defined by our worst decision.

Our whole life should never be defined our worst decision.

I agree 100%, and frankly, for me, that was something that was reinforced to me when I

began reading, of all things, the Bible. I was an adult when I first saw a Bible,

and so I'm devouring it and reading it, and I find the story of this woman named Rahab,

who ends up being in the genealogy of Jesus. And I go, wait a minute,

I think she's like this prostitute, ends up being in the genealogy of Jesus. And I go, wow,

there's such a small story of her, but one positive choice redefined her entire life.

And so I just noted for myself, you are always one choice away from the best version of you.

And I remember just writing that down and going, it doesn't matter if I'm Rahab,

what matters is the choice I make right now. And that choice can redefine who I am.

And I just love that kind of hope and I feel like that's a huge part of what I get up in the morning.

What I'm passionate about is helping people destroy internal limitations and begin to recreate a new architecture instead of their own minds.

That's the mind architect. Yeah, you actually your new book and we'll get to your new book in a minute.

Mind shift.

You started it with you startled me when I read this. Like you said, the purpose.

Let me say it exactly right.

The aim of this book is to destroy your internal limitations. Is that right?

Yeah. Is that what you said? I was like, wow.

Yeah. Come right out and just, I'm going to tear up what you think about yourself

and the limits you put on yourself.

And you did just a masterful job. But before we get to mind shift,

I want to just give us a 30,000 foot view, Erwin, of who you are and what you do

and the kind of work that you do, a little bit of your background and that kind of thing.

Give us the big picture of who you are.

Yeah, you've caught me in an interesting phase of my life, and I've had so many different phases.

Every 10 years, I start a new career, both purposely and accidentally, both at the same time.

And so people who know me real closely, I kind of work in a lot of different worlds.

But my faith experience has been that I started a church in LA called Mosaic.

And I started it really in a nightclub the prince used to own.

It was for all my friends who were irreligious, and my atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim,

some agnostic friends who, or there were ones who grew up in some kind of like Christianity or Catholicism

who were angry because the church really left them jaded

and it just created a space for them.

And it was a very different kind of space and Mosaic has grown and become a positive

spiritual influence across the world.

But I've also, in the past 20 years, I've worked as a filmmaker and a fashion designer and I write books.

I coach geniuses, which is basically what I do in my life. And so whether it's somebody, you know,

coaching the NFL or a fashion designer, who would be one of the best designers in the world

or someone in the music industry or the business world.

And I only really coach people who want to, who are aspiring to be the best in the world,

the best of the best.

And for Mosaic, I can give away for free everything you need to go from average to good.

And when people say, hey, how come you don't coach us? I go, most people right now are just sitting in average

and everything I create at Mosaic can move you from average to good.

And moving from good to great is a different level of work, but moving from great to a level of genius,

that requires a level of ruthlessness that most people aren't willing to bear in their own soul.

And so it's a different level of coaching.

And yeah, and so that's what I do. I write books, I've been writing books for over 20 years.

I have a graphic novel, that's on its way. I've worked with films, I've worked with music,

and I have a couple of fashion brands over the years.

And then just in a practical way, also creating this online learning community

called The Arena that will focus on communication, leadership, character, and big ideas.

I really think communication is an art form and that we've lost the beauty and power of words.

And so I just have a real passion to help people become extraordinary communicators

and to not only make it effective and efficient, but also make it elegant and beautiful.

Wow that's powerful arena is gonna be is it like an app that people can sign up for me it's a online community that requires like a monthly membership,

and i put all the content we create like i have a master class called the art of communication and another class called the seven frequencies of communication and buy themselves are thousands of dollars but in the community you get access to them for free,

I'm always creating new resources, new ways to redefine the architecture of your brain.

I just thought, I don't like to sell, I hate to sell, it's like my worst thing in the world.

I thought if I create a community of learners, I think it's the future of education.

If I create a learning community, I can just keep putting things in

there and helping people access what they need.

I'm excited. This August, we're launching the arena and I

think it's going to be the future of education.

Amazing. You can follow Erwin on Instagram and find out more about that.

And following your posts and keeping up with that. That's an exciting, you're on to something there.

I think that's going to be really exciting. So you'll probably see me sign up for that at some point too.

And right behind me, I don't know if you see Daredevil.

Yeah. And I love graphic novels and mythologies. And one of the things I love about Daredevil is that he's a kid through a tragic accident,

went blind and he redefined a liability into an asset.

And other people saw him as disabled and, but the true story was that it was a superpower.

Wow. That's so cool. Hey, give us just for a second. So the first time I ever heard of you was with a book that you wrote called The Last

Arrow.

Oh yeah. And I don't know if any of my, any of the listeners here have read that book yet.

Now they've heard me mention it before.

Tell us a little bit about The Last Arrow and the concept because it's such a cool,

the way you started that book and why you started it. Really, a really powerful image there.

Let us hear about the last arrow for a sec.

Yeah, I wrote The Last Arrow, I think it might have been like seven years ago, because, and the reason I remember that is because it's right when I found out I had stage four cancer, I had just finished editing the book, just got it back from the publisher, and I was going to my final editing.

And it was right before my wife's birthday, around, I think, December 17th, that I was told I had cancer and that I had stage four cancer and that it metastasized from my prostate to my bladder to my lymph nodes.

With nodes, and so the likelihood that I would survive that was not extraordinarily high, I don't think.

And I was here finishing this book called The Last Arrow that's about how to live a life without regret,

and how most people think they failed, but actually what they did was quit.

And I had three weeks between being told I had cancer and having surgery that was gonna last

six and a half hours or so.

And so I made sure I finished that book before that surgery in case I didn't come out of it.

And what to me was so almost like mystical,

was the night they told me I had cancer and my wife and kids, obviously it was a really tough night.

And they were profoundly emotional. And after they went to sleep, I opened up the manuscript

and I thought, I've got three weeks to finish this book.

So I went right to work that night after everybody went to sleep.

And the first line I read in my manuscript was this one, I'll never forget it.

It said, I need to tell you before you hear it from someone else, that I'm dying.

I wrote that phrase a year before I knew I had cancer.

And when I read that, it just set me back. but it was almost like a shifting in my soul going.

You're okay you've you've already written the story and you didn't even know it.

Wow and what right after that line right after the line where i write i need to tell you before you hear from someone else i'm dying i wrote the most important line in the book but so are you.

That's right and that was the last arrow is that if you can begin to live your life.

As if you're on borrowed time, and develop that level of urgency and intention,

you will be able to look back without regret.

I finished the book. I thought maybe this is the perfect metaphor.

My last book is literally called The Last Arrow. I didn't know I would live.

But I can tell you that in those three weeks, I never felt bitter,

I never felt angry, and what surprised me the most is I never felt afraid.

And I gave myself permission to feel anything I needed to feel.

I didn't want to have to fake it.

If you don't know if you're going to live, there's no point in faking.

You might as well just be your most authentic self. That's right.

And what I discovered, to my own surprise, was that there was a deep sense of courage

and peace inside of me that I didn't know I had and that I know is available to everyone.

And so when I wrote The Last Arrow, I'm so happy that I got to live and grateful that

I got to see its impact around the world.

And yeah, so it doesn't surprise me. That's the first book that you heard from me because I, I'm a little eccentric.

So I disappeared from the world of writing for six years in the world of public speaking.

I just went anonymous and worked in fashion and film and, and then I reemerged and stepped back out into the world and frankly, my whole business

world, all the mentoring, I do all the masterminds, all the coaching, all the

development, personal development stuff.

I do mindset stuff.

I've always did it really privately. This is the first year I've ever gone public.

And it's because August 28th is my 65th birthday.

And I told myself, I made a 15-year commitment to pastor Mosaic from scratch.

And I've been there 30 years.

And I've always been really very careful to try to keep my public life very much in the space of Jesus

and my private life in the business space.

And now I'm taking my private work and making it public.

And because I actually think that there are principles I need to give the world and that there are frameworks

that I need to pass on to the world. And I don't want people to have to, quote,

go to church to access that insight.

I don't want them to feel like, oh, I have to believe like you to learn from you.

And so I feel like at this stage in my life, I'm trying to make my life a gift to people

and to pass on the things I've learned to help people destroy those internal limitations.

Wow, that's so inspiring. This podcast, we haven't really talked about this yet,

but this podcast started out of pain,

And most of the people listening have come to my writing and my work because

they've gone through something hard. In fact, the subtitle of my book,

which I mailed you a copy by the way,

but the subtitle is about trauma tragedies and massive things that happened in

our life. And so you certainly had that massive thing that came along with cancer.

Most of the people listening here have dealt with brokenness and pain in some

way. We lost a child in 2013 and that's when I started writing and podcasting

trying to process that stuff. And you know,

And the big thing is, when you face that challenge that very well could have been a death sentence

for you, Irwin, what was the relationship between how you decided you were going to

move forward and your faith?

What were those two things? How did they relate to one another?

Honestly, I don't even know how to think about life outside of my faith.

And it's like asking me, what do you do when you're not breathing?

When you're not breathing, you're dying, you're suffocating.

And for me, I had a life-changing encounter with Jesus when I was around 20 years old

in the middle of college and a very irreligious person.

I wasn't against religion. I just wasn't for it.

I wasn't against God. I just wasn't aware of him. But for me, it was a very significant shift.

It wasn't about religion. It wasn't about belief systems.

And I really didn't care less about heaven and was never worried about hell.

So it wasn't anything like that.

It was a shift in my understanding of my significance as a human being, that if I were actually

created by God, then I had intention and calling and destiny, and that there was a spark of

the divine genius in every human being,

and that they need to be treasured and valued.

And so it redirected my life because I had a reason to live because I felt like humanity was desperate.

Drowning in loneliness and insignificance and doubt and despair.

And if I could bring hope to the world, it would, in a sense, fill me with hope.

And yeah, my faith has always been central to my whole journey.

But I wrote a book called The Genius of Jesus, and a part of the reason I wrote that book is going,

I can't believe I believe in Jesus, it shocks me.

I can't believe I believe in God. I'm still the guy that's really confused

that he believes all this stuff so deeply.

And so I wrote this book going, okay, if I didn't believe in God,

and if I didn't believe Jesus was God, how would I see Jesus?

Would I see him as a genius? I have a high value for those sparks of human genius.

And so I began doing this ruthless analysis of Jesus, asking the question, is Jesus a historic genius?

Does he qualify?

If he does qualify, then what is his genius? And if he has a genius, how does that affect me?

Does it have any transferable nature at all? Because Picasso's genius is not transferable,

and Mozart's genius was not transferable, and Einstein's genius was not transferable.

Even to their own children, it wasn't transferable.

And yet, what I find to be very unique is that the genius of Jesus is transferable,

and that's what is genius, is that somehow he moves us to becoming more beautifully human.

And that book really led to this next book called my shift going, all right.

I know that if somebody reads The Genius of Jesus, it will explode in their brain and

unlock their own personal genius.

But for a lot of people that go, wait a minute, I don't believe in God, I don't believe in Jesus.

So then they don't access what is available to them there. I thought, how do I write a book that is really from the framework of social science?

How do I write a book that's accessible to everyone in the world, no matter what their

beliefs or non-beliefs are? And then if they have greater interest and they want to explore further, they can go

backwards and pick up the genius of Jesus and begin to ask those deeper questions as well.

And you did that very well. And you know, it's interesting when we write as Christians who write books, it's always

is it a Christian book or is it just a book? And it's unfortunate that they're separate, but you lead off, you don't hide from it.

Your book is dedicated to Jesus. wrote beautifully to Jesus who created in me a mind shift that transformed my

life from the inside out. You changed my heart, changed my mind and changed my

life. You lead right with it and then all through the book you sprinkle in little

bits of your faith so there's no hiding from it but you're right it's very

accessible to anyone. I told the people that listen to this podcast last year I

thought Genius for Jesus was in my top five books of the year last year maybe

ever. And I've got, I probably sold a few hundred copies for you. These people, these

folks that listen to this podcast are readers. They always buy books and listen to them,

but I want to shift into mind shift. You did shift into mind shift. You did that very well.

Segwayed into your own work. And earlier you said you, you wanted to talk about the mind

and not the brain. And of course, from a neuroscience perspective, that's been hotly debated forever.

The pure materialist scientists want to believe that the mind is purely generated by the brain,

right? artifact of electrons and.

Chemical events in the brain that create the mind. And Christians would say, no, it's God

communicating with us. That's how we, he gave us our internal compass as a separate part of the

organ of the brain. So first of all, how do you see that dichotomy mind brain problem and where

does that sit with you? Yeah, I think I probably, strangely enough, fit more with the first group.

And I think the mind's an extension of the brain, but I don't, but I think the brain is a work of

of genius by the hand of God.

And so I tend to not bifurcate the way that a lot of times Christians do.

And I don't separate my soul from the essence of who I am as a human being.

And I think my body is also sacred. So I don't go, well, my body doesn't matter,

but my soul matters. And I go, no, your body matters.

And because if you believe you're created by God, then everything that is a part of who you are, it matters.

And if you get brain damage, you get mind damage, whether you realize it or not.

So, to me to go, oh, your mind is something different and your brain is, I think, naive

and maybe even superstitious. Because they're intimately connected.

But then to say, oh, all you have is a brain, there isn't this thing called the mind,

I think it's unrealistic because I know it sounds a little mystical, but there's clearly

a higher consciousness.

I called my brother yesterday. I haven't talked to him in ages.

And I got really sick in Mexico.

And I ended up getting this water poisoning. My brother lives in another city.

He lives in Detroit, I live in LA. And he happened to call me yesterday and he goes,

I told him I said I was really sick.

On Sunday I got water poisoning.

He goes, that's so weird. I was at work.

And all of a sudden my stomach got so sick I had to go home.

And he goes, could you not get sick again? because you're having a negative impact on my work.

I actually think that there's such transcendent connections between human beings, even if you don't believe in God.

Just when you look at dynamics of physics and that human perception on an object

changes the reality of that object. And look, when Einstein said that energy and mass

are the same thing, that seemed like superstition.

Yeah, it's like the idea that matter,

is energy would have been superstition just a few generations ago. Science feels more like magic now.

You know, so it's like we left magic, went to science, and now science is magic again.

That's right. Quantum physics blew that up. Yeah. That's what, you know, we understand quantum

entanglement now. That's why your brother's stomach hurts when yours does. We know that,

electrons that are entangled with one another, you can separate, you can split them and separate

them across the whole world and they still behave as if they're tied together. And that explains a

a lot of things on the human side of how we can stand next to somebody who's in a bad

mood and we get in a bad mood too.

That's all about quantum physics, right?

Yeah. In fact, I was just in this Q&A at a business conference and someone asked me about how

deep they're grieving for someone that just passed away in their life.

And I walked them through quantum entanglement and I said, your grief is actually proof of

their existence. That's right.

Because what you know is that your particles are still entangled, even though the distance

it seems to you insurmountable.

And so what you're calling eternity, the particles in your being are so connected to them.

The grief is actually the recognition of the space between you and them and the connection between you and them

because it's still there.

That's right. And I, yeah, and I look at, because I did a talk at a community, at Mosaic,

I talk about things like fractals and quantum entanglement and black holes and-

It's my kind of- No, it's, in fact, this past week, The last time I spoke, I talked about epiphanies,

and how to have breakthrough ideas.

And so it's a little different kind of space. But some of it is because that's what's fascinating to me.

But again, it's because I think science creates the best environment for faith.

Exactly. If you have a superficial view of science, you can be an atheist.

But if you actually have a developed, complex understanding of science,

you can at best be an agnostic.

And, because I can understand being agnostic. You can go, wow, the mysteries of this universe

are just too big for me.

I cannot comprehend how all this happens. And in fact, I talked to someone this morning

in an earlier meeting, and, because he was saying he was agnostic,

said, well, that's so much better than being an atheist.

And he goes, yeah, I just don't know. And I said, no, it's not even just that,

it's the mental structures. He goes, what do you mean? I said, once you become an atheist,

you create self-limiting boundaries.

Because what you're saying is the things that you do not understand cannot exist.

And that framework will actually transfer to other aspects, other domains of thinking.

And so even if I didn't believe in God, I would never say that I'm an atheist

because I refuse to allow arbitrary boundaries to limit my thinking.

Wow, that's exactly right. And quantum physics has blown up biology and it's blown up astrology.

It's just it's changed the whole game. And anybody who's really honest, who understands

what's happening at the quantum level starts asking questions about God or at least origins.

There's an amazing book Stephen Myers wrote, The Return of the God Hypothesis,

that you ought to check out. So just right up your alley. Let's talk about mind shift for a minute.

I promised you about 45 minutes and we're running up against I don't want to take too much of your

your time today, Erwin, but tell us about Mindshift.

It's so right in my alley and right in the lane of things that the listeners in this show will be familiar with.

So I want you to just tell us a little bit about Mindshift and then I'm gonna make people read it.

I feel like we've been talking about Mindshift the whole time.

You're right. We just haven't said it.

And I would say writing the book was quite a conversation with my publisher, because the house I'm in

is a Penguin Random house.

Yeah. And with the imprint being convergent and convincing them that this is the kind of book I needed to write

and the approach toward a book.

Because when it's a very refined book, it's only, I think, maybe 30,000 words.

And so it's really short. And I put incredibly dense concepts in a very short book.

You did. And I cut out all the fat. This is not a ribeye, this is a filet.

There's just no fat on this book. That's right.

And I, because I wanted the concepts to explode fast in a person's mind.

And cause I was, and I know men don't read a lot and women read more than men.

And even like super busy entrepreneurs that I know 10 of them, they don't oftentimes take the time to read.

And so I wanted to write this book with almost like with a red bull kind of concept of just 12 explosive ideas

that will erupt in a person's mind.

And then force them through interest to go back and then begin to activate these in their lives.

And so just the way the book is written was really important to me.

And then also making it a social science book and not creating the faith barrier for people.

And so in the first few chapters, I don't even use really a faith example to maybe chapter three.

And a lot of it is because I'm going, you don't have to agree with me

for these concepts to revolutionize your life.

And I really want to help you live the life you're created to live.

And I'm convinced that as you move toward that, you're going to become more open toward God.

I'm not worried about that. And then also realizing,

and this is what my publisher was concerned going,

you're going to alienate all the Christians when your book is a social science book.

And I go, you know what?

I want to.

Everyone who has a friend who doesn't believe in God, who has a friend who needs help and

needs new internal structures, needs to overcome these.

Self-limiting boundaries, I want them to be able to give them this book, even if they're atheist, agnostics, whatever they are.

And so I was really very intentional about how I wrote this book and who I wrote it for.

And yes, the first page of the book, the whole chapter says this,

this, the intention of this book is to destroy internal limitations.

And that is what every single chapter does. It attacks a very subtle internal limitation and breaks you free from it.

And one of the chapters is called Talent is a Hallucinogen. And it really is an important chapter,

because if you're born with a lot of talent, it's a curse.

Because what happens is that when you have talent at an early age,

society, family, institutions build external structures around you so they can extricate all that talent out of you.

But they don't care about you, they care about your talent.

That's right. And then the moment that talent is no longer beneficial,

they remove those external structures and you self-destruct.

That's what happened. That's why 75% of professional athletes are bankrupt

within five years after they finish playing pro football.

It's because all the structures for success were external, built around their talent.

Once their talent has been extricated, the structures are gone, their life collapse.

And then if you grow up without obvious talent, which would be me, I grew up with no clear, obvious talent,

you end up, if you succeed.

Building internal structures for success.

And you're oftentimes completely unaware of what those structures are.

And so it's a hit and miss.

You hit the right structure three times, you hit the wrong structure.

You go back to the right structure, two times you hit the wrong structure.

And depending on your ability to recognize patterns, the faster you begin to realize,

oh, this works, this doesn't work.

This works, this doesn't work. This works better, this works with less efficiency.

And so what I wanna do is I wanna accelerate people's learning and help them move toward

their optimal performance as fast as possible.

For me, MindShift is a cheat code.

For how to get to the best version of yourself. I love it. And I think you hit the target. You really did.

Let's take one example, imposter syndrome. Give us a thought process about that.

It's one of my favorite parts of the book, imposter syndrome.

Are you going to tell me what you saw?

My favorite part, this paragraph right here, I was just pulling up my iPad.

There's a part of us that feels as if we are faking it to some degree.

All of us feel that. Even brain surgeons feel it. We still feel like we're going to walk in a room and other brain surgeons say,

you shouldn't be here. We still do. It's true.

It has become known as imposter syndrome. I certainly am no different.

I never feel as if I deserve to be in the rooms I'm invited into.

I'm always surprised when I'm invited to speak. If you never feel good enough or talented enough or prepared enough,

welcome to the party. Still, it's different from faking it.

So what's the difference between imposter syndrome and faking it?

That's funny. That's in the chapter called, no one knows what they're doing and that was one of the most liberating shifts in my mind.

When I finally realized I'm not the only one who doesn't know what they're doing. That's right.

Because everything I've ever done, whether it was in fashion design or in filmmaking or whether I

I was writing books or working as a, you know, a mindset expert, I always felt like.

Do i really know what i'm doing or everyone else knows what they're doing everyone is great at this and i'm just trying to get great at this and when was liberating things in my life is to realize that the best place you're ever add is when you're an amateur.

Add it it's when you think you've achieved expertise that you're actually in danger because you no longer willing to learn or think you need to learn and but i think the difference between imposter syndrome and faking it.

Is that faking it is really about your image management.

It's that you spend all your energy trying to convince other people that you are something you're not.

That's right. And imposter syndrome is actually about, if I go with this way, is giving yourself grace,

where you realize this is who I'm committed to becoming, but I'm in process.

So of course I'm imperfect. Of course, there's enough evidence in me to say,

I'm not good enough for this.

But there's also enough evidence in me to say, I'm committed to becoming the best at this.

And I think the best way to overcome imposter syndrome is don't focus on who you are,

focus on who you're becoming. Yeah.

That's the line. That's the line I was hoping you were gonna say. I love it.

Erwin, you've done a beautiful job at this, and it is going to hit the target that you shot at,

which is going to appeal to everybody, regardless of our faith or lack thereof,

because we've come upon this idea that our,

the thing that is limiting the most is how we think about our lives.

And as you said, can't change your life until you change your mind.

So somebody that's listening to the show today has just gotten that news like you did,

has just gone through the hardest thing they've ever going to go through.

They've lost a child, they've gotten a bad diagnosis. What does Erwin McManus say they ought to do next?

Whenever you've gotten bad news one, I hope you have people in your life That you can share the weight of that pain or that burden or that disappointment,

And which I do i've been married for 40 years and i've come I have two kids that are 35 and 31

They become my best friends,

Not just my children I have a community of friends and people in my life that if I call them they show up. Yeah, and,

And I actually think people who have sustained success

make relationships their highest value, because relationships are really the most important

commodity for true wealth.

But if you lack that in your life, one of the things I would do is I would step back

and realize that no matter what you're facing, it's not your whole story.

It's not, as learned optimism says, the failure isn't permanent, it's not personal,

and it's not pervasive. And I think Zeligman talks about that.

And so I step back and always look at everything good in my life.

I step back and look at things that I'm really grateful for.

I step back and make sure the environment from which I'm absorbing this pain is gratitude,

because what I've discovered is that gratitude is far more powerful than disappointment.

And when I am thin on gratitude, the smallest difficulty or tragedy or hardship brings me down.

And when I'm rich in gratitude, I'm incredibly resilient, and I can face pretty much anything in the world.

Wow, amen. Erwin, thank you so much for your time. I pray rich blessings on your work and in your life.

You're doing good things, and just a great honor to have a few minutes to talk to you today.

Hey, thank you so much, Lee. It's great to meet you and get to know you. Two, three, four.

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