PJ Gadimi is a self-made entrepreneur, best-selling author, and founder of Secret Entourage. He left a lucrative banking career and went on to found three major businesses, VIP Motoring, Secret Consulting, and Secret Enourage, which collectively have grossed over $40 million in revenue annually. PJ has authored 10 books to date, and his most recent best-seller, Third Circle Theory, focuses on a unique roadmap to a higher level of self-awareness, leveraging the power of entrepreneurship. Today, he s focusing on the importance of defining the role of self and purpose in your life, and how to take control of every element of your life by becoming more aware.
00:15:40.800Your ability to manipulate an environment or to be within an environment that is being manipulated enables you to create outcomes you want.
00:15:50.400And if you like it or not as a human being, you're either being manipulated in the environment or you are the one manipulating the environment.
00:15:57.360Because you're not the only person in the room that has self-awareness.
00:16:01.400It's possible that there are some rooms you end up in when you don't.
00:16:04.580But there's a lot of rooms if you end up in a room with me where I'm already playing the room, right?
00:16:09.540So, if you're not conscious, then you're being played.
00:16:26.760It's not something that tomorrow morning listening to this, you're going to go in an environment and be like, I'm a master of making this environment work for me, right?
00:16:34.080The earlier stages, it's a lot of work, thinking, looking, paying attention, which really is the only way you can train your mind is just paying attention to patterns and what's happening.
00:17:21.400So, if you manipulate people's environments so that they're able to buy into you so you can progress forward and create a common goal, create a common solution for everybody,
00:17:33.000and everybody wins in it, even if at different levels, right?
00:17:50.920If you're self-aware and you create a lot of great outcomes at a convention, that didn't hurt anybody else.
00:17:55.060You give yourself a better chance of being the next guy that speaks on stage instead of the next guy that shows up at the conference, right?
00:18:02.520Well, and I think what happens, too, is I think, like you said, is if you're not manipulating the environment, it's manipulating you.
00:18:08.720And I think what people do is they actually probably lie to themselves and say that the way that I look or the way that I groom myself or the way I communicate or whatever is not important.
00:18:23.140And in that case, based on what you're saying, they're actually lying to themselves.
00:18:26.800It is important and it's valuable and you need to be aware of these things.
00:18:51.240You're going to become really good at it because you're going to be able to predict how people behave and correct that behavior before it happens instead of reactively.
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00:20:19.560So I think I may have interrupted you and got you off track earlier because you said there's some exercises that we can do to become more self-aware.
00:20:28.280But I'm not sure we even got into those.
00:20:30.480So I'll give it to you really nice and simple.
00:20:32.580It's an exercise I have at the Academy that I almost force kind of my students to go through to kind of understand where they are on the scale of awareness versus self-awareness.
00:21:41.020And the more you write these details, then the second part is you're going to write two days' work.
00:21:45.080And the reason you write two days' work, even though you're repeating the process, is because you're going to take a lot of what you did on day one and day two, which are the same, right?
00:23:45.280Like how is it that they're on the top of the shelf?
00:23:48.060So like the depth of this exercise is that within two days of your life, you could technically look back and understand the core concepts of the 10 major brands you use every day and how they're even born, what they do and why they function.
00:24:00.340And then the next, the next phase to it is also understanding, uh, the concepts behind, uh, how reactive versus proactive your days.
00:24:10.440So what you're really looking for is how much of your behavior is actually reactive versus proactive.
00:24:16.880Because what you're getting is you, there's a lot of people who take this exercise who are actually realizing that they're completely programmed and that they spend more than 95% of their day on items that are just reacting to their environment rather than being proactive and growing their life.
00:24:36.520So then this gives you a very clear view of why your life is very focused on survival rather than growth and why your days don't change and why you struggle with plateaus, not advancing, not creating excitement in your life outside of your fun, you know?
00:24:53.200And so these are, these are things that happen that people, these are steps people can take to really first see if they are likely to become self-aware and if they're not, they need to redo the exercise until they realize how much they're missing.
00:25:06.320Uh, and then it also allows people to understand how much of their time they're spending, their spending being reactive versus proactive, which is a key part of people who are self-aware versus people who are just aware.
00:25:17.440So let's look at the other side of this because it seems like some programming would actually probably be a good thing.
00:25:22.540For example, your brand of toothpaste.
00:25:46.620Well, no, we do care because even though we may not change them, we should still be aware of them.
00:25:51.460So while I understand why I brush my teeth with certain, you know, whatever, like toothpaste, I may choose to do nothing about it, right?
00:26:01.620I may still choose that I'm not going to chase why there's a better toothpaste or not.
00:26:05.940But I'm still aware that I subconsciously don't understand that process.
00:26:10.000So just the awareness is the key here, not the actual action.
00:26:13.060Like being aware of why we do something is the key that we choose to act on it or not is how we are going to be really good at growing our life, which is we're going to pick our battles, right?
00:26:26.620Like we choose to go to a job, but we need to understand why we're going to that job and what is going to happen to us if we continue to go into a job that we're unhappy with.
00:26:36.540We may not be in a position to change that job immediately, but we still need to be aware about the fact that we are unhappy in that role and that we're not, we're creating excuses why we're not going anywhere.
00:26:48.680Because eventually, we are going to change it because we're aware of it.
00:26:52.960And the more aware of something we become, the more we tend to want to make it good.
00:26:58.120And so we're going to spend time doing exactly just that, even if it takes us longer for some than others because we're not trained to do it.
00:27:06.300I mean, just going back to that toothpaste example, what you're suggesting is that you need to be aware of it and you may consciously be aware.
00:27:13.400For example, in my case, I've consciously made the decision not to really care if it's Crest or Colgate, right?
00:27:22.820You're not just doing it because you picked it off the shelf and you never looked back.
00:27:27.840And then I'm sure not only that, when we focus on these, what some people might consider trivial, I'm sure that it enhances your practice and your level of awareness when it comes to more meaningful areas of your life.
00:27:42.640And I think that's the key part is that the key to becoming more self-aware is to be more in tune with who you are.
00:27:51.660And like, you know, when people look at themselves in the mirror and they see something they're not, they're like, I'm so great, I'm this and that.
00:27:59.160But in the reality and in the context of the world, they're nobody.
00:28:05.760Most people, when they look at themselves in the mirror, have an image of who they are on the basis of the influences around them who have told them who they are.
00:28:15.340So if they live in a small town, right?
00:28:17.500And if they live in a town where there's not a lot of good looking people, then they're like, oh, I'm very good looking, right?
00:28:23.600Now take them and put them in an environment where everybody's good looking.
00:28:27.820Now suddenly they're not that good looking, are they?
00:28:30.360So again, the perception we have of ourselves, our self-awareness is highly impacted on our environment.
00:28:38.040If we're born in a small town where there's not a lot of business and the average income is 30K and we make 50K, we're considered rich, right?
00:28:46.560Take that same guy, transpose him in a city like Chicago, Miami, or New York, and he's below poverty level.
00:28:53.940So how can we make sure we are conscious of that without having to move to that major city, without having to place ourselves in an environment?
00:29:03.860How much do we understand ourselves enough to make sure that when we're placed in that other environment, we're not going to be faced with such a drastic surprise and a need to restart how we look at ourselves?
00:29:15.440You know, it's interesting as I talk with a lot of men, one thing that I run across quite a bit is men who are transitioning from maybe their parents' house, maybe they're graduating high school or they're finishing up college, and they've never had any exposure to the outside world.
00:29:31.480They've never done any practices like you're talking about when it comes to self-awareness.
00:29:36.180And then all of a sudden they're in this environment, whether it's college or a new place, and they're out on their own.
00:29:40.000And frankly, they just can't handle it because they've never even realized what this actually could look like because they've been trapped in this little bubble.
00:29:47.900Yeah, and what that does is it crushes your one thing which you need a lot of.
00:29:53.360Two key traits you need to be successful in business and in life.
00:29:56.080And so you're constantly taking blows to your confidence level, and instead of being able to take the blows because you understand where your life differs from the context of society versus the context of life, you're able to, you know, take those blows faster because you're more self-aware.
00:30:13.340And you're able to adjust faster without as much of the downtime.
00:30:16.040I mean, the simplest way I can illustrate this for someone is how many people we know consider money the byproduct of success, right?
00:30:26.360And every 90%, 9 out of 10 people you ask in the street, like, how do you define someone successful?
00:30:32.600They'll tell you based on how much money they have.
00:30:34.620You know, based on how much money they've made, had, whatever you want to use it, it's money, right?
00:30:39.860So money plays a significant role in the way people perceive success, right?
00:30:44.820But people who have made money typically will tell you money has nothing to do with success.
00:30:50.720So because they've graduated past the idea of pleasing society, they've grown past the idea of awareness and have gone into this mode of understanding themselves enough and understanding that in the game of life, not in the game of society, money is only a component.
00:31:34.040So, again, money was a form of manipulation with an environment.
00:31:37.240So let's talk about the comparison trap because I know this is a trap a lot of people fall into and they start comparing themselves to other people, whether it's their health or whether it's their level of wealth.
00:31:47.400And it's disheartening in a lot of cases.
00:31:49.760Is this practice of self-awareness, does it help with that or does it actually make that worse because you are comparing yourself to other environments and other people?
00:32:57.640My circumstance was different than yours.
00:32:59.760Yours is different than one of your students.
00:33:01.560Mine is different than one of my students.
00:33:03.340If your student or if someone who wanted to learn how to be a man repeated step by step every single thing you've done in your life to the moment, right, they would still have a different outcome than yours.
00:34:05.540People need to be themselves in the sense that they need to have a clear view of what they're lacking, who they are and how well they're doing, and then need to take themselves to the next level by simply improving who they are, by paying attention to what are the people that they aspire to be like, not become, to be like, that they can learn today to position themselves in that same place in 10 years, in five years, in three years.
00:34:31.860So I think the goal is to just be yourself because the more you attempt to be others, the more you attempt to have what others have, the less likely you are to actually obtain it.
00:34:43.880But then it's also this lie you feel – and I've tried to do this.
00:34:47.560I've tried to emulate other people and do exactly what they do, say exactly what they say, dress the way they dress, communicate the way they communicate, and I'm not happy with that.
00:35:01.860Well, so in addition to maybe this comparison trap that maybe people fall into, are there some other pitfalls or some other traps or things that we need to be aware of when it comes to this journey of more self-awareness in our lives?
00:35:12.600I mean, there's a thousand traps people fall into.
00:35:16.860I think that the first one is that most people have a skewed opinion about how long something should take.
00:35:27.500I think this is the biggest trap, you know?
00:35:31.280And this is one of the biggest traps is that the time frame is something that people really get confused about.
00:35:38.120They set kind of – you know, they tell themselves, if I'm not married by 35, if I don't have a million dollars by 40, then I'm considered a failure.
00:35:46.060And they're constantly changing that kind of like – you know, that evaluation of what that time should be.
00:35:52.960So they're just giving themselves excuses why they haven't reached it, right?
00:35:56.280I think that most people should consider that they shouldn't have focuses based on rewards.
00:36:04.900And I think this is the biggest problem in society today is everything we do is associated with a reward at the end.
00:36:12.480So how many people – I'm sure you hear this a lot, but, you know, in my academy, I hear a lot of students saying, I want to be a millionaire by 24.
00:36:20.760You know, I want to be a millionaire by 30.
00:36:22.840Mark my word, I'll have this Ferrari by 25, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
00:37:29.580Yeah, I'm about halfway through the book at this point.
00:37:31.380Yeah, so we talk a lot about, I mean, in general, like we think as a human race, you know, and as human beings, we typically look at outcomes and choices.
00:37:41.160You know, we said, I've made a choice and it had X outcome.
00:37:44.940You know, like I got married and God, this was a bad choice for me and therefore I got a divorce.
00:37:51.040Or someone will look at something like I started a business that was a bad choice, you know, and therefore that led to a bad outcome.
00:37:57.780The one difference in the equation, like the difference between successful and unsuccessful people is success is unsuccessful people will write choice equals outcome in their journal.
00:38:07.840You know, whatever the choice that was a bad or a good idea.
00:38:10.980Successful people will typically write choice plus their actions led to such outcome.
00:38:20.280So the difference is the action part is in who's controlled themselves, right?
00:38:24.980So they realized that now the choice was only part of the equation.
00:38:29.940The actual actions they took after making the choice led to the outcome.
00:38:35.860So therefore they were completely in control of such choice.
00:38:39.200No matter how bad the choices looked at the beginning, right?
00:38:42.480Like you may have said A or B both don't look that great.
00:38:45.840The actions you took after could have altered that choice and could have ultimately altered that outcome.
00:38:51.800So I think the more people take control, first, the more they're going to become men, right?
00:38:57.680Like the more they're going to become actually capable of accomplishing and are going to fuel their belief and confidence system.
00:39:05.160But then the more people are in control, the more they are going to become self-aware because the less they're going to blame their environment for everything that happens to them.
00:39:46.500So that's right on point with what I have to believe about it as well.
00:39:51.120So PJ, if we want to learn more about your work, what you're doing, Secret Entourage, Third Circle Theory, how do we connect with you?
00:39:57.180Well, I think the best place to do so is I'm at the Secret Entourage Academy every day, which is online.
00:40:03.860It's found that you can find Secret Entourages at www.secretentourage.com.
00:40:09.380You can find our academy at www.secretacademics.com, all in one word.
00:40:15.720And to learn more about the book Third Circle Theory, you can visit www.thirdcirclebook.com.
00:40:22.920And I do recommend if people are interested in joining your academy, make sure you read the book first.
00:40:29.260I always tell people, like, don't just join the academy trying to shortcut the book.
00:40:33.740Understanding yourself is the key to everything.
00:40:36.400And it doesn't matter that you choose to join, you know, a business academy, learn to be a man, or anything else you want to do in life, which are all valuable resources.
00:40:44.340I think you should understand yourself first so you can absorb the information better in the long term.
00:40:49.300Don't be that guy that doesn't grow the habit of going to the gym, but he had one six-minute abs, even though he's overweight, he eats everything.
00:40:56.500You know, doesn't pay attention to anything, right?
00:41:42.840They're putting in the work and the effort when it comes to improving their lives.
00:41:46.200And if you're looking for a tribe of like-minded men, this is it.
00:41:50.240Head to orderofman.com slash ironcouncil and join us right now.
00:41:54.420And again, all the details for the show can be found at orderofman.com slash 057.
00:41:58.460And you can join in the conversation we're having about masculinity and living manfully in our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash orderofman.
00:42:06.340Guys, I look forward to talking to you next week, but until then, take action and become the man you were meant to be.
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