Today we are joined by Rock Thomas. Rock is a coach, author, entrepreneur, who has inspired 72 million people to take action, led 35 people to become millionaires, is the bestselling author of 3 books, is a serial success entrepreneur, is a Tony Robbins mastery level trainer, and a creator of a Global movement – wow!

Rock leads the #IAMmovement and a number of high-level MasterMinds, such as M1 and Gobundance. On top of all of that, Rock has actually trained directly with such greats like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Wayne Dyer.

Now, in this episode, as you can imagine, Rock and I really hit it off. We learned all about his story, the struggles he went through early in life and what they taught him, and we just went deeper and deeper from there. We talked about mindset, the power of words, success, money, and the impact and role that each can play in your life.

This was a really great episode! I'm not gonna spoil it all for you, but let me tell you that I really enjoyed the episode with Rock, and immediately after the call was over, we made plans to start working together on another exciting piece of content that we want to put out – if you want to learn more about that, make sure you check out https://jle.vi/mastermind, where you'll get the opportunity to discover much more from Rock and me in the very near future.

Without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with my latest SuperFriend, Rock Thomas.

-Jonathan Levi

Every month, we’ll invite top experts to host their own 30-day challenges, solely for the members of this group… Plus, each member will get awesome gear delivered to their home, AND discounts on various of our products! Click on the banner to find out more!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Rock Thomas, and how did he become an inspirational coach? [5:30]
• What was the start of Rock's journey? [6:55]
• Money as a driver of freedom [9:15]
• What does ‘thinking small' mean for Rock Thomas? [11:40]
• The magic of creating an ecosystem of success around you [13:40]
• The rest of Rock's amazing journey [15:30]
• The beginning of Rock's transformation [17:50]
• Going from a failed real estate agent to the owner of an award-winning agency [19:10]
• A reference on Rock's MasterMind groups:  Gobundance & M1 [21:40]
• What is a whole life millionaire? [22:45]
• Can you learn to have Rock's energy, enthusiasm, and abundance? [25:15]
• What are the 2 things you need to become a superstar? [27:40]
• What are some other exponential skills? [29:00]
• Amazing homework for you by Rock Thomas [32:35]
• We live in a world of negativity [36:10]
• What is Rock's morning routine? [37:35]
• Does Rock have any other SuperHuman hacks in his arsenal? [41:25]
• The power of MasterMind groups [45:00]
• Where can you find more about Rock Thomas? [47:50]
• Why don't people plan more? [52:00]
• Rock's takeaway message [53:45]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Tony Robbins' books on Amazon
• Our previous episode with Joe Polish
• Gobundance
• M1
• Rock's website
• Your Epic Life Blueprint Community
• Rock Thomas's products

Favorite Quotes from Rock Thomas:

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I want to tell you about an absolutely crazy idea that I recently had. You see, every single week on the Becoming SuperHuman podcast, we share with you some incredible idea that can change your life, whether that's meditation or the paleo diet or Tai Chi, or lucid dreaming. But the thing is, how much do you actually implement in your everyday life? 10%? 20%? And you're not alone, I mean, even I, as the host of the podcast am lucky if I implement 20 or 30% of what we talk about on this show. Why is that? Well, first off, in order to implement, we need more than a week. We need more like a month or even two months. We need a community of people supporting us, cheering us on and we need actual guidance from the experts beyond just a one-hour podcast. So I had a crazy idea, what if we got everybody together in a members-only group, and then we committed to one another that we were going to take on a new challenge every month, one month we would all commit to lucid dreaming, another month, we will all commit to improving our willpower, another month, we might all try to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.

So I put this idea out there and we got over a hundred people committed and involved. And here's what it looks like. In addition to a regular monthly challenge, we also send out all the gear, all the books, all the, whatever that you need to complete that monthly challenge in the mail and in your email. We then have an expert, one of the 200 world-renowned experts that we've had on the show, come into the private group and teach a lesson every single week for a month so that we can actually implement what we're learning. We already have started developing the first challenges, we're working on a lucid dreaming challenge or working on a willpower challenge, and many, many more.

So I want to invite you to come try this out. Join us. There are over a hundred of us doing these challenges and we would love to have you participate with us. So to join this new, crazy experiment that we're calling the becoming superhuman mastermind, please visit jle.vi/mastermind. We can't wait to see what you achieve.

Greetings, Superfriends and welcome to this week's episode, which was lovingly handcrafted thanks to a review from Diana House in Canada, who says world-class podcast five stars, Jonathan is a great host and has some phenomenal guests. I've learned so much from his Josh Felber and Carrie Campbell and Brian Grasso episodes. Keep it up. Well, thank you very, very much, Diana, and thanks to your review and we'll keep it up, I think. Onto today's episode, you guys today, we are joined by Rock Thomas. He is a coach author and entrepreneur who has inspired 72 million people to take action. He has led 35 people to become millionaires, he's the bestselling author of three books, he's a serial success entrepreneur, he's a Tony Robbins mastery level trainer, and a creator of a global movement, he leads the I am movement and a number of very high-level masterminds, such as and GoBundance on top of all of that, rock has actually trained directly with such greats like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Wayne Dyer.

Now in this episode, as you can imagine, Rock and I really, really hit it off. We learned all about his story, the struggles that he went through early in life, and what they taught him, and we just went deeper and deeper from there. We talked about mindset, we talked about the power of words, we talked about success, money, and the impact and role that each can play in your life, oh man, it's a really great episode. I'm not going to spoil it all for you, but let me tell you that I really, really enjoyed this episode with Rock, and immediately after the call was over, we made plans to start working together on another exciting piece of content that we want to put out, so if you want to learn more about that, make sure you check out jle.vi/mastermind, where you will find an opportunity to discover much, much more from Rock and I in the very near future. So without any further ado, please meet my latest super friend, Rock Thomas.

Rock, Welcome to the show, my friend, how are you doing?

Rock Thomas: I've been doing phenomenal, very excited to be alive today.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. I'm really excited to have you on, I did my fair share of internet stalking in preparation, and I'm just so excited to share your story and your enthusiasm with our audience.

Rock Thomas: Well, thank you.

Jonathan Levi: So Rock, tell me a little bit about your journey, how you got from a to b and how it is that you came to be a motivational speaker, a coach, and an inspirational leader.

Rock Thomas: Well, I think the turning point was picking up a book in a store that was written by Tony Robbins and realizing that when you change your words, words create your world, I realized that there was a world called personal development I didn't really know about, and I remember reading something like I'm tired too I'm recharging my batteries and I thought, that makes me feel better. And I began this journey about 25 years ago in earnest, I didn't know that growing up without a TV that I actually was already learning a lot of things other people didn't know. And that in life, when you do what is difficult, life will be easy, and in life when you do what is easy, life will be difficult a difficult will come. So fortunately for me, I grew up on a farm and I learned to do things that were difficult, I learned a good work ethic, I learned to not quit, I learned to push through frozen pipes, carrying buckets of water out in the freezing cold, the horses. There was always a way when the demand on yourself, the standard for yourself was put high enough, you always find a way so I've learned to find a way in spite of fear, doubt, and worry, and I think a lot of people were never given that gift that I was given at a young age so I'm very grateful for that.

Jonathan Levi: Incredible. And did you launch your career as a coach or did you explore and find your way to coaching and inspiration and leadership kind of in a roundabout way?

Rock Thomas: Yeah, a great question is, for me, I think that there's inspiration and desperation, and I've always been a little inspired, but because of the way I grew up, I became desperate. My brother, I was the youngest of seven and my brother used to beat me up all the time, and he had small man syndrome, he was smaller than me, and he just thought he would equal the playing ground because he was two years older than me by intimidating me, bullying me, beating me up, and I was a nice kid. I was this little city slicker, my parents got divorced, my father married his mom, she was a farm girl, my dad was more of a city slicker, so I came out to this farm, you know, not knowing what to expect and I think he rubbed his hands together and thought, let me teach this little kid, a lesson. And I really just was trying to please him, I was the good little boy, I was trying to make him happy, but after a while, I realized that strategy didn't work. So I was like the little kid that bought the weights in my room and started lifting weights, try to, to muscle up toward him, and eventually one day I stood up to him when I was around 13 I think.

And he almost killed me with a mouth full of snow that choked me and that was the moment that I found a part of myself I didn't know existed that I wish everybody would find is it's the hulk within you. It's the part of you that says no more, that's it. I will not stand this abuse anymore and when I found that voice, all of a sudden, I felt like I had a Cape on my back and I became maniacal about making money because for me that was freedom. I mean, I was a kid that was 11, 12 years old that asked for jeans, and my step-mom said, then you have to save your pennies. So when you start buying clothes as a young teenager, and that's the only way you get them, you start to have an appreciation for money.

So I bought my first motorcycle when I was 14, my first car, when I was 16, I worked evenings weekends, and I learned that you know, if you add value and you show up beyond what most people do, you're going to do better than most. And that's really where my good work ethic came from.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. There's a lot of things that I want to pick out of that Rock and I want to also thank you for sharing that story because I only recently realized, so I was also a victim of bullying, although I shouldn't use the word victim, I also had struggles with bullying. I'll be at not in my family and I only recently realized through working with an incredible coach that my drive for income, I mean, I. Like you have built a life of passive income, have built a life where I can make an incredible living wall simultaneously helping people through the things that I suffered with, and I went to this coach and said, you know, I'm not a materialistic person. I want to understand why is it so important to me to make money? And it ended up being exactly the thing that you said. He asked me, well, let's look at what money means in your life and what money means in my life today, is exactly what you said. It's freedom. It's never having to feel like that trapped kid with no options again and the ability to go where I want, do what I want, and feel free.

So it's incredible. The same tool, the same healing mechanism, which is earning a living through helping people in and earning a hell of a living.

Rock Thomas: Yeah. And then the backside on that is that when you really discover that and you realize that you've got to train your brain, you've got to trick your brain, you're constantly being influenced in a negative way in the world to play smaller, to not step up, to be afraid when you get that's actually a thing, then you get excited that you can help other people because the hypnosis of our culture is keeping most people asleep, afraid, taking pills, eating crappy food, trying to just get a job and get by, and my mission is to say, Hey people, there is another way. If you weren't fortunate enough, like you and I Jonathan where you had a challenging childhood where difficult, didn't enter into your life where you were cushioned by your parents or your environment, you didn't have an ecosystem that fostered for you to grow and push through, then you might still be half asleep and that's not going to serve you to live a great life. So, in a way. I kind of say I'm an irritational speaker, not a motivational one because I need to irritate people, I need to remind them that there's more, there's another side, and to try to cajole them into seeking their personal standards.

Jonathan Levi: I feel exactly the same way and I want to ask you to go deeper on what it means to think small and well, to not think big enough, and to not have that hunger. I mean, what does that mean for you? I think we each have our bone to pick with the way kind of people go about their lives and that's why we do what we do but what does that look like for you?

Rock Thomas: Well, that's another great question. I would say that there's a small group of people that are extreme athletes and phenomenal with their nutrition and discipline and they're a small elite group call it the VIP room and they get each other's language, they see each other, they'd nod at each other and they understand that that's the world that exists.

The masses, on the other hand, look often at those people because they feel separation and the human spirit wants to belong almost more than anything else. He wants to matter, it wants to feel as though you're worthy to be in that VIP room. So, if you haven't been invited, you haven't been showing you have a couple of choices and one of them is to make that wrong.

So a lot of people do that. They go, Oh, you see those, you see those people up there, you see those rich people, you see those people that are in shape? I'm like, that's ridiculous, they're going to hurt themselves they're running an iron man. So they make it wrong because they don't understand it, which is unfortunate.

So for me, what I try to do is I try to invite people into that experience. We talked earlier before the call about the mastermind of Joe Polish's genius network when you're in that room, you don't want to ever not be included in that room. Does that make sense?

Jonathan Levi: Totally. Totally. That's the last expense I'll cut.

Rock Thomas: Exactly. So once you're in that room, it can become your new normal in order to get into that room, you've got a hunger for more and unfortunately, our society usually poos that when you stand out, when you're in an area, you're the quarterback, you know, the hero of your football team, that's great, but also there's a lot of jealousy of bullying.

So you have to navigate that and what I found is you got to create an ecosystem. So the ecosystem from New York's like this, if you look at a greenhouse, a greenhouse is abundant and fertile for plants to grow or whatever you want to grow in there. Well, how do you grow an awesome person? Well, you've got to surround them with other supportive encouraging, and challenging, awesome people. You put them into that ecosystem where the resources and the conversation and the dialogue and the environment says, Hey, you can do this, you deserve to do that, and then every day you're prompted to do that. I was in Thailand last year on vacation and I love to work out, so I went to this resort, which had tennis courts and pools and stuff, and I didn't know it, but then, the Russian national team was training their swimming team there. So I got in the pool I happened to get in the pool and lanes beside them, and I just watched them like a little kid and I mimic them, and I copied them, and I watched her trills and I tell you, I felt a foot taller. and at the end of two days, I felt better. I, I sat in the cafeteria, I didn't speak Russian they didn't speak English, but I just was around their energy, and I felt more like an Olympic athlete swimmer than had I just been around a bunch of, pardon me, you know, vacationing fat Americans that sit and drink Pina Coladas in the pool and have been on both ends of that spectrum. But when you're around an ecosystem of success, success becomes easier.

Jonathan Levi: Totally, totally. So I'm going to bring us back to your journey because you had an incredible and meteoric kind of rise to success and I know you became one of the top real estate professionals in the country, I know you trained with some of the top trainers in the world, tell me about that journey and that transformation.

Rock Thomas: As a farm kid, I learned to work hard. That was the programming I got from my father. He would always say to me, you know, you're going to have to work hard. Life is difficult. He worked long hours, he was a workaholic, he would never play with me and so that was my reality and I wanted. Him to be proud of me, so the way I got his attention was to do chores around the farm. And this became part of who I was, what I say my identity, and from about eight and a half to 28 and a half, I worked driving taxis, shoveling driveways, painting, carpentry, building decks, anything really that was manual labor, just kind of got minimum wage, and I prided myself on, you know, my suntan and working until the sunset. And then going home and, you know, having traditionally that cracking open that Budweiser, like on the commercials, the tough guy and that's who I became. In my late twenties, my father got diagnosed with cancer, and although I had evolved a little bit bought a few pieces of real estate, was reading some books on the side about developing that strategy, my identity, my inner story was still telling me I wasn't worthy of it and it sure came to the truth when my father was diagnosed with cancer within about a year and a half I lost the three properties I had bought, I went through a divorce, I got evicted from my apartment, and by 30, I was back on the couch with my mom after paying off debts for my father, because my father was a poor money manager although he made good money, he was really bad at investing and managing it. So I was back to square zero and that's when you know, you a breakthrough is proceeded by as you know, a breakdown. And that was one of the rock bottoms for me. I remember sitting on the couch in my mom's and it sounds so cliche, you hear people say it all the time online, but it's actually true. And looking around feeling like a complete loser, what was I going to do? Ask a girl to come on a date and bring her back to my mom's place at 30? I felt like a loser, I behaved like a loser, I started going to the bar and drinking and hanging around with other people that we're feeling sorry for ourselves and I'm a guy who loves my body. I work out, but I wasn't treating myself that way. And then one day, as I said, at the top of the show, I went into a store looking for answers, I picked up this book and it was Tony Robbins' book, I bought it. I was going on a golf trip and the idea on this golf trip, Jonathan was, to golf in the morning, drink all afternoon by the pool party all night.

And by reading this book, after we golfed, instead, I went to the beach and I read the book and I went running on the beach. And all the guys were like, what are you doing? I go, I don't know. I'm just moved by this book. Long story short, I went to a Tony Robbins event, and instantaneously I was the first person in the room and I was the first person to high-five Tony Robins by jumping off my seat when he came on stage. And I remember like it was yesterday, I went to 19 events in 19 months and I became completely consumed by feeding my mind what was going to cause it to Excel. And I joined his platinum partners, I spent a hundred thousand dollars I didn't have, I wanted to be around greatness, I did all the practices at home, I've come up with a saying that you got to pay the price of practice in private to perform in public like a pro, and I believe that that's the piece that most people don't get. They don't chip away at their success every morning by doing the daily practices. They think that they have to have a silver bullet, some monumental thing that's going to happen to win the lottery or get that promotion when it's really the daily little things that you do that add up. And I went on this tear and it was through joining real estate and Tony at the same time that accelerated me from worst agents selling one home a year to a hundred a year, and then buying the company and then I started training people in my company to do what I did. And that's when I had another epiphany, Jonathan, is that I started to tell them what to do. I said, here you knock on doors, you drop off these flyers, you hold open houses, and guess what? Almost everybody had no success.

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Rock Thomas: And I went, what the heck? I'm telling them exactly what I did to become the number one agent, a hundred homes a year, the average didn't sell six, I'm selling a hundred. They just have to do what I say and they'll succeed. And then I had another lesson. Another layer is that it's the internal narrative that you have if you knock on a door, but inside, you're saying I'm not worthy, I don't know what to say, I can't add value, I'm not an expert, people feel it and they don't want to do business with you. So I peeled that back and I started doing these weekend seminars called inside the millionaire mindset and I started to teach them what my inner narrative was and then people start to skyrocket. People that'd be the 80,000 a year for eight 10 12 years stuck there to ceiling started to go to 140, 192 50 we were doing vision boards, we were changing the way we talk to ourselves, my office skyrocketed we went from 94 agents to 270, we broke every record I was decorated as a top 50 brokers in the world, and then I started writing a book and my love affair with helping people with their inner narrative took off and it is never relinquished since.

Jonathan Levi: Wow, that's phenomenal. And you've mentioned quite a few millionaires through your work as well.

Rock Thomas: I mean the layers keep on coming, the lessons come as you get to the next plateau is, you know what, a mountain, you can see the next level. And you're like, Oh my God I thought it was at the top of the Hill. There's another ridge to go.

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Rock Thomas: I started to realize that you can go to a Tony Robbins event or to any seminar, you come back, all jacked up, you're all fired up and your belief system is being stirred and shaken and you feel that you have more potential and you come home to the ecosystem, the greenhouse that you live in, and it's polluted, it's not fertile. Most people saying that will never work and I'm tired and lazy and words make your world, so all of a sudden you're pulled into that cesspool and mediocrity. So after working as a trainer for Tony for 15 years may say 10 but five years ago, I said, What can I do that nobody's really done before on a high level, at least that I knew of and I started my own mastermind called GoBundance, a tribe of healthy, wealthy, generous men that choose to lead Epic lives and don't apologize for being awesome, and we put these people together and did trips, bucket list trips around the world, kind of based off of the four hour workweek, and we talked about passive income vehicles, we supported each other when somebody would play the victim and tell a story, we would call a story, knocked them out of their pattern and get them back into empowerment. So we had all these rules around success, around a fertile environment, and then we realized there is a ton of people that were hungry for success, but didn't have the ability to do this so I created another group where I help mentor people to become millionaires and it's worked really, really well, it's called M one March to a million, how to become financially free without giving up your health and your relationships, and we've helped about 40 people become whole life millionaires as we call them in the last two and a half years.

Jonathan Levi: Tell me more about that, what's a whole life millionaire?

Rock Thomas: Well, we've all seen people that, a little cliche, but you're, you know, the guy sitting at his desk, he's 40 pounds overweight and he's, you know, mulling over his divorce papers yet he looks at his stocks and his bank account and he's like, wow, 2.5 million, I'm a badass, but he's sad and he's empty, but he was maybe driven by something like you and I were to have money, be that need for freedom and power, and he wanted to help people, but there were a couple of pieces of the puzzle missing. I want to talk to that person. I want to talk to the person who's the soccer dad, who's afraid of rejection. He wants success, but he's afraid of rejection so he's the nice soccer dad, he runs triathlons on the weekend but, you know, he lives in a two-bedroom apartment with two kids, and his wife and he are struggling. I want to talk to him about helping him overcome the problem that he has, he doesn't have it in the health garden, but he has it within his career finances, et cetera. I want to put the pieces together so that you can actually be healthy, you can be wealthy and you can have great relationships. You can be free to do what you want, impact the world with your mission. So we have things where we help people discover what their gifts are, so they can lean into them and they can feel fulfilled where they're inflow. We help people do budgets, which is so I almost thought it was an insult to say to somebody, Jonathan, let me help you do a budget. I realized that most people don't do it now. I thought to myself, it was obvious because of the way I was raised. You must do a budget. You have to do a budget. If I didn't do a budget, I didn't get my motorcycle. I didn't get my car. I didn't get my jeans, but people weren't raised that way. So I started to find where were the leaks and people's, you know, lives fill in the blanks cause I'm very good strategically that way and create this whole life millionaire, the person who you need to become to win the money game in modern society to not be sucked in, by the way, you live your life by pills, you know, being a solution, but where you get your butt in the gym, you know, I was in the gym this morning, I'm up at five 30, I do a, a thousand stairs, and then I get in the gym, I do three miles and then I hit the weights or I do laps in the pool and I love it because I've conditioned myself to love it. I'm 56 and I kicked most people's 25-year-old kids' button, pushup competitions, anywhere in an airport at an event, I was just let's do it, let's go because I love to be creative and on the edge of life, and I want to hire other people to do the same thing.

Jonathan Levi: I love this. Rock, so, you know, my background is in accelerated learning, that's how I've chosen to impact people's lives and the big question that always comes up on this podcast is can people really learn what you do? And I want to, because I know that the answer to learning the skills, learning the habits, learning to budget, learning the mindset, probably even that's what you do. And so yes, you believe that people can learn that. Can people learn to have your energy, and abundance, and enthusiasm?

Rock Thomas: Hundred percent. And that's, you know, great questions, Jonathan, thank you for asking that. One of the very first, you know, things that I talked about is probably the greatest skill that you or I could have, or anybody could have is the ability to relearn to learn.

And I call it your level of passionate curiosity. Einstein said that he's not the smartest guy, but he stuck with problems longer because he was passionately curious. I pride myself in being passionately curious, go to dinner parties I'll ask people. I was at bill mayor's event, which is a satire politician, kind of late-night show in LA. I went there and we were a group of 10 people before going in, one of the guys was one of the designers for BC GB or whatever stores. And I'm like, so tell me, what are you passionate about? And he looks at me and he goes, well, are you a reporter? And I said, no, I'm just really interested in, because people, especially in LA, a lot of times, people aren't interested in other people they're interested in, what can you do for me?

So they're trying to position themselves. I'm genuinely interested in other people and I think that if people would be like that, you know, Dale Carnegie says you don't need to be an interesting person, you need to be an interested person. Be interested in other people, learn from other people, ask great questions.

So the first thing is to learn to learn. My father never looked at my report card, he always said to me, Rock, I want to know what you're applying that you learned. I don't care about your marks because you can fake it, you can fudge it, you can, you can cram it, and not retain it. He goes, what I'm interested in is what you retain and what you apply.

Now go measure that two by four with the measuring tape and divide the number by 12 and tell me how many feet are in that length. So I was constantly rewarded for application of knowledge. So I say to people, if you want to be a superstar, there's two things you need. Only, only two things is to develop a work ethic and a level of curiosity. And with those two things, I can teach you to take over the world. And so could anybody else that has a skill and an area of real estate or basketball or whatever, those are the two things you feed. Now, the follow-up question that Jonathan is, how do you have a great work ethic? What if you get up in the morning?

I don't feel like getting up it's dark. I don't want to go to the gym. Then you go to inspiration and desperation. You go to visualization, you go to belief systems and that's the journey of personal development, but can you get there? A hundred percent.

Jonathan Levi: I think you and I are going to be really, really good friends Rock because I mean, that's our mantra, right?

Is I truly believe that learning is the only skill that matters because if you have that skill, you can learn just about anything else besides maybe, you know, if you're five foot two, and you want to have a wicked dunk, probably can't help you there. But besides that, just about everything else, I really believe that you can learn, but you have to know how to learn.

I want to ask you, what are some of, I call that kind of a, a exponential skill. If you will. It's a skill that leads to other skills. You've worked with a lot of people, you've inspired millions of people, what are some other exponential skills that you see? I mean, you've already identified one, which is taking a genuine interest in other human beings, tell me some other ones.

Rock Thomas: Yeah. So, I mean, in one of my courses, I teach something called the acronym, histep. H I S T E P. And those are the six variables that I check in with myself when I'm lacking motivation. So the H for example, as a headliner, imagine that whatever you're doing is going to be on the front of Facebook or Instagram or the newspaper or whatever you want. The headline is somebody's watching. So as you hit the snooze button, you had to tell all your clients that you are a bad-ass trainer, that you're whatever you are, but they see you hit the snooze button that could be leveraged if you care, what other people think.

So my father used to always say to me, you know, God is watching you, your creator is watching you do the chores, so you better do them well. It scared the bejesus out of me so I would pull the Barbwire tight, I would dig the hole deeper, I would do a good job, and that worked for me. So like I said before, you got to trick your brain.

You have to find ways to leverage yourself. The T stands for what I call triple E extreme emotional experience. When you have something that happens like you get fired, you can use that instead of playing the victim, you can say, you know what, that boss was a sob and give the power to the boss. You could say, you know what? That will never happen again. And burn it into your brain kind of like, you know, Michael Jordan lost, he didn't make the high school varsity basketball team and he became one of the greatest, you know, practice practicers if that's a word of the game and he threw himself into a bit of showing, proving and finding a part of them that didn't exist.

So when you have something really negative in your mind that happens something that goes against the result that you visualized or you hoped would happen, take that and use it as power and say, what do I need to own? So that will never happen again. Ever and become excited about the power that's available there.

The girl dumps you because you said something stupid work on coming up with jokes, great lines, somebody called you chubby and you hate that. Get your ass in the gym, hire a trainer, work out, change your diet. Use the adversity to your advantage. That's what I love to do. Something goes wrong, I get fired up and excited.

I'm like, thank you, God, thank you God for that. Now, how do I turn that around? So that it'll never happen again. I remember once I was on stage and this guy who came up to me that was struggling in his business, he says, you know what, Rock I'm down at this level you're on the stage and I noticed that your shoes are dirty.

And as a person on stage, you should have shiny shoes. And the first thing I wanted to say to him was F you like crush you in results. You're like pee on that my ego wanted to shout that out. I felt like I was not enough at that moment, I felt like my father would criticize me or my mother. The pattern showed up.

But I learned to be grateful for things like that and I'll tell you what, there's not a time that I don't go on stage. I don't think shining my shoes and made sure that I look sharp there. I use that now as a gift. So, that part of me actually stands as a higher standard. And I agree with him. If you're going to step on stage, I should look sharp. I should dress the part. So I think a lot of people, Jonathan don't use adversity to their advantage. They played the victim as you said before, I use adversity as a gift gets fired up and excited about it and so can anybody, if they decide that.

Jonathan Levi: That's fantastic. I want to ask you because I really love to assign homework on this show, what is some homework, an exercise, a practice, reading, an article, what's something that someone can do right now to actually take advantage of what I assume is a moment of inspiration and turn that into a moment of action?

Rock Thomas: Nice. So I'm pretty well known for saying the words that follow I am following you and call it the I am movement.

And one of the strongest forces in our personality is to be certain about who we are. If we go to a party, we are either friendly, outgoing, or shy or introverted or a drink or a non-drinker, we need that otherwise, we'd be schizophrenic show up at a party, and all of a sudden you start, you know, Hula hoop dancing, and you never did that before. You'd freak out. You need some certainty. The same thing happens with how you describe yourself. I'm lazy. I'm a procrastinator. And soon that becomes who you are, even though the label you got, might've been a label from your parents saying, Oh, Jonathan's shy. Because one day you were tired, you didn't talk and your mother wants to protect you from the embarrassment of not being outgoing or not responding may be for her own social benefit, she thinks it would be nice if you spoke up, you go well, what's shy, you entered into your programming for the rest of your life you think you're shy. The exercise I would give people Jonathan is to write out the words that you use as an inner narrative that is the most negative about yourself.

Labels other people offered you that maybe you've taken on I'm too short, I'm too tall, I'm too lazy, I'm not good with words, I'm lousy with numbers, whatever it is, and then upgrade them because that is a free choice. She says I'm lousy with numbers, then you could say something like every day in every way, I get better and better with calculations, you can start to morph your identity. If you say that you're not good with business, well, then maybe you can say that you're awesome with people and I find great partners to build my business with, make it believable and then upgrade it. My brothers and sisters called me pizza face cause I had a lot of acting and I learned through this process that I could change it from pizza face by modeling Clint Eastwood to ruggedly handsome.

Was it pretty boy, Tom cruise? Cause I couldn't believe that, but I could believe that I looked a little bit like Clinton's to it, he was ruggedly handsome, it was believable for me, and I started to change mine. Inner narrative from pizza phase, which I said thousands of times to myself because my brothers and sisters teased me to ruggedly handsome and sure enough, my confidence changed and I just said it over and over again.

I went from struggling real estate agent to the best real estate agent in Montreal using this same technique. I went from hardworking to smart working. I went from dyslexic to not best writing author, but best-selling author and wrote a best-selling book. You can language yourself into a new identity if you're willing to romance yourself with the words, I am, and upgrade it to whatever you want. Does that make sense?

Jonathan Levi: It makes perfect sense and I agree, absolutely. And do you know, it's funny because you can know that, and I do know that, and I've known that for years and yet sometimes you need to check-in and you need to be reminded of that because as you said that the life has a way of correcting you, if you fly too high sometimes, or if you become spoiled or if you begin to take things for granted, and it's important to remember that not to let those words impact you. Not to let them break your spirit because your words become your reality.

Rock Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And a hundred percent and let's face it. We live in a cesspool of negativity everywhere. Just turn on the news and there's screens everywhere in our life now, everywhere. Your phone, your laptop, you go to the gym, the airports, everywhere.

And they're spouting negativity because they know that negativity hooks what the mind and their job is to grab your attention so that they have viewers and eyeballs so they can sell commercial space. That's the only reason CNN is now in entertainment, not in news. And most people are seduced by the screen.

They don't have a mission or vision for their life, so they walk along and if you just walk next time, you're in the airport and sure you've done this before, zoom out a little bit and just watch the trench that most people are in. They're not even aware of their environment, they're in a trench and they're trenched by the cesspool of mediocrity and everybody wants to grab your eyeballs and put you into it. So that's why people like you and I, love our morning rituals and we get ourselves empowered our lives we want to create, and we like to encourage other people to find their own vision and create that for themselves and lean into it.

Jonathan Levi: That's a great segue. Tell me a little bit about your morning routine. You mentioned you're up at five 30, you exercise every single morning, what are the other things you do to help yourself perform at your best all day?

Rock Thomas: Yeah. So for me, the morning routine has two goals. One is to stimulate the cells in my body, to awaken them and give them life because you know, you wake up you're a little bit, you know, you're not a hundred percent on the go yet.

So the first thing is a movement that creates that. The second thing is to stimulate my mind. I have a five and a half minutes I am statement on my phone that I listened to. So it's like, I am a gladiator. I am gifted, guided, grateful, powerful, passionate, playful, sexy, central sensitive, and blessed. And it goes on for five and a half minutes.

It's what I wrote out about eight areas of my life, who I am with my hobbies, my relationships, how I am as a father, a spouse, a leader, a trainer, a business person, et cetera. And I listened to that first thing when I get up and while I run stairs or I'll listen and I'll listen to a motivational video that a pro my phone from YouTube, something that will inspire me with some really cool music and it gets me feeling what's possible.

It reminds me of what happens when you defy the odds and you grab life big. I will, of course, during the period of time, the first hour I'll consume usually, um, a couple of glasses bottles of water to get myself hydrated, I'm living in the desert right now so it's super important. I will journal, I will capture, I might read I'll do anything that feeds the mind or feeds the body initially in the first hour.

And then throughout the day, I have different things that I do, which I love it incantations that I learned from Tony is an affirmation, so I might be just standing at the counter, checking in or something and I'll do squats or I'll listen to something on my phone and I'll get inspired, I'm a little bit, people are like rock you're a little bit weird, so I'll just go with, yeah, that's true. I'll squat, I'll do squats while I'm pumping gas into my car, I'll do yoga at the airport, you know, I mean, to me, Who is more important, my opinion of me or your opinion of me? And in my book, my opinion of me has to take precedence because if not, I give all my power away.

It's not that I don't care what other people think or that I don't take it in as information, it's just that I think most people want to do what I do. They just don't, they haven't overcome their fear of a little bit of embarrassment or shame. Cause I'll tell you what, I'll move my body as much as I can. I have a dentist that is on the sixth floor and I'm often in the waiting room, somebody goes, aren't you downstairs? I go, yeah. And they go, well, I didn't see you in the elevator. I go, I know. And they go, well, how'd you get up here? I go, I took the stairs and they go, why? And I go cause I can? One day I might not be able to, but in the meantime, I look for ways to move my body because motion creates emotion so I don't care. I just, try to be childlike as much as possible. And my girlfriend sometimes gets a little embarrassed, but you know, she'll grow through it.

Jonathan Levi: Well, you know, it's funny as I see so much of my own relationship in that is like the learning and I think it's, it's those of us who were bullied, who, uh, you know, the way that I explained it to her at one point was I spent enough of my life being ashamed of who I am.

I'm never going back in that box again. So I'll do the same thing. I'll do squats before a flight, and I'll dance around like a silly fool, you know, if my little nieces and nephews are dancing around hell yeah. I'll do that because I'm never, ever, ever going to be ashamed once again, for who I am. It's like, uh, you know, a consciousness that's expanded can never go back to its old dimensions.

Rock Thomas: Yes. Yes. So well said, well said, man, you're like a brother from another mother.

Jonathan Levi: We have to make it happen. We absolutely have to make it happen. Rock, I want to ask you a follow-up because typically what I ask is, you know, do you have any tips techniques skills, or strategies that you use to perform at a higher level, but for you, I'm going to ask, do you have any more? Because I know the circles that we run in, you probably have a lot of different things you do every day to hone your performance, whether that be a certain kind of nutrition, a certain kind of meditation, tell me about that.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, so meditating is, uh, I like to do actually a few different forms of meditation. There's six-phase meditation I've learned from Vishen Lakhiani that I like. There's the priming with Tony, and then there's just simply being quiet, those forms of meditation admittedly, I'm a high kind of a type personality.

I probably could do a little bit more of that than I do, I cycle I swim, I play golf, I play tennis, and I work out. Those are kind of the major things I do some yoga, um, and I have a trainer once in a while. So from that perspective, those things keep me on track. I go to many events throughout the year, so when you're teaching, you know, you remind yourself of what you need to do.

So I just did a retreat called life design in Puerto Rico, we had a very small intimate group for three and a half days, and we go deep, and then they have to make a presentation to defend their life in the eight areas of their life. So this is my strategy for becoming healthy. And that's something that I do that enriches me as well.

I go to Tony Robbins events still. So for me, it's about constantly being in that place, I still write and I still teach, I still do my own podcasts and I lead two mastermind groups. So for me, I'm a little bit lucky if I'm constantly in it. I was talking to my girlfriend, I go, what do we do this week? And I go, well, let's see, we signed up, I'm going to date with destiny, with Tony and going to another landmark course, I'm taking an online course for sacred gifts and I'm also taking one on relationships call with Alison Armstrong. And that's just what I signed up for in the last couple of weeks. So the thing is, but for most people that are still maybe what I call them, the grind zone is you've got to get yourself to events once in a while, and you got to get yourself an ecosystem that would be online, that you could adhere to a mastermind group like you and I are part of something that you can visit with regularly, and coaching to me works to an extent, but what I found is more powerful is peer pressure. Get yourself in a group you want to belong to, you know, be the, not the smartest guy in the room. So get with a group of, I have a group of five guys that I get on a call with once a week, and we talk about our goals and dreams and we set goals every week and then you're, you're on the hook to the guys next week. And there's something about that, that stirs inside of you you don't want to be the slowest one in the pack and it causes you to get up and do your 57 push-ups when you wake up or, or to make the extra call or what have you. So environment, peer group ecosystem, greenhouse, whatever you want to call it is the edge for most people because they're in that cesspool of mediocrity.

Jonathan Levi: You are a hundred percent correct. You know, one of the things that's blown my mind, so you've been doing masterminds for quite some time, we just launched ours recently and you know, it's like everything, the first month, we didn't know what was going to happen, we didn't know if we were going to nail it, disappoint people and it's been one month of us kind of just figuring out, you know, how we want to run this thing. And we've had like 15, 20 people tell us their lives are literally and irreparably changed for the better, which has just blown my mind and I can take pretty much zero credit. I take credit for arranging this group of people to meet, but everything else is exactly what you said.

It's the right peer group. It's the coach that we bring in, but I would say 80% of it is, you know what ben Hardy calls the psychological upgrade because they're in a room with other people just like them and no one wants to be that guy who checks in every day with I didn't do it.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, and mastermind group, I think fills a void that we all talk about how social media has connected us all, but we're so disconnected is people are still hungering for the human touch, for the real conversation.

What we've found is that you're sick as your secrets. So if you can be in an ecosystem where you can be authentic, you can tell people, you know, about the phase you went through when you know you are depressed or you were discouraged or you had a drinking issue or you were on pills or you had a pornography addiction, you know, we're able to flush those things out and the shame peels off of people's backs because people are always trying to we're afflicted by this thing called needing to look good because we think if we look good, people will want us to be around, we'll be lovable. It's actually the opposite is when you can be authentic, vulnerable, real that the connection actually happens.

So we're in a stage right now in the world where people are posting on Facebook Photoshop pages, which is alienating each other. So in our ecosystem, it's about being real, it's not about having, you know, being a victim and being addicted to your problem, it's about saying here's where I am today. Here's what I've been using as a strategy to try and get through life.

What strategies have you discovered that maybe can help me get through this? And then you connect. And you feel like you can make a difference for somebody in the mastermind is not just about showing up and getting, but it's about, Hey, I can help you. I ran three marathons. You want to run one? Let me help you.

I built a business, I know how to do it, let me help you. You have a really good relationship with your family, I'm going through a struggle. What would you recommend? And that peer-to-peer conversation is desperately missing in the world today.

Jonathan Levi: Totally. And I want to add something on the power of vulnerability, which is a few years ago, well, every year I add one secret of adulthood that life taught me. And for my 27th secret, I realized the same thing that you just said, which is quote, the more you try to shape the way others perceive you, the worst that perception will inevitably be. It's so true.

Rock Thomas: Did you make that up?

Jonathan Levi: I wrote that yeah.

Rock Thomas: That is really nice, I love that.

Jonathan Levi: Thank you. I appreciate that. So, Rock, I know we're coming up on time here, I want to give you an opportunity to kind of share with people how they can reach out how they can learn more, how they can get involved in all the programs, the books, that all the different stuff you're doing because you do like a hundred different things so I want to do allow us a good 10 minutes for you to describe all of them.

Rock Thomas: Okay, cool. Well, I always say to people, 88 keys on a piano, and you could be, maybe we'll use Tony Robbins is really kind of at that peak and if you will cause a lot of people to know him and then at the other end, you might have somebody who's depressed and unresourceful, or going through a tough time, junk food to healthy food.

So wherever you're at in that cycle of progress for your own personal life, you know, you could start with going to my website, rockthomas.com, and downloading my free book, The Power Of Your Identity, where I'll help you shape and upgrade your identity so you feel like somebody that can take momentum completely for free.

You can also go to your Epic Life Blueprint. Your Epic life blueprint Facebook page, and I do Facebook lives there and I help people just kind of, again, maybe they're in a tough spot financially, their financial blueprint isn't what they'd like it to be, they were in an environment a little bit like maybe you and I were where money was scarce and they're still running that program, they haven't learned how to upgrade their blueprint and therefore they don't have funds right now to invest in their education. By the way, I believe that you should invest 10% of your money that you earn in education, 10% for savings for investment and 10% minimally of your time every day in your future self, which your future self will thank you for.

And most people are so desperately trying to get through the day, they don't feel they have that time. So you can do that 100% complementary. Then if you're somebody that's like, you know what? I really want to accelerate my life, I have a variety of products that start at, you know, 50 bucks, $29, 200, 300 it's depending on whether you want to learn how to have more time in your life, I have something called the Sunday system for success, I've got something that is called the top 10 rules, which is a 90 day challenge on how to get uh, what we call self mastery, it's a 90 day ecosystem where you'll work with some of my coaches people I've coached to get yourself to an understanding of how to train and run your brain, and then we go all the way up to $30,000 for our elite mastermind group and where you get to go on some private trips and stay at exotic resorts and really take a deep dive on your life and everything in between, I'd say our most popular program is our, our one year immersion, what we call our M one mastermind group, and that's something that you can learn about by I'm just going to my site, we're going to go m1gom1.com and filling out the application, you will get on a discovery call and you'll have homework to do before you have a chance to qualify. It's not for everybody like applying for Harvard, there was a prerequisite because we don't want people investing money in themselves to not take advantage of it.

Imagine spending $40,000 for your first year at Harvard, and then just learning how to be better at drinking and partying and wasting your money or your parents' money and ending up with student debt. I say to people, I don't want your money, I want you to succeed story and your money is your accountability partner.

It causes you to get your attention to show up and play full out. So that's the one that, that is most exciting for people that aren't millionaires yet, if you're already a millionaire and you just want to hang out with other highly successful male entrepreneurs, you can go to gobundance.com, and apply there for our very, very cool bucket list and venture mastermind group.

And we do trips around the world, uh, with really, really cool people and that will shape your peer group rapidly. So I'd say that's the majority of it, Jonathan.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. That's a pretty good list. You are a very, very productive guy I can tell why you teach a course on personal productivity. I'm just thinking to myself like I know what it takes to create all of these programs, and like my god! Where does he find the time? But I guess when you wake up at five 30 in the morning, you got nothing but time.

Rock Thomas: Well, you know, I think that like I teach this thing called the Sunday system for success and people that take my course, they say that they gain five to 10 hours a week. The reality is most people don't plan for four reasons and I explained the reason that people don't. One of them is that they don't want to feel guilty when they arrive at an appointment in their calendar to do something that they don't feel like doing. So, you know, I'm going to put Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm going to work out at five o'clock in the morning.

What happens if you know, I didn't have a good routine the night before I wake up, I'm feeling tired. I don't want to work out and feel guilty. You know what I'll work out when I feel like it, and this is the story people tell themselves. So I need to peel back that layer and help people so that they understand how to be the type of person that feels like working out.

And that's the story behind the story. There's a million time management courses, but people rarely address the reason why people don't do it. And when you get to the source of why people don't do what they want to do, you create transformation. And that's the part that intrigues me. The reality is we all have 24 hours in the day. Bill Gates has no more than URI, but they've found a way to be efficient, effective, and productive. And you're the type of guy that does squats at the airport like I do, you found a way to energize your body. It just really depends on how willing are you to push past the voice in your head? I say, let's find a new voice for you because the voice that's working based on what you've told me, isn't giving you the result that you want, let's create a new one and that's really the key to transformation.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. I love it. Rock, I want to thank you but first before I let you go, I want to ask you if people take away one message from this episode, and it's the one thing that they remember for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that message to be?

Rock Thomas: I think that the biggest thing is to understand that we're all authors of our voice and the inner narrative that you and I have is fed by something. If you read books and then you quote that, or if you listen to a great motivational speaker, Jim Rouen or whoever it is that inspires you, and then you can mimic that voice, If you're a mimicking an athlete, I'm a Canadian guy so I used to if you've heard the name Wayne Rescue, does that mean anything to you?

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, of course.

Rock Thomas: Yeah. Okay. So in my day, it was like, I would be skating and I'd be saying in my head I'm Wayne Gretzky. I'm moving down. I'm today. I'm turning around here. Am I going to do these cars? I'm embodying him and I'm trying to transcend his being. I would encourage people to choose the person that you admire and respect the most and ask yourself what's the inner narrative that person has. Did Mohammad Ali wake up in the morning going, Oh my God, I don't feel like waking up.

Or did he wake up, open his eyes, and goes, I'm the greatest in the world like, get your ass out of bed and get in the gym and workout so you can be a champion for the rest of your life. That's the voice that you want to find and my message to everybody is it's a choice. The voice is a choice. Find your voice, upgrade your voice, feed your voice, because if you're playing the victim, that's your choice.

Jonathan Levi: Phenomenal words to end on. Rock Thomas, this has been an absolute pleasure. I can tell we're going to be as I always call it super friends, and I really hope we run into each other next time I'm in Arizona.

Rock Thomas: I love it. I love it. Please hit me up when you do. It'll be my pleasure.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. You take care my friend and thank you again.

Rock Thomas: Cheers.

Jonathan Levi: All right. Superfriends, that is all we have for you today, but I hope you guys really enjoyed the show and I hope you learned a ton of actionable information tips, advice that will help you go out there and overcome the impossible. If you've enjoyed the show, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or drop us a quick little note on the Twitter machine @gosuperhuman.

Also, if you have any ideas for anyone out there who you would love to see on the show, we always love to hear your recommendations. You can submit it on our website, or you can just drop us an email and let us know that's all for today, guys. Thanks for tuning in.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.