0:00:04.3 Wayne Brown: Hello, I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET Project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET. And today we are visiting the city of Hilversum in the Netherlands and chatting with our guest Mr. Juan Campoo. Juan is a transformational coach, trainer, and speaker who has dedicated his career to helping individuals achieve personal mastery and emotional freedom. Over a decade ago, Juan was a rising professional in the corporate world and he seemed to have it all, yet his health told a different story. Having flirted with burnout and depression, he learned firsthand how vulnerable and fragile we can be. These experiences led him on a journey to learn the secrets of the body and mind, and to study how that all plays out in the workplace.

0:00:53.0 WB: Eight years into this journey now with more than a dozen certifications in mindset and behavioral change under his belt, and after working with some of the most prestigious training and consulting firms in Europe on things like communication, influence, leadership, culture, and wellbeing, Juan came to the realization we live in complex times and move towards ever more ambiguous futures, yet we have mindsets that were developed in the past. The world is accelerating faster than our inner development. So Juan asked himself the question, how can we accelerate inner development so people can show sustainable impact in life and at work? This led him to develop and refine a revolutionary method that makes psychology simple and intuitive, helping people leverage their brain’s ability to learn and change. And it’s called the Mindset Canvas. This methodology kickstarts and accelerates emotional intelligence, empowering wellbeing and contribution for individuals, teams, and organizations.

0:01:58.5 WB: The Mind Canvas soon became an Amazon bestselling book, led to a TED talk with more than 10,000 views, and was a basis for some groundbreaking transformational work with leaders around the world, granting Juan an award for best wellbeing coach in 2023 by Coach Awards. Born in Argentina and now a resident of the Netherlands, Juan is a devoted father and husband on a mission to empower people and organizations to unleash their potential for wellbeing and positive impact. So, Team ET, please join Juan and me as we look at how we can find our inner accelerator and move beyond personal development.

0:02:39.9 Speaker 2: Welcome to the ET Project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

0:02:55.7 WB: Welcome Team ET, great to be with you again, and today we’re back discussing, as you probably know, one of my favorite topics, the mind. We can never learn enough about the power of the mind and how it impacts our lives, whether it’s consciously or subconsciously. And you will have heard me introduce, our conversation today is based on some cutting edge theory as well as its application through a model called the Mind Canvas. And here to help us unpack everything related to as well as beyond personal development, including this theory is our guest and creator of Inner Accelerator, Mr. Juan Campoo. So Juan, welcome to the ET project.

0:03:37.1 Juan Campoo: Wayne, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

0:03:38.9 WB: I watched you on a TED talk recently, How To Go Beyond Personal Growth. Nicely done. Some great statistics, some metaphors. I really enjoyed the envelope, ego and true self, I thought that was very nicely done. How was the experience? 

0:03:57.5 JC: Well, it’s actually one of the high points in my life, I’m never gonna forget that, as I speak of it right now, I feel all the emotions coming. I have goosebumps. It really is, and like you say, people are really shocked by that metaphor, how simple it is to put the mind and life in that sense. And brings me back to a coach I had once, a storyteller coach. She told me that I’m a synthesizer. I have an ability to consume incredible amount of information and books and models, and to make it incredibly simple for people and intuitive. Yeah.

0:04:30.1 WB: I was curious how you managed to go past 18 minutes, how did you manage to go… Because I think it’s about 19 minutes or something.

0:04:38.5 JC: Yeah, I thought so too. I thought they might not put it up because it was about 19 minutes, but it’s not really that harsh. They really don’t have a problem, maybe in the main Ted stage, but TEDx…

0:04:53.3 WB: Yeah.

0:04:54.1 JC: I think they’re a little less hard there. Yeah.

0:04:57.0 WB: Yeah. The message that you give is so important, so powerful, and we’re gonna probably dive into that in some way, shape or form today. But I thought before we get too deep into the conversation, I mean, you are known as a transformational coach and you’re also the creator. I don’t think last time we spoke that I realized that you’re the creator of Inner Accelerator, or Inner Acceleration, can you share a little bit about what that is and what you do with that, if you don’t mind? 

0:05:29.4 JC: Well, sure. So inner acceleration is the latest evolution of trying to explain to people, what is it that I do really. If you look at, well, let me start this way. It’s really about personal and leadership development and team development so that an organization can tap into the performance and engagement and wellbeing potential of anyone within the organization. The thing is that there’s so much being done on the outer side when it comes to the performance, the behaviors that lead to that performance, you know, external motivation, motivators, money policies, hygiene factors in the company, whatever, but it’s not enough being done on the inner side. I worked also as a trainer for world renowned training bureaus. And if you look at what the trainings are being bought are 90% to 99% on the outer side, on what is the thing that people could do to achieve a certain result. How you say no, how do you delegate? How do you give or receive feedback? So that’s the soft skills, but usually on this outer side.

0:06:39.9 JC: Most companies are not daring to go into the inner side, the inner development. When I’m talking inner development, I mean the self-awareness, the ability to self-regulate, right? Your emotions, your attitudes, your behavior, from where then your behaviors come and actually manifest in results or the lack thereof. And the cultures that we create, all of us actively co-create every day with those behaviors and the lack thereof. So if we tap into that inner side that is not that visible, that some companies are scared of going there, then you accelerate that inner development to be going as fast as not more to the complexities and the evolution of the outside world with this VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, right? Complex and ambiguous, well, inside is also like that. And we’re not addressing it enough. I have developed a way to accelerate that so the companies can tap into this potential faster. And people as well.

0:07:38.9 WB: What’s the core philosophy behind inner acceleration? 

0:07:43.4 JC: Ooh, there’s, it’s a bunch. It’s a whole system [chuckle], but one thing I could add as a next part of my answer is, if you look at a graph of what is the most important set of skills for leadership, for professional development, for life, it’s been proven to be emotional intelligence. And if you look at a chart that compares the evolution of different intelligence throughout life, so we have the past here, we have the future, and you see that cognitive intelligence, IQ, goes really fast from when you’re a teenager or a little before up until you are 20, 25 years old. And then it stagnates and it flatlines, and your IQ basically doesn’t change much. EQ, which happens to be the most important set of skills, the highest predictor for performance, success, life satisfaction and everything, it starts going up in your teenage years very slowly with a different angle, and it peaks around 50-60 years old, or 40-55 years old. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could flatten that line or bring it closer so that at the beginning of your career you start benefiting from having those skills. And, especially, you know, it’s not surprising that a leader becomes a leader only when he achieved a certain emotional intelligence, of course. So what happens if you accelerate that development, then you get into this bounty-ness.

0:09:15.0 WB: I wonder if you don’t mind, I mean, it’s your call how much you share, but I wonder if you could share a little bit of your personal journey and some of the challenges perhaps that you faced as you moved in or on this path. Like you haven’t always been doing what you’re doing. So where did it start and how did you get to where you are? 

0:09:36.1 JC: Beautiful. Yeah. So I was a professional in, excuse me, sales and business development and marketing mainly, business management studies. And, very long story short, after several years of career, I was growing a lot very fast. I was earning a six figure salary before my 30s. So I was doing very well. But something happened because of meditation, because of yoga. There was a shift going on inside of me. And that shift was calling me to work with people, for people, through people.

0:10:14.0 WB: Okay.

0:10:14.0 JC: And I couldn’t, yeah, I could not listen to it. It was a clear message, a clear longing for that change, for a more meaningful career. And I shifted to that. I took my first certification in life coaching when [chuckle], was it in 2011 or ’12, I think. And I fell in love with the idea of coaching in general. I realized also I was very limited in what I could do with people with a certification in life coaching. And, from that point on, every year I took one or two certifications, and something about the mind, emotions, psychology, team dynamics, corporate development, culture, leadership development, you name it. And, I’m fascinated with that, to unlocking that potential.

0:11:03.3 WB: I’m guessing that is what led you down the path of putting the book together as well. So you have a bestselling book called The mind Canvas, A Revolutionary Approach to Personal Mastery. How was the book received, first of all? 

0:11:20.5 JC: It has five stars on Amazon, and, like you said, it became a Amazon bestseller in three categories, and the feedback is fantastic. I get people saying, you get the same kind of feedback all the time. Excuse me, my throat is a little bit, one second. The feedback that I get is the following. This comes from a well renowned coach. He said this, imagine you have a library, huge library where all the books on personal development, mindset and leadership are there. And suddenly you condense all of that knowledge into one book, that will be The Mind Canvas. It’s like a full library of personal development in one book. And the reason why, and this part of the inner acceleration, one of the principles of inner acceleration, is because with the mind canvas model, which is just one simple image, you simplify psychology, you make it simple, intuitive, and you also include in there, in that simplification, emotional intelligence, one image, right? Like the Lord of the Rings, one ring to rule them all. [laughter]

0:12:25.2 JC: And then if you think of, for example, okay, let’s talk about the Walt Disney creative strategy, something that there’s tons of workshops and trainings on that, or you want to talk about the grow coaching model, or you want to talk about dealing with limiting beliefs, anything that you can think of, a lot of it, you can find it back in a visual intuitive way inside my model, because it basically uses two variables, time and interpretation. We’re gonna talk about it probably in a moment, but it’s any kind of thought process, any kind of decision, you can find it in there, and therefore you can see what is the impact emotional that is having that thought, that decision in me, in my behavior, and the people who will be touched by my behavior or by my decision. You can see it right there and make a conscious choice to shift something.

0:13:21.7 WB: You speak about personal mastery. Why is it so important for us as individuals to really be masters of our own self? 

0:13:32.9 JC: Well, beautiful set of questions, and there’s a lot in that question. There’s many parts.

0:13:37.0 WB: Sorry. Sorry for that.

0:13:38.0 JC: Oh no, don’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. And I touched on this also on the book actually. That’s how I actually start the book. The first chapter is on the bigger picture. I once read a book from a very well renowned doctor from, I think it’s the Mayo Clinic in the United States. He said that life is nothing but the sum of present moments. What is life? It’s the sum of all present moments in your life, in my life. So really a good life is about mastering the present moment, your present experience. Then that takes us to another principle. Do we experience life really? Or do we experience our own inner interpretation and experience of what we don’t filter about the outer experience? Right? And up until this point, a lot of leadership trainings or coaching involves this, is knowing that leader to get to realize that what we see, the perception is not reality. Right? That’s a basic principle in most leadership trainings. That’s… Up to that point, yes. They go there and then deeper. Usually they don’t tend to go. And it is a shame, I think. Then if life is the mastery of all present moments, what does it mean? What is the present moment? Well, I have my actions and my decisions, and then what influences that? And therefore what creates then the environment and the experience that we all share? 

0:15:01.1 JC: Well, it’s our emotional state. If I’m afraid, if I’m not confident, if I’m demotivated, I’m not gonna do the things that will change my environment and therefore the experience of others as well. But if I’m confident, motivated, inspired, basically that would unlock my behavior. Different kinds of behavior. We all know that we should act in certain ways, but why don’t we, why do we postpone? Why do we… We plan on giving that feedback and the moment comes and our throats gets a nut and we cannot speak or we sweat and we choose not to do it. And then we never do it. It’s because of our emotional states. That is the door for behavior to change or not. And then what affects our emotional states? What dictates it is our mindset. And that’s a very simplistic way of saying all of our psychology.

0:15:53.6 JC: And in there, this is where it gets tricky. People don’t know this. And that’s why inner acceleration is about teaching people this. What is in the mindset that unlocks that emotional state, that unlocks the behavior, that changes the experience in reality? There’s thoughts, that comes in form of self talk or images. There’s also belief systems. I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve this. The other is wrong, I’m right. A full… All perception and belief systems, and there’s values, things that are important for us. There’s a whole movement on values-based coaching for leaders. Becoming aware of what’s striving subconsciously. Right? Your behaviors, not just values. It’s also belief and it’s also thoughts that repeat because you just practice them too much. Right? If you practice too much, the idea that in a meeting people will find you awkward, every time you go to a meeting, that’s a trigger, you will repeat the same thought, which is an image of people laughing at you.

0:16:54.3 JC: And you’re not gonna realize that you’re having that subconscious image and you’re going say, you know what? I’m not gonna speak today, and you think I’m making a conscious choice to stay safe. No, you’re not. You have made a subconscious choice and you don’t realize it, to not risk and therefore tap into the gains potentially of that risk. So, and there’s also needs, subconscious needs, because of our psychological development. There’s a bunch of stuff. And the thing is, because we are in our own heads, it’s very difficult to be aware of that, to take that step back, look at whatever is that mindset and to realize to what extent is this serving me, my goals and the people, my stakeholders and their goals and their needs. That ability to take a step back and look with consciousness, with awareness to what’s going on in the mind is the first element of emotional intelligence, self-awareness.

0:17:50.0 WB: Self awareness, yeah.

0:17:51.5 JC: And then to be able to shift that, to change it so that it unlocks new mindset, new feelings, new behaviors, new environments and experiences, it is the key. It is very, it’s not easy, but it’s very simple. And then with this visual models, once you see it and you get it, it is very difficult not to be able to master it. Very difficult. You would have to really want to sabotage yourself in your life to not tap into this power. [laughter]

0:18:18.3 WB: We’ll talk more about that because I always have a follow on question when we start talking about self-awareness, which is, awareness for me is always step one. Step two is then being able to tap into it and regulate the second pillar. But we’ll come back to that. I’m curious, while we’re on the topic of the book, the whole premise around the book is the mind canvas model. So I wonder if you can stop us sitting here in suspense and introduce the model for us and give us a little bit of an introduction to what is it, how does it work? And why is it so powerful perhaps? 

0:18:58.1 JC: Do you see my background now? 

0:19:00.5 WB: I do, yes.

0:19:02.0 JC: Great. So this is basically the basic version of the model, the mind canvas. What you see right here is two dimensions. You see time with the past, present, and the future. And you see interpretation or perception, whether it’s positive, neutral, or negative. It’s very simplistic. But at the same time, these are two universal variables that affect everything we do. Therefore, and that’s why it includes most of the things we can do with our minds. And what I say is that, look, if you go to a psychologist, usually what happens is you’re months, if not years, if not decades in therapy, right? And this takes me back to the question you asked me. Why did you write the book in the first place, right? Let me connect the two stories. After doing more than 10 years of coaching and trying things from eastern philosophy, neurolinguistic programming, from everything that I studied, I developed my own specific way of doing things.

0:19:58.2 JC: And the speed at which transformations were happening with people and their lives, their marriages, their businesses were changing. It was astonishing for them. They said, how is this possible that in three sessions you can do what a psychologist didn’t do in five or 10 years? Right? Their words, not mine. And I kept hearing things like that over and over again. I said, okay, there’s something special here that I need to reverse engineer and try to make it tangible and to give it back to people. And that’s when… It took me a year to reverse engineer the process. What was the 20% that gave the 80% of the result? That was the mind canvas. If you understand that this is how your mind works, that at any given time you’re always in the present moment trying to master that experience, any given time your mind is thinking or perceiving or interpreting something.

0:20:47.7 JC: And it can be about the past, present, or future. You can do that in a neutral, positive or negative way. You immediately have mastery or control over your emotional state, which is always in the present moment, walking with you everywhere, right? So you said, what is personal mastery? It’s the ability to master the inner dynamics of that person. Person comes, oh, I talked about this in the TEDx talk. Person is nothing but the persona, which the mask of an actor, the personality, that idea of who we are and what we do in life. It’s just a story. If you’re able to detach yourself from your thoughts and be able to look at them like this model allows you to because of the space that it creates, you can very simply realize, oh, at this moment in time, I have certain emotion that is affecting my behavior in a certain way.

0:21:38.8 JC: And it’s because, ah, I see it now, for example, I feel shame right now. And because of that shame, I’m lashing out in that meeting towards that person. And why do I lash out? Because I feel shamed right now. I’m trying to defend myself, or my ego is trying to defend itself. Why do I feel the shame? Shame is a typical emotion from a negative interpretation of something that happened in the past, accompanied by words like, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m so stupid. That’s so bad of me. But when you see, oh, look, this is where I am, you intuitively know that this kind of thinking, interpretation about you, life, the situation or whatever, creates a negative self-limiting emotional state that then manifests in your behavior, that is not gonna be functional, and creating a culture that people wanna be part of and feel safe in. The same thing for the future, right? 

0:22:35.7 JC: People say, how do I overcome fear or anxiety or stress? Well, you’re thinking about the future in a negative way, otherwise you could not feel anxiety or fear, period. If you then take that step back and say, how am I feeling right now? Oh, is it empowering or is it disempowering, simplified? Am I feeling empowered or not? If not, what kind of contents of my mind do I have that are creating that feeling? So that gives you self-awareness, not just about how you feel, but how you’re creating your own emotions, which means self-responsibility, right? We talk about accountability, responsibility, but we don’t take our own responsibility for our own emotions. We say, you make me feel this way. You offended me, you’re frustrating me. No, you’re not. All those emotions we create because we are unaware of our own expectations of what should be and what we deserve and not.

0:23:32.7 JC: And this gives you that perspective. So it takes you, gives you self-awareness, it allows you to be responsible for your own emotions, and then immediately, intuitively shift that into a at least neutral mental strategy, factual or positive self-empowering, empowering to others. For example, if I’m thinking of giving feedback, first I apply this to myself. Why am I so scared to give that person feedback? Ah, because the last time I tried, that person did something and manipulated me, you know, was quite a narcissistic person, whatever. Okay. So I learned that if I do that, then I feel bad and bad things happen. No, the question is, should the future be exactly like the past, can I not learn from that and evolve my behavior or my approach? Right? So the mind got stuck in the past negative and is not allowing you to learn, grow, change. Exactly. So first I need to do the work on myself. If I wanna accelerate my development in terms of giving feedback, first I need to look at myself.

0:24:37.3 JC: Okay. So I’m scared of what could happen because of something that happened bad in the past. Let me shift that, the negative, that’s not how it happened. The person was not aggressive towards me. The person, if you look at the facts, was with our own limitations on emotional intelligence, trying to let me know how not happy he was with what was going on with his inabilities, with, you know, he just never learned. That’s a fact. So he’s doing the best he can with the emotions he has at the moment. You see, again, when you speak that way and you think that way, neutral, you feel equanimous, the gray heart. That’s why it’s great. Instead of a red heart, which is a negative emotion or a green heart, in the animations I show it with the colors, right? So first is to go to equanimous point of view and interpretation of reality so that you’re free to choose empowering approaches, behaviors, decisions, not from fear, not from anger, not from these negative stuff.

0:25:38.1 JC: And then from the negativity, you’re free already. Your decision making is better, but you can also explore the other side of reality, right? What could be the positive intention of that behavior of that person? Well, if you look at it, and that person already has said the same thing already for 10th time in our relationship, it appears that I’m not listening. So maybe that is just the person being frustrated trying me to understand and to put myself in their shoes, for example. Right? Finally, I see it. There was a positive intention. Then what happens is I start feeling compassion, understanding, patience, all emotions that I couldn’t tap into before because my mind was focused on my negative biased interpretation of the past. Any emotional state you can activate it within one second.

0:26:21.5 JC: You can open the tap of any neurotransmitter you have in your body to create an emotion you want, and this perception that closes certain taps and open other ones. And this is what makes it so simple, so intuitive, so easy, and so fast. So if you’re having any, just to conclude, any kind of problem or conflict, there’s no conflict between people. There’s only conflict between perceptions of people, maps of the world, filters of reality. If you stay in conversation, challenging your own perception towards a positive and factual, and you invite the other one in conversation to do the same, there is no conflict. And then we say, what do we want to do with this? Where do we wanna go from here? And we co-create better realities for everyone.

0:27:12.7 WB: I heard a couple of words that you used. One was intention. So once we become self-aware, we then have that capacity at least to set our intention about our reaction or our behavior, and we can choose whether it’s going to be positive, negative, et cetera. So I think that’s a very nice map for sure. And it’s something that I also talk a lot about. So it fits very nicely with what I understand as well. I can imagine tools like mindfulness or meditation, and these types of tools, do you practice these as part of your coaching practice? 

0:27:31.7 JC: Those things take time to develop and practice, and practice, and practice, you know, minimum twice a week, hopefully three times, if not more a week to really tap into the benefits and to make it a habit. I don’t teach that. I tell people do it.

0:28:19.4 WB: Right.

0:28:20.0 JC: But, otherwise it wouldn’t be accelerated. Look, when I started in this path, I told you in 2012, with my first certification, I was trying to accelerate the impact I had on people. I became a yoga teacher because yoga, meditation, mindfulness was transforming my life, transforming, it was opening levels of consciousness I never thought possible. My whole personality changed twice in a period of three years. That’s how transformational it can be when you do the work. Seriously, I was going five times per week.

0:28:54.0 WB: Yes.

0:28:54.8 JC: Right? And working with swamis on tantric practices and energy work and psychology work. It was incredible. And I was giving yoga classes. I became a yoga teacher as well. I gave yoga classes for free just to give back. And once a month in a park in Santiago, Chile, and I realized, look, this is already three, four months and people are just now getting the physical benefits of it and maybe some relaxation and mental peace for a couple of hours until they go back to their homes or to their works Right? Or okay, help in the car with traffic. And the rage comes again. And this is not the path. I mean, it’s a modern world. We’re triggered like sages from the past were not triggered. So we need a different way. We need a different way.

0:29:42.2 JC: That’s when I continued to study and then I built what I built. If you do my work, if you learn these models and therefore look at life through these models in yourself, it really transform how your mind works. You think less but better, right? You just want to ask questions because everything is neutral. There’s no negativity or positivity events. Everything is neutral and you’re just curious and you just ask questions. And from there you don’t run any risks and you only harvest so much creativity, engagement from others. You know, you avoid conflict. But the thing is that, to be able to overcome the tendencies of the mind, which we are wired already with all the negativity and perceptions, there is a process of deconditioning and this mind canvas model helps you accelerate that. But if you want to take it to the optimum speed, you combine it, this intuitive framework with the practice of creating a step, taking a step back and looking at your mind. And that’s mindfulness. So the more you practice mindfulness, it accelerates also the mastering of this model and therefore is a perfect cocktail. Again, I do mindfulness, I do meditation. [chuckle] So yes, I know the power of both combined.

0:31:03.6 WB: Excellent. And it therefore embeds your approach. It helps to cement that approach through that longer term practice. I’m thinking resilience is almost a byproduct of what you’re introducing. So by becoming a more positive person, you’re going to be less focused on the negative. And therefore I suspect more resilient as things go on, as a challenge…

0:31:32.1 JC: Exactly. And it is almost as if you knew that I have this slide prepared or this background prepared, almost as if you knew. Whoever… Listeners, we did not have this planned.

[laughter]

0:31:42.8 WB: This was not staged. [laughter]

0:31:45.8 JC: No, no, no. What happens is that when you practice enough this way of being, this way of looking at your mind and life, there’s a transformation of your mind. You see that there is no use in thinking in negative terms. There is really no use. I mean, your psychology is wired already in a way that it will show you the risks, the future. It will show you potential negative things, we have that, you’re not gonna be able to avoid it. What we have to do is to be able to be conscious and minimize the unnecessary negativity that limits us and limits others, so the first reaction is gonna be negative. Maybe you say, oh, this bad thing could happen in the future, but immediately you’re aware and you say, thank you. I took the message, I see the problem or the risk, and now it’s not a negative thing. It becomes a factual thing. So in this model that you see here, basically the neutral, which was the gray in the middle has eaten up the red. And basically you go through life, and that’s an equal on the bottom. And it’s not a minus anymore.

0:32:53.5 JC: You go through life looking at things and people and circumstances in a neutral or positive way, because then you’re free from any negative emotion. Therefore, you have your neocortex always active to make decisions, to think critically instead of being hijacked and being an animal that reacts. So now you’re free from that. You don’t have that negative stuff. And at the same time, you are having amazing conversations based on fact, asking people, why did you do that? What did you want to get from that? What other options are there? You know the power of that, right? Or positively. I see why you’re trying to do this. And the intention is beautiful, my friend. I also see that there is a risk, which is a fact, how would it be if you maintain your positive intention and you try to avoid that risk? How would you do that? What other behaviors are there, my friend? And it’s a complete, constructive, beautiful, explorative, adventurous conversation.

0:33:53.2 WB: Sounds like the true definition of a growth mindset, one where you’re just constantly seeking the potential, the opportunities. You’re curious, you’re learning, you’re adapting, you’re growing. Yeah.

0:34:07.7 JC: I told you, any model you can think of, it’s here. [chuckle] So the growth mindset is basically, no matter what happens to you in the present moment, instead of going into negative interpretation, look at what can I learn from this? And you leverage it and you mine it, you harvest it, making it at least a neutral, but usually a positive. And then it’s just that my mind canvas gives you more intuitive ways to leverage that. What can I learn from that? How can I use that in the future? You move into the future. How would I like to behave, how do I look like when I incorporate this in my behavior, and what is the benefits that is gonna create for me, for others, tomorrow, one month from now, one year from now? It is all encompassing, but yes, it is also the growth mindset. Yeah.

0:34:54.3 WB: Is there some specific advice that you give your clients at the start of this journey, or is there a framework that you put in place at the beginning? I guess each is unique, but is there something that you typically will do with your clients at the start of this journey towards this inner acceleration? 

0:35:16.8 JC: Yeah, definitely. So there’s a bunch of things. The very first one is from the intake process. I do not have an intake if you do not invest time. And I invest the time also for free for them, in filling up three assessments that, some of them are mine, based on my model. Some of them are from other work, you do those assessments. I get the reports, you get the reports. I study those reports. We jump in the intake. And that intake is a very special one because I ask a few questions to completely understand the picture, and then I give the people their stories back to them. So this is what I see. You are someone who, and I tell the life stories, and they usually say, you know me better than my mom.

0:36:05.1 JC: Because I go into everything, the subconscious things that are driving their decisions their whole lives and why they’re in the current state that they are, that they wanna get away from and what is the things that are calling from within these evolutions, these developments that are calling them to step into, I completely get it because of this life model, psychological models. And once they see, wow, now I know why I’m stuck in this place, or why is it that I cannot have the progress that I want and it’s clear where I want to go, we have the A and the B, in a deep way. So now we have that and we know what the journey could look like. And yes, the journey is very variable because every session takes us to places that we might or might not expect.

0:36:47.2 JC: But, that is not something that is there. The other thing is that before session one, after they jump in the journey, they go to my community online platform where I have a program for them, very short. If they only watch the videos, it’s about an hour. If they do the exercise as well, and they use the worksheets and workbooks and guided practices that I have there, it could take up to a day or two depending on how deep they want to go. But at least I have them to watch the videos. So basically the videos are a summary of my book and other models that I also use. And when they jump into the first coaching session, we have the same language and the models to really analyze everything that’s going on and analyze others. And therefore, from the first session, the person is working with another mindset already.

0:37:40.7 WB: Yeah.

0:37:42.4 JC: And therefore that’s why it’s accelerated.

0:37:46.3 WB: Very nice. So are there any tips, practical exercises that our listeners could try if they wanted to start improving their mindset or their personal mastery? Like is there anything simple enough that you could introduce on the podcast that people could try to get underway? 

0:38:06.1 JC: Well, sure. It’s gonna sound cheeky but the first thing is you can buy the book because all the tips, all the principles and the basic processes and tips they can implement is in there. However, if there’s, without giving too much information and also making it short, there are three main practices that basically accelerate your inner development, there is what you do in the present moment with every experience, are you mindful and aware of the dynamics about the world, others behavior, your behavior, your emotions? If you do that already, you have a chance to make better choices, if you then from that awareness you realize, catch yourself in some kind of negative emotional interpretation, and if you shift it, you’re already gonna tap into the benefits of this.

0:38:55.9 JC: Just ask yourself, what is the opposite of what I was thinking? Ah, this asshole or something, excuse the language, really, really, is that person an asshole? Let’s go to the facts, is the person a piece of skin from the behind of the person? No. You know, so this is me being very rude, completely non-factual. So what is the thing here, what are the facts here? As you explore the facts immediately you’re free from judgment and from there you go into the positive, what else could it be, how is this an opportunity for both of us? You go from negative to neutral to positive, your perception is already transformed or that thing in that moment, you keep doing that, you know, as you go, throughout the day the more you practice the more pure your consciousness becomes, the more free you become from judgment, negativity and you stop being a toxic leader and a toxic person for everyone around you, for your neighbors, for your family, your kids, the more often the better, just like with meditation.

0:39:55.5 JC: I call this process, I gave you the short version of it, but I call this process the arise process, you arise from the negative, you arise from destruction, toxicity, towards higher frequencies, higher levels of thinking, those five steps of the arise process are very thorough and I explain it in the book, basically take you through a process that is guaranteed to transform your understanding of any situation and it teaches you to coach yourself not superficially, like okay, just shift my thoughts, no, no, no, that’s superficial, a transformation of thought process, a self-coaching process of five steps that teaches your brain to heal and to purify itself, so that’s one thing, but I give you the gist of it already, and if you always go like that, then your memories become better memories because it’s a more positive memory that now doesn’t haunt you, but it just influence you in a neutral positive way, so every day you become more free and light.

0:40:51.4 JC: The other two practices is what you do at the beginning of the day, what you do at the end of the day or in the beginning of any time period in the end of any time period, you could do this monthly or yearly, and they call that the planting ritual and the harvesting ritual, so if before any meeting unit of time or day you look into the future and you explore, what do I want, right? That future positive. How do I wanna live today, what feelings do I wanna experience today, what values do I wanna live by today from my personal leadership compass or something? How do I wanna be with others, what results do I want to get? Whatever.

0:41:30.1 JC: If you explore that, we know how it works, visualization is proven, you wire your brain for manifesting those things because you’re aware of cues of the environment’s opportunities and you already play them in your mind so basically you don’t have any fear to do the things you know you wanna do, you have the confidence because you’ve seen it happening already, so you activate confidence, motivation, inspiration, you feel great, you manifest your day but more and also you explore in that planting ritual the negative, but because you’re conscious now it’s not negative, it’s factual.

0:42:02.4 JC: You ask yourself questions like what could happen today, what is a moment of truth, what is a high stake moment? Ooh, that meeting with a partner, the relationship is not very good. Okay, great, how do I see that in a neutral way and what would I like to do with that so it stays factual or positive? Yeah, I would like it to be even better than it was and for that I can actually stop doing that and I can actually start asking these types of questions that unlock understanding, compassion. So you manifest your day even looking at the potential risks and then at the end of the day or unit of time you look back and you harvest, so you plant or sow and then you harvest, and you do the same thing, you always start with the positive, always, because the mind always wants to go to the negative first.

0:42:49.2 JC: So you coach your brain to go into the positive. What am I proud of? What was great today that I did? Right? How did I live my values? How was I the person or leader that I want to be? And you harvest because otherwise you’re gonna forget it, it’s not gonna go into your long-term memory after you sleep, and then every day you’re gonna judge yourself, ah, I’m so stupid, I’m so whatever. No, all the gold is there to be mined, you just have to see it, and once you do, it’s gonna empower you from the past, from your memories every day, so harvest that, become aware of that positive things. What were moments that I acted in a way that I’m proud of or happy, success moments, et cetera, and then you go into the negative that is not negative anymore because you’re conscious.

0:43:33.5 JC: What were things that were not that well? [chuckle] It’s not bad, not that well. Things that could have gone better, that’s a fact. Great, and what can I learn from them, what did I do, how did I cause it? What other behavior would avoid that situation in the future? What do I learn from the behavior of other? What could have been the intention of the other? Why is that person acting that way? And this reflection expands your consciousness and purifies it, then you go to sleep, the next day you have an operative system that is less heavy, more pure, works faster and has other kinds of programs that you just downloaded because of that reflection.

0:44:14.0 WB: Very nice, beautifully explained, some real pearls of wisdom, thank you for that. Yeah, where are you heading, anything you’re doing at the moment, any new projects? 

0:44:26.9 JC: Definitely, so after doing this work, because the book is out for two and a half years now, I think, more or less.

0:44:32.3 WB: Yeah.

0:44:33.2 JC: Maybe three, what I have been doing is bringing this work now to perfecting the B2C side and working with founders and leaders internationally, and now that that is completely on its own wheels, I’m going now into B2B with trainings and workshops and group coachings in organizations, so I have a set of sessions, it could be two hour, four hour, full day, two day, whatever, to go as deep as the client. Depends on the amount of impact they want on the development of their people. If it’s a organization that doesn’t wanna go so deep because it’s afraid of people being spooked by subconsciousness or things like this, well great, there’s a minimum level of self-awareness and self-responsibility that needs to take place for their transformation and acceleration to happen and that’s what I’m bringing, have actually just finished choosing my first group of facilitators that will be working with me giving this, some of them are old clients, some of them are trusted trainers that I respect a lot, and yeah, I’m bringing that into companies now, my friend.

0:45:51.3 WB: Well, all the best with that. Where can people go if they wanna connect with you and and learn more about what you just mentioned and what we’ve spoken about? 

0:46:00.8 JC: Well, either by my name, Juan Campoo, that is J-U-A-N C-A-M-P-O-O, Juan Campoo, or using inneracceleration.com. I’m most active on LinkedIn so you can also find me there. You can find my LinkedIn with my name or on my website at the bottom of it, and yeah, and the book is called The Mind Canvas, there are a bunch of books with that name, so either you find it with my name next to The Mind Canvas name or maybe we can share the link with them, is that possible? 

0:46:36.8 WB: We will, yes, yeah.

0:46:38.5 JC: Got it.

0:46:39.5 WB: Juan, great conversation, it’s been really enjoyable to listen to the clarity you bring around this topic.

0:46:49.2 JC: I feel very honored by your words, it confirms what I’m doing and I wanna give you the motivation to continue my friend, so thank you.

0:46:57.4 S2: Thank you for joining us on the ET Project, a show for executive talent development. Until next time, check out our site for free videos, ebooks, webinars and blogs at coaching4companies.com.