Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in another great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers, as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now, here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host Tony DUrso. so I interview some of the most successful people in the world and I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality, and hear the successful entrepreneurs who provides insights and guidance you can use to move along your vision path. Listen to my shows on all the podcast platforms such as Spotify or iTunes, Apple podcasts. Just search for Tony D-U-R-S-O. Okay Success squad, before we get going here's a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show. Please stay tuned for an important message from SimpliSafe and how to get commercial-grade, enterprise-level security for your home at such a low cost, you have to listen a few times to believe, and get ready to build your first sales funnel without having to hire an entire team to help out as Click Funnels makes it super easy. Visit TonyD-U-R-S-O.com/click (C-L-I-C-K). More info on them just ahead so please stay tuned.

Today's show is about fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. Let's see what we can learn today. And at the end of this interview, I'm going to do a summary recap of what we went over so stay tuned for that. Here's some info on Michael.

Michael Benner is best known for his popular human potential radio programs in Los Angeles on KABC-AM, KLOS-FM, KLSX-FM, KCBS-FM, KRLA-AM and KPFK-FM. As a result of writing a breakthrough self-awareness training for the Orange County Sheriff's Academy, Michael published Fearless Intelligence featuring practical tools for developing awareness, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. And for some of my more endearing fans that have been with me for a while, you've heard me mentioned Michael Benner here and there in talking about who's helped me with my podcast and has given me such great advice, and I just want to publicly one more time thank Michael. He's helped me with when I've had questions about podcasting, he's just been absolutely fantastic. And if you like my show, which I'm sure you do, because you're listening to it right now, I owe my gratitude to Michael for his tweaks and his adjustments and his advice, and I could probably spend the rest of the show talking about that. So here I am, once again, interviewing my mentor, and I'm not really nervous, but I'm very extra pent up excited. So forgive me a little bit. But here we go. This is a great show. Wait till you hear about Fearless Intelligence. All right, here we go.

Hi, Michael. Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. So great to have you on with us once again.

Michael:

Well, Tony. Hello. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited about chatting with you today.

Tony:

The honor and the excitement is all mine. As I've already mentioned in the intro, you've been on our show a few times. You've helped me learn so much on podcasting. I just want to thank you once again, I'm so honored. It's just exciting to have you Michael. There's something about who you are, and now we're going to talk about Fearless Intelligence, which is an amazing book, and we're going to talk quite a bit more about that. But before we get into it, we're going to go back in the past. We’re going to follow your journey to success, Michael. How did it all start for you? What's your backstory?

Michael:

Well, I have been in radio since college, and that really started with my interest in folk music and Bob Dylan in the late 60s protest music, and a lot of it based on my interest in anti-war activity. And so I learned to play guitar and I listened to folk music and started doing campus radio at Michigan State University when I went away to school. And about a year into it, I thought, this is fun. I'm really enjoying myself, and I realized that I could get a four-year degree, a bachelor's degree from Michigan State in broadcasting. It was basically in Business Management, Broadcast Management, but I just wanted to the degree. So I changed my major from General Business to Broadcasting. I majored in Journalism, ad by the beginning of my junior year, I began to work at a local radio station, a commercial radio station in Lansing, Michigan, as a 19,20-year-old news guy, doing the City Hall and State Capitol beat.

And one thing led to another; that was my career. I did that until I was about 40 years old. In addition to news, I did a lot of radio talk shows based on current events and my interest in - I don't know how else to say it, Tony - my interest in the truth. Maybe it was that I'm a suspicious guy, maybe a little cynical. I always wanted to know the truth. So I thought if I was a journalist, I would find out the truth and be able to spill the beans. But as I began to do that and the radio talk shows, I thought no, the truth I want goes beyond the news. I don't want to just report politics and government and the conflict of partisanism. It was something deeper I wanted; I wanted philosophic truth and so I started a business teaching meditation and hypnosis. By this time, a hobby of mine, an avocation, which was hypnosis, and meditation and the use of altered states to expand awareness. That became my new vocation.

I gave up radio. I continued to do radio as a part time job around my 40th birthday. But that's the point where I began do hypnotherapy and teach meditation skills, and I just found that people get so much smarter particularly me. So much more aware, so much more clarity, when I manage stress and relaxed and paid attention to my breathing, quieted the jabbering of my monkey mind. And I started sharing that with people and doing it as a living and that's the rest of the story. Rest of my life that's what I've done is help people use the altered states that deep relaxation promotes to expand their awareness.

Tony:

Michael, do you think that this quest for the truth that you started out with as that young journalist that you want the truth? Is that what led to the vision and brought about your current success that you have now in Fearless Intelligence?

Michael:

Well, one of the great wisdoms of all cultures and all times is that the prime motivator is fear. The reason we do what we do, and the reason we don't do what we should do is fear. Fear is an element in everything. People will often talk about fear by any names - stress, anxiety, anything Tony from panic and horror on one end to mere nervousness or mild apprehension - it is still fear. It could be the tiniest little bit of concern. You know, men will say, Well, I'm not afraid. I have my concerns, but I'm not afraid. Well, it's all the same thing - stress, anxiety, fear. The way I use the term, it's all the same thing and people will say, well, that really kills motivation because people think the prime mover, the prime motivator, is moving toward what you love. Well, in the absence of fear, that's true, but much more powerful from the brain's point of view, than moving toward what we love, what we desire, what we want, is avoiding what we don't want - this basic survival. And I think one of the most important points that we need to make here at the top of the show, is that fear Tony has nothing at all to do with danger.

Tony:

I'm going to drill down a little bit more, actually a lot more. the rest of the show is going to be on Fearless Intelligence, and I already have so many questions and so much that I want to learn about but I just want to get some of the basics and understand how you set off with this goal, with this vision. You found that stress, fear, they're similar? I kind of get that but was this purpose here? Was this reason to help others remove fear? Why did you go down this road?

Michael:

Well, I had twin interests. I wanted myself to eliminate fear, stress and anxiety in my life, and because I was increasingly successful in doing that, and studying the research around that, I wanted to share that with other people. The people closest to me, my family, my friends, my business associates, and then, as I say, in midlife around the age of 40, that became my vocation. It was my career, so I offered services. Personal Development Strategies is the name of the business and I just offered these tools and techniques. I am not a healer. It's not a psychotherapeutic approach. There's no analysis of people's lives that are involved. I'm a teacher, and not a therapist. And so people will often say, well, does insurance apply? And say, no, this is not a medical thing. It's not psychotherapy. This is school. I'm an educator. I'm going to teach you to confront fear, stress and anxiety, which I said before is not about danger.

Fear is how it feels not to know something. Ralph Waldo Emerson said famously 'knowledge is the antidote to fear'. So, if knowledge is the antidote, then clearly fear is about what we don't know what we don't understand, what we're unaware of or ignorant about, what is uncertain in our lives, whether it's dangerous or not, and rarely is it dangerous. I mean, how many times has somebody said to you or someone you know, what are you so worried about? Why are you stressing out? And we have to admit, I don't know. Well, that's the point. That's what fear is; it's what you don't know. So the antidote to fear, stress and anxiety is to know and understand. And then the question is well, to know and understand what? Well, the circumstances or situational awareness, to know the problem, to know the world around you, to have a sense of what other people are going to do. But at the core, more importantly is to know and understand yourself. Let me just add, that's the biggest fear of all, not understanding who we are, why we're here and what we're for.

Tony:

We're talking about Fearless Intelligence with Michael Benner. You can find him at Michaelbenner.com Benner is B-E-N-N-E-R, or you can go direct to fearlessintelligence.com. I recommend going to Michael Benner, seeing what he's all about and there's a button there you can click and find out more about the book; fearlessintelligence.com. This is the Tony DUrso Show, where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about Fearless Intelligence with Michael Benner. But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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Tony:

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All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about Fearless Intelligence with Michael Benner. Michael says during my initial career as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, I became fascinated by the emerging fields of emotional intelligence and relationship management. In 1987, I left broadcasting as a full time profession and launched personal development strategies to address "the most critical personnel problems in the workplace - poor self-awareness and the consequential lack of empathy, communication, leadership and motivation skills".

All right, and now back to the chat with Michael. Michael, let's get into your vision path here. I have quite a few questions, but I want to make sure I have a good understanding. You've talked about it already. You've given us some information. Let's give a good definition for fearless intelligence. Michael:

Well, think of the opposite, Tony. Think of the fact that whenever we're frightened or as I say, just nervous or worried or concerned to whatever degree, a little or a lot, it causes us to be less aware. We get stupid; fear makes us stupid. We can think of performance anxiety. You're studying for the test, you know the answers, you know that you know the answers, but the anxiety of the performance causes you to blank out and all of a sudden your memory goes out the window, or the nervousness of the first date when you're a young person, or a job interview, or standing on stage as a public speaker, a singer, a dancer. All kinds of situations where the anxiety and the stress of performance causes us to do worse. You know, the stage fright. Well, we can turn stage fright into stage fever. We can turn oh no into oh boy. We can turn the fear that degrades intelligence into the fearlessness that makes us more intelligent.

So fearless intelligence is the antidote to the stupidity if you will. I hate to be insulting but even the word ignorance is ... I don't mean we lack the capacity to understand; I'm saying we lack the information. You know, to say someone is ignorant, that's usually a pretty insulting thing but there are not a lot of words for a failure to understand something. There's confusion. That's a good word. There's uncertainty and there's unawareness. That's about it. But that's what stress and anxiety and fear by any name will do to you. It makes us makes us stupid. It makes us ignorant. We miss opportunities. We're more likely to make mistakes, it degrades performance. So learning to manage stress, to mitigate and eliminate fear, to become fearless makes us wow, a whole lot more intelligent. That's what wisdom is - the intelligence of fearlessness.

Tony:

Michael, I want to drill down into this and with the fear of asking questions again that are going to be very similar, I just want to understand, because I've been on stage. Fortunately knock on wood, I don't have stage fright but way back when when I was younger and speaking in front of people, even if I knew the subject, I would get this nervousness and I find the same thing today in podcasting. I've spoken and interviewed to hundreds of people - millionaires, billionaires, well known people - but ever so often, there's someone that's very well known or very famous or whatever and I get nervous and it's so weird, because I know what I can do. So why is it we kind of zone out when it's something that we already know so well?

Michael:

It has to do with a structure in the brain called the amygdala. It's in the reptilian or limbic brain, and it's the 'fight or flight' center, and it's concerned ... it's really hard wired. The amygdala is a small almond shaped cluster of neurons or brain cells that is triggered by anything uncertain, unknown, or confusing, because there's a potential for danger in it. The brain doesn't need to recognize the danger. Doesn't need to know for a fact that it's dangerous. All it needs to be is unaware of what's going to happen next, and the more that's at stake, the more likely it is to be triggered.

Let me bring up an image in our minds of a bell shaped curve. You probably remember in school being graded on the curve, which means a few people got As, few people flunked out and most people got Cs, and somewhere in between the A and the C, there were B students and D students. But the peak of the curve was the average. The mean was the C. Stress is the same way, Tony. And so a little bit of performance anxiety is called eustress and the prefix 'eu' in eustress means good. So eustress is the anticipation that helps us do a better job. We can call it excitement or enthusiasm. The 'oh boy, can't wait to get on stage' or it's a baseball game and I'm coming up to bat next. I'm in the on deck circle. Boy, I'm really excited'. And so, if we didn't care at all, if we were apathetic, we wouldn't do well. And so a little bit of stress, eustress, good stress helps us perform better.

But there's a point of diminishing return once we go past the top of that curve. Too much of a good thing becomes distress and now our performance is degraded. Now what had been the excitement, 'oh boy, this is great' becomes dread, dismay, worry and doubt, and brings up images of failure and given the way the mind works, we reap what we sow. If you think you're going to fail or screw something up, you are more likely to actually bring that about. So the answer to your question has to do with understanding that bell shaped curve a little. A little bit of stress and anxiety is a great thing; helps us improve our performance, but too much will degrade the performance. And so stress management is not about eliminating stress in our lives, and fearless intelligence, the title of my book is not about eliminating fear, stress and anxiety. It's about facing it, embracing it, understanding it since it represents what we don't understand, and moving through our fear. We shouldn't avoid what we're afraid of. We should move into it and through it and out the other side. Psychology is the same. The only way out is through.

Tony:

I'm starting to get this in my brain here fearless intelligence where you confront it, you're facing it and you're just going through it, and then that facing of it helps mitigate that nervous anxiety, even if it's something you've ever done. For example, I'm just going to make this up. You're meeting the President of the United States. You've met thousands of people, but this particular person creates this anxiety, this excitement, but if you can just come to grips with it, face it, confront it, you're less anxious about it. Did I get that right so far?

Michael:

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, one of the practical tools that we teach, and I did a training a few years ago, a 3-year training for the Orange County, California Sheriff's Academy, where we trained all the deputies and their staff, from forensics lab people to jailers to of course patrol officers and detectives. Everybody in the Orange County Sheriff's Department went through this course that I put together. We called it internal vigilance, and one of the things they learned to do was anticipate frightening situations and rehearse them in relaxed states with their eyes closed, using guided imagery or visualization. So if I were going to meet the president, any president, any powerful person, job interview could be, as I said earlier, a first date with somebody you really, really like and you want it to go really well. I would, at least once a day for four or five days before the actual meeting, take 5 or 10 minutes, sit down, breathe, relax, close my eyes and imagine the meeting going exactly as I want it to go. And I might anticipate problems - what if this happens and what if that happens - and visualize myself handling it and trying out different ... in other words, rehearsing in your mind's eye. You and I, three or four years ago, when we did one of these podcasts, you asked me about interviewing Chuck Norris back in the early 1970s. I don't know if you remember asking me about that.

Tony:

I remember very well. I was going to comment on that, but I'll let you bring it up.

Michael:

Well, the reason I brought it up now, is that at that time, this was 1971 or '72, we were both kids. Right? And he was in town. This was in Detroit and he was promoting a kickboxing tournament in Detroit, and I asked him about Bruce Lee, and I asked him about guided imagery or visualization. And he sat bolt upright, as if this was the secret of secrets, and he said, you know about this? And I said, Yeah, Tim Galloway just wrote a book called The Inner Game of Tennis, and he talks about visualization and guided imagery in becoming a better tennis player. And there are books about the inner game of golf and the whole field of sports psychology has come out into this idea that you can rehearse with your eyes closed, sitting in an easy chair and see it going perfectly, exactly as you want it to go. So that when you actually get in the situation of meeting the President or going on the first date or playing in a golf tournament or tennis game that's important to you, or taking a test or a job interview or whatever, the unconscious mind goes, oh, this again. We've been doing this all week, and we've been just acing it. We're doing so well with this. Here it is, because the unconscious does not know the difference between real or imagined.

Tony:

I am so glad you brought this up again, because I understand it now on a higher level and I'm definitely going to use this when I run into situations that I think could make me a little bit uneasy or anxious, or something. I meet the president or whatever. I really appreciate that. Thank you. This really has gotten home to me. Thank you.

This is the Tony DUrso Show, where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@TonyDUrso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this and share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. All right, and now back to the chat with Michael.

Now some of these other points we've talked about fear, anxiety and stress, and that I guess is a good word, it degrades that self-awareness and intelligence, and if we confront and face whatever we're facing, it relaxes; it brings us back to the front of the bell curve. Are those the only culprits by the way - fear, anxiety and stress? Are those the key things that we have to look out for that create this effect on us?

Michael:

All I think in terms of words that describe fear of the Big Three, besides fear itself is anxiety and stress. But as I mentioned before, it could be anything from panic, dread, horror, or totally freaked out. You know, we've heard of panic attacks and there's all kinds of anxiety disorders like attention deficit disorder, ADD/ ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, but just words like apprehension or nervousness or worry or doubt or confusion. Anytime you don't know, you're going to feel some trepidation. There's another word - consternation. We have lots of words for it, but it's all fear. I'll tell you this, clinical psychologists will often distinguish between fear and anxiety and they'll say fear is a response to real danger, and anxiety is a response to nonspecific confusion and uncertainty. But the reason I see it as all the same is that in either case, the more you know about it, the less you suffer from it.

So even if there's a real danger - you come around the corner, turn into an alley and there is a mangy, rabid dog snarling at you, drooling, in an attack mode with its ears up, that's a fear of real clear and present danger. But even in a case like that, the fear is less about the danger then what you don't know about the danger, you see? So fear is by any name - anxiety, stress, worry, doubt, nervousness apprehension - is what we don't know whether dangerous or not. Let's say I have a poisonous snake, and I'm holding it carefully right behind the head so it can't hurt me, and I tried to intimidate a group of people with a snake by moving it toward their face and trying to intimidate them with a snake. Each person is going to feel a different level of fear until I come to perhaps one person who knows snakes, who has raised snakes, who breeds snakes, who love snakes and knows all about snakes. This poisonous snake is just as dangerous, but there will be much less fear because they know and understand. So the antidote to fear as I said earlier - Emerson wrote this - knowledge or understanding is the antidote to fear because fear is a feeling or a reaction to what we don't know, whether dangerous or not.

Tony:

So the key point here is the unknown. We are afraid of something that we don't know, which is still a little weird because we could be a little bit apprehensive about things that we do know but still, there's some iota of unknown in it for us to be uneasy or anxious about.

Michael:

Yes, and that's primarily because at the center of everything we don't know is our individuality. We don't know ourselves and nothing is more frightening to people than who am I? Notice all the admonitions about not judging other people, but we do it anyway. Why do we judge others? Why do we compare ourselves to others? Because it's risk free; it's perceived. This is not true, but it's perceived to be a risk free way of understanding myself. Well, boy, is that person stupid? Boy, is that person ugly? Boy, is that person that failure? Boy, are they poor? They're rich, but I sure wouldn’t want to be rich like that the way they are, so ostentatious and proud. We're always comparing and competing even if we try not to, because what most people wish to avoid is a direct encounter with who am I? What makes me unique? I've got fingerprint evidence and DNA proof that I'm one of a kind, and yet 99% of people couldn't care less. In fact, they are terrified to know themselves, to understand themselves. Ostensibly I think, Tony, it's because we're afraid all the critics, the people that have tried to humiliate us, make us feel inadequate, we're afraid to find out they may have a point. That we really are bad or stupid or wrong, or not good enough or handsome enough. Our concern with what other people think is overwhelming, when in fact we should be concerned about our own self-esteem and self-image, and frankly, not even what we think about ourselves but what we care about. This is an important point and when I present this in a public setting in speeches or classes, I often get a real strong response to this because people never considered it. I think it's real important to consider that when it comes to self-awareness, we are not what we think of ourselves. We are what we care about.

Tony:

Michael, sometimes we're really good at something. There should be no fear. There's nothing we don't know. We've done this routine... let's just take a dance routine. We've done it 1000 times. We know it, we live it, we breathe it, we eat it, we sleep it and yet it comes time to perform and we flop. So why sometimes is it some people just try, try, try, and they should be so good, but sometimes it just seems to make things worse instead of better. Why and how does that happen?

Michael:

Yeah, it's a great question, Tony. Because what we're getting into now is the differences between the common sense of intelligence as a mental faculty, and the emerging field of emotional intelligence. And because we don't know much about emotional intelligence, we rely excessively on the only thing we learned in school, which is mental intelligence. So, if I love to dance and I've got this dance routine that you just described down pat, I will do well as long as I go with the flow and just feel it. But if I start to think about it, that's when I screw it up. There's a poem in my book about a centipede. I can't repeat it by heart. I can only paraphrase it, but it's about some sort of ladybug as I recall that approaches the centipede and says how do you move? You've got 100 legs. How do you coordinate all of that? And the centipede never moved again!

Tony:

Oh!

Michael:

Because the centipede never thought about I got 100 legs, how do I move, but as soon as he began to think about it, he was paralyzed. And so we call this paralysis by analysis Tony, or more commonly, we just tend to overthink things. And part of knowing yourself is trusting yourself and allowing yourself to rely on your emotional intelligence. There is no wrong way to dance. So even if you have this routine down and you get out there and you step wrong, well dance out of it, dance through it. Put a smile on your face and turn it into something even more elegant. Stop judging yourself and go with the feeling. This is an emerging field. It's only about 25 years old now, emotional intelligence, but in business and elsewhere - sports, universities, professional sports teams and the biggest corporations in the world - are now including emotional intelligence in their executive training and in their employee trainings as well, because it's all about it. There's four parts to emotional intelligence - self-awareness, learning to identify and manage emotional feelings. The second part. The third part is empathy, and the fourth is relationship management.

Tony:

Those are all a form of intelligence? When I think of intelligence, I don't usually think of those. This is quite something.

Michael:

Well listen to your words. I don't think of those. Because emotional intelligence is not about thinking; it's about feeling. So the first two is intrapersonal - self-awareness and managing your feelings. This is assertiveness and impulse control, when to step forward, when to hold back. For example, working with the police at the Sheriff's Academy I mentioned, part of the way that class came down in a practical sense was let's say you're having a problem at home. You and your spouse had an argument, or you get a big tax bill that you thought was settled and you actually owe the IRS a whole lot of money, or maybe the dog died and you go to work and some poor guy rolls through a stop sign, gets a little upset with you as a law enforcement officer, and the next thing you know, you've tased him, or hit him with a club or something, out of an emotion that really had nothing to do with him talking back to you, much less rolling through the stop sign. It was just this misplaced anger and hostility that was operating at an unconscious level that really came out of the trauma of home, misdirected anger. So expanding your self-awareness and learning to manage those feelings are the first two stages of emotional intelligence. That's intrapersonal.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. But first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. Michael says, I designed three basic programs, fearless intelligence, feeling like yourself and smarter than you think, to teach mindful self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking to individuals, business teams and executives. The fearless intelligence training was originally commissioned by the Orange County Sheriff's Academy in Anaheim, California, where it became a groundbreaking introduction to internal vigilance for law enforcement personnel. "I continue to draw upon all three programs when tailoring a convention speech, seminar, retreat or other presentation to address the needs of a particular business, company, or corporation", and now back to the chat with Michael.

Michael:

And then three and four, the empathy and the relationship management, are leadership skills that are interpersonal. Now, I take what I've learned about myself through the way I feel and use that to empathize with somebody on my team, or somebody that I'm supervising at work, or a boss that I’m trying to please. I can empathize now because I understand myself. There's no way we can understand another person beyond the limits of what we recognize in ourselves.

Tony:

That's definitely opened up some doors for me in terms of intelligence. I've never thought of those, as I mentioned, as being intelligence. So it has given me a new level here, a new vista of that. Very interesting stuff. And I definitely want to have a chat another time, I believe on emotional intelligence and really understand this. I mean, it is a very big subject and we're definitely going to have to have some time on that. Michael, what are you looking to accomplish in the next few years?

Michael:

Well, you know, I'm pretty much retired. I'm in my early 70s, and I moved from Los Angeles, having lived there most of my adult life out into the desert east of Palm Springs here and it's quiet and peaceful. And we had open desert behind me and we're backed up against these beautiful pink mountains. Every sunrise and sunset is absolutely gorgeous. And yet the first thing that I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of at night is becoming more self-aware and helping other people to expand their awareness. Tony, we hear words like mindfulness now and living in the moment rather than wasting our lives with regrets about the past and fears of an anticipated future that hasn't even happened yet, and every moment we spend thinking about the past or the future, there's a moment that we're missing, that we lose forevermore.

I tell a story in my book about going into the Starbucks on the Sunset Strip with my wife one day, and in front of the bakery counter breaking down in a weak moment and buying one of their chocolate espresso brownies even though I do better, and we got in the car and we went off down the Sunset Strip. We're looking at the people, the giant billboards. Next thing I know I reach for the brownie and the package is empty, and there wasn't a little dog in the car to blame and I know my wife wouldn't have eaten it. She would have bought her own if she wanted. She has better discipline than I do. So I knew I must have eaten the darn brownie and never even realized it. A thousand calories wasted. But that wasn't the end of it, because what followed immediately on the heels of that was the idea of me being maybe 80 years old, and ending up in some kind of nursing home someplace, realizing that my life was almost over and I forgot to pay attention. Realizing that my life was almost over, and I wasn't there. I wasn't paying attention not only to the brownie, but to the sunrise, the sunset, to the flowers, to the fragrance of the night blooming jasmine, to quiet times, to read more poetry or to listen to more music, or read more good books.

I understand the wonderful joy of accomplishment, of entrepreneurship, of creating a business and to succeeding or providing for the security of your family, of having a car that starts reliably when you push the button, and a home or the roof doesn't leak and a decent pair of clothes to jump into. But we have to ask ourselves, when is enough enough, and what is appropriate and what is balance? Am I integrating my life in such a way that I have an opportunity to live it? It's not all about commerce. It's about looking deeply into your partner's eyes the way you did when you first met her or him. Spending time with your pets and your kids and their kids and your parents and neighbors, friends and associates. Quality time with the TV turned off, talking about things that really matter, not just newspaper headlines and politics and conflict and all of that. So as I get older, I'm more and more interested in addressing the quality, not the quantity, but the quality of my life and supporting other people who wish to do the same thing, to balance an abundant and prosperous and successful life with a life of quality, so that when you do turn 80 or 90 or 100 years old, or however long you may be able to make it, you won't ever think, gosh, I forgot to pay attention.

Tony:

I just love that. that is just so strong. I'm almost speechless from that. You've just zoned me in. We should be more grateful and be more mindful of what's important to us now because we have things we're always striving for. I want this. I want this. I want more, but how about just being grateful for what you have? A roof over your head that doesn't leak that's here every day, a refrigerator full of food, a good family. Those are things that sometimes like that brownie, we somehow take for granted.

Michael:

Oh my goodness. And you know the pressure of the high technology that we're dealing with; everybody on their phones. I don't know if you've noticed, but I bet you have. The rapid rate at which people's ability to speak clearly is degrading. People are not reading. They're not thinking critically. Conversation is becoming shallow and meaningless. The attention span of people is getting very foreshortened and we're killing ourselves. We're just living lives that we're not present in, we're not aware of. That's why fearless intelligence and emotional intelligence are all about self-awareness. The subtitle of my book Fearless Intelligence is 'the extraordinary wisdom of awareness', and that's the secret of life. We are not what we think. Actually, we're not even our feelings as much as we are our awareness of our thoughts and our feelings. You can have a thought that you're not aware of, or you can make conscious, deliberate, purposeful decisions. You can have feelings that you don't understand, or you could take the time to expand your awareness and look for the meaning and the significance of this complex set of feelings. We can behave reflexively. Everything is a reaction, knee jerk reflex, or we can expand our awareness and do things purposefully and deliberately. When it comes to perceiving the world around us, the same thing. We can just live in the world but we're not really of it. We're not immersed in it. We're missing something and we don't even know what we've lost. It's our soul. It's our essence. It's our love. It's our connection to other people and life itself. When was the last time you climbed a tree, Tony? You remember when we were kids we climbed trees?

Tony:

Trees when you live in the city? There are no trees here.

Michael:

You better go find one before it's too late. Climbing trees is cool because adults never look up and when you're a kid, you become invisible in the tree. Nobody knows you're up there because they're too busy; they don't look up. When was the last time you rode a bike or flew a kite or rolled down a grassy hill or ran barefoot in the grass? Tony, we've got to rediscover the balance. Technology is wonderful. I love my smartphone and my computer and the internet and all these cool gadgets. I love it but it's not everything or nothing. We have got to integrate and balance our lives and awaken through emotional intelligence, fearless intelligence an integrated, balanced approach to living in the world.

Tony:

Well said. We are more than this. We're souls and we forget that we're souls created by a divine entity, God, the Creator. We forget this sometimes and we just have to bring it back. And coming back to those roots opens up new vistas for us. Once again, we talked about fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. You can find him at Michaelbenner.com, B-E-N-N-E-R, or you can go direct to fearless intelligence.com and get the book. I highly recommend it. It's going to change the way you do business. And as you probably got a little glimpse of it's going to change how you live your life, how you deal with people, how you interact and you know what? You may just wind up enjoying life a whole lot more. Michael, thank you so much. This is great. We're going to have to get you back on because I want to talk about emotional intelligence another time.

Michael:

That would be wonderful, Tony and I think you have a very exceptional program. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I have even heard in the past directly from some of your listeners who said, I heard you on the Tony DUrso Show, and so anytime I'd be thrilled and honored to be back on the show. Thank you so very much

Tony:

Hey, success squad. Thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took his vision to reality. I hope this was inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned so much. The insights are so valuable. So how did you like it - fearless intelligence with Michael Benner. My mind is buzzing with everything I just learned. I'm going to have to listen to this again and again.

At the outset of his career, we begin to see Michael's passion emerge for the truth, something perhaps we all want, but this fire grew inside of him and went beyond journalism, politics and news reporting to the final culmination it is today of personal development, mindfulness and intelligence, both emotional and fearless. I love his quest for the truth. Now some of us may gloss over one of Michael's earlier points of how he became more aware and achieved more clarity by managing stress. It's a statement you have to think about and ponder a little bit to really get it. Some of us may have so much stress going on, especially with the current world events happening right now that we may not even be aware that we are as stressed as we are. Thus, I recommend listening to the show twice, once to decompress, and the other time to soak up more of the great information that Michael shares.

Fear! This one seems to grip everyone in one way or another. It's the reason we do what we do or why we don't do what we should. Fear seems to rule it all, don't you think? You have to focus on this one a bit and really take a hard look at it. There seems to be so much we fear in the world, and that fear drives our decisions, your decisions. It rules our lives, your lives. Some of us probably don't even think about it, but when you do, you realize how pervasive it really is. Fear is attached to nearly everything in some way, or fashion and it has nothing to do with danger. We all need to learn to confront fear, stress and anxiety, and knowledge is the antidote to that, as fear is all about what you don't know. The knowledge or knowing something helps take care of that. Michael says that at the core is to know and understand yourself. It's the biggest fear - not understanding who we are. Why are we here? What do you think? Unless you ponder this for a bit in a quiet setting and listen again, you may not get it all the first time. I know the answer will truly humble you once you realize what it's all about. Fear, stress, anxiety. These unfavorable emotions and factors actually make us stupid. And in the face of those, I completely see how we can make the wrong decisions sometimes. This is incredible stuff, doing poorly on an exam when we really have a good grasp of the material, stage fright, not performing as well when in a group setting, these and many other forms of anxiety cause us to blank out enough to then perform poorly. I love the solution to that building anxiety when you have something important coming up, such as a date or meeting the President - guided imagery or visualization. Have you ever tried that before? This is a winner.

There's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? I would love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Reach out to me. Okay guys, now grab hold of your vision, decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with a decision, and you can get my vision map to help you along the process. The free eBook is at TonyDUrso.com. I created my empire in just a few years. That's all it took. I had the vision map as my guide. I wrote it up so that you can do it now as well. And once again, check out my shows on Spotify, all designed to help you get to the next level in your business or career. Let's help you move on your journey to success. And if you have iTunes or access to any Apple device, look up my name Tony D-U-R-S-O and subscribe to my show. A kind review there will get you tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks and remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds, Sow good seeds, do good deeds, and join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show.

We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, 2 p.m. Pacific Time on The Voice America Influencers Channel