Burn From Within

Shifting to a new career and life path by changing your self-concept - Damon Cart

• Matt Garrow-Fisher • Season 1 • Episode 33

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On this week’s episode, I have Damon Cart, who has a huge career and life turnaround story. Only a few years ago Damon suffered from depression running his own life insurance business as a State Farm agent while his marriage also broke down. 

Looking for ways to relieve his depression, he found NLP and began a tremendous journey of self discovery over several years training with some of the world’s most renowned NLP Trainers including Robert Dilts and Steve Andreas. He’s now burning from within, recently happily married to the love of his life, fulfilling his dream of being able to travel while running his business and now training and transforming individuals rapidly with some of the most powerful models that have changed his own life, including changing your own self-concept.

. In this episode, we discuss:

  • Spotting signals in life that you are on the wrong career path
  • Damon’s experience of depression from spending all day in a business he hated
  • Lifting depression in one hour with NLP versus over a year in traditional therapy
  • Finding an interest that developed into a passion that became a business
  • Finally being able to make tough but congruent life decisions by shifting limiting beliefs
  • The importance of building your life from your own values not ones imposed by others
  • The self concept model and transforming your highest values into a quality of who you are
  • What’s the one thing that’s made Damon Cart burn from within?

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Matt Garrow-Fisher:

On this week's episode, I have Damon Cart who has a huge career and life turnaround story. Only a few years ago, Damon suffered from depression, running his own life insurance business as a state farm agent. While his marriage also broke down. Looking for ways to relieve his depression. He found NLP and began a tremendous journey of self-discovery over several years. Training with some of the world's most renowned NLP trainers, including Robert Dilts and Steve Andreas. He's now burning from within. Recently, happily married to the love of his life, fulfilling his dream of being able to travel while running his business and now training and transforming individuals rapidly with some of the most powerful models that have changed his own life, including changing your own. Self-concept. In this episode, we discuss spotting signals in life that you're on the wrong career path. Damon's experience of depression for him spending all day in a business. He hated. Lifting depression in one hour with NLP versus over a year in traditional therapy. Finding an interest that developed into a passion that became a business. Finally being able to make tough book, congruent life decisions by shifting limiting beliefs. The importance of building your life. From your own values, not ones imposed by others. The self-concept model and transforming your highest values into a quality of who you are. And what's the one thing that's made Damon cart burn from within. The full show notes and videos of other interviews are available@bonefromwithin.com forward slash interviews. So listen all the way through. And enjoy. I took notice of one of Damon's recent posts. It was actually a few days ago on Facebook where he said, One of the best decisions I ever made. And then there's a memory from two years ago where it said today, I'm no longer a state farm agent. 11 years ago, I began training to become an agent. I opened my agency in September 28, 2008 during the height of the financial crisis and realized very quickly that insurance wasn't for me, but it was too late to turn back. For five long and hard years. In spite of myself, I built a successful business. I spent the next five and he is creating another business that I'm very passionate about and that I enjoy to the point that it doesn't feel like work. And for this podcast and for what this show's all about, I was like, wow. Yeah, Damon is amazing, like a Maestro of NLP, which is another passion of mine. But to be able to share his career change story I thought it was going to be just super useful for you guys. And so Damon, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Damon Cart:

Thank you. I really appreciate it. And it's interesting to me that people find this interesting. And, but when I think about it, when I felt like I was very much trapped, which many, probably perhaps many of your listeners might be feeling right now where. They maybe don't, they're not in a solid career yet because they don't know what career they want to be in, or they are in a career and they're not happy and they'd rather be in something else. I've been there and I remember thinking to myself, if I could just solve this problem, like life would be so much better. And the truth is that yes, indeed. When you solve this problem, life can be so much better. Yeah, I was kinda surprised that people were interested in that post. I really do appreciate you reaching out seeing that there was something interesting there and wanting to talk about it. Yeah,

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

sure. And let's go straight back, but it back in your timeline too when you were. When you are unhappy, actually. And I think a lot of people can relate to this when you are unhappy realizing that you chosen like you said, in your post, the wrong career, but, and you stuck it out, you made it a successful business. How did you know that it was the wrong path for you?

Damon Cart:

I'll give you the exact moment that it just it was, it struck me very hard, but I ignored it because I thought, no, I'm already into this. I'm gonna I'll fit myself into this role.'cause I want it so bad. I wanted the freedom of having my own business. I hadn't had my own business up until that point. And so I wanted that freedom so bad that I was like, okay, I'll do whatever. And the reason why I chose insurance was because that's what my father still does actually. And he does have a great set up for himself. He has, I don't know, five or six employees. They run the business, he can go and do pretty much whatever he wants whenever he wants. And he does very well. I go to his financial aid. So I had just had my first child and my daughter and I was living in Los Angeles at the time. And I thought, okay I'm going to shelve my dreams of becoming a writer and a filmmaker because now I have to provide for my family. And having kids will make you do those things. You started, you get really serious about life. And so there was a lot of truth in that, but the only thing that I thought to go to, to buy my freedom list of the create. A business like my dad had done, because that was the closest reference point that I had very different though. But I remember I was having to go and buy suits to begin my training with state farm. They train you as an agent for six to eight months. And you actually have to show up like fully dressed and like you're ready to go very professional. And I had never worn a suit, even though I had an office job in Los Angeles, I'd never worn a suit to work before. And so I start trying on suits and I was really liking the suits and I was getting into it. And I remember just turning and looking at myself in the mirror with a suit on. And there was just something that struck me very hard that said, this is not, you. And I re I was like, stunned. And then I was just like, okay, wipe that away. This is me, I gotta, I got to go forward with it. And so I did. And then every step of the way, like I just wasn't enjoying it. I wasn't as I finally did open my office after my training and everything, I just, it was really felt like the resistance was building the further and deeper I went into this. And I think the second time that I really got struck between the eyes. Was so I'm a huge fan of the writer, Henry Miller and read probably most of his books just deeply passionate. I love his story too, how he just gave up on all careers and decided to just write full-time and just figure it out and any move to Paris, and I love to travel too, and I love Paris. And but he never overly romanticized these things, he was willing to tell the truth about it all. It's about two years into my agency and I decide that I want to personalize my office more. I want to make it more me because that was what felt was really missing. It was like, I'm not really doing what I love doing. And so instead of trying to play this role, maybe I can try to make the role adjust to me. And so I started buying things like movie posters, and then I wanted to buy a poster of Henry Miller. And I'm just like, I don't really seen a poster of Henry Miller, but let me go looking. And on I couldn't really find much. And finally I found one and it was a of him at a big surf where, which is where he had lived for a while. And some of the greatest American writers have either lived there or spend time there, like Hunter S Thompson, Jack Kerouac. But anyway, so I find this poster and it's not like Amazon, it's not like you just buy it and go, I couldn't even figure out how to buy it. And, but I wanted it. And so I, I just sent a message on the contact and I said, Hey, how do I buy this poster? And somebody responded by email and said you can just send me a check and I'll send you the poster. And it was signed Val Miller. And I was like, Whoa, that's that's Henry Miller's daughter. And I wasn't sure that I was like this way, am I really talking with Henry Miller's daughter and or emailing? And then, so I emailed her back and started trying to work out the details. And then she says, you know what? I noticed that you're in Santa Cruz. Cause in my email signature said Santa Cruz. She's I'm in Monterrey, which is not far from Santa Cruz. She was like, I'm actually coming up to Santa Cruz next week. How about I just bring you the poster? Would you want that? And I was like, Yeah. Yeah. I want to, I would love for you to bring me this poster Henry Miller's daughter, Henry Miller died in, I don't know, 84, some of us are like, this would be the closest thing to ever meeting Henry Miller himself. So sure enough, she shows up and she looks enough like her father and I'm just like really excited and she comes into my office and I just said, Hey, I just want to make sure are you Henry Miller's daughter? And she says, yeah, And I said, this is such a pleasure for me to meet you. I said, your father is writing, changed my life. And she looks at me and it was about 32 years old at the time she looks at me and she goes really? And I was like, yeah. And she steps back and she goes, and you're so young. And I was like, I don't know what, I don't know what that really means. Okay, sure. I'll be young. And then she says, she sits back and she looks me up and down and she goes, yeah, no, if dad were here, he would tell you to quit your job. I remember just that struck me again between the eyes. And I was like, I know that's exactly what Henry Miller would tell me. And I was like, I don't know what to do with that. I've got babies to feed. It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders at that point. That's when the business was not doing well. And I was not happy and I had just come out of a depression. In fact I had suffered from depression not, let's say as partly a result of the business doing, spending most of your days doing something you don't enjoy. You, you ride that line with depression. There were other things going on though, but I just remember that her voice just rang in my ears for the longest time. And I just kinda knew that somehow this was going to come out that, I couldn't run from this. And no amount of money that I could make in a successful business that I hate that I really did not like was never going to fill that void. And so those were two moments that I kinda, had to take pause and realize that, I didn't listen to it as well as I should have at the time. And it wasn't until later when things exploded on me that I really realized, okay, I have to do something different.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

What, what made her say that? What made her say? I think you should. I shouldn't be in that career.

Damon Cart:

Yeah. I never said I was an expiring writer. I never said I was an aspiring artist. She's obviously she knows she's in a state farm office. She knows she's in an insurance office. She's looking at a guy who sells insurance. And she just said, if dad were here, she would tell you to quit. And yeah, there was no prompting for that other than, yeah, just me telling her that her father's writing changed my life, somebody is writing can change your life and you're not even interested at all in being an artist or a writer. But I think there was something about that made her connect dots and said, Oh okay if you're that kind of person, this is what my father would advise you to do.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Wow. That's that's pretty insane intuition from her actually, and makes me think maybe we're in a simulated reality who knows it's like, or what's something else. There's some higher power there potentially. And so that kind of started the ball rolling of okay, that's planted a seed of, maybe I should be doing something else. What happens next? In terms of the steps you took to actually think, okay, I'm going to do something next.

Damon Cart:

I had NLP, one of those things too, that seems, like you're talking about a simulation are, maybe it's synchronicity and LP had kept showing up in my life. And again, that was like the calling that was knocking on my door. And I kept not listening to it. And so the first time I experienced depression was right after I graduated college. I was still living in new Orleans at the time. And a professor of mine who had taught the philosophy of psychology was the name of the class that I attended. At the end, he taught us some NLP and he showed us all these other modalities, these other therapies. And he said, okay, now I'm going to bring out the mother of the mall. And so he shows us NLP and I was like, wow, this is fascinating stuff. And I really enjoyed it. And then after that it was about, I don't know, two years later I was out of college. I was out of school for the first time. Since I was like three or four years old, cause I went to school non-stop through, all through the years. And I fell into depression being out of school for the first time, having not having much direction, it was right after nine 11. That whole experience just watching that happen on TV over and over gave me probably PTSD. And I was just, there was some other things that had happened where I was just like. Didn't know what to do and didn't want to leave my home. And I fell into depression. So I reached out to my professor and I said, Hey, I don't have health insurance. So I can, again, I don't have a, I can't afford therapy, but I believe you can help me. And he said, yeah, come on in. He said, I don't need your money. But every time you come to me you need to dedicate some time to, or donate some time to community service or you need to give money to community service. He's I don't need your money, but I don't believe in a free service. So you need to do that. I need you to commit to that. And I said sure. He said, okay, come back next week, came back next week. And in one session, one, one hour session. The depression was over. I walked out of there and I was like, is this real? I was, had been suffering for months and suddenly I'm looking around at everything seems great. And everything's normal. I'm not suffering anymore. And I remember just having to sit, I was at the campus cause it was at his office. I remember just having to sit down on a bench and just like what just happened in there. And it was so bizarre. That it just lifted that fast. And I remember thinking to myself, I really got to learn this NLP stuff at some point. So we jumped forward. Now I'm living in Santa Cruz. I'm depressed because everything's not the major things in my life are not working out my wife at the time. Ex-wife now. She's a therapist and she said, you need help. You. You're not. I can tell. And I remember thinking to myself, my first knee jerk reaction was to say no, I'm fine. And then I was like, no, she's right. I'm really not. And I haven't even been recognizing it. That's how much of a inside of a bubble I've been. And so I go to, I find a therapist now I have health insurance. I go to a traditional therapist and it takes a year for me to come out of the depression. And I remember thinking this is one year versus NLP, one session. And I, I don't want to set things up for NLP that like everything happens in just one session and it'll be as known for working rapidly. But that's not going to always happen in one session. Don't want to, set up other NLP coaches, like people are coming to them now and say, Hey, this guy, on this podcast that you should be doing this in one session now. It's not always like that. But it was very traditional psychotherapy. He was an older therapist and it got to a point where after a year I was feeling really good. And when I'd go to see him, I would feel worse because he only knew how to get you out of the hole, but he still would want to discuss your problems and things that you couldn't control. And it's this isn't helping. And it was at that point that I realized I needed to do something to maintain my mental health. Just like you would exercise and eat right. To maintain your physical health. I just knew that if it didn't do something different, I was going to end up right back in his office. But I also knew that I needed to move on. It was time to stop seeing him. And was moving to here to Santa Cruz. That's when I was researching the market and I was just trying to learn more and more about Santa Cruz, I learned that NLP had started here. And again, that's that whole synchronicity thing. And what I first did was I hired an NLP coach and I hired her to help me solve the problems in my business and to help me maintain my mental health. And so she came in and And I just drove the woman crazy because as we were, doing the sessions, I kept wanting to know what she was doing. And so I would stop her and say, okay what does that mean? Or why did you say it that way? Or, and this just drove her nuts and it would drive me nuts as a coach, too. It's I'm either coaching you or I'm teaching you. They're not the same thing. We've got to do one or the other. And about a month after about a month that she finally just said, look, you just need to go do the training. You're obviously interested. Just go do it. And this was difficult for me because I wasn't doing well in my business. And I would have to put this on a credit card and I would have to justify it to my wife, like why I was taking two and a half weeks out of. Do out of work to go up to the campus and do this training. And even my father was saying like, don't do this, don't do this. You need to be in your office. And I was like, I've been doing the office thing for a few years now and it's just really not working. So I convinced myself I was doing it for my business, but deep down, I was really doing it for me. I went to that first training, that first practitioner training, and it was like, Yeah, I knew for sure it was a calling and I didn't know what yet. I think to myself, I wanted to be an NLP teacher. I didn't think I wanted to be an NLP coach, but I knew NLP was going to be a lifelong practice. And I just felt that it was an I don't know. It just, it felt like putting on a glove that just fits so, so well. And so I was thinking, okay, next year I'm definitely coming back. Whenever they have the master practitioner, I'll come back around and do it then. But that wasn't enough for me. After about a week after that training, I was like I experienced what I call NLP withdrawal. I was like, I gotta get into another NLP training. So I found another ends in a NLP Institute up in San Francisco and I did their practitioner training. And then they were holding a hypnosis training after that. And I was like, okay I've got to do that. And so at the same time, I had an LP practice group that I had started right before I did my first training because I was trying to learn NLP from books. And that's the other thing too. People are like I tell people start an NLP practice group and they're like I only have one training or only have two trainings. I'm not, a skilled as you are a knowledgeable as you are. As I started one when I had no training, I was just like, I wanted to practice what I was reading in the books. Was really utilizing that after I started doing the training and so I was practicing every day. I had a regular practice part in our practice weekly with, I just could not get enough of this stuff. I would show up with my books, to my insurance. Office. And when I wasn't meeting with clients, I'd whip up my books and I would start studying again. But I was still, I was not thinking of I wanted to make a career out of this or that I wanted to teach or coach. Yeah,

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

it was definitely a passion at that point.

Damon Cart:

Exactly. And that's really what I recommend when people say I want to start taking NLP trainings and I want to be a coach and I want to be a teacher. What I tell them is just put that aside for now. Not saying that you won't be one, just put it aside for now and just dive in and just really enjoy it and have fun with it. And if. All the skills and all the other things will come along with that. If you're having a good time and you're enjoying it. So the summer comes, the next summer comes back around. I had already paid, I don't know, put down a deposit on the master practitioner course, and some other things started to happen that just was making things a lot harder. So my marriage was terrible at this point. I had just had knee surgery, so I was on crutches and the university of California at Santa Cruz. Is the most on handicap friendly or most unfriendly to handicap people, as you can imagine, it's it's all these Hills. They don't have a lot of ramps. And so I'm on crutches. It was going to be very difficult for me to get through there and that was going to be on crutches for at least a week. And then my landlord decided to sell the house. So they were like, Hey, you guys got to get out. And then my wife was putting a lot of pressure on me at the time. She was like, what? You have no business stepping outside of this office with this business, not doing well. And you on crutches and, we could use that money for something else. I was just on and on. So I was this close. So just bowing out and taking my deposit bag and my practice partner at the time, I told them all this and I was trying to like, get some, I don't know, somebody to tell me like, yeah, Damon, I think you're right. You just need to not do this training. He said the exact opposite. And he said because of all those things, I think you really need to take this training. And as soon as he said that, I was like, you know what? You're right. This is what I'm going through right now is crazy, but things will always be crazy. I need to take this time out. I need to do this for myself and I need to go. And it was really good that I did. It was the master practitioner really focused on belief change. And I was carrying so many really limiting beliefs about money limiting beliefs about happiness and what I deserved and what I didn't deserve. And during that training just got all busted up. And I remember thinking to myself and started telling people who were close to me in the chorus. I was like, I just have this very strange feeling that I'm going to disappoint people who love me. And I then went to Robert Dilts and he said let me tell you a story. And he recounted the story about how he ended up leaving his wife for the woman who he's married to now. And I remember thinking to myself, what am I? He told me that story, so now it's an interesting story, but I don't think it applies to me. And a few days later is when I realized I needed to get a divorce, like it was not, my marriage was not going to work. And it was the first time I was able to fully admit to myself that this business that I've been doing this insurance business, it was not it's time was limited. And I remember walking in that day to talk to my employees and our sat them down. I sat them down and I said, okay, I got to tell everyone something. And I said, look, my heart is not in this. It never really has. It's not something that I'm, I don't know how much longer I'm going to do this. And I thought I was going to get this sort of like shock and scared look, because I'm basically saying, I don't know how much longer you're going to have a job, but they got, they all looked relieved. And I was like, what? And they said, Damon, we've known this ever since we started working for you. It was like, sorta, like everybody else knew it, but me, cause I was in denial about it. And so it was like, okay, that's interesting. And then I decided, okay, that's when I was going to become a coach and I'm going to become a teacher and I'm going to use this business to fuel that I'm going to build this business up so that I can step out of it and take the time to build up the other business, which then became its own journey. But that was really the turning point.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Yeah. It sounds like you're in a bubble of your own reality. And you couldn't see outside that bubble, the clarity of what was obvious to others how did you get out of that bubble How did you arrive at that point where you're like, you know what, I am going to get a divorce, you know what, I'm going to quit state farm what was it that gave you that clarity?

Damon Cart:

No, I wasn't thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to do this next exercise and I'm going to focus it on my marriage. Actually I think the thing that I was most focused on was money. I felt like it was something that had always alluded me. The more I tried to make it, the more it seemed to move away from me. And I remember doing a process. I think it was called the Tetra Lima, which is a Zen, I believe a Zen concept. That Robert had taken and created a process out of. And I started off with this idea that you start off with one polarity of the belief, which is, here's the belief. And then you realize actually there's there's, it's opposite it's opposite pole. And then you go through this process of recognizing well, okay what if both of these things are true at the same time, even though they're contradictory and then would have none of that, neither of them are true at the same time. And as you explore all these different points, Then you come back to now understanding all of this. And I remember, and then, so then you state the belief that you have now. And so the beliefs that I started off with was, is I'm terrible at, with money. By the time I finished it, I was like, wait a minute. I'm not terrible with money. I'm actually really good with money. I always have been really good with money. I've always been frugal. I know how to save and it was like, so then that I remember that day, the rest of her for 24 hours, I w I was, my new information was just slamming into my head about how I had managed money and what had influenced me to manage that money. I had taken out some really expensive life insurance policies that just were not like I remember asking myself what I recommend my own clients take out these huge policies with the amount of money. What my income is. I was like, no, I wouldn't even advise my clients to do this. So why would I do this? Life? Insurance is important. I needed it. Just not these really like Cadillac policies. It didn't make sense. So I was like, okay okay go, cancel those, convert them to term policies, and so I got the money out of that, which got me out of out of debt some debt that I had, and then my expenses were lower and there was all these things. I just, all these ideas. I was like, how did I not see this before it was in plain sight the whole time, but it, so that process really helped me break out of that sort of the, those restrictions. Another thing that happened was reimprinting Robert has a rubber didn't create reimprinting, but he created a certain type of reimprinting. He added a piece to it that I think is really important. Where you also give resources to the other people who were involved in the, in your imprint as it happened. And that was really intense. That was a process where a lot of tears were shed and it was a lot of healing. And I remember. Tell, I talk about this in one of my videos. We did the reimprinting process with students like you, Robert would teach, he would demonstrate and then you would go out and try it. And it's really hard to do for the first time, even though you're following the book. And the people that were guiding me who hadn't really done the process before, and so we kinda got there, but we didn't get there. And I went to Robert. I said, Hey, I don't know if we quite got it. I, I feel different. I feel like we got something different here and I think the limiting belief was something like yeah, it was like I'm going, nowhere is something like that. I'm not going anywhere in my life. And so he brought me back in time. That's the whole idea behind reimprinting brought me back in time. And it was an incident that I don't really know if it actually happened or not. That's not what's important. Is it the visuals and everything was manifest from the wounds memories reconstruct of, so again, it's a reconstruction of something that you're feeling. And the feeling was that I was running away from my father who was angry at me when I was like, I don't know, three or four years old. And I'm trying to run down a hall and he's coming up behind me and I feel his hand on my shoulder. And so I was, we got back to that point with Robert, is walking me through this and he's okay, so you feel the hand on your shoulder? I'm like, yeah. He says, okay what do you see? And I was like, I see the end of the hallway. I'm trying to get to my bedroom. And he says, what are you here? And I said, I don't hear anything. He says, bring him the audio. And and so I did, and it just struck me like lightning and it was like, I could hear my father saying you're not going anywhere lines up pretty well with that belief, that I had. And then he said, okay, now bring in the resources. I'd already identified some resources that I needed at that time. And so I brought them in and I was like, and again, I started to get weak in my knees. And he said, now, what do you hear? And I heard my father say, you can go anywhere. And then I felt his hand push me, like releasing me from that and pushing me forward to go. Now you can go. That was again, another, broke down in tears and everything. And it was just like, it really shattered something inside of me, but also built up something new. And that's when I really realized it was like, okay, yeah. Okay. I can go anywhere now. I've got that permission. I feel that wound. And from that point on, it was like full steam ahead.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Wow. That's pretty transformational. There's these unconscious processes that were holding you back, from your childhood or some kind of structure there, that was, it was influencing your behaviors to say, I need to stay in this job. I need to stay in this marriage. I need to stay the same. And you went through this process was it a kind of a different feeling like you had the real, the conscious realization I need to change and also a different feeling that made you take action. What happened after that?

Damon Cart:

I wasn't afraid anymore. I, wasn't afraid to admit the. The business wasn't for me, before that I, that was like the scariest thing to admit that I made a huge mistake, a mistake that cost me over a hundred thousand dollars, and expenses of creating this business and all the time and effort that I put into it, and then the, also the thing with my marriage and I had two kids at the time and it was like to finally admit that my marriage was a failure and that it wasn't, I didn't believe it was repairable and. Even to the point where like we went ahead and tried and I was like, okay, I'll give this another six months. We go to therapy and see if we can salvage it. But deep down inside, I just knew it was done. And I think what happens is that you build these sort of constructs in your life and you gotta be very careful with the foundation of those constructs are the foundation of those constructs are. I'm doing what I feel like I'm supposed to do based on external values of your society, your culture, your family, or, when other people want you to do or what other people think you should be doing? You probably will be successful to a point in building those constructs. But then at a certain point, there will be a reckoning because those constructs are built out of values that were not your own. And so what happens is I think. And I think part of what I was doing too, is I was having an early midlife crisis. I think what midlife crisis is for at least for a lot of men, it's, I think midlife crisis might be different for women, but you build these things out. You finally become successful. You finally make money, you're approaching 40, or you're just beyond 40 years old and you realize that. You're still not happy. You're still so unfulfilled. You have all the things that should indicate that you should be happy. You have the house, you have the wife, you have the kids you have the money, you have the car and you're still not happy. So what do you do? You have to bury yourself in something, some sort of distraction to distract you from how unfulfilled you are. And so then maybe you run off with a younger woman. Maybe you buy a Ferrari, you do all these kind of crazy things to distract yourself from that pain. And for me, it was more like, okay, I know that's not going to do it either. I need to just start over in a certain way, start over and take with me everything that was useful or did make me happy. I love my kids and I was like, okay, one thing for sure is I'm staying near my kids. I'm just not going to live in the same house. As my ex wife I learned a lot of good business. I acquired business acumen. From running that insurance business I learned how to sell really well because I was, constantly practicing and then when I learned in LPs started incorporating the NLP into sales. And so all these things were very useful and I was like, okay, I can take all this and bring it to a different business. It's so important to get clear about what your values are, because your values are the indicators of what will fulfill you. And when you fulfill your highest values, that's what fulfillment is. And so it's okay to take half of your life. To figure that out. Instead of just running off and saying, okay, I'm confused. I don't know who I am. I'm riddled with self doubt. Okay. Just I'll just go along with what other people want me to do. I'll go along with what my parents want me to do. I'll go along with, even with my, with what my spouse thinks I should do. Even though, deep down, I don't really feel like it's mine. And again, you, if you're. Most people are really good about, creating these things or creating success, being successful, you work at anything you will be successful. And w I think the worst thing is becoming very successful at something that you really don't like because that's the golden handcuffs. That's the hardest one to pull out of. It's the hardest one to break away from. There's a Joseph Campbell quote. That's something like that, to put your ladder up against something and really work hard to climb that ladder only to find out it was up against the wrong wall. I think a lot of us do this and I think what's even worse is when you finally discover or realize that it was the wrong wall is doubling down on it and saying no, I'm going to stay here because I worked hard to be here. And it's but you're never going to be fulfilled that way. You really have to you don't have to do it exactly how I did it, but you have to find your way to your fulfillment. And the way that you're going to do that is to get very clear about what you value. And that's not a process that you can only work out on paper. Like it's great to work that out on paper. It's great to listen to your values. I'd still do it about every three months. I just break out a notebook and I started asking myself, what do I want out of my marriage? What do I want out of my business? What do I want out of my health? So I go through all of my different major contexts of my life. I, and most of the time we I've done this so much now. The values don't really change, but the process reconnects me with my values. The process helps me get clear about my values and because I do it like say every three months or so, I'm getting feedback during those three months about, how am I moving in this direction toward my values? Am I getting some clarity about my values because of the feedback that I'm getting and now I want to go and reevaluate those values based on the new feedback that has collected. And so it's just a process of getting clearer and clearer about this. And here's the thing, even if you don't do any NLP, even if you don't do any other kind of personal development, just that process of getting clear and clear about what you want, it will start showing up in your life more. It is the most amazing thing. This is what I think they're referring to when they talk about the law of attraction and the secret, which I have a lot of criticisms about. There is some truth to it, and this is what I think the truth of it is just when you have that kind of clarity about what you want. You can't not move toward it. And even when you're not thinking about it, even when you're not conscious of it, even when you're sleeping, it's you're still moving toward it. I was in last year at this time, I was in Rome, Italy, right? At the time that Corona virus was ravaging Italy, I still went and I was walking around Rome with who was the woman, was my girlfriend at the time has now become my wife. And I remember just being really struck by that. I was looking around, I was like, wait a minute. Why does this seem familiar? And I started looking around and I was like, What's going on here. And I just, I had to think about it for a moment. I had envisioned a lot of what was happening at the moment because a friend of mine had asked me a few years before he said, if you had unlimited funds, what would you do with your life? You don't have to work. What would you do? And I said I would travel the world. I would learn about history and then visit those places. And I would also learn languages. That's exactly what I was doing. And it just, at that moment it was a recognition of that. And that alone is probably the most powerful thing you can do is just get clear and clear about what it is you want.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

I think most people they don't know what they want in life. And one of the, essentially talk about values. The biggest regret of the dying in the book, the top five regrets of the giant by Bonnie, where is. I wish I lived a life true to myself. Not what others wanted from me. And the only way to do that is to actually be clear about what you want and be clear about what is important to you. And the, these. Seminars. And then this training that you've been doing with Robert Dilts an appeal university and all the other trainings you've done was an opportunity for you to actually step away from society, telling you what to do all day. The insurance company, telling you what to do, your wife at the time, telling you what to do, and actually get that clarity. And I think. Whether you take a retreat or a an NLP course, or even start taking time by doing exercises, watching your YouTube videos reading books about how to get that clarity, how to know what you want is, it's super important. Now fast forward to now, you've recently got married, happily married to your wife. And now you've transitioned to. To, to coding fully into training, NLP, teaching and RP hunt. You've got hundreds of thousands of years on, on, on YouTube, from. Everything that you've learned in personal development in NLP, in life. What do you thinks made the biggest difference to actually transitioning your life and transitioning your career to be able to do what you love for work and also be happy in life, in, in relationships and your life balance, What's enabled that

Damon Cart:

a real turning point for me. When I was using a lot of those models that I had been taught early on and I plateaued and I seem to not be making any more progress. And it was so strange because that was right at the time that Steve Andrea's entered my life. And so I was asking him a lot of questions and He said, go read this book that I wrote called transforming yourself. And I think that it will answer all of your questions. If not, go ahead and let me know what other questions you have in the introduction. That pretty much answered almost all of my questions. And then I had a lot of confusions because he was saying how to do certain NLP processes. And they were not the way that I had been taught. And so I questioned him about that and sometimes I even disagreed with them and he said, okay, look, instead of disagreeing with me, just go try it and see what happens. It was meeting Steve was a huge upgrade. And then it was when I learned the self-concept model. That truly now it was not just about using NLP to solve problems. It was NLP for the most fulfilling life. That I could be living. And not only that, realizing that every time you fulfill that potential, there's always more. And so that has been the most amazing thing to me is that I don't really pay attention to like how much, what my life looks like. I get to see it sometimes when I do a log and I go, Oh my God I'm really living this thing that I dreamed about, but I don't want to be too bothered by that. It's more about connecting with my values. And then moving in the direction of my values, because anytime you do, anytime you're a behavior aligns with one of your values or more than one of your values, you instantly fulfill it. You instantly feel it and facil it, you fulfill that value. And so you feel more fulfilled. You also have a, if the value is really high, a highly valued value, like happiness, joy, freedom, any of those, when you fulfill that, Then that's what starts giving you, you have a sense of purpose and meaning in life. That was something I'd never had. I'd been taught that I was, my parents were very devout Catholic and would say, the only way you're going to have meaning and purpose in your life is to follow God. And I was like, it always felt so empty to me and work for me. To the point where I finally let go of religion. And I just thought you know this thing about meaning and purpose, it's just one of those things you have to make up for yourself, which wasn't a hundred percent wrong, but it wasn't until I started working with this model and discovering what my highest values were and then saying to myself, wait a minute. So this is my highest value. What happens when I transform this into a quality of who I am. And that's when the whole thing just exploded. And that was that's when my life got to the point where I was like, okay, now it's about how fulfilled can I be? Like, how let's really put this to the test and see what happens. And what happens is you take a lot of risks, you do things that a lot of people wouldn't do because it's okay. Like you don't mind failing. You don't mind. Falling on your face. You don't mind, the ups and the downs, because you are now in your identity is built into your identity as fulfillment. So to answer your question if there's two things that I would say if you want that kind of fulfillment and you want that that, that confidence to take chances to, to walk away from things you gotta know what your values are and you gotta be very clear about them. And then the second step is you've got to become the person who fulfills those values. So it's not just about knowing what your values are, because you can still know what your values are and still experience a lot of fear and anxiety about taking those chances about acting in alignment with those values. When you transform into the person who lives, those values. Then there's no stopping you. It's that is when you reach that point. And so what I, my main, the main thing that I do as far as teaching is it's group coaching for people where I, and my coaches, and I walk people through this whole process of the self-concept model and we do value solicitation. So we're discovering, okay, what are your highest values? And then are these values showing up as certain and solid qualities of who you are and nobody is nobody's values are showing up that way. And that's why there's so many unfulfilled people. And so we are transforming lives. As we teach this model, we, you practice it and you, and I'm teaching it and I'm practicing it with you as we go through it and the transformations as they're happening. It's just been amazing. And so I got to a point where it was like, I can't have those transformations. Like I used to like once a week, just go after a transformation. And it was just the most amazing experience. You do that enough and you run out of those qualities to transform. It doesn't mean that you stop transforming. It's just a slower process. It's not as smashed bang while, it's more of a incremental process after that. What I tell people is that my job is one of the best jobs or the best job that I can imagine having, because the best thing is to have your own transformations. The second best thing is to be able to help people have those transformations and sharing that experience with them. When Robert Green, are you familiar with Robert Green?

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Yeah. He wrote a mastery. Didn't he? The real

Damon Cart:

master eight and his latest book, the laws of human nature. To me, that's one of the best books ever written. And he says that, we all have narcissistic tendencies. And so instead of indulging those narcissistic tendencies, if you really want to be fulfilled in your life and you want to accomplish a lot. When you see that other person succeeding, instead of feeling like, Oh, I, I can do that. Or I should, I'm better than that person. He said, no rejoice with that person almost as if you accomplished it yourself and that will get you there. And that's what I feel like my job is I get to rejoice with all of these people who are transforming. And so it feels like I'm having those transformations all over again.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Wow. So that's a serious platform for fulfillment that you have every day. In terms of your life can you compare your life? A few years ago when you're at state farm, you and you are really unhappy, you're in a marriage that wasn't working to now. Where you're in a really happy marriage, you're transforming lives every day. With this self-concept model and all the other stuff that you teach online and an offline. That there's, it strikes me that you are living a life with passion, definitely. In terms of, you doing NLP every day my highest values living your highest values

Damon Cart:

purpose. One of my highest values

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

is one of your highest values. That's probably why then purpose, as you said, it's given you meaning the relating to Robert, what Robert Green says. And now you're giving that in in the seminars and training you do and you'll say are balanced as well. You're learning languages, you're traveling around the world. You're spending time here with your kids. All those three things I call that burning from, within living a life full of passion, purpose and balanced. What do you think is the one thing that's made the biggest difference for you? Damon it to burn from it then?

Damon Cart:

Ooh I don't know if I can narrow it down to one. What I will say one of the best things that I have had, I just felt like it's something that's always been with me is not being afraid to ask for help. I certainly have been afraid to ask for help at times, but in general before we had GPS and all that I'm old enough to have driven around in a car before we had GPS. And I was never afraid to pull over and ask for directions. I know that's, that was a joke that, they used to make a lot about men not wanting to do that. And the women always wanted, to go over and ask for directions and never been afraid to do that or never, it was never an ego thing for me. When I did get the press and somebody would point out, Hey, you need help. I would say, Oh, okay. I guess you're right. And then I would go do it instead of, trying to defend that. So there's that I think, and I think it goes a little bit, I think this is connected. So one of the things when my dad. My dad was very instilled as devoutly Catholic and was really pushing that on me and my brothers quite a bit to the point where we, none of us liked it. In fact, all of us turned away from it, but something else he would do that he wasn't pushing on me. And that was this personal development self-improvement kind of thing. And he would go and after we would all go to bed. I would hear him in his bedroom, listening to these cassette tapes. And it turned out that these cassette tapes were Zig Ziglar. They were Tony Robbins, they were Jim Roan. And I wanted to know what those people were saying and what I, when I could hear what they were saying through the door, what did the message I kept hearing over and over again was you don't have to accept how your life is now. You can change it. You have control here. You have power here. You don't have to just say, Oh, my life is miserable. And then that's just how it is because that's the hand you've been dealt. The message I kept hearing is that you can change this. I actually got to meet Jim Rohn. When I was about 66, I think it was 16 years old. Yeah. I was 16. My dad took me to see him. He was, I think he came to new Orleans. And I went to I went to hear him talk and when they had done an intermission, he stuck around during the intermission and talked to people. And so I was like I'm going to go talk to this guy. And yeah, that was when I think back on it, it was like, wow. I talked to Jim Rowan and his influences felt all throughout personal development. You can't get away from it, so he's one of the greats for sure. But I think that's what it was. It's this idea that, you can change your life. I think that was I never let go of that. Even at the worst of times, it was always this idea that things will get better and I can make things better. So I would say if I had to narrow it down to one thing, that'd be the closest thing that I could narrow it down to.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Yeah. So it's like a, almost a meta belief. Of change can happen. And actually that's, what's enabled you to learn about changing all of your beliefs and all data, this development work, and actually burning from within and having an amazing life now. Where can people find more about your self-concepts training in particular? Because I think that's pretty important in terms of. Helping people with career change, working out, like what's true for them, like how to live an authentic life. Where can people find out more about how to do that? And also more of your other kind of videos and everything else that you do.

Damon Cart:

Sure. Yeah, so I'm actually in a bit of a transition phase. I partnered with someone in business who has been a lot more successful in business than I have. And he actually came to me for coaching. He was this CEO of this. Really successful handful of very successful businesses. And I remember coaching him. I was like, who are you? Cause he, you could tell he was a little bit different. And then he starts telling me about his businesses. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. He's coming, he's come to me for coaching. But we went through some transformations. I coached him for about three months. He comes back about six months later and he says, Hey, you want to go into business together? And I was like, yeah, let's do it. So we created something called the self-concept research group. And he was so taken by the model and the coaching that he realized, we could, he had a vision for bringing this to everybody put it in the hands of anybody who wants it. putting transformation, the ability to transform at will with predictable results in the hands of everyone, like that's our vision. So we created this group and if you go to self-concept dot com. You can take an assessment and you can focus on career. There's a part of it where you can focus on career. And so you, you answer these questions, then you get the results back and that's just the beginning. Like you, you learn more about what it is that you're after and who do you need to become in order to have it? And then so you get that information and then if you want to have a consult with somebody to, to talk more about how to go further with that, then, we make sure we make that information available to you. So I'm really focusing now on the self-concept model life mastery, Jim is phasing out because self-concept has really become I knew it whenever I first learned the model that it was going to be, that it was the height, it was the best model. The most powerful model that I'd ever come across because when you change the identity level, that changes everything. There is no bigger, greater generalization that we make other than the self-concept, it transcends space and time. It has always been there. You have never had a time or a memory where you didn't have a sense of self. And so that generalization, has carried through all this time. And so when you change it, the, your sense of reality changes. It shifts. There's no way it can not be possible that way. I've since changed my YouTube channel at first, it was NLP gym. When I first started it then I changed it to life mastery gym, and now I think I've settled. Finally. I don't think I'm going to change it again. I've just changed it to my name Damon card. So if you start saving card, you're probably going to get a lot of my videos rather than my actual channel. But that's where you're going to find the majority of the stuff that I do is on YouTube. Cause I have should be about around 700 videos now on YouTube.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

Damon, thank you so much for an awesome conversation. And guys that Damon is the real deal when it comes to serious knowledge and serious hours and hours of practice over many years with the best trainers in the world for NLP and having your own kind of self. Development gen like life journey, transitioning from where you were back when you were on the happiest state farm to where you are now, and like giving that, giving some of the structure, how of what's worked for you, particularly the self-concept model to, to others every day is really the Testament that you're burning from within. And and yeah I thoroughly encourage people to. Go check out the self-concept model. I certainly will be. And and all the links to to that and Damon's work will be in the show notes. So thank you very much, Damon. And keep in touch.

Damon Cart:

Yeah. Thank you. This has been fun. Awesome.

Matt Garrow-Fisher:

I loved how Damon shared his story, his own transformation and real examples from change work. He went through to change his beliefs. Consistently realigning his values and understanding his own self-concept to ultimately help others too. Now. By making passion, one of his highest values. He is burning from within, with solid foundations. From how he's constructed his life. If you want to learn more about how to change your self-concept and get some of the life-changing breakthroughs. The Damon had go to self-concept dot com. And there's a specific assessment for your career. You can take for free. I would also recommend reading Steve and dress his book. Transforming yourself, which Damon mentioned in the episode for background on this awesome model. Stay updated with more inspiring interviews by hitting the subscribe button now on your player for the burn from within podcast and until next time live with passion purpose and balance and burn from