Hypnosis, Championship Poker and Winning the Inner Game W/ Elliot Roe | Elite Performance Podcast #53

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:10:09
Elliot Roe
If you know what to do, but you're not able to do it, That's when you need mindset coach. And again, this is for the poker players, but it's for anyone in any aspect of high performance.

00:00:10:09 - 00:00:19:06
Itamar Marani
On today's podcast, we have Elliot Roe joining us. Elliot just came out with a new book, A Game Poker Master The Mental Game, Create a Winning Mindset and dominate the modern Poker Game.

00:00:19:12 - 00:00:27:10
Elliot Roe
So there are a few things that if they improve their mindset, if they reduce the amount of time that making emotional plays at the table, they'll see a very big return on that money.

00:00:27:16 - 00:00:31:05
Itamar Marani
How do you differentiate someone who's doing well until they're actually needs to work on their inner game?

00:00:31:06 - 00:00:50:03
Elliot Roe
An example of this, it shows itself quite frequently in poker is often times the player will get either anxious or they get very angry and they'll start making emotional plays because they're feeling picked on. So a lot of sports visualization is just seeing yourself being successful. And I actually think that's the incorrect way.

00:00:50:05 - 00:01:07:20
Itamar Marani
Welcome to today's podcast, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Elliot Row. He just put out the game, a game poker master, the mental game, create a winning mindset and dominate the modern poker game. Aside from that, he's also been a mindset coach to various UFC athletes champions people the highest level. So I say thank you for coming on board.

00:01:07:22 - 00:01:10:09
Elliot Roe
Hey man. Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:10:11 - 00:01:25:13
Itamar Marani
Pleasure, man. So I'd like to start out with a deep question because we kind of talked about a little bit before we got on there. You said there are some poker poker players that should work with me. Yeah, define what you mean by should work with me. How do you differentiate someone who is doing well and someone who actually needs to work on their inner game, so to speak?

00:01:25:15 - 00:01:26:12
Elliot Roe
Okay, social.

00:01:26:12 - 00:01:27:16
Itamar Marani
Science for you.

00:01:27:18 - 00:01:57:20
Elliot Roe
So there are a few things here. The first off, they have to have the opportunity to make the money for it to be worthwhile working with me. And we got to be very realistic about in poker, people playing at different stakes. And some of the most of the players I'm working with are playing extraordinarily high stakes poker. So working with a mindset coach sort of at my level makes sense because if they improve their poker, if they improve their mindset, if they reduce the amount of time they're tilting at the table.

00:01:57:20 - 00:02:17:08
Elliot Roe
So that's making emotional plays at the table. They'll see a very big return on that money. If someone's playing much smaller stakes, they shouldn't be investing the same amount of money in a mindset coach because there's not the same potential upside. And we have to see that their skill set is able to take them to a certain level where it would be valuable.

00:02:17:10 - 00:02:38:03
Elliot Roe
So so that's the first side of it. I always want to make sure it's reasonable for somebody to work with me from a financial point of view. The second side of it is really just looking at your game and thinking about whether the things that you're doing like on the table would be the same way you would make the same plays off the table.

00:02:38:06 - 00:02:58:00
Elliot Roe
If you were looking back. When you're studying the same hands, would you say something different? Would you advise another player to do something differently? And the way that I describe this is if you if you don't know what to do. So if you just stuck at the table, then you need a technical coach. And this applies to business as well, or any other industry I'm working with.

00:02:58:01 - 00:03:24:02
Elliot Roe
If you know what to do, but you're not able to do it, that's when you need a mindset coach. And again, this is for the poker players, but it's for anyone in any aspect of high performance. Wall Street trade, a CEO of a company, anyone executive of a company, if they if they could tell their friend exactly what to do, then more and more strategic advice won't help because you already have the correct strategic advice and therefore it's a mindset issue.

00:03:24:02 - 00:03:42:14
Elliot Roe
But if you're just stuck and you've got no idea what you should be doing, that's when I believe you should be looking for a business coach, a poker coach, a strategic coach, and whatever you're doing, because you need to fill in that information gap first and then the mindset coaching comes in when you're not able to implement the tactics and techniques that you've learned.

00:03:42:16 - 00:04:00:21
Itamar Marani
That's really said, okay, that makes perfect sense. So to go into that, what is the first thing that you do with someone when they come to you and they say, I know I should have done that at the table. I didn't implement the right strategy, but for some reason I'm not getting myself to do the right thing in the heat of the moment.

00:04:00:23 - 00:04:02:23
Itamar Marani
How do you start with someone like that?

00:04:03:01 - 00:04:25:08
Elliot Roe
So I look at the emotional response that's firing at the time. So in almost all cases when there's this irrational decision making, what we notice is there's also a physical response that comes with it. So say, how did you feel in your body? And we go through a hypnosis state, so they're usually in trance. The feelings, the memories are amplified.

00:04:25:08 - 00:04:44:06
Elliot Roe
So it's slightly different to a conversation we're having now. And I can dig into hypnosis a bit more later, but often times they'll say, Hey, I felt a sickness in my stomach. I felt a pressure in my chest. I just felt like I had to act that way. I had to make the decision quickly because I just couldn't deal with the pressure I was feeling.

00:04:44:08 - 00:05:18:11
Elliot Roe
An example of this, it shows itself quite frequently in poker is I don't know if how many of the viewers are poker players, but if a player has three been at the table. So another player is playing aggressively against them. And it's the same player doing that, playing aggressively, playing aggressively, playing aggressively. Often times that the player will get either anxious or they get very angry and they'll start making emotional plays because they're feeling picked on as we go through this process to understand where that's coming from, it will almost always bring up memories of school bullying.

00:05:18:13 - 00:05:39:01
Elliot Roe
Like just happens. Almost every client who has this particular issue, the it comes down to school bullying. We work through those bullying issues and then the three being at the table becomes something to adjust to rather than something that's a trigger for them. And it's that sort of process. But we're always just looking at, okay, so what's the physical response that you're feeling?

00:05:39:05 - 00:06:01:07
Elliot Roe
Because that's it's just not there. This shouldn't be there at a poker table and then where's that coming from? What's the the root cause of that? And then with hypnotherapy, we can go back to those root causes. We can change the way it's framed. We can make it an adult subjective perspective rather than a child's perspective. So the school bullying you know, I was seven years old and I was beaten up to seven year olds.

00:06:01:07 - 00:06:21:13
Elliot Roe
You. That's terrifying. It's life and death is the first time you felt violence to adult year. It's to seven year olds having a fight. So if you can reframe those emotions through an adult perspective and remove the big fight or flight response from it, there's actually nothing to then trigger when those things come up in your adult life again.

00:06:21:15 - 00:06:38:22
Elliot Roe
And it's usually it's just really like reeducate facing the programs that you created to keep yourself safe as a child that you still ended up just holding on to. And when we're talking about high pressure environment, so in poker, a lot of the time my clients are playing for millions of dollars. My Wall Street traders, crypto traders, it's millions of dollars.

00:06:39:00 - 00:07:06:05
Elliot Roe
UFC fighters, it's large money, but it's also, you know, their body is on the line. Yeah, big time ego and fighting in any of these situations, those triggers, those weaknesses from childhood will show themselves because you're in a super high pressure environment. And that's why I actually find any of the high pressure environments, like they're just wonderful places for self work because they show you, they show your weaknesses.

00:07:06:07 - 00:07:18:12
Elliot Roe
So I've been lucky enough that the majority of my career has been helping people in these high pressure environments. We see the weaknesses, we work through the weaknesses, and then we start to see a shift in their performance.

00:07:18:14 - 00:07:34:23
Itamar Marani
So this is really interesting because what you're saying once this happens is that we can go back in time and kind of understand why we can investigate this. So that's the pre-work system, That's the rehab these guys need to do in order to show up their best, whether it's the poker player, the trainer, or whatever it may be.

00:07:35:01 - 00:07:52:11
Itamar Marani
Yeah. What do you do with them in the moment? For example, if someone's like, how do they interact? Say I still am, I'm at that final table, I get this feeling in my body or I'm not really sure what's going on. All of a sudden, I think it's called on Tilt on poker. I just like is like all of a sudden I feel like I'm just losing it.

00:07:52:13 - 00:08:04:17
Itamar Marani
What is how can somebody who feels that in the in the moment they're not able to handle themselves or really execute on their strategy? Like you said, What is the mechanism that people can use there to still be a performance?

00:08:04:19 - 00:08:31:13
Elliot Roe
I mean, realistically, if we've done the right work, we should be removing that issue. So the ideal situation is if we've hit the right root causes, they should start to feel it to the same degree that they were. I'll take them through visualization exercises to to basically utilize in those situations. One way of controlling it is prior to those final tables will be doing visualizations of things going wrong and overcoming it.

00:08:31:15 - 00:09:02:00
Elliot Roe
So a lot of sports visualization is just seeing yourself being successful. And I actually think that's the incorrect way of visualizing a sporting or high pressure event. I think you should see a struggle and see how you can overcome that without a high stress response and practice that because, you know, let's say a UFC fighter, if they if they just visualized the walk out, they threw the first punch and they knock their opponent out there again, there's going to be a lot of fights where that doesn't happen and they're dealing with a lot of stress.

00:09:02:02 - 00:09:21:03
Elliot Roe
So so prior to it, we'll be doing the deep memory work, will then be doing the visualization work, and then they'll have some tools from that visualization. So imagining this stress as if it's controlled on a dial picture of that dial, in your mind, what number does that dial show? Oh, it's nine out of ten. Okay, close your eyes.

00:09:21:03 - 00:09:38:19
Elliot Roe
Take a deep breath. I want you to bring that down to a seven. What does a seven feel like? Etc., etc.. And the more that you practice those types of techniques, the more efficient they become in the high pressure moments. But I actually believe this is much more about finding the trigger beforehand so that it doesn't show itself at all.

00:09:38:21 - 00:09:48:03
Elliot Roe
Rather than trying to have a Band-Aid in the moment. So so it's like there are some Band-Aids, but really we want to fix the wound.

00:09:48:05 - 00:10:06:01
Itamar Marani
Question for you on that, because first off, I fully agree with you that the preference is to mitigate the mitigate the whole thing preemptively by getting to the root cause of it and improving it. What I've noticed is that sometimes you just almost this bad muscle memory and let's say somebody gets an injury in their ankle and then their their gait is still off because of it.

00:10:06:03 - 00:10:14:22
Itamar Marani
And even if you take off the root cause of what's causing it, they just have this kind of Pavlovian response that when someone does this, I feel I start getting anxious.

00:10:15:00 - 00:10:15:16
Elliot Roe
Hmm.

00:10:15:18 - 00:10:23:04
Itamar Marani
Do you feel that if you go deep enough, you're able to even take that away? Or is it something like we've got to treat this in a bit of a different thing? This is a bit of a different flavor.

00:10:23:07 - 00:10:45:09
Elliot Roe
I believe that you can I've seen that we can take that away as well. If we go deep enough. But also with visualization, it's the mind doesn't know the difference between visualization and reality. You know, that's why people cry at the cinema. You know, you're watching pixels on a screen and you're crying your eyes out or you know why 50 Shades of gray Cells is ink on a piece of paper and people are getting turned on.

00:10:45:11 - 00:11:17:04
Elliot Roe
You know, your mind has physical responses to its imagination. And what we can do in these deeper states is we can replay and replay and replay and see them overcoming until we're overwriting that response that you're describing. So there's a thick groove that says, I should feel anxious when. But through the visualization process, we can replay that and replay that and replay that in in the way that we want that to show itself so that that groove is reduced and reduced and reduced and they can take back control.

00:11:17:06 - 00:11:22:07
Elliot Roe
So it takes effort and it takes practice through visualization, but is something that can be overwritten.

00:11:22:09 - 00:11:39:03
Itamar Marani
And so you're saying first is understanding the root cause of it, then basically challenging if it's a valid thing? Like anybody who makes me feel nervous, I should feel like it's life or death, like I'm a seven year old about to be beaten up. Yeah, but then the big thing is just getting the reps in as far as civilization to override that initial response.

00:11:39:05 - 00:12:16:01
Elliot Roe
So so it's so it's, it's reframing the initial situation until there's no emotional load. So I mean, obviously sometimes they're very traumatic things, but if you can bring forgiveness in for yourself, for the perpetrator, whatever it might be, you can shift the way these memories feel and trigger. And as I say, then look at it from an adult perspective, reduce that charge and then go into the suggestion, type the visualization type work, which is playing through how things can be different with that, with that trigger removed and putting yourself through, hey, you know, your chip.

00:12:16:01 - 00:12:43:11
Elliot Roe
So if it's poker, your chip leader in a tournament, there's a bad beat, you're now five out of six. How do you respond from that situation? Now, the natural thing that most people do, if they've lost the chip leaders in the tournament, is they try and get those chips back as quickly as they can. Right. What we want them to do is just play each hand as a puzzle and they now just have a number of big lines and they have to play that puzzle differently now.

00:12:43:13 - 00:13:05:09
Elliot Roe
And it's we're having them visualize it go wrong and them overcoming in a rational sense. So I know you got experience in martial arts with UFC fighters. It's, you know, you're taken down, he's in the mount. How do we deal with this situation? Talk me through it calmly. What are you doing? How is your breathing? How do we respond to this situation?

00:13:05:09 - 00:13:33:08
Elliot Roe
Okay, he's taking your back. How do we deal with the situation? How do we defend against the arms? What do you do? How is your breathing? How's your mindset? What's the next transition? What's the next transition? What are you looking out for? So we're taking them to the worst case stressful scenarios and having them play through a calm, considered response in those situations until that's the normal thing that happens to them when those situations show themselves in the sports context.

00:13:33:10 - 00:13:49:15
Itamar Marani
Do you think a big part of that is that people arrive to situations that are unknown to them and people fear the unknown and then they start to panic. So by you giving them that visualization like you've kind of been here before mentally, that's what preemptively reduces that emotional response. So it's not an unknown.

00:13:49:17 - 00:14:14:06
Elliot Roe
But it's normalized. So so it's, you know, what is it going to be like the first you know, you're fighting in the UFC for the first time. You've ended up he's got you in the mountain, right? You're on TV, your friends and family are watching. There's a huge stress response. We need them to have been there already. So when that happens, this is just the technique that they're utilizing in the same way they would in training in poker.

00:14:14:06 - 00:14:30:07
Elliot Roe
As I say, the bad beat or, you know, in business, it might be firing the member of staff. An awful lot of owners of companies come to me because they struggle with firing staff. And then it's how do we deal with this? This person has a breakdown. How do we deal with that? This person gets extraordinary anger, angry.

00:14:30:12 - 00:14:49:13
Elliot Roe
How do we play through that situation? What's the best next step? So you're putting them through the scenarios so that they're ready to cope with those situations, understanding that these are all things that can be dealt with and coped with. We just don't want it to be. The first time it's ever considered is the time you face it in real life, in a high pressure, high money situation.

00:14:49:15 - 00:15:08:06
Itamar Marani
I want to go a little bit back because you keep going back back to that world normalized. That seems to be the thing that you keep saying here. No, what I'm hearing from you is that in your perspective and I agree with this, is that the people that come to you or die there already, they have the baseline to be 80 performers as far as their technical capabilities.

00:15:08:08 - 00:15:24:07
Itamar Marani
And really the key for a mindset coaches to help them cap the downside so that even in situations where the most people usually panic, if you can make that feel normal to them and I'm in this heightened emotional state, they don't panic and they can just employ their logic, their skill set and so on. Is that what you mean?

00:15:24:07 - 00:15:34:01
Itamar Marani
By normalize, you can normalize to the more challenging situations and cap the downside. By doing that so that people don't feel this is new, this is what's going on here in panic, is that I think.

00:15:34:06 - 00:15:57:16
Elliot Roe
I think that's an excellent description of what I'm trying to describe, what we're looking at and as as you said, we're in a strange world where almost everyone who reaches out to us is going to be like, Yeah, so it's why I'm not I'm not concerned. Usually if someone decides to reach out to me for poker, for trading, for professional sport, usually they're one of the top in the world, in in the area.

00:15:57:18 - 00:16:24:22
Elliot Roe
And what we're looking to do is say, okay, strategically, you know, the game plan for the fighters, often if they come to me, it will be around the hey earlier in training in the gym, I'm a monster. I just wish I could perform in the cage the same way I can perform in the gym. Yeah. And you know, there are, you know, in the industry, we know there are a lot of guys who are famous for the way they spar, and they just falls apart when they're in the Octagon.

00:16:25:00 - 00:16:50:08
Elliot Roe
And what we're looking to do is remove that stress. So they can unleash their full capabilities in a high pressure moment rather than the anxiety goes up, you know, and they shut down their full techniques, their full situate, you know, the body stiffens and they're no longer able to flow because, you know, everything's about being present, being in the moment, allowing your body to do what it knows how to do, or even in poker or trading.

00:16:50:10 - 00:17:07:16
Elliot Roe
You know, the the muscle memories there in terms of the reps, how many they played a million poker hands. So they've been trading for the last 15 years. They know what to do and what to look out for at a subconscious level. They need to be present enough in the moment to actually follow through with their game plan.

00:17:07:18 - 00:17:30:02
Elliot Roe
And yeah, I believe my work is helping people like find and perform at their full potential. But they have to put in the hard work to have that potential in the first place. And that's why I like being clear with people. If you don't know what to do, if you're not world class, you should be working with a strategic coach first, you know?

00:17:30:02 - 00:17:44:15
Elliot Roe
And I really believe that that's important that someone, if they truly are at a level where the mindset coaching is going to be the edge that tips them over the edge rather than, you know, something that could be leading them in the wrong direction if they just don't know what they're doing.

00:17:44:17 - 00:18:03:12
Itamar Marani
Yeah, this is it's really because we're exactly aligned with this. So the way I look at is what our coaching does. That enables consistency. People then can be elite. They have ups, but then they have downs. And if we can just cap those downs because we can make sure they're only acting on their skill set, not emotional, impulsive, the times, that's when they keep winning.

00:18:03:12 - 00:18:06:04
Itamar Marani
And that's exactly what you're doing. Is that correct?

00:18:06:06 - 00:18:08:03
Elliot Roe
Yeah, exactly that.

00:18:08:05 - 00:18:23:03
Itamar Marani
So I have a bit of a I, I do want ask a bit of a challenging question here. Yeah. Let's say you get someone to you know, you're with one of your players that's had a big tournament and somebody comes up to you and all they have is 6 hours before, let's say 4 hours before their big game.

00:18:23:05 - 00:18:45:11
Itamar Marani
And you don't have time to say fully get out. The groups are doing all the visualization and all that. You know, you kind of do the initial work. They cognitively understand, oh, okay, this feels like a threat. Even though it shouldn't be. They get that logically, but they haven't yet been able to completely let it go. Are there some tools that you could give them that, Oh, this is a way for you to catch yourself.

00:18:45:12 - 00:18:51:08
Itamar Marani
If you're starting to get emotional. How would you help them with that? Because they're not they're not yet super happy.

00:18:51:08 - 00:19:12:02
Elliot Roe
But it's open. So it is. Hey, we desperately need a Band-Aid here. The first is I would do some suggestion hypnotherapy with them and I would I would have them. You can. You can. Hypnotherapy is very, very good for short term state change. So you go into this. I'll quickly explain. Obviously, it sounds strange because it's hypnotherapy, but I'll give sort of a brief synopsis of what it is.

00:19:12:02 - 00:19:39:20
Elliot Roe
So hypnotherapy isn't magic like you see on TV all. It is a form of guided meditation where if you think of mindfulness meditation, you're following your breath, your thoughts come in and you effectively bring yourself back to breath again. So. So that's what you're looking to do with with mindfulness meditation, I'm off to say, a body scan with hypnotherapy, you reach that same level of relaxation after saying body scan, progressive relaxation process.

00:19:39:22 - 00:20:07:14
Elliot Roe
But instead of letting go of your thoughts, you're focusing on a singular emotion or a singular thought, and that allows you to then explore that emotion and that thought in a way you wouldn't be able to do in a conscious conversation. So that's like a very brief and like description of what it is. We take a client to that sort of state and then we can we can make a state change that if we're not doing, the deeper work will still work for a short period of time.

00:20:07:16 - 00:20:28:05
Elliot Roe
So they're in this very relaxed state where they can visualize much more vividly than they can in their everyday life. And I'll have them picture the most professional version of themselves. What does that version of? What does that part of you look like? How's he standing? How is he dressed? How does he interact with others? How is he playing at the table?

00:20:28:06 - 00:20:53:07
Elliot Roe
Watch that part of you play through this entire final table. What does that look like? What do you see? What do you notice? And I want you to step into that body. What does it feel like playing this way? Understanding how you overcome these different situation? What does that feel like to you? And I'll have them describe it in vivid detail and we'll run through this and run through this until they framed themselves as that most professional part of themselves for the next 24 hours.

00:20:53:09 - 00:21:08:09
Elliot Roe
So we sort of blind and remove everything else as far as we can from from their frame of reference. So I want you to imagine that the tables in color, you and the table are in color with the rest of the world is in black and white. Nothing else exists until this final table is over except you playing your best poker.

00:21:08:11 - 00:21:30:11
Elliot Roe
What does that feel like making the decision for you, for your family, that nothing else exists except playing your most focused poker today and you put these suggestions in place and create this emotional response in them so that by the time they come out of that process, they're feeling very confident and sort of invincible. So it's a short term state change.

00:21:30:13 - 00:21:47:21
Elliot Roe
You know, they're going to wake up tomorrow and they won't be a different poker player. But in that moment where they had a high level of anxiety, that anxiety is going to be much lower than it was before. And they're going to be framing is like, what would that best version of me do right now and have them ask that question over and over again.

00:21:47:23 - 00:21:55:15
Elliot Roe
And this is a very quick technique to bring a high level of performance if you don't have the time to do the deeper work.

00:21:55:17 - 00:22:13:23
Itamar Marani
Question for you in that you set for the next 24 hours. And what I'm assuming here, there's some reason for that that you say if we can tell them, you only need to keep this up this fast for the next 24 hours, they can actualize it. If you just say just be that person, then it won't have that level of impact as it perhaps some believe that's feasible, reasonable, whatever it may be.

00:22:14:01 - 00:22:16:09
Itamar Marani
Is there something there that I picked up or so?

00:22:16:10 - 00:22:32:07
Elliot Roe
So yeah, I mean, I just think from what I've seen, so there are two types of hypnotherapy. The suggestion based, which is what I've just described, and then there's regression based hypnotherapy, which is what I was describing earlier, which is when we going into the past and we're making the big changes to the triggers that created the issues.

00:22:32:09 - 00:22:53:00
Elliot Roe
What I've tended to have seen as we can create state change for somebody in the short term, maybe it'll be a day or two, but realist strictly, it's going to be a short term state change and they'll have to do that sort of work again prior to another tournament to feel that same way because it's sort of using visualization and their imagination and life is going to get in the way.

00:22:53:00 - 00:23:11:06
Elliot Roe
They're going to go to bed, they're going to wake up, they're going to feel, you know, argue with their wife or whatever it might be, and they're going to bring themselves out of that zone. But if I have someone you know about to fight in a cage, I can get them to that place in those moments before they could walk out to fight in the cage.

00:23:11:08 - 00:23:17:17
Elliot Roe
But I don't expect them to be in the same place the next day. When it comes to the regression work where resolving.

00:23:17:17 - 00:23:30:09
Itamar Marani
Can just jump in before that, I want to make sure I had an answer. I asked my question correctly. Right. Is there a reason that you feel that you have to tell them only about the next 24 hours or otherwise they will not buy into it or that?

00:23:30:11 - 00:23:44:06
Elliot Roe
Yes. So the buy and so so I find that everything that you say has to be honest and true for someone to accept it. So if I tell you, the only thing that matters in your entire life is poker, and I need you to feel that way forever.

00:23:44:08 - 00:23:45:00
Itamar Marani
Yeah.

00:23:45:02 - 00:23:59:17
Elliot Roe
There's going to be a voice in your mind. This is actually my kids matter a lot more than poker. Actually, my health matters a lot more than poker. If I say for the next 5 hours, whilst you're playing for $5 million, the only thing in your life that matters is poker. That's something you can accept at a subconscious level.

00:23:59:18 - 00:24:16:10
Elliot Roe
So we never want to be giving people suggestions that they would rationally disagree with. So someone can accept. I can focus all of my energy on this for the next 5 hours. That seems like a reasonable thing to do. If we just suggest that poker is the most important thing, you need to just focus on that for the rest of your life.

00:24:16:12 - 00:24:21:08
Elliot Roe
That suggestion isn't going to be accepted by the subconscious because it's not a reasonable suggestion to make.

00:24:21:10 - 00:24:42:10
Itamar Marani
Now, I think I love that you said that because one of my big things I'm against this whole in the whole mindset or self-help industry is I hope people say I have limited beliefs and I have positive beliefs. I think we're going to see the positive or not. If they're not truth, like there's going to be resistance in, you know, that we've all heard that if people I know you have a net, you have a limiting belief, what would be a more positive belief?

00:24:42:10 - 00:24:49:15
Itamar Marani
And literally every entrepreneur that I work with that I don't care if it's positive, I don't believe it. I don't believe it in the moment. I'm not going to buy into it.

00:24:49:17 - 00:25:09:16
Elliot Roe
And that's where with this type of work, you have to be careful with the framing. So, you know, there have to be levels of it has to be acceptable. And if someone's a high performer, they can accept that. They know that there's been a time they've been on their A-game, they know there's been a time they've been fighting in the cage and they just felt invincible.

00:25:09:18 - 00:25:30:20
Elliot Roe
There were these moments that we can connect into that's offset absolute peak performance us in flow. And if you're just asking someone to step into something that they felt before, even if they've only felt it for 5 minutes before they can accept, they can do that for a few hours. If you tell someone you need to be in that state for the rest of your life, yeah, the subconscious is going to laugh at you because it's.

00:25:30:20 - 00:25:31:22
Itamar Marani
Great because it.

00:25:31:22 - 00:25:32:22
Elliot Roe
Just doesn't fit.

00:25:33:00 - 00:25:50:02
Itamar Marani
Yeah, that's great. So and I'm going to naturally assume that again, That's the way to cut that downside in the short term by saying, okay, you don't have to hold on. This is for everything. This like really, really peak say that you were once before. Now however, in the future how you can maintain this elite level of performance is by removing the drag.

00:25:50:04 - 00:26:07:07
Itamar Marani
And that's where we've got to do the deeper work is that I can do something exactly. So question for you that you deal with. I'm sure a lot of A-type individuals. Do you feel you sometimes get resistance from people to wanting to do that work, to really go deep and be vulnerable, especially with, say, UFC fighters or whatever it may be?

00:26:07:09 - 00:26:10:18
Itamar Marani
Or is it people come to you when they already have a willingness about them?

00:26:10:20 - 00:26:34:16
Elliot Roe
I think there's there's always a willingness if they've reached out themselves to the place where I found that difficult is when someone gets sent to me by their company or they get told they, you know, it's just something where, you know, that my wife has said I have to do this. I'm typically those clients as a waist up, or you should say like, it's highly likely this is just a waste of both of our times and your money.

00:26:34:18 - 00:26:57:11
Elliot Roe
I don't like working with someone unless they're coming to me because they believe that they have an issue that that they need to work on. The second side of it is and I think with any kind of coaching that's specifically hypnotherapy, the most important pieces, rapport, the person has to sort of believe that I can help them. They have to want to be helped.

00:26:57:13 - 00:27:18:08
Elliot Roe
And then they generally have to like they have to like you to some extent as well. I believe like there has to be some level of respect, but also a a the way I describe it is we're working as a team against your subconscious. So you and your conscious mind and me, we both want the same result, which is for you to perform better in these moments.

00:27:18:10 - 00:27:37:15
Elliot Roe
And your subconscious is there saying that it's scary if you have this level of success. We're working as a team to educate that part of you that this doesn't need to be scary anymore. It can stop protecting you so that you can allow yourself to achieve what you want to achieve. And by framing it as teamwork rather than I'm doing this to you, I'm not doing this to anybody.

00:27:37:17 - 00:27:45:14
Elliot Roe
I'm helping them understand themselves and work through their issues. But we're doing that as a team rather than a LDA is applying this to me.

00:27:45:16 - 00:28:05:03
Itamar Marani
Yeah, I've noticed a couple of times in our conversation that it sounds like you're a big fan of attachment or whether instead of saying right now, it's not me against you, but it's me and you against your subconscious, There's a lot of detachment here, or it's not even that. When you said about the seven year old example, what I expected you to say was that was a seven year old.

00:28:05:03 - 00:28:21:19
Itamar Marani
You you were in a fight, but now you're an adult. That's not life threatening. However, you took it in a whole different level. On top of that, you said it's just two seven year olds fighting. It's not even about you. You speak more to that. Like, why did you choose to say in that manner? Why do you find that to be more effective?

00:28:21:21 - 00:28:26:11
Elliot Roe
The more distance you can create from anything, the easier it is to adjust.

00:28:26:13 - 00:28:28:20
Itamar Marani
It, even if you make it impersonal.

00:28:28:22 - 00:28:56:18
Elliot Roe
Impersonal, but also. Yeah, just not not an internal trying to think of the correct words for this. So the way the way I like to describe it is like you are not your issues. So you want an angry person. You learned to be angry at some point. You want an anxious person, you learn to be anxious. So again, it's the same from this.

00:28:56:18 - 00:29:20:09
Elliot Roe
Like the more separation, the more gap we can create from the person's belief that these issues are innate, The more space we have to do the work and the more flexibility there is, the more fissures there are there for us to pressure and create a new reality for them. So by stepping outside, looking in at the situation, we can almost always give great advice to our friends.

00:29:20:11 - 00:29:36:12
Elliot Roe
It's hard to give that same advice to ourselves. But with these sorts of trance like states, we can actually look in from the outside and treat ourselves as a separate person. So I could say it's more like, I would like you to see this response. I'd like to imagine you're a consultant, you've been hired to help this person.

00:29:36:12 - 00:29:50:23
Elliot Roe
What would you tell this person? And you'll come out with this eloquent list of all the things you should be doing better in your life, you know, or the parts type therapy? You know, I want you to imagine that highest self that best part of you, they walk into the room, what do they look like? And you'll say, That's all.

00:29:50:23 - 00:30:12:00
Elliot Roe
They're handsome. They're glowing white light. Okay, great. What does that part of you tell you? What advice does that higher self have for you? And again, they'll come out with these eloquent, beautiful descriptions as to exactly what they should be doing, and then we'll bring it in so you understand exactly what you need to do. I want you to listen to your higher self and I want you to just make the decision to follow your own advice.

00:30:12:02 - 00:30:33:08
Elliot Roe
Can we both agree that you can choose to follow your own advice in this situation? And because you've separate in it and because they've given the advice themselves rather than me telling them what to do, oftentimes they'll accept it much easier. And that's why I'm creating the space for that to happen so that free to actually speak the truth to themselves, even if they don't want to hear it, might be, I have to divorce my wife.

00:30:33:10 - 00:30:48:03
Elliot Roe
Okay, well, you know, if that's the truth, that's the truth. But they didn't want to say, you know, that person should divorce his wife. Okay? They didn't want to say that I need to divorce my wife. But obviously the logic of that plays out once that situation's in play.

00:30:48:05 - 00:31:04:06
Itamar Marani
It's the follow up to that. So this is really what I do as well with my clients in order to uncover what their main mental blocks are. We first start with this exercise. It's like watching somebody else to its CEO was more successful than you despite being drunk, lazy, whatever it may be. They did one, two, three things.

00:31:04:07 - 00:31:21:06
Itamar Marani
I mean, such an impact model was a been and then they say, oh, we're probably XYZ. That is a cool why aren't you doing them? Yeah. From there we kind of pull the yarn of saying, okay, what's the mental block that you have around this stuff? However, is it accurate to say that the poker players, they already know what they should be doing?

00:31:21:06 - 00:31:34:10
Itamar Marani
Or how do you come to recognition? Like, how can you find with the least amount of time? Because what I think we're both not fans of and I think all of our clients come to us. I don't want to just spend ten years looking at my past. I want to get down to the bottom of it really, really fast.

00:31:34:12 - 00:31:38:12
Itamar Marani
So what's your methodology to get down to the root cause as fast as possible?

00:31:38:14 - 00:31:59:14
Elliot Roe
So the first of the first session, I do a 90 minute intake, 30 minutes of hypnotherapy. So I'm getting a lot of context in that first 90 minutes. And then because of this modality, and this is why I'm looking for those physical responses and I mentioned earlier, if there's a physical response, your subconscious knows where it's coming from.

00:31:59:16 - 00:32:23:01
Elliot Roe
Otherwise, maybe a minute. So if I mean, I don't know if you think about something somewhere in your life, you have an anxiety response that has a physical response to it. So racing, heart sickness in your stomach, tightness in your chest. So for a lot of people watching, it's probably public speaking. Is that for a lot of people right.

00:32:23:03 - 00:32:50:01
Elliot Roe
Your subconscious is generating that. It's not a real thing. It's being created from inside of you. It's not externally created. It's internally created. So the subconscious understands why. Otherwise it wouldn't be creating that feeling. It knows it believes there's a threat because it learned that that was the threat. So in that trance like state, when I say I want you to connect into that feeling in your chest, well, I'll say when you so imagine walking onto that stage.

00:32:50:01 - 00:33:04:08
Elliot Roe
What does it feel like as you face that audience for the first time? And they'll say, I feel a tightness in my chest, My hands are starting to quiver. I can feel a sickness in my stomach. Excellent. I want to dig in to that feeling. I want to amplify that feeling now. Connect that back. Five, four, three, two, one.

00:33:04:08 - 00:33:25:03
Elliot Roe
What's the next memory you think of? They'll bring up another memory and then another memory. And usually we'll get to something between the ages of five or ten. That explains why they created a phobia of that situation. But if the if the subconscious didn't, the physical response wouldn't be there. If the subconscious didn't have a reason for it.

00:33:25:03 - 00:33:48:16
Elliot Roe
And because in hypnotherapy, the subconscious is dominant, it's just very fast for us to find those places. So normally, you know, it's within 20 minutes we're getting to some of these deeper memories that they might not have thought about in 20, 30 years, but they're popping up because to the subconscious, that's a dangerous memory that it's using to navigate life.

00:33:48:18 - 00:33:56:04
Elliot Roe
And it's all about making sure the subconscious is dominant over the conscious mind as you're going through that process.

00:33:56:06 - 00:34:17:03
Itamar Marani
Yeah, that's really interesting. Like, yeah, there's a lot of similarities here. I've always thought about asking to go, Where did you learn that to be true to things? A more cognitive approach and you're having a much more deeper like saying, let's go to the emotional approach for some people. Yeah. Question For you on that, have you ever worked with anybody that's a military law enforcement guys with severe PTSD?

00:34:17:05 - 00:34:18:10
Elliot Roe
Yes.

00:34:18:12 - 00:34:36:01
Itamar Marani
What and I'll say this about myself, like what I noticed when I came out of the agency and I think we've talked about this on a personal level, I almost got kidnaped by Al Qaida. I had some PTSD there and the way I was basically taught to deal with emotions was to not have emotions. I was extremely emotionally detached from my early twenties.

00:34:36:03 - 00:34:47:16
Itamar Marani
And I would think that if in my early twenties you were a candidate, what's the feeling you had there? I don't have any feeling, and I wonder how you've dealt with people like that. Like I'm sure there's a way to appeal through that, obviously.

00:34:47:18 - 00:35:08:18
Elliot Roe
But so I usually, usually when they present me with some level of PTSD, I start with the symptoms that they describe. So there's usually a PTSD symptom showing itself. So it might be, let's say it's nightmares night terrors or a response to loud noises. So so we use those situations. So if they're not sleeping, they have night terrors.

00:35:08:18 - 00:35:35:06
Elliot Roe
What does that feel like as you wake at night Again, they describe that visceral sensation. That's my gateway in there. So I'm not saying, what are your feelings? I'm using whatever they've given me in that pre talk. And there's almost always something if someone's coming with trauma where it's showing up in some way in their life, you know, I'm throwing rages at my wife and there's no reasons here.

00:35:35:08 - 00:36:03:21
Elliot Roe
Okay. Tell me what that feels like. That might be the entrance point. It's rare that they're coming to me and saying I'm absolutely neutral in every situation. And, you know, I'm sure there are some people who feel like that way and have completely disassociate it. But usually the ones who come to me is this there's something flaring up somewhere that helps them know that there's something wrong and it's not that we use for the for the sort of the opening point.

00:36:03:23 - 00:36:21:20
Itamar Marani
Yeah. So it's from what I'm hearing from your groping from wrong, it's even if they can't pinpoint that emotion because they're more emotionally shut down, there's some kind of behavior. Yeah. Like when you said to me, like my minimal thing, I would have immediately told you. I keep scanning all the time. Whenever I go somewhere, I'm scanning or when I leave my bedroom, I'm always looking through the people before I go out.

00:36:21:20 - 00:36:25:18
Itamar Marani
And you were like down to the street to make sure there's not like a because that's my behavior.

00:36:25:20 - 00:36:29:19
Elliot Roe
So, so. So what does it feel like when someone walks into the restroom?

00:36:29:21 - 00:36:35:20
Itamar Marani
I really get a sense of adrenaline, of being. I have to check and have to immediately scan them up and down like what's going on there?

00:36:35:21 - 00:36:47:13
Elliot Roe
Right. So. So that would be excellent. I wouldn't picture that you're sitting in the someone comes in, you don't know who they are, they look threatening. How does that feel? You'll say there's an adrenaline. I can start to feel it. Where can you feel that in your body? I'm feeling in my neck.

00:36:47:13 - 00:36:59:04
Itamar Marani
Wherever it get in my head. In my head. Because that's where my my weapons usually work. I get that maybe they feel like something like sitting there because I'm about to like and then it's usually then.

00:36:59:06 - 00:37:08:12
Elliot Roe
And then it's like, Excellent. You're feeling that in your hip. I'm going to count you back from 5 to 1 is going to take you to another memory, another memory earlier in your life. Five, four, three, two, one. It's going to be some time in the military.

00:37:08:13 - 00:37:11:02
Itamar Marani
Yeah, it's time. The military, the agency, the shooting range or.

00:37:11:03 - 00:37:12:20
Elliot Roe
Yeah, I'm sorry, but you know.

00:37:12:22 - 00:37:25:14
Itamar Marani
Nobody, you know. Yeah, it wasn't that bad exactly that because it was pop me up like. Exactly. I remember the the the death house that we used to clear and the agency took me back the that I can remember targets around my face like the smell everything.

00:37:25:16 - 00:37:42:06
Elliot Roe
And then you go to the next, go to the next, go the next and some other things will pop up. But there's always an entry point. You just have to find the entry point of the emotion. It's almost always that same what you're describing there is like, Yeah, for me it's in my hip. And then it gives us a story as to why it's there.

00:37:42:07 - 00:38:09:22
Itamar Marani
Yeah, so a question around that, because what you said is that people usually come down for something that happens from 5 to 10. Yeah. What I've noticed with some people, it's that it's their youth in whatever the context is, if it's life in general, it's 5 to 10. But if it's, for example, like the example I like to give is somebody if they have 100 launches in business under their belt and the 100th and one didn't go well, the big that's part of it if they're very first launch.

00:38:10:03 - 00:38:17:04
Itamar Marani
Yeah like didn't go well that's difference was also the context of the first time you did this thing.

00:38:17:06 - 00:38:33:20
Elliot Roe
Yeah. Mean that's that's really interesting I agree with you like there will be some level of stress from that thing that they did but oftentimes times you can go a level deeper than that. And there's a reason why that was so emotionally devastating from them for them.

00:38:33:22 - 00:38:38:20
Itamar Marani
So reason hey, launch was so chaotic, I didn't like it was because my dad didn't love me as a child.

00:38:38:22 - 00:38:59:20
Elliot Roe
And this was my way of proving to my dad that I was good enough and I'd lost my way of proving to my dad I was good enough. Yeah. So it's why. So it's a bit like a really silly one, like fear of spiders, right? Why are you scared of spiders? When I was ten, a boy threw a spider in my hair and I freaked out.

00:38:59:22 - 00:39:23:03
Elliot Roe
Okay, That's what someone will say when we do a hypnotherapy session, that memory will come up. But behind that memory is their mom screaming when she saw a spider. And that's what made it scary. Not funny when that boy threw the spider in the hat. So there had to be an initial sensitizing event for there to be a secondary response because some people, if someone threw a spider, they would laugh.

00:39:23:05 - 00:39:43:20
Elliot Roe
But you didn't laugh. For some people, their first business crashing is a Well, I'm an entrepreneur. Everyone's first business fails. I'm just moving ahead. But for this, in this individual, it was traumatic. Why is it traumatic for one but something someone else can get over? And what's the story behind that trauma? So I'm usually looking for the what's the story behind the thing?

00:39:43:22 - 00:40:19:11
Elliot Roe
The the place where this is different is significant PTSD. If it happens in adulthood, it has to be more extreme than the way a child's mind gets shaped. But there are instances, military experiences, sexual assaults, things like that, where we they can be the root cause. So when it's very extreme, we can be looking through adulthood. But if someone is someone presents with an issue, that's, hey, you know, I had this extreme response early in my business life.

00:40:19:11 - 00:40:33:13
Elliot Roe
I think you're right. Those early those early experiences are more amplified. But I find there's usually a reason why for that individual, it was particularly painful. And it's the exploration of that that's, you know, a part of the work that I do.

00:40:33:15 - 00:40:49:12
Itamar Marani
Yeah. So it's kind of that whole going five levels way deep, but then in point of view as to why is it traumatic to you, For example, you're saying why was a spider traumatic to me? Because my mother taught me that those things are really scary when I was a little kid and therefore that's what happened. That accurate?

00:40:49:12 - 00:41:14:04
Elliot Roe
Exactly. Yeah, but but but you might think it's because someone threw a spider at you, but there was a reason why that was a traumatic experience. But you might only remember that one. Usually people don't remember the actual initial one. They usually consciously remember the secondary one where they had the big emotional outburst. But there was a reason why there was a big emotional outburst there.

00:41:14:06 - 00:41:30:06
Itamar Marani
It's gray matter. Well, so we got a lot covered here. Is there anything else that you want to say? That addition like there's something that you wanted to pop up back there? We said something about this we think would be valuable to share this or just anything in general. Mac, I think you're sharing a lot of wisdom here, and I appreciate it.

00:41:30:07 - 00:41:52:09
Elliot Roe
I'm I would say I love how you describe that. You help your clients. I follow a very similar sort of process of this. Hey, what would the top person in your industry do and list them down and then put a ticker across next to it as to whether you're doing it and which of those crosses feels most emotional to you, because that's where we're starting to look, you know.

00:41:52:09 - 00:42:16:17
Elliot Roe
So it's a very similar we are a process is a very, very similar. And I would say the big thing for anyone watching this is like work through your life and have a look at different places. Where would you tell someone else to do things differently than the way you're doing this? And any where there's a gap between what your advice would be and what your behavior is, that's worth exploring.

00:42:16:19 - 00:42:33:23
Elliot Roe
Certainly worth exploring on your own. But it can be really worth working with someone to help you understand and work through that. Because if you can remove these barriers, it's like you're driving with the brakes on. You can just see, you know, exponential gains if you can remove the brakes in those situations.

00:42:34:01 - 00:42:48:14
Itamar Marani
Yeah. So I want to say thank you very much for coming on and I hope everyone listening today got a lot of but I got a lot out of it. And I think one good litmus test that we give to everybody at home, whether you're trying to work on your performance or whatever it may be, look at the person's results.

00:42:48:16 - 00:43:08:01
Itamar Marani
The beautiful thing is there's a lot of people that call themselves mindset coaches out there, but they can actually stick to results. And the fact that it works in such tangible places, whether it's poker, finances, traders, CEOs, whatever it may be, and that forces to actually find a system that really works. Otherwise results don't happen. It's a litmus test to like someone someone's a real deal.

00:43:08:03 - 00:43:20:09
Itamar Marani
And so and said I think that's probably why we also have similarities because you have to find the truth in order for things to actually work out to make people feel better. And I say again, thank you very much for coming on and working Everybody find you.

00:43:20:11 - 00:43:38:10
Elliot Roe
At hero dot com. You can look at my coaching staff there and we have an app called Primed Mind that you can download for free. It's on the Android. It's on the iPhone stores called Prime Mind. It has about 400 hypnotherapy audios on it. I think 40 of them are free. And then you can pay for an upsell to those.

00:43:38:10 - 00:43:57:17
Elliot Roe
But just to try it, if you want to experience hypnotherapy and you have a phone, you can try it for free. So I guess most people out here probably have phones. So if any of this has been of interest, that is the suggestion. Hypnotherapy I was describing the state change and then obviously we've got the coaching that's available there.

00:43:57:17 - 00:44:03:03
Elliot Roe
If you're looking to do that, the deeper work, you know, that's something we do have available.

00:44:03:05 - 00:44:06:07
Itamar Marani
Awesome. Thank you very much. I from that we will so.

00:44:06:07 - 00:44:07:05
Elliot Roe
Much for having me.

00:44:07:07 - 00:44:09:07
Itamar Marani
That way. We'll see everybody next week. Bye, guys.