JONATHAN MEAD – Unleash The Superhero In You Q&A
Full Transcript of the Interview
(Other available formats Video Version – Audio Version )
Victoria: Hi! This is Victoria Vives, ready for some empowerment overload? You got it! This is Unleash The Superhero In You – Q&A, this is a series of interviews especially designed to back you up in your Superhero journey.
And for today we have here our Superhero guest, Jonathan Mead, the founder of Illuminated Mind. Not only that, I’m also consulting with him about my How 2B a Superhero project and we also train together, so we’re doing all this crazy martial arts, gymnastics, conditioning… it’s a lot of fun!
So, hi, how are you Jonathan?
Jonathan: I’m good! Thank you for having me.
Victoria: Thank you for coming!
First of all I would like for you to describe what Illuminated Mind is?
Jonathan: Yeah so, Illuminated Mind is a website, and a project and a part of my life that is dedicated for helping people live on their own terms, and expressing themselves authentically. I mean, in most people’s life it feels like there’s some kind of falseness or some kind of division between what they want and what they don’t want and the goal of Illuminated Mind is to help people be 100% authentic and to use that to empower their lives. That’s pretty much the purpose behind of Illuminated Mind.
Victoria: Awesome! And what was the origin of Illuminated Mind and how did you get started?
Jonathan: So, I started to get really into self-development and I started to read a lot of books and a lot of blogs online and really kind of immerse myself in it, and after a while I was thinking about how I can give back to this community that I felt had changed my life so much. How can I not just, you know, consume the material and consume things, but how can I engage and be a part of it too? So I created a blog first and I was blogging about generic topics and stuff like that, and I eventually found my own voice. That’s how Illuminated Mind got started.
Victoria: Why is Illuminated Mind more Superhero like than other resources or systems or tools? What makes it different? What stands out?
Jonathan: I think the biggest thing, the biggest way that Illuminated Mind stands out is that it really speaks to people that do not necessarily resonate with the typical approach to self-development, like the kind of Tony Robbins approach like “pound on your chest and get excited”. [It speaks to] people that kind of want something that’s a little more unconventional or that resonates with their background.
For me personally, I’ve always had this kind of past questioning things, kind of questioning authority, questioning the kind of unconscious beliefs that we have, questioning, certain systems that we have in society, and that led me to growing a lot, but it also made me realize that, at a certain point you can’t just question, you have to create something for yourself as well. You can’t just be breaking things down, you have to be building something up. So, I think a lot of people resonate with Illuminated Mind because they have that history of rebelling and breaking things down and that whole kind of persona, but they also realize that tearing things down isn’t enough. It’s good to break limits and stuff like that but what are you going to put in its place? If there’s nothing in its place it’s just a vacuum and life doesn’t exist in a vacuum, there has to be something there so, that’s kind of how Illuminated Mind stands apart. It’s a little more… it speaks more to the unconventional person, the person that is off the beaten path or wants something a little bit different.
Victoria: Very cool! I really like that. How can Illuminated Mind help our viewers on their journey to become Superheroes, and evolve their inner and outer aspects?
Jonathan: Yeah, so the main thing that I talked about is that the purpose of Illuminated Mind is to help people express themselves more authentically and the way that I try to help people do that is, number one: to be more aware of the ways they limit themselves, and those might be unconscious beliefs. Those might be agreements that they’ve decided to participate in, beliefs that society has about the ways things should be or whatever it is, and really deciding consciously, once you realize what those things are, it’s about, “alright, I see where I am limited. Now, what do I want to create in that place, what do I want to decide I’m creating for myself?”
A lot of times we think that we just have to live by this kind of template of life that everyone else lives, like go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, you know, and live this sort of pre-made template. The reality is that you don’t have to do that, you can create whatever you want, it’s just a matter of deciding to do that. So once you decide to do that it becomes a lot easier. That’s kind of how I try to help people at Illuminated Mind.
Victoria: Awesome! What was the best advice that you were given and that you remember that turned your life around and put you in the right direction?
Jonathan: One thing that comes to mind is the quote that really struck with me “Always do what you’re afraid to do” . If you look at your life and see what are the things that scare you, you are able to see where the possibilities are for the most amount of growth. For instance, say you are in a relationship and if you’re afraid of expressing yourself emotionally, maybe you’re afraid of asking for what you want with your partner, you know, actually facing that fear and just trying expressing yourself, seeing what happens, trying asking for what you want and seeing what happens.
The more you do that the more you’re going to start to realize that the fear wasn’t really something that was tangible, it didn’t really exist in reality. Once you actually tested it, it only existed in your mind and the more I tested my own assumptions and faced my fears, the more I start to realize that there is not really that many dangers out in the world. There is more imaginary danger within your own mind and the more you face those the more you kind of reclaim ownership of your own mind, instead of allowing fears to own or occupy your mental space, so that was kind of one major big difference for me.
Victoria: Pretty awesome! That’s good. I also would like to know what would be the best advice that you can give to people that want to achieve their potential, their maximum potential in their lives?
Jonathan: Yeah, so a big shift that happened for me is, and this is something I tell my clients and I tell a lot of people that I’m working with, whether it’s in my program that I teach online, I tell people, instead of trying to think about how you can create a plan to succeed or how you can try to do something, think in terms of inevitability, so how can you do something and make it inevitable that that would happen. I think inevitable is a really powerful word, if you just think oh, I want to try this out, if you think oh how can I make it inevitable, that’s like wow, there’s no other possibility of being something else because now you’re thinking, it’s going to happen; it’s just a matter of time.
Like a couple of examples of that, say you want to travel more, something that would make it inevitable is buying a plain ticket. It’s pretty much certain that you’re going to go on that day after you buy the ticket. Now you just have to plan where you’re going to go when you get there, and how you’re going to pack and make arrangements and stuff like that, so say you want to be a better martial artist, you can sign up for three months of martial arts classes, you know.
Money and making a financial commitment is usually a pretty strong motivator for most people because they don’t want to waste the money they spent, right? So there are other things you can do to make it inevitable that don’t have to be necessarily financial, like you can start a mastermind group that helps keep you accountable. you can meet with them once a week or if you’re really committed, once everyday and that would help keep you accountable and stay on track to your goals, so if you do that, it kind of makes it inevitable that it’s going to happen.
I think that can help quite a bit with releasing your potential and kind of achieving whatever it is that you want.
Victoria: Very cool! I’ve also noticed that a lot of people when I suggest things that they could do or how they can pursue their passions, they tell me, you know, it would be great but really I don’t have the time, I have to do this, do that, my work, whatever, you know, but I always think that we have the possibility of choosing, and I would like for you to share how you personally incorporate these things in your life, in your everyday life, the things that you love, the things that you’re passionate about and that you want to do, things that make you go to the next level. How do you manage in your life to be able to integrate all of this?
Jonathan: Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, I think ultimately what it comes down to… I think there’s two parts to that:
The first is that if you don’t have enough time, you’re choosing to not have enough time, because you’re choosing to do other things that are going to be taking out your time, you know. So it’s about realizing that and then realizing, you know, in order to do something else that I really want, what would I have to give up? What am I doing that’s not necessarily so important.
That might be spending time doing things that aren’t very meaningful like watching television or surfing the internet for five hours a day or whatever it is. It might be something like that that’s pretty obvious or it might be things that aren’t so obvious that are taking out your time as well, like say you have a $500 car payment, that might force you to work a job at more hours, to make more money to pay for that car, you know? So it’s lifestyle choices too.
And thinking about those things, and then a lot of us make “to do” lists, but we don’t very often make “to stop” lists, so you can make “to stop” lists…
Victoria: Hahaha! That’s a good one!
Jonathan: …say you want to do this, say you want to become a Yoga teacher, or say you want to learn how to skydive, I don’t know, whatever it is you want to do, think about how much do you want that and, you know, create a “to stop” list. What you’re going to have to stop doing to be able to do that.
The other thing is, that’s kind of more long term, is just consciously creating the life that you want, to be able to facilitate the flexibility, to be able to do those things. Maybe that means negotiating in the job that you work in to have more flexibility, to have more control of your schedule, you know? Maybe that might mean working for yourself, maybe might mean any number of different things, but kind of taking back that control of your time.
I think if you do that you’ll start to be on the right track.
Victoria: Cool! So, what is the next project or the latest project that you have?
Jonathan: Yeah, so, you know, I’ve been doing Illuminated Mind for about two years now and for the past year or so I’ve really started getting into the physical expression of self-development.
For a long time I was really into the mental and emotional aspect of self-development, but now I’m starting to explore how self-development is related to expressing your body. So that’s going to be something that I’m going to be incorporating more in Illuminated Mind, more like Illuminated Mind and Body and really integrating those two things. We’ll see how it works.
Victoria: It sounds really good!
Jonathan: We’ll see how people respond. I’m pretty excited about moving in this direction.
Personally for me, thinking about physical things in terms of self-development and expressing your potential has made it much more interesting and fun for me, than just thinking about exercise and my body as some kind of chore, which is what a lot of people think. It’s like Oh, I have to go to the gym for a certain amount of time today, you know.
I used to think like that and eventually I started to change my relationship to fitness, and that’s really been powerful for me, so I’m excited to start sharing some of that, some of what I learned.
Victoria: Cool, very nice! Exciting. Looking forward to it!
Well Jonathan, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your superpowers!
Jonathan: Thank you Victoria for having me.
Victoria: And thank you for watching, Superhero. This was Unleash The Superhero In You Q&A and this is Victoria Vives.
(Other available formats Video Version – Audio Version )
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