Julie Hilsen: 0:20

Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love. We gather every week to explore what the life of love looks like at this time and bring forth messages to inspire, to challenge, and I always ask take what serves you and leave what doesn’t, but please I mean this has been happening more and more people are sharing these episodes. If you think of someone when we’re delivering a message, if you want to offer any of our content, please share it. You mean the most to me, my audience and my guests and this community that we have. That’s been going and I thank you for all your support and most of all, your ears, because it just means the world to me.

Julie Hilsen: 1:05

So today is a wonderful opportunity to pick the brain of Matt O’Neill. He has been a soldier for joy, for love. He’s an author. He’s impacted the lives of over 100,000 people worldwide this podcast, good Mood Revolution, and then he also has the book Good Mood Revolution, which I’ve gotten a chance to put my eyes on, and it’s one of those you want to go back to. It has truths, it has lies. He really breaks down things that might be part of our programming, that we could re-examine. So I just want to shout out his book and his website, because he’s been doing a lot of work and just being in the field of spirituality and self-awareness, self-love, and he’s a family and he’s in Charleston and I’m in Cumming Georgia, so we’re both on the East Coast here, and so I’m just delighted. Thanks, matt, for being here on Life of Love.

Matt ONeil: 2:01

What’s up, Julie? I am so happy that we have connected and I am so excited about this conversation today.

Julie Hilsen: 2:09

Me too. Me too. It’s always fun to invite someone and collaborate and be in the field with someone who wants to bring God into the focus and enjoy, and so that’s what resonates so much with me and I shared with you before our pre-interview how my book has bring in the light in the beginning and yours is like that’s your message at the end. And so to me, we bookend each other’s hearts with the message that we were called to bring forth. Right, like because nobody wants to sit down and write a book about God and love and joy, because you’re going to get judged. Right, it’s not like writing a best-selling murder mystery. You know what I mean.

Matt ONeil: 2:53

It’s like no, it was definitely a calling. It is and it’s a calling and it’s scary to answer the call. I was, I had so much fear to answer the call and then I’m just like let’s just trust it like I continue to get this message to write this book. I told you I’ve been getting this message since I was five years old to write this book and then I actually was spoken to. It was 2017 and I had a really successful business and we were doing so well.

Matt ONeil: 3:29

But I’m reading and I’m studying and I’m praying and one morning, before the kids got up, I’m reading this book and a question was in this book and it said what could you do to be the biggest service to the world? I asked it out loud. I said what could I do to be the biggest service to the world? And it was spoken back to me and it was write your book. And I, like, I looked around. It was like five in the morning, nobody’s there. But somebody was there and I don’t know who said it. I don’t know whose voice it was. Maybe it was me from the future, maybe it was a guide, maybe it was God, who knows. Somebody said it and I wrote it down and circled it and said, okay, I’ll write my book.

Matt ONeil: 4:18

And then I spent the next four years writing that book and it just. I wanted to live every. I wanted to live every emotion so that I could speak from authenticity about how to embody love, you know, because love is one of the chapters how to live a life of peace, because my life wasn’t always peaceful, it’s still not always peaceful, but I needed to know that I could walk the walk, that I could live a peaceful, loving, joyful life. And at the time when I started writing the book, I didn’t feel authentic about living that way. So that’s why it really took so long, because I wanted to really figure out how I could do it, so that I could actually teach it.

Julie Hilsen: 5:07

Well, I commend you because it’s a beautiful book. It’s like I said, when you say the lie the lie that we’ve been told, the lie we’ve told ourselves and then the truth of how to counterbalance, and I like to say cancel, delete. That’s a cancel delete, it doesn’t serve my heart in living in love, and that was something that really the first note I took when I was going over your book was sustainable happiness, and I put stars around that. I’m like isn’t that a great lens to you? Know, it’s not saying you have to always be happy, you always have to be in a good mood or you always have to make every choice in the highest light, but it’s sustainable. And so I wanted to talk to you about how you came up. I mean, sustainable is a pretty common word with you know, meat production or food, think about it with a mood right. So was that one of the voices coming down Like right, sustainable happiness, you know Right?

Matt ONeil: 6:14

Sustainable happiness. You know, so that you know there is this. I’m so glad you said that it’s not realistic to think that we’re just going to feel amazing and we’re never going to have bad moods. That’s not. That’s not reality.

Matt ONeil: 6:32

And I teach happiness, so we can have happiness every day and, in fact, the majority of each day can be happy days. Now, if we’re going through a particular time like loss, we can have happiness in those days. It may not be the predominant emotion that we’re experiencing, but I wanted people to know that, yeah, we can sustain happiness for longer and longer periods of time, and it’s just a skill, just like anything else is a skill. Maybe we weren’t taught in school how to sustain happiness, but it is a skill and we can learn it, and that is what the book was aiming to do. That’s what this conversation is for learn it and that is what the book was aiming to do. That’s what this conversation is for. I love to get on and talk to your audience today about how they can grow their skill of being happy, because it is a skill and once you learn the steps, we can live it.

Julie Hilsen: 7:28

Yeah, so that’s a segue into the next thing I want to talk to you about was the progression of moods, and I know that’s like the bedrock of of where you started was to know about these moods, and I can’t. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the person who authored the moods or the, is it?

Matt ONeil: 7:49

David Hawkins. Yeah, david Hawkins, david.

Julie Hilsen: 7:51

Hawkins.

Matt ONeil: 7:51

Okay, that was another message, oh my gosh, Okay. So by crazy coincidence, I ended up running into somebody at a dinner and he was an old mentor and he said, Matt, you have to read this book by David Hawkins Power Versus Force. And I respect this mentor and I said, okay, great. So I got the book, I’m reading it. It’s super boring. It’s like so technical. He’s like a super technical heady writer and I’m kind of getting bored and I get another nudge and it’s pay attention, You’re going to write a book about this. And I’m like, but I, you know, but I’m a full believer in the magic of the world, as you are, and so I started to pay closer attention. And then, sure enough, it ends up what the book ends up being about.

Matt ONeil: 8:44

So David identified 16 different levels of consciousness. The lowest eight levels of consciousness he actually calibrated with a frequency like a hertz level. The lowest of them is shame. It’s the lowest emotion, it’s the heaviest, it’s the darkest, it’s the I’m unlovable. And in that thought, I’m unlovable. We say I’m going to prove I’m unlovable and then we do the worst things ever. So if we believe this lie and the lie of shame this is why each chapter starts with a lie the lie of shame is I’m unlovable as I am. When we believe that lie, we have to manifest ways that we’re unlovable to prove that we’re right and that’s the quantum.

Julie Hilsen: 9:32

That’s quantum mechanics. It’s the. And that’s the quantum. That’s quantum mechanics, it’s the you put out. It magnetizes to what’s coming to you. It’s a hard one because you’re like, no, I don’t want that, but at a subconscious level in your belief system you do, and that’s a hard thing to look at yourself in the mirror.

Matt ONeil: 9:56

My daughter was this morning. She came downstairs We’ve got four kids. I’m doing breakfast all myself. I told my wife she could have the morning to do her own thing. I said I’ve got this babe and she was worried for me. My second oldest comes down and she looks at me and she’s like dad, you need help. I’m like heck, yeah, I do, cam. She’s getting water bottles and helping me. My other daughter is a huge Megan Trainor fan. We put Megan Trainor on the radio. We’re all dancing around the kitchen and we’re having just the best time.

Matt ONeil: 10:30

Then my daughter comes down and something had triggered her shame reflex. Something had made her feel unlovable, unworthy, and she just brings down this dark cloud of energy. And I know when she’s like that that she’s believing a thought that she’s rejectable, and I don’t know what it was that triggered her. Sometimes I can guess at what the trigger was. Was that triggered her? Sometimes I can guess at what the trigger was. She then says a cutting remark in front of me to her sister and says your hair is a mess, you haven’t brushed it yet. And then her little sister, the sweet little six-year-old. She puts her head down and the whole breakfast is starting to turn sour.

Julie Hilsen: 11:15

You’re watching the Hawkins scale, yeah.

Matt ONeil: 11:17

I’m watching it, but what she wants me to do in that moment is reject her. She said that comment so that I would reject her.

Julie Hilsen: 11:27

It was a bait, yeah.

Matt ONeil: 11:30

But she doesn’t even know it. This is when it’s a subconscious program. It runs without our understanding. She doesn’t know why she’s acting out in that way and why she’s wanting to bring down her sister. It literally is so that I can tell her that she’s not lovable. But I won’t fall for it. So I wrote a note and I said Harper, I love you so much.

Matt ONeil: 11:54

I hope you have the best day. And I went to put it in her lunchbox and then, when I got, I dropped him off at school and when I got back, the note had been crumpled and ripped into pieces and then put down on the floor where I would find it. I still won’t fall for it. See, this is the thing is that when we feel unlovable, we need to know that there’s nothing we can do that will ever take God’s love from us. And so me, as her dad, I’m going to be that image of unconditional love for her that, no matter how much she wants to believe she’s unlovable, I will make sure she knows she’s lovable, no matter what she does or doesn’t do, she can’t lose it. And that’s what we need to know when we’re believing the lie of shame.

Julie Hilsen: 12:46

Yeah, that hits. I mean it really hits, because it’s easy to want to discipline or be like we don’t treat each other that way and you know. So you created a love.

Matt ONeil: 13:00

I would just fall right into the right into her pattern if I acted that way and then she would, then her ego would then be justified, that she’s unlovable and that. But I won’t fall into the pattern.

Julie Hilsen: 13:12

I did, and then I learned and that’s all we can do is like look and, and I loved how, when you put in your book um, you know, when you’re not in the state of love I forget how you wrote it, but it was like return to that state of love, because when you’re not there, everything feels off, everything feels frustrating, it’s not serving. It’s not serving your good to be out of love and action, especially with family members or anybody, I mean even somebody who’s cutting you off in traffic. I mean you can be like Absolutely, absolutely.

Julie Hilsen: 13:51

Compassion.

Matt ONeil: 13:52

Even the person. Even the person when we’re on hold, we’re trying to fix our internet and that we had to answer a hundred questions about who we are and verify our account and all this stuff. Then they get on the phone and they’re like can you verify your account? And you’re thinking I just verified it through your automated system for the last 10 minutes. Even then, when we fall out of love with that person, life isn’t working as well for us. So, yeah, like my, my best recommendation is we’re not.

Matt ONeil: 14:26

It’s unrealistic to think we’re going to stay loving all the time. You know, I talk about Jesus and what would Jesus do? That was the big bracelet in the 90s was what would Jesus do? Wwjd. And then my wife bought me a bracelet a couple of years ago because I saw someone wearing it and it said HWLF. And the answer to what would Jesus do is he would love first. And I’m like, oh, that’s so cool, I’ll wear this bracelet. So I’m wearing this bracelet that says he would love first and I’m thinking I’ll just like love first.

Matt ONeil: 14:55

And I find myself my wife had locked us out of a cabin we were staying at. We rented a cabin for a family vacation. She locked the door and it didn’t bring the keys. And it’s pouring down rain and we’re standing out in the rain, the whole family’s pouring down rain and I’m so frustrated at Katie for locking the door and I’m not loving first.

Matt ONeil: 15:18

And then she points to my bracelet. She’s like you’re not living it right now and I’m like, okay, good, Good call, but I’ll do this. I’ll choose love second. And that was when I created the idea that we could just always, as soon as we notice we’re not being loving, that’s all it takes. We just need to notice it and then we can choose to be loving in that moment. So here we are in the rain, no keys, and Katie says you know, I used to be able to pick locks in high school. Let me see your credit card. I’m like here she jimmies the lock of that cabin and we all run in and then it ends up being playful and fun, rather than I just ruined everything because I got super unloving.

Julie Hilsen: 16:02

Yeah, and now you have a cat burglar for a wife.

Matt ONeil: 16:05

She is. She can break into a house.

Julie Hilsen: 16:09

It’s so cool and you know, to me it’s like you’re jumping timelines. I think of it that way. I’m like I’m not going to be in this timeline. I don’t like this timeline. I’m going to jump and return to love and instantly you’ve jumped to another dimension. I mean, even if you look at Hawkins scale, you know you’re raising your frequency. You’re in another, another dimension. We were talking about this yesterday. It’s like our souls. Our souls are our auras and they go. Our body only has a portion of them, so these other dimensions are always available. It’s just that we’re in this density right now and, like you said, choosing that’s the magic.

Matt ONeil: 16:50

Well, each of these moods, each of these eight negative moods and the eight positive moods, they all have their own, it’s like its own world. You’re calling it a dimension. I agree with that language. It’s like its own world. So when we’re in the world of anger, let’s just use anger as an example. Anger, let’s just use anger as an example. It’s just the anger has a thought pattern, anger has a frequency, anger has certain thoughts and anger has just certain ways it responds.

Matt ONeil: 17:31

And when we’re in it and we don’t realize we’re in the world of anger, we think it’s us, we think we feel this way, but it’s not. It’s a universal emotion that when we just get, we plug into that universal feeling that all humans can plug into, and then we start acting in a really predictable way, which is angry. And the first step to being happy is to recognize what are these eight different unhappy places that we all plug into as humans. And once we can recognize it and we know it’s predictable, then we can say I don’t want to be in this pattern, I don’t need to be in this pattern. Now the pattern has utility, there’s a reason for it. Our soul, like sometimes, pushes us into a pattern, so that we can recognize something.

Matt ONeil: 18:14

So in the case, of anger, like sometimes anger is really positive. It’s saying you’ve been putting up with something for a long time and it’s time for you to bring enough energy that you do something to get yourself out of that situation and we can use the energy of anger to create positive change. We don’t want to use the energy of anger like to manipulate and overpower. And you know, one of my favorite lines I heard was from Caroline Mice and she said we can have a love of power or we can use the power of love, or we can use the power of love. And using anger is a love of power, but it’s not true power, it’s false and it takes away and destroys everything we truly want, because to me it has a layer of shame, it has a layer of expectation.

Julie Hilsen: 19:12

You’ve been let down, down and those kind of things can really sabotage the foundation of trust and understanding and compassion. But yeah, I love how you.

Matt ONeil: 19:24

it’s like the the anger is the fuel that says I’ve had enough and I want something different so for me, the way that I that I explain it the book on anger, just because we’re on this topic is anger is usually a secondary emotion and it’s covering up primary emotions. It comes in so fast though we don’t recognize that it’s coming in to protect us, but anger is usually covering up some vulnerable part in us where we feel hurt and vulnerable or we feel afraid or a combination of both. And so anytime I get angry now my go-to is to say where am I feeling hurt and vulnerable and where am I feeling afraid? And then I switch the anger from projecting it out to whoever I want to be mad at and I look at myself and I say how am I hurt and vulnerable right now? So I use an example in the book of this person that I felt like had really betrayed me.

Julie Hilsen: 20:29

Yeah, the real estate. Yeah, he had betrayed me.

Matt ONeil: 20:34

And I was so angry with him. I was so angry. I went to play basketball one morning with my friends and I was just just in this, like anger at this guy, yeah, and I’m running into them all intentionally, like just running my body into them, following them on offense. I’m running it and then, and then they have no choice but to hit me back because I’m hitting them so much. And one of my buddies is like man Matt, what is going on with you? You’re like the most positive person I’ve ever been around. And here you are, like something must be wrong.

Matt ONeil: 21:09

And you know, I got into my car after that game and I just cried. It was just a release that I was holding on to so much anger. And at that point I prayed and I said, god, I need help forgiving. I’m not able to forgive on my own. Please help me forgive. And it was two days later. This is how our prayer, you know, I think any prayer said with intensity and intention, always is answered. It may not be you get what you want, but the prayer will be answered, especially if you ask for forgiveness or you ask for like you know not to like get a million dollars. Maybe that prayer won’t be answered, but any prayer where like, hey, help my mind understand something from a higher level. Let me see things from your eyes.

Matt ONeil: 21:58

Two days later I was. I was just getting ready for work and I get this insight and it says this person never hurt you and cannot hurt you, but you can hurt yourself. You, but you can hurt yourself. And that was all I needed. That was the insight. I’m like okay, so he’s not the one hurting me. I’m hurting me, it’s this emotion of anger that’s actually hurting me. So how do I heal it? Well, I heal it by going into my vulnerability and I feel like I can be hurt. But I just heard from this answer that I cannot actually be hurt by this. So what is it that feels like I can be hurt? And I’m like well, he left, he, we used to work together. He left, and then now I feel like he’s being mean. Yeah, he’s coaching your employees.

Julie Hilsen: 22:47

I mean that’s, that’s your, it’s your um stability and your paycheck, and you guys are really good friends. You mentored him. I mean, I remember reading this. I was like I don’t know if I could have gotten there the way you did, but you asked for help.

Matt ONeil: 23:03

I asked for help and then it said he actually can’t hurt you. So I’m like, ok, well, I think he can hurt me because he’s taken, you know, he’s poached from us. We lost 25% of our company, which is 25% of our income, which means if I didn’t replace it, we were going to lose money every month. So it was, but he couldn’t actually hurt me, was the message I love this Good story.

Matt ONeil: 23:28

I you know. So here’s the truth about it. All the people that chose to leave were obviously not the right people for me.

Julie Hilsen: 23:38

Right, you got to cleanse.

Matt ONeil: 23:40

You don’t have to fire anybody, they just left, we got cleansed All the energy that wasn’t in frequency with us and it was. It was. It was the energy of competition and pride and, like all of this, like really macho kind of energy, was what it was. Who’s attracted to him?

Julie Hilsen: 23:58

and it as soon.

Matt ONeil: 23:59

As soon as it was cleansed, it opened up all this room for the right people to come in and also it opened up all this room for, like the super amazing warriors of light that were on my team to grow into that position. We then went into the most harmonious period of our company’s history. As soon as that happened and I got over the hurt of it, it turned into just this beautiful, loving company. We were named the number one company to work for out of 470,000 companies the following year.

Julie Hilsen: 24:32

Yeah, and you brought in the lesson Because the energy was great. Yeah, you brought in gratitude, you loved on those people, you solidified your team. And such a great story and your book’s full of these great stories these antidotes, these examples that bring to life the concepts, the gratitude and the rising up and feel the pain. But don’t stay in a victim, because the victim will continue being at that frequency where you’re not seeing the beauty and joy around you, you’re just seeing how you were wronged and you don’t get up from that. You have to move on and move up you have to move on and move up.

Matt ONeil: 25:11

So I finally, the way I finally like closed it, like to just be to have full forgiveness of this guy, because I, you know, I’m like, okay, I can see life’s better, but still he was, that was mean what he did I finally got to the point where I was like I’m going to make up a new story about him.

Matt ONeil: 25:30

I’m going to pretend that before we came to earth we were super tight buddies, hanging out is you know, spirits, and I’m like, hey, dude, can you help me learn forgiveness when we get down into earth? And he’s like for you, man, anything, I’m like don’t make it a super hard lesson where, like you know, you kill somebody in my family that you know that can’t come back, but do something that like feels really real but isn’t actually going to hurt me, could you do that? And he’s like I got you, man. And so we come into earth and then he teaches me this lesson on forgiveness. And so now I’m like, man, he’s just my super good buddy. We made a pact that he was going to do some gentle lesson for me that actually wasn’t going to hurt me.

Julie Hilsen: 26:16

But it was going to like feel like it hurt me. That’s the whole premise to me behind Talladega Nights. Ricky Bobby, and he’s like well, I always win. You know that, cal Cal, you can’t win, I win, how could I win if you win? He’s like he’s like, he’s, like, he’s, like, he’s like he’s like he’s like.

Matt ONeil: 26:35

I was just thinking that, you know, maybe I I could win one time yeah, no, that wouldn’t work. That doesn’t work how would that work? How? How could you win, if I’m winning?

Julie Hilsen: 26:46

exactly, and the french guy can’t remember his name. I was like. Well, everybody has their adversary, you know?

Matt ONeil: 26:54

Like everybody has something I love that we’re going Talladega Nights. Sweet little baby Jesus all in his swaddling clothes.

Julie Hilsen: 27:02

I sort of like the tuxedo shirt. He’s formal but came to party Baby Jesus, so good.

Matt ONeil: 27:13

It is so good. I gotta pull that one out with my kids. That’s one we haven’t watched. Is it age appropriate? Is it something they can watch?

Julie Hilsen: 27:22

how old are they?

Matt ONeil: 27:23

I think they could.

Julie Hilsen: 27:25

I don’t think that movie goes too raunchy when they’re being mean to the grandpa, that’s hard. And then there’s some stuff on the table. They clear off all the they clear off. He says something really mean to her dad and she’s like I’m so hot right now and they start jumping on the table together. I remember that okay that might be a little that might be the fast forward part yeah, if it’s on tv, I think they cut those parts out.

Julie Hilsen: 27:54

But we were watching it a couple nights ago and my boys were like I don’t remember this part and I was like, because it was probably on tv right let’s go get thrown out of applebee’s such a good movie. I’m on fire. I’m on fire, my friend’s on invisible fire. I gotta go help him. So good, so I do. I loved how you put the questions for when you’re feeling anger or you’re trying to forgive. So I think it’s forgiving somebody like what about, is true. I think it was Brian Katie that you had gotten this from.

Matt ONeil: 28:39

Yeah.

Julie Hilsen: 28:40

I thought that was a really freeing exercise to go through those questions and be like you know how can I get beyond this? Because you’re right at that vulnerability. It hurts, you, feel raw, it hits you, it’s, it’s just rough. But if you can, if you can take these steps, like Brian Katie and you wrote about in your book, to reframe the situation, like you did with your, your buddy, and I wanted you to share those too, because it’s just like a great thing to come away with.

Matt ONeil: 29:12

Well, this is the end of the ego. Byron Katie teaches how to dismantle the ego, one judgment at a time. All the eight bad moods stem from believing lies that the ego is trying to tell us. But, however, happiness comes from controlling the only thing we can’t control, which is ourself. We cannot control anyone else, but we think we can. So we judge them. Somebody does something, we judge them and we blame them and we get angry with them and we think that all of our judgment and hate and criticism is going to be poison for them. But we know we’re just drinking the poison as we’re feeling all these emotions. But we think that, oh, I’ll just get revenge on them and I’ll be so cold to them and I’ll send such bad energy their way and then when I see them, I’m going to be mean to them and this is going to get back for what they did. All we’re doing is making ourselves miserable. But that’s the lie. The ego is telling us is that, hey, you can hurt them back and then that’ll be good. But Byron Katie’s process is anytime you’re judging anyone is to say this judgment is my opportunity for freedom from the ego.

Matt ONeil: 30:29

So the story you told earlier about a driver that cuts you off. You know you’re like that prick. You know I can’t believe that. They just did that to me and I was like an angry driver. I definitely had road rage and if somebody cut me off I’d go cut them back off and we’d exchange middle fingers to each other. So that was fun. But that judgment. So the person cuts you off and you’re like, oh, they’re such a jerk, what an a-hole. My dad used to say this in the car. He’d be like he’d call them all these names. And Byron Katie teaches us that, as we’re calling them all these names, what we’re actually doing is we’re calling ourself all these names and when we start to notice that it’s not the person that’s harming us, it’s our judgment of the person that’s harming us, then you flip around the judgment and you say I’m the jerk. How am I the jerk? Well, I’m sitting here in my car screaming at nobody.

Julie Hilsen: 31:33

They can’t hear you.

Matt ONeil: 31:36

I’m being a jerk to somebody I don’t even know. I’m being a jerk to myself. I’m sitting here stewing over something that has no consequence in my life at all. What a jerk. I’m being a jerk to my kids, right, I have to listen to it.

Julie Hilsen: 31:50

Yeah, you created this hate soup around. Yeah.

Matt ONeil: 31:54

I’m being a jerk to my wife who’s sitting next to me. All of us have to deal with my energy. I am a huge as I’m calling this guy who turned in front of me a jerk. I am being a jerk in so many ways and, as in this exercise of turning around, every judgment dismantles the ego every single time If we have the humility to admit that we are what we judge. And it takes courage to say I’m that thing.

Matt ONeil: 32:23

It takes a lot of courage, takes courage to say I’m that thing. It takes a lot of courage. But if you, anyone who can get to this point and recognize that the person that they judge and dislike, that they actually dislike the quality in themselves, and then look at every time they say that person’s this, say I don’t like that about me, that person will live a life of happiness.

Julie Hilsen: 32:46

It’s true, it’s so true. I mean, people just experiment with it for a minute. When you find yourself judging, be like do I do that?

Matt ONeil: 32:56

Politics is a good place to do it.

Julie Hilsen: 32:59

I was thinking the same thing.

Matt ONeil: 33:00

Politics is such a good place to do it. So I was at a barbecue this weekend and there were, the whole group was talking about how much they love Donald Trump and um and. And so my wife comes up. She’s like, hey, they’re all talking about how much they love Donald Trump. And she’s like I just want to, I just want to warn you. They’re just like. You know, they’re throwing Kamala Harris under the bus.

Matt ONeil: 33:28

And I just walked right into the middle of the group and I said I just watched Waltz’s speech and I thought he was on fire. Like I’m like I thought he was so good. And they’re like, oh, but that Kamala, every time she talks, it just grates on my nerves. And I’m like it’s so interesting because every time I heard Donald Trump talk, every single speech, it made me think that he was the worst of humanity. And so here I am judging Donald Trump as the worst of humanity and in that moment, as I’m starting to argue about politics, I’m like how am I the worst of humanity right now? I’m like, oh, because I’m arguing about two people I don’t even know.

Matt ONeil: 34:14

Yeah, I don’t even know. I don’t know Donald. I don’t know him personally. I’ve seen him on TV. I’ve seen his persona. I don’t know what he’s been through in his life, I don’t know what trials and tribulations, I don’t know all the good he might have done for our country or for my family. And here I am saying he’s the worst of humanity. How could I make that assumption without walking a mile in his shoes? First, Wow.

Matt ONeil: 34:33

And so that’s what we need, so we need right now is like that kind of so, as we, you know, even as we’re saying, my side’s the good side, we’re for the light. If we’re throwing shade at the other side, in that moment, that’s our moment to have some spiritual awakening, because our judgments are holding us back, even judgments we think are good judgments.

Julie Hilsen: 35:00

Yes, so I’m excited. I’m excited because there’s used to when I remember I was in college and I used to think Nobody, nobody knows anything about our government, nobody knows any like people could name the senators, people barely knew who the vice president was. And I had a friend from Finland and he knew all the politics, like he could talk politics about his country up and down and I was like nobody even talks. Well, now I look at my life and that’s basically all that people want to talk about. So I’m really excited.

Julie Hilsen: 35:33

And this division, I guess it’s just part of the cleansing. You have to see what’s going on with both parties, to figure out what needs to be fixed so we can move on. Because this whole idea is I’m right and you’re wrong. Well, no, people want to be happy. They want to raise loving families, they want to put food on their tables, they want to be able to go on vacation, they want good health care, like all these things. It’s a common. You know, 90% of people are all on the same page, but we have this media that only wants to show us certain things and you know there’s all this division. So the more divided we are, the more chance we get to see that that division is not helping us, but for some reason it’s got to be so in our face. I’m really excited about this election and the opportunities it’s going to give us to work on our egos.

Matt ONeil: 36:22

Here’s the reality Both sides are right and both sides are wrong, and it’s only a holistic view that can see how everybody is right in some way and how believing that we’re the only right answer is also wrong. That holistic view that sees the rightness in everyone, that’s the only way that we can actually be a loving world or a loving nation or a loving human being is to see how all sides have merit and all sides are valid. It is when we say I’m right and you’re wrong. That’s ego and that’s suffering. So anytime we go into I’m right and you’re wrong, we’re in ego and that’s suffering. So anytime we go into I’m right and you’re wrong, we’re in ego and we’re in suffering.

Matt ONeil: 37:09

I did say this to the group. I said my wife and I, we own businesses. We were very successful when obama was president. We were very successful when trump was president. We were very successful then when joe biden and I said we’re going to be very successful when whoever is president next. So I said at the end of the day, I can’t affect who’s going to win this election, but I can focus on myself and our companies and what we’re going to do with it, and we’re going to make sure, we thrive, no matter who wins this election, so it doesn’t weigh on me as heavy as it does everyone else.

Julie Hilsen: 37:45

Right and I think that’s Tony Robbins, it’s one of his things is that no matter who’s in office, there’s opportunity. And the most important thing and I’m paraphrasing him with my own opinion is that and this is just for me if it doesn’t serve you, let it go. But if you have your values and how you want to live and you can’t rely on a politician to fulfill your dreams, like that’s you know, you can’t say, oh, this politician’s gonna gonna feed my family, no, I mean that’s not. If someone promises you that, I mean there’s food stamps, but who wants to rely on someone else deciding what food to feed your family? This whole thing is you show up as your best self, not show up and vote for you.

Julie Hilsen: 38:35

Who think is the best self of you? It’s showing up in your skin and the politicians are going to do what the politicians do and the politicians are going to do what the politicians do. It’s up to us to vote and show up how we want and change the world, to make it the way we want it. There’s no savior that’s going to change the world. We’re all going to do it, one at a time, no matter who’s in office, and we’re going to say this is OK and this is not OK for us, and it might be different for your neighbor, but all you can do is love and compassion. You know, like you said, you didn’t walk a mile in their shoes, so how can you judge it’s? We get a lot of opportunities to practice being out of ego. It’s exciting.

Matt ONeil: 39:16

Yeah, it’s so. It was so beautiful what you just said, and you know, and I you know, I’m thinking, well, what if they destroy the planet? Right, don’t we need policy that, then, is going to protect the planet? I’m thinking, well, I’ll just go ahead and do what Julie just said. If I really care about protecting the planet, I could write a book about how to care for the planet. I could start a podcast about how to care for the planet. I could start a charity about caring for the planet. I had an opportunity-.

Julie Hilsen: 39:42

Yeah, grow your own food. You don’t like the government’s allowing additives in our food. Yeah, grow your own food. Find a farmer. There’s plenty of people that enjoy growing food and it’s beautiful and it’s connection, it’s community. I miss community in that way of let’s get together and grow food and cook for each other and have potlucks, and I just love it. I love that idea, so I love the opportunity. Tell me how they’re putting chemtrails in the sky. I’m going to do better. You tell me I have to put poison in my body? No, I’ll do better. I’m not going to let someone tell me anything.

Matt ONeil: 40:20

This is the good mood of responsibility, and so I talk about how it doesn’t matter what happens. Our ability to respond is the only thing that really matters. But it’s again. The ego is so convincing that we need to play the victim. The election is not going the way I want it to, or it didn’t go the way I wanted it to, so now my life won’t be as good. Well, that is, your life could be better than it’s ever been, as soon as you choose to make it that way regardless of what the economic climate?

Julie Hilsen: 40:55

Yeah, yeah, but yeah. So it’s a lot, of, a lot of good chances to laugh and the comedy has been so great. I mean the memes and the reels I can find online and you know, the more I can talk about it, the more my phone listens and then I get more of it. So it’s just awesome.

Matt ONeil: 41:18

So my wife and I watched that movie, the Social Dilemma, with my soon-to-be 11-year-old, and I watched it because she was saying she wanted a phone. And I’m like, hey, you’re going to have a phone one day. She’s got a watch right now so that we can talk to her when she goes to her friend’s house. I said you’re going to have a phone one day, but I want to talk with you about some of the dangers of it, and I’ve heard this movie, the Social Dilemma, will talk with us about the dangers of social media. I watched that and I was like whoa, this is hurting my happiness and I deleted every social media app from my phone and my wife did too. We have not been back.

Julie Hilsen: 42:04

And you don’t miss it. I’m sure you don’t the opposite.

Matt ONeil: 42:07

I am so free. I am so free, you know what, in the place of pretend connection on social media, do you know what you end up doing? Having real connection. So, instead of because I was doing this loop, I would open my phone and I’d open my email and then I’d go straight to my Instagram and then over to my Facebook and over to my TikTok, and it was. I did the same loop every time, and it’s just, it became a habit, right? And that movie showed me how my brain was addicted to that loop.

Julie Hilsen: 42:42

That dopamine yeah.

Matt ONeil: 42:44

So now I open my phone and I go to my email and I’m like, what else is there to do? Shut it down. When I set the phone down and I’m more. There’s all this time to be with my children and to be with my wife and at work, there’s more time to connect with people here at the office. And you know, I actually sometimes just pick up the phone and like call a family member that I haven’t talked to in a while because I’ve got time on my hands, because I’m not just, it’s not being sucked away in hours.

Matt ONeil: 43:16

The thing that really got me in that movie was it said you think that these apps are free? Well, if something seems free, you’re the product they’re selling. Yes, they’re selling your attention. And at the end of the movie it zooms out of this person whose face is their attention is sucked into this phone. Their whole life force is sucked into this phone, all their attention is sucked into this phone. And then it zooms out further and there’s a hundred people whose life is being sucked by these machines. And then it zooms out further and there’s a hundred people whose life is being sucked by these machines. And then it zooms out further as a million people whose life is being sucked by these machines.

Julie Hilsen: 43:52

I’m like oh my God, it’s the matrix.

Matt ONeil: 43:55

It’s the matrix, except they didn’t plug into the back of our neck, they plugged into our attention and our face.

Julie Hilsen: 44:02

Our eyeballs.

Matt ONeil: 44:03

So yeah. So now I can only do social media sitting down at a computer, pulling up things on an internet browser and guess what? You don’t do that that often.

Julie Hilsen: 44:15

I love that. I love that tip, because I catch myself doing that. I was like well, maybe I got an instant message. I need to go check it and basically, if people want to get me, they can go to my website and find my. I have my email on my website. If someone wants to send me an email, they can. They don’t need to instant message me.

Matt ONeil: 44:32

There’s this fear. I know the instant message and you can miss business. You can lose business for sure.

Julie Hilsen: 44:38

Yeah, that’s what I struggle with.

Matt ONeil: 44:40

You can, you can, you can, you can, you can. So there’s a give and take. I’m not saying this is the way to live for everyone. I’m just saying it’s the way to live for me. I am happy to have less business and have my life back.

Julie Hilsen: 44:58

And have your four children and you can give them your complete attention.

Matt ONeil: 45:03

That’s the beauty and that’s your phase A little bit more money for all my life. Right, you know, we make this trade, though we make this trade like, yeah, but I got to have these extra two or three sales this year. I’m like, do I, or maybe your?

Julie Hilsen: 45:24

relationships are so connected and strong that they tell their friends and they’re like oh, this is who you need to use, that’s interesting.

Matt ONeil: 45:30

I hadn’t even thought of that, Julie.

Julie Hilsen: 45:32

Is it?

Matt ONeil: 45:32

Yeah, maybe I. Maybe I’m so present with my current clients that I actually get more referrals because I don’t have the social media.

Julie Hilsen: 45:48

Because you’re different, because you’re you’re being you authentically 100%, not 20%, over here thinking about what your social media account, how many? Followers you have whatever.

Matt ONeil: 45:53

So I run a real estate firm. We have 50 real estate agents who work here. The number one agent in our firm by double everyone else doesn’t even have social media accounts. Our firm by double everyone else doesn’t even have social media accounts. And many of my top agents are like I, just you know, but they’re older, right? So most of the top agents are in the generation that didn’t grow up with it and they’re so successful without social media. Then these younger agents will be like just posting all day, all day, and I’m thinking, and I do, I train them, I say, hey, it’ll work, You’re going to get some business this way. However, real connection will be the best business you ever had. And just look at these top agents that aren’t spending their time on social media but are actually going to lunch and having real relationships with people.

Julie Hilsen: 46:47

But we come back to the heart and we’re reaching our end of our time. But when you come, when you lead with your heart, there’s no stronger force. The internet signal can never match your heart frequency.

Matt ONeil: 47:00

That’s beautiful, so true.

Julie Hilsen: 47:05

Well, I’m going to share the link to your book. Do you want me to put an Amazon link or your website? How best can people get to your content? And I’ve just enjoyed this so much and I want people to have connection to you beyond this.

Matt ONeil: 47:21

Yeah yeah. Amazon is the best spot to get the Good Mood Revolution book, and then I am offering one-on-one happiness coaching. So if anyone is interested in having some happiness coaching, they can go to mattonealcom.

Julie Hilsen: 47:37

Nice, okay, I’ll put the link in the show notes too, and I just adored this time and I wish you all the best. This has been awesome.

Matt ONeil: 47:45

Thank you, Julie. Thank you for having me. This has been awesome.

Julie Hilsen: 47:48

Thank you, Julie. Thank you for having me. I’m so honored. It’s my pleasure.