AS Seen On

By: Stephan Spencer

Introduction

Barry Shore
“Once you recognize that you are an essential element in the universe, you become a conduit of goodness and a child of God.”
Barry Shore

It’s no surprise that stress leads to illness and struggle in one’s life. While going through stress is inevitable, Barry Shore says one good way to fight it is to SMILE, which is an acronym for “See Miracles In Life Everyday.” While you may not feel like doing so while in the thick of things, it is doable and it leads to powerful outcomes. Barry Shore’s life story is a testimony to it.

Barry is a mental wellness activist, change-maker, and life transformer. His body became paralyzed overnight from a rare disease and yet he went on to build a framework to enable people to live in joy daily despite their difficulties. His 11 strategies are being embraced by people around the world.

In this episode, we talk about the implications of living a life full of exuberance and positivity. Though it may not be easy, we believe it’s the best and only way to live and stay optimized.

So, without further ado, on with the show!

In this Episode

  • [00:30]Stephan’s guest on today’s episode is the mental wellness activist and the ambassador of Journey of You (JOY), Barry Shore, as they delve into finding the good in life and maintaining a positive outlook.
  • [02:07]Barry mentions how he connects with people as his purpose in life and his transformation after he ended up with a rare disease.
  • [09:54]Barry tells about an experience that made a difference in him, leading Stephan to ask him about his next big breakthrough.
  • [15:30]How does aquatic therapy change Barry’s life?
  • [24:54]Barry narrates his vision in three steps if he has millions of dollars.
  • [27:26]What is stress? Where does it come from? What does it stand for?
  • [30:18]Stephan speaks about choch de metzach, a term he learned from Kabbalah.
  • [31:55]Barry explains the three fundamentals of life.
  • [36:29]According to Barry, everything is there for our benefit and explains further the idea of paranoia.
  • [43:00]Barry talks more about self-talk and life as he and Stephan go on with their discussion.
  • [47:37]Stephan mentions the book called The Game of Life and How to Play It, leading Barry to talk about the concept of fear.
  • [50:46]Visit www.whatawonderfulworld.barryshore.com to access free valuable resources from Barry Shore.

Jump to Links and Resources

Barry, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Good day. Beautiful, bountiful, beloved immortal beings and good-looking people. Now, Stephan, how can I make the categorical statement? All the thousands and tens of thousands of people that will be watching the show are all good-looking. Because by definition, if they tuned in to Get Yourself Optimized, they’re always looking for and finding the good. That’s a good-looking person, someone who’s always looking for and finding the good in life.

That’s awesome. Why do you sing so much? I’ve heard you give presentations before and even just show up on masterminds. When it’s your turn to chime in, you actually are oftentimes singing. What is it about that?

My purpose in life is to connect with people.

You just said the word, chime. A chime or chimes are things that sound good. The genius of the human experience is that when we animate our speech. We call that singing. It’s far more interesting to listen to than just someone giving over data and information, that’s computer-like.

By the way, I sing often. Oftentimes on key, sometimes not. It allows me to be more animated, which enables me to connect with people. That’s really my purpose in life, to be connecting with people. What I urge people to do is become a conduit of good, what I call a COG.

People think of a cog as just some small piece in a big machine. But when you recognize that you are the essential element in the universe, you become a conduit of goodness and a child of God. That’s one of the reasons I sing, because it’s a form of praise, and I love people.

I urge people to become a COG: Conduit of Goodness and a Child of God

Yes, and music is a way to connect with God.

Absolutely. It is an experience.

I would love for you to share with our listener your origin story. How did you end up paralyzed? How did you end up with this rare disease? How did you transform your life through that? Also, what was the gift?

That’s a three-, four-, or five-part question. We’ll break it apart, unpack, and share with everybody. By the way, again, thank you so much, Stephan, for having me on the show. I’m deeply touched, honored, and humbled, because you are a person that brings out the best in others. That’s really what your goal is, to get yourself optimized. Because otherwise, why are you here?

We don’t want to be mediocre; we’re here to be optimized and grow.

By the way, when I speak in groups and just recently, thank God because we’re not doing the masquerade anymore. Hundreds and hundreds of people just yesterday and my first opening question to everybody was, who here wants to be mediocre? Can you imagine, not one hand went up. We don’t want to be mediocre, we’re here to be optimized. We’re here to grow.

Whenever I speak with people, I mention that I work with what’s called the three fundamentals of life. Three fundamentals are, number one, life has purpose. You lead a purpose-driven life, number two happens. In this case, a good number two, you go mad. MAD stands will Make A Difference. You lead a purpose-driven life, you go MAD, you make a difference in the world. The third is to unlock and uncover the power in the sequence of everyday words and terms. 

The example right now is this beautiful episode that we’re doing together is carried over the Internet. If we ask anybody what is www stands for, invariably, it ties with the Internet. But in our world, Stephan, the world of the positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant, WWW stands for what a wonderful world, and ‘what a’ is a word.

WWW stands for What a Wonderful World.

Of course, that song, What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong (Satchmo), has gone viral, not just touched tens of millions or hundreds of millions, but billions of people around the planet. Whenever you hear the opening bars, what can you do? You smile, you can’t help it. For me, smile is the operative word in my life. 

Imagine the following. Standing up in the morning, hale and hearty, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. That night, being the hospital, totally completely paralyzed. Not an automobile accident, not a spinal injury, a rare disease which I never heard of the day before, and I couldn’t spell to go with my body and rendered me a quadriplegic.

Quadriplegic means nothing in the body move, all I could do is blink my eyes. I was 144 days in the hospital. I was in a hospital bed in my own home for two years, I couldn’t turn over by myself, four years in wheelchair. I have braces on both my legs, my hips to my ankles. That was progress.

Thank God today, Stephan, I am able to be vertical and ambulatory with the help of a seven foot walking wand on a tripod, not a bipod. I still can’t walk up a stairs by myself. I can’t walk up a curve by myself. I have help 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, but you hear my voice.

Positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant, all because of one word. That word is smile. Smile? Yes, because SMILE stands for seeing miracles in life every day. As I mentioned, when I speak to groups and I tell the story of Barry Shore and you smile, right away, people raise their hands and say, ‘hey, Barry Shore, I’ve been up for hours, but I haven’t seen any miracles.’ And I asked them, are you here?

Can you hear? Can you stand still? I can’t do that. Can you walk? I can barely do that. Give water, drink, food to eat, a place to sleep, family, friends, every single one of those is a miracle.

The simplest proof, a simple proof, a million people didn’t get out of bed this morning. You know why? They died. By definition, if you’re watching, you’re listening, you didn’t. You have an obligation to live life exuberantly, and to live it with purpose, and to go mad and make a difference.

I’d say one quick story. I just realized. My eight-year-old niece came over to me a few weeks ago and said, “Uncle Barry, can we spell SMILE?” S-M-I-L-E I thought about it, smile? Sounds the same. Why not? I asked her, “How come?” She says, ”Because then it would stand for seeing miracles in life everyday.” An eight-year-old.

Out of the mouths of babies. What was she doing? She was creating the kind of world she wants to live in. CREATE is a wonderful acronym that stands for causing rethinking enabling all to excel, because rethinking is the key to life, isn’t it Stephan? This is part of what we do.

We are evolving all the time. You’re not the same person you were a week ago, a month ago, or a year ago.

We are evolving all the time. You’re not the same person you were a week ago, a month ago, or a year ago, in the sense that, first of all, your biology has changed. We know that, your cells and things like that. But by definition, our thinking is expanding.

We want to be able to be more conscious, more alive, more optimized in everything we do. That’s called, for us, Neuro Linguistic Programming, NLP. But really, what it boils down to is these six words. The most important six words you get ever utilize, internalize, and leverage in your life, and they are choice, not chance, determines your destiny. 

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. How you respond to any situation determines what’s going to happen with your life. For me, I was a quad. I still can’t get up from this chair. Basically, from the waist down, I’m still what they call a paraplegic. But I can move and I can, with help, I walk. And I swim, which we’ll talk about a little bit later.

That’s a long route to get to the plane of overnight, paralyzed, now what do you do with your life? There are a lot of benefits that came out of it, which I would not have checked off on the menu. But the good Lord says, ‘Mr. Shore, I need your attention, here’s what I’m going to give you. What are you going to do with it?’

Do you feel that you opted in for this? Before you incarnated, you’re like, okay, God, do you want me to be paralyzed and to gain some great lessons and share those lessons with the world by doing this? Okay, I’m in.

I don’t want to be glib and say, oh, yeah. No. It’s a challenge and a struggle. But I will tell you a story that made a difference for me. I was in the hospital about three weeks in. Again, I’m protoplasm. They pick me up, move me around, do things with me, and try to find out more about what’s going on.

The JOY of LIVING by Barry Shore

I had this one nurse, a male nurse, interesting. He had been with me already three days, and he’s wheeling me back to the room. I remember, my eyes could see out the windows. There was sort of coming dusk. He stopped the gurney, he leaned down, and he asked me a question. He said, “Mr. Shore, can I ask you a question?:

By the way, in addition to being paralyzed, I could barely speak above a whisper. It’s very hard to talk, but I said yes. He looked at me and said, “This is my specialty. I work with people who are paralyzed. I’ve never met anybody who’s not bitter and angry. How come you’re not bitter and angry?”

I realized what he was doing. He was asking me the great existential question, which is, why me, God? Why did you do this to me? But it’s not what I was asking. I was asking, I’m a regular guy. What am I supposed to do? What do you want?

I can tell you something, Stephan. At that moment, 55 years on the planet, a calm came over me that I had never experienced before. I had no idea if I’ll ever move again, walk again, swim, or anything, but I was completely calm and accepting. I think that goes to your question. The good Lord said, hey, sure, I need your attention for a while, I’m just going to be here. I was in.

Amazing. What do you see as your next big breakthrough or the next step in the ladder of ascension or of elevation for you?

First of all, I laughed when I say this because you remember, I was 55 when I entered into paralysis, the next stage of the rocket as it’s getting up into the stratosphere and such. I can’t climb up a ladder. If everybody listening, things that we do on a regular basis, you can take a step up a ladder. It’s such a common ability for people.

I now swim, and we’ll talk about that a little more in depth in just a bit. But I now swim regularly. In order to get in the pool and out of the pool, this particular one I go to doesn’t have stairs going in. It’s an Olympic pool and it’s quite remarkable and beautiful, but there are ladders going in for people on the side of the pool.

My visualization on a daily basis and affirmation was the ability to sit up and put my feet over the side of the bed. That was my goal. It took me two years to do it, but I did.

I can’t use those. I have this special machine called a Hoyer lift to get into the pool and out of the pool. Thank God we have these things. Otherwise, I can’t get in and out. What people use, 99.999% of everybody comes in and out of a ladder. If you can’t do that, so you answered your question with the ladder.

My growth through this process of feeling like the cocoon in the now the chrysalis is that these years that I was in the hospital bed in my own home, not being able to turn over at all, and being able to just visualize. For me, my visualization on a daily basis and affirmation was the ability to sit up and put my feet over the side of the bed. That was my goal. It took me two years to do it, but I did.

It was a lot of work, because I had therapists coming 3–4 times a week, and many other things to help prod me along the way and such like that. But the real true benefit—that was the physical—is that I was able to utilize the time to think about, meditate upon, and produce what we call the 11 Strategies for Living in JOY, which is of course, the title of my book.

My book is called The Joy of Living: How to Slay Stress and Be Happy. Recognize, a stress, Stephan, is the biggest killer in the United States and even in the world. All the other things with symptoms, such as sleeplessness, gastrointestinal issues, and heart failure. Almost everything comes back to the root of stress.

I’d like to talk about it a little more when we can, but for now, what has happened for me is that the next levels and the ladder, the staircase, or the ramp for me to move up and forward is to make sure that people know about the book, The Joy of Living: How to Slay Stress and Be Happy. The subtitle is from paralyzed long distance swimmer.

Stress is the biggest killer in the world.

I’m now swimming around the world. We’ll talk about that in depth. My goal as a mental health activist is to work with people to learn how to reduce, mitigate, maybe even eliminate stress, and learn how to use it to advantage. That’s something wonderful. That’s my purpose now and my mission.

Amazing. You mentioned that you’re swimming around the world. Please elaborate that.

What the heck does that mean, Barry Shore swimming around the world? A great story. When I was brought home from the hospital, I lived in this beautiful place in Venice Beach, California. We were there for 45 years. We just moved from there recently, because California is California and stuff happening.

We moved to a wonderful community called Henderson, Nevada, which one of the reasons we’re here is because it has great aquatic facilities and such. But suffice to say, when I came home, my attendants took me out of the wheelchair for some fresh air one day. One of my neighbors comes out and says, I know what happened, I’m here to tell you, I’m going to have you up and out of the wheelchair and walking within a year. Great. I remember, I’m still paralyzed.

Aquatic therapy is what made a difference in my life.

I love the guy, his name is Vince. He tells me he’s the best aquatic therapist in America, so I believe him. Why not, if somebody’s going to tell you to have you walking? Aquatic therapy is what really made a difference in my life. I just said, let’s do it, whatever you need to do. We were able to get to a pool, where they had these special lifts, getting me from the wheelchair with lift at the water and had people working on me.

I’ll make the story somewhat shorter. Over the course of many months, putting flotation devices on my arms, on my tummy, and all my legs, so I don’t sink and drown, he had his people moving my limbs, so I tried to get some movement back if possible. The legs were not, but some of the upper body was and after were numb almost a year. One day, I was able to move my arms over my head, my right and then my left.

Again, I was moving. I was actually doing a backstroke in the pool. After a few strokes, I hit my head on the side of the pool and I said, wow, that’s wonderful. I turned and I moved to the next. I went back and forth in the pool. 

Stephan, that day was November 18th, about a year-and-a-half after I became paralyzed. I swam a mile, 98 minutes nonstop. On my back, out in the pool, and I was just in heaven. Remember, I’m the guy who can’t move. My legs barely did something, but they had flotation device so it wouldn’t sink and around me. But I’m in the pool moving, swimming a mile.

By the way, people were applauding. It was great. If I could swim a mile once, I could do it again, so I did it twice a week, then three times a week. Over the course of another year or so, I was able to turn on my tummy and swim with flotation devices still on my legs, not on my arms anymore, on my belly. I wore paddles because you see, my hands don’t close because everything looks like arthritis, but it’s not. But my fingers don’t close.

I use a snorkel because it’s too hard for my neck to move breathing, but I now swim two miles a day, six days a week. I’ve been doing that for more than a dozen years. Now I swim two miles in 100 minutes. I have over 8473 miles as of today. I’m over a third of the way around the world, and my goal is to swim around the world.

The most important speech you’ll ever hear is from yourself.

At my age, because I’m 73 chronologically, that I’m going to have to be 109 before it happens, but like you, we like to optimize ourselves. One of the way you optimize yourself is you leverage. The genius of business is leveraging, what we call other people’s networks.

My big goal, because I’m in mental health activism, is to attract Michael Phelps. Michael, if you’re listening to this, we’re already trying to contact him. To attract Michael Phelps who says, Barry Shore, I love your story, because he already knows about it, he’ll swim two miles a day, I’ll swim two miles a day, we’ll add them up. Together we’ll do 1000 miles a year and people will say, I’m in for two cents a mile, so it’s $20 a year.

With Michael Phelps’ notoriety more so than Barry Shore, I think we’ll have 100,000, 200,000, maybe a million people contributing $20 a year. We’ll raise tens of millions of dollars for mental health activism, which is called Stop the Stigma, the stigma of mental health of not recognizing that people have issues.

Stress is the main one. Anxiety, depression, fear, worry, they’re all part and parcel, I think. But to recognize it, admit it, right now Stephan, as you know, probably better than most anybody because you’re very sensitive to what’s going on in the world in understanding, because of the lockdown and because of the fear in the world, suicide rates, especially amongst teenagers, have increased dramatically amongst regular adults, also. The depression levels are increasing.

Once you recognize that you are an essential element in the universe, you become a conduit of goodness and a child of God. Click To Tweet

The reality is that help is available. Help is available. It’s like a 12-step program. If you ever know anything about a 12-step program, I worked with addictive personalities for years. I am an addictive personality, but I happen to be on the positive level. I swim two miles a day, six days a week. I’m addicted. In the 12-step program, the first step is 50% of the way to the goal. You know this. The genius of that is same thing in mental health—admitting, recognizing, reaching out. You’re halfway there. That’s wonderful. 

I’m swimming around the world. We want to attract Michael Phelps, and then we’ll attract a few other celebrity swimmers who will contribute a mile or two a day. Together, because we’ll swim around the world, almost 25,000 miles, 24,913 miles. Okay, we could do it in a few years and raise tens of millions of dollars. Isn’t that wonderful? How great is that? What a mission, what a purpose, what a life.

I love your enthusiasm and you’re dreaming big. That’s awesome. I wave my magic wand and you have tens of millions of dollars already in your hands, what do you do with it?

The first step of three steps. What I would do is to utilize all of the genius of the people that I know—Stephan amongst them—to leverage what we do in our world on what’s called social media. To attract, not pursue but attract the most recognizable, the most dedicated, and the most giving people on the planet. 

JOY stands for Journey of You.

We’ll start with a person like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles (the gymnast), Sir Richard Branson, and people of that caliber to bring out the realities of life and say, hello, I know what stress is, I did it, and I’m urging everybody, get in touch with yourself.

Here’s a great idea. Three-letter word with the middle letter of O. People might think I’m going to God. The word is joy, because JOY stands for journey of you. It’s interesting.

This show is not about Barry Shore, a nice guy that he is. It’s not about Stephan Spencer, a great guy that he is. This show’s only about one person, you, the one who’s listening, the one who’s watching. It’s about you.

You becoming the best you, because when you’re the best you, you make the world a better place. You build bridges of harmony, create more joy, happiness, peace and love in the world. The genius of today, Stephan, step two, is that we attract these great personalities who want to help. People do want to help, and it’s now global.

This show’s only about one person, you, who’s listening.

The genius of today is that because there is no geography, because time and space don’t exist anymore in reality, because it’s all online as it were, we can really touch people everywhere. 

Stage one is creating the modality. Remember, create causing rethinking, enabling all to excel. Number two is attracting the people who others will be attracted to, as I say, the celebrity is the spark that ignites the masses. Do you like that? Celebrity is the spark that ignites the masses. And number three is that it becomes—you ready for this?—fun. It becomes fun to say I’m working on myself. I love it.

I love teaching people, by the way. I use a lot of four-letter words. The four-letter words that I use, of course, because we live in the world of positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant are love, life, hope, free, gift, which we have a free gift for everybody, pray, play, swim, and I even use the four-letter FU word because it’s fun and I like the shock value of it. The four letter FU word that we use is FUNN.

People listening will raise their hand and say, hey, Barry Shore, fun is only spelled with three letters. Not in our world. The world of the positive, purposeful, powerful, pleasant, FUNN is spelled F-U-N-N. After this show and you see your family or friends, I want you to point your finger, have a smile on your face. Remember that stands for seeing miracles in life everyday, twinkle in your eye and tell everybody, FU. Remember to add right away, capital N, capital N.

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. Click To Tweet

They’ll say, where’d you get that? I said, well, I listened to Stephan in his show, Optimize. He has this guy named Barry Shore who wants to teach the world to FU capital N, capital N. When you do that, now you’ve broken the ice. You created the potential for a conversation. A conversation can lead to understanding. Understanding leads to the genius of community, because we are a community.

The word community is very interesting, because the U comes before the I. When we’ve all recognized that the U comes before the I, we become all givers. That’s the joy of living. I found out after years of paralysis, meditation, research, and learning, the joy of living can be summed up in one word, giving. 

That’s what I would do with my hundreds of millions, create the modality, attract the people, and make sure that it’s out there touching, going viral, and people say, yes, FU, capital N, capital N.

What are the two N stands for?

The two Ns?

The greatest opponent you have is that voice inside yourself that tells you NO.

Yeah.

Never-ending nurturing.

Okay.

Never-ending nurturing. That’s what we’re about, isn’t it? Who is Stephan Spencer? He’s a nurturer. Yes, he does things in business and makes things happen. He has magic. He knows what to do. But that’s what he is, he’s a nurturer. Am I correct?

Yes.

STRESS stands for Stomach Turning Reality, Enabling Self-Sabotage.

That’s the way I’m doing. When you optimize yourself, you become the giver. I’d like to share with you two things. May I do that? Three practical tips and tools. By the way, I didn’t even have a chance here to talk about stress and my acronym for stress. Maybe we’ll do that first. Okay?

Sure.

Okay, let’s talk about stress. First of all, stress wasn’t just a product of the lockdown, the pandemic, or the panic. Stress is the most searched word in the Internet after Covid and all that other stuff, because it’s always here.

Stress comes in three places. It comes from money—too much or the lack of—relationships with other people and the most important relationship—with oneself—and health. Money, relationships, and health. Either yourself, something that’s going on, or somebody very close to you. That’s where stress comes from.

SHARE stands for Spreading Happiness and Rejuvenating Energy.

STRESS is an amazing acronym, Stephan. It stands for stomach turning reality, enabling self-sabotage. You know what happened? I lost my job, I may lose the house, my cousin committed suicide, the kids are going crazy going to school, the country’s falling apart. If people don’t do it on the outside, they’re doing on the inside. That’s stress.

They’re internalizing, which is even worse. At least if you know how to release it, I can show people how to use it to advantage as part of why we built The Joy of Living community, which I urge everybody to join. The Joy of Living Community. Stephan will post it somewhere and you can see it on barryshore.com.

That’s stomach turning reality, enabling self-sabotage. What we share with people, and SHARE stands for spreading happiness and rejuvenating energy. We share and teach people. STRESS stands for—write this down—stomach turning reality, enabling self-success.

Yes, you did lose your job, you may lose the house, your cousin then committed suicide, the kids are going crazy, the country’s falling apart. Okay, how you respond in any given situation will help determine, are you optimizing yourself or not? How do you respond? Not react, how do you respond? Using the mind?

You want to be a spiritual chiropractor, I call it. When you go to the chiropractor and physically, I don’t know, something go, wow, you’re aligned, you can carry yourself. The same thing here, spiritual chiropractor.

You want to align your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. You’re flowing, you’re a channel of goodness, a child of God, and then what happens? You can grow. That’s self-success. Yes, there are always these stuff.

I learned this from Kabbalah that there’s a term I pronounced incorrectly, I’m sure, it’s choch de metzach. It refers to the ability to receive messages. When your thoughts, words, and deeds are all pure, in alignment with purity, it turns the dial up to 10 in terms of your ability to receive messages from the other side of the veil, from the Creator, from his angels, from guides.

Even other humans.

Life has a purpose; go mad, make a difference.

Yeah. It’s like you pop your head up above the clouds, and then all the others who have popped their heads up above the clouds can see you, and then you just get approached by all these amazing, wonderful people who have worked on themselves. All these amazing synchronicities happen, too.

I wanted to get your thoughts on this concept of the ability to receive messages. I’d love to hear if you’ve had any experiences where you’ve actually heard the voice of God, for example. If you want to share any kinds of without-a-doubt signs that you receive from the Creator or from your angels, or guides. What amazing mystical experiences if you’ve received in that way?

Stephan, you told me before we began recording that this is going to be one of the more remarkable podcasts I’ve ever been on. You just helped make it so. What a wondrous discussion. How fabulous, thank you.

AWE stands for Ancient Wisdom Educates

I work with the three fundamentals of life. Life has purpose, go mad, make a difference, and the third is unlocking the power and the sequence of everyday words and terms. There are words that you alluded to that I want to share with people as an idea and then give you something that you ask for.

The first word is awe. We use awesome, but awe. The next word is wow. People say that when they hear something that expands themselves or highlights.

AWE all stands for ancient wisdom educates. You mentioned Kabbalah. Kabbalah is a remarkable word, by the way, in Hebrew origin. It means received tradition. It is a gift. That is what Kabbalah is. It is the ability to recognize and receive a gift.

The next word is wow. People say when they hear something, wow. WOW stands for words of wisdom or words of wonder. I’ll give you an example of something I always found fascinating. Chronologically, I’m older than you and probably almost more than most everybody listening to this. I’m 73 chronologically.

WOW stands for Words of Wisdom or Words of Wonder.

By the way, there’s an important issue in this realm that we’re going to be discussing. Everybody has four ages. Once you get over the age of 25 and you become somewhat cognizant of life, everybody has four ages that you live in the same time. Your chronological age, your metabolic age, your mental acuity age, and your SOW.

Chronologically, I’m 73. Metabolically, I’m 47, because I swim two miles a day, six days a week. I’m in shape or as they call it, shape. I can’t walk that well, but hey, get me in the water and it’s great. Mental acuity is about 28 because I work with a lot of 28-year-olds, 25s, 22s, 33s, and such. I work with them.

My SOW, and you say, what’s an SOW? Sense of wonder. I’m eight-year-old. And the important thing of being eight-year-old is between six and nine is when things really are happening in the world. Your pathways in your brain are being wired, rewired, moved, things are going on, and every day is an adventure. You get into double digits already, and that box comes in, and things happen in school and all that. Okay.

SOW stands for Sense of Wonder.

If you can keep your SOW somewhere between six and nine, I’m an eight-year-old, wow. You got WOW, words and wonder or words of wisdom. You walk along the street and you see grass grow up, a little blade of grass through pieces of concrete, you say, oh, my gosh, look at that. That’s exactly what you just said, wonderful Stephan.

That blade of grass is popping up. You said the clouds, I call it the concrete. That blade of grass is me. It’s ever reaching. It sometimes breaks concrete. We’ve seen that with tree roots and all kinds of things. That’s what the world can be like.

I like your analogy of the clouds, but I’m just saying people feel constrained as if it’s concrete. They have a knot in their tummy and that blade of grass, so I’m going to share with you something from the Kabbalah. Every blade of grass has at least one angel who’s in charge of saying to that blade of grass, grow, grow, grow.

How many blades of grass are there in the world? More than the googol number, more than any gigabyte, more than the planet’s. They’re in the billions, maybe trillions. Every blade of grass has an angel that says grow. If that’s true for a blade of grass, how much more so for human being?

That’s about how each of us has 100,000 angels.

You must live life exuberantly, live it with purpose, and make a difference. Click To Tweet

Hello, and they’re all there for one reason, for your benefit. Let’s go on an idea. Ready?

Yes.

Again, I do this when I’m with people in our audience. We have a big audience. I ask people, everybody here knows the word paranoia? Every hand goes up. Everybody knows. Of course, I know the word paranoia. I’ve seen, I’ve heard.

Okay. Are people paranoid? Not everybody is, but everybody knows that paranoia is an impending doom. Would you agree? I said, everybody, that’s what paranoia is. You’re all thinking of it, you experienced. Oh, yeah, okay.

Okay, how many people know what pronoia is? I’ve spoken to groups over 5200 at the time. By the way, this particular group 55,263 people, two hands went up. It was wonderful. One of them, when I asked, they said, I only raised my hand because I wanted to raise my hand.

Paranoia is impending doom. Pronoia is the understanding and the knowledge that everything is there for your benefit. Everything is there for your benefit. It’s a designer universe. I have experienced it.

CREATE stands for Causing Rethinking Enabling All To Excel. Rethinking is the key to life.

I believe going close to knowledge that every human being experienced that at some point in their life. It may only be a flash. When you see a lightning light up a sky and then clear as day, it goes away. For others, it’s a time of breakthrough, inspiration, and say, I’m excited. I want to see it again, I want more of it, and then we’re on the path.

Remember, JOY stands for journey of you. I urge people to put aside that word paranoia and replace it in your being with pronoia. Live it, feel it, taste it, experience it, and it will be part and parcel of you. Yes, okay. Initially, it’ll be outside of you until you bring it in. Once you bring it into you and you’re living a pronoia life, you’ll be singing, you’ll be dancing. I urge people to skip. You hear this, Stephan?

One of the remedies I urge people to do when I work with people, either one on one or in groups and such, skip. I don’t care if it’s a block of you by yourself. The better it is to skip with somebody holding on to hand somebody you like or love, and the best is to have one in each hand. Skip. It is childlike, and that’s great. Stephan, when you were a kid, did you go to a place that they called kindergarten?

Yes.

Okay. They mispronounced it. Don’t think kindergarten. Remember, we’re just shifting perspective. It was really called kinder garden, because that was the place where five-year-olds who are, wow, always looking, thinking, touching, and they’re like, what’s going on? They learn to deal with others and learn how to be kinder, how to know not just me, but there’s another who’s really the garden of being kinder. The best news is, we’re still here. You can enter the kinder garden now. Isn’t that wonderful? How fabulous.

You make the world a better place when you're the best you. You build bridges of harmony and create more joy, happiness, peace and love in the world. Click To Tweet

I have a two-year-old and he’s such a blessing, such a gift in my life. He helps me to stay young, and to tap into that childlike wonder, and be awe of God and of this creation of his. When you have a little one who tells you about angels and where they are in the room, that’s real. That’s absolutely real.

Absolutely.

And then we crush their psychic abilities by denying their reality, saying, who are you talking about? There’s nobody there or stop talking to your imaginary friends. You’re going to look like a freak when you go to school. That just crushes their ability to receive. That was a really bad thing to do. I’m very careful to only be positive and encouraging when it comes to accessing the other side of the veil.

Absolutely, it is so important. That’s why I said, part of you, the double end has to do with nurturing. That’s what you’re doing. You have a soul that’s been brought to you. You’re nurturing. It’s wonderful. Is it a boy or girl?

Boy.

Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. Yes. Keep encouraged. There may not be a body there, but there’s a reality there. The word, by the way, imagine, I love playing with and using words. Imagine, for me, I break it up and I call it I’m a genie, because that’s what you are. You’re magical. Everybody listening, again, you, the one who’s listening, you’re magical. Once you recognize that, then we can really begin to communicate. 

I’d like to go into one small realm right now. I will talk about the most important speech that anybody can ever hear, and it’s not from Barry Shore, not even Stephan Spencer, as nice as he is, as smart as he is. Really, the most important speech you’ll ever hear is from yourself. Am I correct on that? Self-talk.

The best way to help others is when you are in your best self. Click To Tweet

Yeah. With the distinction, I think that you’re either receiving the self-talk from the opponent from the negative if that’s the frequency you’re tuned into, or you’re receiving it from your angels and Holy Spirit in that. You’re tuned in to a radio station, and that radio station is what’s filling your self-talk.

Right. Let’s share with people what the acronym for self-talk is so that it will be in the frequency that is of benefit to you. Remember, you’re now living in pronoia. That’s the radio frequency. You’re tuning in.

You want to write this down because you want to look at it, examine it, and say, really, is that true? Yes, it’s true. SELF-TALK stands for recognizing that you are a soul experiencing life fully, teaching always love and kindness. That’s the self-talk you want to have. You’re a soul experiencing life fully, teaching always love and kindness.

A great example of this is the airline. Thank God the masquerade is over. We can go back to the airlines again and almost be human inside. When you get on the plane, you’re seated, and the person at the front of the plane takes out that mask and such, the other good mask, and says, if you have a change in cabin pressure, then what’s going to happen? Something’s going to come down over you.

Here’s the key. Let’s say you’re traveling with your two-year-old or somebody who’s acting like a two-year-old, and the chiropractor changes, and then the masks comes down. Counterintuitive, because intuitively, what you would do is you put the mask on your two-year-old or the person acting that way and then on you.

The reason that there’s a person in front of the plane explaining something to you is to override your intuitive and counterintuitive and say, put the mask on you first. So you’re breathing, and now you put it on the other person. Your best ability to help in the world, yourself, and everyone else, is when you are breathing well.

When you have calm and awareness in your very being, you can be a benefit.

When you have calm and awareness in your very being, now you can be a benefit. Put the mask on you, breath in first, be in calm and aware, and now you can be of benefit. Now that’s the self-talk, recognizing you’re a soul experiencing life fully. Therefore, as a soul, you’re attached to the Creator.

It can only be pronoia. It’s all good. It’s all designed. No matter what your other thoughts were, those are paranoia thoughts. Pronoia says teaching always love and kindness. If you want to put the mask or the breathing apparatus to the other person, you need to be calm and aware first.

Very true. You said, you’re a soul experiencing life fully, teaching always love and kindness. You’re not a person who has a soul, you are a soul who has a body. That’s a very important distinction.

Right. The body by the way, everybody knows, everybody. The body has a certain shelf life that we’ll call it, but you’re eternal. I opened up, I said, good morning or good day, beautiful, bountiful, beloved immortal beings. We’re immortal. We’re an immortal being. You’re a soul.

LIFE stands for Living Inspirationally for Eternity.

You have it now, utilize it to the best of your ability. Optimize, get yourself optimized, and utilize that which is given to you as a gift, life. LIFE stands for living inspirationally for eternity. I like that one, Stephan. Living inspirationally for eternity.

When you recognizes and do that, when Stephan looks at his two-year-old, he can see himself, he can know that in some point of time, let’s call it 50 years or 70 years, this being called Stephan, dad, may not be physically here, but Stephan, dad, will always be part of him. The legacy continues from your son and continues. We’re immortal. What a way to live to approach life, to see. Remember, you’re good looking, because you’re always looking for and finding the good.

Yup, beautiful. I know we’re about out of time here. If you could share your thoughts on something I learned from reading a book called The Game of Life and How to Play It. It’s about 100-year-old book. This concept of fear being inverse faith. In other words, faith in the worst outcome rather than the best outcome. This I think ties in pretty darn well with pronoia. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that statement here as inverse faith.

FEAR stands for False Expectations Appearing Real.

It resonates well with me. Most of us know the famous acronym for FEAR. There are many of them. The one I utilize the most when I’m sharing with other people, false expectations appearing real.

Yeah, or false evidence appearing real is what I heard. I also heard F everything and run.

Right, or face everything and respond. The good news is that we can utilize the concept and create the benefit. Let’s go to the martial arts. One of the greatest ones I’ve been able to practice is Tai Chi or Jiu-Jitsu. You’re using the energy of the opponent against them.

The greatest opponent you have is that voice or voices in you that use the N word. The N word is no. What I do with the word no when I teach it in my book, The Joy of Living: How to Slay Stress and Be Happy, Love and Strategies, is talking about the N word, no.

HUGS stands for Heartfelt Unlimited Giving.

Whenever you hear the N word no, surround it with a K and a W. Oh, that’s different, but same sound, know. The K and W stands for kindness and wisdom. Every time you hear NO surrounded with kindness and wisdom, I think that’s great. In the remaining moments, if I may, I’d like to give a hug to you and to all the people listening and blessing. HUGS stands for heartfelt unlimited giving. Our blessing is go forth, live exuberantly. Spread the seeds of joy, happiness, peace, and love. Go mad, go make a difference.

Awesome. Thank you. You’re making a difference and what a blessing you are to all of us, Barry. You, listener, are also a blessing, so please go out there and live a joyful life and spread that joy with others. Barry, what is your website?

www.whatawonderfulworld.barryshore.com. There are some free valuable resources there. Use them.

Awesome. Thank you, Barry. Thank you, listener. We’ll catch you in the next episode.

Thank you, Stephan.

All right. Take care.

Important Links

Checklist of Actionable Takeaways


?Focus on the good things. Situations and circumstances are part of life. Positive thinking is important because it can have a beneficial impact on both my physical and mental well-being.


?Keep reminding myself that I’m an essential element in the universe. I am a conduit of goodness that can make a difference in the world.


?Aim to lead a purpose-driven life. Individuals with a strong sense of purpose tend to be more psychologically resilient.


?Keep looking for the miracles that happen every day. Even the smallest things can massively impact one’s life.


?Visualize and practice affirmations daily. Doing so allows me to change my beliefs, assumptions, and opinions about the most important person in my life — ME!


?Work toward becoming the best version of myself. Working on myself can build bridges of harmony and create more joy, happiness, peace and love in the world.


?Keep my words and deeds in alignment with my thoughts. This will allow me to be clearer in expressing my truth and have the power to bring it into reality.


?Replace the word paranoia with pronoia. Pronoia is the understanding and knowing that everything is there for my benefit. Live it, taste it, experience it, and it will be a part of me.


?Exercise positive self-talk. The most important speech I’ll ever hear is from myself. SELF-TALK stands for recognizing that I am a Soul Experiencing Life Fully, Teaching Always Love and Kindness.


?Visit Barry Shore’s website to learn more about him and to access his free resources. Also, check out and read his new book, The Joy of Living: How to Slay Stress and Be Happy.

About Barry Shore

Barry Shore is a mental wellness activist, change-maker, life transformer, and the Ambassador of JOY, aka Journey of You. He was completely paralyzed overnight from a rare disease and went on to build a system to enable people to live in JOY daily. His 11 Strategies are being embraced Globally.

 

Disclaimer: The medical, fitness, psychological, mindset, lifestyle, and nutritional information provided on this website and through any materials, downloads, videos, webinars, podcasts, or emails is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical/fitness/nutritional advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Always seek the help of your physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, certified trainer, or dietitian with any questions regarding starting any new programs or treatments, or stopping any current programs or treatments. This website is for information purposes only, and the creators and editors, including Stephan Spencer, accept no liability for any injury or illness arising out of the use of the material contained herein, and make no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the contents of this website and affiliated materials.

 

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