World of Speakers E.50: Michael Levy | The philosophy of speaking and living authentically
Ryan Foland speaks with Michael Levy, a philosopher and poet. We have had experts from all walks of life with all sorts of expertise come on the show, but this philosopher will rattle your worldview and hopefully give you some new perspective on what it means to not only be an authentic speaker, but how to live an authentic life.
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Transcript
Michael Levy: This has been a wonderful hour spent with Ryan who is, I would say, a very authentic person doing a wonderful job to bring messages out in the world, for other people to grow from.
All the other speakers, what I've said today will speak for itself; you don't have to reiterate it.
It is what it is and those that want to follow something that was said today have the right to do so because nobody should tell anybody else what to do or how to live.
So, this has been a real pleasure speaking on this podcast.
Ryan Foland: Ahoy, hello, bonjour, buenos dias anybody and everyone who is listening to another episode here at The World of Speakers podcast.
Today I'm excited because we're speaking with a speaker who speaks about a topic that's very important. Very important for you, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
I have Michael Levy and he is the author of 16 different books that all have to do with the practical philosophy of everyday living.
We're going to be learning about him, some of his particular tips when it comes to speaking, and hopefully, life and practical living; as well as how he's been able to get more and more traction to spread his message.
Let's kick this off.
Michael, how are you today?
Michael Levy: I've been great, Ryan. It's a pleasure to meet you on this podcast.
Ryan Foland: Yes, absolutely.
I like to start the show instead of reading a long bio that has all of your accolades, I want to hear a story.
What is a story from your past, you can either go way back to a child, or to an adolescent, or a teen, or college, or even something that happened yesterday.
But if that story was the only thing that I had to describe you to somebody who had not met you, then ideally it would be a story whereby they would get to know you for who you are and what you're all about.
Can you think of a story that represents who you are?
Michael Levy: Yeah. Well, I grew up in Manchester, England, in a corner row house with no running hot water. We had no bathroom. We had to have a tin bath by the fire maybe once a month. That's how it was.
That was my palace for 19 years. It was what you’d call today an urban slum, but nobody ever told me I was poor.
That was never a part of the equation.
I grew up in those circumstances and I left school at 16. Told the teacher I’d have a Rolls-Royce by the time I was 26. I kind of had holes in my shoes at the time.
"Dream on, Michael," he said, those were his words.
So I did dream on, but I put the dreams into practice and I got my first roll Royce at 28 years of age.
Then I went from street markets, where I started my own business at 19, I went into wholesale textiles, and it became very successful.
The more people tried to push me down and tried to do different things, the more success I was getting because it released the spring inside me.
When I released that spring it allowed me to go to higher levels that I wouldn't have gotten to, had they not tried to pull me down.
I thank all the people who tried to pull me into the gutter because, without them, I might have ended up in the gutter.
But at 46 years of age, I decided I had enough of what I was doing. The fun kind of went out of it, and I always follow my joy and my bliss.
I had an opportunity to come over to the States to meet a friend who had come out here, and over a period of time I got used to the American way of living.
In 1992, I came over full time and I took six years of time out.
I sat on the balcony, looking up to the heavens and the stars—I live on the ocean—asking very profound questions about the meaning of life.
I continued to ask these questions almost every moment for those six years.
Even when I was playing golf, when I was playing bridge, thoughts were coming into my head.
The ones I didn't think were real and that weren't liveable — I dismissed them.
After six years with these thoughts, I kind of developed some kind of philosophy that I've been living and that got me to where I am today, but what am I going to do with it?
For another six months, it was like a dichotomy — on one side I said, "Why don't you write it down and see what you can do… maybe even write a book?"
On the other side, I said, "Forget it, you can't spell, you are 60. No one's ever going to read it."
So the dichotomy was going to and fro, and I made a vow.
After 6 months I bought a computer and I started to research what the sages of the past have said, going back from early history, and I found that there's a correlation between the philosophy that I had come up with and science and religion.
You kind of build a bridge between the two.
But it was a practical bridge, it wasn't an analytical bridge and that's what made the difference.
So I made a vow: never to advertise, never to actually use PR, but wait for people to contact me, as you did, Ryan.
And then I can then relate to them.
What I've learned in my life I would have been successful by doing it, and over the past probably 20 years.
I've written 16 books and I've been published all over the world on many websites. Also, many journals, Royal College of Psychiatry have published me 12 times in their journals. My poetry, I also became a poet and that's been published all over the world, too.
I made a niche for myself without actually trying to have to convince anybody of anything.
When people approach me, I'm more than willing to do what I can do to fulfill whatever they're asking of me.
And that's what I do as a speaker — when people contact me, and they want me to speak at an event or something, that's what I'll do once I find out who is at the event, and what it’s going to contain.
I can tell you, I reject over 90% because it's got to be authentic and it's got to be real and if it's just kind of a flim-flam kind of thing that you get in most of the media today, I'm not interested in doing anything like that.
Ryan Foland: Well, my new favorite two words are flim-flam, by the way.
What I'm curious about is this idea of really marketing without marketing, creating this own niche, waiting for people to come to you.
It's almost the opposite of what maybe, I wouldn't go so far as saying common sense, but I would say common sense if you've been paying attention to what everybody else is saying, and so it's more like group-think, maybe?
Michael Levy: Yeah, it's a very good way to analyze what I just said. Excellent!
The basic thing is this: if I copy everybody else, what they're doing, the way they are promoting with media and social media.
I am on Twitter, by the way, I've got 300k people that follow me on Twitter by default.
But I didn't try looking for that. I just started when it first started, just by putting a few original quotes out each day for people.
That's all I do on it, I just put original quotes (and maybe a few thoughts about the stock market.)
Basically, everybody else was doing it in a certain way and still do it in a certain way.
Same as my books — if I write books that are already out there and are similar to books that people read for self-help from all the what you call gurus out there, then what's the point of me writing it?
It's already out there.
What's the point of me giving a speech as a speaker when all the lecturers who are far more educated than I am, maybe are able to put over a story in a way that people want to hear it.
But with my philosophy and what I have to say, it's basically original and it's something that people need to hear, but sometimes they might not want to hear it.
So people might not want to read my books, like maybe when Van Gogh was doing his paintings, a lot of people didn't want to look at any of his paintings.
It was maybe 100 years or more after his death before he became popular, and now his paintings sell for millions — hundreds of millions.
If you want to be authentic in your life, you can't follow the herd.
You've got to break new ground. You've got to take the path least traveled.
Once you start doing that and people start to realize, "Hey, maybe we can learn something from this guy.”
”Maybe there's something there that we can learn from that can enhance our lives.”
“Maybe I can find a better way to eat.”
”Maybe I can find a better way to invest my money.”
”Maybe I can find a better way to start up a business and run a business without taking a loan."
There are ways that people can learn if they want to and a practical way of doing something.
Now, going further than that, more important than anything is to find the joy of the day — to carpe diem, to seize the day.
If we can't seize the day, and if we allow the day to seize us, then we're trapped in a vacuum of everybody else who was doing the same thing. We're just going down the same route and we're at the back of the herd.
So basically, if you want to be a leader in life and you want people to enhance their lives and you're not doing it for personal gain, and you're not doing it for monetary gain, and that's me, I don't do it for monetary gain, that's not my intent at all.
That's why I don't do it in what you call "the business-like way", the common sense if you will. I do it in a natural way and there are two ways to live our life.
Today you can live normally, as most people do, and you see all the normal headlines in the newspapers and everything that's going on in the normal world.
Or you can revert back to be a natural, how nature intended you to live on Earth, which our founding fathers going back from the first footsteps on Earth when we evolved and were created, and where we came from.
We had to be authentic to get to where we are today.
Because if we weren't, then the human race would have been wiped out a long time ago.
Lots of our ancestors along the path did many things that were authentic, to allow us to live the life we've got today.
We then get captured by high technology or the other stuff that takes away the joy of the moment.
The joy is paramount and it's our yardstick to living a successful life.
Joy means J-O-Y, Just Obey Yourself, your authentic self that was around before you were born, that will be around while you're living here on Earth in your human form, while you're doing your role plays, and will be around whenever these role plays disappear, and we leave this mortal coil; will still be around in our true form.
It's a shame that people don't realize that and can't live it, rather living a human experience because they're living just by what they think they know, and unfortunately, the majority of people on Earth today will never get to know what they need to know.
Ryan Foland: Mic drop, buddy. I dig it. So I've got a couple of notes here
I want to circle back to: you talked about common sense, and then I think you said “non-common sense”. I really liked that as maybe your 17th book, “non-common sense”.
When we grow up in a certain environment, whether it's with or without water or hot water, you're shaped by those experiences.
At a certain point, you then have the feeling of autonomy where you're out on your own, whether it's at 16 selling scraps of excess material or if you're with your parents even into your 30s.
It's your environment that creates this common understanding the way that you see it, but you're really challenging people to look the opposite way and make it a non-common sense.
I'm assuming that when it comes to the topic of speaking, there's very much common sense advice out there, which is enunciate and use your voice, and use your body language, and use pauses, and use storytelling.
For me, I'm now thinking of everything in this lens of common sense versus non-common sense.
I'm actually intrigued to know what the non-common sense speaking tips would be, from a practical sense.
You've kind of talked in a holistic way about the philosophy of everyday living, but when it comes to speaking, is there anything unconventional or non-common that you do when you're on stage or when you're communicating with people about these different messages, to rattle their cages?
Michael Levy: Yeah, absolutely.
Number one is be an authentic speaker. Be credible.
You've got to live a credible life, and you've got to speak about it from the experiences that you've had and how you've changed from where you were brought up, and how people try to indoctrinate your mind and even how your own mind has been indoctrinated and how you've overcome that.
So number one, you need clarity of voice.
Number two, you need to be original.
You've got to be authentic in what you're doing.
You've got to be truthful when you deliver your words.
Your words have got to contain wisdom.
If they're not containing wisdom and they're only just reciting learned text from education, then that isn't an authentic talk.
I can relate to, say, the maestro who comes into an orchestra.
The orchestra is reading the music sheets and the conductor is.
But the maestro comes in and doesn't read music.
If you take someone like Itzhak Perlman playing the violin, he is the maestro that will join the orchestra.
His eyes are closed while he's playing, he's hearing what he is playing, (those were his words, he hears what he plays) and he enjoys what he's playing.
And he plays like nobody else. He's a maestro.
The maestro is doing it and the orchestra is following him.
When a speaker comes in and speaks, they've got to take the stage as the maestro.
They've got to be the one that's going to tell people, in a way that's not been told before, the stories that they need to hear on the subject matter that they're talking about.
If it's a destination speaker, then it's got to be something very different than other destination speakers.
If it's somebody talking about the stock market, he's got to relate in a very practical way how people can invest their money safely in every environment, and how they can invest with the genius that they were born with, and we're all born with the genius.
That was one of my early books on the stock market, "Invest With A Genius."
I'm talking about non-practicality. All my books contain this, what you call, non-practical-ology, that is very practical.
You see, everything is a reverse process; a mirror image of how we see it to be.
What we think is practical doesn't get the right results for most people because if people are guided by logic and reason everybody would be multimillionaires, everybody would get everything right, and the logical reason would work for itself, but it doesn't work that way, does it?
We just don't get that in life.
We've got to find a method that contains authentic information on a continuing basis because life's changing every minute we're on Earth.
It can't be rigid; it can't be fixed.
Yet it's got to be changing. It's got to have reference points within the philosophy that can change our conditioning of, say, how I've been brought up and the things that were going on.
It's got to change that into a way that we need to relate to.
Understand, if people live with a negative mind, they will always find a problem with every solution.
The solutions are there for us once we connect to the genius within us that has got all the answers, and then it takes the research and understanding to do that.
When you're coming out as a speaker, you don't go and rehearse what you're going to be saying, especially on my subject matter.
You've got to already be within the zone, so you allow the talk that comes through your head, to come through your voice, and you're listening to it.
I'm listening to what I'm saying now and none of it was rehearsed, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. It's not a rehearsed speech.
It's not contrived like you get on television. I refuse lots of TV shows. I could have been on the PBS show a long time ago, but they wanted me to rehearse it and give them exact details of what I was going to be saying, I can't do that.
That's not what my philosophy is about. We don't rehearse our lives.
When I come and give a talk to people, I find out who I'm giving a talk to after I accept it, and then I will talk to the room and the people that are in that room. I look at all the faces in the room and I'll try not to be too controversial.
The thing is, when you're talking about my subject matter, people have got all different types of belief systems, from atheism to strong religious beliefs. Now, people are dogmatic.
I won't take an assignment on when people are dogmatic — they really don't wish to listen to what I'm going to be saying and they should not be reading my books.
A dogmatic person wouldn't gain anything from reading my books.
But a person who's open-minded, one that actually wants to improve their life, will gain a great deal of wisdom from them.
You notice I didn't say knowledge.
You can get knowledge from universities and textbooks.
My books don't contain that type of knowledge.
They contain a wisdom-knowledge, which is practical in everyday living.
It's a practical philosophy put over in an impractical way that most people will find strange to begin with. It's the same with my talks.
I can tell you, at the end of my talks I always get standing ovations and people from all walks of life come up to me afterward and say how enamored they were with it.
And how it's exactly what they needed to hear in their lives, and never heard before.
I had a Princeton professor, when I was giving a talk, he came up to me afterwards, he says,
"You relate it to me. I always thought while I was in the educational system, while I've been living my life", and he lost a son in the Six-Day War in Israel, and he says to me, "I just want to tell you, you put me at peace with myself. You put me at ease with myself and my whole life now will take on a new perspective."
That was just one guy out of thousands that I've heard from over the years that have said it has helped them to get to where they need to be. To live the rest of their life in a joyful state of mind.
Ryan Foland: Wow. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here.
First of all, I appreciate the non-conventional wisdom that you are bestowing upon us here and I will speak for myself and on behalf of all of our listeners as well.
I want to go through some of these elements and I've got some particular questions that I'm really interested to see where you go with.
The first thing we talked about was credibility.
The common sense for credibility is a banner that says you've been featured in Forbes, featured in Entrepreneur, featured in this magazine, featured on this stage, worked with these companies, that kind of material.
But your definition that I heard you say about credibility had nothing to do with that.
It wasn't the common sense.
What I heard was that it was the stories of your past, the holes in your shoes, the struggles that you made of your personal story and how you've overcome them and what you've learned from it.
To be clear, the common sense of credibility that is common-think is all these accolades and stars and prizes and everybody building you up.
But in actuality, you're saying the non common-sense credibility definition is really your personal story?
Did I get that right?
Michael Levy: Well, yeah, apart from the word struggle. I've never struggled.
There's never been a moment of struggle in my life.
There were issues that I had to overcome, but there weren't struggles. I didn't see them as such anyway.
Ryan Foland: Right, and that goes to later on about which I'll bring that into later when you talk about negativity, because thoughts become words, words become things.
So even if you're using the word struggle then it's assuming it's a struggle, but I like that correction of an issue.
Okay, so credibility has to do with the issues that you have an opportunity to experience throughout life. Is that correct?
Michael Levy: Yes, and when you talk about accolades and praises: a praise and an insult are the same imposter. You shouldn't allow yourself to be taken in by either.
Today's saint is tomorrow's sinner, especially in politics.
The tomorrow's sinner is today's saint.
As good as the moment that you're doing stuff for people, if you're out in the public eye and you get all these accolades, but whatever else is going on, you don't need that type of credibility if you want to be authentic.
It's nice to have if you get them. I'm not decrying them. It's nice to get your awards and degrees, everything that you need to be, as long as you're not taken in by it.
I've got two grandchildren. One grandchild went to Cambridge, physics and mathematics. He got all these degrees, he passed the CPA test in 18 months. He has broken all the records in an incredible way. He is only 25.
Yet I said to him when he went to Cambridge that, "Before you're going to go to Cambridge, if you want me to help you, then you've got to understand your education is only a tool and all the accolades, rewards and money that you're going to get afterwards may be the icing on the cake, but it isn't the cake itself.”
“The cake itself is to enjoy every moment of whatever job you're doing and then you don't need to call it a job. You can call it a love. A love of what you're doing."
When you love what you're doing it's no longer work. If I give a talk, it's because I love giving a talk.
I love to give that talk. I won't give it unless I love to give a talk. That's why I refuse a lot.
It's got to be a love and a joy combined, if you have that, the talk comes over in a very authentic way.
When people go home from it, they’ve got something that they can live their whole lives by, as long as they are prepared to make the changes and put it into practice.
To share in the talk, or just reading my books will not do it.
You've got to actually understand it after you read or hear it, and then do more research, and then go out and live it,
Unless you're living it, what you have actually heard — and it might sound pretty if you go to a nice pretty talk and it goes all lovely and it inflates the person's ego, but that's not going to do it for that person. It might be okay for a short period of time, but after that… well, that's not going to work for them.
My other grandchild, my granddaughter, started playing the guitar at 14, she's more academic than my grandson and went to the top girls’ school.
She left school at 16, and is now at this music conservatory and she's actually going out busking in the streets all the time.
And she loves it. She's busking in London, she's busking all over the place.
She gets gigs here and there. She writes all her own songs. She writes probably a song every single day, it just drop into her head, and she just won a big prize in London at a big competition and she won that.
She's going down a different route than my grandson and she's following her joy and bliss in the world of music.
She could have been a top lawyer. She could have been a top doctor. Her friends are all at Cambridge and Oxford and she goes to visit them and she was top of the class.
She got 10 A-Star O-levels when she left school, she was the top girl in the top school in England actually and she left that behind to follow the bliss in music.
There are two instances where somebody does it in a practical way like my grandson and he's doing very well with it.
Then my granddaughter, who is doing it in a non-practical way.
She's breaking all the rules and doing it in a way that is as natural as you can be.
I was on the street markets learning the philosophy of life from people who were talking to me.
She's out in the streets busking, learning from those people, so she's entertaining them, which is also learning from them.
Ryan Foland: Right, and so the credibility is really not a matter of credibility or not.
It's about just obeying yourself and it's about finding that joy and it doesn't need to be led by one outside verification or credibility from an outside validation, essentially.
Okay, I like that.
For people who don't have those accreditations, or don't have those featured in, this should be inspiring for them because it's not what that's about.
What it's about is finding a message that you're passionate about sharing so that whatever your proverbial “in the street” is could be on the stage, but you're sharing your stories. I like that.
Moving on to this idea of truthfulness because you talked about truthfulness, my question to you is about relative truth because you mentioned there's what you learn in a book. That's knowledge.
And then you talk about wisdom.
I have a circle around the word truthful because, in my mind, there's relative truth — what's true for one person is maybe true for another person and somebody who's dogmatic like they don't even care about truth.
How do you define truthfulness when it's relative at the end of the day?
Michael Levy: Very good. Well, there is relative truth.
On Earth, we live relative truths on the daily basis. We have gravity on Earth and that's our truth here.
On other planets, in different solar systems, there's no gravity. It's a total different relative truth on that planet if there's any life on it or not.
The whole universe is constructed in a way where there's absolute truth, and then when it's defined in what you call creative form, it turns into a relative truth. And each person's relative truth is different.
That's why as a speaker you're going to appeal to a lot of people, but you've got to understand that what you're saying is open to interpretation, and when a question just like yours, which is a great question, you’ve got to be able to answer it in an authentic way.
So yes, we live these relative truths on a daily basis, but then there's an absolute truth and absolute truth isn't privy to the intellectual mind.
Our brain really can't explain what you call real truth in a real sense of the word, authentic truth.
Having said that, every cell in our body works off authentic truth. It doesn't try and analyze it, it doesn't try and work things out analytically, it doesn't try and use an intellect to use it.
What it uses is its intelligence, and intelligence and intellect are close tablemates.
For one is a hack, the other one is a thoroughbred.
We learn with our intellect.
But if it's not guided by our intelligence, which contains wisdom, then the intellect alone made, nor all it’s intelligence it’s got, and going down its own route and just its relative truths and keep banging his head against a brick wall all the time.
It will not get anywhere with it.
Because they're only relative to that one person's head. And what's relative to one person isn't relative to another person.
That's why we have wars, conflicts, because all these people think they know the truth, but none of that is true.
The best book I wrote a few years ago was called "Cutting truths" and it's all about truth.
It's all about defining truth and finding the common element that links us all as human beings.
It links us all to Mother Earth, it links us to every treat, every blade of grass, to the ocean and to every part of the universe.
When we understand that authentic truth, and that absolute truth, then we're able to be fed by it.
And then we know that we have to question it too. We still have to define it and make sure that we can define it in it a way that is understandable for people.
We ourselves are living. Your heart's beating, your kidneys are functioning, your liver is functioning.
We're not doing anything to do that.
It's done by a master who's created, or involved in creating it, wherever that master you deem that to be, or you want to call it by chance, whatever label you want to put on it.
But it's there and we live it all the time in our body and if one minute all this authentic truth within our body, in our body cells (and there are billions of body cells,) if they all of a sudden stop living that truth, with that, we no longer exist.
We're living every moment with absolute truth.
And unless we understand that, then what we're going to be doing is feeding our body the wrong types of foods, the wrong kind of diets, fad diets.
None of those work. There is only what your body will accept and if you understand what your body wants and what it will accept, there is no need to go on these fad diets.
Ryan Foland: Gotcha. So it is the truth.
It is a relative truth, but there's truth in relative truth, but there is absolute truth, and so it's the combination of being aware of that to actually find what is truthful for you.
This is a great transition to my next question. You're talking about practical and logic and reason because I love this, I talk about this all the time— do you use story or logic?
I forget who said it, but the brain is a logic processor, but it really likes stories.
So my question to you is— if it were logical and if X=Y, everybody would be doing it, everybody would have the Rolls by the time they're 25.
My question is: does that tie into the reality of the 80/20 principle, the Pareto Principle to where people think that inputs equal outputs, but in actuality, there are very few inputs that yield massive outputs.
Is it a matter of finding the right things to invest in for this multiplier effect? Does that tie into it?
Because I do believe that there are practical things and logical things.
If you create a sales funnel, logically, you're going to get more clients into your course, or into whatever it is, but within that logic, at least personally, I've done a lot of research around the 80/20 principle, and I'm curious how that ties into it?
Is it that people aren't doing the right practical things or is just all that logic nonsense and it's really the anti-common sense that you're talking about?
I'm curious about your thoughts on that.
Michael Levy: Well, you’ve done a lot of studying, so you know what you're talking about.
It depends what you want to leave behind.
What kind of footprint do you want to leave on Earth?
Do you want to learn it, and I'm not criticizing people, who are learned, there is a necessity for it.
Ryan Foland: And you said it's a tool, you already said that education is a tool in its own right which is totally fine.
Michael Levy: It's all necessary in its own way.
But if you want to leave a legacy behind that people will understand and be able to live throughout the life in my subject matter or whatever people are doing, then you need to find something within that scope of logic and reason that you, whether put logic and reason over where I'm talking to you, I'm using a form of logic and reason so that you can understand it.
So, that is our intellectual sides of our brains.
We're analyzing it, we're understanding to a degree what somebody is saying, but without further research in something that's really authentic because you're not going to learn that stuff overnight.
It's something that is like say with a diet if you wanted to change your taste buds, you want to go dairy-free.
Well, you don't do it overnight. You might take six months to do it, and it is a slow process.
If you have say cheese every day and then you have it every other day, and then you have it every three days, every five days, every week. Over a period of say six months, you might only have it once a month.
And then wean you step off of it slowly and that way you still change your taste buds, and you won't go back to them.
Because once you get rid of the taste of, like, "Cheese is just fat and salt," once you get rid of those tastes (and it's one of the worst things you can eat, dairy products.)
Once you start to get rid of that kind of indoctrination, when we were growing up we thought, "Wow, you've got to drink milk for calcium."
Not true. You get your calcium from greens, from the Earth.
The kind of actual calcium that you get from dairy products actually bleaches the calcium out of your bones because it takes alkaline to digest the acidity of the milk. That is a scientific fact.
You’ve got to research science too because when I do a talk it’s got to be factual, there are scientists in the audience.
I wouldn't be credible unless I said things that were actually relatively truthful to what they've learned.
The relative truth comes into it, but you notice I never mention the word belief.
Because the word belief has three little letters in the middle, L-I-E and every single war that's ever gone on has been through two different belief systems.
You see, beliefs might have a modicum of truth in them, but it isn't truth itself.
So just to lock yourself into a belief system without researching it and finding the truth of it, then we are like Plato living in a cave, and we're talking to shadows. We're not seeing the outside world as it really is.
Ryan Foland: I love that.
Michael Levy: And the outside world is a constant change in dynamics.
Ryan Foland: Yeah, and a lot of people are doing what they just hear or what they read or what they see and this is what we initially talked about.
Like what is the common thread of what you see, what is trending and what's there and if you invest your time in that, it's not necessarily going to yield results, although you want to believe that's the case.
This really moves me to my next question. I have a lot of questions, and normally we have a whole section of the talk where we talk about how to get on stage.
But you already covered that, you pretty much said, "I don't worry about getting on stage, everybody comes and talks to me".
We're skipping that section.
But when it comes to this idea of beliefs and you talk about negativity, this is something that I'm passionate about, “negative talk” and you're limiting yourself by the thoughts that you think become the words that you speak.
At least the last couple of years I've really been into studying confirmation bias.
I'm curious about your thoughts. From your experience, how powerful is confirmation bias both ways when it comes to this?
You talk that negativity breeds negativity. In the same respect, do you find and believe that positivity really breeds positivity and that your brain has a confirmation bias that seeks these out?
And if that's the case, how powerful is that? Is that really the root of your success as a speaker?
Is it, "Believe it and it'll happen?"
Because common sense kind of says that's cheesy and that that's a little bit esoteric.
I'm curious what are your thoughts on confirmation bias when it comes to the root of success to set yourself up?
Michael Levy: Well positivity and negativity is not something you can use to change your mind.
That's what people tell you all the time.
Ryan Foland: That's a common knowledge. I want the uncommon knowledge from you.
Michael Levy: If you look at a glass of water.
People say, "Well it's half of a glass there, it's half full or it's half empty."
The positive person will say, "It's half full," the negative person will say, "It's half empty".
Well, if you want confirmation, then you can't get it from that glass of water because if you say it's half full, you don't know if it's full of toxic stuff.
You might be thinking you're positive, but it might be full of toxicity.
It might not be something that you need to swallow, it could do you a lot of harm, and that's what it is with our thought process when people start to learn things as you're growing up and your mind becomes conditioned and those reference points stay with you for life.
Now, we live in a disposable society.
But what most people can't get rid of is a negativity of what they have grown up with, and that lock themselves into a prison.
People throughout their life are living in their own “prison camps”, that they have erected for themselves, not knowingly, not as though they understand how it's come about, but they're locked into that mindset.
And there are very few places on Earth where you can learn how to get out of that.
You go to these seminars, people who are motivational and inspirational and they talk about positivity and negativity.
People go home, "Oh, I’ve got it now! Now I've learned the secret. Now all the things are going to happen.
Well, it's not quite like that.
Because if you're just thinking it's going to happen, well, you'll be in for a big shock.
You might be having the wrong types of expectations.
There are positivity and negativity charges throughout the universe.
A battery works from negative to positive charges.
And unless you get to put them together, you won't get an electric charge from it, and you don't get any power.
So there is power from negative and positive energy, but the intelligent energy is neither negative nor positive.
It is what it is.
It's true.
Ryan Foland: So by not focusing on either the positive or the negative, but just trying to be in the middle saying,
"Yes, that's a glass of water. I'm not going to answer further, your honor."
Michael Levy: Not quite.
I am giving you a scratch of the surface on this.
I am not going to go into the deeper kind of stuff because that's in my books if people want to read it, fine. If they want me as a speaker, I can go deeper. When people ask me a deeper question, I can go a little bit deeper on that.
But this is a general topic talk on speaking and getting your message across to your audience.
And how your speakers who are on your World of Speakers — you're doing a phenomenal service to people, by the way, Ryan.
Ryan Foland: Thanks.
Michael Levy: You're one of the few. You’re a real vangaurd who is doing something really special for the people and you'll find that you will be rewarded at certain stages in your life when you're doing things in an authentic way.
Because when we, human beings, do things in a way because that's the way you want to do it, and we do it in a different way than anybody else, which is what you are doing, and you're doing it in a new media with this zen thing that we're on.
Ryan Foland: ZenCaster, yeah.
Michael Levy: I have never seen that before, no downloading of any software.
You found the fantastic mission, and you do something very, very special for people.
So other speakers can learn from listening to different speakers that you will be interviewing and different ways.
But more often than not, when I listen to a lot of speakers on maybe a cruise or something like that, I find out that that's not what I want to be doing.
There is a great holistic speech specialist that was speaking on a cruise.
I went to his first talk and it was all against natural ways of living so I didn’t go to any more.
But then there was his last one, and it's headline was “Natural Herbs”. So I went on to listen to what he was saying about that.
And it was right, what he was saying. But the way he said it was wrong. And again, it's not what we say, it's how we say it.
So he's telling people all the downside of having natural herbs and all natural ways of eating before you have a major operation — because you need drugs and those herbs and stuff will interfere with the drugs.
He is right about what he is saying.
So if I was giving a talk, I would be telling people the kind of foods that they can eat so they don't have to have an operation in the future.
They can alleviate the stress on the body. They can alleviate the stress on the mind, and as they go through life, they're not going to get sick because health is a choice.
Most people will deny that because they want to live the way they want to live. People think red wine is okay.
No, any alcohol is doing damage to the cells in your body.
And science has just proven, a new scientific study came out only a month or so ago and it said exactly that — all forms of alcohol, including red wine are bad for your system.
This is the biggest extensive study that's ever been done on people consuming alcohol.
Now, obviously it's been hidden. I only saw it once in the media and then it completely disappeared.
So you've got a very strong lobby with alcoholic, beverage people and the meat marketing people, even Oprah couldn't help people when it comes to eating meat… they shut her up.
So this massive lobby is everywhere today.
And there are many restrictions on people finding those relative truths or what they need so they can find the absolute truth, so they can live in an absolute form.
Ryan Foland: It brings us back to what we were initially talking about, which is this common knowledge.
Sometimes you don't realize that common knowledge is influenced by these lobbyists, by these groups, by these influencers, and whatnot.
So at the end of the day, you can be speaking on a topic that you're an expert on but you can still be misinforming people because you're picking up a solution that's further down the line when it could be essential.
Michael Levy: Excellent, spot on. That is it in a nutshell.
Ryan Foland: Spot on would be if we had another couple of days to hang out and talk and I'm sure that I'll connect with you after this to pick your brain a little more and work through these 16 books and probably number 17 when you're done writing it.
This has been an absolute pleasure.
I've really enjoyed the stimulating conversation. Every cell in my body now understands its absolute truth and just even what I'm doing with this. I'm just authentically trying to learn from people and share it with others and I'm excited to see when that pays full fruition later on in life, however it pays out.
But right now, this is my truth. Just being excited about meeting and learning and honing my craft and helping others do that.
I'm really excited and I hope that this helps to get a lot of other people on your radar.
And for those people listening, we did skip an entire section about how Michael says to get on stage.
But if you missed it, here it is — don't worry about that.
Let people come to you and that's by doing what you do the best and that's your absolute truth, by being credible in your life experiences through the issues that you faced understanding that really you are conditioned to some extent, but you've got to uncondition the conditioning in order to really make an impact so that you're not giving people relative truths that will lead them the wrong way.
So Michael, if people were going to find you or your books, where do I send them? Where do we point them to so they can learn more?
Michael Levy: My website is PointOfLife.com and there's a link there to the books and, if they go to the purchase page on it, that takes them to Amazon.
We don't publish all around the world. Like I said, I don't advertise. I'm hard to your finding.
Ryan Foland: Excellent. And then on Twitter, where are you on Twitter?
Because that's a great place for people to connect.
Michael Levy: I am Michael Levy. I am on LinkedIn too.
They can contact me through LinkedIn.
But I am also a poet and along with any real good philosophy, any true philosophers, ones in the past too, need poetry as an avenue to be able to explain some of the things that we're talking about, and if you want we can have the interview in the poem, if you want to, or however you want to.
Ryan Foland: Absolutely, now my question is: is it a haiku?
Michael Levy: [Laughs] I've got some haikus.
Ryan Foland: I am the big haiku kind of guy, I love the structure, the 5-7-5. Put me in a box man, and I'm going to kick my way out.
But yes, I would love to end on a piece of poetry from you sir. So take it away, or just riff it.
Michael Levy: Ultra-Violet Haiku De-Lights is a book I have written and there are a lot of haikus in there.
There are about 250 haikus in that book. Not your normal type of haikus as you can imagine. But so many poems that would be relevant to today's conversation.
I think one that would stand out would be,
Humankind, How Limitless In Genius
Playful inspirations kindle figments of a baby's first hello,
Ripening in a flawless cosmos that only purity and virtue know,
Picturesque clarity graces the mind's vivid, insightful rainbow,
As time fashions just a brief, but fascinating finite show.
Indeed; even if every new beginning developed sadness,
True joy will adjourn the sorrow, to replace it with a canopy of gladness,
The glows of spirited laughter illuminate all the candles of elegance,
Symphonic enchanted harps pleasingly orchestrate a divine, sacred dance.
Intoxication of a lover's music is played on celestial violins,
Secret satin dreams linger, concealed within the keys of silent hymns,
The amour of sweet shadows float gently beyond the universal sleep,
Obscure and deep, all have profound promises to keep.
The wheels of nature's textured bounty, will still go on turning.
A unique and rare gifts convey the beauty and wonder of creation.
What an opus of craftsmanship is humankind,
How magnificent in foundation, how limitless in genius.
Ryan Foland: Wow, bam, I had closed my eyes. I was in the audience as you were reading that in Carnegie Hall on a loudspeaker, as it just reverberated through my brain.
That was great.
I don't think we could have ended it in any other way that would have been the authentic absolute truth for this show today. So Michael, I want to thank you so much. This has been a blast.
Michael Levy: My pleasure. Thank you Ryan. And remember, if you listen to this for me back, I didn't have one um or aaah.
Ryan Levy: Yes, I love it. And that is a lesson for everyone — it can happen. It is possible to not um it up.
Michael Levy: There you go, excellent.
Ryan Foland: Alright, well, thank you Michael. Everybody, if you enjoyed this, definitely leave a review. I mean, this is one that you need to share with people. It's almost melodic.
It's going to feed your soul and it's going to feed the souls of your friends.
Leave a review on this, share it, like it tweet it out, Facebook it out, get it out in the world because more people need to hear this especially the last part about not uh-ming it up.
Alright, my name is Ryan you obviously know that and I'm excited to continue to share with you an amazing group of people who comprise the World of Speakers.
Check out the next episode, subscribe, and we will see you soon.
Adios, Michael for once and all until we meet again.
A bit about World of Speakers
World of Speakers is a bi-monthly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.
We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.
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