Who Is John Moyer
If you grew up watching LDS movies like Singles Ward, RM, and Mobsters and Mormons, you will have heard of John Moyer’s name. John wrote those movies and directed Mobsters and Mormons as well. But John as led a very eclectic and cool life. In addition to writing and directing, John also spent years as a stand-up comedian. He noticed, however, that audience members started to dwindle but showed up in droves whenever a stage hypnotist showed up. He then pivoted and declared that he was going to be a stage hypnotist He did so and crushed it. But along the way, John started to learn about the true power of the mind. Especially when he attempted suicide. He realized the depression he suffered came from the stories his mind was creating.
Understanding this from a new point of view, he started to learn how the mind could be rewired, and as a result, experience a different kind of life. He became a certified hypnotist, meaning one who could actually help people through hypnotherapy. He created a YouTube channel that exploded and has helped many, many people around the world. One of John’s mantras is “Circumstances don’t matter; only your state of being does.” Grounding himself in a positive state of being, he started to watch as rough circumstances in his life faded away and positive experiences came into his life. He is now married to the woman not of his dreams, because he couldn’t even dream of her being that amazing and wonderful. He is continuing to make a positive impact wherever he goes. Glad we got to sit and chat about life!
Get to Know John Moyer
Hailing from Salt Lake City, John Moyer is a professional writer, director and certified hypnotist. With his work available on a plethora of platforms, including YouTube and Spotify, his ingenious ideas are available to all. On YouTube, he has earned the Silver Play Button Award for 100K+ subscribers! His work focuses on the magic of the mind and spirit, offering guided meditations for success, love, power and energy. John studied theater and film at Brigham Young University. Little did he know that this know-how of script writing and filmmaking would take him on a path of self-discovery, as well as being the catalyst to an incredible career that now helps thousands if not millions of people worldwide.
John’s Early Career
John has a very intriguing history and is full of creativity and wisdom. John’s movie career is an incredibly impressive one. He is the mastermind behind some of the best Latter-day Saint movies, including Singles Ward, RM, and Mobsters and Mormons. He is a well loved and highly respected filmmaker who has some great credits behind his name. But what about the man behind the name?
John’s life has been eclectic and exciting, and his journey began as a comedian. This is where he realized something incredible. Though audience members were beginning to dwindle, their numbers increased when a hypnotist was on stage. John decided that he, too, wanted to be involved. This soon turned into incredible success, but the journey was not over.
John Harnesses the Power of Hypnotherapy
Dealing with depression caused John to look at his life and the power of his mind that was dealing with suicidal thoughts. Learning to appreciate this and understand the power, he realized that a mind could in fact be rewired, and he began to focus on hypnotherapy further. A certified hypnotist, John has dedicated plenty of his time to helping others simply through the power of the mind. He appreciates what really matters in life. Some of his YouTube videos are evidence of this; they are prevalent in his positive mindset videos, guided meditations, sleep hypnosis and tips for breathing. They work to calm anxieties that we feel day to day. People across the entire world can access John’s work on YouTube, and above all, everything available online is free.
John works to encourage people of all walks of life to improve areas of their lifestyle. This may include their career or relationships. He has become a beacon of hope to many people who are struggling, especially recently when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and many people felt isolated and scared.
John can also put his hand on heart and exclaim that his own work really does help. He himself has created great circumstances out of poor ones. He has seen the bad elements leave his life and be replaced with positive ones. New experiences have shaped his views and his work ethic, leading him to new pathways. He has combined his love of filmmaking with the power of hypnotherapy and the two work impeccably well together! He is also a happily married man. John’s wife is an important figure in his life, and he calls her “amazing and wonderful.”
His skills have been used across all areas of his life, not only in his films and the filmmaking that he created in the past but in the present too. His screenwriting skills also offer him an additional benefit; the way he writes and creates his guided meditations makes them personable, believable and reliable. There is a sense of belonging and calmness, which is often very difficult to create. John’s continued dedication offers people a solution to their issues, and he wishes everyone to live their best life.
John Moyer Podcast Transcription
Charan: Hey, what’s going on guys? This is Charan Prabhakar with the Lemonade Stand Stories Podcast and I’m here with a dear buddy of mine, Mr. John Moyer who … Here’s what’s funny, is I’ve heard John’s name past decades, I swear, before we finally met because in the early 2000s. We were just discussing this. There was this big emergence of local filmmakers making movies, right? And these were geared towards the LDS audience.
Charan: There were movies like Singles Ward, RM, and these new fresh faces came on the scene, and we’re doing all these cool movies. And John Moyer’s name was in all of those movies. I’m like, “Dude, who is this guy?” And then we were just discussing that you had written those movies and then wrote, directed and produced Mobsters and Mormons, which is a hilarious movie if you guys haven’t checked out, and then I’m trying to think when we actually met, because I think it was, what was it?
John: Was it 2011 I think?
Charan: It was like then, yeah. Maybe 10 years ago.
John: What’s funny, because we were talking about this. It was a one-off event. It was the Utah Entertainment Awards.
Charan: Yes.
John: And you came on stage in character.
Charan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: [crosstalk 00:02:35] did a whole East Indian thing.
Charan: Yeah. Yeah.
John: And that was weird for me, because I thought it was interesting, I thought maybe that’s … I remember talking to you after the fact that I’m like, “Oh, you sound like this.”
Charan: Yeah. Yeah. That’s so funny, because I totally remember that. That was the first or second year they were doing that thing. And anyway, so we met then, and then we ended up acting together this one project.
John: It was a weird interesting. It was a sexual assault training video.
Charan: Yeah.
John: For the army.
Charan: For the military, right? Yeah. Yeah.
John: I was a drill sergeant. And it was like we were dismissing everybody for weekend leave.
Charan: Yes.
John: And so we had to do the before and the after. It was, I say all these horrible things about, “When you go out there, make sure you don’t …” It was this rough, graphic… It wasn’t dirty language, but it was just like … And then I get sit down by the general or something and like, “Well, don’t you understand that when you say this and that?” And then we go to me saying all the politically correct comments [crosstalk 00:03:44] that we were supposed to be able to [crosstalk 00:03:46]
Charan: Dude, and I remember even watching and be like, “Dang, John’s good. He’s really good.” You delivered a great job. I think I had a very small role. My buddy was the one that was doing dumb stuff, and I had to pull them out of there. But then I didn’t do it quickly enough. And so I was also reprimanded.
John: And it was because we filmed that at Camp Williams.
Charan: Yeah, Camp Williams.
John: And it was funny, because I was in this uniform, and I remember walking to go to the bathroom or someplace, and they were real National Guard guys, and whatever I was, I got saluted. I’m not a real one. I’m just playing one today.
Charan: Yeah. Yes, yeah. But yeah, I know, that was such a funny shoot, but yeah, that’s when we worked together, and then it was just bros for life. Dude, why haven’t we worked together more?
John: I know, that’s the other thing.
John Moyer Talks About His Early Career
Charan: It’s a disappointing but true thing. But dude, walk me through your life a little bit, because — and I really want to get into the hypnotist side of things because I’m so fascinated by that. So let’s talk a little bit about your early years doing movies and then how that shifted into, because I know you were a stand-up comic; you did hypnotism shows on stage and now you evolved it even more to actual therapy.
John: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, because I feel like my life now is like the end of the movie Signs with Mel Gibson.
Charan: Oh my gosh, yes.
John: Where it was like all these things came together in an exact moment and now it’s like, “No, okay, it makes sense.” And that’s how I feel with my life now. But the whole thing began for me when I was a kid, because I was always the show-off. I was the one that my parents were embarrassed about when family and company came over. I got the talk, “Okay, now when they come over, you’re not to do blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”
Charan: Right, yeah.
John: I never listened to any of that anyway.
Charan: Never.
John: And my father was an incredibly talented musician. He was in big band music. So we had what’s called the George Moyer Orchestra, right?
Charan: Oh, very cool. Yeah.
John: That was his passion, but my father’s whole thing was, my father never believed that a real man could make a living as a musician or as an entertainer, so that was his hobby on the weekends. And a real man goes to work 40 hours a week, and this is what you do. And he went to work for his uncle from the family company, and it wasn’t until really years later that I really found out how miserable and unhappy my father was. But whether or not he was too afraid to say, “I’m going to go out and pursue entertainment or not.”
John: But seeing how unhappy, that was the first thing in my mind, seeing how unhappy my father was, not following his passion, not doing what he really loved. But the thing that really kicked it into gear for me was I was about 12 years old, I had discovered my father had a Super 8mm movie camera.
Charan: Sweet. Yeah.
John: And it was one of these things. I went and saw An American Werewolf in London, and this was back … They never cared about how old you were. I was 11 years old, I remember going to see Stripes at age 11 with Bill Murray. These theaters, they never cared. So I went and saw An American Werewolf in London. I was like, something about that just fascinated me. I was like, I want to do that. So I go home, and I take my father’s Super 8mm movie camera. And I discovered I was really interested in this and passionate about it. And it was interesting, because it was back in the day. I was cranking I had to develop a Super 8-
Charan: Yeah, of course. Those are awesome, yeah.
John: You’re cutting it and taping it together, but I had this … It was a keen instinct that I had. And I remember saying to my father, it was probably about a year later, I was about 13. I’m like, “What do you think about me making movies?” And my dad goes, “I think it’s another one of your stupid, childish ideas.”
Charan: Oh, no.
John: I still remember the exact moment where we’re at the whole thing. As a 13-year-old kid, that stuck enough to me where it was like, “Screw you, I am going to go out and do this.” Just as an F-U to my father. And so I wound up going to, I went to film school, that was my whole plan. Go to film school and I remember my mom saying to me — it was right before I went to BYU — my mom goes, “Maybe it would be a good idea if you had something to fall back on.”
John: And I think this is sage wisdom for a 17-year-old that actually came out of my mouth. But I said, “Mom, if I have something to fall back on, that’s me already saying-“
Charan: I’m not going to make it.
John: “… That I’m not going to make it doing what I …” And my mother, she had nothing to say to that, right?
Charan: Yeah.
John: So I went to film school and screenwriting emphasis. They had a screenwriting emphasis major. And at the time, you were still making student films with 16 mm. And you had to pay for everything yourself. And you hear these stories about, “Students are taking a year off to go raise money for their three-minute student film.”
Charan: Sure, yeah.
John: And I’m like, “Wow, it would just be easier to write.” So that’s what I did. I got the screenwriting emphasis that I wrote. But along the way, I started doing stand-up comedy. Johnny B’s Comedy Club in Provo was the place at the time. So all of this seemed within the same wheelhouse, right?
Charan: Yeah.
John: Writing and filmmaking and comedy. And so when I graduated, I got my degree, theater and film. And then a week later, I was performing, I was just an emcee, but I was performing at the Improv in Seattle.
Charan: Yeah, okay. Okay, yeah.
John: So that’s how all of that had come together. And then of course, my friends from school, when it came around to when the Mormon movie thing took off, a buddy of mine was like, “There might be something to making Mormon movies.” And I’m like, “Well, I’ve got a script about my life as a Mormon and a stand-up comedian who goes through this dysfunctional divorce and then tries to navigate the dating world.” Because it’s a freak show as-
Charan: Yeah.
John: … Dating anytime in the Mormon culture. And when you get older, though, that’s the thing, if you go through a divorce, and then you try to go back to that scene. Dude, it’s the cantina scene from Star Wars. It’s just like these freakish people that you’re just like, “Why am I here?”
Charan: Yeah, it was happening right now, yeah.
John: And I wrote the script as a cathartic piece, never thinking it would ever see the light of day. But then all of a sudden, Kurt’s like, “We should make a Mormon movie.” And I’m like, “I’ve got a script.” And that’s how that got started.
Charan: Wow, that’s so crazy, man, because I feel like a lot of those guys’ careers — well, I say careers, but some of them kept acting, some of them haven’t. But a lot of them have become really close friends of mine and it’s like…
John: And Will Swenson out of that whole group, he’s done really well and he’s on Broadway.
Charan: Yeah, he’s on Broadway right now, and Kirby is a good friend of mine, and he’s still doing stuff. So that’s amazing. So all those things happen. But then were you continuing to do-
John: I was continuing to do stand-up comedy.
Charan: Stand-up, you were.
John: And then in addition to those movies, then being the writer and then turning over your baby to somebody else. I wanted to have one script that was all made, for better for worse, it was all me. So that was Mobsters and Mormons. So a mafia family from Jersey, where I grew up, put in the witness relocation program to Utah. So I wrote, produced and directed that.
Charan: That’s amazing.
John: But at the same time I was still doing stand-up comedy, and stand-up comedy was the live performance element of it; that was my passion. And I kept doing that. But an interesting thing was, about early mid-to-late 2000s I guess, 2005 to 2010, whenever Myspace came out, the guys that were doing comedy when I started in the ’90s, I would hear them talk about how the ’80s were the heyday of stand-up comedy or the late ’70s were the heyday. And they would talk about how cable television killed the stand-up comedy club business model because people would stay home, and they were watching Evening at the Improv or comics live and all the specials, and they didn’t really want to go out to comedy clubs anymore.
John: From my generation I say it was the internet that killed the comedy club model initially early on because it became about who’s got the most friends on MySpace. So comedy club bookers we’re like, “Hey, I’ve got comedian A over here. He’s the funniest guy you’ve ever seen in your life. Comedian B has only ever done five minutes in his parent’s basement to friends. But I know if I book him, he’s got 10,000 friends on Myspace, and they’re all going to show up and see.” So comedy became not necessarily who the funniest person was, but who’s the most famous, the most followers.
John: And for somebody that was relatively an unknown stand-up comic, there are plenty of comics out there making really good money, touring, but maybe you never heard of who they were. But what happened was a lot of comedy clubs, they were closing on certain nights; there were a lot of places that were closing down. And a lot of venues were just the bar; you were doing the back room at the dive bar [crosstalk 00:13:01].
John: So it had become a completely different scene, and I was doing a corporate event, and there was different things happening at this event, but they also had a stage hypnotist. And for when I was performing for my portion, it was about maybe two-thirds full. And then following me, I didn’t realize this, there was the stage hypnotist. And it was standing room only; the place was packed. People were fa-… And I had always seen hypnotists at the comedy clubs before.
John: But as a purist, a comedian, you look at that and you go, “Oh, it’s a gimmick, and they’re hacks and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.” But the thing that would get me is, you would perform at a comedy club and they go, “Yeah, man, we only had half crowds this weekend. I don’t know, last week when the hypnotist was here, we had to add an extra show; we sold out everything, right?” You hated that. So I looked at this and I went, “Well, I guess if you can’t beat them, join them.” And I watched-
Charan: Now at the time when you were seeing these hypnotist shows and stuff like that, did you feel the whole thing was a fake or a fraud? What was your knowledge of hypnotism at the time?
John: I was always fascinated by the mind, right?
Charan: Sure. Me too.
John: And especially you’re watching people on stage. And I knew that it was legitimate. I knew that it was real. I wasn’t as skeptic about-
Charan: The art itself?
John: About the art itself, right?
Charan: Yeah.
John: And not only was the show phenomenal, but he’s selling CDs afterwards of “stop smoking” and “weight loss.” And they’re just throwing the money at him, and he’s selling all his stuff and I went, “I think I can do that. I’ve got to do that.” Because I saw how the business model for stand-up comedy was changing. And of course, I wasn’t about to go get a real job, right?
Charan: Yeah.
John: So I went, “I’m going to learn stage hypnosis. I’m going to go do that.” And I studied;I took an at-home course, but I studied. Then it worked out for me as I was able to go back to the bookers and the agencies and the places that I performed stand-up comedy and say, “Well, guess what? I’ve got a hypnosis show.” And it wound up just skyrocketing. It took off and I was making way more money than I ever did doing stand-up. I was getting treated way better than I ever do in stand-up.
John: I remember driving — you’re driving 12 hours to get to some horrible cowboy bar in Montana. And I remember a client booking me for an event. And it was the day before I was supposed to fly down there. And I pull up my ticket, I’m like, “They’re flying me first class.”
Charan: Nice, yeah.
John: So all these things began to happen and just really take off that I was making way more money and I was doing more venues. I consequently wound up becoming a guest entertainer for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. So I was out performing literally around the world, the hypnosis show. And it just took off. And I was having a lot of fun doing it, which was interesting, is I got to the point where, because I was still doing both, there was a period of time when I was still doing some stand-up shows, and I’m still doing the hypnosis shows. But I was more in my head and more nervous about it just being me on stage for 45 minutes.
Charan: In comedy versus [crosstalk 00:16:18]
John: Versus bringing somebody else [crosstalk 00:16:19].
Charan: Interacting with other people. Right.
John: And it’s a weird thing. It’s a high-wire act when you’re bringing people up on stage. And the first time I did it, I had been on live television. I’ve been in front of audiences of thousands of people, but I was never more terrified because you’re like, “What if this doesn’t work, right?”
Charan: Right.
John: And when you see that it does work, you’re just like, “Holy crap, this really works. I’m doing this.” And I was always fascinated by the mind. But it was also a parallel journey for me, because my personal life, I went through a divorce, and all these things came together where I looked at my life personally, and I looked at my life professionally. And the way that I viewed my stand-up comedy life was all drama, was conflict. There’s not going to be any Star Wars if there’s no Darth Vader and Death Star.
John: So my comedy was really angry. I was the angry, venting comic on stage. So I looked at all of the drama in my life. And I’m like, “Oh, I’m pulling material here, this is a great bet.” And it was the more screwed up my personal life was-
Charan: The greater the comedic [crosstalk 00:17:39]
John: … The more material, that’s how I viewed things. So I could be miserable personally, but I can write jokes about that. And then I can tell them on stage. And it got to the point where I’m not happy as a person. I’m not happy personally. So there was an exploration of the mind. That’s when I really also started doing meditation. And then consequently, as I’m seeing the hypnosis, I’m going, “Well, if I hypnotize people on stage, I bet I could do that to myself.”
Charan: Yeah. And the thing is, it’s interesting, because I’ve seen some hypnotist shows, and I’m just … Because I’ve never personally been hypnotized, but when I see what people with the power of their mind are able to do, it’s like, “Wait a minute; okay, there’s something there.” I saw this happen to my own buddy where the hypnotist laid his head on the chair, his feet on the other chair, and he stood up on top of them. That must have been pretty dangerous.
John: That is something I wouldn’t recommend, but yeah.
Charan: But the thing was, even though he did that, I remember thinking, “Okay, well, clearly, there’s something with the mind that allows the body to go that rigid.” And so I started thinking, not because I want to do that, but more of a, “Wow, what is the power of the mind? What can it actually do?” So I’d love to, yeah, dive deep on this.
John Moyer Deep Dives into Hypnosis
John:
Well, that’s the thing. I’ve seen that time and time again. And I remember one time I had a woman on stage and she was a doctor. She was a medical doctor. And I told her that her belly button was missing. And she’s looking around the stage for her belly button. And she’s going, “I’m a medical doctor. This is impossible. This cannot be the case, but I’ve lost my belly button.” And you could see this weird-
Charan: It’s crazy, dude. It’s amazing.
John: Because it’s how many times have you had a dream where it’s something completely bizarre and strange? But in the dream, you just accept it as real.
Charan: Reality.
John: As reality. And that’s what’s going on with your mind because when you’re hypnotized; your mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, under hypnosis. So your mind is telling you your belly button is missing, and you’re going to believe that. Or your mind is telling you you’re feeling a sensation that you’re not really physically feeling, or you’re not feeling something. So that’s what’s so powerful about that, and I’ve seen that happen time and time again with people on stage.
John: And in hypnosis, one of the interesting things, there was a study done it was 10 or 12 years ago. And the study was people that went to hypnotherapy versus people that went to a psychiatrist or a psychologist. And the people who went to a shrink, I think it was somewhere around a 30% success rate after I think 600 sessions.
Charan: After 600 sessions.
John: 600 sessions, it was a 30% success rate.
Charan: No way. So it’s like years and years of therapy.
John: Yeah, it’s like years in therapy for a 30% success rate, where hypnotherapy was a 93% success rate after six sessions.
Charan: You’ve got to be joking me. And why is that? Is it just because the mind can dive deeper into subconscious issues, or you know what I mean? Or I don’t know.
John: The way that I look at it, this is just my opinion. I don’t speak negatively of the psychiatric field or anything like that because, yeah, it will help you.
Charan: Definitely.
John: The way that I look at it and again, my opinion, but I think sometimes when you go, and I’ve actually been to therapists in the past. They go, “Okay, well, here’s your problem. And let’s show you how to cope with your problem.” So if you put it into a car analogy, it could be like, “Okay, well, your car’s pulling to the left. So let’s show you how to turn your wheel further to the right so you can deal with your car pulling to the left.”
John: Whereas hypnotherapy, it’s just like, “Okay, your car is pulling to the left; well, let’s just realign the car.” So now your car is not pulling to the left; you can just drive straight without having to do anything. And that’s a lot of what happens with the mind. It’s like instead of understanding what the problem is, and then learning how to deal with-
Charan: Deal with that problem.
John: … Deal with the problems or the challenges or thoughts, let’s just rewire the thinking. And that’s exactly what goes on on that deep level level with people.
Charan: So did you feel, because you were just mentioning a little bit earlier, if you felt like if you could hypnotize other people, you could hypnotize yourself? Right?
John: Yeah.
Charan: And you were having all these struggles and challenges with your own personal life, everything like that. So let’s walk through that a little bit. What happened there with hypnotizing yourself and all that stuff?
John: Well, initially what I would do is, I was just listening to audio programs. It’s like a muscle, right?
Charan: Yeah.
John: If you work something at it, then you can develop that ability. And I was always, it was like the arrogant stand-up comedian: “You can’t hypnotize me; you can’t get into my mind or whatever.” And then when I started to experience that just by practicing with what I was listening to, I was realizing I was getting into that state. But what really shifted my thinking about it was when I went to certify doing as a certified hypnotist, and you’re having other people, you’re working with other people.
John: And the teacher of the class actually hypnotized me and I was aware, I’m like, “Holy crap. I’m aware of what’s going on.” But I knew that I was in that state physically, mentally. And I’m like, “Wow, this really does work.” So there’s people that can go into it really quickly. I’ve had people come up on stage that have never seen a hypnosis show, they’ve never been hypnotized, they’ve never listened to anything, and they go down like that.
Charan: Wow.
John: I did an event one time for I think it was a county in Utah, it was their sheriff’s, it was their Christmas event. And they had the head of their county jail come up on stage. And everybody’s like, “You got to go up,;you got to do it.” And it was a female. And she’s walking up on stage like, “This is ridiculous.” Here’s this head of a county jail. Tough woman and she’s up on stage. And she’s like, “Oh.” An hour later she opens up her eyes and goes, “What just happened?”
John: And people are showing them on their phone; they’re playing the video back. She couldn’t believe it. She was completely astonished. And then of course, then you have other people going, “Now I know it’s real.” Because that, what happened up there, that’s not the Mary we know at work. And everybody’s different relative to that. So but if you practice at it, then you can actually, you can develop that ability.
John: So now I’m to the point where when I meditate, and I get in that position, already I can feel my body go, “Oh, this is what we’re doing.” Boom, down like that.
Charan: You’re down like that.
John Moyer Talks About The Power of the Mind
Charan: So let’s dive into a little bit more of what you’ve discovered regarding the power of the mind and subconscious and consciousness itself because I love to meditate as well. I think it’s a very important practice. And the truth is by meditating, I don’t know if they’re synonymous, hypnosis and meditation, I’m not sure. But all I know is when I’m able to surrender, surrender my thoughts, surrender my narratives, surrender all those things, and just relax a little bit, I find myself almost, I don’t know if my spirit’s detached from my body, but I feel I can go deep within me and discover that I’m much greater than what I see here. You know what I mean? So have you been able to discover things for yourself? Or how did that whole journey when you come about? Yeah.
John: When you talk about hypnosis and meditation, they’re sister states of mind, because what’s happening is, you’re going from a beta brainwave state, which is what we’re in right now, brainwave that conscious, brainwave state that you’re in most of the day, then you’re slowing that down, you’re going down from beta, you’re going down into low alpha, and then you can go down into high theta. So meditation is the low alpha, high theta area stage.
John: And lots of times, and especially now I see it where those terms are, you have different terms that are meaning the same things for people. I hear “guided meditation” or I hear “guided hypnosis” or “sleep hypnosis.” And in reality, your body and your mind are experiencing the same things. There are some different outcomes if you’re using hypnosis traditionally, and people refer to hypnosis as guided meditation where somebody’s talking you through something. And what goes on in the mind there is, you have this part of your mind called the critical faculty, and the critical faculty is the bouncer with the red rope outside of the nightclub.
John: And what the critical faculty’s job is to do is to say, “Oh, here’s an idea.” Yeah, we’re not going to like that idea. The subconscious mind is not going to fly with that idea. So what you’re doing with the hypnosis is you’re distracting the critical faculty, the bouncer with a red velvet rope. And while the bouncer with a red velvet rope is looking away, you sneak in the ideas. And that’s what happens in the subconscious.
Charan: Subconscious, yeah.
John: Yeah, so you’re taking old programming or thought, and you’re switching that around and you’re rewiring that. And if you’re meditating, you’re clearing your mind. And there’s a whole different approach to that, which is more about trying, working towards not pushing those thoughts out of your mind. Whereas hypnosis, you’re opening up the mind and then you’re feeding it with these new ideas.
Charan: These new ideas, right? Well, it’s interesting, because I often think of the subconscious is like a computer.
John: It is, yeah.
Charan: It’s running out programs in the background that you don’t even know about.
John: Exactly.
Charan: Right? And I see my computer get bogged down, “Wait, what’s happening?” And then just so many things running in the background. I feel that’s the same way with us. Right?
John: Well, term that I’ve heard put it into when they talk about conscious and subconscious state, the conscious mind is able to process, I think it’s 7 to 10 bits of information per second if you put it into computer terms, whereas the subconscious mind is processing somewhere about 20 million bits of information per second.
Charan: You’re kidding me?
John: It’s that much.
Charan: It’s vast.
John: Yeah, it’s that different. So it’s like the iceberg. The conscious mind is just that tip of the iceberg that’s above the water, and the subconscious mind is everything underneath, and the subconscious mind like a computer, it’s essentially all of our programming. The subconscious mind takes an experience and, let’s say, a reaction or emotion and connects the two together, whether they make any sense or not. And we all have collectively experienced programming that we know this means this, if you’re driving down the freeway, and you see red flashing lights in your rear view mirror, you probably don’t have to stop and go, “Well, that’s … Okay, my uncle got pulled over once by a cop, and he got …” Instantaneously, you know what that means because you either had that experience before, or you knew somebody that had that experience.
John: But then we all have things individually that happened to us that the subconscious mind links up as “this means this.” It’s creating a definition. And some of it doesn’t even have to make any sense whatsoever. I’ve worked with people that they get into a relationship, and they self-sabotage that relationship.
Charan: Totally.
John: Because at some point they realized relationships equal pain. And “I got broken up with and life hurt really, really badly.” And so before they get to that point where they might feel emotionally invested, the subconscious mind goes, “No, we’re not going to have this happen.” And a really good example with this was I worked with somebody one time, and they had an aversion to peanut butter. The smell of peanut butter, the thought of peanut butter just it made them feel they were choking and gagging, and they really hated peanut butter.
John: Now this wasn’t a life-debilitating thing, but they wanted to know what that meant. And this was early on when I started … So I’m like, “Okay, yeah, I’ll work with somebody.” And when we hypnotized them, and they went back, they remembered when they were about two or three years old, sitting in a highchair And they were being babysat by a relative. It was her and her sister. And they were given peanut butter sandwiches to eat and they were playing with the food. And the relative got really upset, took the peanut butter sandwich and was like, “You’re going to eat this.” And trying to shove it into their mouth angrily like, “You’re going to eat this. Stop playing with your food.” And it was the sensation of choking, gagging, huddling helpless, feeling overpowered. And she consciously had no recollection of that.
Charan: No recollection.
John: But the subconscious mind said, “Peanut butter equals choking, gagging, feeling overpowered, and not in control of a situation.”
Charan: Wow.
John: So that was something completely innocuous that nobody else might even think about, but they had that experience with peanut butter. So people have that experience to things that really do debilitate them in their life.
Charan: Well, it’s so interesting, because I feel like hypnotherapy then, in that sense, is the gateway to your younger self. A way that you can access memories that you have probably … Your subconscious be like, “Nope, you can’t access that at all anymore.” It gives you the gateway to go in there and say, “Hey, this is what’s going on. This is what happened and now as a result of it, you have these results.”
John: And it’s not only just going, “Okay, now you’re aware of what happening.” Now what you want to do is reframe that experience. So you want to disconnect the negative emotions, the disempowering emotions from the experience, and you’re racing that and then you’re switching things around for a more empowering … So it’s like the old telephones in the the old office buildings. You’re pulling out one connection and you’re plugging into another connection.
Charan: Another connection. Are you a certified hypnotherapist? Is that what you do?
John: It’s considered certified hypnotist.
Charan: Hypnotist. Okay.
John: And the reason why that is, you used to be able to be called a certified hypnotherapist.
Charan: Okay.
John: But the psychology and the psychiatry fields have fought pretty hard against hypnosis in some places. And actually, it’s the National Guild of Hypnotists. It’s the world’s largest hypnosis organization, and they have some really strong lobbyers that fight in their behalf, because there’s a lot of places where people want to go, “We’re not going to have hypnotherapy here; you’re not going to do that here.” And one what they had come up with agreed to with the psychiatry industry is that we will call somebody hypnotherapist, we’ll call them a certified hypnotist.
Charan: Okay.
John: Unless they already have some type of degree in psychology or psychiatry, then they can call themselves a hypnotherapist. So there’s a lot of tension there between these two groups, because it’s like, “Do we want to have people coming back 600 times and writing them scripts?” So the Big Pharma can keep dishing out, making a lot of money off of that stuff. “Planned obsolescence; we want to keep that cycle going,” versus “Hey, I’ve got an issue, let’s take care of it in a way that might be more effective and more long-lasting and faster.”
Charan: Dude, it’s so fascinating to me. I love it. I think it’s so great. I remember as a kid even studying hypnotism and all that stuff, and I just was so interested in the power of the mind. And the ability for just people to, I don’t want to say superpowers, but the ability to cut addictions off, the ability to transform their thought process, the ability to be more successful because they’ve got a much more abundant mindset versus a limited belief mindset, right? It’s so powerful.
John: And that’s what’s so interesting now is I’ve seen in the tech evolution is that we really are moving into this place where people are looking to what they call “hack their minds,” right? So it’s not just, “I want to quit smoking.” Or “I want to lose weight.” Or whatever the case may be. People are saying, “Hey, I’ve got a pretty successful life. But how can I get that edge? What can I do that goes above and beyond what I’m normally achieving and experiencing? And the one thing that I always tell people is, how many times have you gone to a seminar?
John: Have you read a book? Have you watched a movie where you went, “Yes, that makes such sense. Man, I’m so fired up. I’m going to go out and I’m going to kill it. I’m going to make it happen.” And then a week later, you’re doing the same thing that you’re doing because the thing is, consciously you hear an idea, you see an idea, you read a book or whatever, you go, “That makes so much sense.” And your subconscious mind goes, “Of course it makes sense but not for us, because nothing ever works out for us. We can’t do something; we can’t make something happen.”
John: And so if somebody is really going to create change, it deserves to happen on that subconscious level where and what happens? You tape a goal up to your bathroom mirror or something or you’ve got your vision board and they do talk about getting into the feeling space and all that stuff. But how many times does that stuff just become another decoration on the wall?
Charan: Yeah.
John: Or just passing by it, we’re not even noticing it. The attention is, if we keep going through our mind. But that’s what they say, it takes 21 days to form a habit, because if you’re going the long road, it can take a while to try to get this stuff hardwired into your mind. Whereas if you’re applying something like hypnosis or meditation, man, you’re just fast-tracking that.
Charan: You’re fast-tracking it, yeah.
John: You’re getting it right into the mind.
Charan: You’re getting right into it. Oh my gosh, it’s so fascinating. Dude, I want to change topics a little bit.
John: Yeah.
John Moyer Talks About Turning Lemons into Lemonade
Charan: One of the biggest things we talk about on this podcast, deals a lot with just facing lemons in our life, the hard blows in our life. And you’ve mentioned a couple times just different things that caused you to reflect on your mind. And now it led you to the path that you’re on right now. Was there ever a specific moment where you thought, “Okay, this was a definite lemon in my life, and I need to figure out a way to turn this into lemonade.” Was there a moment like that?
John: Yeah, well, there’s something that you messaged me about yesterday, as a matter of fact, which I’ve been open to talking more about. But I had gotten to the point for me both personally, and I think professionally. I was 39, I guess at the time. And there’s a lot of backstory there which we’re not going to go into here, but I got to the point where I’m like, “What’s the point of it all?” And so I was depressed, emotionally, spiritually, I was really unhappy. And I just said, “All right man, I’m going to check out.”
John: And I swallowed 29 Ambien with a glass of vodka, and I wasn’t drunk when I thought. I put a lot of thought on this. This was something over the course of weeks that I’m like, “Okay, how am I going to do this? What’s the best approach?” And I thought, “Well, that really feels like the easiest, most efficient way to check out.” And what had happened was I had it, I had a five-page note written; it was on a legal pad. But I wasn’t going to leave that on the bedside table, because maybe as I was thinking about it, looking back at it now I go, because you’re always wondering “what if.”
John: And so I had hid the note, but I had written an email to my best friend that was set to go out in 24 hours or something like that. So I would be found, people would realize that I was gone. And then my buddy would get this email from me after the fact. And then I told him, “This is where you can find all the information and everything anybody needs to know.” So I had 29 Ambien, and I had a playlist. It was only a few songs. It was “Comfortably Numb.” And the one from the Departed soundtrack. I liked that version way better than originally Pink Floyd’s version and “Suicide is Painless,” the M*A*S*H theme, which is, it’s a catchy tune, right?
Charan: Yeah.
John: But it’s a haunting tint, when you hear the lyrics and stuff. So I put that on a loop. And I remember putting the pills and then thinking to myself, “All right, well, if there’s something bigger than this, if there’s some reason I’m supposed to be around, I guess I’ll still be here.” And I lay down, and 12 hours later I woke up. And the analogy that I use is, when I was a kid, I grew up in Jersey, and bad snowstorms, school was closed. And there are times you go to bed at night thinking, “There’s going to be a big snowstorm tonight. School is going to be closed tomorrow, and I don’t have to do my homework. I’m just going to hang out all day.”
John: You go to sleep and you wake up the next morning, you rush, you open up the window, and it rained. You’re like, “Crap. I got to go to school.” Only this for me was like, “Crap, I’ve still got to live my life because I’m out of Ambien, and I’m not going to do anything else.” And that was the moment where I guess I realized I hit rock bottom and all of these areas. And so I’m like, “Well, I’m here. I guess I got to try to figure something out.”
Charan: Yeah.
John: And little by little, I forced myself. And I wound up going through a divorce. And I’ve got nothing negative to say about my ex-wife; we still have a very good relationship. She’s married, she’s got two kids, two little kids with her new husband. But it took me a period of time, some courage, too, to say, “Okay, now I’ve got to make some changes that are more than just I’m not going to live anymore, I’ve got to change how I’m living.” And so gradually, I began to read more about the mind and more about meditation.
John: And I was getting into some new age foo-foo stuff. And so I’m exploring, I’m reading and I’m coming into ideas and concepts, and then I wind up meeting Rochelle, who’s my wife now. And that was another thing, where if you were to tell me that was a coincidence, because there had to be all these different things lined up for her and I to meet. And when we met, we’re texting and she’s like, “I don’t even know what you do. What do you do?”
John: And I’m like, “Well, you can go to johnmoyer.com.” She’s like, “What is that?” “I don’t know if you’re familiar with any of the LDS movies or not, the Mormon movies, I wrote all those.” And she goes, “That was you?” She said, “Those were the only movies I would ever let my children watch on Sunday.”
Charan: No way.
John: Yeah, she totally said that. And one of the things my stepdaughter said when she gave a little speech at our wedding. She said, “John, we loved you before we even knew you.” She loved my sense of humor. So I take my wife out on our first date, and I’ve got to be like Eminem at the end of “8 Mile,” because they have the rap battles where they insult each other and he’s like, “I’m just going to throw all the stuff out there about myself so they don’t have any ammunition.”
Charan: Yes.
John: So I just lay it all off and I’m like, “Yeah, I swallowed 29 Ambien and tried to kill myself.” And my wife said, “Really?” She goes, “I hanged myself.” She goes on, “I was rescued by my sister and my friend.” So she had had her own journey where she understood what that was all about. And she was on her own path of study and research and more of these new age thinkings and philosophies. And it was because we think, you said the word earlier, consciousness. She said, “Do you study consciousness or are you into conscious-?”
John: I go, “I don’t know what that means. I’ve never heard that phrase before.” I go, “I have always called it the cosmic internet.” But we both had these similar journeys that brought us together, and we did come together, then it just amplified everything else. But that for me was the point where I went, “Life is so unhappy. I don’t even want to do it anymore” versus and I shudder to think about what could have happened. And this is part of me that always thinks about the multiverse. Is there a multiverse that split off? And one where [crosstalk 00:42:48].
Charan: You actually did pass away, yeah.
John: I did pass away and I go, “I don’t even want to …” And one of the things that I do in my meditations now, there have been times where I have gone back in my mind to myself on that Saturday night, and I’m like, “Let me show you what it’s going to be like.” A Christmas Carol thing. And because one of the things, I have a meditation or hypnosis that I do for people, that walks them through where they feel like they can get energy from the versions of themselves from some other part of the multiverse.
John: And they can use that to fuel themselves and in a hypnotic state, you’re thinking, “Okay, well, there’s some really successful version of me I would be like.” So they imagine that and then imagine that they’re getting that energy, that that version of them is helping them. And because the mind doesn’t understand, know the difference between what’s real or not, the subconscious mind is going, “Oh wow, we’re getting energy from a really successful version of ourselves. So we can make this work; we can make this happen.”
John: But then one of the things I also do in the session is I have the person go to another version of them from the past that feels like they could benefit from that person in that moment then. And so I do that where I go back, and I see myself and I say, “This is what it’s going to be like. This is everything that you have to look forward to.” And there is never in a million years that I would have ever where I was at to believe, to understand that where I get up every day going, “Man, I love life. I am excited to be here. I’m doing what I want to do with my life. I’m being artistic. I’m not my father, stuck, doing something working for the man. But I’m able to take my talents, all the things that I had from filmmaking and writing, and I put them and that’s how the whole YouTube channel happened.”
John: Where I was able to take my writing and my video production skills and put them together, and I never again, not even a million years, never even 10 million years would I’ve ever believed that I would be a successful YouTube creator, because I started putting, I was creating the CDs to sell after my shows because you want more money. Yeah. But I thought, “Well, what if I put them on YouTube, then maybe some people will hear them and go, we want to go to his website, will download them, will have the mp3.”
John: It didn’t even occur to me that people would actually just use YouTube as a format for that. So that’s my primary drive right now. So it’s like I get up and I get to make YouTube videos, and I hear from people all over the place that how something that I said to them, something that I shared with them, a program that I created made such a huge impact and a difference for their life.
Charan: Dude, that’s amazing.
John: Yeah, that’s what excites me, because years ago I worked with a comedian who said, “Telling a joke is like a gift; you’re giving a gift to somebody, and they’re receiving it and you’re bringing joy, and you’re making them, they’re happy.” And to me, my whole thought, anything that I did artistically, you’re giving a gift to somebody. You’re you’re taking something that was completely intangible. And you organize it in a way, whether it’s a joke, whether it’s a painting, whether it’s a video-
Charan: A movie, something. Yeah.
John: Anything like that. You’re taking the intangible, and you’re putting it in a tangible form; you’re sharing with somebody else. And when they experience that, they take on that emotion. You’re giving an artistic gift of emotion. And that’s what’s driven me my whole life. Originally, it was just like, “Let’s make people laugh and feel good for a few minutes.” And now it’s like, “Wow, I have the opportunity.” So my mission statement is that “I create opportunities that offer people the chance to choose into their own happiness,” because you can’t-
Charan: You can’t force it.
John: You can’t force it.
Charan: Yeah, you have to receive it.
John: And the thing is, and this is one of the things I was … When somebody said, “Oh, well, they made me so mad.” They didn’t make you mad; you chose to be mad, because there’s no external forces that can make us feel anything or do anything. It all comes from within. So I take that, and I flip that around, and, “Can you make somebody happy or can you make somebody feel joy?” Well, I say I want to create the opportunity for somebody to choose into joy.
Charan: Oh man.
John: And that goes through everything every day. Every interaction that we have with people: how are we interacting with people? Even it’s the person at the supermarket or whatever. I go, “Any interaction that I do with people should be the opportunity I create for somebody to be able to choose a happiness or choosing a joy.”
Charan: Dude, that is magnificent, because right now you’re living a life, the purpose is much beyond yourself. It’s much beyond yourself and it’s causing you to have exponential joy, because your mission isn’t just to bring yourself happiness, it’s to bless other people, giving them opportunities for them to be happy. I love that.
John: That was the other thing, too, is because I looked at my life, we look at things in definitions, and we all say, how many times do you go, “Well, if this could happen or if this person would do this or if I could experience this, then everything will work out, then I’ll feel good, then I’ll be happy.” But it’s actually the opposite. We have to learn to come from this space inside of ourselves that we create the emotional state outside of ourselves. One of the things I always say to people is, “Circumstances don’t matter; only your state of being matters.”
John: So when a situation comes up, you go, “Oh my gosh, this is so infuriating, or this happened or this happened.” Instead of looking at it that way, you go, “Okay, I’ve got this, I can handle this.” And the way that we emotionally approach that situation in that moment, that energy goes out into the field and is then reflected back to us in a circumstance.
Charan: I love that you say that, because I have an analogy and it’s pretty much similar, where I just say, “Imagine that in your heart there’s a well, and whatever’s inside the well, you will share with the world and get back in return.”
John: Yeah.
Charan: And it really feels that way where it’s this outer three-dimensional world isn’t life at all. Life is really what’s happening inside of us. And this reality is just a reflection of what’s happening inside of us. And as I’ve lived like that, life has just become so much more abundant, because it’s like you’re saying, it’s a state of being, and if you can alter that state of being and your circumstances are great, because it’s just showing you what your state of being is like.
John: Well, that really clicked home for me, because you’re talking about that, you tried these little settings. A few years back, I was booked to do, I was doing a county fair. And I was supposed to go in at nine o’clock in the pavilion, and there was a band before me. And what I used to do is before I performed, before I did a show, I used to envision how everything would play out. I’m doing this perfectly. The audience is responding this way perfectly. The volunteers are responding this way perfect-…
John: You’re seeing a successful show in my mind, and that’s how I would prepare. So I’m supposed to do the show and they moved. It was going to go from one pavilion to another; it was in a really bad location. There’s not even anybody there; there’s three people watching some 80’s cover band doing REO Speedwagon or something; nobody cares. And I’m supposed to go on at 10 to 9:00 to set up. And then there’s nobody there, the band is going long, and I’m getting pissed. I’m getting about ready to call my agent and go, “Screw this, dude. This is all …” But then I’m like, “Circumstances don’t matter; only your state of being matters.”
John: I kept having to reinforce that to myself. And then it’s nine o’clock and the singer’s like, “Oh, we got hypnotist coming on, so we got to wrap this up. All right, we’ll do one more song.” And then I’m going out of my mind. I’m like, “Circumstances don’t matter, only your state…” So I get in that. So what was interesting is, the band wraps up, but the extra time that they took, people started showing up. More people were coming over to the pavilion. And I was able to get set up, I was able to … Because I only had I think 55 minutes or something for the show.
John: So I didn’t have a ton of time, but people — in that extra little padding of time, I was able to get set up. Now the pavilion is getting up and packing up. Now I get volunteers up on stage and it was a small stage. I think I could have 13 people, but I had no problem getting volunteers. And as I begin, literally, I get done with what they call the pre-talk where you tell everybody what’s going to happen. I’m ready to begin the induction. Something happened; a circuit tripped and all the audio went out.
John: So now I’ve got no microphone, I’ve got no music, and there’s a monster truck rally happening the next park over. And for a split second, there was a split second where I want to go, “Well, I guess the show’s over. We’ll just forget about it.” And I went, “Circumstances don’t matter; only my state of being matters.” And the audience couldn’t hear me, but I’m yelling my induction to the people on the stage. And I’m anchoring the environment. “And as you hear the monster truck rally, that allows you to focus on my voice even more and feeling more relaxed.”
John: And so I’m getting through and I’m watching these people on stage, they’re going under, but then my next one is, “Oh man, what happens after they are hypnotized?” But the audience can’t still hear anything, how am I going to do it? And it was at that moment, they got the sound back on and everything came back up. And it was fascinating, of the 30 people that I had on stage, there were nine stars, participants that I kept. And then after the fact, they were all running out buying my merchandise.
John: So before I would focus on what I think the show is going to look, how I think the audience is going to respond and throwing that out, focus on the emotional state rather than thinking about all of the external circumstances.
Charan: Yeah, the only thing about the exact specific outcome you’re saying.
John: Right. I wanted to focus on the feeling that I had after a show. I wanted to feel joy, I wanted to feel pride, I wanted to feel this was … I wanted to feel successful from all emotional contexts that were outside of the scope of what needed to happen to make me feel that way. So I got rid of judgment, I got rid of anything that I thought needed to make me feel that way, and I focused on the emotional state. And interestingly enough, everything that happened, happened in a completely different opposite way-
Charan: Than what you thought you would have happened, right?
John: What you would thought would happen, but after the show, by emotional, I was calling my agent, I’m like, “You’re not going to believe how incredible this was. This was so fantastic. We made the sales” and all this stuff. Man, I was just flying high after that because I felt, “Holy cow, I took this train wreck.” So I was sustained in the emotional state that I was preferring, not just in … It was above and beyond the emotional state.
Charan: Because what would have been terrible is, if all the things you had wanted to have happen happened and you weren’t feeling that good-
John: Yeah.
Charan: … Could you imagine if you … I tell people this, “Hey, what is worse than having none of your dreams come true is having all of your dreams come true and you not being happy about it.” It wasn’t fulfilling.
John: Right, because, people … The thing is, why do we want to achieve a certain goal? Why do we want to have just a million dollars? Because we want to have pieces of paper with dead presidents on them. What do we think that million dollars is going to provide us? Well, a sense of security, a sense of peace, all these things. Any goal that we want to achieve, we want to achieve because it’s going to create an emotional state for us. And the thing that, and especially when it comes to stuff like, you want to talk about the law of attraction or any of that stuff, especially when I’m talking about in hypnosis, because it works for people whether you believe in more classic physics or whether you believe in what I call quantum physics, which is really what the law of attraction really is.
John: You have to let go of judgment; you have to let go of the thinking part, because we sit back and go, “Well, we have to do this. And this has got to be that way. And if we do this …” You have to let all that go and focus on just feeling that emotional state, because the universe has got an infinite amount of ways that that experience can show up for us. We bought a new house in December, and of course, in Lehi, where we live, you know what that’s like, it’s become the tech capital of the western half of the United States, and trying to buy a house, and I’m saying to my kids, “Focus on what we want to feel, the feelings that we want to have with the house, and the universe will always provide a way.”
John: So we the first house see, we love it. This is great. My wife is thrilled. We make an offer. I don’t know, somebody from California came in and paid cash. I was like, “Okay, circumstances don’t matter. Focus on how we’re going to feel.” We see the second house, and we love the view of the second house, but it was an older house. And my wife was like, “The view is incredible. It’s like you were up in Cedar Hills; you were looking at over the entire valley and see everything. It was the view that sold it.”
John: And my wife’s like, “Well, the house is 20 years old, or whatever it was, it’s going to need this and this.” All right, we made an offer. Didn’t happen, right? Somebody else, cash. So then we go, and we see this third house and I was thinking, the location, I don’t want to live in that area in this house, and then we see the house. And we’re like, “Oh my gosh, this house checks everything off the boxes.” It was only two years old. You know what this market is like, this real estate market is like.
John: So the first two houses we bid on, it was multiple offers, over within hours. And I said to my agent, I go, “How long has it been on the market?” He’s like, “11 days.” “Has anybody made an offer?” “No.” And we didn’t have to haggle; we gave them the asking price. But it was like we had seen these other two situations. We thought, “This is going to be it.” But you have to let that go. And then we’re grateful that those bids, they didn’t come back because we absolutely love it; it’s everything that we could have ever imagined and dreamed of.
John: So we focused on that emotional state of what it was. I didn’t think for anywhere I’d be in the … I love the location now. Once I went out there, I’m like, “Oh wow, this is great.” And that’s really what it comes down to. Any type of goal setting, we just have to let go of the judgment.
Charan: Yeah, and by judgment, you mean the exact outcome, right?
John: Yeah, because we always say, “It’s got-“
Charan: “It’s got to look like this.”
John: … “It’s going to look like this, it’s going to be like this, it’s going to be like that.” You let go of that and you focus on the emotional state. And that’s what’s so important especially in their mind, because in the subconscious mind, when you’re doing hypnosis or a meditation or something, you’re disconnecting the judgment, you’re disconnecting the path that you think has to be the outcome. And then you focus on that emotional state. And your subconscious mind is now wired for that emotional state.
John: And that’s what’s going out to the universe and for a lot of people that seems like, “Man, I’ve got to really push a boulder up a hill; how do I make that change?” So the one thing I always start with people, the simplest thing that you could do is no matter when any moment comes up, stress or think about something negative, you focus on something that you’re grateful for in that moment. The smallest, littlest thing. If you’re stressed about something, if you’re feeling upset, and you go, “Well, what am I grateful for this moment?”
John: “Okay, well right now, I do have a job right now. I have money in the bank right now” or “You know what? I’ve got all my fingers, my toes,” no matter how small it is. And when you get into the state of focusing on gratitude, and then feeling gratitude, or we say that it’s the law of compound gratitude, compound interest, it just expands and expands and you’re feeling grateful for everything. And then the next thing you know, more and more things are showing up in your reality that you can feel grateful for.
John: But it’s an easy way to retrain the mind, instead of looking at the things that you’re upset about, the things that you’re negative about, what do you feel grateful for? And then that just builds.
Charan: And that just builds. Dude, I feel like I just went to therapy and it was amazing. Seriously, I’m so grateful, because there’s so many things that you just hit, just barely that I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” I know these things, but to have it reminded, it’s like, “Wow, that’s right.” And that’s just how it’s supposed to be, because it is funny, even regarding law of attraction, that type of stuff, I do believe in a lot of that stuff because I’ve seen it happen to my own life. But I do know what you mean where when you’re focusing on the joy and the feeling of it as opposed to what does that exactly look like, then you can be surprised by how it comes. It’s like a Christmas gift.
John: Yeah. It’s like my wife says: “This, this or something better.”
Charan: Yeah, that’s great.
John: When you talk about I was reading some fascinating stuff this week … Read about before. I know you’re probably familiar with the concept of the pineal gland.
Charan: Yes. Decalcification of the pineal gland, right?
John: Exactly. Good for you that you’re aware of that stuff.
Charan: I literally read it this morning so…
John: Tom’s toothpaste, no fluoride, so get rid of that. But in the pineal gland, they have discovered that there’s actually calcite crystals in the pineal gland.
Charan: Yes.
John: That have piezoelectric properties and transfer the properties. So literally, it’s the same things in our radio. That the pineal gland has these crystals that are capable of transmitting and receiving information outside and around us. So what’s so fascinating for me is all this stuff that people thought was woo-woo and foo-foo, more and more and more things are coming into place relative to science that are kind of saying, “Hey, this is [crosstalk 01:01:08].”
Charan: Yeah, it’s all woo-woo until the science proves it right.
John: Exactly.
Charan: I know, and it’s interesting, because I’ve been able to do these, and I call it spiritual creation, is where I can go into that place and create things and things just work out. And they happen. But I really like what you were saying about not having a very, very specific outcome in mind, but more of the state of being. I like that a lot more. That’s so great.
John: Yeah, that’s the key to it all.
Charan: That’s the key. Yeah.
John: See, the problem is, I look at all the things that I’ve studied, you look at ancient civilizations, and we think that they’re so archaic, and they’re so [crosstalk 01:01:44]
Charan: Oh man.
John: But they were more in touch with the concept of emotion and energy and feeling, versus as we’ve evolved as a humanity, we’ve become these … It’s all about thinking and analyzing things and judging things and saying, “It’s got to be this way.” We’re more in our head about the thoughts. And we’ve fallen away from that ability to be able to focus on that emotional state and emotional energy. And one of the things that I’ve talked about with people is that we hear a lot about the existential crisis, this existential … and growing up in the ’80s, everybody was afraid of nuclear war.
John: The nuclear war is going to be the existential crisis. And now, we hear from people now the existential crisis is … Climate change is the existential crisis. And really what I think for me is the existential crisis of humanity is not anything from without; it’s what’s happening within. People that are creating individuals that have no ability to manage their emotions. And we’re so connected, and we’re sharing emotional energy, right? Something happens to you, you want to go and tweet about it, you want to post about, “I’m so angry about this.”
Charan: Your reaction time to it is [crosstalk 01:03:01]
John: Reaction time is instantaneous. And now we’re sharing that energy we’re putting out. People go, “I’m upset, I’m angry, I feel like a victim. This happened to me and now I want to go out there, and I’m going to share that, tell everybody else so everybody else can feel bad for me and they can be upset, they can be angry too.” And then it just gets-
Charan: It’s like that pineal gland is transmitting very fast.
John: Yeah, it’s going out there and now we’re spreading. The analogy of Terminator when they … What’s it called? Skynet online, right? In reality, it was almost that first tweet, when that first tweet was sent, that was like putting Skynet online and, ultimately, but the thing that really gives me hope, and I’m seeing so many people that are coming into consciousness. They’re understanding these things; they’re realizing these things. And I think the loudest voices that we hear out there aren’t necessarily the majority of the voices, but there’s so many people that are discovering these things. They’re discovering these ideas and it’s the people that I hear from all over the world that reach out to me because of what I put out there on YouTube.
John: So that is what boosts me up. Of course, I don’t need the outside world. That’s the other thing, I go, “All right, we just have to let that go. We just have to focus on feeling.” But as I focus on feeling good for me, I’m seeing and [crosstalk 01:04:30].
Charan: The outside world is reflecting it.
John: Yeah, the outside world is reflecting it.
Charan: The circumstances are reflecting it and that’s the beautiful thing. I love it. I love that you said this. These are very, very important topics that we need to … that people need to know about, because you completely are re engineering your approach to life, completely, because now it’s not a matter of like, “Oh, life is just stuff that’s happening and our reaction to it.” It’s more like, “Oh, I can consciously make my life happen,” meaning I can see the effect of my life by what’s happening on the inside.
John: Yeah, and that literally is going out there. Out into the field and things will attract.
Charan: Attract to it. It’s perfect man, it’s perfect. Okay, I’ve got two last questions for you now.
John: Yes.
John Moyer Talks About His Greatest Fear
Charan: With all these things you’ve learned, with the expanding consciousness, what would you say is your greatest fear right now?
John: Wow, that’s a good question because I don’t focus on, I don’t focus on. Well, actually, it is a good question because I do want to call it the echoes, the echoes of the past, because what’s going to happen is that you make a change, something happens, and but there’s still this tiny little part of your subconscious wiring that wants to go, “Hey, yeah, this might look good now, but this is going to happen or that’s going to happen.”
John: So I guess for me, when I say it’s my greatest fear, it’s like I feel like I’m living my dream, I’m living my bliss right now. My wife is amazing.
Charan: She’s amazing.
John: And she is just a fantastic person, living in the dream home, I’m doing what I love to do. I’m my own boss, but I’m helping other people. I’m able to take my time to be creative to share other people. And then there’s this little part of the echo that wants to go, “Yeah, well, do you remember 10 years ago when you were living in your two-bedroom, bachelor condo and nothing was going on? Well, guess what? It’s going to get back to that eventually.” And so the meditation and the exercise that I do is stepping away from that.
John: And just going, “Now, I think differently now. Thanks for sharing, but things are different now.” And so because we’re living in the residual outcome of our thoughts and experiences and emotions.
Charan: So it’s like a negative way for me, and the past could come back sometimes.
John: Yeah. Yeah, the past comes back up. And in fact, it’s funny because I’m releasing a program on Sunday night called Conquering Fear and Anxiety. And that’s one of the things that I talked about towards the end of the program is saying, “Hey, you know what? It’s going to be okay. Once in a while, the echoes are going to creep up. And when the echoes creep up, you can say, “Thank you for sharing, echo, but I prefer feeling confident. I prefer feeling strong. I prefer feeling these things.” So yeah, a lot of it has to do with the past.
John Moyer’s Advice to His Younger Self
Charan: The past. That’s so amazing. Okay, last question for you. What would this John Moyer tell John Moyer one of the past that was depressed? You have the chance to go back to that multiverse, right?
John: Yeah.
Charan: And you visit. What would you tell your younger self?
John: I would say, “Everything that you prefer to do with your life, you will be able to do all the things that you’d prefer to experience. You’re going to prefer” — because I always use the word prefer, I don’t say the word want, because if you want something, your mind hears, “Oh, well, we want a new car. So we’re just going to stay in a state of want.” “Oh, but I am someone who prefers a new car.” “Okay, well, how’s the person who prefers a new car? What do they do? How do they act out of that?” So now you’re driving a new car.
John: So I say to my past self, “It’s going to be more amazing than you could ever imagine. But you can’t imagine visually because the things that you’re thinking aren’t necessarily the way that it’s going to be, but you’re going to be doing those things and you’re going to feel on top of the world, you’re going to be living the life that you prefer to live. But you have one idea about the pathway to that, and it’s actually got to be something more amazing than you could have ever imagined.”
Charan: It’s so interesting. When you were saying this, a thought came to my head. I’ll have to share. Back in high school, there was this or actually, I just graduated high school. And this other girl was still in high school, but there was this girl that, “Oh my gosh, everyone just thought she was the cutest thing. She was so attractive.” And when she ended up graduating, I was, of course, so intimidated, but we ended up hanging out in the same group of friends once, and I don’t know if I went on a date with her or something, but I was driving her home one day, and I was just mesmerized, just mesmerized.
Charan: I was like, “Oh my gosh, this girl is so cute and I think she’s so funny or whatever.” But I never really saw her again. She went to Utah State and just never happened. Twenty years later, I’m at a wedding and she’s taking the photos for that wedding. And we reconnect and she’s divorced and we end up having lunch and we end up hitting it off and we ended up dating and we ended up taking a trip to New Zealand. If I had told my 21 years ago, “Oh my gosh, this girl that you like are so madly in love with you or whatever, you’re going to be on a trip with her to New Zealand and you’re dating her,” there’s just no concept of that.
Charan: And the truth is, we’re not dating anymore. We’re still really, really good friends and I just keep thinking, “Okay, that’s a perfect example of let the universe surprise you.” You can state what you want about your feelings.
John: Prefer what you prefer.
Charan: But you prefer what you would like with your feelings and then let the universe surprise you. And I think it’s a beautiful thing.
John: Well, and it’s interesting as you’re talking about her then, and you then, one of the things my wife had said before was, “Why didn’t we just meet when you were at BYU and I was all these things?” I said, “But you know what? The people that we are now, our relationship functions so lights-out incredibly because of who we are now.” Man, my wife’s got … Her journey dude, that’s [crosstalk 01:11:05]
Charan: I can have her on the podcast.
John: It’s an interesting journey. And but then mine too. Everything that we were over the space of our lives aligned us to be the people that we are now that can have this incredibly successful relationship, because we could have dated at 25, and you know what? We could have hated each other, and then this or that, but all of the things of the past are what make us who we are now. So you can’t look back and go, “Man, woulda, shoulda, coulda.” I just accept it and you allow it, you let it go.
Charan: Yeah, you let it go.
John: Yeah.
Charan: Dude, I love it, man. This has been so fun because you’re speaking on things that I love studying about and preaching about and thinking about. And the idea of allowing things, surrendering to things and relaxing into things, I think, is the way because you’re not making life happen, just happening for you.
John: It’s sounds so dichotomous.
Charan: It does, it does.
John: Because especially when you use the word surrender, it just sounds like you’re giving up or something, but the paradox is that you also have to prefer something, but then at the same time, you have to be willing to let it go. That’s the paradox of saying, “This is what I’m preferring to accomplish or preferring to have or preferring to be.” But then you also have to balance that with, “I don’t care; if it doesn’t happen, so what?”
Charan: Yeah.
John: So what?
Charan: Yeah.
John: And when you get to that point, that’s when you’re in … That’s when you’re in-
Charan: A beautiful flow of life.
John: Yeah.
Charan: Dude, I love it, man. I appreciate this. And dude, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been such a rad ride session, and I feel like not only will I have gotten … Not only did I get some therapy, I’m hoping that the listeners have gotten some awesome ideas and therapy out of this.
John: And they can look me up on YouTube.
Charan: Please, yeah.
John: John Moyer.
Charan: John Moyer.
John: J-O-H-N M-O-Y-E-R. You’ll find me on YouTube.
Charan: Awesome.
John: I got stuff on all the iTunes and Amazon, Google Play, all that stuff. But my primary body of work by long form stuff is all on my YouTube channel.
Charan: YouTube channel. So John Moyer, search on YouTube guys. Thank you so much John for being on the podcast.
John: Thank you, sir.
Charan: And we’ll chat soon.
Charan: Thanks so much for listening to the Lemonade Stand Podcast and we hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you use to be alerted when we release new episodes. We’d also love to hear your feedback in the reviews and if you or someone you know has an awesome Lemonade Stand Story, please reach out to us on social media and let us know. Thanks so much and have a great day.
The Lemonade Stand Stories Podcast with Charan Prabhakar was created to shine a light on some of the world’s greatest creators, entrepreneurs, and innovators and the positive impact they’re making in the world.
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