Renowned life coach and alternative medicine expert Justin Stenstrom (@justinstenstrom) joins Mark to discuss what it means to truly live an elite life. Justin is the best-selling author of Elite Mind: A Real-World Guide to Overcoming Anxiety, Conquering Depression, and Unleashing Your Inner Confidence, Editor-in-Chief of Elite Man Magazine, the founder of Elite Life Nutrition, and the host of the Elite Man Podcast. Justin and Mark also talk about mental health, alternative medicine, neuro-linguistic programming, and the state of the current pandemic.
Hear how:
- Mental illness can affect anybody at any moment—even more so in this pandemic
- Justin recovered from his anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts—without modern medicine
- The origins of modern medicine are not what you think and how holistic medicine went the wayside
Listen to this episode for some insight on what it truly means to be elite and how you can use the current VUCA environment to get there.
The Unbeatable Mind coaching certification program is taking applications right now. This program is invaluable for leadership of all kinds, both business, coach, consultant or manager. It will also be essential if you are interested in starting either a full-time or part-time coaching business. The next program starts soon, so to find out more, go to unbeatablemind.com/coaching.
Mark is a fan of the CBD oil products from Mission Farms. He has started using it on his knees to reduce the pain and swelling that comes from a workout. Their organic products will effectively allow you to manage stress in muscles and joints so that you can go further with your workouts. Go to missionfarmscbd.com/unbeatable and use the code “unbeatable” to save $10 on your order.
During these times we’re all experiencing unprecedented stress. To help decompress, Mark recommends the BiOptimizer magnesium supplement. Magnesium is a major component of body chemistry and is responsible for many biochemical reactions. So you can supplement with Magnesium Breakthrough, the supplement from BiOptimizer. You can use it for 10% off because you are a listener. Go to https://bioptimizers.com/unbeatable and use the code unbeatable10 at checkout.
Listeners to the podcast, can save by using the code UNBEATABLE at checkout for 20% off the regular price.
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We’d love your feedback, please leave a rating and review.Transcript
Start
2:04
Hey folks welcome back this is Mark Divine with the Unbeatable Mind podcast. Super stoked to have you here. Thanks for joining me today.
We’re gonna have a great show, talking about things that are near and dear to my heart.
But before we get into uh introducing our guests if you like this show please go rate it or consider rating it on iTunes and or whatever place you listen to this. It really helps. We’ve got over a thousand five-star reviews, so we’d like to keep racking those up. It helps people find it and helps us stay one of the top ranked podcasts on iTunes.
So here’s a quote – let’s see I have to put my glasses on for this – “all you have is what’s going on in front of you right now. Worrying about the future is only going to cause anxiety and bring up fears. It’s only going to cause you to live in a time that’s not present.”
Sounds like something I would say. The author of that quote is Justin Stenstrom who is a renowned a life coach, an alternative medicine expert, best-selling author of “Elite Mind: A Real-World Guide to Overcoming Anxiety, Conquering Depression, and Unleashing Your Inner Confidence.”
He also is the editor-in-chief of “Elite Man” magazine, founder of “Elite Life” nutrition and host of the “Elite Man Podcast.”
Awesome I can’t wait for this conversation, Justin. Thanks for joining me today. Hooyah.
Justin: Yeah, thanks so much for having me Mark. I appreciate it man.
Mark: Yeah. No kidding, it’s great. Sounds like we’ve got a lot of interests in common. But as with all of my guests, I like to start out with just the man behind the current myth – (laughing) like, where are you from? What were some of your early influences? What were some of the major disasters in your life, and screw-ups and you know crazy stuff, that kind of forged who you are today, so that you can help people the way you do?
Justin: Yeah. I like how you ask that question too, because I think all our things from the past forge who we are today. And it’s whether we learn from those things, or whether we just kind of ignore them or keep going with them that determines who we become.
Mark: Absolutely.
Justin: But yeah, for me… I mean, my whole background really started – and it really talks about it in the book – is about having severe anxiety, and depression, and panic attacks three to four times a week. And suicidal depression at one point for like months at a time where it was just like a constant thinking…
Mark: And how old were you?
Justin: 17-18… around that age…
Mark: Okay.
Justin: And it lasted… the whole thing probably lasted a good year and a half – two years… close to two years. And then I’m sitting on my couch one day – and this is over 12 years ago now – and I’m just like thinking of all the ways I could kill myself.
And I mentioned I’m from Boston, or just outside of Boston – there’s this bridge – I’m thinking about jumping off the bridge – I’m thinking about grabbing rope…
Mark: There’s a lot of ways in Boston to kill yourself, for sure.
Justin: There’s a lot of ways, man.
Mark: (laughing) It’s not that funny, but it is…
Justin: Yeah, looking back now we can laugh at it. But, I mean, it is a serious thing. And that’s really what the book’s all about.
But it just kind of dawns on me at one point after going through this whole obsessive, crazy thinking that I got to actually really figure this problem out, or I am going to die.
Mark: It’s going to happen. So you were you weren’t really serious about it, were you?
Justin: I never attempted it, but at this point it was like “all right, next step is the attempts…”
Mark: Yeah, “either I do this, or I fix this…”
Justin: Yeah.
Mark: Before we get into more about that and kind of the turnaround, what was your childhood like? What were your parents like? Was there childhood trauma? What was going on that may have caused this?
Or was it just some sort of, you know, flu?
Justin: I think there’s a lot of factors that kind of went into it. And actually my childhood was great. So it’s one of those things where it’s like you can’t really pinpoint sometimes. Abuse and that kind of thing, you can kind of see or guess where people might tend to go.
But for me, my background was great. My childhood was great – I had a lot of friends growing up, a lot of parties – hanging out with kids. And my parents were great.
And then, I think around like 13 or so, my parents got divorced. And then that’s kind of where the split sort of came… after that point. It was like one thing after the next… I started getting into trouble, started messing up in school, hanging around with the wrong kids.
And just slowly over time I realized that the life I was living wasn’t really who I was. And I’d created this sort of identity of like trying to be cool and I was really insecure inside. Every time I’d go home to my house, I’d be so depressed, and miserable, and unhappy. Because I didn’t have like real friends.
And this just combined over the course of two or three years to really get me to this point of being super-insecure and super-depressed. And having no idea how to get out of it, it just gets worse and worse with time.
And I actually talk about it in the book, too. It can happen to anybody – like I said I had a pretty good childhood, can’t complain about things…
Mark: And divorce isn’t uncommon…
Justin: Yeah. Divorce is actually probably more common these days, that people are getting divorced. It’s like up over 50%.
But so this could happen anyone and just because a lot of things have gone right in the past, doesn’t mean the next things are going to go right…
Mark: Do you think there was something biologically that was influencing it? Nutrition or…?
Justin: So that’s a good question – I think a lot of it can be attributed to nutrition. And there’s things like heavy metals, there’s toxins, there’s the GMO foods that mess up the neurotransmitters and the brain chemistry, et cetera.
For me, I don’t think that was the case. I think it was just a combination of different circumstances… psychological factors and that’s what happened.
But it can be a combination of the two. It could be one or the other… if you have a nutritional problem, you gotta address that first. And then a lot of the times things will go away.
Mark: How prevalent do you think this issue is? I mean, you work with a lot of clients now recovering from anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts… stuff like that. How prevalent do you think this is? Especially now with Covid…
Justin: Yeah, pre-Covid… so there’s two answers to that… pre-Covid there’s some stat like 35 – 36 % of people will deal with depression in their lives. Like, legit depression. And that’s combining the – there’s a name for it, but it’s combining all of the like alcoholism – which is basically a reaction to depression – and anger issues, and those types of problems. So all the factors that go into what real depression looks like. It’s like 35 %.
That’s pre-Covid. Now – Covid – those numbers have actually like the suicide rate has gone up 10 x since Covid started in March. The calls for the suicide hotline went up 1100 % in March from the same time last year. And that’s what we’re facing right now.
So we don’t even know what the real numbers are. It’s still too early to really figure it out. We can’t track it yet.
Mark: Tracking is like several years…
Justin: Exactly, right. So we’ll know in a few years what it really is. My guess is though that number is going to probably skyrocket. The 35 % number.
Mark: It’s not just America, either. I actually read a story about how the number of Japanese women committing suicide has tripled this year from Covid.
Justin: Wow.
Mark: Yeah, crazy hunh? Anyways, a little sidenote there…
So back to your story. You were sitting on the couch contemplating doing something horrible – jumping off a bridge or whatever… what was the turn around? What was the lightning bolt that struck you?
Justin: That was the lightning bolt that really hit me. I jumped out of the couch, basically, put my foot down, and figured out that I got to figure out what’s happening. And to be honest, I didn’t figure out that solution right away. It took me a little while and a couple of more months.
And then I had like a really bad panic attack one day. And actually this is kind of a good little story – I’m skipping class and I go to smoke pot with a couple of friends. And I ended up smoking laced marijuana…
Mark: Laced with what?
Justin: PCP is my best guess. I’m like 90 % sure that it’s PCP, angel dust…
Mark: I had some people that I know from Coronado that did that. And literally this one person… he was never the same afterwards.
Justin: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah, he didn’t know he was doing it. And it literally split his personality… he became like psychotic… horrible…
Justin: Yep, it’s 100 % true. I actually know somebody – and I got lucky, because I was able to recover from it -but I know somebody who was one year older than me. That I was kind of friends with. Did the same type of thing and didn’t know what it was – and we still don’t know for sure, but we’re 90 % sure it’s PCP – but he never came back from it. He’s completely gone. He’s just in another universe now. You know what I mean? His mind’s gone.
But so I did this one day and I end up hallucinating. And I like pass-out, my friends leave, and I’m like hovering over my body. I had an out-of-body experience.
So I’m literally looking down at myself, as if I was a third-person character in a movie. And I’m freaking out, needless to say. I’m seeing threes of everything and everything’s just going crazy. Eventually it just kind of wears off and I just like pass-out.
Next day I wake up and I’m in like the hospital I go to the doctors and everything – I tell my parents after a period of time like trying to deny it for a few hours – and I end up telling them.
And then, long story short, I go to the hospital and they give me anti-anxiety medications – clonazepam, benzodiazepines – those types of things. And he basically just gives it to me, tells me to take it and I’m like this kid at this time 17, 18 years old. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
So I go home, and I take it. Put the pills on the counter – I take one or two – I think it was one and I passed out for a few hours. And then I go to take another one when I woke up probably five, six hours later…
And I end up having this conversation with my dad, because he saw the pills on the counter. And long story short, he tells me “don’t go this route.” Like, I was hiding all these problems from him for a while. But he basically sat me down and said “this isn’t the solution, right here. This medication right here, I’ve had like friends and stuff, they had bad reactions to it.”
“you don’t have to take this medication to beat this problem. I don’t know what you have to do, exactly. But you have to figure it out, and you can beat it. You can and you will beat it.”
He said, “you’re tough, you’re a fighter.” And my father’s the toughest guy I’ve ever met. He’s just a bad ass… he’s from south Boston, grew up in a rough neighborhood that kind of thing. Wasn’t the best communicator, but he was always there to kind of give me that physical and mental strength. And that’s what he did.
So when he did that, I started like searching all kinds of stuff… alternative therapies, alternative medicine, vitamins, herbs… all these types of things. And it took like two or three months after that point, but I was like 90 % cured of my problems, because I started doing the holistic approach.
And ever since then – 18 years-old and that literally changed the entire course of my life. I’ve been on this sort of crusade to do it the natural way, the healthy way so to speak… as opposed to just the pharmaceutical way, where they just throw a bunch of drugs at you.
And not like there’s s no need for that, because there is some need for pharmaceuticals…
Mark: If it’s an intervention, it could be helpful, right?
Justin: For sure. But there’s so much over-prescribed, Mark. It’s crazy how they just throw stuff at you.
Mark: Well, there’s so much money in it, right?
Justin: That’s what it comes down to, man. That’s what it comes down to.
Mark: So give us an idea of what your prescription was that led to that 80 %, 90% recovery in three months. What were you eating? What supplements did you take? Did you start exercising? Give us kind of a holistic prescription.
Justin: Yeah, so it’s all those things. And by like say month four or five, I was basically 100%. And I’ve been that way ever since.
And, you know, you do the right things no matter who you are, no matter what you’re facing. You do these right types of things, you’re going to progress and get better, no matter how bad the condition is…
Mark: You can either heal, or go from good to great…
Justin: Exactly, exactly… so, my prescription was eating healthier, cutting out a lot of the fats and the junk food, and the cookies, and the chips and all that stuff. That’s the easy stuff to be honest…
Mark: Paleo? Or full-on keto?
Justin: Neither actually, but more actually more vegetarian-like – although I’m not vegetarian, I incorporated a lot more fruits and vegetables. And cut out a lot of processed sugars, of course, and you know the fats that really weren’t healthy.
And still I kind of eat that way as well, where I have…
Mark: That probably in itself had a profound effect. It may have been 100% solution…
Justin: Yeah, it could be. Actually, if I’d known the information I know now on fruits, and vegetables, and nutrition – I could have incorporated a lot better back then. And probably done even better.
But I didn’t know as much, and I was just kind of dabbling with it. But that helped a little bit for sure.
And then of course the supplements like magnesium, B complex, vitamin d… there’s seasonal depression every time we get up here in the northeast, where the sun goes down. You don’t get that vitamin d absorption. That’s why seasonal depression is so bad in the northern states, northeastern…
But yeah, if you’re taking 5000 IUs of vitamin D a day, you’re great. 200 to 400 milligrams of magnesium is great. A b50 complex is great. Fish oil – I don’t actually particularly like fish oil anymore, because it has mercury in it. Even when they say they take it out of it, there’s still some mercury in there.
I do like plant-based omegas though. That’s very good.
And then things like turmeric or curcumin either one turmeric or curcumin are incredible.
Mark: In lieu of a plant-based omega?
Justin: I prefer the turmeric or curcumin – either one of those, and sometimes together – I prefer those over the omegas. But I also take the omega – like if I had to pick one, I would pick the turmeric.
Mark: That’s interesting for me, because I still take the fish-based omega, but I think you’re right, I’ve seen some studies now that say that mercury is an issue, and some other things are issues.
Justin: Yeah, they try to pull them out and they do their best to pull them out, but it’s almost like I’ve heard some things – and I don’t know if this is 100% true… that there’s still mercury in them is 100% true, but I’ve heard that when they try to take them out, in the process of taking them out, they can actually make it a little worse. Because they’re like doubling down on some of the mercury that’s left over.
And that gets like spoiled almost and it becomes even more toxic. But there’s only tiny amounts of it, but that’s still very toxic. So I kind of avoid that.
But the omega-3s are incredible as well. But I do prefer turmeric. Because if you ever get like a headache or something, and you have some inflammation going on – you have turmeric or curcumin and you have say fish oil. And you take one of those two to get faster relief, which one do you notice relief from?
The answer is turmeric, or curcumin. You notice that immediate impact, because it’s working far better on the COX-2 enzymes that cause inflammation. Working far faster – within 15-20 minutes you can notice relief.
It’s almost – I actually believe it’s as good as ibuprofen – but the great thing with curcumin is you don’t get any of the side effects that you would if you take ibuprofen long-term for your liver. Actually contrarily it supports the liver and can actually help the liver’s function over time.
So I take it every single day regardless of what’s going on. And I’ll even take a little bit more if I have some kind of inflammation or headache or whatever else… you know, you go to the gym… you get aches and pains… that type of thing.
But yeah, those are some of the big ones that I started taking for supplements.
Zinc is another great one as well. Great for the brain. It’s incredible.
And yeah, so supplements… you got that stuff, you got the foods.
The gym is of course incredible. There’s so many studies out there that say actually just going to the gym regularly for three to four times a week can overcome depression. And they’ve done studies where they compare that to the leading antidepressants, and exercise alone beats antidepressants. Which is incredible. Just that alone. That one change. And I know you’re all about fitness too.
Mark: The problem is people when people are depressed, they don’t have the energy or the motivation…
Justin: That is the problem. That’s a big problem, you’re right. But once you get into like the routine of it and you start doing the other things – like the nutrition, the supplements – to just kind of lift yourself up, then the other things become easier as well.
But talk therapy actually, as well, I believe in. I’m a huge proponent of. And having someone to talk to – not necessarily the psychiatrist, who wants to throw a medication at you – but say a counselor or just a regular psychologist who can sort of unpack a lot of these problems that you have inside you. A lot of these insecurities.
It’s almost like they’re shining a light in some of the areas that you’re overlooking. So you’re going through your day all the time and you have these different things that pop up – these sort of hiccups or these blind spots – that you don’t notice. And when you’re talking to somebody else, who kind of knows what they’re doing, they’re able to sort of pinpoint those things and sort of shine a light on those problems that are kind of creeping up and causing different things to happen.
Mark: Yeah. I love that.
NLP
21:38
Mark: You know, I’m a big fan of therapy and I believe that… I know you use this term metacognition in your work, in your book. A lot of times people don’t have the self-awareness to have the metacognitive “thinking about your thinking” process. Or to instill it, or implement it in themselves, right? It’s almost like installing new software.
Justin: Yeah.
Mark: But going to a therapist and having a therapist hold that kind of mirror up to your thinking – and to then reflect it back to you and have then you be able to objectify and look at that thinking. And the emotions not caught up in them but as an object. Then that actually is practicing metacognition with a third party, which then you can kind of install into your own kind of self-process. What do you think about that?
Justin: Yeah, I think it’s incredible. And I think the awareness alone is such a huge part of it.
Mark: Right.
Justin: Just becoming aware of what’s happening and why it’s happening. And then once you know that you kind of understand why your reactions have been happening and then you can sort of make these little changes.
They don’t have to be huge changes, but just that awareness of what’s causing you to feel a certain way can allow you to then start to feel a different sort of way.
And it’s sort of like meditation, too. Just a surrendering to the moment, and understanding like why things are happening, without necessarily trying to control it all the time. And understanding exactly why these things are happening.
And being like an observer of them, as opposed to like a first-hand actor in these sort of circumstances can be… another thing I talk about, which is NLP. That’s the whole way NLP works is changing the visuals and the imagery and the pictures and what’s going on in your mind and stepping back from it and sort of like looking at it from a third person. Where you’re not attached to all these emotions and these feelings.
When you’re separated from it, that’s when you can make the changes.
Mark: Yeah, so NLP is kind of like a combination of self-hypnosis and metacognition.
Justin: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it, actually.
Mark: That’s interesting. I’ve never really done NLP personally, but I researched it when I launched the Unbeatable Mind program back in 2012. And of course, I read all of Tony Robbins’ work, and his book “Awaken the Giant Within” is all about NLP. And that was kind of interesting.
So how did you get involved in NLP? Tell us more about that, and how it would be useful for a listener.
Mark: So, I just kind of dabbled around with that. And by the way self-hypnosis was probably the single best thing for my depression. I did that first, and…
Mark: Is there a particular process or program? Or did you just learn how to…?
Justin: Yeah, so there was a few different ones. I liked a few different guys that had like audio – this is CDs, back in the day. I’d put the CD in and just throw headphones on – Paul McKenna was a great one, Richard Bandler, of course, does more of the NLP stuff and some hypnosis. And Dr. Andrew Hill’s a great guy.
But the guy I loved the most was a guy named Dr. Andrew Dobson – I think he was from New Zealand or something, Australia – he had this cool voice. And I would just throw his cd on – his mp3, I put it on my mp3 player – and then I would throw it on for 20 minutes a day, every single day for the first like six months I was going through this whole process.
And every single time I’d like wake up out of the hypnotic state I’d feel like so much better. I would start all my days off. So I would do this in the morning as soon as I woke up. Like 20 minutes, the first start of my morning.
After that it was like my whole rest of the day was incredible. I just felt awesome, I felt on top of the world.
And I did this over and over and over again. And literally just reconditioned my subconscious mind to have all these favorable feelings and emotions. And let go of the past – like, releasing the past and in my opinion – it’s the single best way to tap into your subconscious mind. Which is actually in control of the feelings and emotions and everything going on. It’s like 99% of your mind is your subconscious mind.
And you can do all these things consciously throughout the day. Like take these different actions, go to the gym, eat healthy, take supplements…
Mark: The subconscious will always override that.
Justin: It always overrides it. But you can do these types of things, and slowly condition your subconscious mind to change, when you do these types of actions.
But the fastest way to sort of hack into the subconscious mind, and tap into it, and rearrange these programs and codes so to speak is to do something like self-hypnosis.
Mark: Go right to the source…
Justin: It goes right to the source. It’s like hacking into it, and being like this coder guy, and you reprogram all the favorable emotions that you want to have. And then you start to feel a lot better.
And that’s kind of how NLP works as well. Which is kind of cool about NLP, it works on a conscious level. So you’re consciously doing these types of things. And you’re sort of visualizing and recreating this picture in your mind.
And then you’re feeling a certain sort of way. Like, if you have a fear or something or if you have a phobia, or if you have depression – you think about it and you feel these terrible feelings and then you then start to feel like…
You change the picture into a more favorable one. And then you feel like positive emotions. You feel good emotions, you feel favorable like confident emotions. And if you do this over and over again, those are the emotions that override the poor ones that you had before. And that also reprograms the subconscious mind.
Mark: Yeah. And I think that labeling it NLP or self-hypnosis is actually a disservice – so anyone who’s listening like these are just basic skills we have as human beings, right? We have the skill – this is the way I teach it in Unbeatable Mind – we have a skill to use imagery to reflect in a retrograde sense – which we call “past” – as well as to project forward in a future sense – which we call “the future.”
The left brain has linearity to it, right? Your left-brain cognition – which is what you’re calling the conscious aspect of our brain – has linearity to it.
The right brain – subconscious – does not. It’s in the here and now moment. It has no linearity to it. So when you use the imaging function – which is a right brain function – in a state of memory to go back and remember something, you can remember something that happened in the past is if it happens now and recontextualize it.
Like you said, Justin, change the imagery. Change the color, change the energy. One of the ways this is done is to take something that’s super bright like a painful event – it’s really bright, it’s very vivid – but of course, you got a lot of false associations with that. Because maybe it happened when you were 13, right?
But you can go back – using your right brain faculties, especially the imaging faculty – and recontextualize that by dimming it. So that’s one way to reduce the energy.
And then, secondly, you can change the story attached to that, right? Which is the second… which you would say change it by adding maybe a positive affirmation, or just literally change the story by inserting the learning in how powerful you are now as a result of that event, right? Like we talked about when we opened.
Justin: Yeah.
Mark: And so that’s basically neurolinguistic programming and self-hypnosis. But it’s just a skill. So get rid of all the naming and labeling of these skills. It’s just a skill, and it’s a basic human skill.
Warriors have been teaching this for years. The Toltec had a tradition where they required any young warrior – before they were admitted to the warrior class -this is men. I don’t know if they allowed women in or girls – to what they call “recapitulate” – which is basically what I just described – their entire life. All the way back to birth.
And it took these warriors about a year. And they had to go into the wilderness and do it. So there’s a lot of other benefits of that too, right?
Justin: Wow.
Mark: Survival, and being close to nature. But they had to recapitulate to their entire life to eradicate every single regret. And to release any negative energy associated with their childhood.
Justin: Wow.
Mark: And when they did that – then they were admitted into the warrior class. And the reason for that is when confronting an enemy, they didn’t want any of that baggage to slow down their decision-making. And they wanted to have a pure… clear head and a clear heart, right?
Because so many warriors that I know, were vindictive and were actually projecting their shadow onto the enemy. And stuff like that and no Bueno, right? And you get bad consequences.
Sorry to go off on the little tangent there.
Justin: No it’s cool. Fascinating.
Mark: Just wanted to point out that these are basic human skills that we have. You stumbled upon them through NLP and self-hypnosis. I stumbled upon them through tony Robbins, through napoleon hill believe it or not talks about these…
Justin: Oh yeah, way back…
Mark: Way back when. So they’ve been around. Yogi’s have been doing it for thousands of years.
That’s cool. So what point did you decide that this was going to become a career for you? Or a service for you?
Justin: I think it was probably maybe three years or so after that. And it was just like – once I was in that, I kind of got my foot wet in this whole self-help world. I fell in love with it, and I just kind of knew inherently after that point that this was something I wanted to do. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, what I was going to do…
You know what I mean? And this is all kind of the online marketing and all this type of stuff of having a business online was all fairly new back then. But I just kind of kept at it. And I kept learning stuff and Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle and you know Paul McKenna…
I just researched all this stuff, fell in love with it. Every single day I was trying to improve myself. Every single day I was trying to learn new things. And like you said, I would research all these types of things from thousands of years ago, in all these other traditions and these guys that were doing incredible things… and Milton Erickson of the world… like those types of guys.
And I didn’t know what it was about it, but I just fell in love with the fact that I was able to take charge of my life. And overcome this huge problem.
And after that – and I say it in the book, too – it was a blessing in disguise of having this severe problem with mental health. I know for sure; I wouldn’t be where I am today, or who I am today if it were not for the problems back then.
Mark: Everything happens to us for a reason.
Justin: For sure. It all happens for a reason – I do believe that I do believe that life has a series of challenges and obstacles. And we’re faced with overcoming those things and growing from them as human beings. We learn these different lessons.
Some people don’t overcome them. Some people won’t face these challenges head-on. And those are the types of people I think that that end up living their life with a lot of regrets. A lot of unhappiness, a lot of unfulfillment by the time they get 90 and they’re sitting on their deathbed.
But because of this thing right here, because of this problem, it conditioned me to want to take charge of every single day. To want to seek out the new adventures, and to try new things. And to push myself out of my comfort zone.
And those are the types of things I’ve done every single day after overcoming this. And with that sort of mindset, I wanted to help other people have the same type of life that I’ve had.
Mark: Right. What would you say that your mission is?
Justin: I think it’s right there. It’s helping people live their elite sort of life. Which is taking charge of it and doing the things that they want to do. When they want to do them. With who they want to do them. And not letting anything stop them.
And really, the elite mind is all about having this belief, this knowing, this understanding that you can overcome anything that comes your way. If there’s any challenges, any obstacles, any medical conditions – health conditions, mental health conditions, setbacks, chronic diseases…
And by the way, I overcame a huge chronic disease two years ago – and it was because of this mindset… well a year ago… that lasted two years… and it was because of this mindset here that I was able to overcome it. And that’s what I try to instill in my guys and the people I work with. Is you guys can overcome anything that comes your way.
You just have to have that understanding, that knowing, that you’re going to do whatever it takes – anything possible to overcome that.
And you will. If you don’t give up on yourself, it will happen.
Mark: When most people hear the term “elite,” they think better than others. Is that what you’re trying to convey? Or better than you could be? Or better than your old self?
Justin: Yeah, it’s your best self is really what it is. It’s your elite self. It’s becoming the best version of yourself.
It certainly has that connotation in some settings, but it’s not in this setting here. It’s about becoming uh the best version of yourself – like your elite self your best self.
Mark: Right. Yeah, that’s how we used the term in the SEALs. I mean, we never thought that we were – I mean some did – but I never thought that we were better than others. There’s no like single best special operations force, there’s just special operators trying to be their best, perform their best, to be tactically proficient and whatnot.
And then there’s some who kind of ride the coattails. They would not be elite.
Naturopathy
37:46
Mark: What do you think about modern medicine and what’s going on in the world there?
Justin: That’s a great question. It’s one of my favorite questions too.
I think it’s a disaster. I think it’s an absolute disaster, if you want to know the truth…
Mark: (laughing) Oh, I’m with you on that… and I love doctors, though.
Justin: I do too.
Mark: They’re so well intentioned. And gosh they take the Hippocratic oath, and they’re just brilliant. And then they get sucked into this system that is really about disease, right?
Justin: Yeah. I’ll tell you what the basis of what’s really wrong – especially with American medicine and the ama and such – and this is going to sound a little crazy, but you can look it up. There’s plenty of proof out there.
There was a… and you might have heard of this Mark, I’m not sure – but there was a report – I believe in 1911 – something like that. It’s called the Flexner report – have you heard of that?
Mark: I have not.
Justin: The Flexner report was a report – so it was basically this overseeing of the medical system back a hundred years ago. And it was in America and Rockefeller – John D Rockefeller, the multi-billionaire – he’s basically the Bezos of today and probably even richer.
He looked at the German system of medicine back in the day – and this is again over 100 years ago – and he liked the model of how they were doing things back then. Because 100 years ago we had holistic medicine – we had herbs, we had vitamins, we had naturopathy, we had homeopathy… we had all these different modalities for healing people and helping people get better.
And he looked at it though and saw a business opportunity. He was this you know super billionaire back then, and he saw the ama – the American medical association – and he liked what Germany was doing, when they were doing a lot of pharmaceuticals and they were just starting to get into that stuff.
And pharmaceuticals 100 years ago are not where they are today. But they were tapping into that type of resource. And so he was like “all right, I’m going to take advantage of this.”
He hired this guy Flexner; he paid a few people off – he got this guy Flexner to be a commissioner and to oversee all these American medical healing modalities. The homeopathy, naturopathy and regular medicine as well – which is kind of what we have today.
But what he did after the course of like a few months he went around the country and basically, he labeled all these healing health medicines and practices holistic practices as quackery – so homeopathy, naturopathy, functional medicine, vitamins, herbs, etc.….
All the people that were practicing these medicines, they were all labeled quacks. And from that point forward, the entire focus of American medicine was in pharmaceuticals – pharmaceutical drugs. This guy infiltrated it, because he had these pharmaceutical companies that he later ventured into and started this whole thing. He made all kinds of money from pharmaceuticals.
And that’s why he set this guy up. And so from that point forward – talking 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s is when it really took off… 60s, 70s you had all…
Mark: It makes sense that an oil man would also shut down naturopathy…
Justin: (laughing) Exactly.
Mark: (laughing) Not only are we going to disease and ruin the environment with petrochemicals, but we’ll just ruin health…
Justin: Yeah, exactly. And just look at the numbers… the chronic disease rate has shot through the roof – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, all these things… so he hacked into this thing over 100 years ago and the entire focus of all these institutions, all these medical institutions – they then became pharmaceutical based.
You know, in all the years of study that doctors do currently today? In all their classes and everything the courses that they take, you know how much they take in nutrition? Probably – I think we can both agree this is probably the single most important – they take one half of one class. It’s 23.9 contact hours, I believe 23.9. In all the classes.
That’s a disaster. The most important thing that we know Mark to override our health problems, etc.…. To be in good health, is our nutrition. And these guys don’t know what the hell they’re talking about when it comes to nutrition.
Not like they’re not brilliant people, like you said. I know a lot of brilliant doctors.
But they have to do their own research to actually learn about nutrition. Because they’re not taught about it… and the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spend in medical school.
And that’s a shame. And it’s a shame, because they don’t want people to know that turmeric or curcumin is just as good as ibuprofen. Because there’s no real money into turmeric or curcumin. It’s an herb. You can pick it off the ground.
The pharmaceutical patent though for ibuprofen – and not really ibuprofen, because it’s cheaper – but some of these other ones… it’s just an example… the pharmaceutical patent though is 10 100 times more than that plan – if you buy it off the Walmart shelf or a supplement store.
That’s why there’s so much more money in pharmaceuticals. And that’s why these guys – they have the lobbyists, etc. – they put all their money – and by the way they finance a lot of these studies. When you have like different studies for pharmaceuticals.
They finance a lot of these medical schools and they give them all kinds of endowments. And they pay them off to sort of steer their curriculum to a certain way to sort of propagandize what they’re selling. And that is the pharmaceutical drugs.
And so like we’ve been conditioned as just Americans and people even around the world, to believe our doctors and to believe everything they say. You know, I went to the doctor for the benzodiazepine, and the first thing he does is “take this.”
And without like any second thought it’s like, “okay, sir.” And you go home, and you start taking drugs and that’s what it is. You got high cholesterol, you got high blood pressure, you got aches and pains… it’s “take this one, take that one, take that one.”
And there’s no reason or rhyme or reason for why they’re actually doing these types of things. Except for that’s what they’ve been trained to do.
Mark: I just saw that with my father-in-law. I mean, it’s really sad – especially with the elderly, right? Once they start down this road…
Justin: Absolutely.
Mark: They give them one thing for something. And that causes some side effect, and then they give them another thing for that. Soon, they’ve got this pill tray you know with 27 things that they’re supposed to take. And each one of them is having some sort of effect that’s sending the system further and further out of balance. And it actually accelerates their aging.
Justin: Yep, certainly does. And they’re taking medications to stop the side effects from the other medications.
Mark: Exactly. You just stop it all, right? You just start eating really healthy, close to the earth – like you said – thinking well, moving your body…
Justin: Yeah, it’s true man. It’s so true. It’s sad, too.
And then everything that’s going on right now, with the with the pandemic, the shutdowns… it’s all come full circle, I think, the last year.
I understand where people are coming from, and the government… I understand their stake in this whole thing.
Mark: Well they gotta be seen as doing something.
Justin: Yeah, exactly.
Mark: Unfortunately, doing something when it comes to the government usually leads to disasters. The founding fathers made it complicated, so that it would be hard to do something.
Justin: Yeah, absolutely.
But no, I mean it’s not a pandemic at all, it’s a scaredemic… they’re saying now to even people that get the vaccine that’s just rolling out warp speed – and by the way there’s never been ever in the 50, 60, 70 years they’ve been trying to get a vaccine for the common cold which about a third of them are made up by coronavirus – coronavirus is not new you know that. They’ve been around for forever.
And so for the last 50, 60 years they’ve been trying to have a vaccine for the for the common cold many of which are made up by coronaviruses – haven’t come up with one single successful vaccine. But we’re led to believe that in the past nine months now that they came up just magically with the vaccine that’s not only effective, but also safe?
No way. Not a chance. And usually it takes five years for vaccines to roll out in any case, but not even for the thing they’ve never found a vaccine for. Ever.
Which is a coronavirus and uh same thing with the flu… the flu’s efficacy at best they say is 30%. The CDC says 30%. So if you’re taking it 10 years, you’re only protected three years out of the 10 and you’re still getting all say the mercury, aluminum, the antibiotics they shove in there… the killed off fetal tissue in some cases of aborted fetuses are actually in there.
And if these sound all crazy, if you just look at the ingredients on the back of these vaccines – they have them on the website still – you see that all these things are on there. They’re in there.
They put them in there by the way to create an immune response. They want to actually hike up the immune system so that it can like fight off the virus that they’re sticking in your body.
Mark: Create antibodies. Which they don’t know how long those antibodies will last.
Justin: No. And what they don’t tell you either is that that mercury and aluminum they’re sticking in that vaccine is never going away. It doesn’t just flush out. Your liver doesn’t flush mercury out.
There’s a way to get it out by the way, but it doesn’t come out naturally. And it’ll stay in your system forever. And mercury – say in the brain – will lead to things like autism. Over time it’ll lead to Alzheimer’s, it’ll lead to dementia, Parkinson’s – you have it in different parts of your brain – like, if it’s on the brain stem, it’ll cause Parkinson’s 20-30 years later. If it’s say, on the hippocampus it’ll cause Alzheimer’s disease 20-30 years later.
And they’re not telling you these things when you’re 20, 30 years old and you’re getting the flu shot – they’re not telling you when you’re 60 years old you’re going to have cognitive decline and start to forget things. Because you have mercury in your brain…
Mark: I don’t know if you know the answer this… I should have said “I bet you have the answer this.” What can we do to get the mercury out of our brain? Because I know I’ve talked to people before that said it can be done through a strict regimen of cleansing and certain nutritional things. What do you think on that? How do you get these metals out of our brain?
Justin: So there’s a guy named Anthony William, who helped me actually recover my health a couple years ago and uh there’s a lot of health experts out there some of them are really good some of them are just wrong and you gotta steer away from those guys.
Mark: But this is one of the guys who actually… he’s 100%. He’s the real deal. But so there’s different ways to actually do it. You can use all kinds of different things. There’s different formulas.
Most of those things don’t really work that well. They’ll work a little bit – the best formula though that I found is a combination of certain herbs and superfoods.
And the number one thing is cilantro. Cilantro does work to help pull heavy metals out of the brain and out of the cells. Cilantro is the number one thing.
You also have something called wild blueberries, which are from Maine. There’s a company called Wyman’s. There’s also some other ones that can now make it into powder, and you can order it online. But wild blueberries is another part of that combination.
And then you have spirulina, a great part of that combination. You have something called Atlantic dulse, which is a superfood and an algae in the sea. It’s basically like seaweed. But it helps pull heavy metals out of the system.
And then you also have something called barley grass. Barley grass juice. You ever heard of that one? It’s a superfood as well – a lot of people put in their green shakes.
And a combination of these five works in different levels – pick the heavy metals up. The cilantro – by the way – goes into the deepest parts of the cells. The deepest tissue in the cells that nothing else is going to touch. So you really need the cilantro.
And the wild blueberries, too. They actually help build new neurons – especially in the brain. It builds new cells, but especially neurons when it comes to the brain. It can actually regenerate – neurogenesis – create new neurons…
Mark: Does this Anthony Williams have a cocktail with all this stuff in it?
Justin: Anthony William he just recommends these five and then he recommends throwing it in like a blender with orange and bananas, and just kind of mixing it up and having it as a fruit shake. He calls it the heavy metal detox smoothie.
Mark: So you kind of have to get these as fresh. Fresh cilantro, fresh blueberries… it’s not like you… would it be effective if someone created like a supplement of these five things or six things?
Justin: You probably could do that, actually. You probably could, and that might be a million- or billion-dollar idea, yeah.
Mark: Let’s do it. You and me, right?
Justin: Right. (laughing) But actually the only fresh thing that you really need is the cilantro. Because cilantro goes bad after like a week or so.
But the wild blueberries can be frozen, so you can just go to the store and get them frozen and they work just as good. And all the other stuff are just little supplements like individually – like the powders and stuff…
Mark: Is like something you would do just for a few weeks to cleanse?
Justin: You can do that, for sure. Everybody can benefit from a little cleanse. Getting all these you know toxins, chemicals, petrochemicals – all this crap out of your system, anyways. Even a week or two will do wonders for your overall health.
But if you got a chronic disease going on, if you got Alzheimer’s, you got Parkinson’s, if you got fibromyalgia, if you got cancer… if you have one of the big ones – this isn’t just a few week thing – it’s more like 12 to 18 months of doing it every day.
But all those things I just mentioned – if you do this every day for 12 to 18 months and you got all the other things in place where you’re healthy – you can reverse all those things. Every single one.
Mark: I agree. This is a question you mentioned autism and a lot of you know that’s been growing and growing, and from what I understand it’s because there’s already a build-up of metals in the system that are passed in utero, right?
And so 100 years ago, not much autism, and then now we have the industrial age coming on, and so the women is exposed to more toxins. Then she passes it down to her daughter. And then her daughter passes it down to her daughter.
And now all of a sudden in 2020 – five generations later – the great, great, great granddaughter now has a significant amount of metals already in her system. So the latest shot, vaccine can put them over the edge. Because it’s got more metal in it.
Does that sound right to you? And then so here’s my question – you’re nodding your head, so it does sound right – can a cleanse like this that gets metal out of your system also reverse the effects of autism?
Justin: So first of all, I’m surprised you know as much – because that’s dead on. Exactly what you said is dead on. It gets passed down in uterus and by generations… by women – especially starting in like the 1700s industrial revolution late 1700s, 1800s, that’s 100% dead on.
And that’s also – by the way – the reason why some people can get the flu shot every year and they’re fine and they… it’s also the same reason why people can go out and drink, they can smoke, they can treat their bodies like crap and they never have a chronic disease pop up.
Because it’s just everybody’s different. We all have these different things that we don’t even realize…
Mark: I tested that with the drinking part… never smoked… but I definitely tested that… healthy as can be but kind of overdid it a little bit. Wasn’t the only one, trust me…
Justin: Oh I’m sure, man I get it.
Yeah, but anyways and the person tries to do the same thing that you did, and they get liver cancer after 10, 15 years. So everybody’s body is different, we’re all built differently, we all have these exposures that are different… you know, different rates of it.
But to your question – with autism specifically – the answer is yes. Although it is a complicated answer. Autism tends to be, because there’s been so much exposure and then in the womb of the pregnancy there’s been some type of thing that’s drastically gone wrong. It could be vaccines; it could be mercury levels and by the way eating tuna – that’s why I stopped eating tuna like five years ago – tuna itself has a tremendous amount of mercury in it. A woman who’s pregnant might not have any… I mean, sometimes they’ll get told this by their doctor, sometimes they won’t… they’ll eat like tuna or something like that. Fish that has a lot of mercury in it. And without even realizing it, they’re poisoning the fetus, they’re poisoning their baby, right?
And so like – you know, if you shoot somebody in the head – just say as a crazy example – it’s such a traumatic blow to person – if you shoot them in the head, they’re probably not going to be able to take the heavy metal detox smoothie and become healthy again and recover. There’s a certain threshold where if you cross that, you know what I mean? There’s been so much traumatic damage to somebody, right?
That’s a crazy example, but you understand what I’m saying, right? When you cross a threshold at some point where you just won’t be able to get fully functional, where you could have been before.
However with autism there are a lot of cases where it’s not like extreme traumatic damage in the womb. And they come out just like a little autistic, they’re on the spectrum… there’s a lot of chance for them to recover. And a lot of these people do, if they get this early enough, they do something like the heavy metal detox. They pull out all these toxins and all these heavy metals.
And they get these nourishing foods, that create these brain cells. That reverse a lot of these conditions. They can actually reverse their autism, to a certain degree.
And there’s been cases actually, where they’ve done it 100%… Where people have reversed their autism. You would never know this person has autism, or that they had it in the past or that they’re born with it.
Those are definitely out there. But to answer your question – yes, it can be done – but if it’s too extreme and the damage has just gone off the deep end, there’s only so much you can do for those ones.
Mark: Right, it makes sense – ADD and ADHD are in this kind of same category, aren’t they? Epigenetic and nutritionally, kind of conceived diseases, or conditions.
Justin: I think that’s also why the ADD rate has gone way up. And they’ll say too that’s it’s because we you know diagnose it better, which might have a little bit to do with it, but overall the add rate has gone right through the roof. And by the way the add problem is a dopamine problem…
Mark: Right. And it’s exacerbated by social media and our digital devices…
Justin: Yeah, exactly.
Mark: Hmm.
Well, so what’s your vision for the future? Positive, negative, abundant, scarce?
Justin: It’s crazy right now. I’ll be honest, I think it’s going to be chaotic and violent before it gets peaceful again. And I think these next couple months – like in all seriousness, I think the next two to three months is probably going to get a little chaotic with everything going on.
Either way, you know what I mean? No matter who gets in officially. I think things are going to be chaotic for two or three months. But I do think the good thing – the whole silver lining of what’s happening – the pandemic, and the elections, and the shutdown, and all this crazy stuff the last year… the silver lining is that people have become more aware – like you mentioned earlier – a lot of people are just kind of waking up from all the crap that they’ve been conditioned to believe for the last 20, 30, 40 years of their life.
And they’re realizing that what they’ve been told isn’t necessarily true. And there’s a lot of nefarious things that have been going on in the background the whole time and I think a lot of people are standing up to it.
So I think with this awareness, in a few months – like six months down the road – next year. There’s going to be a good awakening of good things…
Mark: Depending upon what news or silo you tap into. People are asking questions and they’re going like “look at all that corruption, look at all that whatever,” you know?
Justin: Yeah.
Mark: And I think that’s probably intentional, I mean just literally blew me away and actually saddened me to read yesterday about this leaked document to Australia that was leaked by some Chinese agitator -that’s not the right word – dissident… you know what I’m talking about? That basically claims that there’s over a million verified communist, Chinese communist party members have infiltrated western corporations – major corporations – to include Pfizer AstraZeneca, oil and gas… et cetera, et cetera…
As well as highest levels of government in Europe and America.
Justin: That’s insane.
Mark: Primarily America. So when you think about the potential claim that democracy has been hacked and china’s bought or at least has their finger in the intel pulse… because these people are required… like required to report back when called upon to the Chinese communist party what’s going on. They can’t pretend that they’re just an academic, or just a corporate worker who’s independent and working for this you know corporation like Pfizer.
They’re the Chinese government basically – in the government’s eyes. Now they might protest that, but when that call comes… there’s no way, they either defect or they provide intel back.
Million! That’s insane, and the fact that the Chinese communist party was tracking that and it’s like those are their assets. There’s gonna be some interesting days ahead. People thought 2020, they’re so grateful it’s over. And I’m like “standby. 2021 is going to have its own set of…”
Justin: I’m sure it will. I’m sure it will.
Mark: Well awesome. So is this a new book? I have to admit, I didn’t get a copy of it before this podcast.
Justin: Yeah, I sent it out a few days ago. I don’t think with the postal services backed up right now… I go there every day, by the way. I send out supplements and shipments of stuff.
And I talked to the ladies that they’re just overblown by it…
Mark: (laughing) I think it was censored, because it’s too healthy. Amazon took it off the shelf and set it to the side…
Justin: I wouldn’t be surprised, man. I wouldn’t be surprised. But here it is right here. It’s “Elite Mind.” But your copy is in the mail. I think you’ll get it any day now – the next day or two.
Mark: Look forward to seeing that. “Elite Mind: Real World Guide to Overcoming Anxiety, Conquering Depression, and Unleashing Your Inner Confidence.”
Is there anything else? Like any big “aha’s” that you think the listeners should hear that you bring out in the book that we haven’t talked about?
Justin: No, I think we’ve covered honestly pretty much everything. I just want to leave the message that you guys can overcome anything. Like I said – the mental health, the depression, the anxiety – no matter how bad it gets – and I’m sure it’s gotten really bad for a lot of people this year.
And then the same thing with chronic disease. If you got diabetes, you got rheumatoid arthritis, if you’ve got fibromyalgia, you’ve got Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s… do the things that we talked about today. Reach out to me if you need to learn more information.
Or Mark. I’m sure he’s going to know a lot more too after today’s episode about this type of thing. But you just have to have… the whole elite mind premise is having that mindset that you can overcome whatever comes your way… and that information is out there. You just got to find it and keep going until you figure out the information that’s going to help change your life.
And you can do it. Don’t give up on yourself, no matter how bad it gets.
Mark: Yeah, I agree. 100%. And in spite of what’s happening around us, we are still in control if we take control back, right? Of our health, our mindset, of our subconscious programming – like we talked about – our conscious behaviors.
It’s all within our domain of influence, to take control back, regardless of what’s happening around us. And so don’t be a victim to the chaos. Take control and live in that calm center of the storm.
Where can people learn more about you, Justin? Your social media stuff?
Justin: Yeah, I’m most active on Instagram so just @Justinstenstrom. And Facebook too, as well elitemanmag or at Justin Stenstrom and then the book… just elitemindbook.com will take you to the book.
Mark: Awesome. Justin, thanks so much for your work. Thanks for your time today. Keep it up. Let us know if there’s anything I can do to support you.
And we’ll look forward to a real exciting year next year.
Justin: Thanks man. I appreciate it.
Mark: Hooyah.
All right folks, that’s it. Go check out Justin Stenstrom @Justinstenstrom on Instagram, Facebook elitemind.com – I can’t wait to read my copy. Some great, great nuggets in this episode.
And getting that mercury out of your system is so important. That’s one that I’m going to follow up on. Moving to plant-based omega-3, no doubt. I’m going to ditch the ibuprofen to throw back to my SEAL career, we used to call it candy. Oh my god, I wonder how much of that stuff I got to get out of my system.
We’re going to replace that with curcumin and turmeric. You know, I’m one of those guys I have used turmeric and curcumin, but when it runs out, I kind of forget to reorder it. And I go for months and months without it.
So I’m going to make that an auto-purchase or whatever – subscription. Anyways share this episode with your friends. Like everybody is struggling right now folks. I mean it’s not just you.
Share it with your friends and family. And let’s all be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem. Hooyah. Thanks again, Justin.
Justin: Thanks man.
Mark: All right folks out there in Unbeatable Mind land. Stay focused, do the work and be unbeatable. See you next time.
Divine out.
Hooyah.
This was the most interesting podcast for me personally! These things are in line with my alignment, I’d love to work with Justin on this!