311. Living Well to Die Well: Discovering Your Higher Purpose Through Isolation and Reflection with David W. Fabricius

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness coach, Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening. And don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social mediaoachsandy Scarlett, enjoy the show. David Fabricius I think I said it correctly. Yes, you did.

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Before I hit record, I was like, are you sitting in a limo? And he's like, yeah, either that or a submarine. And I'm like, what? So are you about to go on a submarine or what is the deal here? Just having fun, living life.

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I was like, this is a first. I don't think I've ever interviewed anybody that's been in a limo before. But hey, it's all good. I'm just happy to have you here. We met in Vegas, right?

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Was it Vegas we met in, or was it Chicago? Yes, Vegas. Yeah, it was Vegas, right? Gosh, I went on so many trips last year, I can't keep them all straight. And I just remember you were just such an interesting person.

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And I remember Bill Walsh introducing you. I'm looking at your LinkedIn page right now. I don't even know where to start because you've just done so many things and you've had just this incredible career. Can you just share with the audience your story? What do you do, who you are and how you got to where you are today?

00:02:37
That's a lot. I know. Thank you. I would love to give you short answer, so maybe you should just ask one at a time. But a quick overview.

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I was born in Africa in a small town, very a village, where nobody I knew spoke English. When I was born, we lived in a town that only had four buildings total. And then later on we moved to a big town. It had four traffic lights total, right? And so I grew up in a very small community where it was custom to be barefoot until the age of twelve.

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As a kid I was diagnosed with a so called heart condition, which I still don't believe I ever had. And I was sent to what is called a sick, lame and lazy squat. Oh, wow. And that was our official title. In the afternoon they would say, sick layman lazies, come here.

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And our job was to out weeds in the schoolyard and in the british style. Although they didn't teach us much English, any useful English, they would cane us a lot. So I rebelled against being in a sick layman lazy squad and I got very viciously caned as a result of it and decided that school is pretty. Not for me. It's very unfair.

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I don't like it that I could do that. And I did not really participate much thereafter in school. I just showed up as a legal requirement. My mother was an entrepreneur, very, very successful entrepreneur in fashion, but she only had two years of school education, so she didn't really care about whether I take school serious or not. She said, when you beg, just become an entrepreneur.

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Don't worry about it, right? You don't need any of that. Those things they teach you in school, outside of school. I would go to a karate school, a boxing gym, a wrestling club, I would go to the library every day and study absolutely ferociously. So I knew I was never going to fit into the normal nine to five everyday world, that it was just not me, I'm not meant for it.

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And after that I got drafted into the military. A whole nother conversation on its own. And when I came out of the military, I found it very difficult to find a job because they said, hey, you know what? You didn't go to university first and foremost. Later on I did go to business school.

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At the age of 30 I went to business school. But before that they said, look, you don't have university degree and that organization that you come from, the two groups that you worked with, we are scared of those people. We don't want them working in a corporate environment. You may just punch the manager or tell the manager he sucks at leadership and you're not going to want to listen to somebody who's not, at least at a very high level of leadership. And we don't have that kind of people here.

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So I did work for Mercedes Benz corporate head office for a short while, had a great time there, the chairman took a big liking in me, and I had a lot of good memories from that time. But I became an entrepreneur just after the age of 30, after I left the armed forces and a short stint in the corporate world. And I really found what I was built for. I was built to travel the world and speak to audiences. Started with small audience.

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This my biggest audience ever. 50,000 people live in a stadium. Wow. And so I've traveled across six continents, all of Europe, Africa, North, Central, and South America, Australia, Asia, traveled very extensively as a speaker, working mostly with elite groups, doing firewalk events, leadership presentations, sales training for Fortune 500 companies, and on and on and on. And that brought me here to America.

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The pursuit of wanting to be in a bigger market. Before COVID with a company called Fortune Builders, they used to put on an event here, the Mandalay Bay Hotel. 5000 people or more. The largest real estate investors, real estate group training in the world. I would speak every year for them at their event.

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So the last event at the Mandalay Bay Hotel before COVID it was a great event. We made something like a. For 93 minutes straight. Wow. And life worked good.

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I was going places. 2017, I won an entrepreneur of the year award. And on and on and on. You know, suddenly I was hanging out with celebrities on stage, backstage with big name celebrities, and I thought, wow. You know, now my speaking career is really going somewhere.

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I can get into the A League. And then, of course, COVID came. And during COVID as you know, in Vegas, the lights got switched off on the strip. Everything closed up. And I saw a statistic yesterday.

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65% of all small businesses never reopened after COVID. Well, it certainly affected the speaking industry. At the height of my speaking industry, I traveled through 22 cities on four continents in one month. Wow. And suddenly there's nothing.

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Suddenly it's all just the lights are switched off, the place is boarded up. There are a few police cars and a security guy or two and a dog or two and a homeless person. But that's about it. As you know, everything closed down globally. And I'm trying to keep it tight.

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I developed a lot of discontent. I became bored. It's like, this is not for me, just sitting at home. I like to travel. That's what I do.

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I'm not just sit at home guy. I'm having withdrawal symptoms. Not speaking to people, not inspiring and helping people. This is terrible. And they said this thing, this thing called zoom.

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I go, yeah, big deal. How do I do a fire walk on zoom? Right? I did not quite want to go to zoom route. So I'll finish with this and I'll give a shot at asking me more instead of just talking.

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I took a motorcycle, an old black motorcycle. Nothing that would impress anybody. Water, food. And I went to the valley of death. I went to the desert.

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I wanted to ask God to talk to me and go, okay, God, what's next? What is your will for me? Why did you give me the gifts that you have given me? What is the purpose and how can I use it for you, for your purposes? What do you want?

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Right, um, the idea was to stay 40 days and 40 nights. I wonder where I got that idea from. And, uh, that's not easily done. In the desert, in the valley of death, on the border of Nevada and California. But I ended up staying there initially, um, until day 40.

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And I was almost dead. And God still had nothing to say to me that I could hear. Oh, my gosh. I'm sure the problem was with me. I was not listening.

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And I said, I'll stay a little bit longer. You know, I have nowhere to go anyway. Everything is shut down. And by day 44, miracles and magic and wonders showed up in my life. And it never stopped.

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And it continues until right now. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the miracles that have shown now. And if anybody met me there in the desert, which on day 44, man, who is now a friend did meet me there. But if people had to observe that, they would said, there's no way David will ever get out of this desert again from here. The coyotes and crows are going to eat him one day.

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They'll find his bones here somewhere in the isolated desert. Nobody would even know he died here for a long time. Oh, my gosh. And I haven't really count, but somewhere between maybe 812, 15 countries I've been just in the last year and a half or so, all over the world again, southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere to places like Monaco and Dubai, great places in the world. And everything have changed again and made me a great believer in what I now refer to as spiritual manifestation, what other people maybe describe as quantum physics.

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Yeah, I'm going to stop there for a moment so you can ask. Wow, that's a lot to digest. Oh, my gosh. Wow. So let's go back to, you're in the desert, it's day 44, and you realized that you received.

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Okay, let's just go. Your first miracle. What was the first miracle that you received that made the light bulb go on and be like, here we go. Here we go. This is it.

00:11:49
Okay. Great question. Thank you, Sandy. I went to a road where I could get a little bit of a shadow and a little bit of a phone signal. I had a little solar panel charger for my phone.

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Those don't work very well. Even with all the sun in the desert. I always struggled with that little solar panel to charge my phone. But there was a place where I could get 1 bar of signal on my phone when it did have a bit of a charge. In fact, what happened?

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Even when the phone charged, it's so hot, the phone get heat exhaustion. The phone died. Big deal. You've got your phone charged now, but by the time you got your phone charged, the phone is dead. So it was a real struggle.

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And there was a place where there was a signpost, very, very old signpost that cast a shadow that, depending on the time of the day, is between four and six inches wide. You have to stand sideways to fit into the shadow. And that's the only shadow for miles. If you're thin enough, right. If you're thin enough, right.

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And yeah, it's a terrible situation really. Absolute silence. You know, there are such places are so silent there that when a crow flies past, you can hear the slow flapping of the wings of the crow. It's amazing how silent it can be. So anyway, I got a signal there.

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So I'm trying to upload a picture of a knife I made in the desert, survival knife to Facebook. I'm just trying to check in a bit, see what goes on with the world and my friends. And a couple of things happened. I got a call from a lady in Sweden while I was there, that later on briefly became my girlfriend. Or at least we explored the possibility of that end up me going to Sweden and Norway, and on and on from the desert.

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I was making a viking axe that impressed her. And that's how the conversation started. But a man pulled up, a man by the name of Mark. A true, what I now describe as an earth angel. And many more earth angels came into my life to help me since.

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And it felt like it was a divine appointment. A man stopped next to me. He was in a big truck. And he said, hey man, are you okay? I'm a motorcyclist.

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As you know, it is our etiquette to stop and check on other motorcyclists because out here you will die if your bike broke down, you know? Do you need help? Do I need to take you to the closest town? What needs to happen? Here I go.

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Nope, I'm perfectly good. Here you go. Really go, yeah, I'm fine. I'm happy. Don't worry about it.

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I'm just doing a little bit of text messaging here. Just uploading some stuff to Facebook. They go, um, where are you from? They say, I'm local. You go, no way.

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You know, you've got an accent, you know? What do you mean? You local? Yeah, the desert, right? And, um, I was wearing a collared shirt with a monogram on my cuff.

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He say, local people here don't wear business shirts like that, right? I don't believe you. Local. I go, I am serious. My name is David.

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I'm local. I live here in the desert. I'm on a vision quest. I'm here to see if God wants to talk to me. So far, I'm not being very successful at it.

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I'm not having much luck with it, but, you know, I can hang in here. Water would be good if you've got water. We talk a bit more, and he ask, what the heck are you doing here? I told you, I'm on a vision quest. I'm here to hear from God.

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I also make knives. I make survival knives with scrap metal. And let me just. Somebody's trying to call me. I don't want them to bug us here.

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Anyway, so he said, where? And I told him where. I say, you can come there anytime. You'll find me there most of the time. It would be nice if you have water, if you can bring some water, a drop of water.

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Where do you live? You say, well, I live here too. Do you see that white spot way over there in the desert? I go, yeah, actually, before that, he said, what is the vision with the knife making? And I say, I imagine a giant, big, white building, like an aircraft hangar or a big industrial warehouse, and I imagine making knives there for the top people in the world.

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And that's when he pointed out that white spot in the desert. He say, right over there, sometime your building is waiting for you. I've got a big white aircraft hangar. That's my workshop. And if you want to get out of the sun, you can come and make knives there, and I'll help you.

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And we became great, great friends. He became a true earth angel and a true blessing in my life. And he had a well where I could get water, so that was nice. And in the place where I was later, I moved into, like, a. A shed.

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You can't stay in the open desert forever, not in summer. It was record heat. As you know, Dev Valley is one of the hottest places on earth. If not the hottest. I had to find more shelter and be closer to water.

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So I moved to a shed in a junkyard with 40 shipping containers underground. It looks like something out of a Mad Max movie. And it was perfect for making badass knives. It really looked like a Mad Max movie scene. And he would bring me water there.

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And I started an art gallery. I found some old art. He ended up bringing me a lot of very expensive european oil paintings. And I had a whole wall in the junkyard and as a art gallery. And so life improved from there.

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And then more miracles came. More good things happen. I went traveling overseas and life was fantastic again. That's incredible. Wow.

00:18:04
So did anything come from the knives that you wanted to make? I achieved my initial goal. My initial goal was to make the Rolex submariner of knives. I end up co making that I designed and somebody else refined it and then crafted it. The artisan in France, we made a knife that truly can be described as the Rolex submariner of knives.

00:18:26
Wow. And I made a few more. They collectors items, they're expensive. It is only the highest tier. Men that like my knives, military types, John Wick types, you know, they like it.

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But the bottom line is, I don't think that is the best use of my time. I had to review that. Right. And more miracles occurred in my life that convinced me I need to teach again. Yes, I can come back to making knives as a hobby, but my true calling is helping people, and making knives is not necessarily that.

00:19:06
Right. So my true calling is I got to teach people. I got to share the story of my blessing in the desert. The power of spiritual manifestation, help people to do that. So, yeah, we still have the knives as a hobby.

00:19:23
Nice. But it's a bigger game, there's a bigger purpose. Sure, sure. I love that story. That's incredible.

00:19:31
So when you talk about spiritual manifestation, and I like that you use that instead of the other term, because that just seems so far out there for so many people. And I think spiritual manifestation is something that people can actually wrap their heads around. How can people work toward obtaining that without going to the desert for 40 days and 40 nights? Well, it's an interesting thing, I think when God really wants to talk to somebody, God have a tendency to isolate you. Men and women.

00:20:04
Men more. So hardcore men like me get an extra special treatment. Right. So some of us, it takes a little bit more to get our attention. Well, you're special forces, right?

00:20:18
Well, I was trained in, by special forces and I work in a special operations unit. I was too much of a compassionate individual to be on a killing team. I worked as an instructor, but as a conversation for another day. No war stories, no big claims, no stolen valley. Right.

00:20:40
But, yeah, I had some training in interesting places. And so to answer your question, I think time in isolation is good. So people after relationship breakup, people after a divorce, after a. Maybe losing a job, maybe a bankruptcy in a business, there's that gap of time where people feel quite lonely, and they often very lonely in that gap of time before things get better again. Yeah.

00:21:12
And I think if people realize that you need to choose life, you cannot commit suicide. You got to get through it. I went through it without alcohol, without drugs. I did not try and numb it out. We all have something.

00:21:28
Nobody is perfect. But, you know, you got to be present with it. You got to feel the pain, right? And you got to take personal responsibility. You got to say, what is my part in this?

00:21:41
You know, don't blame others. Don't play victim, take personal responsibility. And then after a bit of time in isolation, reflecting, journaling. Journaling is good to help you clarify your thoughts. I think the challenge for people is to find gratitude.

00:21:59
Now, looking back, the desert was such a gift. It was a wonderful thing. It was exactly what I needed. It was custom made for who I am. It really, really fits who I am.

00:22:11
I needed it right now. Before that, I lived in absolute luxury in opulence, like you cannot imagine. And to go from five, six, seven star opulence and luxury to that, that's quite a shift. But it is what I needed. Yeah.

00:22:29
And so I'm very grateful for it. So people need to find gratitude, at least for their health, the fact that they're still alive. There's something you got to search and be grateful for. Something then, not from a place of complaining and whining and victim mode, but from a place of gratitude. Then you ask, you know, and I want to recommend a book by Mark Victor Hansen and his wife called Ask.

00:22:56
Yeah, the book basically say, hey, look, you got to ask of God, you got to ask of yourself, and you got to ask of others. So to be humble enough to ask, right. But with total sincerity, with total humility. And it can be conversational. It doesn't have to be complicated, right?

00:23:21
But it's to get to that place where your pain is so intense and you have nowhere else to go, you have nobody else to ask. And you have that conversation with higher power of source, with the infinite universe. I talk about free minds. I think about the soul mind, which is our intuition. Which is our super mind, which connect us with source.

00:23:47
And we can tap into that. But then we also have, I heard, something like 40,000 brain cells in our stomach. There's a small mind, but a very powerful mind. Our gut mind. Yeah.

00:23:59
Where is your intuition, that gut feeling? And then there's your brain mind. And when you can ask of all three ds, alignment in a moment of desperation and pain, and you basically get to the point where you say, it is in God's hands. Yeah. And, you know, if anything good comes out of it, it's not because of you that it's in spite of your errors.

00:24:29
It's your grace, it's mercy. It's favors, forgiveness. No matter how bad you've been, there is still forgiveness. And then you ask sincerely, but I think also to really believe that it will happen for you in spite of no evidence, in the moment, you step into it as if it's already so. Yeah.

00:24:54
And I now also talk about something called godspeed. And I'll give you a quick example. My beloved Maria and I was in Dubai just very recently. And the night before, we had dinner with a gentleman who is a consultant to the royal families. And she said, typical to women.

00:25:16
Right? Oh, I would like to meet the shit. Right? Yeah, of course. Women always want to meet royalty, etcetera.

00:25:22
I get it. Right. Like one of the richest men in the world, by far, and not making a big deal of it, like all the other guys you see online. Yeah, but I mean, what are the chances? So this person, he said, well, maybe in the future, when I have a meeting, I somehow can, you know, take you along and introduce you.

00:25:43
But it's kind of way out there. Maybe in the future, somewhere. The next day, we have a trip planned to Abu Dhabi. A tourist day trip. And that morning, she tells me, she say, I really want to meet the sheikh of Abu Dhabi and the one of Dubai.

00:25:58
But the sheikh of Abu Dhabi specifically is, I believe, the wealthier one. Okay. Lives in a $3.5 billion palace. Wow. That's just one of his palaces.

00:26:11
So we go down to the coffee shop where we wait for the tour guide and a gentleman engaging conversation with us. He tells us he's a politician. He shows us photographs with him and many famous politicians, including american politicians. The top of the top. The most famous.

00:26:34
So, obviously, you know, he's been around politicians and he says he's a politician, apparently, he's also a billionaire. Well, the moment I hear you, a billionaire and a politician, and you did not. You were not a billionaire, before you came upon became a politician. Then I'm a bit suspicious. But nevertheless, he said, where are you guys going?

00:26:56
Today? We say we go to Abu Dhabi. They go, really? The king, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The sheikh is coming here tonight to meet me.

00:27:06
Right here in this coffee shop. 07:00 tonight. I go, no way. Right? I can't believe that.

00:27:13
If the king wants to see you, he'll summons you to his palace. He's not going to come here? No, no. He happens to be in Dubai. And, you know, I represent.

00:27:21
He said, the country that he represent. And it's a big project. And we're meeting here tonight. If you folks want to meet him, be here by seven.

00:27:34
Like what you just joked this morning before breakfast. You want to meet the sheikh, and you have an invitation to meet him. Well, we go to Abu Dhabi and a tour guide have some problems, etc, etc. We get delayed by two and a half hours. So we think, oh, we miss out on meeting the sheikh, right?

00:27:56
So I guess God is playing chess. He's looking at it and he goes, Maria wants to meet the sheik. David kind of can't really care if he meets him or not. But, you know, will be kind of cool for them. Just this to show them what godspeed looks like, I can manifest in the same day.

00:28:15
Give them what I asked for. And I think I'll just delay the sheet by two and a half hours. We show up at a hotel, 930. There's a little bit more detail. Private conversation for another day, 930.

00:28:32
I end up almost hitting the sheik with my shoulder as I turn. As I walk, I look. And I look straight in his eyes. And his eyes, about twelve inches from my eyes. I'm surprised that a security did not intervene.

00:28:46
Stay between us. Like, how is this possible, right? This is not possible. You cannot get that close to people like that. In the same day as Maria asked, here we're standing.

00:28:59
All I could get out is, good evening. You know, I didn't even say, your highness. You know, I was doubtful. That is really him. He's in his traditional clothes.

00:29:09
And they've got a huge painting of him on the wall. The free ships. I look. Yep, it's him. And on and on.

00:29:16
The rest is a story for another day. But can you imagine that happens in the very same day? Yeah, and that's not the only thing that happened while he was in Dubai. Continuously in December, there was a major, major one like that, that's now turning into gold. It just keeps happening.

00:29:39
And so, when you ask sincerely, but first give gratitude, ask, believe.

00:29:48
And, you know, continue to keep that thought in your mind. What is it that you most want? What is the reason why you want it? When you think it, you send a signal out from your brain. Like the quantum physicists would tell us.

00:30:03
But you have to desire it in your heart. Because the heart creates a magnetic field, an attraction field. And that draws into us what we want. Now, I don't want to over complicate it with science. I'm very simple in that way.

00:30:19
It's like I don't need to know everything about electricity. The only thing I need to know is, where's the switch, right? All I need is the number of the electrician, right? And so, even though I don't know everything about electricity. I have the benefit.

00:30:33
So I don't claim to know everything about quantum physics. But I am experiencing spiritual manifestation. In a very big way in my life. Divine favor. And there will be divine selection.

00:30:47
People will show up in your life. The exact circumstances, conditions. And people that you need will show up in your life? Yes, without question. And I love how you explain that.

00:31:00
Because you really simplified it. And it's just all about that energy that we're releasing. And the feeling and the emotion that's in your heart. And I love how you said that. So, we only have a few minutes left, David.

00:31:13
And I want to be conscious of your time. If there was one thing that you could leave with the audience. That has been integral in your success. What would that be like? Something that people can apply in their life right now?

00:31:29
Well, I would say it's all about who you meet. Who you meet will open the doors. But then when they open the doors, you better have the skills. You better have the ability. You have to show up.

00:31:41
So your preparation is important. That in that moment when you end up in front of the sheikh or whoever. You ready, right. You can't then forget to call him your highness or whatever. You've got to be ready.

00:31:55
So opportunities will come for all of us. You need to be ready when the opportunity come. I had a tremendous opportunity come my way. It took me 30 years to prepare for that opportunity. And I was ready in that moment, and it worked.

00:32:11
So be ready. Do your part. Develop yourself to be the best person you can be. Your first goal should always be to be a better person. Difficult to do, but that should always be goal number one.

00:32:23
Zig Ziglar taught me. He said, we do not set goals for what we will get. We set goals for who we need to become in the process. Yeah. And so maybe I can finish with this.

00:32:38
At the end of your life, you will want achievements. You will want successes. You will want the legacy of accomplishment. But it's not the most important thing. At the end of your life, you're going to want to know, did I experience real, authentic love, true, true soul love, that is really what matters most?

00:33:03
You're going to want to know, did I live life fully and not have regrets that you missed out on travel and all the experiences of life that you wanted? You want to live your life fully, responsibly, but fully. And at the end of your life, you're going to want to know, did I contribute to at least one person's life? Is at least one person's life better as a result of me being here? There's also the spiritual question, of course, of your soul.

00:33:34
But if you can answer positive to those questions, your life would have been a good life. So live well so that you can die well. And in whatever time you've got left. I encourage you to explore the power of spiritual manifestation. You don't need to do it all by yourself.

00:33:53
You need to do your part. Absolutely. You've got to show up for your own success. You've got to do your part. But when you make source your partner, when you connect with source and you start to humbly, for the right reasons, practice spiritual manifestation, it is amazing.

00:34:13
The miracles, the wonders, the magic that shows up. And don't let jaded or people without ethical ambition discourage you from that or try and persuade you otherwise. Let them do them. You do you.

00:34:29
David, this was so amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Just incredible. Just incredible conversation.

00:34:37
And I love everything that you're doing. I love everything that you shared with, with the audience today. So thank you so much and thank you. We'll have you on another time and we can, we can delve into some more of this stuff at a later. I appreciate you.

00:34:52
And next time you're in Vegas, let's meet with you and Maria, introduce you, and maybe have a meal and talk a little bit. That would be great. That would be great. David, let's talk soon. All the very best of your podcast.

00:35:05
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much.

00:35:21
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.