- Back in 2012,
I used to work at a job selling woman's shoes.
It was a sales commission job
and I remember working and sometimes
there'd be either the managers or some of the employees,
like the coworkers that I would have that asked me.
They'd say, what's wrong with you?
Why do you have so much energy?
And there was this level of me feeling
like there was something wrong with me.
I felt like there was...
Maybe I was broken or I shouldn't be the way that I was.
And in general, I had a lot of energy
and I had energy to a place to where I was very ungrounded.
I was at a place to I would go into work every day,
I would drink four shots of espresso
and those four shots would make me very calm.
Literally I could put my hand like this after four shots,
I'd be super calm, but without it, I was very hyper.
So it had the opposite effect on me.
And I eventually went to a doctor and a doctor told me, oh,
you have ADHD.
And they gave me this prescription for ADHD,
which is called Adderall.
It's similar like Ritalin or all these other prescriptions.
And basically what that would do
is that would really zone me in
and helped me to focus while I was at work.
It helped me to be more normal
when really what it is is, it's like legal methamphetamine,
not even kidding.
And I lived where I had very harsh side effects of that.
The side effects of taking Adderall
are you don't eat very much, you don't sleep very much.
So I would take it during the day.
I'd make a whole bunch of money.
I'd go home at night and of course,
the side effects is not eating,
not being able to eat and sleep.
What I would do to balance that out
is I would smoke cannabis.
That was my way of being able to eat,
sleep and like mitigate the side effects.
But that had me feeling like I needed things outside of
myself in order to just to get by.
And there was a level of shame also
that came with having ADHD,
where I believe that there's something broken about me
and what made this switch for me
is what I want to share with you in this video.
This video, I think will help change
the way you see yourself, understanding that a lot of times,
the way we believe and think about ourselves
is on autopilot.
When we challenge it,
that's when everything begins to change.
And it's so powerful
once we get to understand how flexible reality becomes
based on our own sense of internalization,
of who we think we are and how we can change it like that
by making the choice.
Welcome back to another video.
My name is Aaron and I help people
expand their consciousness.
Now on this video, I want to share with you
the biggest trigger that went from me
being version of Aaron that has ADHD,
that wasn't able to focus,
that was very dependent on substances
and ways of just getting by
to me being much more grounded
and also going after my purpose,
being able to channel the energy that used to be sporadic,
being able to channel that,
not needing to do anything other than meditation.
I learned meditation, it changed everything,
but I want to share with you what that actual switch was
because there's an identity piece here
that changes everything.
And recently I was actually at the gym and I met somebody
that came up to me and said,
and he recognized me from the videos.
And he was like,
I just wanted to say thank you
because I used to be on Adderall
and through watching one of your videos
from back in the day, I saw what you were able to do
and I did the same thing.
I've been off Adderall now for months.
And I thought that was really cool
and he said that that really changed his life,
that whole idea.
And I was like I haven't talked about that
in a long time on the channel.
So I kind of went back inside myself and I started realizing
what was the major trigger point
that really changed everything?
And it's understanding this one idea.
This reality that we live in,
it's gonna sound kind of esoteric.
The reality that we live in is a form of virtual reality,
meaning we are eternal spiritual beings
believing and dreaming that this is who we are
as these physical avatar selves.
Now what happens is through certain past experiences,
we believe that things that we are told
by other people have to be true.
We have this certain sense of identification
that then remains on autopilot
until we become aware of it.
Prior to that, we just think that reality is fixed
and reality is the way it is.
Now, the magic is understanding that every moment
is a new moment.
Every moment's a new moment.
We are constantly defining ourselves in the present moment
of who we are and these things
that have these heavy definitions and these heavy labels
are simply things that we've been tied to
based out of familiarity of justification.
And we can change it like that
by making a new choice about who we are
and dropping our old sense of self.
Now, just to give you a little bit of a barometer
to this as well, just my story, if you haven't heard it
as far as the ADHD thing goes.
Back from seven years old to 15 years old for me,
I had the ex step-mom in my life
where my brother and I had no freedom whatsoever.
We weren't allowed to have friends,
we had to earn going to school activities.
We weren't allowed to watch TV.
Like we were normally just working outside all day.
So there was a level of control that was in our lives
where we weren't able to really be ourselves.
It wasn't until my junior year of high school
that I was actually allowed to have friends
and I was actually allowed to like do normal things.
So sophomore year was extremely awkward.
Junior year, that's when I started coming out of my shell.
So there was like all this pent up energy
from seven to 15 years old of being in the little box.
All of a sudden I'm able to be myself,
I'm able to like have friends.
I'm able to go to school activities
and not get them taken away from me.
And what happened is I started coming out of my shell
and then at 18 years old,
I started working at Nordstrom's in women's shoes.
It was a sales commission job.
Very good job especially if you're 18 years old.
And I would walk around, I had all this energy.
I would like mess with customers sometimes,
I would joke around a lot
and it was just very ungrounded energy.
And the reason I say that is because in high school,
you could have looked at me
and I didn't actually look like I had ADHD at all.
I was in a little fear box, we're not allowed to be myself.
Then what happens is my dad divorces
my ex step-mom finally, I have all this freedom
and that's when my personality started coming out.
And it was almost this ungrounded sense of self
where I was just joking around all the time,
especially at that job that I had at Nordstrom's.
And that's when people started saying things to me,
they'd be like what's wrong with you?
Why do you have so much energy?
I remember one time there was...
Before I even got on Adderall or anything,
there was this one assistant manager
that I had at Nordstrom's in women's shoes.
And she was telling other managers.
She had a meeting, I have a friend of mine
that was also like a department manager.
She was hanging out at lunch with them
and she said that she was convinced I was on cocaine, coke.
And I'm thinking to myself what?
I've never done that in my life.
Why would somebody be spreading rumors like this?
And what I did is I told her,
it actually worked out in my favor.
I took her out to lunch one day and I told her,
I said hey,
I heard about what you said to all these other people,
unless you go to each individual person
and you tell them that it's not true,
that you were just saying that, and you were gossiping,
unless you go tell them that,
then I'll go up to HR unless you tell them that.
And that's pretty much what she did
because I was why do I have to explain myself to people?
But literally, like not only do I feel like a sense of shame
or there's something wrong with me.
I mean, it's even called
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
I felt like there was something wrong,
but I got people that think I'm on drugs
when I'm not on drugs.
So there's this level of like shame,
this level of like something's broken with me.
And that actually ended up working in my favor though
because then that manager was afraid of me
being in the department she was in.
So she helped me get transferred to a better shoe department
selling salon shoes, which are more expensive shoes,
which means it's you make more money in commission.
So it actually worked out better, but it was interesting.
Like that's the kind of stuff I dealt with.
My energy was so hyper that that's how people thought of me.
Then what happened is I was in 2012,
I was feeling a lot of resistance.
I was also like feeling a lot of the pain of my past.
And I think that that's why I was like resorting
to maybe substances
or maybe that's why I had so much energy.
I felt a lot of anxiety just having this whole new world
where I could do anything.
But then what I did is I started looking online
at different research,
different things that showed like research on things
that didn't have such harsh side effects because Adderall,
you couldn't eat very much, you couldn't sleep very much.
I would take that during the day, then at nighttime,
I'd go home and I would smoke cannabis
and I was just always feeling like I was like pulling back
on these different things in order to get by.
And I felt like kind of stuck.
So I go online and I look up and find research on meditation
and I start meditating.
It basically says that meditation
has zero negative side effects.
Observing your thoughts
can help you regulate your dopamine levels
cause when you're taking Adderall,
that releases a crap load of dopamine,
which then means you crash later on.
But basically what happened is
I then start meditating.
The first two or three days, nothing really happened.
The third day, I start observing my thoughts
rather than reacting to my thoughts.
Before that, I would start thinking negative thoughts.
I'd start freaking out because I watched the movie
The Secret not that long before that.
And I was like, oh my thoughts create my reality.
If I think negative thoughts,
something bad is gonna happen
and then what happened
is I would think more negative thoughts
and it became this like wheel.
But then I was like wait, what if I read somewhere.
Staring at a candle flame would like...
When your eyes don't wander, your mind doesn't wander.
So what I would do is I stare at a candle flame
and I would observe my own thoughts.
I wouldn't try to control them.
I'd let them come in, I'd let them go out.
Now this is like the third or fourth day
of learning meditation that I started doing this.
And within a week,
my whole entire life started to transform.
My vibrational set point on a scale of one to 10,
with one feeling horrible, 10 feeling amazing,
I was at a consistent, I'd say about a four.
I would feel not that great at all,
but if I smoked cannabis or I did Adderall or whatever,
I would go to about a five or six
and then I crashed back down to a four.
As I started meditating, observing my thoughts
and being more in my body,
I went to a solid seven or eight out of 10
and I started to feel high all the time.
I didn't understand it.
I thought that it was too good to be true,
maybe this feeling just goes away,
but as I started observing my thoughts
and also realizing that at a certain point in my past,
a doctor told me you have ADHD.
And then I bought into it, I believed it.
And I thought, and I've prescribed to the belief system,
literally prescribed to the belief system
that I had to take Adderall in order to get by.
That was the way to treat it.
I started to question these things about myself.
I started to question, do I even have this thing?
And as I was meditating, observing my thoughts,
I was disengaging from the old identity.
And I started to reframe it.
I started to give it a new meaning.
So for me, that meant I just have a shit ton of energy.
So I'm gonna go ground myself in grass.
That's what I would do,
I'd go ground myself in grass, walk barefoot.
And then the energy,
I let the excess energy kind of flow through.
I started meditating and I literally went from this identity
of ADHD, energy all over the place,
feeling the pain of my past, feeling stuck,
feeling kind of like a victim in many ways
because even though the ex step-mom was out of my life,
I had a manager that was the same exact archetype
of my ex step-mom
so there was always a woman in my life
to reflect that kind of energy back.
I learned meditation and then guess what?
I started wiring in a new identity.
I then became a zen version of myself.
At that time, what happened is I went vegan immediately.
I started losing a lot of weight.
So people at my work and even family members and friends
thought I was on drugs when I wasn't.
I actually got off Adderall and cannabis completely
and then everyone thought I was on drugs
because I lost so much weight.
And at the same time of losing all that weight,
what happened is I started to meditate
and I started to literally take on this identity
of like a meditative person.
It shifted almost like this.
Literally within weeks, got rid of Adderall,
got rid of smoking cannabis.
And I didn't feel like I needed it.
I just felt like different.
And it was a shift in identity
and it was a reframing of the old disorder.
And it was a releasing of the shame
that there was something even wrong with you.
What if you think you have ADHD is actually your superpower?
What if you could reframe it and see
how this is going to allow you to channel
an immense amount of energy into something
that's gonna create a great success in your life
and happiness or channel creative ability
or psychic whatever.
It's about using what has happened in the identity
in a positive way by reframing what it means.
I think you can use this for anything.
Now at the same time I have to say, is this true?
I'm not a doctor
so I'm not telling you if you're on some medication
or something else like to get off of it.
But this is what I did, that's what I did.
I questioned what I was told
and I changed my sense of identity
and that changed everything.
And I used this same identity shift, by the way,
I've used this same exact identity shift
to go from a nine to five job goer
with thoughts, emotions, and actions equal to that reality
to a full-time Youtuber.
I even used it to go from a lukewarm average sales employee
to a top sales employee
because I realized that my self image
is that I'm an average employee.
So at the end of the day or the beginning of the day,
next day at work every day,
I'd go in and see the top salespeople from the day before
because it would show things like that.
And I would then see
that I was at the middle part of it consistently.
I started to see myself as a top salesperson.
I started being a top salesperson.
I started greeting every customer.
I started being very personable.
I started looking people in their eye in a certain way.
I'd think what would the version of Aaron
that's a top salesperson think, do and feel like,
and I became it.
The same way with YouTube.
What would this version of me do?
Make videos consistently.
I made videos starting February 2017.
Every single day, my life transformed
because I was being that version of me.
So what if there's a version of you right now
that is a meditative or like present person
that has reframed the frantic energy
and grounded it into your body?
What if you were able to work on breathing patterns?
So you can just breathe.
I was reading a book recently
that said that breathing patterns affect like ADHD.
So it was like what if it was like
a traumatic breathing pattern that changed stuff.
So the first step is knowing
that there's other courses of action
rather than just doing what the doctors tell you to do
by giving you methamphetamine, literally is like legal meth.
I just got done watching a whole entire show
called Breaking Bad, which is a very dark show,
but it is an amazing show,
but they're cooking meth on that show.
And you see what happens.
And literally, when I was doing that,
I remember one time I was helping a customer with shoes
and my hand was twitching.
I wasn't taking more than I was supposed to,
but it just has a weird effect on the body,
but I was focused and a lot of dopamine flowing through
so the main part of this video is knowing you can shift
right now by making the choice about who you are
and disengaging from the old sense of self identity
and what people have told about you or said about you,
and you can start making and reframing new meanings
and seeing yourself in a new way.
And by taking on these new habits,
like maybe meditation or yoga or breath work or whatever,
you'll start to shift your sense of self.
And when you shift your sense of self,
your whole entire life begins to change.
Now there is a meditation that I think could help with this.
It's on raising your dominant vibration.
When I talk about going from a three or four out of 10
to a seven or eight out of 10,
I met a meditation that we all originally did together live
that is so powerful,
and the title is the most powerful meditation
for raising your dominant vibration permanently.
It's in the top description box.
Check that below, commit to 21 days, watch what happens,
read the comments and see what's possible.
And that's another way of raising your vibe consistently
so that you don't have to feel stuck with those things
so that helps you shift your identity easier.
Anyways, like this video, if you liked this video,
or if you want me to talk more about like different things
like the ADHD or different parts of that story,
let me know, comment below.
Other than that as always,
I'll talk to you in the next video.
Peace, much love and namaste.