[00:00] Daniel Mangena: For someone who’s not even seen themselves, how can we presume that we’re gonna see what other livestock spots are? We’re gonna see what our shortcomings are, we’re gonna see where we’re moving out time with what we want to create. And so it’s very, very, very important to have those outside eyes in cause that’s the only thing that’s gonna make sure you’ve got all your bases covered.

[00:19] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success Through Failure, the Show for successful people and for those who want to become. Successful. The only show that reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I bring you Daniel Mangena. Daniel is a successful entrepreneur. He is a bestselling author.

[00:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: He’s a podcast host of Do It with Dan. Uh, he’s a life in business transformation coach and he’s an international public speaker. He’s been featuring on CNN, CBS, Fox, the Jack Canfield Show, Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. This guy is the real deal. You know, there’s a lot of people out there who breach success and abundance and mindset, and then there’s people who actually live it.

[01:03] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Daniel has lived it. He talks about his ups and downs, his successes and his failures. This guy has climbed from the bottom to the top and he’s created his dream life, and he teaches us how to do that as well. You’re going to love this episode with Daniel. All right, let’s get into it. My interview with Daniel Mangino.

[01:23] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: You’ve faced a lot of adversity in your life, including a life-shattering trauma. You had a late diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. Can you share a little bit about your backstory, just so listeners can get a perspective of who you are and where you’re coming from? Yeah,

[01:35] Daniel Mangena: sure thing. So, grew up, my parents immigrated from Zimbabwe in Southern Africa in the late seventies of the uk.

[01:40] Daniel Mangena: I was born in East London in 1983. Basically, kind of ordinary family, you know, nothing particularly magnificent. But I really, really, really was determined that I was going to be, Entrepreneurs one thing, well, actually I wanted to be a mad scientist at first and then, uh, was committed to being a business owner.

[01:58] Daniel Mangena: It wasn’t an entrepreneur then. It was business owner that I had in my head. The fine line between those two things, fine line between the two, realize I’m more of an entrepreneur than a business owner. But that’s another conversation between

[02:08] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: that, between being a business owner and a mad scientist too.

[02:13] Daniel Mangena: Although to be an entrepreneur you’ve gotta be a bit of a bad side distance. Some sometimes when you’re dealing with things, but, but yeah, I got to have some great success. Took myself to make computers when I was 13. Had a tuck shop, you know, built up and was able to make my first million when I was 19, and then had it smashed and snatched away a few months later.

[02:30] Daniel Mangena: Actually, I didn’t really get to enjoy it for all that long.

[02:33] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: How did you make your first million, if you don’t mind me asking?

[02:35] Daniel Mangena: Yeah, so I had basically, I built up a little bit of a conglomerate. I was importing and exporting the key thing was it’s, I found out about something called trade finance and the light bulb went off for me.

[02:47] Daniel Mangena: So there are actual lenders that you can partner up with where you put down a deposit and pay them a fee and they’ll issue a letter of credit for you on your behalf for you to buy goods and then you can ship them. So as long as your profit margin is more than what you paid, you can actually pretty much double your money.

[03:02] Daniel Mangena: It’s really quite a fascinating. World. I was buying like containers of orange juices, orange juice. We did like mobile phones once from Finland and, and shipp, those ca, cow beans, luxury clothes, anything that I could find a margin on, I was buying and selling. So we did that. Did some real estate, some other bits and pieces in the uk.

[03:21] Daniel Mangena: But unfortunately what had happened was, is that I’d got people to give me the money to get the letters of credit. Which I didn’t know at the time was actually illegal. You’re not allowed to do that unless you’ve got a license, because that means that you are technically an investment company. So because of that, the government came and took everything away and said, sorry, you’re not allowed to have any of that because you didn’t have a license to do what you’re doing.

[03:40] Daniel Mangena: And so that was that. So I went off and I dusted my shoulders off. I was just turned 20. I said, oh, okay. Well, I’m just gonna go off and. Do something else sy. So I went off again, completely void of any doubt or lack of belief because the thing is that I’ve been reading books like Think and Grow Rich since I was 15 or 16 years old.

[03:58] Daniel Mangena: I was reading books like Psycho Cybernetics and all these books on mindset, and so I really had a very powerful mindset, but mindset alone. Isn’t enough to get you over the finish line. You also need experience. You need guidance, you need mentorship. And the problem with being a young man who thinks he owns the world is that you don’t think you need any of that and that you’ve got it all worked out, which I found out much to my dismay a few years later when the second time I put everything up, people came and stole everything.

[04:23] Daniel Mangena: And that’s when I realized, oh my God, maybe I don’t know everything. And having spent the last several years arrogantly telling the world that I had it all figured out. Watching everything taken the second time in quite a big, messy way. It was a lot for me and the identity that I had built up around being the guy that knew everything.

[04:41] Daniel Mangena: It wasn’t even really being a success. It was a guy that knew everything, that very fragile identity based on other people’s eyes looking in. That fell apart and it really left me in a really dark place. Jim.

[04:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And you mentioned that you contemplated suicide at one point.

[04:58] Daniel Mangena: It wasn’t even contemplation, Jim, it was commitment to the goal of suicide.

[05:02] Daniel Mangena: At that point, I literally looked around at the pieces of this identity that I built based on this idea that I knew everything and watched that gone and literally thought, I’ve got nothing left to contribute. I didn’t have any more value. It would actually be better for everyone if I wasn’t here anymore.

[05:20] Daniel Mangena: So the only reason why I didn’t make an actual attempt was cause I didn’t wanna fail at that on top of everything else, and my commitment actually became okay, I need to work out why I’m such a failure so that when I make my suicide attempt, it doesn’t fail and I’m successful. And that’s actually the very twisted route that brought me to where I am today because I went off on that journey, but ended up in a very different place at the end of it.

[05:44] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: How did you overcome that? How did you overcome that low point and get back to where you’re at now?

[05:49] Daniel Mangena: There wasn’t actually a point. Gym where I’m like, oh, I’m not gonna do this anymore. I remember it was 2015. I just got back from a trip. Me and my cousin had gone out to Thailand. It was my first trip, like lad trip that I’d gone on and we made loads of friends.

[06:03] Daniel Mangena: You know, we’d hang out with girls and we were drinking and enjoying the sunshine and, and, and backpacking and all the things. And I’d built up a business again by that point, and I’d only had to take one 10 minute phone call the whole two weeks. I was away. I’d taken one 10 minute phone call and I got back.

[06:19] Daniel Mangena: I was like, wow. I was able to go away and I was working with a business coach who had helped me get to the point where my business was more systemized and I was just really grateful at that. And I said, hang on a minute. I’ve got a really cool life now. And I realized that I hadn’t actually thought about suicide and I couldn’t remember about back to the last time that I had.

[06:38] Daniel Mangena: And I was actually living a life that I really loved and I was doing things that I really loved. I had great relationships with my family. I had a great relationship with myself. I was taking care of my body. I was financially comfortable. And it was that point I realized there had been a change and I couldn’t pinpoint where, but I was able to backtrack and pinpoint the watts from that journey that I’d gone on to uncover what had gone wrong with everything that I thought I knew before, to the point where things were working.

[07:04] Daniel Mangena: And somehow I’d slipped into unconscious competence with what I was doing.

[07:08] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: What were some of those? Whats, what were some of those epiphanies? What were some of those realizations you had?

[07:12] Daniel Mangena: The key thing is for me, I went immediately back to. That day of March in 2008 when I was like, this is it. You know, I don’t need to do this, this living thing anymore.

[07:22] Daniel Mangena: And I realized that there was a point in that self conversation where I realized something that since become a cornerstone to the way I live my life, a cornerstone behind everything that I teach and I share with people was I realized nobody else could be responsible for my goal being successful, nobody else.

[07:39] Daniel Mangena: The successful execution of my gold dark as it was. Had to depend wholly on one thing, and that was me. And as I sat and thought about that, I thought, well, why is that the case? And I came to what I call now common denominated theory, which is this, even if you’ve got an identical twin, even if you’re with your best friend every day of your life, there is no one and there is nothing that’s present in every single experience that you’re gonna go through in your life.

[08:00] Daniel Mangena: No one and nothing. Absolutely no one and nothing. And so, regardless of what you want to accept in terms of personal responsibility, regardless of what your philosophical ideas or your theological ideas are in anything, the most logical place. To start if you want to affect change in your life is with you because it mathematically speaking, if you are present in everything, if you change everything that you’re present to has to change to some degree.

[08:21] Daniel Mangena: Also, it’s the quickest way to affect mass change. So if you can then start to be deliberate in the change that you wanna elicit in the things around you by what you do with yourself, you’re gonna create massive change. And I realize that what I’d done is I’d spent years pummeling myself with books.

[08:36] Daniel Mangena: Tapes, uh, biographies, philosophical books. I taught myself to transliterate, Arabic and Hebrew so I could read ancient texts in the original language and started to understand what was actually going on with that. You can’t do that for that period of time, and there not be a change in your mindset, a change in your emotional state, and therefore a change in what you are actually then going off and executing and doing.

[08:56] Daniel Mangena: And that became a really big part of me understanding that when we shift our environment to a very consciously chosen set of inputs to ourself, There’ll be a very, very predictable set of changes that happen within you, and then you can track that down to positive outcomes that happen in your life Also.

[09:13] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. That’s JimHarshawJr.com/action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now, back to the show. Tell us about unconscious competence.

[09:32] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: There’s a framework there. Can you share that with us?

[09:35] Daniel Mangena: I first heard this from Tony Robbins. You can be unconsciously incompetent so you don’t even know that you’re incompetent. Then you have to move into consciously incompetent. Oh, I know that. I don’t, we’ve

[09:46] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: all had bosses that were, were, would that fall into that first category?

[09:48] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Right,

[09:50] Daniel Mangena: right. And then we move into conscious competence. Okay, I know what I’m doing and I’m consciously doing it. And then we can move to unconscious competence as in, I don’t even think about it, like driving a car, walking. We don’t think about all the muscles and things that need to move in. All the actions we need to go through.

[10:05] Daniel Mangena: We just do it because we’ve got to the point where it’s just who and what we are. And so the work that I started to develop from there, which became my Beyond Intention paradigm, is all about moving beyond conscious incompetence and unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence and beyond the need to keep.

[10:21] Daniel Mangena: Deciding I’m gonna do this competently. And you just start executing on that naturally. But there is a set of changes that need to happen inside of us in order for us to be able to operate in that basis. How do we make those changes? I would say it goes down to first and foremost, knowing what you wanna change to.

[10:36] Daniel Mangena: You need to be intentional in the direction that you’re moving into, and that means owning where you are because you need to know what you’re unconsciously incompetent about and be able to accept and forgive yourself for that, cuz it’s. Crazy to me how many people are stuck in the same place because they refuse to forgive themselves for getting there, right?

[10:52] Daniel Mangena: They spend so much time blaming other people for where they are, that they don’t actually get the freedom and power to actually move beyond here or pretending that they’re somewhere that they’re not. Versus, you know what? I messed up. I made that poor decision. I didn’t do the research. I thought I knew everything and I didn’t have the openness to accept advice, input, and guidance from other people, and it led me to this outcome.

[11:12] Daniel Mangena: Okay. Now that I’m here, where do I want to go next? Right now I can start to plot that out. Okay, what emotional state do I cognitively connect to that outcome? What are my shortfalls and where do I need support so that I can get that support on board to help me get to the next step? Then we can start to execute there and actually get there.

[11:28] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: You said you worked with a coach. Do you have a coach or were there people outside of you who helped you get there and have those realizations? A hundred percent.

[11:35] Daniel Mangena: I spend multiple six figures a year on my personal development. Now, Jim, it’s not something that I will ever shirk on, and I think that people who are ready to accept.

[11:43] Daniel Mangena: That outside eyes are always gonna be better than you. I mean, one of the things I always laugh joke about is we’ve never seen our own backside. We’ve never even actually seen our own face. We’ve seen a reflection or a picture of it, or a video of it, but we’ve never seen it. I dunno what my nose looks like in reality, I know what it looks like pixelated.

[12:00] Daniel Mangena: And so for someone who’s not even seen themself, How can we presume that we’re gonna see what our blind spots are, we’re gonna see what our shortcomings are, we’re gonna see where we’re moving out of time with what we wanna create. And so it’s very, very, very important to have those outside eyes in cause that’s the only thing that’s gonna make sure you’ve got all your bases covered.

[12:18] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I always feel like a failure whenever I have a free clarity call with a prospective client and they say no, or they just kind of ghost me after that and don’t commit to joining us in in our community, and they try to go it alone. They try to figure it out. Maybe I can just read another book or listen to another podcast episode or just really buckle down and do it on my own, but it’s like, You know the best in the world, world class performers.

[12:40] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I always use the example of Tom Brady, who’s the greatest of all time at what he did. He had a nutrition coach. I’m pretty sure Tom Brady knew what to eat. He had a strength coach, pretty sure Tom Brady knew his way around a weight room. He had a quarterbacks coach. He he knew how to throw football. But you have to have that person or people.

[12:56] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I have multiple I sounds like you do as well. People outside of you who are asking you the hard questions, helping you see your blind spots and holding you accountable to execute. On the things that you know, you need to execute on Elite performance, world-class performance doesn’t happen by yourself.

[13:13] Daniel Mangena: No, it doesn’t.

[13:14] Daniel Mangena: And I think it’s okay for people to accept that maybe the real reason why they’re not reaching out and getting that support is because at the unconscious level, they’re happy where they are. And I think even the energy that comes back from just accepting, do you know what, I’m actually quite settled in my victim story.

[13:30] Daniel Mangena: Do you know what? I don’t wanna take responsibility for what’s going on in my life because it’s easier, you know, I. Talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and not all of them are really entrepreneurs, right? And it’s okay to. Get the paycheck from somewhere. There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in wanting to play smaller than others want to play.

[13:48] Daniel Mangena: But I think there’s a beauty and power and strength that comes from accepting where you sit in terms of those questions and being able to own that and then live fully into it. But if you do wanna go bigger, if you do wanna be massively a contribution in the world, if you do really wanna maximize your potential and you do really want to, you know, get the most out of life, the likelihood, the probability that you’re gonna do that alone is very, very, very low.

[14:11] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And so what you’re talking about is sort of defining what you want, defining success. So how do you define success? Is there a universal way you define it, or, or is it different for everyone?

[14:23] Daniel Mangena: Um, I mean, I keep my definition of success very simple, but it’s got a layer to it. And the simple thing is this, success is getting what you want at the conscious level, but the thing with that is what you want at the conscious level may not be the best thing for you.

[14:36] Daniel Mangena: Number one. What do you mean by that? Let’s say for example, that you are chasing a particular relationship, right? A romantic relationship. That person may not be the ideal partner for you. Maybe you’re chasing it because. There’s an egoic drive, or maybe you’re chasing because they look particularly good and they fancy or tickle, right?

[14:55] Daniel Mangena: But they may not be the best partner. They may not be the best person to build a family with. They may not be the person who’s gonna be in your corner when the chips are down. But if you attain that relationship, you’ve been successful in your goal. But success is only one part of the formula. So for me, it’s not just success, it’s also happiness and meaning that sits on the other side of it.

[15:12] Daniel Mangena: Level of fulfillment that you receive on the other side of c6. And that’s why it’s so important to be intentional from the roots all the way up to the top of that tree as to what you want to create so that you know the why behind what you’re going for. Okay? You want that relationship. What? What do you want from a relationship?

[15:28] Daniel Mangena: You don’t know? So how do you know that you’re not gonna get to the relationship and be one of the 50% of marriage is something stupid? Some high percentage they’re ending up in divorce and failed marriage, right? So be very, very intentional in what you want. And then when you go for it and you are successful, you’re not just gonna feel empty.

[15:45] Daniel Mangena: I mean, look at all these Hollywood stars and these famous people. They’ve reached the heights of their industries, the heights of their careers, drugs, alcohol, suicide, emptiness, sex addictions, all these things because they’re trying to fill a hole that wasn’t filled by the success that they achieved. If.

[16:02] Daniel Mangena: We are intentional. We’ll probably find that we don’t even need as much energy to achieve what we want anyway, because it’s probably not as wild and fantastic as we thought that it would be. But more importantly, we could actually have a level of fulfillment and happiness once we get there.

[16:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: This is why in my coaching program, we step back first.

[16:17] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: We don’t jump right into setting goals and attacking things right away. You gotta just step back and say, what do we really want? Why do we really want it? What does success look like for me, that is different than probably what I see on social media or the mass media tells me that I should want, or, you know, what’s based upon, uh, what’s parked in my neighbor’s driveway, or what our parents imprinted into us when we were young that we should want as success.

[16:44] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: That is not usually when you really dig deep, what defines success for an individual and it’s unique to everybody and you have to take that step back before you start taking those steps forward. Daniel, your book, the Money Game You focus on on manifesting wealth, creating a life of abundance. What are some of the most important mindset shifts or habits that people need to cultivate in in order to achieve financial freedom and financial

[17:10] Daniel Mangena: success?

[17:11] Daniel Mangena: One of the things I love about Money Game is it’s not a big book. It’s a playbook. You can get through it in an hour and a half. It’s not designed to have pretty pros. It’s designed to give you a step-by-step play of how to move from not being able to manifest money to being able to manifest money. But one of the things I love about that book most is that it, it’s really about understanding that it’s not just about manifesting money, it’s using money as a scorekeeper for you to understand how you can manifest outcomes in your life.

[17:36] Daniel Mangena: Because money isn’t the most important thing, but it’s a very powerful tool that allows us to create different goals, create more choices, to create more freedom. But ultimately, it’s important to understand that what you are learning is how to manifest full stop. And that’s not mythical mystical concept.

[17:53] Daniel Mangena: This is a real trackable, measurable thing of you saying, I want to create this thing. This thing is here, I wanna create this thing. This thing is here. So when they have the done the work, for example, of working with you and stepping back and seeing what it is that they want to do, step back in and set those goals.

[18:08] Daniel Mangena: I can execute them. I can get across the finish line. And the key thing is, It’s not just about mindset because mindset’s just one piece of the puzzle, right? So we’ve got the fact that everything that we experience in our life is a result of a choice that we’ve made. Everything that we are seeing is the effect of causation between actions, habits, and behaviors that we’ve had.

[18:27] Daniel Mangena: Even if it’s inaction, non-habit and non behavior, right? With behavior.

[18:32] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: That’s a hard thing for a lot of people to digest and come to terms with because it’s like, wait a second, you’re saying. All of this is my fault is because of me. And it’s the more you can accept and own that, the more power you have over it.

[18:45] Daniel Mangena: Yeah, and I think one of the great things to do is to not look at it as fault, but look at it as responsibility. That’s within my realm of influence. I have the agency available to me to step in and create X, Y, and Z, and then once we’re able to do that, then we can start to move forward. But you know, mind over matter is a real thing.

[19:05] Daniel Mangena: The action habits and behaviors as much as 97% for some of us. Of those actions, habits, and behaviors, they’re not even conscious. They’re running from unconscious programs, 70% of which was developed between, you know, the age of two and seven when we’re developing our analytical mind. So we have to get a handle of what’s going on with those programs, what’s going on with those belief systems, what’s going on with that mindset.

[19:25] Daniel Mangena: But then the mindset in and of itself also has a backdrop to it as well as I found in my own case. The emotional state that we’re in sets the landscape for what we’re able to think. Someone doesn’t believe that well try and get an angry person to talk about something happy, try and get a happy person to talk about something angry, right?

[19:44] Daniel Mangena: Try and listen to comedy and cry. Try and watch a sad story and and laugh. It’s because our emotional state sets and dictates what’s going on with the chemistry in our brain. The chemistry in our brain changes. You know what we’re able to think, literally the chemistry, and so we’ve got this backdrop then of.

[20:00] Daniel Mangena: Actions happen to behaviors impacted by mindset, impacted by emotional state, and we can start to direct that emotional state through intentionality. And so what we do with the money game is to teach you how to set off a chain of events from an intention all the way through to an outcome where things start showing up and showing up and show up, and developing the capacity to increase the scope of what you are able to create over time so you can create bigger and big better things.

[20:28] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Daniel, how has failure played a role in your journey to success? Any specific instances of failure and how you move through those, how you leverage those for success?

[20:40] Daniel Mangena: I don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for the failures that I’ve had in my life at all. You know, sometimes I’m used and laugh worth.

[20:48] Daniel Mangena: My first business hadn’t gone to Pence, and I’d gone on to be a multi, multi multimillionaire or whatever at the time. I would’ve been an arrogant little twat, number one. Number two, I wouldn’t have understood the power of connection, contribution, community, and collaboration, which I get my meaning from.

[21:07] Daniel Mangena: Now, I would’ve been an empty shell. You know, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to understand about people, about myself. I certainly wouldn’t have had my Asperger’s diagnosis. Probably I would’ve been suffering with serious. Uh, the general and social anxiety I was suffering was really, really bad. It was really deep phy phys, physiological responses I was having to that, which is what led me to actually going to get the diagnosis in the first place.

[21:32] Daniel Mangena: You know, every single experience that we have has the opportunity to expand us. And I think when we understand the energy is this energy. And actually a failure that gives us a bigger emotional charge, gives us more energy that we can tap into to create something bigger and better. Then we’ll start to see these quote unquote failures actually as object lessons and opportunities to grow.

[21:57] Daniel Mangena: But again, you need to develop the capacity to do that. So trying to go and take your biggest failures in your life and and pull that energy from them is gonna be a bit harder than looking at some of those little missteps that you’ve made. Starting to look at the object lessons there and build the momentum of being able to learn retrospectively and to pull that energy retrospectively.

[22:16] Daniel Mangena: And then when those things start to sharpen the future, it’s like, oh, the mind tracks and says, well, the last time that Bobby was looking at failure, he saw that there was a lesson. Okay, now what filter am I gonna look at this situation with? Now, maybe there’s a potential lesson because the mind is, you know, it’s not, Sitting there with an opinion, oh, I’m gonna make Jim sad today.

[22:38] Daniel Mangena: It’s just going on the basis of what it’s got as data points. So when you start to overload it with data points that the pain and the stress is actually something you can grow from. You can expand from those things. When you move forward, it’s gonna run on that program instead of beating yourself up and putting yourself down for the

[22:53] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: listener.

[22:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I’ve done hundreds of interviews with world-class performers. That is one of the best descriptions of how to benefit from failure that I’ve heard. And to restate what Daniel is saying here, go back. Look at the failures in your life in the past and what has come from that, what benefits you’ve gotten from those failures, why you are better off, not worse off, but better off from those failures.

[23:17] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Become mindful and aware that the pain. In suffering that you’ve experienced and the failures you’ve experienced have turned into positive things in your life. Now, whether that’s financial or relational or health or otherwise, as you experience these moving forward, now you can go, ah, yeah, this is one of those things where it sucks right now, but maybe just maybe.

[23:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: This is actually the greatest opportunity of my life. Or maybe there’s just something really positive that’s going to come from this and I’m actually gonna end up in a, in a better place because of this, not despite this. So, man, Daniel, that is so powerful. You talk about a late diagnosis of Asperger’s.

[23:58] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Can you tell us about that? First, for the listener who doesn’t know what Asperger’s is, can you, can you talk about that, but also how this diagnosis came about and how that impacted

[24:05] Daniel Mangena: you? Sure. So Asperger’s is a form of autism. So the most basic crude definition I’ve been able to give people to kind of understand, you’ve seen Rain Man or you’ve seen a film or something where there’s a deeply autistic person.

[24:22] Daniel Mangena: Someone can have the same level of autism and be As and be Asperger’s. But the key difference is someone with Asperger’s can communicate with the outside world where someone with deep autism cannot. So it’s on the autistic spectrum, but there’s a couple of things that are plugged in that allow communication with the outside world.

[24:37] Daniel Mangena: So the brain still functions the same in terms of its most of the wiring. But there’s a couple of things plugged in that mean that you can actually connect with the outside world. And so my score was actually ridiculously high. I didn’t realize how high it was until I did a few quotients on it, but what happened was is I’ve suffered from really bad insomnia since I was a teenager.

[24:57] Daniel Mangena: And so I could go for days and sometimes a week more with no sleep, with no reason why my nervous system would just not shut down and I’d just be wide awake. And I had lots of different techniques for dealing with it and over the counter things like Camel Mart and slowing down and breathing and whatever.

[25:12] Daniel Mangena: But sometimes it just was, you know, it was just too much and, and nothing would work. And I was going through one of those particular periods of time. And what ended up happening was I went to see the doctor because none of the over the counters, sleeping tablets were working. None of my remedies were working.

[25:27] Daniel Mangena: And it’d been more than a week since I’d had a proper night’s sleep. And so I went to see the doctor, and the doctor prescribed me something called Zoic Line, which is an extremely powerful sleep medication. So much so that he’s only legally allowed to prescribe me a certain amount. Cause this wasn’t very addictive and you can only take two.

[25:45] Daniel Mangena: And he gave me three so most he can prescribe. And he said, one will knock you out and if it doesn’t, it’ll make you, if you’re just a bit drowsy, just have another half, but you’ll be asleep and that should reset your system and you’ll be able to sleep. I took two and was still wide awake, Jim. So I go back to the doctor and he said, well, this isn’t physiological.

[26:03] Daniel Mangena: There’s probably something, you know, you need to talk to someone. I’m gonna have to refer you to a therapist cuz there’s something going on that’s that’s stopping you from sleeping. So, Refers me to a cognitive behavioral therapist, Dr. Helen McEwen, who I’m so grateful for. We’re getting have a few, the first couple of sessions I’m able to get a little bit of sleep, and I didn’t realize at the time sh, she told me later, she recognized immediately certain traits in my behavior that meant I was on the spectrum because she specialized in working with adults with autism.

[26:35] Daniel Mangena: That was her specialist areand so she picked up these clues. And then through investigation, she dug a little bit deeper, and it was about a month before she actually had me do a test, and I, I came up with my score, but by then, she’d already been using cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to settle my nervous system because what she understood was the reason why I wasn’t sleeping.

[26:55] Daniel Mangena: I was having this insomnias, my nervous system was fired up because it was trying to consolidate a neuro divergent mind in a neurotypical world and trying to do it without any help. So it was creating this, this dissonance that led to insomnia. So she helped me work through that and I was able to then understand what my superpowers were and to dive more deeply into those and also understand where my shortfalls are so I can be supported with those.

[27:15] Daniel Mangena: Uh, and that began my journey with, you know, really taking what may be seen as some, as a disadvantage of being on the artistic spectrum and making it one of my greatest strengths.

[27:26] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: How do you do that? How do you take something that most people would look at? Again, kinda going back to the conversation we just wrapped up around failure and looking back at your failures.

[27:34] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: How do, how do you take something that to most people might be a setback or like, oh, okay, now I have an excuse to lower my goals, settle for less. How do you take that and turn it into, not just a, I’m gonna move forward with this and that’s okay, but actually a positive. How do

[27:48] Daniel Mangena: you do that? Because I looked at what the superpowers were and I looked at what those strengths were, and I looked at how I could deploy those to actually improve my life and get more out of life.

[27:58] Daniel Mangena: You know, the good thing is by then, as I said, I was reading books like Think and Grow Rich, and all these psycho cybernetics and all these positive psychology books were quite young, so I had the seeds for it. By then also, I was knee deep into my journey of research that I spoke about earlier, and so my mind was already very heavily primed to look at things through the filter.

[28:18] Daniel Mangena: How can I move forward and what’s a positive thing that I can pull from this? But going back to what we spoke about before, about being supported, having Dr. Helen there to guide me through the process, who wasn’t just, oh, this is your diagnosis. You’re off. Who actually sat down, this is what’s positive.

[28:34] Daniel Mangena: And someone who really encouraged me and helped me to understand this new landscape and to p plot my way through this new map of, of uncertainty, really was key to me being able to move forward in a positive way. So it was the fact that I really had a thirdhand ground, but more importantly, having a guide to take me through that process was definitely, uh, definitely key.

[28:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So for the listener, I just wanna reiterate two things here. Number one, Daniel’s mind was primed. He had been feeding at the right stuff, he had been putting the right content in. And you really gotta question yourself at whether or not you’re putting the right content in. And that means the books you’re reading, the podcast, you’re listening to the people who you interact with.

[29:15] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So his mind, it was a fertile ground. And then the second part was he had a guide. He had somebody outside of himself and, and I asked you, the listener, like, Are you doing that? Like, are you really intentionally doing this? Are you really putting an intention behind putting the right content into your brain and into your mind?

[29:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And, and then also, do you have a guide? Do you have somebody outside of you who can help you through this process? Daniel, for the listener who’s bought in, who loves what you’re seeing here and wants to take action on this, what advice can you give them? What’s an action item or a couple of action items even that they could take in the next, let’s say 24 to 48 hours to really take what you’re teaching us here and put it into action and change their lives?

[29:57] Daniel Mangena: I would say first and foremost, before you take any action, do that step back that you spoke about earlier, Jim, and let’s get really clear on what it is you want to create and why. And one of the things I invite people to do isn’t even to look at that as a list of things that you wanted to achieve, but to get clear on how you want to feel every day in your life.

[30:14] Daniel Mangena: Because once you understand how you wanna feel, and that doesn’t need to be a laundry list of, you know, a half page description, it just needs to be anywhere from three to five emotions that you feel really deeply passionate about feeding on a regular basis. And this can change. I interrogate the list for myself every single day.

[30:29] Daniel Mangena: Every single day I reconnect in the morning with, do I still wanna feel those emotions? If there’s something else that shifted based on what I’ve learned or based on how I’ve grown over the last 24 hours or whatever.

[30:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: You do this every day, this is an intentional activity that you do. How does that look?

[30:43] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: What does it look like? Are you looking at a piece of paper or are you just sitting on the edge of your bed closing your eyes? I mean, tell us

[30:48] Daniel Mangena: about that. As soon as I open my eyes, I say a pro gratitude’s, one of the first things that I do, and then I get really clear on how I wanna feel that day I feel into my body.

[30:57] Daniel Mangena: And this isn’t like an hour long process. This is like 60 seconds, two minutes max, get really present in my body, maybe take a few deep breaths in order to do that. And. What are some, some feelings I wanna feel today? And is it still the same guiding light as the day before? Right. And so for me, right now, for example, it’s peace, freedom, joy, and love, peace, freedom, joy and love.

[31:17] Daniel Mangena: And I feel that in my body. What does peace feel like? Is there a part of my body that lights up? What does freedom feel like? What does joy feel like? What does love feel like? How does that feel in my body? And is that still how I want to go into the day? And then that becomes a filter for everything that I do.

[31:32] Daniel Mangena: The conversations I’m gonna have, the people that wanna come into my life, the opportunities I’m gonna take on the books, I’m gonna read the con. Everything is then guided to, is it supporting me? Feeling those four emotions more or less. Are there things that come in? Are there people that show up today that wanna make me feel less love, that wanna make me feel less peace, less freedom, or less joy?

[31:51] Daniel Mangena: Then I ruthlessly curate my life every day on will that person not gonna have much access to my energy. The activity’s not something I’m going to do. That’s not something I’m going to engage in. And then at the end of the day, I track and I say, well, have I successfully stepped more deeply into those emotions for the day?

[32:07] Daniel Mangena: Or have I fallen ’em back? And I trip back, oh, hang on a minute. Oh, I missed that. There was that event that happened. Oh, there was that happened. And then I’m journaling in the evening. I make note of that. And then that sets me up for the next day to go and make new goals about what I’m gonna do. But find those emotions anywhere from three to five.

[32:23] Daniel Mangena: And then every morning just ask yourself. Do I still wanna feel these emotions? And as you go through the day, ask yourself, are the things that I’m doing, the places that I’m going, the people that I’m engaging with supporting that, or are they inhibiting it

[32:38] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: for the listener? That is simple, but very actionable.

[32:42] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Take action on this. Daniel, for the listeners who wanna find you, follow you by your books, et cetera, how do they do that?

[32:49] Daniel Mangena: Easiest we dream with dan.com. Dream with dan.com.

[32:53] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Excellent, Dan. Thank you so much for making time to come on the show. Well, thank you

[32:57] Daniel Mangena: for having me. Really appreciate it. It’s been a great conversation.

[33:02] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at JimHarshawJr.com/apply, where you can sign up for a free one-time coaching call directly with me. And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action.

[33:21] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often. You would totally make my day if you give me a rating and review. Those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience. Just open up your podcast app. If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast a rating and review.

[33:46] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck and thanks for listen.

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