John Sanei, South African futurist and former Singularity University faculty member, cuts through the noise of AI hysteria with a provocative truth: your reaction to AI says more about your unresolved trauma than the technology itself. In this conversation, John reveals why the people shouting doomsday about artificial intelligence are often the same ones who’ve been fearful about every major change, from Bitcoin to blockchain. He argues that AI isn’t inherently dystopian or utopian. It’s neutral. What matters is the frequency, the consciousness, and the emotional state you bring to it.
Drawing on neuroscience, Einstein’s theories on frequency, and his own work in human adaptability, John makes the case that we’re moving from an industrial era that prioritized brains to an AI era that will prioritize hearts. Everything digital is racing toward zero marginal cost, which means the real value will come from what we create in real life, through emotional intelligence and authentic human connection. John shares practical tools for calming your nervous system, healing trauma, and rehearsing your future through meditation, so you can approach AI not from fear but from play, curiosity, and possibility. For leaders navigating AI adoption, this conversation is a wake-up call: the future doesn’t require you to be smarter. It requires you to be more fluid, more adaptable, and more deeply human.
John Sanei is a South African futurist, strategist, and bestselling author whose work focuses on adaptability, human potential, and the future of organizations in an AI-driven world. He was the first African faculty member at Singularity University and is a trusted advisor to global companies, governments, and leaders navigating disruptive change. John is the creator of the Adaptable Intelligence Framework, which blends neuroscience, psychology, and business strategy to help people and organizations thrive amid exponential technological shifts. His approach emphasizes that adaptability, rather than technical expertise, has become the defining human advantage in an age of automation and AI.
He has written multiple bestselling books, including What’s Your Moonshot?, MAGNETiiZE, EXPANSIVE, FORESIGHT, and Who Do We Become? A sought-after keynote speaker and faculty educator, John delivers talks around the world that blend optimism, practicality, and personal insight. His signature message is clear: thriving in the future requires not resisting disruption but unlearning outdated patterns, embracing vulnerability, and leaning into curiosity and creativity. Learn more at johnsanei.com.
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Chris Parker: Welcome to AI and I. This is a new show where I am exploring the space between the dystopian views of the future and the tech optimist views of the future on the impact of AI really on myself and maybe my friends and family and children let’s call it humanity and I’m talking with John Sanei who is um one of the top futurists in the world. I have a number of of his books here. Future next, reimagining our world and conquering uncertainty. What’s your moonshot? Future proof yourself and your business in the age of exponential disruption. He is or was at least a faculty member of the Singularity University. And back in 2011 in Singularity University, I think that’s when I first got smacked straight in the face with the concepts of AI. And Singularity is a think tank. It’s an educational platform for people to explore those things that you know like exponential technologies like um green energy, AI, robotics. It was also a place where I sat in a in one of the early early Google Google cars and and realized that okay this there’s this is going to change this is going to change everything. So John and I are going to have a conversation about what this shift in our world can mean. And so I think what I’d like to kick it off with, John, is um AI has erupted in the last 18 months. It’s been around for a long, long time. It’s absolutely just exploded into our lives. What has really, I guess, shocked or surprised you about that? Like what has been like particularly fascinating for you in the last 18 months?
John Sanei: listening to Sam Altman who doesn’t know what the hell’s going on with his own product. That’s what’s been the most fascinating is to listen to the people who supposed to be guiding us through Pandora’s box being opened and the guys have opened up Pandora’s box are like I don’t know if you’ve seen that interview with Sam Alman they say what is the business model for um open AI he’s like we’re not quite sure yet but we’re waiting for AGI to come and then it’ll tell us what our business model is going to be. Oh my gosh. And so I think the most fascinating thing is that we’ve opened up Pandora’s box and uh because of the race between nations so that the nations have the most power we are moving and hurtling towards a really unknown future. And this is both very scary and very exciting depending on the type of consciousness that you have towards the topic. And this is really where my work has started to become really uh popular and I’m doing more and more talks around this because the technology itself is neutral just like anything in our reality. Our projection onto it is what makes it dystopian or makes it an incredible unlock. And the analogy that I use in my audiences is do you know the type of person you are when you come back from holiday? Do you remember that that Chris? You know that Chris that’s just come back from three weeks of holiday. He’s super relaxed. His nervous system is chilled. And then think about Chris who went on holiday and you realize that they’re very different Chrises. And the Chris that went on holiday had a dystopian view of AI and the Chris that came back from holiday has a lot more relaxed view of AI and is looking to explore AI in many different ways. And so my job has become the fact that if your consciousness, if your awareness, if your frequency, if the level of your behavior and perspective is optimistic about uncertainty, which can only come from a calm nervous system, AI is a fantastic tool. Fantastic. Never had a better one. If you are coming from a place of fear, anxiety, trepidation, unprocessed emotions, trauma that hasn’t been processed, you had an issue with governments, you had an issue with Bitcoin, you had a issue with blockchain, and now you have an issue with AI. Guess what? It’s just something else that you can have an issue with. So for me, it’s just the type of frequency and evolution of humanness that you have within you that determines what AI will do with you. Einstein had a great quote 120 years ago. He said, “The medicine of the future is the medicine of frequency.” What does he mean by that? He means that your diseases and your challenges are all based on your frequency. And your frequency is just another way to say your personality. And your personality is just another way of saying the way you think, act, and feel. And if neuroscience is proving to us that we have 90% of the same thoughts as we did yesterday because our brains have been trained to be familiarity machines, we are now stuck in a loop and then want to go on a dystopian like I don’t know warning people. But actually all you’re doing is regurgitating your own fear projected into the world and now you think everybody else is in the same boat as you. I watch keynote speakers at events that are totally fearful of AI and I’m watching them and they are totally fearful of all other things as well. So it’s not AI. They’re projecting that fear onto AI as well. So yes, is it scary? Absolutely. Is it going to rock the foundations of everything we know? Thank god it is. Who was happy in the world of industrial revolution which we were working six days a week nonstop couldn’t ever get a break. Make our millions still anxious. can’t get enough greed, can’t have enough. I mean, who was enjoying that trade? Nobody was. We just didn’t know how to get off it. And so, what I think AI is going to do is going to force us to be more human than ever before. Why? Because everything digital is going to move to zero. Everything. And the trajectory of digitization has shown us that we arrive at something called the zero marginal cost society. And what this means is that anything that’s digitized starts to get created for free and shared for free. That means that anything that you can do on your laptop will eventually be free. Meaning that what you have to focus on is in real life. In real life, you’ll start to make the value ad into the world. And the best way for you to come into in real life is not intellectually, but emotionally. You don’t need high intellect to engage with humans. You need high emotional intelligence to interact with humans. So, we’ve moved from an agricultural era that prioritized our muscles to an industrial era that prioritized our brains to an AI era that will prioritize our hearts. And the people that are shouting doomsday have not accessed their hearts.
Chris Parker: Let let me grab into so much that um frequency and be more human. Is being more human having a optimal frequency? Can you can you unpack that? Like are we go Sometimes I feel like as I’m doing my own self-work um deep selfwork. It’s not so much that I’m discovering things but remembering things you know it’s like like oh oh here it is you know I’m getting rid of all of this junk and getting connected more to self. And when you’re connected more to self, you know, for me at least the natural result has just been fear has has just fallen away. It’s a continuous journey. I’m not there yet. But what can you unpack this being authentically human and the the frequency or the vibration perspective?
John Sanei: So I think a lot of the times what we do when the word frequency or vibration comes into a conference hall into a corporate environment people glaze over right and they’re like no no no this is woo woo stuff and so let’s just understand what the neuroscience means. You cannot solve a problem from the same level of awareness that created it. The medicine of the future is the medicine of frequency. Awareness, frequency, personality, all the same thing. They’re all exactly the same thing. So, let’s focus away from the woowoo words and just focus on personality because we all have a personality. And you can’t call personality a woowoo. Then you have to dive deep into what is personality. Personality is made up of how you think, act, and feel. If you keep thinking and acting and feeling every day the same means that your personality doesn’t change which means your awareness doesn’t change which means your frequency doesn’t change which means you keep looping the same story and what then happens is because that loop becomes the familiarity that you have find comfort in even though you might not like it most probably you don’t like it as as the saying goes people become addicted to lives they don’t even like and so this is what’s happening is people start to defend the loop that they hate that they’re within and now I come to you and say to you, “Look, bro, you can’t actually solve tomorrow’s problems with the existing loop.” And you’re like, “Oh, that’s woo. Don’t tell me about woo. I’m just going to work harder. I’m going to get another degree and I can push further.” And my response is, “The future doesn’t require you to be smarter. It requires you to be more fluid. It requires you to be more adaptable.” And what adaptability actually means really and truly, what it means is to develop a brain that is happy to engage with things it doesn’t understand. It’s optimistic about uncertainty and subjects that it’s not familiar with. That brain requires us to think about how our brains are currently wired and how do we rewire them not for absolute outcomes and an addiction to certainty but for adaptability. And so we have hooked into the frequency of outcomes. This is the world of economies of scale. It’s got us addicted to net profits, profitability, efficiency over everything else. our own health, the health of our organization, salaries of our of our people, environment. We become so addicted to it that we have companies sitting inside boardrooms in Switzerland making calls for child slavery in Africa to get chocolate so that Nestle can make more money. I mean, think about the dynamic that has eroded our ability to see nature and humans as part of our decision-making process. And that’s all because of an addiction to certainty. So what is frequency? Frequency is this ability to be adaptable. And when you start to become adaptable, what starts to happen naturally is your frequency starts to rise. And as it starts to rise, you start to remember new things because all of it’s available. You just start to remember them from a higher level of frequency. And people that have got diseases, when they change frequency, the diseases fall away. This is Einstein’s work. This is not woo woo mumu. This is Einstein who gave us so much science but because we don’t understand it or have made woo woo ideas sort of like derogatory we don’t want to engage with it because it’s very difficult for us to let go of our identity to start to develop a new identity which is actually exactly what this is asking us to do is the identity we develop through based of intelligence and inner career has to elevate has to disintegrate for us to start connecting with our own genius our own fascination and allowing that to become the frequency to move us into the future because remember the currency of the future is not fitting into the system. The system itself is starting to implode. The currency of the future is your uniqueness and your genius and that start to lead you towards how you can add value to the world.
Chris Parker: Let me grab on some of this and and um since we last spoke I I’ve also published I have a book out lead from love with roommates. quite a while swimming in the ethos and the magic of Roomie, the 13th century Persian poet and mystic. And um what I took away from that was self-love as the place of starting and and there’s a lot of embracing the mystical, the unknown, the Yeah. the the unexpected um and from a place of of self appreciation love which gives you safety then it’s creates an yeah I guess the possibility to to to have that almost childlike curiosity of like oh what’s going to happen next is this is this where you’re is this what you’re talking about is is this is this the childlike because I absolutely believe like like I I play the volleyball ball still even though I’m 53 and and it’s so amazing. You just you get a group of humans in a space, you throw a ball on the ground and they will play. I think it’s like we are we are just programmed to play and I just absolutely love it. So my wish is you know AI creates the space where we can play again.
John Sanei: But of course it will. But you know Chris, it will for you and for people out there that think dystopian coming. Guess what? You know reality is so kind to us. It says yes to everything we want. It’s yo yo yo it’s it is going to dystopian. Yes, there we go. Now move towards North Korea and now you’re going to get caught up in a prison camp and yes oh dystopia told you it was going to be dystopia. So yes of course these are the magics of what we’re realizing about the world around us. This idea of loving yourself again a very woowoo idea that many exe and look I work with executives so I’ve got to be very careful with the words I use because I don’t want to glazed over executive team at PWC looking at me thinking I’m speaking you know some spiritual term but the truth is if you don’t love yourself you’re a miserable git because if you’re fighting with yourself inside yourself continuously guess what you’re doing with the rest of the world as well and I myself and like the rest of us have continuously had this internal dialogue of judgment, of not being good enough, of thinking other people don’t like us and putting our own voice into their voice and then projecting it back to us. There’s been so many nuance ways for us to prove to the world that the world doesn’t like us within ourselves, right? And so what I did is I uh learned a few different modalities and I put them together and it’s called the happy mayor game. And this is a game that helps you have a more peaceful internal dialogue. And it’s based on it’s based on uh if you’re the mayor of your um city and you want to keep your mayorship uh the thing you have to do is make sure you have peace between all your citizens. And if you have peace between all your citizens, your mayorship is safe and secure and everybody’s happy. You have a peaceful city. And so who are your citizens? Your citizens are the characters that you’ve developed between 6 and 15 years old to protect yourself when your emotional body wasn’t as strong as it is now. And these characters are still wide awake and alive. And every time something new arrives, they get very riled up and they arrive now to want to defend you. And what I’ve realized through this game, the thing to do is when one of these characters show up is to name it. And for example, um I have Marty the Martia and Marty the Martia likes to feel like a victim. And when he feels like a victim and I say he because the minute I start feeling like a victim and it’s become so much less now but Marty the Marty had a very very loud voice inside my head and the minute you name Marty you disassociate from the emotion. You realize it’s not you it’s an emotion. And then what you do is you remind Marty that you’re a 50-y old man and you don’t need this type of protection anymore. And you’re so appreciative of Marty coming and you get Marty to sit on your lap because he’s a version of you at 6 years old, 8 years old. And then you love Marty. You just love Marty. You hold Marty and guess what happens? Marty dissolves into you eventually and Marty’s gone. And Marty’s sting is gone. Now I can tell you I have dozens of characters. I have Shaky Sherwin who’s a scared guy. I have Courtney who takes myself to jail to court. I have Grizzly the judger of the world. And so every time these characters show up and they’re becoming less and less because once you’ve once you listen to them, allow them to think and voice themselves, remind them that you have got this all sorted, all of a sudden your internal dialogue becomes very peaceful because none of these characters think they need to come and defend you. And so now you start to think about AI in this format, Chris, and tell me what you think. You’re like, “Yes, man. Let’s go play.”
Chris Parker: Yeah. Well, let’s go. Well, I mean, what I’m hearing is um almost timeless and and this is what I adore about the conversation. These aren’t new fangled, you know, techniques. This is actually going back to the essence of humanity. Meaning, yes, we all have our parts in our in ourselves. Um, and those parts are there to protect us and and that’s their job, of course.
John Sanei: What is their job?
Chris Parker: Well, that Yeah, not present tense. Their job well that is their job, but it’s just no longer appropriate.
John Sanei: They’re they’re working in the wrong shop, you know, like Yeah. No, but they’re not even needed.
Chris Parker: No, their skill sets are their skill sets are from 20, 30, 40 years ago. And again, that’s coming down to that that inner peace, that inner calm, which then creates a space for that playful curiosity, which then makes a tool to have lots of fun with.
John Sanei: It’s internal dialogue that’s at war. AI is another thing to be at war at. You know, I’m speaking to a friend of mine who’s going through a divorce, and I was telling him, I was like, “Unfortunately, your wife would never be happy with no matter what comes. Your wife’s just not happy. you’re just another thing she’s not happy with. It’s just it’s okay. It’s like you can’t fix it. She has to fix it. And so this is the exact same thing. We are now using war and I see a lot of people be doing this. They use war to voice their own unsolved trauma.
Chris Parker: Vegans voice their unresolved sadness and anger in scolding people that eat meat. Yeah, people that are pro Palestine are doing that. Pro Israel are doing they’re just using all these tools around us because they’re fictitious tools to process and to shout out our own emotions. And guess what? AI it’s just the next one. Well, I I think we all have our traumas and and one of the things I believe deeply is is and and I discovered it again in in in the work with Roomie that what you give your attention to grows and what you give your energy to is what you become.
John Sanei: Exactly.
Chris Parker: And so, you know, on you know, so I’m curious if if there’s any tactics, you know, I I don’t think in in this short conversation we’re going to be able to to to instruct people how to get into a place of zen and self-love.
John Sanei: But meditation, I can tell you two two very clear things. Do trauma healing and do meditation because what trauma healing does, it cleans your past and meditation gives you ability to um rehearse your future. So if you’re not keening your past or rehearsing your future, you’re looping.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Let’s go into trauma healing like like I was okay…
John Sanei: mushrooms family constellations body healing kinesiology um uh raiki all of these things disassemble parts of your memory that have been stored in your body and your psyche and your heart. Nice. When you can start to unear them, you start to release the hooks that have created defense mechanisms inside you to then look at the future in defensive manners. When you unhook them, defense turns into optimism.
Chris Parker: Yeah, I think I’ve been down all those paths and and would uh would generally uh I’ve not done IASKA yet. It’s on it’s on the list. Um, how does that help? Because what I’ve heard with uh Iawaska is that that sort of like connects you to the the universe. what in your in your words, if you’re open to talking about it, like how has a psychedelic like that helped you on your journey?
John Sanei: Well, it takes you out of your current awareness. It changes your awareness, right? And you get an opportunity to look at your life from an objective point of view with the guide of mother Iwasa. And what she shows you is that many if not all of your memories are false. Yeah. And they are just rubbish stories that you have dramatized over the years. You know, your dad might have slapped you once, but now that it’s been 10 years, no, he beat me and it was even more dramatic than I ever made it. And so now my anger is very fueled by this deliberate subjective story that I’ve magnified. And what she does is she shows you that your memory is false. It’s actually not serving you. And what happens when she shows you that because you’re in an altered state and you’re in this very like theta brain stage, half awake, half asleep dream state, your subject is totally focused on the blueprints of your psyche. you’re accessing your subconscious patterning and when the minute you see that the second you see that you purge and the reason you’re purging is that your body cellular structure has been built on that memory and now that you become clear that that memory is false you have to let go of that cellular structure makeup and you will hurl and hurl and purge and the next morning you go look in the bucket there’s nothing in it so it’s just emotions And so it’s really just about a fast track to finding cleansing methodologies about your past. And many of the times you don’t even know that many of your psyche stories in your personality are based on deep deep falsehoods and she helps you unwind them.
Chris Parker: And let’s let’s turn the page to meditation. My my own work um I’ve been to uh Dr. Joe dispensa weekl long retreats a number of times and those are pretty they can be quite psychedelic in in in themselves even though there’s no actual you know chemicals involved because as they state there is is through these deep intensive you know sometimes fivehour long meditation moments you know in the middle of the night you know when your brain is in the right right mode and and also walking meditations is yeah I wouldn’t call it so sort of out of body But there was a a combination of release, of junk, of fear, of of ridiculousness. Looking back, you’re just like like what what um and then connecting into that into that future. And it’s um and through that work that I think that that’s what probably has made me the most comfortable with just pure ambiguity as well. It’s like because what is the future? You know, you said, you know, people are locked in these worlds of certainty. Um, but nothing is certain. I think that that is a lie, you know, because when people say, “Oh, I’ve got this job security.” Like, no, you don’t. You’ve got a paycheck next month and you have no idea what’s going to happen beyond that. So, so manage yourself accordingly. So, let me throw it back to you on on meditation. What does meditation mean to you?
John Sanei: Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love, she said, “Oh, darling, you never had control. You just had anxiousness.” Yeah. And so that’s what it is. It’s a false sense of control. And because you worried about it, a false sense of control is created because you’re worrying. Think about Middle Eastern moms and Jewish moms. They worry about their kids. And they think if they’re not worrying about their kids, they’re not being good mothers.
Chris Parker: And so you understand that that Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I was just um that worry about kids is one of the first things that that emerged from me is was was being from a uh um you you just said my memories are false, which is probably true, but um it wasn’t a typical childhood, shall we say?
John Sanei: And I and I’ve been carrying with myself. Um can can I ask what is a typical childhood and who ever even had a typical childhood?
Chris Parker: Because everybody like mine wasn’t wasn’t typical. I’m like, “Yeah, I mean, I got beaten. I know a lot of other people who got beaten, but anyway. Anyway, sorry. I don’t mean to I don’t mean to dismiss your past.
John Sanei: I’m just asking I mean the what I’ve also come to do is is adore my childhood, you know, meaning meaning the fact that um Well done, Chris.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Well, well, that’s power. That’s you changing your memory.
John Sanei: Yeah. No, it’s rewriting. reinterpreting and going from anger to you know what they were human they were doing the best they could this was nothing…
Chris Parker: exactly nothing nothing to do with me I think having having children help me embrace my parents so completely much like oh I get what’s going on so um going back to yeah go ahead…
John Sanei: Dr. Joe, I’ve been to 14 events. Wow. And I’m on my way to my next one, the 10day in Cancun, the 10day AFU. The first 10day AFU. Yeah. The advanced follow-up. Um I was at the last 10day in December as well. Um what I love about Dr. Joe is, and he doesn’t call them that, but I call him I call them that is they are active meditations. Yeah. They’re not mindfulness meditations. And mindfulness might be the first 20 or 30% of the meditation. But the rest and the 70% of the meditation is actively thinking about something that you want to create in your brain patterning which is rehearsing your future. And so for me, Dr. Joe doesn’t really talk about healing your past. And he even thinks that healing your past is quite a rubbish thing because if you just really wire your brain, your past kind of fades away anyway. Yeah. But I think um the combination for me has worked really well. But exactly like Dr. Joe does, I’ve created a range of meditations I call rapid rehearsal and they 15minute active meditations for people with ADHD and I’ve themed them into things we want in our lives. And the first one is called $10 million. And it was really brought about by a friend of mine talking about him going to a meeting that he was feeling a little bit anxious about. And I said to him, I said, “What would it feel like if you’re walking into this meeting with $10 million?” And he totally relaxed his body. I said, “Okay, what is that emotions that you’re feeling now that you’re super relaxed?” And we came to the conclusion that there’s five emotions you would feel if you had $10 million. Victory, safety, freedom, gratitude, and confidence. Now, if you rehearsse those five emotions every morning, every afternoon, and every dinner, guess what’s going to happen to you? You have rehearsed yourself into having that level of access and abundance. The next one’s called the kiss on the shoulder, which is about how do you develop a relationship that has your partner kiss you on the shoulder for no reason whatsoever. And the next one’s called living in an athletes body. Is what does it feel like to be an athlete? and I’ll start creating these and I want them to be 15inute rapid rehearsals into your future self but with a very different angle to Dr. Joe. You know, I’m a Dr. Joe fanboy inside out. And I think that there’s a bridge between my corporate clients and Dr. Joe and I’m playing that bridge. I’m trying to create that corporate idea to release it, dissolve it, to start to access a type of consciousness that allows them to solve new problems. But I dare not use the word consciousness. I use lateral creativity. I dare not use connected to self. I call it connected to your most innovative version of your…
Chris Parker: Why do you dare not with these terms?
John Sanei: What what is the because corporates are allergic to any of these woowoo woke ideas. And my I wrote I wrote a chapter called the future of food will never be determined by angry vegans. And what you got to realize is that vegans have got it wrong. Angry vegans have got it wrong. I used to be a vegan. I used to be an angry vegan. And I was more if I was really worried about animals, I would inspire you to change and I would invest all my money in lab grown meat because what I want to do is I want to inspire you to see something new and I want to give you a convenient um option as quickly as possible. But no, no, no. I’m going to be angry and scold you, which means that I’m not really worried about animals. I’m much more worried about expressing my emotion. So when I go in front of corporates, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to express myself or am I trying to change behavior? I’m trying to change behavior. So, what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to ambush you without you realizing what I’m doing to you. By the time you realize that you’ve agreed to everything I’ve said, now you’ve agreed that you need to be more conscious. I just called it lateral creativity.
Chris Parker: Love it. I took a little different path and I and I and I reflected often on this like lead from love. Um and it’s a leadership book. um it’s not for everyone and I agree with you. Sometimes it’s very off-putting for some people. Um however, there’s other people that are maybe closer to the topic. They’re like, “Well, what do you mean by that then?” And and for me, this is this is where the the invitation starts. So, grabbing this back to the the concept of AI. What I um love about this is we spoke so little about technology and that and for me that is I think this is the truth of this is this isn’t about the tech. This isn’t about, you know, Sam Alman, whatever he’s doing, and, you know, these big names that are espousing stuff that they have no idea because what is the future anyways? um looking into healing trauma. So doing the work which is good in any case and doing the meditation in order to discover and craft you know intentionally your future and have some of these rapid meditations and things from your from yourself. Um, this is good news anyways. And if you and if you’re doing this work and you’re walking in life through life in in your power in your in your positive self, going back to the the frequency and the vibration, if if you’re optimizing and raising your frequency and therefore, I think attracting other people near you that are of the similar frequency. Um cuz sometimes when I’m when I’m really vibing high it’s like it’s like I was like what you know I can’t even be distracted with negativity at that point. Sometimes you have a funk of course when you attract all sorts of other junk into your life. Um this is this is let let me just this is your advice on how to make I don’t it’s not even related to AI then just the best possible life I suppose.
John Sanei: It’s like my work is about a huge huge dose of responsibility. Your personal responsibility to evolve your humanness. And if you a a great sign that you’re not evolving your humanness is if you’re complaining.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Yeah. Great. That’s it. Um Yeah. in this raging against the machine. It’s it’s um um it just feeds the machine.
John Sanei: It feeds the machine. People that are anti-Israel, people that are anti-Palestine, people are they’re just feeding the machine. They don’t realize what they’re doing. When you share all your social media posts about the terror that’s going on there, you’re feeding the terror. You’re not solving the solution. You’re not bringing a solution. So, I had this discussion with my ex-girlfriend and she was very, very fiercely angry with Israel about Palestine. And I said, “I get it. I agree. It’s not cool what they’re doing. But by your every Instagram post beating about the war, you’re not actually bringing a solution to my table. You’re sharing your your anger.” So we I helped us set up something called turning the table, which is about having dinners around the world that raise money for the children of Palestine. channel that anger into an uplifting program and benefit the outcome that you’re looking for. Stop beating the drum of pain. You’re just helping Israel. And if you’re Israeli, you’re helping. It doesn’t matter. It’s actually irrelevant. Whichever side you’re on, it’s irrelevant.
Chris Parker: And so I I think to unpack this and and we’re we’re way over time than than I was hoping to, but I can’t stop engaging with you on this. So, thank you on this. Um there will never be a perfect world either because I think there are people that I think this is just the natural reality of humanity that some people at a moment are on a lower vibe and some people are on a higher vibe and and they will be creating different realities.
John Sanei: And something else I remember always remember that the future is a plural word. It’s futures.
Chris Parker: It’s not what is the future.
John Sanei: Yeah. What are the futures that I can access? Unpack it further. There’s multiple futures. How many timelines are there that you can access? An infinity number.
Chris Parker: Okay. Yeah.
John Sanei: Do you know that this Dr. Joe 99.999% is pregnant with potential? Where you accessing your focus and energy? And guess what? If you don’t meditate, you don’t have the power to focus your energy. Because that’s what meditation, all meditation is doing is helping you channel your lifegiven energy. And what I tell my audience is if you can’t stop thinking about a problem that you have, you are obese in your thinking process. You’re unfit in your thinking process. If you can start to focus on what you want to focus on, now you have fitness. And when you have fitness, you can start to direct your life force. Otherwise, you can’t. Otherwise, you’re playing a fool’s game.
Chris Parker: Wow. I I was going to um a slightly different direction, meaning something’s happened, right? Okay, you know that okay, you know, we have this book in front of us and the different futures are somebody could look at this and say, well, this is absolute rubbish. What’s your moonshot? What’s a moonshot anyways? Okay, what you know who who is this jerk? You know, but the book is still real. Or someone could see this and say, “Oh, that’s interesting. What is a moonshot? There’s a moon on it. It’s a lovely yellow.” And then and embrace it. So I think there’s the the futures there’s infinite futures for me and you to create and everybody. Um and I think there’s also an infinite futures in in in just having a perspective on reality because there is a war here and there’s a war there and how are you emotionally engaging in that in a positive way and not feeding the machine. John, if people want to welcome you into their space into their corporate space and they want to have a confronting, authentic, positive, maybe less woo conversation than this because I think we we we were a bit uh uh authentic here which I love. Um they can go to johnson.com. Um and I got I guess two questions for you. what in this space and you’ve written a number of books. Um perhaps the book who do we become would be that would that be the best place for someone to start to snack on this to to take your insights or would you recommend they go a different direction?
John Sanei: I to be honest with you out of all the books it really depends which one calls you. Yeah. They’ve all been written for different reasons. Um so yeah, who do we become is a very valid question. It’s not about the future. It’s who are you becoming through the process of transformation. I have a new book coming out called Future Memories is really about developing your life based on where you’re going rather than where you’ve been. And so we you sit in that dichotomy. You know, most of us are just repeating where we’ve been. We’re not actually focused on where we’re going. And so it really depends wherever you want to pop in uh any one of those books, my podcast, the expansive or book me for a keynote or a master class. All of it’s really based on how do we simplify the future, elevate our awareness, and restructure our organizations and our thinking. All of it. No matter at what touch point you you access me.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Perfect. And those mini meditations um are those available on the website.
John Sanei: On the website. Yes, they’re all on the website under meditations. You can download for free $10 million and the bridge. Those are two different types of meditations. And then the new ones are all starting to get uploaded now over the next sort of couple weeks.
Chris Parker: Outstanding. John. I thank you so much. I was II’m navigating um and I have to admit with some uncertainty and confusion because my world as a tech leader is just collapsing. It’s just for collapsing under this AI stuff. And I see there’s so much potential and beauty and creativity and and opportunity for humanness. And this is why I’ve created this new platform really just to to to snack, eat, share, and explore. So John Sanei, you can find him at johnsonai.com. Thank you so much, John. This is awesome.
John Sanei: My pleasure, Chris.
Chris Parker: John, until next time.
Chris Parker: Welcome to AI and I. This is a new show where I am exploring the space between the dystopian views of the future and the tech optimist views of the future on the impact of AI really on myself and maybe my friends and family and children let’s call it humanity and I’m talking with John Sanei who is um one of the top futurists in the world. I have a number of of his books here. Future next, reimagining our world and conquering uncertainty. What’s your moonshot? Future proof yourself and your business in the age of exponential disruption. He is or was at least a faculty member of the Singularity University. And back in 2011 in Singularity University, I think that’s when I first got smacked straight in the face with the concepts of AI. And Singularity is a think tank. It’s an educational platform for people to explore those things that you know like exponential technologies like um green energy, AI, robotics. It was also a place where I sat in a in one of the early early Google Google cars and and realized that okay this there’s this is going to change this is going to change everything. So John and I are going to have a conversation about what this shift in our world can mean. And so I think what I’d like to kick it off with, John, is um AI has erupted in the last 18 months. It’s been around for a long, long time. It’s absolutely just exploded into our lives. What has really, I guess, shocked or surprised you about that? Like what has been like particularly fascinating for you in the last 18 months?
John Sanei: listening to Sam Altman who doesn’t know what the hell’s going on with his own product. That’s what’s been the most fascinating is to listen to the people who supposed to be guiding us through Pandora’s box being opened and the guys have opened up Pandora’s box are like I don’t know if you’ve seen that interview with Sam Alman they say what is the business model for um open AI he’s like we’re not quite sure yet but we’re waiting for AGI to come and then it’ll tell us what our business model is going to be. Oh my gosh. And so I think the most fascinating thing is that we’ve opened up Pandora’s box and uh because of the race between nations so that the nations have the most power we are moving and hurtling towards a really unknown future. And this is both very scary and very exciting depending on the type of consciousness that you have towards the topic. And this is really where my work has started to become really uh popular and I’m doing more and more talks around this because the technology itself is neutral just like anything in our reality. Our projection onto it is what makes it dystopian or makes it an incredible unlock. And the analogy that I use in my audiences is do you know the type of person you are when you come back from holiday? Do you remember that that Chris? You know that Chris that’s just come back from three weeks of holiday. He’s super relaxed. His nervous system is chilled. And then think about Chris who went on holiday and you realize that they’re very different Chrises. And the Chris that went on holiday had a dystopian view of AI and the Chris that came back from holiday has a lot more relaxed view of AI and is looking to explore AI in many different ways. And so my job has become the fact that if your consciousness, if your awareness, if your frequency, if the level of your behavior and perspective is optimistic about uncertainty, which can only come from a calm nervous system, AI is a fantastic tool. Fantastic. Never had a better one. If you are coming from a place of fear, anxiety, trepidation, unprocessed emotions, trauma that hasn’t been processed, you had an issue with governments, you had an issue with Bitcoin, you had a issue with blockchain, and now you have an issue with AI. Guess what? It’s just something else that you can have an issue with. So for me, it’s just the type of frequency and evolution of humanness that you have within you that determines what AI will do with you. Einstein had a great quote 120 years ago. He said, “The medicine of the future is the medicine of frequency.” What does he mean by that? He means that your diseases and your challenges are all based on your frequency. And your frequency is just another way to say your personality. And your personality is just another way of saying the way you think, act, and feel. And if neuroscience is proving to us that we have 90% of the same thoughts as we did yesterday because our brains have been trained to be familiarity machines, we are now stuck in a loop and then want to go on a dystopian like I don’t know warning people. But actually all you’re doing is regurgitating your own fear projected into the world and now you think everybody else is in the same boat as you. I watch keynote speakers at events that are totally fearful of AI and I’m watching them and they are totally fearful of all other things as well. So it’s not AI. They’re projecting that fear onto AI as well. So yes, is it scary? Absolutely. Is it going to rock the foundations of everything we know? Thank god it is. Who was happy in the world of industrial revolution which we were working six days a week nonstop couldn’t ever get a break. Make our millions still anxious. can’t get enough greed, can’t have enough. I mean, who was enjoying that trade? Nobody was. We just didn’t know how to get off it. And so, what I think AI is going to do is going to force us to be more human than ever before. Why? Because everything digital is going to move to zero. Everything. And the trajectory of digitization has shown us that we arrive at something called the zero marginal cost society. And what this means is that anything that’s digitized starts to get created for free and shared for free. That means that anything that you can do on your laptop will eventually be free. Meaning that what you have to focus on is in real life. In real life, you’ll start to make the value ad into the world. And the best way for you to come into in real life is not intellectually, but emotionally. You don’t need high intellect to engage with humans. You need high emotional intelligence to interact with humans. So, we’ve moved from an agricultural era that prioritized our muscles to an industrial era that prioritized our brains to an AI era that will prioritize our hearts. And the people that are shouting doomsday have not accessed their hearts.
Chris Parker: Let let me grab into so much that um frequency and be more human. Is being more human having a optimal frequency? Can you can you unpack that? Like are we go Sometimes I feel like as I’m doing my own self-work um deep selfwork. It’s not so much that I’m discovering things but remembering things you know it’s like like oh oh here it is you know I’m getting rid of all of this junk and getting connected more to self. And when you’re connected more to self, you know, for me at least the natural result has just been fear has has just fallen away. It’s a continuous journey. I’m not there yet. But what can you unpack this being authentically human and the the frequency or the vibration perspective?
John Sanei: So I think a lot of the times what we do when the word frequency or vibration comes into a conference hall into a corporate environment people glaze over right and they’re like no no no this is woo woo stuff and so let’s just understand what the neuroscience means. You cannot solve a problem from the same level of awareness that created it. The medicine of the future is the medicine of frequency. Awareness, frequency, personality, all the same thing. They’re all exactly the same thing. So, let’s focus away from the woowoo words and just focus on personality because we all have a personality. And you can’t call personality a woowoo. Then you have to dive deep into what is personality. Personality is made up of how you think, act, and feel. If you keep thinking and acting and feeling every day the same means that your personality doesn’t change which means your awareness doesn’t change which means your frequency doesn’t change which means you keep looping the same story and what then happens is because that loop becomes the familiarity that you have find comfort in even though you might not like it most probably you don’t like it as as the saying goes people become addicted to lives they don’t even like and so this is what’s happening is people start to defend the loop that they hate that they’re within and now I come to you and say to you, “Look, bro, you can’t actually solve tomorrow’s problems with the existing loop.” And you’re like, “Oh, that’s woo. Don’t tell me about woo. I’m just going to work harder. I’m going to get another degree and I can push further.” And my response is, “The future doesn’t require you to be smarter. It requires you to be more fluid. It requires you to be more adaptable.” And what adaptability actually means really and truly, what it means is to develop a brain that is happy to engage with things it doesn’t understand. It’s optimistic about uncertainty and subjects that it’s not familiar with. That brain requires us to think about how our brains are currently wired and how do we rewire them not for absolute outcomes and an addiction to certainty but for adaptability. And so we have hooked into the frequency of outcomes. This is the world of economies of scale. It’s got us addicted to net profits, profitability, efficiency over everything else. our own health, the health of our organization, salaries of our of our people, environment. We become so addicted to it that we have companies sitting inside boardrooms in Switzerland making calls for child slavery in Africa to get chocolate so that Nestle can make more money. I mean, think about the dynamic that has eroded our ability to see nature and humans as part of our decision-making process. And that’s all because of an addiction to certainty. So what is frequency? Frequency is this ability to be adaptable. And when you start to become adaptable, what starts to happen naturally is your frequency starts to rise. And as it starts to rise, you start to remember new things because all of it’s available. You just start to remember them from a higher level of frequency. And people that have got diseases, when they change frequency, the diseases fall away. This is Einstein’s work. This is not woo woo mumu. This is Einstein who gave us so much science but because we don’t understand it or have made woo woo ideas sort of like derogatory we don’t want to engage with it because it’s very difficult for us to let go of our identity to start to develop a new identity which is actually exactly what this is asking us to do is the identity we develop through based of intelligence and inner career has to elevate has to disintegrate for us to start connecting with our own genius our own fascination and allowing that to become the frequency to move us into the future because remember the currency of the future is not fitting into the system. The system itself is starting to implode. The currency of the future is your uniqueness and your genius and that start to lead you towards how you can add value to the world.
Chris Parker: Let me grab on some of this and and um since we last spoke I I’ve also published I have a book out lead from love with roommates. quite a while swimming in the ethos and the magic of Roomie, the 13th century Persian poet and mystic. And um what I took away from that was self-love as the place of starting and and there’s a lot of embracing the mystical, the unknown, the Yeah. the the unexpected um and from a place of of self appreciation love which gives you safety then it’s creates an yeah I guess the possibility to to to have that almost childlike curiosity of like oh what’s going to happen next is this is this where you’re is this what you’re talking about is is this is this the childlike because I absolutely believe like like I I play the volleyball ball still even though I’m 53 and and it’s so amazing. You just you get a group of humans in a space, you throw a ball on the ground and they will play. I think it’s like we are we are just programmed to play and I just absolutely love it. So my wish is you know AI creates the space where we can play again.
John Sanei: But of course it will. But you know Chris, it will for you and for people out there that think dystopian coming. Guess what? You know reality is so kind to us. It says yes to everything we want. It’s yo yo yo it’s it is going to dystopian. Yes, there we go. Now move towards North Korea and now you’re going to get caught up in a prison camp and yes oh dystopia told you it was going to be dystopia. So yes of course these are the magics of what we’re realizing about the world around us. This idea of loving yourself again a very woowoo idea that many exe and look I work with executives so I’ve got to be very careful with the words I use because I don’t want to glazed over executive team at PWC looking at me thinking I’m speaking you know some spiritual term but the truth is if you don’t love yourself you’re a miserable git because if you’re fighting with yourself inside yourself continuously guess what you’re doing with the rest of the world as well and I myself and like the rest of us have continuously had this internal dialogue of judgment, of not being good enough, of thinking other people don’t like us and putting our own voice into their voice and then projecting it back to us. There’s been so many nuance ways for us to prove to the world that the world doesn’t like us within ourselves, right? And so what I did is I uh learned a few different modalities and I put them together and it’s called the happy mayor game. And this is a game that helps you have a more peaceful internal dialogue. And it’s based on it’s based on uh if you’re the mayor of your um city and you want to keep your mayorship uh the thing you have to do is make sure you have peace between all your citizens. And if you have peace between all your citizens, your mayorship is safe and secure and everybody’s happy. You have a peaceful city. And so who are your citizens? Your citizens are the characters that you’ve developed between 6 and 15 years old to protect yourself when your emotional body wasn’t as strong as it is now. And these characters are still wide awake and alive. And every time something new arrives, they get very riled up and they arrive now to want to defend you. And what I’ve realized through this game, the thing to do is when one of these characters show up is to name it. And for example, um I have Marty the Martia and Marty the Martia likes to feel like a victim. And when he feels like a victim and I say he because the minute I start feeling like a victim and it’s become so much less now but Marty the Marty had a very very loud voice inside my head and the minute you name Marty you disassociate from the emotion. You realize it’s not you it’s an emotion. And then what you do is you remind Marty that you’re a 50-y old man and you don’t need this type of protection anymore. And you’re so appreciative of Marty coming and you get Marty to sit on your lap because he’s a version of you at 6 years old, 8 years old. And then you love Marty. You just love Marty. You hold Marty and guess what happens? Marty dissolves into you eventually and Marty’s gone. And Marty’s sting is gone. Now I can tell you I have dozens of characters. I have Shaky Sherwin who’s a scared guy. I have Courtney who takes myself to jail to court. I have Grizzly the judger of the world. And so every time these characters show up and they’re becoming less and less because once you’ve once you listen to them, allow them to think and voice themselves, remind them that you have got this all sorted, all of a sudden your internal dialogue becomes very peaceful because none of these characters think they need to come and defend you. And so now you start to think about AI in this format, Chris, and tell me what you think. You’re like, “Yes, man. Let’s go play.”
Chris Parker: Yeah. Well, let’s go. Well, I mean, what I’m hearing is um almost timeless and and this is what I adore about the conversation. These aren’t new fangled, you know, techniques. This is actually going back to the essence of humanity. Meaning, yes, we all have our parts in our in ourselves. Um, and those parts are there to protect us and and that’s their job, of course.
John Sanei: What is their job?
Chris Parker: Well, that Yeah, not present tense. Their job well that is their job, but it’s just no longer appropriate.
John Sanei: They’re they’re working in the wrong shop, you know, like Yeah. No, but they’re not even needed.
Chris Parker: No, their skill sets are their skill sets are from 20, 30, 40 years ago. And again, that’s coming down to that that inner peace, that inner calm, which then creates a space for that playful curiosity, which then makes a tool to have lots of fun with.
John Sanei: It’s internal dialogue that’s at war. AI is another thing to be at war at. You know, I’m speaking to a friend of mine who’s going through a divorce, and I was telling him, I was like, “Unfortunately, your wife would never be happy with no matter what comes. Your wife’s just not happy. you’re just another thing she’s not happy with. It’s just it’s okay. It’s like you can’t fix it. She has to fix it. And so this is the exact same thing. We are now using war and I see a lot of people be doing this. They use war to voice their own unsolved trauma.
Chris Parker: Vegans voice their unresolved sadness and anger in scolding people that eat meat. Yeah, people that are pro Palestine are doing that. Pro Israel are doing they’re just using all these tools around us because they’re fictitious tools to process and to shout out our own emotions. And guess what? AI it’s just the next one. Well, I I think we all have our traumas and and one of the things I believe deeply is is and and I discovered it again in in in the work with Roomie that what you give your attention to grows and what you give your energy to is what you become.
John Sanei: Exactly.
Chris Parker: And so, you know, on you know, so I’m curious if if there’s any tactics, you know, I I don’t think in in this short conversation we’re going to be able to to to instruct people how to get into a place of zen and self-love.
John Sanei: But meditation, I can tell you two two very clear things. Do trauma healing and do meditation because what trauma healing does, it cleans your past and meditation gives you ability to um rehearse your future. So if you’re not keening your past or rehearsing your future, you’re looping.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Let’s go into trauma healing like like I was okay…
John Sanei: mushrooms family constellations body healing kinesiology um uh raiki all of these things disassemble parts of your memory that have been stored in your body and your psyche and your heart. Nice. When you can start to unear them, you start to release the hooks that have created defense mechanisms inside you to then look at the future in defensive manners. When you unhook them, defense turns into optimism.
Chris Parker: Yeah, I think I’ve been down all those paths and and would uh would generally uh I’ve not done IASKA yet. It’s on it’s on the list. Um, how does that help? Because what I’ve heard with uh Iawaska is that that sort of like connects you to the the universe. what in your in your words, if you’re open to talking about it, like how has a psychedelic like that helped you on your journey?
John Sanei: Well, it takes you out of your current awareness. It changes your awareness, right? And you get an opportunity to look at your life from an objective point of view with the guide of mother Iwasa. And what she shows you is that many if not all of your memories are false. Yeah. And they are just rubbish stories that you have dramatized over the years. You know, your dad might have slapped you once, but now that it’s been 10 years, no, he beat me and it was even more dramatic than I ever made it. And so now my anger is very fueled by this deliberate subjective story that I’ve magnified. And what she does is she shows you that your memory is false. It’s actually not serving you. And what happens when she shows you that because you’re in an altered state and you’re in this very like theta brain stage, half awake, half asleep dream state, your subject is totally focused on the blueprints of your psyche. you’re accessing your subconscious patterning and when the minute you see that the second you see that you purge and the reason you’re purging is that your body cellular structure has been built on that memory and now that you become clear that that memory is false you have to let go of that cellular structure makeup and you will hurl and hurl and purge and the next morning you go look in the bucket there’s nothing in it so it’s just emotions And so it’s really just about a fast track to finding cleansing methodologies about your past. And many of the times you don’t even know that many of your psyche stories in your personality are based on deep deep falsehoods and she helps you unwind them.
Chris Parker: And let’s let’s turn the page to meditation. My my own work um I’ve been to uh Dr. Joe dispensa weekl long retreats a number of times and those are pretty they can be quite psychedelic in in in themselves even though there’s no actual you know chemicals involved because as they state there is is through these deep intensive you know sometimes fivehour long meditation moments you know in the middle of the night you know when your brain is in the right right mode and and also walking meditations is yeah I wouldn’t call it so sort of out of body But there was a a combination of release, of junk, of fear, of of ridiculousness. Looking back, you’re just like like what what um and then connecting into that into that future. And it’s um and through that work that I think that that’s what probably has made me the most comfortable with just pure ambiguity as well. It’s like because what is the future? You know, you said, you know, people are locked in these worlds of certainty. Um, but nothing is certain. I think that that is a lie, you know, because when people say, “Oh, I’ve got this job security.” Like, no, you don’t. You’ve got a paycheck next month and you have no idea what’s going to happen beyond that. So, so manage yourself accordingly. So, let me throw it back to you on on meditation. What does meditation mean to you?
John Sanei: Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love, she said, “Oh, darling, you never had control. You just had anxiousness.” Yeah. And so that’s what it is. It’s a false sense of control. And because you worried about it, a false sense of control is created because you’re worrying. Think about Middle Eastern moms and Jewish moms. They worry about their kids. And they think if they’re not worrying about their kids, they’re not being good mothers.
Chris Parker: And so you understand that that Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I was just um that worry about kids is one of the first things that that emerged from me is was was being from a uh um you you just said my memories are false, which is probably true, but um it wasn’t a typical childhood, shall we say?
John Sanei: And I and I’ve been carrying with myself. Um can can I ask what is a typical childhood and who ever even had a typical childhood?
Chris Parker: Because everybody like mine wasn’t wasn’t typical. I’m like, “Yeah, I mean, I got beaten. I know a lot of other people who got beaten, but anyway. Anyway, sorry. I don’t mean to I don’t mean to dismiss your past.
John Sanei: I’m just asking I mean the what I’ve also come to do is is adore my childhood, you know, meaning meaning the fact that um Well done, Chris.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Well, well, that’s power. That’s you changing your memory.
John Sanei: Yeah. No, it’s rewriting. reinterpreting and going from anger to you know what they were human they were doing the best they could this was nothing…
Chris Parker: exactly nothing nothing to do with me I think having having children help me embrace my parents so completely much like oh I get what’s going on so um going back to yeah go ahead…
John Sanei: Dr. Joe, I’ve been to 14 events. Wow. And I’m on my way to my next one, the 10day in Cancun, the 10day AFU. The first 10day AFU. Yeah. The advanced follow-up. Um I was at the last 10day in December as well. Um what I love about Dr. Joe is, and he doesn’t call them that, but I call him I call them that is they are active meditations. Yeah. They’re not mindfulness meditations. And mindfulness might be the first 20 or 30% of the meditation. But the rest and the 70% of the meditation is actively thinking about something that you want to create in your brain patterning which is rehearsing your future. And so for me, Dr. Joe doesn’t really talk about healing your past. And he even thinks that healing your past is quite a rubbish thing because if you just really wire your brain, your past kind of fades away anyway. Yeah. But I think um the combination for me has worked really well. But exactly like Dr. Joe does, I’ve created a range of meditations I call rapid rehearsal and they 15minute active meditations for people with ADHD and I’ve themed them into things we want in our lives. And the first one is called $10 million. And it was really brought about by a friend of mine talking about him going to a meeting that he was feeling a little bit anxious about. And I said to him, I said, “What would it feel like if you’re walking into this meeting with $10 million?” And he totally relaxed his body. I said, “Okay, what is that emotions that you’re feeling now that you’re super relaxed?” And we came to the conclusion that there’s five emotions you would feel if you had $10 million. Victory, safety, freedom, gratitude, and confidence. Now, if you rehearsse those five emotions every morning, every afternoon, and every dinner, guess what’s going to happen to you? You have rehearsed yourself into having that level of access and abundance. The next one’s called the kiss on the shoulder, which is about how do you develop a relationship that has your partner kiss you on the shoulder for no reason whatsoever. And the next one’s called living in an athletes body. Is what does it feel like to be an athlete? and I’ll start creating these and I want them to be 15inute rapid rehearsals into your future self but with a very different angle to Dr. Joe. You know, I’m a Dr. Joe fanboy inside out. And I think that there’s a bridge between my corporate clients and Dr. Joe and I’m playing that bridge. I’m trying to create that corporate idea to release it, dissolve it, to start to access a type of consciousness that allows them to solve new problems. But I dare not use the word consciousness. I use lateral creativity. I dare not use connected to self. I call it connected to your most innovative version of your…
Chris Parker: Why do you dare not with these terms?
John Sanei: What what is the because corporates are allergic to any of these woowoo woke ideas. And my I wrote I wrote a chapter called the future of food will never be determined by angry vegans. And what you got to realize is that vegans have got it wrong. Angry vegans have got it wrong. I used to be a vegan. I used to be an angry vegan. And I was more if I was really worried about animals, I would inspire you to change and I would invest all my money in lab grown meat because what I want to do is I want to inspire you to see something new and I want to give you a convenient um option as quickly as possible. But no, no, no. I’m going to be angry and scold you, which means that I’m not really worried about animals. I’m much more worried about expressing my emotion. So when I go in front of corporates, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to express myself or am I trying to change behavior? I’m trying to change behavior. So, what I’ve got to do is I’ve got to ambush you without you realizing what I’m doing to you. By the time you realize that you’ve agreed to everything I’ve said, now you’ve agreed that you need to be more conscious. I just called it lateral creativity.
Chris Parker: Love it. I took a little different path and I and I and I reflected often on this like lead from love. Um and it’s a leadership book. um it’s not for everyone and I agree with you. Sometimes it’s very off-putting for some people. Um however, there’s other people that are maybe closer to the topic. They’re like, “Well, what do you mean by that then?” And and for me, this is this is where the the invitation starts. So, grabbing this back to the the concept of AI. What I um love about this is we spoke so little about technology and that and for me that is I think this is the truth of this is this isn’t about the tech. This isn’t about, you know, Sam Alman, whatever he’s doing, and, you know, these big names that are espousing stuff that they have no idea because what is the future anyways? um looking into healing trauma. So doing the work which is good in any case and doing the meditation in order to discover and craft you know intentionally your future and have some of these rapid meditations and things from your from yourself. Um, this is good news anyways. And if you and if you’re doing this work and you’re walking in life through life in in your power in your in your positive self, going back to the the frequency and the vibration, if if you’re optimizing and raising your frequency and therefore, I think attracting other people near you that are of the similar frequency. Um cuz sometimes when I’m when I’m really vibing high it’s like it’s like I was like what you know I can’t even be distracted with negativity at that point. Sometimes you have a funk of course when you attract all sorts of other junk into your life. Um this is this is let let me just this is your advice on how to make I don’t it’s not even related to AI then just the best possible life I suppose.
John Sanei: It’s like my work is about a huge huge dose of responsibility. Your personal responsibility to evolve your humanness. And if you a a great sign that you’re not evolving your humanness is if you’re complaining.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Yeah. Great. That’s it. Um Yeah. in this raging against the machine. It’s it’s um um it just feeds the machine.
John Sanei: It feeds the machine. People that are anti-Israel, people that are anti-Palestine, people are they’re just feeding the machine. They don’t realize what they’re doing. When you share all your social media posts about the terror that’s going on there, you’re feeding the terror. You’re not solving the solution. You’re not bringing a solution. So, I had this discussion with my ex-girlfriend and she was very, very fiercely angry with Israel about Palestine. And I said, “I get it. I agree. It’s not cool what they’re doing. But by your every Instagram post beating about the war, you’re not actually bringing a solution to my table. You’re sharing your your anger.” So we I helped us set up something called turning the table, which is about having dinners around the world that raise money for the children of Palestine. channel that anger into an uplifting program and benefit the outcome that you’re looking for. Stop beating the drum of pain. You’re just helping Israel. And if you’re Israeli, you’re helping. It doesn’t matter. It’s actually irrelevant. Whichever side you’re on, it’s irrelevant.
Chris Parker: And so I I think to unpack this and and we’re we’re way over time than than I was hoping to, but I can’t stop engaging with you on this. So, thank you on this. Um there will never be a perfect world either because I think there are people that I think this is just the natural reality of humanity that some people at a moment are on a lower vibe and some people are on a higher vibe and and they will be creating different realities.
John Sanei: And something else I remember always remember that the future is a plural word. It’s futures.
Chris Parker: It’s not what is the future.
John Sanei: Yeah. What are the futures that I can access? Unpack it further. There’s multiple futures. How many timelines are there that you can access? An infinity number.
Chris Parker: Okay. Yeah.
John Sanei: Do you know that this Dr. Joe 99.999% is pregnant with potential? Where you accessing your focus and energy? And guess what? If you don’t meditate, you don’t have the power to focus your energy. Because that’s what meditation, all meditation is doing is helping you channel your lifegiven energy. And what I tell my audience is if you can’t stop thinking about a problem that you have, you are obese in your thinking process. You’re unfit in your thinking process. If you can start to focus on what you want to focus on, now you have fitness. And when you have fitness, you can start to direct your life force. Otherwise, you can’t. Otherwise, you’re playing a fool’s game.
Chris Parker: Wow. I I was going to um a slightly different direction, meaning something’s happened, right? Okay, you know that okay, you know, we have this book in front of us and the different futures are somebody could look at this and say, well, this is absolute rubbish. What’s your moonshot? What’s a moonshot anyways? Okay, what you know who who is this jerk? You know, but the book is still real. Or someone could see this and say, “Oh, that’s interesting. What is a moonshot? There’s a moon on it. It’s a lovely yellow.” And then and embrace it. So I think there’s the the futures there’s infinite futures for me and you to create and everybody. Um and I think there’s also an infinite futures in in in just having a perspective on reality because there is a war here and there’s a war there and how are you emotionally engaging in that in a positive way and not feeding the machine. John, if people want to welcome you into their space into their corporate space and they want to have a confronting, authentic, positive, maybe less woo conversation than this because I think we we we were a bit uh uh authentic here which I love. Um they can go to johnson.com. Um and I got I guess two questions for you. what in this space and you’ve written a number of books. Um perhaps the book who do we become would be that would that be the best place for someone to start to snack on this to to take your insights or would you recommend they go a different direction?
John Sanei: I to be honest with you out of all the books it really depends which one calls you. Yeah. They’ve all been written for different reasons. Um so yeah, who do we become is a very valid question. It’s not about the future. It’s who are you becoming through the process of transformation. I have a new book coming out called Future Memories is really about developing your life based on where you’re going rather than where you’ve been. And so we you sit in that dichotomy. You know, most of us are just repeating where we’ve been. We’re not actually focused on where we’re going. And so it really depends wherever you want to pop in uh any one of those books, my podcast, the expansive or book me for a keynote or a master class. All of it’s really based on how do we simplify the future, elevate our awareness, and restructure our organizations and our thinking. All of it. No matter at what touch point you you access me.
Chris Parker: Yeah. Perfect. And those mini meditations um are those available on the website.
John Sanei: On the website. Yes, they’re all on the website under meditations. You can download for free $10 million and the bridge. Those are two different types of meditations. And then the new ones are all starting to get uploaded now over the next sort of couple weeks.
Chris Parker: Outstanding. John. I thank you so much. I was II’m navigating um and I have to admit with some uncertainty and confusion because my world as a tech leader is just collapsing. It’s just for collapsing under this AI stuff. And I see there’s so much potential and beauty and creativity and and opportunity for humanness. And this is why I’ve created this new platform really just to to to snack, eat, share, and explore. So John Sanei, you can find him at johnsonai.com. Thank you so much, John. This is awesome.
John Sanei: My pleasure, Chris.
Chris Parker: John, until next time.
