John Demartini: 7 Secret Treasures

Our interview of Dr. John Demartini for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere. John is a human behavior specialist, an educator, an author of over 40 self-help books, including the recently released The 7 Secret Treasures: A Transformational Blueprint For a Well-Lived Life.

Dr. Demartini shares his incredible journey from being a self-described “long-haired hippie surfer that lived on the streets” who couldn’t read until the age of 18, to being a sought-after motivational speaker and author of over 200 books—the self-help books are just the beginning!

This is a fun interview, learning about John’s world travels (he lives on a cruise ship) and the experience and wisdom he has gleaned along the way.

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A transcript of the episode follows:

Jon Pfeiffer:
I am joined today by Dr. John Demartini. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. John Demartini:
Well thank you for having me.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So your bio lists you as a human behavior specialist, an educator, an author of over 40 books, and that you're a sought after authority on maximizing human awareness and potential. Okay. That's a lot to live up to right there. So we'll dig into some of the other details. But first I want to get, where did this path start? What's your origin story?

Dr. John Demartini:
Boy, a brief version. I had learning challenges as a child, a speech impediment and didn't read until I was 18.

I was a long-haired hippie surfer that lived on the streets and hang out in Huntington Beach, California, where the surf was and down in Mexico. And I eventually made my way to Hawaii at 15. So I left home at 13. And nearly died at 18.

And in the recovery of that I met a gentleman named Paul C. Bragg, who's a longevitist. And he inspired me one night to believe that maybe I could overcome my learning problems and someday become intelligent.

So that night was the beginning. In fact, it's in two weeks, less than two weeks, a week and a half from now it'll be 50 years.

So, 50 years ago, I had a dream to learn how to read, learn how to write, learn how to speak properly, become intelligent, become a teacher, and do what I can to help other people overcome their challenges. And so that's where it all started at age 17 on the north shore of Oahu in a Sunset recreation hall, Kamehameha Highway, one night.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So, that's actually a great story.

And you have a new book and we'll get to that in a second, The 7 Secret Treasures: A Transformational Blueprint For a Well-Lived Life. But I want to hit first the social media aspect of this because you are active on Instagram, 90,000 followers. You have 1.8 million YouTube views, you have a blog, you have a podcast, you have a website with a ton of free resources.

So the flip question is, where do you get the time?

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I do four things, teach, research, write and travel. I live on a ship that travels around the world. So I've been there living there for 21 years, and I just circumnavigate the earth and do teach, research and write. So I do that seven days a week. People ask me why do I do it? And I said, "Because I can, I found out that I could when I was 18."

Jon Pfeiffer:
So when you say a ship, tell me about this ship.

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I live on a ship called The World. It's a condominium, private condominium ship that 100 of us own and we circumnavigate to navigate the world with it. If you look up The World Residences at Sea, it's a private ship. And I've been living on there since 2001, since 9/11.

Jon Pfeiffer:
As one of the... you said 100, 200 people live on there?

Dr. John Demartini:
There's 100 people that actually own that ship. We divide that ship. It's a-

Jon Pfeiffer:
How do you decide where you go?

Dr. John Demartini:
We just vote. We just decide, we go, we got a whole system for all that. We have 309 staff and we have a hundred of us that live there. And we just decide where we want to go and have expeditions and adventures and a whole lot of education on there. A lot of Nobel Prize winners come on and other speakers come on there. So we learn, adventure and philanthropize.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So you obviously have... Because we talked about it earlier with the 40 books, you've done a lot of writing. So in your time on the ship and before you did a lot of writing, tell me what motivates you in how you pick your topic.

Dr. John Demartini:
Well actually the 43 books that are out, the self-help books are just a small part of my writing. I've written probably 300 books. I'm just finishing up 1,100-page textbook on astrophysics and another one on quantum physics. So I'm writing about different topics, nonstop and whatever inspires me, I write about it, and it seems like I have an audience out there for pretty well whatever inspires me.

And so anything to do with maximizing human awareness, potential or the involvement of human consciousness or mastery of life is what I've been interested in. And my primary objective is education. That's why I have so much I just give to people out there in education. That's the primary objective. I have been blessed to be fortunate financially from speaking all these years because I do 300 to 400 speeches every year and about this year, about 4-500 podcasts. And I write articles every week, 44 week made probably. So I'm constantly in the teach, research and write mode. I've delegated everything else away. I haven't cooked since I was 24, haven't driven a car in 32 years. I got my own pilot and captain and chauffeurs and all that.

I have delegated everything so I can teach, research, write and travel the world. So everything else is off my plate. So I got a lot of people are bogged down with other things. I don't have a lot of that. I have people to shop for me, I have people to do everything.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I mean, you said you haven't driven forever. And how did you decide that that's what you wanted to do was teach, research and write? I mean, when did you come to that realization?

Dr. John Demartini:
At 17. I had a vision I guess that night of me standing in front of a group of people being intelligent. And so I set out a goal to first learn how to read. I started on with the help of a dictionary and I started memorizing 30 words a day until my vocabulary was strong enough where I could read. I didn't read until I was 18.

So then I grew my vocabulary and then grew my ability to read. And then I started reading encyclopedias and dictionaries and I just started sharing it. And now I've been blessed to read over 300 different disciplines and write about them. So I'm a polymath. And I love learning and I love sharing whatever I learn and anything that has inspired myself that I think might inspire other people I share.

And somebody out there, there's enough people out there that want I guess watch it and see it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now I got to stop you cause I saw the word polymath in your bio. I looked it up, to be honest with you. What is a polymath?

Dr. John Demartini:
Well polymath is somebody who's delved into many, many fields and somewhat mastered many fields.

When I was 18, I wanted to understand what Paul Bragg called a universal law. And I wanted to build a foundation of knowledge that was substantial. And so I figured that a universal law would be something that I could apply at all scales of study. From the quantum scale all the way to the astronomical scale. Each wavelength of study has got a different term, whether it be quantum physics or nuclear physics or atomic physics or whether chemistry or biochemistry or molecular chemistry or whatever.

These are gradually larger systems until you eventually get into geology and atmospheric studies and then out into the solar system. And so I was looking for laws and principles that would stand the test of time for each discipline. So I made a list of every known discipline out of the encyclopedia and then made a commitment to read at least a hundred books in each of these disciplines and then to be able to compile principles from them that would apply to human behavior.

One of the texts that I'm right now is the correlation between the human psychology and optics and physics, because there's a massive amount of correlations that most people don't realize, and laws that apply to human behavior. So that's the reason I'm interested in that. It's all related to human behavior.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So if someone were just new to you, new to what you teach, where would they start to go down this path?

Dr. John Demartini:
Most people will watch a YouTube, maybe go to my website, maybe do the value determination process, which is a complementary little exercise they can do. And then start maybe reading some articles out of the media, because there's probably thousands in there. And then they may just move around and let their mind go to YouTube videos or whatever.

And then if they want, they may want to come to a seminar that I do that's live. The one that's most signature is the Breakthrough Experience. I've done it 1,161 times. And so some people come to that, but I have 80-something courses that I teach and they go up to three weeks long. So there's all different courses that I'm involved in for people that want to go to whatever level of education they want to do.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Tell me again the name of the signature course that you just said.

Dr. John Demartini:
The Breakthrough Experience. That's the one that I've probably known the most for.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And tell us about that.

Dr. John Demartini:
Well that was the course... The night I met Paul Bragg. He lectured or presented and inspired me so much, that I thought that maybe I could learn to read and become intelligent. And I thought, "Wow, it would be great to be able to do a presentation that would be able to inspire people to believe in things they may not have believed they could do so they could achieve more in their life or fulfill more of their life."

I divide life into seven areas. We got a spiritual quest, an intellectual quest, a business quest, financial quest, family, social, physical quest.

So anything to do with maximizing those I've tried to uncover to try to give people knowledge that would help them in those areas, whatever areas they want to go and develop and also want to help people if they want to master all of them, something that would help them in all of those areas. So my book, the 7 Secret Treasures is a vignette, a simple fast reading book filled with information and practical that they could do to help assist in expanding and powering those areas.

That's it. I wanted to master my life when I was 18, I watched David Carradine on Kung Fu, you probably remember that from the early '70s.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yeah, his father was a scout leader with my son.

Dr. John Demartini:
Well he had a Shaolin... In the movie, in the show, a Shaolin Master. And I thought, I want to be a master. So I said I want to understand mastery. So anything to do with mastering shields, mastering anything I was fascinated by. So I just love learning and I do it every day and I try to edit and type and write and I've written for lots of magazines and newspapers and you name it, I just write all the time.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So this is the perfect transition into your new book because it is The 7 Secret Treasures and I assume it's follows the seven points that you just talked about. And tell me how you determine the order of which ones to present in what order?

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I created a circle, with spirituality at the top. Spirituality is not necessarily religious, it's just what inspires you, what intrinsically, spontaneously are you inspired by in your life? And that could be raising a family, that could be an entrepreneurial business, that could be a pole vaulter, an Olympic medalist, it could be academic, whatever inspires you is the top one. Then comes the mental capacities and mental skills and talents that it takes to fulfill that. Then to try to figure out a way of doing what you love that inspires you in a way that remunerates you. So you have a vocation equaling your vacation, you're doing what you love and getting paid for it.

Most people have a Monday morning blues, Wednesday hump days, thank God it's Fridays and week-frigging-end, and they don't have their vacation vocation join together. I was blessed to do that, and be fortunate doing what I love.

And then the next one is to manage the finances that you earn and then have the next one is family, making sure that once you have a substance there, you have something to share with somebody because possibly procreate, family, children, things of this nature.

And then social influence, to be able to make some sort of contribution to the world. I think we want to make a difference and make a legacy of some form. What is that? And the other one is physical vitality and handsomeness and beauty. And I think that it goes around the wheel that way.

I don't want to make it only that way, but I polarized it into productivity and reproductivity. The mental, vocational and financial were typically in underdeveloped countries, the masculine side, the testosterone side and the family, social and physical health and beauty was typically the feminine side.

So I divided those into the two categories, not that is a hard thing because in developing countries it's more androgynous today. But in the underdeveloped countries, those were the two poles. So I saw that our inspiration is the synthesis of the male and female androgyny of those two poles. That's why I laid them out that way.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And then, I want to ask you about a couple of the topic. I mean I can ask about all of drill down on a couple of them. One is to find and do what you love. And you've touched on that just a second ago. How if, because I teach a class at Pepperdine, it's the communications college. And what is universally true is there are a lot of students that don't know what to do with their lives. And I teach juniors and seniors, so they're at the stage that they're almost ready to enter the world and they don't know what to do. What advice would you give somebody in that position?

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I've been fascinated by that and in Tokyo, many of the universities use my value determination process for that, for guidance in the counseling process there. Every human being-

Jon Pfeiffer:
Before we let that go, before we let that go, there is on the website...

Dr. John Demartini:
Value determination.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yes, yes. Talk that a second and then I'll let you answer the question that I originally asked.

Dr. John Demartini:
I was going to do them together. So, every human being, regardless of age, gender, culture, lives moment-by-moment by an evolving hierarchy of values or set of priorities they live their life by, that is impacting their perception, decisions and actions, therefore their behavior.

Whatever's highest on that value hierarchy is an intrinsic value that they're spontaneously inspired to fulfill. A young boy who loves video games doesn't need to be motivated by the father or the mother says, now go, Johnny, go do your video game. He just spontaneously does it. But he might have to be on something lower his values, which is extrinsic, he might have to be motivated and punished or rewarded in order to get him to do the ones, like clean his room.

So whatever's highest on our value is where we spontaneously are most fluent and most congruent with what we feel is our identity.

So if you ask that young boy who love video games, who are you? He says, "I'm a video master."

If you talk to me, who am I? I'm a teacher, because that's my highest value. But a woman who's got three kids under the age of five who's 35 and her focus is mothering, she'll say, "I'm a mother," whatever your hierarchy of values as the top value, your ontological identity revolves, around your epistemological pursuit of knowledge revolves around, and your teleological feeling of a mission revolves around it.

So identifying that first is where we've got the most intrinsic drive and we'll, we tend to build the most walking of our talk. We're most spontaneously active, we're most resilient and adaptable. We have the greatest patience and endurance and resilience in the pursuit of something in that direction. That's where we excel the most.

So, first finding that out... In Tokyo, we started utilizing that tool in guidance counseling and narrowing down the value determination for the young people.

And the guidance counselor said, this is vastly different. Because now they know where they're going. They've given themselves permission to go after what's intrinsically driving them, instead of what their mom and dad is expecting. Most people are subordinate to mothers, father's, preachers, teachers, conventions, traditions and mores instead of giving themselves permission to honor what's intrinsically driving them so they can excel without the resistance.

Otherwise they have... Every time we subordinate to outer authorities, we inject some of those values and cloud the clarity of what we feel our calling and mission is in life and giving ourselves permission to pursue that mission is where we stand out, not just fit in. That's where we make the greatest difference. And that's where we have the greatest vitality to pursue it and the greatest epistemological understanding to give us competitive advantage.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So if you were a college junior or senior or if you're the parent of a college, junior or senior, and they're floundering. That's where you would have them start is just-

Dr. John Demartini:
I would start there. And then I would ask, okay, that's what you would love to do. That's what you spontaneously do on a daily basis, that nobody has to remind you to do. In the brain, there's evoked potentials which come from sensory input that can in some receptors and go up the spinal cord and go up to the thalamus and eventually get to the corona radiata and then to the cortex. And those are called evoked potentials in the brain.

And then there's spontaneous potentials that they don't see coming from any sensory input that are spontaneously, intrinsically driven. And these are the ones that are the ones that are spontaneous. These are the least effort and first asking, what is it I would love to do? And then how do I get handsomely paid to do that? And who can I serve with that talent and skill and narrow that down, and now people will do what they love and get paid for it.

And it does... It's not necessarily the easiest answer. And the primary reason why is because of the conflict between the rejection from parents and people around them. Many people are frightened to admit what they really want to do because they think, "Well, will I be intelligent enough to do it? Will I be able to make any money doing it? Will I fail at it? What will people think? Will I lose loved ones over it? Will people reject me? Do I have the stamina, the looks to do it? Am I going to break a moral and ethical, if I do it?" And they block what it is that they intrinsically would love to do?

Jon Pfeiffer:
And then how much of this, if a young person's identified what they truly want to do, but there's no path to making that a way to make a living.

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I've not seen a pursuit that doesn't have a path.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Okay-

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I've seen people who start out with that thought, very common. But can I share a very interesting story?

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yes, please. Well, what I'm doing is I'm kind of pushing back on what I'm a parent, the things that I hear other parents telling their children.

Dr. John Demartini:
Yeah. Well, I had a lady that was attending the Breakthrough Experience Program 20 something years ago and she was 29 years old, and she had got a master's, a bachelor's degree I think, and was doing a bit of jobs here and there. And I asked her, "What is it you would absolutely love to do in life?"

And she goes, "I don't know."

I said, "No, no, no. What is it you would absolutely love to do in life? I mean, just if there's no bars, no resistance, nothing stopping you, what would you do?"

And she said, "Well, I'd love to play with my dog. I love spending time with my dog."

And I said, "Fantastic." I said, "Next question, write that down. How can you get handsomely and beautifully paid to spend time with your dog?" Don't ever... it's not wise to ever ask, how can I afford to do what I love?

That's spending of money to do it instead of making of money to do it. So I said, how could you get handsomely and paid to do that? And she goes, "I have no idea."

I said, "Answer the question, get accountable. Look."

"I don't know."

"Look again."

"My dog's cute. Maybe if I walk my dog, people will take a picture of it and want take a picture, and I could charge them for it."

I said, "Great. What are the highest priority actions you could do to move in a direction of making that happen? And she started writing down the actions she could do to make that possible." And went, "So what obstacles might you run into and how do you solve those in advance with foresight, using the forebrain."

We came up with some things, and we went through seven questions and then all of a sudden, she left the program. On the following day, on a Monday she lived in New York, she decided to take her dog for a walk.

She goes down to the Philosopher's pathway on the little benches on the side with the trees in New York and to go down to where the fountain is by the boathouse. And all of a sudden somebody comes up, and this is before the iPhones, this is where they had yellow cameras, you know, platinum paper.

And somebody comes up and says, "I'd like to take a picture of your chihuahua." She has a beautiful little chihuahua. And she said, "well that'll be $5." She never, ever charged. But that day she said, "It'll be $5." Three people asked her, one person paid, she made five bucks, she walked home. She said, "You earned your keep today" as she's walking her dog home, she then went back and sat down in the edge of a closet, rummaged through a closet and found some red elastic material. And [inaudible 00:22:49] that goes between his legs and his foot paws and then got some black elastic strip for some sunglasses that she found and she attached sunglasses to his head, and put a red thing on him and then practiced walking up on his hind feet.

And then she went down the next day to walk the dog. And this time not one, she got three people to pay her five bucks. And she thought, "Okay, I'm actually making a little profit on you now, you're paying more than you're costing." So then she decided, "I'm going to get more creative outfits to put on the dog to get more likely for him to get one of big pictures and I'm going to get it topical, based on Christmas or whatever the time of the year is."

And more people started asking for it. And she got that thing up to about $125 a tour on a walk. People were paying five bucks. She got a card made, "I'm his agent." Agent for dog, made a model out of the dog, his name was Eli.

Then a guy saw her cleaning up and taking pictures and was eating a sandwich or something and was watching her and he comes up to her and he says, "I'm in the marketing business. I think I might be able to use your dog as a mascot on a commercial."

And she said, "Well, here's my card. I'm his agent. Let me have your card and we'll chat." Well the Milk-Bone Dog Biscuit Company signed a deal that gave her 2.2 million for talking and walking the dog.

Well she started putting outfits You on YouTube, you can find her on there, not YouTube, but on images under her name. You'll see this. The dog got two other deals, which is worth millions. Then she ended up getting a Mommies and Doggies show a television show out of it. And the dog became more famous than Gidget from the Taco Bell dog and was at the Academy Awards, Global Awards, you name it.

And this is about six years ago, I got a final letter from her. She says, "I'm retiring Eli, finally. I have 25 million net from earning from this dog. That means after cost and after taxes, almost 10 million we've earned from this dog. Thank you for those questions."

So you're not going to convince me that you can't find a way of linking whatever you would love to do to something that would meaningful that is serves and fulfills another human being. There is always a way of connecting.

Jon Pfeiffer:
If somebody reads your new book, will they be guided through this process that they can do the same thing?

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, I'm not going to say that they're going to be guided to go get a dog and go manage-

Jon Pfeiffer:
No!

Dr. John Demartini:
Although I know some people have tried now. But yes, those questions are there. And how to learn according to values, how to be engaged at work and be productive according to values and how to lead and management and sell and negotiate according to values and how to communicate values and how to shift values to change directions.

There's a lot of practical things in there. How to lead by values, how to communicate in relation to the values, how to live by the highest values and be inspired. There's a lot of practical action steps that are simple that people can do that can enhance the seven areas of their life. There's no doubt about it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So I want to ask you, and we touched on it before we started recording, how are you determine, because there's so much free content that you put out there by the blog, the podcast, the YouTube videos, the Instagram. How do you draw the line on what you put out for free versus what you charge for?

Dr. John Demartini:
I just constantly put out information and I still have seminars that I charge for it. And I've been blessed. I find people that come to the seminars and I find... the other is a way of reaching people that I probably would never reach.

When COVID came, I was speaking 325, 340 times a year in different parts of the world. I've spoken to 181 countries right now, and I've got another one coming up in Israel.

So I'm busy. I don't have a lack of business or lack of economics or anything like that. I'm busy serving people. I always say that if you're innermost dominant thought is your clients, their innermost dominant thought becomes your business.

So I just do that and I give out a lot of service.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So COVID is clearly still around, but it's not what it was. Are you back on the speaking tour and have you noticed a difference in attendance because of COVID?

Dr. John Demartini:
I'm still doing a lot online, a lot online still, but I'm doing a little bit more. I'm starting to do live ones. I have a live one this weekend. I had a live one Wednesday night. I got a live one in Israel. I've got one in Turkey coming up in about a week or so, week and a half.

So it's picking up, but there's a lot of people still want certain ones that I do online. And then there's other ones like the Breakthrough Experience, people Ready for Life events again. But some of my more advanced courses, they love online. They've got the comfort of their own home.

So I think I'm going to probably do a little bit more live and a few less online or maybe just the same number online and do a few more live. I'm a workhorse, I love teaching.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So I want shift it to a couple personal questions. What is your guilty pleasure?

Dr. John Demartini:
My guilty pleasure.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Your guilty pleasure.

Dr. John Demartini:
I don't know what that would mean. I don't have-

Jon Pfeiffer:
I mean some people, it's like watching reality shows or it's eating chocolate, or what's the thing that when people look at you, they wouldn't expect that that's one of the things you do.

Dr. John Demartini:
I don't eat chocolate, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I don't have regrets, I don't have guilts. I don't think about that. That doesn't even cross my mind. So I just teach, research and write. I just do what I love every day. I always say if you fill your day with things that are inspiring to you, it doesn't fill up with things that aren't. So I don't have any regrets I can think of. I'd have to dig deep and try to find some.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So as a teacher, and you've been doing this a lot of years.

Dr. John Demartini:
50 years.

Jon Pfeiffer:
First, who's your target audience? Who do you, I mean, I know it's the world, but if you could pick a group to attend one of your talks and it would just be that group, who would you pick?

Dr. John Demartini:
I speak to children, I speak to leaders. I'm speaking to five Israeli leaders here in just a few days. I've spoken to government leaders, I spoken to corporates, I've spoken to general audiences.

I guess you could say that probably the young, 30 to 50 year old, soon to be leading entrepreneurs that are ready to go out and make a change in the world would probably be the ones that are most inspiring that have dreams to live and accomplishments that want to go do something amazing on the planet. That's probably the most inspiring audiences that I get.

But I reach out to... I mean speak at schools, I'll speak at prisons. I've spoken in governments, kids at school, I've spoke to five to 12 year olds, a thousand of them recently.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Where was that?

Dr. John Demartini:
Calgary, Canada. And that was such an inspiration. Little five-year-olds on the floor, I got down on the floor with them and everything else and they think I'm a weirdo, but that's part of the game.

But you're a professor. So you know what it means to see light bulbs go on in young people, you know that's like. You know how it brings a tier of inspiration to you when you can say something you've learned and share it and they can take off and go do something amazing with it.

That is absolute inspiration, still to this day. So I rarely turn down an opportunity to share.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So I have my second to last question for you. What question should have I asked you that I didn't ask?

Dr. John Demartini:
I don't know. You did a great job. I don't know. I have no idea what I always say. If you compare your current reality to what you should have done or wished to have done or whatever, you don't appreciate the moment. So I'm grateful for the questions. I don't have any comparison.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And then actually I lied. That was my third to last. Second to last is where can people find your books? Where's the best-

Dr. John Demartini:
Well, on Amazon you can get them on Amazon and I'll probably, any book distributing system is probably out there and it's online by G&D publishing, also.

But just if you go on and type in Dr. Demartini or The 7 Secret Treasurers, I'm sure you can find the book and I appreciate it because I believe that if you get the book, we both win. If you don't, neither one of us win.

Because I believe that the information will be valuable to you and you'll get an insight and inspiration from it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And then the last question, and this is always... People laugh when I ask the last question, but where can people find you on the internet? Where's your website?

Dr. John Demartini:
Just drdemartini.com. D-R. Demartini is D-E-M-A-R-T-N-I.com, drdemartini.com. And I believe you'll find a few references to me if you just type in "Demartini," you'll catch me.

Jon Pfeiffer:
As someone who did research on you over the weekend, that is true.

Dr. John Demartini:
Yeah, I looked up my name and it had 1.5 billion references, so I think there's a few out there.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So thank you. This has been great.