Training the Brain: How I Rewired My Mind When Life Fell Apart

By: Neo Positivity
FDC 2026 Speaker

In 2008, I was a single father raising two kids on my own. I was a police officer in what was statistically the most dangerous city in America. I have seen things most people only see in movies. Homes that smelled of despair. People whose eyes had given up. Situations where life and death could trade places in an instant. I have been shot at, spit on and cursed at. I had seen the worst of humanity and still had to put on a uniform and go back out the next day.

No amount of danger compared to the internal war I was fighting at home. My department had illegally stopped paying me, and I had no savings left. Three to four nights a week, I ate at other people’s houses. On the nights I didn’t, dinner was a one-dollar bowl of white rice from the Chinese takeout and a one-dollar chili from Wendy’s. My sister had just passed away. My life wasn’t just hard. It was collapsing in slow motion. Every direction I turned, something was missing. Money, peace, love, energy or hope.

Then one night, I saw “The Secret.” The phrase “Thoughts Become Things” flashed across the screen, and it hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. That one line filled in the missing puzzle pieces of my entire life. It made everything make sense. For the first time, I realized that if my thoughts had helped me attract the mess I was in, then maybe I could think my way out.

Believing that wasn’t as easy. For Oprah to say “I’m rich” ten times is easy because she is rich. When someone who is broke, broken and buried under depression tries to say it, the egoic mind kicks back like a heavyweight fighter. Every time I tried to think a happy thought, the ego would punch me in the stomach with a voice saying, “You’re lying to yourself. Look at your life.”

That’s when I realized I couldn’t just copy what others said in books or movies. I had to create my own mental exercises, designed for someone standing where I was, in the middle of chaos, fear and doubt. I had to learn how the ego works, why it does what it does, and how to work with it instead of fighting against it.

I started to picture every thought as a drop of water. Each day, I had 65,000 of them. Some were watering the flowerpots of gratitude, faith, and love. Others were watering fear, resentment and lack. At the end of the day, whichever pots got the most water were the ones that grew. If I wanted to change my life, I would have to change which pots I was watering.

That realization changed everything. I began training my brain, which I still say is the hardest occupation a man can have, according to both science and religion. I learned that morning rituals set the tone. Exhaling longer than you inhale can calm the brain and reset your emotions. That gratitude and self-affirmation are not just feel-good fluff, they are software updates to your brain’s operating system.

Most importantly, I realized that proactive thinking, the stuff we consciously say and affirm, was only a small part of the equation. More than 94% of our thoughts are on autopilot. Those in-between thoughts, the ones we don’t notice, were steering the ship. So that became my focus, changing the autopilot.

And once that happened, everything began to shift.

Eight months later, in November of 2008, I retired. The same man who couldn’t afford rice and chili had manifested financial freedom. My mind had completely changed, and my reality followed. I was living proof that thoughts become things.

The belief in my ability to manifest it became the foundation for everything. Without it, nothing would have worked. I tell people all the time that if you don’t believe in your ability to manifest, then the Law of Attraction, affirmations and visualization mean nothing. Because life isn’t about rolling dice, it’s about sculpting clay.

Throughout the years, I have read thousands of self-help books; most of them touched on a handful of good ideas but I knew there were dozens more that people weren’t talking about. That became my mission. I interviewed more than 2,000 people, including coaches, psychologists, high performers and everyday people. I listened to more than 200 podcasts on this subject and gathered the best of the best from all of them and created my book “Your ATM: Your Ability to Manifest.”

That’s not just a catchy title, because no matter what tools I could ever share, none of them matter if you don’t believe in your own ability to manifest.

Today, that belief is my foundation. I live in Florida; I fly airplanes, helicopters and paramotors, all things I’ve loved since childhood. Back then, when I wore glasses, becoming a pilot was impossible. When laser surgery came along, the childhood dream returned and I made it mine. I travel the world several times a year doing what I love, speaking, teaching and helping others tap into their own ability to create the life they want.

Not everyone wants to fly, but everyone has something they love, something life once told them they couldn’t have. My message is simple. You manifest what you love.

Through all those interviews and all those years, I’ve met countless coaches, therapists and motivational speakers whose lives didn’t align with their message. That’s why I live by the phrase, “My life is my résumé.” Because I believe you shouldn’t take financial advice from someone who is broke or take advice from someone who has a miserable mindset.

Every thought has a foundation, just like a house. You can paint the walls with affirmations and decorate them with vision boards, but if the foundation is cracked, if your core beliefs are weak, the house will eventually fall. When I changed the foundation of my thoughts, everything above it changed too.

And now, 17 years later, I’m standing on stages, writing articles like this one, and sharing everything I’ve learned since that one-dollar rice and chili chapter of my life. I can’t fit all 18 years or 2,000 interviews into one book or one keynote, but I can share the most powerful truths that changed me in hopes they change someone else.

I know someone out there might be eating their own version of rice and chili right now, wondering if life will ever change.

To them, I say this. Your life will change the moment you believe that thoughts become things and that you have the ability to manifest.

Believe that, and your mind will do the rest.