Finding Clarity with Paul Tokgozoglu

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What's going on ladies and gents? Welcome to the Warrior Soul Podcast. This is gonna be a really great episode. I've got my friend Paul Tokgozoglu. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing his last name, but really, really awesome guy.

He's putting amazing content out there all the time. Paul is an Internet marketing specialist. Now, what he does is he talks about spirituality, talks a lot about artificial intelligence, but also talks about how you can apply these to your own success in your own business. Paul's also got a really interesting story. He's a US army officer, and he while he was in the army, and this is a really interesting thing.

He found out that he was autistic. He's on the autistic spectrum, and he never knew this, and it was causing some some crazy limitations in his life. And he ended up taking a test because he was going through some stuff and literally found he was on the spectrum, got himself some help, and it completely turned his life around. Like I said, it's gonna be a really great conversation, and, I think you guys will get a lot out of this. You should also check out his podcast.

It's called the Beyond Homo Sapien podcast. Really, really great stuff. I think he's publishing an episode every single day, so there's tons to choose from there. Before we get into the conversation, I just wanna say that this podcast is brought to you by the good people at F Bomb Nutrition. They make awesome, delicious packets of fat.

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They're absolutely delicious. And if you wanna get yours, you can head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout and get 20% off your first order. With that, let's get into this conversation with Paul Tokgozoglu and the Warrior Soul podcast. What is going on everybody? Paul, welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast, and I am going to pronounce your last name correctly, Tokgozoglu.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:03:01 (link to this point)

You nailed it. Paul Tokgozoglu.

Chris Albert 00:03:03 (link to this point)

You it. Dude, welcome. We're gonna talk about a lot of things today, but I wanna get started by talking about exactly who you are. So who are you, Paul?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:03:16 (link to this point)

First of all, thanks for having me, brother. I really appreciate it. It's great to be here. It's always good to talk to you. So I I got started podcasting about two years ago.

I'm finishing up my time in the military. I'm still in the active duty army for... In the United States military. I'll be out in just a couple of months. And about two years ago, I got started on the whole entrepreneur thing because I realized, like, very quickly, as soon as I kind of, you know, got into the military and started to experience this nine to five life.

I'm I'm in the 90% of the military that is basically indistinguishable from a nine to five job, but I wear a uniform and combat boots. And other than that, it's relatively the same as a corporate American job. And I realized very quickly when I kind of joined... When I got started, I was like, man, I do not wanna do this for the rest of my life. This is...

I wanna be an entrepreneur. I wanna... I was getting really into, like, Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan and lots of folks along those lines who were teaching about business or having entrepreneurs on their podcasts and stuff like that. I was like, holy shit, man. I can I can do this?

I can I can make something happen here? And that's really where I wanted to go. So about two years ago, I started podcasting and I started the Matrix Jiu-Jitsu podcast because I absolutely love Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It's one of my, one of my favorite things in the world. And that kind of led me to learning more about digital marketing.

And I started to realize that I had this this set of skills that I was developing around the podcast, like learning how to do Facebook ads, learning how to do social media marketing, YouTube channels, and all this other stuff that I was getting into. And I made a ton of mistakes on my own stuff. I was doing everything wrong, but I I was learning and it was great. And then people started to reach out to me and ask me to run their social media platforms. And that's when things clicked for me, man.

And I said, oh shit, I could make money doing doing this stuff. This is this is great. And, then along the way, I started getting into artificial intelligence. I started to get in, much more to spirituality and kind of my own spiritual and personal development, as I was going through quite a lot of challenges kind of in my personal life. And, that resulted in me wanting to do a different podcast, and that's that's what I do these days, is is a show called Beyond Homo Sapien about kind of the evolution of the human species and how people can kind of understand what's happening in the world these days, whether it's artificial intelligence or virtual reality or kind of the more esoteric stuff along the lines of the law of attraction or learning about psychic abilities and psychedelic drugs and just kind of all these things that are kind of emerging out of the collective mind of the Internet these days.

And... But on the side, I'm still doing some digital marketing for people, and I really I really enjoy that too. So life's good, man. That's that's me these days.

Chris Albert 00:06:18 (link to this point)

Interesting stuff, man. So you went into the military. Were you 18 when you went in, or were you older?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:06:23 (link to this point)

No. I was 22 when I graduated. I did ROTC in college. I studied philosophy in... At university.

So obviously, there's nothing I could do other than enjoy the military. But but I did I did ROTC, and that was great, actually. I absolutely love

Chris Albert 00:06:41 (link to this point)

off of that?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:06:42 (link to this point)

Yeah. I did. So I I joined as a military police officer as... When I was 22. And here I am about five years later, ready to get out.

But I... Man, it was... I haven't done much actual military police thing. I'll tell you that. I've done quite a lot of PowerPoint presentations.

And... But that all being said, I'm incredibly grateful for my time in the military. It's been it's been such a great experience. I got to live in Germany for three years. They sent me over there, which was outstanding.

And... Yeah. So life life has been life has been great the past couple years, man, but it certainly has been a journey to get to kinda where I am today.

Chris Albert 00:07:23 (link to this point)

So when you first started your your jiu-jitsu podcast, you know, what types of things did you have to go through in order to get that off the ground? How many episodes did you do? What were the first episodes like?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:07:35 (link to this point)

Oh, man. Well, first of all, I didn't even fucking know that it was gonna be a jiu-jitsu podcast at the beginning. All that I knew, man, was I had to start something because I was having quite a bit of... I was going through some mental health issues in my life, and I was feeling really depressed a lot of the time because I I felt like I didn't really have any purpose. I didn't really have this.

I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew that this is like what I wanted to do as soon as I got out of the military, and I didn't want to have to get another job and I was feeling depressed because I didn't. I wasn't doing anything yet. So I just knew, it's like, I have to do something. And I had no skills.

I had nothing. I was in the military and I studied philosophy in college. But I had, I had no knowledge of entrepreneurship really at all, but I had to do something. So I started a podcast because I thought, well, I can talk and I've got some ideas. And I just literally started talking.

Like I was just like, the early episodes were such shit. They were absolute garbage. I challenge people to find them because I believe that they they may have gotten taken off the Internet a while ago. But they, they were on my phone. The very first episode, I recorded it on my phone as I was driving on a road trip, and I had had it.

I was like, man, I'm gonna record the shittiest podcast in the world, and I'm gonna put it on the Internet because I start today. And it was about travel, I think, because I was living in Europe, and I had all these thoughts about how Europe was different than The United States and and so on. So I was just like, I'll do it about that. And then then I started to interview guests and all of my friends were jiu-jitsu people because that's all all the friends I had in the world for the most part were people doing jiu-jitsu. So we started talking about that.

And then it clicked for me like, oh, duh. You love jiu-jitsu. Let's do that. Let's do a show about Brazilian jiu-jitsu. So it took a little while for the show to kind of pick up some traction.

But eventually, got to interview some pretty big names like Clark Gracie or Dean Lister was was the one who came a couple of times on the show, and it was great. And I learned so much over the course of about a year of doing that show. And then I kinda switched, and I realized that I had more to talk about than just jiu-jitsu. And there's much more that I was interested in than just talking about passing the guard all day and setting up leg locks. Although I could certainly talk about that for quite a long time.

Chris Albert 00:10:04 (link to this point)

Yeah. I mean, if you... And if anybody wants to hear anybody who looks... Who sounds foolish, you could go back to the first episodes of the Warrior Soul podcast because I've... I mean, in in even recent episodes, I've done that that I couldn't stand listening to myself.

But I think it's this thing that that if you have something inside of you that you want to get out, you've got to find an outlet to put it out there, and I think podcasting is a great platform to be able to do that. It's not I don't know if it's necessarily the best step in starting a business, but it's definitely a good way of starting to refine your communication skills to really help you to get rid of mental or mental and verbal tics, but also to help you and learn a little bit about promoting.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:10:50 (link to this point)

Oh, yeah, exactly. And that is what I learned. And that is what I have learned. That what I tell people these days whenever they ask me about starting a business or getting started as an entrepreneur. It's like, literally you can start anything.

You can start a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast, just do a live video on Facebook every single day. And you will learn, you will develop a set of skills because let's say you do podcasting. Let's say you start with that. You're really going to be learning not just podcasting because honestly, you're right. The podcast itself is usually not going to make you enough money to live your life until you are at that like Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss level, then you're then you're solid.

But for the majority of us, it's really about developing those skills. It's about learning. Okay. So in order to get people to listen to the show, probably gonna have to learn how to market on social media a little bit. You're going to have to learn how Facebook works.

How does Instagram work? How does Twitter work? How do these different outlets actually function? What types of rules do they play by? And then furthermore, you'll have to learn, maybe you decide to promote it on Reddit.

You're posting around on Reddit or some of these other Internet forums. You're gonna have to learn how to do that. You're gonna have to learn perhaps, maybe you build a blog or a website around the around the show. So now you're learning website design. You're learning blogging, which leads you to search engine optimization.

You know, how do you get ranked on Google? How do you get ranked on iTunes? Is that even a a thing that works? How does the iTunes algorithm work? You're learning audio recording.

You're learning sound editing. You know, there's all of these skills that are going into it. There's all of these things that kind of go around this idea of podcast and, you know, maybe you start building a a... An email list for email newsletter or some sort of a free offer that you promote on the show. You know, you can, now you're learning email marketing.

You're learning how to set up an email campaign. These are all skills. And this is what people don't realize. These are all skills that you can charge thousands and thousands of dollars every single month that you get paid a monthly retainer by business owners to keep you around, keep you running their Facebook ads, managing their social media, doing their email campaigns. These are all really valuable skills, assuming that you are good, assuming that you actually know what you are doing and you can get them results, and they can get a return on their investment.

These are very marketable and very important skills in today's world, and that is really what people miss. That's they... It's like, it's not the podcast or the blog or the YouTube channel that's gonna make you tons of money like in the next, you know, couple of months. But the skills that you learn by doing it, those can. Those can really make you money if you learn how to market yourself.

Chris Albert 00:13:33 (link to this point)

Yeah, man. You can apply those anywhere. You know, I've been looking at at the Beyond Homo Sapiens podcast, and it looks like you started recording every single day. How is that going for you? And why did you decide to do that?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:13:48 (link to this point)

Oh, it's been great. It's been an adventure. And I joined a mastermind with a guy named Miles Beckler. Don't know if you've heard of him before, but he's a... He's pretty well known in the kind of digital marketing world.

He runs a... Well, his wife and him run a business called AskAngels, which is one of the top kind of niche websites in the spirituality world. They they help people with like guided meditations and and kind of unlocking their spiritual gifts and things like that. And and it's a it's a multimillion dollar website. And Miles and his wife run that.

His wife is kind of the the face of that organization, but Miles is the one who kind of is in the background running the Facebook ads, doing all the keyword research and stuff like that. And he started a mastermind a little while ago, and I joined. And one of the first things that you do in this is you do what he calls the ninety day challenge, ninety day content challenge, where you just post an episode of whatever it is you're doing every single day, whether it's YouTube, a podcast, a blog, whatever is your thing, you do it every single day. And his his his theory around this, which I found to be absolutely true, is not only does it, you know, ideally get you more followers because you are, you know, doing it every day, you're putting out a lot of content, but it gets you into that mode of thinking of saying, am a content creator. I am someone who creates value in the world.

I do not... I am not the one who is consuming content. I'm producing more than I am consuming. And it's a mindset mindset shift where you're making it a habit where you're like, okay, I am someone who does a podcast every single day. I'm a podcast host.

That's what I do. And I've found it to be it's, it's been amazing. First of all, my, obviously the show's done really well and it is continuing to do really well. And I've, I still got about a month left of this, of this challenge. So I'm excited to see where it goes.

But I, yeah, it's absolutely right. I've become so much more comfortable as a host and as a, as a content creator, it's been, it's been good. But that's, that's the reason.

Chris Albert 00:16:00 (link to this point)

How do you come up with topics every single day? Like, do you have a special process or anything like that?

Because, you know, I I do this show three times a week right now and and we have got different different types of episodes that we do. One of the things that I found is that, at times I am at no shortage of topics to discuss, but then at other times, am sitting here and I am like, alright, what am I going to talk about tomorrow? Maybe those blades of grass out there are good subject matters, things like that. So where do you come up with your own topics?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:16:30 (link to this point)

First of all, I'm fortunate enough that I I kinda selected a topic for the show that's pretty broad in nature and covers a wide variety of interests.

So the show covers everything from virtual reality and artificial intelligence to talking about Jesus Christ and his teachings and how they influence us today, or how to overcome limiting beliefs, or talking about, you know, what is what is spiritual awakening even mean? You know, that's something that gets searched on Google pretty often, is stuff like, you know, what's a spiritual awakening? And, you know, so I figured maybe people are obviously interested in that type of stuff. And that kind of is part of the secret too, is I have a keyword research tool, keywordfinder.com for anyone who's interested, where you can see what people are searching on Google. You can see what they're what they're looking for.

And this is really important. And again, something that Miles Beckler, is very, very big on. He's in my... He's my sensei these days with all things digital marketing. And, you can just search and see what people are looking for in your niche.

You can look up the exact terms they're looking for. So for example, if I wanna talk about the law of attraction, which is something we get into pretty often on the show. So I think that's really important as our species kinda moves forward is understanding this kind of the power of our own minds in general is kind of a very important topic. So if you look up, you know, law of attraction as the keyword, you'll get all these phrases, people search, like how to attract love, how to, how to manifest money. Like these are literal things that people are searching thousands and thousands of times every single month or symptoms of a spiritual awakening is another one, you know?

So I say, okay, great. There's my show. I can do a show on that. So if I'm doing a solo episode, I usually do that as I kind of consult the keyword research tool and you can come up with a whole series, you know, you can see, okay, there's, there's 250,000 people a month are searching for law of attraction. So I can say, okay, if I can get onto Google on the front page of Google for law of attraction, that'll be a ton of traffic from my, from my show and my blog and everything like that.

It might take a while, but over the course of a year, you know, I can produce a shitload of content and maybe maybe make it. And if not, I just know like, okay, something people are interested in, obviously. So I can do a whole series and that that's what I do. Like lately, whenever it's a solo episode, whenever I don't have a guest that day, I just say, okay, let's talk about the law of attraction. Let's put out some more content about that.

Because it's something I know quite a lot about. I've researched quite a lot and experienced in my own life. So boom, there you go. There's a show. And and...

But, honestly, usually, days, I have a guest, and then we dive into some great topic, like like with you. You came on the show pretty recently. So I do that. I've got a I've got a... Some...

I work with some PR companies that give me some guests, and I just I just met a lot of people the past couple years. So I... I'm always reaching out to guests. Like, today, we had Evan Carmichael on the show. That was fantastic.

So, yeah, like, it's been fun. It's been great.

Chris Albert 00:19:39 (link to this point)

I gotta ask you this because, you know, a lot of the content you you speak about is spiritual in nature and and, you know, the the law of attraction and and things like that. You're sitting next to a poster that says thou shalt not commit logical fallacies, and you seem like a really, really logical guy. Is is logic and spirituality mutually exclusive? Are they mutually exclusive? Or are they able to have tenuous synapses between each other? And are they able to to coincide?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:20:11 (link to this point)

Actually, I believe that the only kind of spiritual practices that you can count as somewhat true are the ones that logically make sense. And I'm always looking for ways to kind of logically back up my own beliefs, my own kind of beliefs about the world. That's a very important world. What I believe to be true. I have to logically be able to explain it, be able to prove it in a sense.

I might not be able to prove it in accordance with the scientific method just yet, but I can do something close. Like for example, and this is what I really talk about a lot on the show is you have to go off of your own experience. I grew up in organized religion. I was involved with fundamental Christian church till I was like 17 years old. And then I left because I started reading the Bible and I realized that what Jesus was saying was actually completely different than what the church was talking about.

And, and that's something I get into pretty often on the show. And, but I I I love Jesus. I think he had plenty of amazing shit to say, just like Buddha and all these guys in general, they're great things to say. But you get what I'm saying. So like, you have to go off your own experience and in organized religion, they...

That's the opposite. They're they're saying, hey, listen to me. I have the answers. This this pastor or the priest or whoever I have the answers. And you need to show up at the church.

You need to do X, Y, and Z, and just have faith. Just believe that it's all going to work out and it's going to be fine. We know blah, blah, blah. And I that's so foreign to what my experience has been. And that's why I believe in the law of attraction because I've experienced it.

I've had direct experience with it working in my life and in the lives of many people that I know. Like, in other words, I could point to and list out examples for hours of it working in my life where I directly observed. Again, from my opinion, is, I believe that this is a correlation, but it's happened to me so many times where I just feel like, okay, there's something going on here. This is not a coincidence. There's some real shit happening.

And then I can say, okay, now let's think logically and scientifically. Like I can see that the law of attraction works, for example, I can see, I can observe that it appears to be true. And I can kind of know how it works because, there's all these kinds of formulas you can come up with for like how to manifest and create things in your world and stuff like that. So I can say, okay, I kind of know how it works, but but why? Why is it working?

Why does it work? And now here's where we kind of bridge the gap between spirituality and kind of the emerging technology. We can say, okay, maybe the reason it works is because we live in a simulation. Maybe that's what's going on here is you and I play a bit... We're in a video game together effectively.

There's some crazy shit going on that we don't even... We can't comprehend with our little monkey brains, you know, and we're starting to see virtual reality expanding now, and we're saying, okay, maybe that's what's going on here. That's why it works because this is... It's the the rules of the video game effectively.

Chris Albert 00:23:30 (link to this point)

Yeah. I've had on Tom Campbell. Have you heard of Tom Campbell before?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:23:34 (link to this point)

Yeah. I listened to that episode.

Chris Albert 00:23:36 (link to this point)

I had a couple of times, and and I think he's actually in the process of trying to do experiments to to try to demonstrate that. I'm not sure how they're going. I haven't gotten any updates from them or anything like that. But I I got to go out to one of his seminars in New York City, about a year and a half ago. And it was a...

It was an interesting seminar just just, watching the different things. He was explaining remote viewing, he was explaining healing people, psychic healing, things like that. That is a guy with a physics degree who worked for NASA and a whole host of other scientific organizations. So, yeah, I mean, all of that stuff is really interesting to me. Can you explain the law of attraction for us a little bit?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:24:23 (link to this point)

So there's so many misconceptions about it. That's the other thing I found. And what I really try to dispel on my show is, there's all this sayings about like, oh, just think about something and it's gonna, it's gonna come. It's gonna come to you. That that's, that's what the law of attraction is.

That's not, that's not it. It's not just the thoughts of the first step. The, and, and actually if you get into where it's important, whenever you're researching anything to look, where does this actually come from? Cause if you study, where does a law of attraction really come from? What do you think?

You think of The Secret, right?

Chris Albert 00:24:58 (link to this point)

Right.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:24:59 (link to this point)

Most of the time, The Secret is kind of what brought it in. No, this, the, the law of attraction dates back to, antiquity to ancient Egypt. And in, in occult philosophy is where it comes from. It's it's magic. It's literal magic.

Like that's when people are talking about magic, magic with a K or however you want to spell it. They they're talking about stuff like the law of attraction, which is basically the power of your mind to influence the world around you. And that if you are someone who hypothetically is well versed in something like the law of attraction, You know, you, what you're effectively doing is you're saying you're co creating your reality with some sort of a divine force that we can't really understand. You're making a demand about your reality and you are creating that thing as if by magic. So that's where it comes from.

And if you dive into and kind of do a little research around what those teachings actually say, you learn there's a formula. There's all sorts of formulas for how this actually works. It's not just thinking. Thinking is the first step. Thinking is what gets you going.

And then people give up. They give up at the first step. They say, okay, I thought about myself on a yacht. I visualized it. I made a vision board and it never happened.

So it's bullshit. Like, no, that is not how it works. It's it's a, the thinking is the first step and then your thoughts influence your beliefs. And you start to change how you believe about the world, and then your beliefs make you feel differently. So for example, if I believe that the world is a dangerous place and that I'm a shitbag and like nothing's ever going go right for me, I'm going to feel like shit.

Right? And then that belief, that feeling is going to make me want to just drink a beer and sit on my couch all day. It's not going to make me want to do anything. Right? It's going make me feel kind of depressed.

So the way that you feel is incredibly important and your feelings come from your beliefs about yourself and about the world. And then all of that together is what gets you to take action. And then it's that taking action that really drives the point home. And this is where, this is kind of where it's kind of, in my opinion, steps into something that's a little more spiritual, because again, from my experience, what I've observed about my own life is that when I take action from a place of feeling really good and believing the right things, and I've got powerful thoughts going in my head about, oh, this shit's gonna work. And I have such a strong belief.

Like this is what I'm supposed to be doing. It's possible. It's gonna work out. And I feel fantastic. And I'm like happy and joyful.

And then I take action. That's when things line up for me in a way that is magical, in a way where it's like, holy shit, how did this person reach out to me at that time and suddenly things go right, if that makes sense. For example, like, I feel like I need to give an example here of what I'm talking about, because it's easy for someone to be listening to me and think like, oh, well, you just, you're just working hard. Just, you know, you're just doing the right shit. And it's like, yes, but there it's like, you put one foot in front of the other and then the, the God or the universe or whatever you want to call it takes 10 steps towards you.

And it's like, oh, he's ready. Oh, he's doing it. Let's feed him the right people. Let's give him the right ideas. Like, example, one of the latest, one of the projects I'm involved with is a project to use artificial intelligence to kind of revolutionize education.

And as soon as I kind of started to believe that this was possible, I and was all by myself, as soon as I started to believe this was possible, and I started to learn more about it, learn how to actually code artificial intelligence and what that all actually involves and how we might actually be able to do this, suddenly I met within a week, everyone that I needed to make this happen. And not just that, but they all had the same idea that I did. As soon as I told them my idea, they were like, oh yeah, I had that idea too. Last week, I had the same idea. What a coincidence that we would meet in this random Facebook group and start messaging each other out of the blue.

And we had the same fucking idea. And then you examine further. It's like, okay, actually they'll have birthdays within two weeks of mine, for example. And I think like, okay, I'm born on 10/09/1991. One of my team members is born 10/03/1991.

Another one is born last week of September.

Chris Albert 00:29:39 (link to this point)

I think I was shaving by 1991.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:29:42 (link to this point)

It's true. But you get what I'm saying. And this is kinda... And that's just one example off the top of my head. I have I have many, but that's

Chris Albert 00:29:51 (link to this point)

I I get what you're saying. I mean, of that's the the kinda like the... If you look at the world that's happening to you versus the world happening for you, I think that's an important mental mental distinction to make there for a lot of people. I also think that, in some ways, until something like this happens for you, it s really hard to swallow. Like it s really, really difficult to swallow.

And that s why I have you know, we are both part of the London Real community and we have been on different forums for them and things like that. A lot of times, you know, being on a community like that, I almost feel like some people who are into this stuff are shoving it down people's throats and and you know, for people who aren't ready for it yet. And I think that that's a mistake for people to make because if somebody is not ready to hear this, it's not going to change them, it's not going to help them, it's not going to serve them, it's just going to piss them off, right?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:30:49 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a saying amongst these teachings that the the teacher appears when the student is ready. Right. And that the the right the right teacher, again, as if by magic, will appear when the student is ready.

And, yeah. And that's something I believe in for sure is that in my... Again, if I have this complete faith that what I'm saying is true again, based off my experience, I'll always try to lead with that. Cause I find so many fucking people out there these days who will tell you X, Y, and Z, and they'll just say, just believe me. I'm I'm I know I just trust me.

And it's like, no guys, that's what religion does. That's what organized theology has done. And it doesn't work. You gotta have your own experiences. So again, trust your own experience over me or anything.

But regardless, I do believe in this, then I should believe that if I'm saying the truth, if I'm speaking real truth about, if I'm correct, then the right people will be listening to this podcast, that the right folks will have gravitated into my my orbit, and that if there are any kind of haters out there, people who aren't ready, or if this is over their head or something like that, then it's okay. They they weren't ready to receive it. The right people who are ready to receive this information, they will hear it. And not only that, they might, they might, look into some of the stuff. That's the other thing, man, that I've, that I've seen and experienced for myself.

So when you're ready, you'll go looking for it. You'll go looking for the answer. And that's when things start to really click for you. You might hear something like the people who are ready. They will go and they'll get on Google and they'll start looking into all this stuff that you and I are talking about.

They'll start coming to their own conclusions. They'll start creating... They'll look up the name of the guy that you said earlier, and they'll become curious. And then that's one path up the mountain of all of this stuff. It's one path up the up the vortex of whatever you wanna say.

That's what happened to me. I started to learn. I started getting into like, like just kind of a general mindset stuff. And one thing leads to the next. You look up like, okay, that person who wrote this book, who's the person that influenced them?

I want to read that person's book. And then you read that book and it's slightly more hippie, slightly more woo woo. And then you're like, okay, how about the person who influenced this person? You read that book or you listen to that podcast and you're like, oh shit, These people are all practicing magic. You know?

And it goes all the way back to ancient Egypt and and ancient Greece and and so on. And then you learn about all of the people throughout history who have believed in this stuff, such as Alexander the Great and Plato and Pythagoras, who spent twenty years in the Egyptian mystery schools before you created mathematics.

Chris Albert 00:33:46 (link to this point)

I think Patton did too. Right?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:33:49 (link to this point)

The more you go down the rabbit hole, the more you see how many people have studied these things from a very scientific point of view.

Chris Albert 00:33:57 (link to this point)

So that's interesting. So in in working with this, right, how does somebody apply it? Right? So so, you know, we have this idea of the law of attraction going out there, adopting beliefs, you know, changing your thoughts first and then taking action. When you say take action, right, a lot...

Everybody says take action. Like, you know, you listen to Grant Grant Cardone, take action, 10 x, man. Go ahead and 10 x everything right now. You know what mean? Like, what what does that mean?

Like, what what action should you be taking?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:34:29 (link to this point)

Sometimes the action is just to... Like I said, you just get on Google and look up the people that, you know, you know that you're curious about. Like, stuff like that. That could be an action, you know? And like for me, going back to that example I gave earlier of learning about, you know, starting this company about artificial intelligence and then meeting all my teammates as if by magic, the action that I took was I bought a course on Udemy on coding, you know, artificial intelligence.

And I did video one and that was it. And then suddenly this magic, literally that same day I met like two of the people that I'm still working with a year later. And, you know, maybe that was it. Maybe that was the action. But I think that that's why it's so important to have everything else in line.

Because if you're just obsessed with taking action, you're gonna fall for some fake guru who gets you on the YouTube ad, who gets you hooked on this new drop shipping method, or this new fucking, I don't know, diet plan or something that doesn't even work. Some person who doesn't know what they're talking about. And it's not at all like aligned with what it is that you actually want to, are meant to do here on this, this planet. And you're just going to go get wasting your time and you're going to feel discouraged and it might not work out. And because you're spinning your wheels, there's a difference between taking like determined planned action that you feel is so correct and you've done, you've like gone into the depths of your creativity and pulled this thing out of you, and you're like, holy shit.

This is what I meant to do in the world. And then you take action. That's different than just spinning your wheels, following all these fake gurus on Facebook or YouTube, signing up for their courses or whatever, and it doesn't feel right, but you're going with it anyway because you need money, and you're feeling broke, and you're feeling desperate. You're like, man, this guy says this thing will work. I don't know.

It doesn't feel right, but I'm just gonna go with it. Like, that's this different kind of action. That's why it's so important to have kinda everything. Does that make sense?

Chris Albert 00:36:28 (link to this point)

Yeah. No. It does. Because, you know, it's kinda like you were talking about earlier with with the everyday content thing. Right?

So I'm somebody I I there's periods in my life where I've spent I I did videos on YouTube ninety straight days, like straight on and on and on. But at the same time, like, I think that and I I did a Facebook Live about this this morning. If you don t have clarity of where you are going though, then a lot of times that could get you into a position of where you are going to end up spinning your wheels. So I think that in some aspect, what you are talking about, you had a little bit of clarity in what you wanted to do. You became interested in something, you became interested in artificial intelligence and then you wanted to know more about that.

So you had a little bit more clarity about what you were doing there. But I think in some cases, people don't have any clarity of vision and because they don't have any clarity of vision, they hide. They hide behind the content creation. They hide behind the blog making. They hide...

Or maybe they don't do that at all. They hide behind something else. But I think I think in a lot of cases, people end up hiding from the real action that they'd wanna take, and they end up taking... They may end up making themselves busy with other types of things. Right?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:37:47 (link to this point)

Totally agree. Absolutely. It's essential that you have that clarity around what you want. And now that doesn't mean that you wait for perfection. Doesn't mean that you wait for the perfect idea.

Like, when I first started doing the podcast, I thought it was gonna be all about artificial intelligence. It was gonna be like a emerging technology podcast. And then very quickly, I kinda over... Well, I shouldn't say quickly, over the course of about maybe a month or two, I started to realize like, no, you know, I really do want to talk about spirituality. And not only that, but kind of like I mentioned with the simulation theory example, I feel like they're linked.

I feel like one feeds into the other. And then I realized, oh shit, that's my unique message is that they're linked, is that technology and spirituality is evolving together. But I... And then then I kind of hit on that. I was like, okay, boom.

That's the show is this kind of merging of those two together. And, but I would never have fucking hit on that if I didn't just get started. If I didn't, you know, start hitting record and publishing it on iTunes and doing research, you know, myself trying to develop my own thinking around the show. And I know going back that would have never happened if I'd never gotten started recording that shitty podcast on my phone two years ago. Cause I just, I would be, you know, I would not be the person I am today and, and so on.

You know, so it is important to take action, but I think you're absolutely right, man. It's important to take introspect... Like introspective action. Like part of the... Sometimes the action that you need is to go for a walk or meditate more or go see an energy healer or get some therapy or something like that.

You know what I mean? Like oftentimes that's the action that needs to be taken is like the, the, the great idea that the thing that you're meant to do, the stroke of brilliance from my experience, it's never going to come. It doesn't come when you're eight hours into your blog posts and you're fucking stressed and you're cramming all of this SEO keywords into it. It doesn't come when you're doing that. It comes when you're like on a walk in nature and you're...

The stress is gone and you're like, the world is so beautiful. Wow. And then boom, then you get the the idea comes to you then. It comes to you when you are, you know, when you are daydreaming. It comes to you when you are letting your mind wander a little bit.

That is when you kind of connect the dots and you know what I'm saying?

Chris Albert 00:40:14 (link to this point)

No, absolutely. I do get what you're saying. I mean, that's a big reason why I run a lot. I go out and I run and and you know, I get a lot of really great thoughts while I'm running. And and that's another reason why I like to keep exercise into my routine several times a day, not just once a day, because it just helps to create so much creativity helps to create, so many friendly chemicals that that aid in thought processes.

You had mentioned you've gone through some of your own great difficulties, and some of your own spiritual difficulties, some of your own mental difficulties. How has spirituality helped you to get through those?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:40:57 (link to this point)

So I about... Yeah, when I first joined the military, and this is kind of why I realized I couldn't ever really have a nine to five job like this is, I started to have a lot of mental health issues regarding anxiety. I was having panic attacks almost every single day about, yes, like three years ago now, maybe a little less, maybe like two, two and a half years ago. I was having panic attacks, like almost every single day. And I didn't know why.

I didn't... I couldn't understand. I hated going to work. I couldn't understand. It was so loud to me.

All... I was having these massive, like, sensory overload issues, and I couldn't understand, like, why my coworkers were all were all fine. But for me, like, you know, it was impossible to work in this office environment of, phones going off and people talking and the computers buzzing and all this other... And the air is just so stale and drives you crazy. And I realized about about two years ago that I'm on the autism spectrum, that I...

I'm high functioning autism as they might call it. Although personally, I I think that the whole high functioning versus low functioning thing is kind of bullshit, because I've had some pretty low functioning moments of my life for sure. But so it kind of fluctuates. These days I'm pretty high functioning, I guess you could say. But yeah, so I realized I started learning all about that.

I was learning so much about, just how shut down you get when you're on the spectrum. I don't know if you've do you have any experience with autism? Do you know much about it?

Chris Albert 00:42:28 (link to this point)

You know, I have some relatives who are on the spectrum. And I have much younger relatives and took care of them, so a lot of times, it very, very difficult to take care of them, because they were kind of all over the place, but other than that, I haven't dealt much with with autism or anything like that.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:42:51 (link to this point)

Yeah. And it comes in many forms. There's... And mine... See, I was I was homeschooled my whole life, and then I went to a very tiny college.

And... Yeah. In general, my life was very fucking easy up until I, like, moved to Germany and joined the military and all this other stuff. And then suddenly, I was having all these issues. I could barely function at at work or at home.

And I I just gotten married too to a woman. And it was all haywire, and our whole relationship... Like, our friendship was good, but our whole... The romantic side of our relationship was just not working out. And it was all, you know, it was all haywire, and life was no good, honestly.

And yeah, super anxious and really depressed all the time, and I really was just struggling to make it through my day. And yeah, then I found out about autism about two years ago, and I started to connect the dots and realized like, oh shit, this is this is me. This is totally what I've been going through. This is, you know, this is... I have some form of Asperger's or something like that.

It makes sense. And I found some great resources online, like aspergerexperts.com is a great website for anyone who's going through something like this. I started doing therapy. I'm still with my therapist now two years later. And she's been great.

So I connected with over the Talkspace therapy app, which is an online therapy app that is absolutely amazing. They hook you up with a specialist who's kind of related to your specific thing, and she's the one who's kind of diagnosed me and helped me kind of understand more about what's going on, and it's been great. And... But it was a long road. Then about...

And see, the thing about autism, especially kind of the higher functioning version that I have, is it stifles your emotional development and it makes it so that you literally can't feel your own emotions, cause your body is so sensitive to the world around you that you get so overstimulated. And then it is you shut down, you go into this like fight or flight mode, basically, where you kind of, you just always overwhelmed and you are always panicking and you are always, you know, fucking feeling like you're about to go crazy. And then in my case, I was, like I said, I was having panic attacks every day because my body got so used to that, like, like just absolute hell whenever I was at the office that whenever I was on my way to work, I would have a panic attack and it was shit. It was terrible. And I, really.

Did a lot of work on myself and tried to really connect with getting my body's situated. And, yeah, it was changed everything for real. I was totally, I, I got better at a hydration, which is absolutely huge. Now I drink like three gallons of water every single day. Because when you're a little bit dehydrated and you're super sensitive like me, you feel it right away, and you go into, like, extreme anxiety even if you're, the littlest bit dehydrated.

So for me, hydration is, a top priority. Going for walks every day, I meditate like two or three times a day because that helps with my kinda overall anxiety and really just... Yeah. Just... And fix my diet.

Like, I do not eat meat really anymore because I found that does not help me. Am kinda like a pescatarian these days. Stuff like that. I do yoga. I do yoga, like, every day.

Working out, really important. I like doing push ups, pull ups, going for a run, really important for me. Like, it's all stuff that is important for anyone, but for someone like me who's hypersensitive, it's like like make or break. It's the difference between me, like, my emotions or not, and living in, the shell of a human experience.

Chris Albert 00:46:35 (link to this point)

Are you still doing jiu-jitsu?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:46:37 (link to this point)

Oh, yeah. I do jiu-jitsu probably like two to four times a week. I've been doing for eight years now, it's fantastic. So that that helps a lot too. That helps so much.

There was a certain point though, where I was obsessed with jiu-jitsu because that's the other thing about autism is you have a tendency to gravitate towards obsessions where you're comfortable because it's hard to put yourself out of your comfort zone because it's harder to experience new things because whenever you have a new experience, you have a new set of emotions and feelings that if you aren't connected with your emotions, you shy away from, and you don't wanna experience that because it's so overwhelming for you to go to a different environment. There was a time where I was fucking obsessed with jiu-jitsu. It was all I ever did, and it was actually ruining my relationship because I was just going to jiu-jitsu every single day for, like, three hours. And I wasn't spending any time with my wife because we were having all these issues, and I didn't wanna be there because it was uncomfortable. And so, I I've had a I've had a very powerful relationship with jiu-jitsu, both from a...

It being a negative influence and a positive, but ultimately, overwhelmingly positive, I would say for sure. For sure.

Chris Albert 00:47:47 (link to this point)

We got to wrap up in a second here, but I have to ask you this. Being an entrepreneur, there is this temptation always to work fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hours a day. And having autism or being on the spectrum, does that affect you as far as your tendency to overwork yourself? Are in danger of that constantly? Are you conscious of it?

How do you prevent it?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:48:12 (link to this point)

Yeah, absolutely. And I can get so focused that four hours will go by, and I won't even notice. And really setting limits around...

Chris Albert 00:48:23 (link to this point)

Some people would pay for that, by the way, but...

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:48:25 (link to this point)

I I know. I I know. And that's it's... So that's the thing is it is a superpower once you start to get into where I am today, where I'm I'm doing amazing, and life is great. And it's been that way for about a year now.

But I will say, like, you you really have to understand there's a... I would say, if there's anyone listening to this and they've gone through something similar, that they know someone going through something similar, the key is asking yourself, am I working hard and I'm super focused because this is what I'm supposed to be doing? Or am I running from something? Am I working this hard and making myself so busy and so occupied because I'm running from myself or I'm running from my my relationship? And if the answer to that is anywhere close to yes, or maybe, the answer is probably yes.

The answer is probably there's probably something you need to deal with. Like, for me, it was actually that I'm gay. I didn't realize this till about a year ago. That was the big fucking, like, reveal. Was not

Chris Albert 00:49:32 (link to this point)

I can't end the podcast on that.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:49:36 (link to this point)

Oh, yeah. But... Yeah. I I real... I realized that I was gay.

That was why our relationships was not working.

Chris Albert 00:49:43 (link to this point)

So you went all the way up through age 23, 24, you got married, everything like that, and then all of a sudden, you you you realized that you were gay after you realized that you were you were autistic. Yeah.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:49:55 (link to this point)

Yeah. I was 25.

Chris Albert 00:49:57 (link to this point)

There was no signs of that or anything like that?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:50:00 (link to this point)

I mean, growing up in hindsight, I can look at moments, and I was like, oh, yeah. They're they're they're and they're. But at the time, no. Because the thing with autism and especially... Again, I shouldn't say the thing with autism, because that makes it sound like they're all the same, and they're certainly not.

There's different forms of it. They're different. Everyone's on their own journey. Everyone has their own experience with it and so on. But for me, the fact that I was so...

I couldn't feel my feelings. That was the thing. I literally could not feel my emotion. Like... And I I I remember the day when my feelings and my emotions came online.

I remember the exact... Where I was when I began to feel my feelings. Mhmm. And like... And I was like, oh, shit.

This is what it feels like to be a human. I get it. Like, I... Like, until that day, was just living in my head. I'm living up in my head, and you're totally disconnected from everything else in your body.

So that includes my sexual emotions. I didn't... It wasn't... It was offline, basically, and I wasn't feeling it. And a lot of folks on the autism spectrum actually go through life thinking they're asexual.

They think that they don't have any sexual emotions at all. And, and oftentimes they just haven't unlocked their emotions and feelings in general. Of course, I'm sure there's plenty who are genuinely asexual, and that might be a thing... That might be their experience of life. And...

But I'm just saying, for me, I didn't know what sexuality was supposed to feel like. And then when I kind of uncovered my emotions, it all came online. And suddenly I was like, oh shit, This is why the world runs on sex. I get it. It's great.

Chris Albert 00:51:50 (link to this point)

Was that was that scary for you, though? I mean

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:51:53 (link to this point)

Oh, yeah.

Chris Albert 00:51:54 (link to this point)

You're a gay man in the military, and and all of sudden, you're in the military. You're an officer, and you realize you're gay. Right? Was was there was there a lot of fear there when that happened?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:52:05 (link to this point)

Like No. No. Honestly, military these days is is absolutely like... They're so... Especially in the army, they're so fucking...

Like, if you... If if if you... Someone could get in so much trouble these days, if they so much as, like, make fun of a gay person, like, they could get fucking kicked out of the whole thing. So, I mean, obviously, I might... I have fear that people might be thinking shit, but I just...

I knew I was like, no. Like, the way things are they... Is... I've I've got to come out to my parents now. I gotta tell them. I have to tell

Chris Albert 00:52:36 (link to this point)

Did you tell your ex wife?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:52:38 (link to this point)

Did you... Oh, yeah. Yeah. She was there with me, like, throughout the whole process. She's great.

And nowadays we're we're still, like, legally married, but we're just kinda best friends and she's off living in another in another city. And, but I mean, certainly not an overnight process, certainly a thing. We realized that we were just basically best friends who thought that they should get married, but really it was the, the friendship that always connected us, not the romantic stuff. The romantic side always suffered. It was always shit.

And it was always, you know, a huge concern for us. And then, yeah, and then we figured out why. And here we are. That's the reason why. And it's been great.

And, now I'm here about a little over a year now after I kind of had this big realization, and things are... Have never been better in my life, and, it's been extremely

Chris Albert 00:53:31 (link to this point)

I think I think one of the things here is this, you know, and and not everybody out there might be experiencing autism and not everybody out there might be gay. But what you can get from this is that, you know, all of us can have a tendency, I mean, the human brain has a tendency to run away from pain and to run away from discomfort, right and to run away from uncomfortable truths. And so what we do in that process is we make up reasons as to why we can't face them. So a lot of times we numb ourselves to our external reality. And so, you know, the thing is that, you know, from my experience, I remember, I went through such a bad breakup when I was in my early 20s.

I literally, like, I went I didn't have a real identifiable emotion for about a decade. And it wasn't until I met my current girlfriend where I kind of snapped back to reality and kind of what you described and was kind of like, well, you know, feeling something for the first time in a while and falling in love and experiencing that. I think that's something amazing, but I think that there are so many people out there who go through life without understanding that they're so numb to reality that they've built up this defense system around them, that they're not willing to open themselves up to to the possibilities.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:55:00 (link to this point)

Hell, yeah. And that's why... I think this is so tied to that question that you asked earlier about, like, do I have a danger of getting too focused, too overworked? Nowadays I think I'm doing much better, but at first, yes. Absolutely.

Because I was running from all this. I didn't, I wouldn't obviously know it was at a subconscious level. It was all tied to not being able to accept myself and, you know, experiences I had when I was younger with treating me about self worth and self love and self acceptance and all of this stuff. And, you know, I was, I was running from that. I was running from this realization that I was gay, that, that things weren't going to work out with me and my partner.

And subconsciously I knew all this stuff. It was all right there. I just, I was avoiding it. So what did I do? I would go to jiu-jitsu for three hours.

I would podcast. I would stay busy. I would always be moving on to the, you know, keeping myself busy. I would, I would fucking, anytime I was in the car, I'd be listening to a podcast, be listening to music. You know, I would never be just like alone in my head daydreaming because it was scary, scary to daydream when things are going wrong.

And I'll tell you this man. And you know this, like, if you're someone who's in that state, it sucks. It really does. And because you're running from something and so you're totally right. So many people are running from something and there's something there that you like, if you turned off the music for a second and just drove without any sound and for an hour, you would go to a scary place and there's people like that.

And if you are in that place, I, I, I encourage you. If you're someone listening to this, I encourage you to know that doesn't have to be that way. And that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And once you do face that demon, it goes away and that you can live a better life. And that's kind of, I guess the message I'm trying to give to people is like, that's when things start to line up for you in your work or in your life or in your career.

You're never gonna fuck. That's what I realized, man, when I was starting to go through all this stuff, I was like, I'm never gonna make it as an entrepreneur as being some sort of a fucking motivational podcast. They're never going to make it. If I'm like running from all this stuff, it's never going to line up. I'm never going to be able to be happy.

I'm never going to be financially independent. If I don't, if I've got all this shit in my head that I'm running from. So I was like, if I don't deal with this now today and get through it in six months to a year, like, you know, it's never going to happen. Ever since you've, and then you turn around and face those demons and you figure it out, you get some help. You go see a therapist, you meditate, go for go for walks, you take care of your body, and you'll be okay, and it will be fine.

And you'll get through it. And your life will be so much better.

Chris Albert 00:57:47 (link to this point)

Yeah, I I think that's amazing advice. And I I could keep this conversation up for hours, but I do have a hard stop right now. And I think, it sucks because I really wanna get into this stuff more. So we're gonna have to bring you back on the show. Yeah, man.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:58:02 (link to this point)

Thanks for having me. Anytime.

Chris Albert 00:58:05 (link to this point)

But, Paul, number one, where where can people find you on the Internet?

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:58:09 (link to this point)

So best place is just go to the... Look up the Beyond Homo Sapiens podcast. It's on iTunes, Stitcher. It's also on YouTube. You can follow me at beyond homo sapien.

And I, if everything I was talking about, all my crazy plans to revolutionize education using AI, that's still in the works. We still definitely a long term process that we're working on kind of hush-hush in secret. But everything that we're doing will definitely be coming out on that podcast. And that will certainly be where we are spreading this message of what exactly it is we plan to do. So if you're interested in that, just follow the podcast, subscribe, and everything will be there.

Chris Albert 00:58:47 (link to this point)

Awesome. Awesome. Well, number one, I want to thank you for coming on. I also want to thank you for your service in the United States military. I think that's awesome.

And I want to acknowledge you, man. That's that's a really difficult realization to make. And it's a really difficult thing to to to bring to the light, especially to to our audience here in this in this community. I think, you you're very brave and also awesome individual for doing that. So so thank you for coming on here and telling your story.

Paul Tokgozoglu 00:59:18 (link to this point)

I appreciate it, man. And I'm trying to tell it more because I realized there's probably couple people out there, probably more than a couple who are going to do something very similar, and they think they're probably the only fucking person who's going through that. And they're not. There's plenty of people. Plenty of people like me.

So if that's you, reach out to me for sure. You email me paul@beyondhomosapien.com and reach out if you need some help, and I will certainly point you in the right direction.

Chris Albert 00:59:43 (link to this point)

Awesome, man. Awesome. Again, Paul, that was a fascinating discussion. And for everybody out there who's listening, you know, think about what are you running from? What are you hiding from in your own life?

And are you doing the things that it takes to move you forward? Or are you spinning your own wheels? Think about it, consult with Paul, definitely check out the Beyond Homo Sapiens podcast, and get out there and live your best lives while you can.