Ruined by Success: the Comeback Story of Dan Mangena

YBOP Intro/Outro: 00:00:06

Welcome back to your brain on positive. All the love and support you need is residing inside of you. And we're going to make it easier to turn it on.

Jackie Simmons: 00:00:23

Welcome to this episode of your brain on positive. I'm Jackie Simmons, I am your host and with me today I am so excited. It is Dan McKenna. Dan, the dreamer, the dreamer, Dan. There's that great line in the poem. You know if you can dream if you can think and not make if you can dream and not make dreams your master you could think and not make thoughts your aim? Yeah, right. Yeah, crippling? Yeah, typically, yep.

Jackie Simmons: 00:00:52

If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same thing. It is that story, the triumph and disaster the what the world judges and how you change that how you judge things. That's the journey. I want you to take everyone on today. So yeah, all right. Let's get started. What happened? What happened? I mean, I like I know you from the introduction. I was like, you too need to talk. And the next thing I know, I've got all of your books. And so let's start with intention and work backwards, because where you ended up?

Dan Mangena: 00:01:40

Yeah. So what basically happened was, I was ruin by early success. When I mean, early success. I mean, I, I created my first multi million pound business at the age of 19. So I didn't have like a silver spoon. I didn't like have daddy didn't give me money or whatever. My parents are just ordinary middle class people. They emigrated from Zimbabwe in the 70s. for education purposes, they wanted to my dad wanted to expand his education. And what ended up happening was around the age of 16, I think it was was no later than that. I discovered personal development. So it started off with infomercials. And wow me up. Being that kid that ordered all of the things, ordered all of the information from the infomercials and from the clippings. And I was like getting magazines like trader magazine in the UK and going through the opportunity section and getting all the information. And I'd been entrepreneur from earlier, I think I taught myself to make computers about the age of 13. And I was making money doing that. And some other little things I did touch up at school,

Jackie Simmons: 00:02:54

were you taught yourself how to do what at the age of 13, how to make computers, how to make a pitch,

Dan Mangena: 00:02:59

how to make computers, personal computers.

Jackie Simmons: 00:03:02

Oh my goodness, thank you. Sorry, I had to slow down the word. Alright. So

Dan Mangena: 00:03:09

the motherboard and the CPU and partitioning the drive. And I told myself to do that. So I had a little bit of capital. And I was pouring that capital quite early into personal development. And then around 16, like I said, I read thinking grow rich. And I really started to understand the power of the mind. And I sort of drifted into a lot more mindset development, I started ordering tapes from Nightingale Khan. And I was actually sharing the story of someone the other day. And I remember one of the first tapes I got from Nightingale Conant was something by I can't remember the name of the guy who did it. But it was wisdom from the richest man who ever lived. And it was actually wisdom from Solomon being raised in a very conservative Christian household that resonated with me. And I dove into that. I read books by one of my earliest mentors, a guy called Stuart Goldsmith, including one called the Midas method. And by the age of 18, I had gone off to have my first year at uni, there's a whole story as to why there was only one year at uni, which is for another time. But I ended up taking a gap year to go out and dedicate myself holding completely to business. And it became very successful. The challenge with having success very early, Jackie is that as a young human, we haven't yet fully developed in our cognitive function. In fact, they say that the decision making function in the brain doesn't really fully solidify until age 25. And also, when you've had a succession of wins, you get the imposter of I can do anything creeping into the mind. And I actually thought I was invincible. And that ended up being my downfall. I was so positive. I had such self belief that I didn't see the parts of my experience that required support and I didn't ask for help. And that led to mistakes that led to me losing my first business and all the way down into a downward spiral that by the age of about 2324 had left me in suicidal ideation. Hmm.

Jackie Simmons: 00:05:06

It's an familiar story, the lack of emotional resilience, Dan, when someone as director of the teen suicide prevention society, and people say you're What's the cause of all the depression and all of the challenges that we're facing now. And it's like, well, it's not what you're hearing on the media. It's not social media, it's not cyber bullying, it's not isolation. It is a lack of emotional resilience, a lack of the ability to know that you can bounce. And unfortunately, our kids can't be taught this, they have to catch it from their parents, and most parents don't have it.

Dan Mangena: 00:05:48

I mean, the fact of the matter is that life is hard. Not everybody's going to be nice.

Jackie Simmons: 00:05:54

Yeah, not everybody's gonna be nice, okay,

Dan Mangena: 00:05:56

you're not going to win all the time. But life being hard doesn't mean that life has to be suffering. And it doesn't mean that life has to be an overwhelming challenge. As much as life can be beautiful life can be the other side, that's the, that's the law of polarity. So as much as they can be beauty, they can also be darkness, as much as they can be happiness and joy, they can be sadness, it is the ability to see those two passes are both the same, right? It's the ability to have the resilience to walk the line of witnessing of it all and say, This is my human experience, which I didn't have the capacity for. At the time. I'm blessed in that, as I was later to find out I, I got Asperger's, my brain operates a little bit differently. And so when I hit that, quote, unquote, bottom, I like to call it the ground that I have the ability to bounce off of, what happened was, is that I actually sat down and started to calculate what my options were in terms of suicide. And I didn't have any that felt sure enough for me, and I didn't, I didn't like the idea of being in my thoughts, the loser who couldn't even kill himself. And so I actually went off and worked more deeply on the mindset from a perspective of litmus testing, everything that I learned up until that point, to find where the gaps were. But of course, if you are emptying dump trucks of a particular type of content into your brain over the period of a couple of years, there's going to be an impact on way that your brain functions. And so for that, I would say a good two or three years solid, all I was doing was reading, listening to tapes, and having conversations around the mind, around success, around achievement, around winning, and around failure and how to overcome those and where the truth lay. And that led inadvertently to completely reprogramming myself and changing the direction of my, my life.

Jackie Simmons: 00:08:07

You made a good point. And it's something that is way understated, I think. So I'm gonna highlight it. You were having conversations you were not just reading, you were engaging with the material by having conversations around these concepts. The idea that you can have a conversation around the mind, most people have no clue that this is actually something not the brain, the mind. So having the conversations, the discussions around what is what is the mind what is success? What is failure? That normalizes it. It allows it to be integrated, Dan, it's what most of us don't make time for anymore, which is discussion and conversation.

Dan Mangena: 00:09:04

Well, there's a difference between information and wisdom, knowledge and wisdom, right? And the integration of knowledge and information into wisdom that can then become experience through application which then becomes new habits, behaviors and identity is a big part of the puzzle that people miss. Like you said, they'll read the book. They'll watch the film, they'll listen to the podcast, then there'll be no change in their emotional response to life no change in their thought processes, no change in their actions, habits and behaviors. They're just waiting for the osmosis osmosis transfer of the information into their lived experience.

Jackie Simmons: 00:09:49

Love the fact that you you did that. You did all the reading. You did all the watcher, you did all the listening, and you added the engagement with other People, so then there was a ability to think it through.

Dan Mangena: 00:10:04

Well, the funny thing is, is that you know much of the point about positivity and changing your mindset, I hadn't done it with the intention of being more positive, I hadn't done it with the intention of learning it, integrating it, I was just doing it. And that was what happened. And I think when we understand that the mind is just so potent and powerful, and will just work on the basis of what it's been fed, if you feed it in a way that it can understand, then you'll get the result. And so, you know, anyone who says, oh, you know, how am I going to just speak to your mind in the way that it understand the language you understand? And it will do the rest, it will do the rest?

Jackie Simmons: 00:10:49

Yeah, that's a brilliant statement, speak to your mind in the way that it understand. Because I think what's behind our eyes in between our ears is the ultimate search engine. And when people start off a sentence with I don't know, how, or I don't know, it's like telling Google, I don't know what I want, and then expecting Google to be able to give you information that's useful.

Unknown: 00:11:12

Exactly, exactly.

Jackie Simmons: 00:11:14

Yeah. So it's a wonderful place to play with this idea of speak to the mind how the mind can actually hear you. All right. Give me Give me some three things speak to the mind how the mind actually hears and listens, then what would be the first way to speak to the mind?

Dan Mangena: 00:11:32

Well, first and foremost, this actually loops into a concept that we teach called Money, DNA. And people will listen to the phrase money, DNA, and they think that money DNA is just about money. But it's not. Because at the end of the day, you know, there are different ways to manifest and create different things. The rules of engagement, when it comes to creation are the same across the board. And also you don't take on a new identity, when creating different things in your life, there is just you, you have the same aptitude, the same skills, likes and dislikes, abilities and non abilities. And so what we're looking at with money, DNA really is a way to map how to find flow with money, which is just a measurable way to track our ability to create anything that we want in our life. So anyone list as you're listening to me explaining about money, DNA, and want you to really understand that the same principles, the same five aspects, the same pillars that we look at, or also cross over into how you create your relationships, how you create health in your body, how you create connection to purpose, meaning and all of things, any outcome. So one of the principles one of the five pillars that we look at in money, DNA is internal communication. And the reason why we look at internal communication is because in order to create a new outcome, there has to be a new identity, because outcomes follow our actions, habits and behaviors, which follow our unconscious habits and behavior directives, which are limited to our emotional state, because we can only think to the level of our emotional state, which is happening from our thoughts, which is in our unconscious program, which as a whole, I call our identity. So if we want to have a new outcome, we have to start with the identity that's leading to the thoughts that's leading to the emotions leading to the unconscious choices, it's leading to the actions, habits or behaviors that's leading to the outcomes. But in order for there to be a change, then the computer system that's holding the blueprint of that which is the mind must be communicated with in order to give it a new identity, because we didn't wake up this morning, being fabulous Jackie, and hi, it took a lifetime of inputs being accepted and integrated, that led to the new identity. I didn't wake up and say, I want to choose life, what happened was, those inputs came in, changed the program, and I ended up choosing life unconsciously. So that idea that we can communicate with the mind, each of us in the same way is a little bit flawed. Because although the mind speaks the same language, which is imprints, emotions, thoughts and images, the way that we can receive and interpret those as individuals is going to be different from person to person. And what we did with money DNA is we actually identified a particular personality profile that gives us a clue as to what that is, and it sounds really weird, but we use your love language. Oh, core

Jackie Simmons: 00:14:15

Kokako I love five love languages, it actually gave me the key to unlock my life so that the choices I had made made sense. So I really like this.

Dan Mangena: 00:14:27

I mean, we use we use some interesting tests with money DNA, we use your erotic blueprint, nothing to do with six. We use a human design, we use your wealth dynamics profile, we use your four tendencies. At the surface level, when we're going deep with people like someone's working with us through their accelerator program or coming to me with a VIP day. We've got much deeper ones that we use, but in order to get the general map these are some of the ones that we use. But the thing with love language is this. So do you obviously know your primary love language? What's your primary love language?

Jackie Simmons: 00:14:58

It boils down to under via a detention.

Dan Mangena: 00:15:01

So, quality time for you quality time is wherever it Yep. Okay? So if you are in connection with somebody, they don't give you their undivided attention. They don't connect with you. They're distracted, they're split. Do you sit there and say, Hmm, this person just looked away, this person wasn't looking me in the eye, this person was on their phone, I now decide that I'm not going to feel love and connection with this person, we don't sit and do that consciously. It happens at the unconscious level, the unconscious processes those inputs and makes a decision as to whether or not they're going to generate within your body the chemicals and hormones that we associate with an elevated emotional state or not. It's the same as someone who's acts of service, I'm acts of service, right? So when my sister, for example, just does something amazing for me. I don't sit there and say, Oh, no, we just did something amazing. Yes, I will feel the chemicals and hormones, but it can you produce a cable, and hormones are feeling good, please. Yes, thank you. That's not what happens. It all happens at the unconscious level. Because what the love language is, is it's telling you the medium through which your unconscious mind will receive a message and then create a corresponding response. So if you understand or money DNA, one of these components is of course this, then you can see, oh, well, I'm communicating an idea with myself so that I can get my unconscious on board, I can do it in a way that's targeted and work effectively.

Jackie Simmons: 00:16:33

Well, there, you just said a mouthful. All right. So obviously, we're going to be having a whole series of talking with Dan, on these topics. So the power of what you just said, having a doorway, that a framework that you could say, okay, all of these things work universally. Now, how do I fit them through my doorway, so that they're easily absorbed by me and implemented by

Dan Mangena: 00:17:01

me, effectively and easily?

Jackie Simmons: 00:17:03

Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Well, having just discovered human design in the last year, and having that make a radical impact on everything that I do. As a matter of fact, that's one of the requirements and students coming into my certification program, I have to have their human design, before I can coach them on how they are going to interact with the world when it comes to bringing conscious transformational coaching as part of their programs. So yeah, it's very powerful stuff, this idea of Shakespeare to thine own self be true. Well, that implies that you know, yourself, right? Isn't that the journey of personal development, it starts with get to know

Dan Mangena: 00:17:44

you. Yeah. Because without that foundation of self knowing, then there's no outcome that you're gonna be able to move to, because you're always going to get stuck. And even if you do move to the outcome, you're not going to have the resilience to maintain. And if the benefits of that it's going to fall away.

Jackie Simmons: 00:17:59

Well, I want to touch briefly, we don't want to leave people hanging too long with you said five pillars, the first one was internal communication, I want to make sure I get on that third. So the

Dan Mangena: 00:18:09

first one is vehicle. So to be any outcome that you want, you have to understand which vehicles are going to be aligned with you. On the money point, you know, so many people are getting caught up in whatever the sexy new thing is, the sexy way to generate clients for your business, the sexy type of business to have the sexy investment vehicle. But we're not all if we're not all suited to vehicles. So if you imagine if you could understand which marketing method is perfectly suited to you in your business, instead of you spending six months a year, and money going and testing out this and testing out that going on this program going on that program? What if you could say, Hang on a minute, I know that these things work for me, and I know that doesn't fit in, so I'm not going to do it. Someone comes to picture because the marketers are good these days, come and do this Fandango, and it's gonna give you millions of dollars. And you're like, well, actually, that's not going to be aligned with my vehicle. So vehicles, number one, number two, the role, the role that we play in what we do every day, not everybody is achieved, some of us have to be the farmers, some of us have to be the bakers, we all have our roles that we are perfectly adapted to.

Jackie Simmons: 00:19:13

And a village requires someone in each role. Exactly. If we were all chiefs, it would be highly inefficient. For one thing, we wouldn't have any warriors and we wouldn't have any hunters and we wouldn't have any gatherers, and the village would starve.

Dan Mangena: 00:19:32

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So the role is key. Third is internal communication that we just spoke about. The fourth one is how we make decisions that bring us into alignment with divine flow, how we make decisions that bring us into alignment with divine flow. That's the fourth one. So when I'm looking at opportunities when I'm looking at what's ahead of me, how can I make the choice as to which ones are actually going to be keeping me on purpose? Keep me in alignment with my intention being manifested keeping In alignment with divine inspiration, how do I do that? All of us have a body, internal built thing in our body to be able to do that. And so we show you how to connect with that. And the fifth one is, how do I actually ensure that I'm taking the actions that are going to lead to the transformation? Because again, all of this is great.

Dan Mangena: 00:20:20

Pillars information, all internal communication, love language, did you hear this thing I

Dan Mangena: 00:20:25

heard on a podcast the other day, it's so amazing, it's gonna blow your mind, right? But what matters is us taking the action that's going to lead to the new outcomes. And that's in pillar number five.

Jackie Simmons: 00:20:34

Oh, I love that I created a meme. It was my first ever meme. I knew nothing about color schemes. And my first ever meme said, attitude may be everything. But attitude without action changes nothing. And that I love. Okay, so I like the idea that there is a unique pattern because DNA, I mean, if there are 7 billion people on the planet, there are 7 billion DNA patterns. So we each have our own unique pattern. When it comes to money, and abundance, we each have that unique formula that will work easily, effortlessly, effectively. As long as we work it and working it means understanding ourselves, understanding all of the different possibilities that you just laid out beautifully vehicles and roles. Internal communication, which you know, is where I live behind the eyes, the ears. Yeah. And I like the decision about design flow, deciding what's going to get me in alignment with flow, so that the actions flow easily, exactly.

Dan Mangena: 00:21:46

All these bills with each other Jackie, though.

Jackie Simmons: 00:21:50

Oh, Dan, that is lovely. Alright, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that into such clarity for everyone listening. And what we'll do is we'll gather some information from you. We'll wrap it around this podcast, we'll make sure that it's in the show notes. And we'll be sending this out. So people can find it easily. Then I want you to say you'll come back. Okay, well, we'll unpack a little more around that the blessing, Dan, that you have brought into my world and to my listeners world, because you know, for you to make time on your schedule of less than 48 hours to be able to just it's such a wonderful gift speaking of an act of service.

Dan Mangena: 00:22:38

Oh, my pleasure.

Jackie Simmons: 00:22:39

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will talk again.