One would assume being in a relationship with someone with the WHY of Simplify would result in… a simple relationship. But just because their WHY is Simplify – doesn’t mean that will jive with your WHY. It does not mean it will be simple.
If you have seen the movie Inside Out, do you remember the part at the beginning when they say, “Do you ever look at someone and wonder what is going on inside their head?” I often find when interacting with someone with the WHY of Simplify – it is hard to tell what they are thinking when they give such short, direct, and simple answers. As someone with the WHY of Trust and building relationships, I find myself wanting a little more substance than a “yes” or “no” response. If you don’t have the WHY of Simplify, you may find yourself wanting a bit more information as well.
It is important to understand that your significant other isn’t being rude, short, or unwilling to open up. They just simply live life in a simple format, including how they speak. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care either, they just believe it is the most effective way to communicate and that “fluff” isn’t necessary.
There are many positives to being in a relationship with a Simplify as well. There is usually minimal drama, and a minimal need for attention as that can often feel too excessive and extra. They are happy with the simplicities in life and finding joy in the small things. They are generally easy going and find it easy to agree on decisions. Date nights will be simple, fun, and all about the two of you!
Brandon Alcocer believes that simple is beautiful. It reduces overwhelm, creates more room for creativity, and makes the brain work better. For him, simplifying things means challenging the way things have always been done, thinking outside the box, and finding a better way to move forward.
An innovator in the world of sexual and motivational psychology, Brandon simplifies a lot of life issues into one thing – sexual expression. As an author, professor and DJ, he focuses on optimizing people lives by helping them improve their erotic intelligence and make the most out of their arousal states.
Listen in as he speaks in detail on how dealing with sexual issues clears up many obstacles in achieving peak performance and paves the way for a more fulfilling life.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Simple Is Beautiful: Challenging Norms And Creating A Better Way Forward
Featuring Brandon Alcocer
We are going to be talking about the why of simplify. If this is your why, then you are one of the fabulous people that make everyone’s life better. You have the unique gift of reducing the number of steps required for almost any task. If most of us believe that a procedure requires eight sequential actions, you see how it can be done in six. You constantly look for ways to simplify, from recipes to business systems, to how you organize your garage. You feel successful when you eliminate complexity and remove unnecessary elements in a process. You streamline things for the benefit of all and break things down into their simplest form. You operate from a perspective that the world is a better place when kept simple and as a result, constantly find ways to help the rest of us improve efficiency, save time and reduce aggravation.
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I’ve got a great guest for you. He is known as a dual-threat innovator in the world of sexual and motivational psychology. His name is Brandon Wade Alcocer. He is a top-selling author, college professor and DJ whose focus involves promoting erotic intelligence and maximizing the power of arousal states for life optimization. During the past several years, he’s influenced thousands of students and social media followers with his entertaining and thought-provoking lectures, posts and novels on improving happiness, health, social skills, sexual expression and relationships.
Aside from his academic and writing careers, Brandon has served as a DJ for many years known for infusing neuroscientific concepts into the creation of workout mixes on SoundCloud. Millions of fitness practitioners, fitness instructors and gym owners throughout the world have used his productions. These music mixes follow a specific strategy designed to boost dopamine during workouts, thus increasing the likelihood of a fitness habit formation. Brandon, welcome to the show.How did you get into being a DJ? Tell us where you were born. Give us a brief story of how you got from where you were to becoming a DJ and then onto your next career.
The first place I want to start with to paint the whole picture is that I learned that I’m what’s called an HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person or Highly Sensitive Personality type, which means that from a very young age, I’ve been observing human behavior probably on a level that’s not typical of most people. I’ve been gathering data my whole life. My parents took me to a lot of parties growing up and I would always observe the dance floor and see if people either dance or not dance. What music do they connect with? What music do they not? I was always compiling data, listening to radio, seeing how women interacted with the music and the effect that it had on the dance floor.
It’s an extreme amount that when I talked to my other buddy who was ten years old, he said, “Dude, just throw me the ball. What are you talking about?” That’s the way it’s been my whole life. It’s this hyper attentive personality towards human behavior. I love entertaining people. I have a musical ear. I’ve never played an instrument and learned music. I have this sense that it’s always been there that I know what’s the right song that this group of people wants to hear that’s going to make their head explode on the dance floor. I don’t put some music file or whatever that people just love. I don’t care. I don’t pay attention to lyrics. It’s just, “What’s going to give these people dopamine?” It’s how I understand it now. I did that.
I started DJ-ing at parties at thirteen years old. There’s a cool story with that. I was thirteen years old and was picking up doggy do to try to earn money to buy turntables. At the time, it was tape decks, little Walkman CD players and a radio shack mixer or whatever I could get my hands on. This was before the internet where you could download everything. I had records and recorded songs off the radio. I said, “Dad, I want to start working events.” He said, “Book it and figure it out.” That was probably the best lesson my dad ever taught me. There are some people who are perfectionists and I’m the opposite of that. My rule is, “Just get a beat on it.” What that means is I do a lot more with that attitude.
Going back to “Book it and figure it out,” I booked a sweet sixteen party. I was thirteen years old for $20 for four hours. It went okay, but they wrote me a check. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t even have a checking account. I had no idea what to do with it, but I got paid. What I learned when I booked that is that I had two weeks to get all this music together. Because the pressure was on for me, I’m also ADHD. That’s when my brain kicks into gear and I focus. If I would have waited to, “Eventually, I’ll get a gig, but for now, I’ll try to develop the skill,” I never would have been in that focus. I would’ve lost interest and probably moved on to something else. For somebody with my brain type, for sure it’s, “Book it and figure it out.” I’ve been using that model with about everything that I’m doing.
I’m an athlete. I grew up playing basketball. To the best of my memory, I’ve hit every game-winning shot that I took. I hadn’t taken a lot but I won our lead championship on a game-winning shot and several others. I might have missed a few. I don’t remember. Maybe that’s selective memory but the whole thing is I know I perform better under pressure. Understanding my brain type, I know that not everybody is wired that way. For me, it’s when my brain is most at peace. I love speaking in front of large groups of people. It’s very natural to me. That’s where I navigated into. I did stand-up comedy for a few years and navigated my way into being a professor because I thought, “I need to get a job. What’s the job? I can’t work in an office. It’s not stimulating enough. What’s something where I feel like I can do stand-up comedy all day?”
That’s where I got the idea of becoming a professor. It turned out that I liked learning. It took me a while to get there. The thing I wanted to teach was happiness, social psychology, which going back to my HSP brain, observing human behavior. At 10, 11 years old, my friend’s parents always seemed unhappy in all these marriages and relationships that eventually got divorced. Observing relationships at school, in college and all these things, I can’t help but think we’re all trying to do this approach to relationships and nobody is stopping to admit, “Why don’t we do something different?” I took that question through college and didn’t learn much because there’s not much information on it. I’ve had to figure out my own way. It’s been gradually growing each year, blending in neuroscience, coming up with my own theories and things like that.
After college, I got my regular degree in Family and Consumer Studies, which is Family Sciences. It’s a study of human behavior. I could have gone the psychology route but when I was going through school, I was focused more on depression, schizophrenia, bipolar and the negative disorders, which is fine, but for an HSP, it’s debilitating. Studying that stuff kills my energy. For people who are reading, if they’ve never heard of an HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, I’ll give a couple of examples.
If I watch a scary movie and a monster, let’s say, Jason Voorhees with a hockey mask is stabbing somebody, it physically feels like I’m getting stabbed. For the next week, two weeks or even a month, throughout the day, I’ll get a tinge where that stabbing occurred in the movie. I know it’s fake. I know it’s for entertainment and all that stuff, but I can’t get that tick out of my brain. I physically feel it, which means I have a hyperactive central nervous system. It doesn’t apply to everything. There are all kinds of variety with it, but that’s an example.
Another example of it is being highly empathetic towards other people. If you and I and let’s say your wife and whoever went to a brunch at a nice restaurant at Marina Del Ray. I think it was Trader Vic’s back in the day. They had a great Sunday brunch. They have a famous chef there. Somebody ordered an egg over easy and it came out over hard. They got angry and sent their food back. For me, as a highly sensitive person, I was thinking, “What message is that going to send? The chef who went to school for all these years is going to feel low on that day.”
Simplify Things: Being a hypersensitive is a superpower. You have to learn how to use it for good because it can easily turn against you.
This was their biggest day of the week. They got to make 1,000 brunches for people. I want to go back there, talk to the chef and say, “I told these people how great of a chef you are and an artist you are. Is it possible to redo this egg? The other thing I want to do is order a dessert from you, chef’s choice. Whatever you think is the best dessert that you would love to eat, send that our way because I think you’re a brilliant artist. I support everything that you do and then I’d go and sit down.” What I’m saying with that is hyper-aware of how other people feel. I want them to feel so comfortable that they can maximize their performance.
Let’s talk about that. When we talk about HSP, what are you doing when you’re being hypersensitive? What’s going on in your head?
You can feel the pain of other people and it shuts down all the other mechanisms in my brain. Some people can block it off and focus on something else. For me, it can’t. It’s overwhelming. For me, I almost feel paralyzed. A lot of times, I’ll say, “I’m going to go to sleep. It’s 5:00 PM. I’ve got to sleep it off and the next day I’ll feel a little bit better.” In a way, it’s one of those things where it’s a superpower. I’ve had to learn how to use it for good because it can easily turn against yourself. As far as the heavy neuroscience of what’s going on, I don’t quite have it. I’m still learning about it but it pulled everything together for me. It helped me understand why I’m doing all this stuff and my perspective on things and how it’s unique.
Let me ask you a couple of questions then. What is the result that you get after you’ve been through an episode of being hypersensitive? What happens because you then took an action, right?
Yes. I wish I could think of an example right now. Understanding human behavior will usually end up being a scene in a book. I write erotic self-help thrillers. My first book, The Experience,which we’ll get into. I’m working on my second book. It doesn’t have a title yet, but I’ll get some lesson out of it that has a unique twist that maybe other people didn’t see it the way I see it. After an episode, it’s a level of clarity that I think is a nuance that might be different than what is the status quo. In a weird way now when I have these episodes, I can sit in the mud, so to speak and be like, “I’m going to get something good out of this. Let me have it work its way through me.”
When you went through and discovered your why of being the why of simplify, taking complex things and simplifying them down to something that’s useful. Stripping away all the extra stuff that’s going on and getting to the point, how does that feel to you?
It minimizes the overwhelm and that’s what an HSP is all about. We create these environments where we minimize the overwhelm. If somebody is creating a team, the HSP is good to have on the team because we can see that maybe there’s a lighter way because it’s going to save energy for everybody. That’s circumstantial, but that’s a big part of it.
Why do you think things should be simple? What happens when they’re simple or simplified?
There’s less stress, which means the brain works better. There are people out there and I think it’s one of your why’s where they love a challenge. I’ve been reading a lot of your episodes. There was a gentleman on who was a basketball trainer. He talked about working with Kobe Bryant and that stuff. I grew up loving basketball and I respect his talent. Similar to Michael Jordan and the documentary, that came out and everything. Those are very specific personality types that most of us don’t have. If we all trained like Kobe Bryant, we would be head cases.
A lot of people don’t talk about the emotional issues that were on his team. He won five championships. If there were some ways to tweak his brain, which you can’t, but if there were to make you a nicer human being, maybe he would have had ten championships. The flip side of that is if you take away that detailed focus, that killer in him, then he won’t be as effective of an athlete. I get that. I’m jumping all over the place. Simple means there’s going to be more space, less stress, more room for creativity and people are going to be happier overall because then there are less people quitting, changing jobs and all that stuff.
When you think about the music that you create or choose, you’re wanting people to have an experience, right?
Yes, a sensory experience.
How do they do that? Do they do that by having a lot of complex things going on all over the place or when they’re able to focus in on what you’re trying to have them experience?
With the music, a couple of caveats. One, this is with the assumption that the stuff that I’ve recorded is in their genre. If somebody only likes country and I don’t play country. It’s within their genre. In my mixes, I create what’s called a mashup, which is where you’ll take the lyrics or the acapella of one song and then the beat of another song and you line them up perfectly. You might hear The Beatles and then a gangsta rap beat. The number one way to release dopamine in the brain is nuance. In this context, nuance is taking something familiar where you’re somewhat familiar with it and you add a little twist to it. That gets the brain to have that spark of dopamine, which is just interest where you say, “That’s interesting.” When you have that, that’s dopamine.
Going to the gym, they don’t change the design of the gym very much. You can go to the same gym for five years and it smells and looks the same. The weights are in the same spot. It’s the same person who was there at 4:00, who was there yesterday and the day before. All looks the same. How are we going to bring nuance to the situation? One way is that thing in your ears. If you’re listening to the same The Beatles album over and over again, that’s going to lose its effect. With these mixes, I take every genre and turn them all around into a way that’s pleasing to the ear and high energy. People use that with workout, cleaning the house or whatever it is. They’re more than likely going to create a habit around that because of the dopamine release that’s in place. That’s my strategy as far as the mixes. That’s different than what I would do for a dance floor at a nightclub. These are specific for working out or habit creation.
What got you from DJ to erotic books?
Being an ADHD, I have lots of interests. I get bored super easy. I jump around from one project to the next. I would like to have multiple projects because it keeps my brain occupied. For the readers, I’m not doing stuff all day long. I might work maybe 2 or 3 hours a day. The rest of the time, I’m just lying around or meditating. If I get too much stimulation, I can feel myself just shut down. During those 2 or 3 hours is the equivalent of somebody else’s ten hours. They are hyper-focused. It’s like the zone that you locked into. Anybody’s been in that kind of workflow state. I know that my brain, because of it, goes there.
How did I get from that to erotic books? The DJ thing started out as a hobby. I DJ’ed to get through college and everything. It ended up being this thing that I could work a couple of hours a week on and it built on its own. As far as the erotic books, I’ve always been observing human behavior in my twenties. I had three wonderful girlfriends, but each of them was unfaithful at various times in the relationship. I was somebody who was teaching dating and relationships. In ’05 and ’06, I was a matchmaker and dating coach in Beverly Hills. I worked at a firm that specialized in helping millionaire women find dates. My job was to coach these women into understanding their sexuality. I would have lines of students after my classes asking about jealousy and what should I do about this and that.
Meanwhile, I go home and walk in on a girlfriend with somebody else or whatever it might be because I’m thinking of doing stuff by the book, but it’s not working. Whatever I’m doing that’s by the book isn’t working. Finally, after the third time that it happened, that was my 29th birthday. I said, “Enough is enough.” During all this time, I’ve been fantasizing about Vegas. I’ve always been obsessed with Vegas. From a human behavior perspective like, “What is this place where you can just go, be free and there are all these lights and shiny objects. What is this?” I’ve been through a lot during my twenties. On my 29th birthday, I dropped everything. From LA to Vegas, it’s about a 3.5 to 4-hour drive. I drove to Vegas twice a month for the next seven years.
I realized that whatever is being studied on sex and relationships isn’t accurate. You can’t get much from a lab when people are filling out a form because they’re not going to be brutally honest. By me going to Vegas, I got to observe human behavior. I’m the professor who’s a fly on the wall. I’m with a pimp, six women, a multi-millionaire amount of cocaine and pizza being thrown all across the room at 4:00 in the morning in this high-roller suite at the Palms. For me, I was saying, “This is some interesting human behavior.” I was taking notes in my mind because I know that guy is married. That guy is a government official. That guy is a celebrity. All this stuff that’s “behind the scenes.”
There’s something about human behavior that we’re all ignoring. That ignited the spark in me. What I started doing was I would do all that on my drive home. I would listen to podcasts on neuroscience. I would buy audiobooks on neuropsychology, going into a deeper bit and then piecing all of these pieces together in what I think is modern dating and sexual expression. It boils down to radical acceptance and understanding who the F you are.
Is it identity?
Yes. An identity that’s unfiltered. If somebody grows up and they think, “I’m going to get married. I’ll have two kids and a wife.” Where did that idea come from? Have you looked at the history of that idea? Have you looked at the amount of oppression for females that that idea has caused? “My religion said.” “Which religion is it?” I don’t want to bash religions. I think they all have their purpose, but there are certain religions where, at least for the first 1,000 years of their existence, they thought that women didn’t have a soul. Why are we still practicing that same thing?
The metaphor I give is like in the’70s and ’80s, everybody thought they had to take karate because with karate you’ll learn how to fight. If you ever see karate in a street fight, don’t do a damn thing. Now, we have mixed martial arts. We say, “That could probably work in a street fight.” It’s beautiful and an artistic expression. I get it. I’m not knocking it, but it’s a solution for something that’s not accurate. I think we’re doing that with dating and relationships. Through all of my experiences in Vegas, thinking of it from a scientist’s perspective, that’s what led to this book. I chose to write it as a story instead of a step-by-step guide because I think people learn better through a story. Studying the brain, the brain opens up a lot more to absorb the information when we feel like we’re the character living it. That’s why I chose to write it this way.
Simplify Things: Sexual expression is a superpower that most people have not tapped into because we live in a system that wants to keep that at a minimum because it makes us easier to control.
Let me ask you a question. You went to Vegas. Do you feel like you studied typical normal everyday people?
Yes, I gave an extreme example and that’s to keep the reader’s attention, but also very regular people. A married couple who are real estate agents from Kansas, but they came there to swing a little bit, meet somebody and bring somebody back to their room that you would never know. There were also people who went to have a good time and a couple of beers and listen to some music. That’s fine too. I had a great laugh. I learned about them as well. I’ve seen all types. I’m not saying that if somebody is married with a white picket fence and all that stuff that there’s nothing wrong with that. No, that’s great. My whole thing is if you did that and it still doesn’t feel right, it’s okay to explore the why and look for other options.
One caveat as we go deeper into this is everybody has a different level of sexual expression or sexual comfort. On a scale of 0 to 10, some people are a ten, meaning they want to get into adult films. They have no psychological issues. It’s just in them to express themselves that way. Zero would be completely asexual where there’s nothing there. Age can play a part in that as well. Wherever somebody is on that spectrum, I hope that they’ve explored. If somebody is an 8 out of 10, but they’ve lived a life following a doctrine that wants them to only be a two, there’s going to be a lot of discomfort, insecurity and not knowing the self there. This book is for those people who don’t quite know where they stand and they’d follow what everybody said, but it doesn’t quite fit. That’s the angle I’m taking.
What did you learn from your studies?
Sexual expression is a superpower that most people have not tapped into. It seems that we live in a system that wants to keep that at a minimum because it makes us easier to control. You can go way back in history and find examples of this. I know that on a lot of shows, they want hardcore science and things like that. It’s hard to measure sexuality through science. I’ll tell you, here’s a future thing to worry about. Sex robots are coming.
If you think of The Jetsons, the house cleaning robot. What most houses are going to have in probably 5 to 10 years is a house-cleaning robot that’ll also watch the kids. If you pay an extra couple thousand dollars, it will look like a supermodel. I’m going hypothetical here. We’re going to have a chip in our brain that if you choose to have sex with this robot, it will also measure what’s going on inside of your brain, the different things that are firing up and all this stuff. It will give you a printout of what you’re going through. The hypothesis is they’ll be able to figure out then, “What parts of your body need to be touched that are lacking sensory connection?”
One thing I learned was that the erotic sensory experience wakes up a part of your brain that might be dormant. It brings an awareness to life that you may never know existed. What I was talking about with the sex robots is, if you have a partner who can’t quite figure it out, we’re going to get to where we have these things that are almost like a therapist. If there’s post-traumatic stress or if there are things like that, they’ll know how to touch your body or to speak to you in a way that builds your brain up in a way that you can’t necessarily do it yourself. That’s one thing that people are craving to be touched. In the pandemic, we see a lot of examples of how powerful that is. Not just touched, but touched in a way with hands that care.
The example I gave is if you’ve ever gotten a massage, you can tell when the masseuse genuinely cares about your experience versus when they’re going through the motions. If they go through the motions, you could walk out of there with more knots than when you came in. The other thing that I’m dabbling with is studying ancient civilization like ancient Egypt and things like that. They’ll show on the walls all these hieroglyphics of very erotic scenes, but they seem to skip over it and try to get to, “This King did this. They were praying to the sun.” I was like, “What about all these erotic images?” If you try to figure out, how are these pyramids built? Maybe they were more connected because they had orgies all the time. Maybe there was something there if you look at the brain when it’s in a sexually aroused state.
If our conversation was about money and motivation, you see a tiny part of the brain light up. A lot of people go through their lives ignoring their sexuality and sexual expression. They have to use willpower and grind it all out. If we bring in erotic energy, you’ll see the brain light up a lot more. This is the sex brain. It’s a big exaggeration to prove the point, but what I’m getting at is there’s a superpower that most of us have been conditioned to ignore. If somebody on that sex scale is a 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and they’re not in tune with that, they’re going to always feel like something is missing. For me, being an HSP, it hurts so much to see people go through that.
It sounds like you’re feeling like they should do. They should live in alignment with how they’re wired sexually then what?
It’s self-knowledge. There will be a better understanding of stuff. A lot of issues are rooted in sexual expression, whether it’s sexual abuse or not allowing this kind of beast to come out. We’re the only animals on the planet that do erotica. We’re the only ones that have some type of artistic expression with our sexual expression where it’s not only for reproduction. I think there is some hidden power there. The reason why I say that is I’ve experienced it. People who have read my book who ran away from cults and heavy structures from small towns that have kept them bound, they have this sense of freedom like, “I’m me.” It’s the equivalent of somebody who comes out of the closet and all of a sudden, they feel alive. That’s what I’m getting to.
Again, not everybody has to do this. This doesn’t mean you go to be single, go off and have an orgy. You can be in a relationship. You and your partner can explore that more. Is sex the same thing over and over again? They say, “Change it up in the bedroom.” Even when I hear that, I’m like, “Let’s go deeper. What are some of the ingredients?” If you do it in the exact same room, the exact same house with the same smells and everything, it won’t feel all that different. A lot of couples when they travel, when they’re in a hotel, all of a sudden, it’s real spicy. There’s something about the hotel. Why is that? You’re away from everything. The hotel is totally different. In that room, the smell and design of everything are completely different. You forget about the inhibitions of whatever is at home in this kind of cocoon that you built at home. Part of it then is me seeing that in Vegas where people let loose. That’s why I can’t help but think, “There’s something there.” I haven’t figured it out yet because the research is hard to do.
When the sex robots come out, it will be easier to get data on it that’s accurate. I know it sounds crazy. If you’re like, “I don’t imagine it.” Everybody has a sex robot. Everybody has one. It’s their phone or laptop, watching adult films on that. It’s the same thing. You don’t touch it. The technology is there. The brains are being shifted as a result. I’m looking forward to the research that’s going to come out because of that. In the meantime, I’ll keep spreading this message that, “We have to get connected to it. Study the history on why systems are trying to keep you down.” Hitler did a good job of that. He changed his whole country’s belief system. As a result, he made masturbation illegal, arrested women who had sex who weren’t married and created a bunch of fear around that. That’s one of the key factors. He was able to switch the brains of these young men and to get them to believe what he believed.
Are you feeling like people should give in to any of their feelings? Let’s say in this case, it’s a sexual feeling. It could be anything else, stealing something. Whatever the feeling is, that’s what I should do.
They’re bringing the moral aspect?
Yes, exactly.
That’s where it’s tricky. I think by exploring, “What is sex? It’s just two people touching. How bad is that?” If you’re in a committed relationship, there are all these other dynamics. I get it. We may have an impulse to steal, let’s say a candy bar, but then the thing comes up in your brain, “No, I’ll get put in jail. It’s probably not the right decision.” With sex, if that thought comes up once, no big deal. If it comes up twice, no big deal. If it’s 30, 40, 50 times to where it never goes away, maybe not act on it, but seek help to understand, “Why is this there? I’m in a committed relationship, but there’s something in me that wants to explore. What is that?” You might go to a therapist and depending on how they’ve been trained, they’ll either guide you to stay in the relationship or help you to sit down and have an open and honest conversation with your partner.
The caveat with this and let’s see if I can answer from another way. I watched the Tiger Woods Documentary. They covered his whole “sex scandal,” which I thought was laughable. They forgot to skip over. That was when he was the most successful golfer on the planet. When he was flying women to Australia to be with them the night before the Australian golf tournament so he’d win the tournament the next day. He’ll fly women or a girl from New York to Australia, not his wife, but that. Kobe Bryant won three in a row, but on that fourth one when they had Karl Malone and everything, that was the year that he got busted for the whole Colorado incident. We know he was probably playing around well before that. I’m not saying these men were doing the right thing by cheating on their wives. I would hope they had a system in place that says, “If you’re having these urges, it’s probably better to get a divorce and then seek it out.”
There is a benefit to your performance based on your sexual expression. If it is with multiple women, we can scan the brain and you’ll see it light up like crazy. As far as how the amygdala responds when it’s in pursuit of a reproduction opportunity, it becomes a superpower. On the moral aspect, those men should have had an open conversation with their partners. If it means to go to divorce and then get to divorce and then they can play around and still be super successful athletes and maybe settle down after their career. That’s the angle I take. It’s a tricky thing. Certainly, what’s worse? To be in a relationship for 50 years that you know you should have got out of after year two, but toughing it out because it’s the right thing to do? I feel bad for people that do that.
Tell us about your book then. What is your book about?
My book is about a college professor. It’s semi-autobiographical. That college professor at 29 years old who teaches dating and relationships walks in on his fiancé and realizes that everything he’s learned in academia is not an accurate match towards what he thinks human behavior should be. He runs off to Vegas. This is where then it becomes a little more fictional. He ends up meeting a gentleman at a bar, who is on the surface, looks like a pimp. He’s got the fedora and all this stuff but he’s brilliant. In neuropsychology, he drops these bombs on him that he did not see coming that he never read in the book. The man says, “You learn this through observing human behavior, not all that stuff in academia that are made by people that are just looking to boost their ego by publishing some paper.” It is not all, but there is a lot of that in academia.
This gentleman who we think is a pimp, his name is Wish. He’s learned all these secrets that he needs to get out to the world, but because of the people who he’s involved himself with, both breaking laws and things like that, he can’t get these sexual secrets or secrets on just overall well-being out. He needs to get into a young man who is credible. He finds this professor. They agree that, “I’ll teach you my secrets, but you’ve got to pass these tests because this knowledge can be used for abuse. You can take advantage of women with these things or whatever it is.”
It’s the hero’s journey story. He goes on this through all these trials and tribulations. The young man learns a lot about himself and the power of experiencing sexual freedom because he was very censored. I was very censored, not for any other reason, not religion or anything like that. I have no idea why I was censored. I’m still trying to figure that out. The only thing I can think of is because of being an HSP. I knew there was a power there that I was hesitant to go because it was so strong. I didn’t know what to do with it.
The character, the professor, does all these things. Meanwhile, FBI agents and detectives are chasing them. They’re trying to avoid breaking the law to bring it all together. You find out that the people who you think are “the good guys,” the law enforcement are the bad guys. This isn’t a knock-on cop. It’s just one specific character in the book. The “pimp” who’s supposed to be evil ends up being brilliant and you see the character come to success at the end. It’s a wild story. This story as said by people who’ve read it and the emails I get, it’s a non-traditional way of self-growth and self-understanding. Even if you’re not into the sexual side, there’s still a lot of neuroscience in there that’s presented in a way that if there is some arousal going on, you’re going to memorize it more than if you were just studying a self-help book on how to make money. That’s why sex and advertising work so well like. The Super Bowl just passed. In the 1992 Diet Pepsi commercial, who was the woman in that commercial?
Simplify Things: When we accept our sexual self, it’s so much easier to accept everything in the world. Most of our insecurities come from that because it’s the strongest thing.
I’m going to guess it’s Cindy Crawford, but I don’t know.
When was the last time you thought about that? It’s probably been forever. You nailed it. Yes, it was Cindy Crawford. Do you remember where you were when you saw that?
No, I can’t. I don’t know.
I put you on the spot and that’s okay. Here’s the whole thing. I remember because I was eleven years old and the whole room froze. Men and women stopped and turned. She got out of this red Lamborghini. For those of you who haven’t seen it, you can find this commercial on YouTube. That led to the highest amount of Pepsi sales in the history of the company. It was that one commercial. She didn’t do anything. She wasn’t dancing or anything. She just got out of the car and cracked open a Pepsi. That was it. She was the most attractive woman on the planet at that time. What’s going on at that moment? We’re all at the Super Bowl. Craziness was going on. Everybody stopped and watched it. While they see this attractive woman holding a Diet Pepsi, everybody’s amygdala in their brain said, “Reproduction opportunity.”
Even if you’re a female, the brain says, “There’s somebody that is getting all the attention. I better pay attention to that.” It activates all of these parts of your brain that memorizes whatever is taking place. “What’s going on here? She’s drinking a Pepsi. Pepsi equals reproduction opportunity with an attractive woman.” It’s what’s going on in our non-conscious brain. I was going to do a TED Talk on this before the pandemic. You may not think anything at the moment. The brain memorizes that Pepsi equals reproduction opportunity. Next time you’re in the grocery store, all of a sudden, you’re going to check out. The non-conscious brain will turn your head and say, “There’s the Pepsi. There’s the thing that’s going to lead you to either Cindy Crawford or somebody that looks like Cindy Crawford.” Another part of your brain might say, “Pepsi is not healthy. I’m not going to buy it.”
The fact that’s how sex works in advertising. It’s understanding just that concept. If you’re ignoring sexual expression in your life, you’re ignoring a big power source of motivation. Even some of the women that I coach and they’ll come up with these ideas. There was one, she said, “I had this big meeting with a bunch of CEOs of some mega-corporation. I wore my sexiest lingerie under my business suit.” It wasn’t showing. She wasn’t trying to flirt or anything like that, but she wanted to activate that part of her brain going into the meeting so she was hyper-focused, able to take in all of that stuff and have her power on standard ground with whatever it was she was doing. There are ways and that’s how some of the things are covered in my book that you can use your sexual energy not to flirt. This is not crossing that line at all. It’s more for yourself that there’s an untapped energy source there. Can you connect to it? Again, if you’re a 5 out of 10, 6 out of 10 or 2 out of 10, maybe it’s a little overwhelming for you. I understand. It’s not for everybody. The big part of the book is learning that.
You have simplified it right down to one thing. If you can deal with and figure out this one thing in your identity, how much more energy can that give you? How much more passion, direction and excitement will your life have if you can focus on that part of your life?
A big part also is radical acceptance of who you are. I think when we accept our sexual self, it’s so much easier to accept everything in the world. Most of our insecurities come from that because it’s the strongest thing. Our brain is designed for two things, get you to reproduction and keep you out of danger. The danger part, we live in a relatively safe society most of the time so there’s an untapped force there. I hope people read this and find a way to connect to it.
The last question, what’s been the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten or the best piece of advice you’ve ever given?
In the self-help and wellness industries, what drives me nuts is people say, “You’ve got to work hard to get it. You’ve got to grind it out. You’ve got to be scheduled and all this stuff.” That never sat well with me. I’m like, “There’s got to be a better way.” The advice I would give is if you’re following Tony Robbins or whatever it is, if you can’t see yourself being good friends with that person, if their path doesn’t connect with you, there’s a chance that you’re wasting your time with it. There are going to be some valuable tidbits, but for me, it takes no mental stress to get up in front of 3,000 people and talk. That’s extremely comfortable for me.
Would you come to me for advice on how to feel comfortable talking in front of 3,000 people? I wouldn’t know what to tell you because it’s natural. When I see a lot of these self-help people, they look like they’re just excellent marketers and I can’t stand good marketing. If something’s well-marketed for me, I turn it off. It bugs me. The best advice is, you don’t have to follow what everybody else is following. I’m a gentle rebel. Maybe those of you who like to rebel against the norm and use your sexual energy, then come check out my book. If you’d rather go with Tony Robbins, that’s great. They help a ton of people. That’s fine. You don’t have to do it that way. There are lots of ways. That’s probably the best advice I seem to share the most because then if you don’t take my advice, at least you can do that and find somebody that’s a match for you.
Brandon, if people are wanting to get in touch with you or wanting to find your book, I don’t think we’ve even talked about the name of your book. How would people find you?
The Experience, I know it’s coming up backwards. It’s on Amazon, if you type in The Experience Brandon, it will come up. You look for these eyes here and you can see it. You can go to my website, BrandonWadeBooks.com. Through that, there are links to my social media, @BrandonWade_Author. If you just like the music stuff and you want to check that out, @DJBrandonWade is my Instagram. On SoundCloud, it’s DJ Brandon Wade. I passed over nine million downloads. It’s growing and lots of good stuff there. Any of that is great. The one-stop shop is BrandonWadeBooks.com.
Brandon, thank you so much for being here. I wondered how our conversation was going to go. I had no idea. I was looking at your bio and I was thinking about our conversation. I was like, “I wonder where we’re going to go here.” I didn’t have a good sense, but it turned out awesome. Thank you for being here.
I appreciate it. I love a good improv. That’s part of the fun. I think a show is not so structured. Let’s see where it goes. It’s a conversation.
You’re doing some great stuff.
I appreciate it. One last thing, your message is something I vibe with. It breaks down into personality types and all that stuff is awesome. Keep doing what you’re doing.
If I were to look at your why, how and what, if I were to take a stab at it, what I think just based on our conversation, I would say that your why is to make things simple and understandable. Break them down to where people can do something with them. How you go about doing that is by challenging the way things have always been done, thinking outside the box and imagining extraordinary. What you ultimately bring to people is a better way to move forward, understand themselves and understand their sexuality. How does that feel to you?
It’s spot on.
It would be your why is to simplify things and how you do that is by challenging things and what you bring is a better way.
There’s lots of fun with that.
Thank you so much for being here. I’m going to continue to follow you. I’m going to check out your music as soon as we’re done.
It sounds good.
Thanks, Brandon.
Thank you.
The Experience
If you were to get in front of an audience, which you’ll be doing more and more of as this opens up, and you talk to them about your why, how and what, they will see what you’re doing from a different perspective. They’re going to be trying to figure you out just like I was because I didn’t know. I knew your why, but I didn’t know anything else. If you said to your audience, “My why is to make things simple and understandable. Take this concept that’s very challenging and break it down to something that’s simple and useful. How I do that is by challenging what everybody says about it. Challenging the way it normally is done and ultimately, what I’m going to bring is a better way to help you move forward, understand yourself and create your identity so that it works for you.” If you started with something like that, then everything you say after that is going to be proof of what you just told me. I will see it from that perspective versus trying to figure you out.
It’s very clear.
I worked with a guy who was one of the finalists on The Voice. I was at an event in Nashville. He came and performed. I saw this guy’s mansion and he knows all the performers. He always has a concert for us at his house. This guy came over and he was one of the finalists on The Voice. After he was done, we had this same conversation. We developed his message. Before he performs, he sits down with the audience and tells them his why, how and what. I asked him, I said, “How was that working for you?” He was like, “You cannot believe how people respond to me now that they understand what they’re hearing. Instead of just a good song or something that touches them, they know why I’m doing it.” It has a different meaning for them versus what I’m doing.
I noticed an increase when I posted a video on my Instagram on my DJ stuff where I explained the neuroscience of what I was doing with these mixes. That got the biggest response and people appreciate it even more. I can see it. Especially even now that you mentioned the music side, that people understand that “method to my madness” you could say. They’re almost looking for it and then they go, “There it is. I got it.” They text me. You’re right. It almost creates a little treasure hunt for the listeners. It’s so simple and beautiful.
That’s what you’re looking for. Simple is beautiful. If you can simplify it into something that’s useful, how much bigger of an impact can you have? If we can simplify what you’re doing and why you’re doing it to 1 or 2 sentences, people look at you differently. They can see you for the gifts that you’re bringing them instead of wondering, “What’s he all about?”
Especially in the world of sex, that can bring up a lot of flags for people. It’s important.
You happened to pick this world of sex and you also picked the world of music. You could have picked anything. It doesn’t matter what. You’ve happened to pick those two things because they were part of your life and part of some trauma and stuff that you went through. You could have easily picked working out, speaking in public or anything else, but you picked those two things and they became your focus. That’s where you’re living your why. I’m so glad we got to meet. Thanks for being on here. I look forward to following what you’re doing. I’ve got to get your book and all the rest.
That’d be great. Same with you.
We’ll keep moving on our paths.
Gary, thank you.
Take care.
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It’s time for our new segment and that is Guess The Why of somebody famous. We are going to look at the why of Mark Cuban. If you know Mark Cuban, he is the Owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He’s on Shark Tank. People either like him a lot or don’t like him. H e’s always threatening to get into politics. He’s always got a comment. He does things that are logical and direct. What do you think his why is? I’ll tell you what I think it is, but what do you think? Stop for a minute and picture Mark Cuban, Shark Tank and all the questions that he has if you know anything about the way he manages his basketball team and the way he’s involved with all of his players. I believe that his why is to make sense out of the complex and challenging. I think he’s that guy that can solve problems and do it quickly. He takes in a lot of information and makes decisions. He’s like, “Hit me, I got it. Let’s go.”
I believe that Mark Cuban’s why is to make sense. What do you think? Let me know what you think. I want to thank you for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com. Go there. We launched our new website. You can use the code PODCAST50 and you can do it for half the price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you’re using so that you can help us achieve our goal of helping one billion people discover, make decisions and live their why. Thanks, everybody.
Known as a dual-threat innovator in the world of sexual and motivational psychology, Brandon Wade Alcocer is top selling Author, College Professor, and DJ whose focus involves promoting erotic intelligence and maximizing the power of arousal states for life optimization.
During the past 12 years, he’s influenced thousands of students and social media followers with his entertaining and thought-provoking lectures, posts, and novels on improving happiness, health, social skills, sexual expression, and relationships. Aside from his academic and writing careers, Brandon has served as a DJ for 25 years.
Known for infusing neuroscientific concepts into the creation of “workout mixes” on SoundCloud, millions of fitness practitioners, fitness instructors, and gym owners throughout the world have used his productions. These music mixes follow a specific strategy designed to boost dopamine during workouts, thus increasing the likelihood of a fitness habit formation.
Known as a dual-threat innovator in the world of sexual and motivational psychology, Brandon Wade Alcocer is top selling Author, College Professor, and DJ whose focus involves promoting erotic intelligence and maximizing the power of arousal states for life optimization.