Douglas Vermeeren has produced and directed 4 of the top 10 personal development movies ever made. His latest film, ‘How Thoughts Become Things’ featuring Bob Proctor, Marie Diamond, and Joe Vitale is set to become the next phenomenon of its kind. Douglas has personally interviewed more than 400 of the top achievers worldwide. He is a regular featured expert on FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, CTV, and CBC and he is often referred to as the modern-day Napoleon Hill. Doug’s training programs share strategies of how to connect with the highest level achievers and expand your network to grow your business. His award-winning entrepreneur training programs have been rated among the best in the world.

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Contact Info

• Website: DouglasVermeeran.com
• Blog: douglasvermeeren.wordpress.com
• Movie: How Thoughts Become Things

Most Influential Person

• His mother, she is the first one to introduce mindfulness to Doug

Effect on Emotions

• “I know of times in my life where I really felt upset, hurt, angry, but I can also think of a few times where I just have taken a deep breath, brought myself present, grounded myself, and it has given me the power to gain back that control.”
• “Mindfulness is a very underrated but very powerful tool that we need to develop.”

Thoughts on Breathing

• “Don't forget to do it.”
• “We do breathing for everything but it's different breathing when you do mixed martial arts, jiujitsu.”

Suggested Resources

• Book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• App: n/a

Bullying Story

• “I was small as a kid and I was bullied. In fact, that is why I got started in the martial arts.”
• “I got bullied all the time so I got empathy for those who are bullied. What's worse than that is I have a brother who was bullied because of his cerebral palsy. I would get into fights protecting him.”

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Free Gift

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Bruce Langford:

ABC television and Fox business refer to Douglas as the modern-day Napoleon Hill. So that's a pretty sweet way to have people refer to you, Doug. That's great. So what does mindfulness mean to you?

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

Wow. You know, that's a really great question and I think I'm quite frankly, it changes from time to time. Right. for me, I think when you say mindfulness, there's, there's really a couple of things that I think about one of them is being completely present. Right. That's being mindful. And I think oftentimes it's very easy to be distracted, especially when we are, you know, how should we say mindful of what we want to get done versus what is going on around us? You know, a handful of years ago, I had the chance to to interview a gentlemen who had written for Time Magazine. And there was a thing that he had written you know, how they do those single volume time magazines that you get that are on either the brain or fitness or happiness or whatever. So he had done an article in one on, on happiness.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

And the thing that was interesting about his is I talked to him about this idea of where are we most happy or what robs us of the most happiness. He said, it really is our lack of being present, that we often worry about the future. We worry about the past and we don't enjoy the present. And so I really liked this question. What is mindfulness? I think as I tried to become more mindful for me, it's an element of how do I become more present, right? How do I really get super focused on either who I'm with or what I'm doing or in the moment, or even if it's just focused on the breath that I'm taking, right.

Bruce Langford:

Well, you certainly seem so relaxed and grounded and happy, and we're going through this Coronavirus thing. How are you doing with that? And what's your best advice for people as we move through this?

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

Yeah. Well, you know what, I'm, I want to be authentic at the same time. I may look like I'm calm and everything, but that's not a consistent right as human beings. One of the things that was interesting when we did the movie, how thoughts become things, there's a lot of myths out there in personal development that if you want to manifest a better life, if you want to be happy, you've always got to be positive. You've got to be a positive thinker. You've gotta be always optimistic. You've always gotta be hopeful. And the truth is, is as humans, you know, we can't do that. We have moments where, yeah, it's not realistic. And I, and I think that's hard for people because they feel maybe like a bit of a failure. They're struggling if they have negative feelings from time to time, and there are purposes for that.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

The other thing that I think is important to notice about thoughts that we discovered is that whenever a brilliant, enthusiastic, powerful Fox shows up something that you want to do, thoughts never come by themselves. They always come in pairs. And so Ray behind it will be the thought of, am I good enough? Can I do this? We start to fear. We start to doubt. Right? And so I think we've got to recognize that we get to choose when they both appear, but they will go here now to answer your question about coronavirus, what I've been up to, you know, it's kind of interesting because a lot of the interviews I've been doing lately, like I just got off with CNN a little while ago when we were talking about the most dangerous aspect of the coronavirus. Most people, you know, right away States the health, don't touch this, spray, everything down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

And I'm not discounting that by saying, blah, blah, blah, by the way, I'm saying, that's just what they've been telling us. And it's, it's a lot, but the most dangerous thing, I think in my opinion is how it's really affected our thinking. We've become very fearful, right? We even, you know, if I've had to go to the grocery store, there's people that literally won't walk down the same aisle with me. Right. And I'm not sick, but they're worried I might be. Right. Right. And there's people who also now their economics have changed their financial situation and they're afraid. And rather than being powered, it's paralyzed them. And then naturally even just in terms of the thought processes that, in fact, it's funny, I was reading a statistic the other day that said that divorce lawyers are at an all time high because people are having to spend time with people that, you know, they love if, if, if they get to relate with them casually, but now that they're up close and personal all the time people get on each other's nerves.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

Right. And so I think that there's a lot of things in that that come directly back to our thoughts. And you know, I'm not sure if we'll get into this in the show, but it really begins with our programming and not just what we've been programmed. We often think of as a kid, you know, my, my parents programmed me, but we forget that we actually arrived into a series of programs that were already running. For example, my parents were programmed by their parents were programmed by theirs, the communities that they were involved with situations where I arrived on the scene in the midst of programming. And it hasn't stopped ever since. In fact, we're being programmed, even this very second people who are tuning into this show right now are being programmed by what they're hearing. And so I think one of the big things that we need to understand with Corona virus or any other circumstance is that we need to recognize that we have power over our programming, but it starts with awareness. We can only really begin to shift things as we recognize where we are and what we're experiencing. And then also most importantly, recognize we have a choice.

Bruce Langford:

Yeah. We really do have a choice in Doug. I know one of the things that you talk about a lot is gratitude. One of your very successful films called the gratitude experiment really makes this clear. Let's talk about gratitude for a minute. How can that shift our mindset and improve our lives?

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

Yeah, well, you know, one of the coolest things that I discovered when we made that film, the gratitude experiment, and actually maybe even rewind, why did I make that movie? Well, as you mentioned you know, the media calls me the modern day Napoleon Hill for these interviews that I did with 400 of the world's top achievers. They were not all thought leaders that I interviewed. I interviewed people who were the heads of companies, like one of the four founders of FedEx, the people involved the Nike Reebok Disney DBT group, Christian Dior boots, Uber, Ted Baker, like you named the biggest brands in the world. I've had a chance to interview those people. If you go boss all these guys. Right. And the thing that was interesting is as I read the success books that had come out over the years and even the seminars, they're actually kind of incomplete most of the time that people writing a successful have never really experienced multibillion dollar success or even multimillion dollar success, they were basically writing what they read in someone else's book or some things that they think make sense.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

And the truth of the matter is, is most of the successful self, there are missing some key components to getting this success. One of them gratitude. In fact, all of the top achievers that I have ever interviewed are not scarcity thinkers. They're not from a place of jealousy, comparison or competition. In fact, one of my mentors that I thought was really kind of cool became like a grandpa to me as what was Franklin guar. He's one of the cofounders of federal express, former VP of marketing of KFC and American airlines. He was eight in the white house, under Lyndon B Johnson, the JFK. He was the personal philosophy teacher of Marilyn Monroe for a time still incredible guy. Right. And there's even more to him. Like he worked at ABC when it went from radio to TV, he gave Alan all the, his first job like this guy was dialed in.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

Right. And it was so interesting to see that as I've got something that got me when he was at FedEx, this idea of not being scarce and, you know, having a, a good relationship with everyone was really interesting when he said one day the the CEO of ups called him and said, well, Frank, you finally done it. He goes, what do you mean? He goes, well, we had somebody just call you yes. And say that they'd like to FedEx something. Right. And so they would laugh about that kind of thing. Right. They had a comradery, even though they were competitors. And I think it's really interesting to notice at a low level or what I call the slow level or the no level kind of relationships or connections. There's much more jealousy and there's much more competition. And we're worried that if someone can get a piece of my pie, right.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

But you don't see that at the high levels. They're, they're very embracing that way. And gratitude certainly is one of the biggest powers. In fact, we found in the movie that gratitude literally expands anything that it touches. So you want a better relationship. You need to be grateful for the one you have, you want more abundance, you've got to be grateful for where you are. Right? Like all of the things are attached to gratitude. And if you think about it, the universe ever since the big bang has been in expansion mode, it's been growing, it's been expanding, right? So anytime we operate in opposite to that contracting by, you know, taking things for granted by, you know, complaining by criticizing, by playing small, by making excuses, we're actually fighting against the entire universe, not the flow of it. And you know, one of my favorite things, and this is kind of funny too, just I know we're going way off from graduate.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

We could talk forever about gratitude. And the problem is, is most people are grateful for meaning the things that show up in their life. I got a nice house, got a nice car. Got nice. They're never grateful in. Right. Right. The gratitude isn't necessarily created the same way. And I was chatting with Bob Proctor. The funny, funny enough, actually, as we were making this movie, he and I we got together. He was doing one of his paradigm shifts events in LA. And so I got to spend the day with Bob in his hotel room. We just got this big hotel room where, you know, we can set up all the equipment and the gear. And so we did his interview and then we just kind of chitchatted and spent the day together and blah, blah, blah. So we were talking about this idea and the secret, they talked about that everything vibrates at a frequency.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

You remember hearing him say that I have everything, but you know, everything, even this table, everything that vibrates at a frequency. And so we got on the subject of what is it that's actually vibrating? Like, what is the universe made up? Like, what is the matter right of the universe? What is it? And as we started talking about things, obviously you know, we didn't talk about things on the periodic table, right? Like it's X amount of carbon and X amount of this, and right. But what we really kind of determined is that the universe as a substance is actually just made of different manifestations of gratitude and love. That's really what the universe is made out of. And obviously things and people and, you know, events or anything that vibrates at a low, low frequency really repels, right. It does not give the opportunity to grow or expand or feel inclusive or anything like that.

Doug Vermeeren, How Thoughts Become Things:

But things that are of a high level, we feel that we walk into a room and certain people, we were just drawn to them. And together, as we even engage with certain people, things automatically get created and expand and grow. Right. In fact, it's really kind of funny because like I said, there's a high level, then there's the lower, the no, or the slow level. Right. And I'll never forget that one of my business mentors, as I was talking to him, he said a really funny thing. You said, you'll never do a million dollar deal at a $10 breakfast. Now, I thought that was interesting. And although we often equate that to, you know, what we pay for a ticket to get in someplace, you can look at it that way, but really it's a kind of thinking, you know, at a $10 breakfast at generally tech attracts people who want to make their 10 bucks back, people who want to sell something, people who want you to come and join them to get in whatever they're doing. Right. But at a million dollar level, you know, or a higher level, people tend to go for different reasons. Right. They're more as they're looking to expand. They're not looking for a sale. Right. It's a really good point. If that makes sense.

Tune in to the episode to learn more.