Happiness journey with Dr Dan podcast: Season 34 Ep 1: Special Guests, authors and teaching on how to live a meaningful existence, Greg Copploe and Dani Forrest

0:00Actually, welcome everyone to the happiness journey with October then podcasts where every journey is worth living. My name is Dr. Dan and I'm your host for today's episode. I'm a bilingual cognitive behavior and oral linguistic practitioner specializing in anger management issues both court appointed and private marriage and relationship coaching, dissociative disorders, narcissistic personality disorders, depression, anxiety, dream analysis and also provide life, business and retirement coaching support. I provide individual one-on-one session in both French or English and also do group settings. If you need any assistance, reach out to DMV Therapy and Coaching Services at 301-325-1550 and our website can be found on life coach dad Amzalai. In today's first episode of season 34, I'm very excited to have Greg, Coplo and Danny Forrest as a special guest and expressing why learning to let go of the traditional path we were told to follow in order to live or more authentic and meaningful existence. We will also discuss about the fake narrative we are forced to believe in to not

1:03stir conflict in our society, how to obey to avoid bringing chaos in our direct surroundings and how to just accept what we're given without expressing discontent. So without further do and as with all of our previous episodes, I'll leave it to the guests to probably introduce themselves as no one can do better job. Greg and Danny, the floor is yours. Danny, why do you go first and then I'll go after you? Sure. My name is Danny Forrest. I am the co-author along with my co-appearer Gregory Coplo of I Am Pink. I'm also the author of 52 Pickup Life in Perfect Disorder and I'm currently working on my third book called Sargaso. I have a background in yoga, Pilates working with families affected by addiction and alcoholism and I work one-on-one with people who are learning and as we all are to move forward mindfully in an often mindless and seemingly heartless world. I am very much right now involved with somatic yoga pursuits as well

2:10as being able to connect the mind and body in order to move forward through the world mindfully. In a time where a lot of us are really suffering a lot from not just our personal past or personal heart breaks but also a collective sense of moral injury as the collective world seems to be anyway a lot more mindless and heartless than than we'd like it to be. Great. Thanks Dr. Dan for having us today too. We hope to inspire some of your audience here and my name is Gregory Coplo. I am the CEO of a team building company. It's a paint and sip company called Stir up the Pain. It's a national brand. I'm also an author of three books and I'm a professional gallery artist and like a lot of us you know raised in the 70s you know we come from a lot of trauma I do a lot of trauma a lot of sexual abuse and you know how we pivot from that and and have a life that you know is is more whole we don't have to bring it into our present life and and move past it and and live a more meaningful assistance without all that trauma.

3:14Well I'm very very glad to have you both here on the podcast today as you know happiness is very subjective and we all try our best to be able to understand the concept of it even though it may be very complex at time especially the science of positive psychology and we're getting more and more people requesting on finding the universal answer to what happiness means to each and everyone. So I'm glad to have you both here and we're going to jump directly into what is now going on in our society. I mean we see so much bad news now the world with Iran with everything that's going on and how we should live our life what should we should do and all of what's going on now I've seen a lot of like post on TikTok on Instagram about people saying enough is enough with the government and how they spend our hard-earned money with the IRS and so on and so forth. So what's your stance with all that? Dr. Dan I have a TikTok account where I post extensively on these matters and

4:19my feeling right now is that the type of of reality that we're moving through this move toward authoritarianism if not altogether fascism it starts at the dinner table it starts in family systems where we are trained to bypass what we know and feel to be true to deny it and or to justify it any of us that have grown up in families that let's say are not all together healthy if not out now traumatic understand that we are all given roles within those families to play whether we are the scapegoat whether we are the golden child whether we are the fixer and right now I believe that a lot of the world isn't a collective trance right now based on those types of dynamics that are almost ingrained in us at a DNA level and so I think right now what we are called upon to do is to own those parts of ourselves that that participated in that dynamic

5:20and have brought to bear on a collective shadow level what is happening now and I think for me and I think for many of us the key right now is to be able to live in the duality to understand that we can have gratitude we can have faith we can have hope and we can see joy but at the same time refuse to normalize what is not decent and what is not humane and that's a very hard and exhausting job to do but our our role as people who want to continue to be decent and joyful is to keep owning our part in that as well as to call out the part that is not whether it is the child exploitation pipeline whether it is the the incursions that we're making on a world basis or whether it is the the falling of institutional guard rails we all play a part in that and we are all each our own guard rail and how we move around in the world in our little micro world as well as in the macro world as well well Greg do you want to second that through

6:26based on your yeah I mean I it's just it's so much chaos for me what I do really to maneuver through it and it really helps me I just I curate my own reality I just I cannot live necessarily what is going on around me 24-7 I just can't do it it's too much stimulation it's too much negativity it's just too much sadness for me I just can't I'm so much of an empath it really affects my soul my whole being and how I maneuver throughout my day so I curate what I say my own reality I curate what I look at I curate what I absorb into my body my spirit I curate my relationships I curate my friendships I curate my job it means that I'm hand picking all of these things that align with me spiritually so that I can find a little bit more joy because if I didn't do that I would be completely miserable and I think a lot of us are I think a lot of us choose to live in this reality we're watching it we're looking at it we're absorbing it as if we're actually

7:26there in it as part of it as part of the wars part of the the financial burden as part of all of it and we have different choices and different selections that we can make in order to find a little bit more joy and that's what I do it's all about for me it's a it's a mindset and it's curation it's not easy but it's necessary in order to find some joy for me it's interesting that you say that about this reality because when you look in the early 2000s and when the Worshiski brothers now their sisters actually they created the trilogy of the matrix and we all live in a simulation in some kind of like a bubble where even though the you know like it was very entertaining in nature with the fights and all that but there was a lot of truth behind everything I think the message the underlying message of the producers it was just to say that what we see in front of us is not real it's just a simulation that we were forced to fall under and we never were allowed to think

8:28for ourselves to be able to take initiative to be able to take responsibility and we always blame the system we never really blame ourselves for whatever circumstances that we put ourselves in and because of that we became too codependent of a system of dictatorship system and then now we wonder why it has taken a hold of us yeah I mean that's why Danny and I wrote the book I am pink I mean it's all about breaking away from the formulaic life and what does that mean we're taught you know to go to school to get the house get the job get the boyfriend the girlfriend do these things and we accumulate all the stuff we go down this road and then we're like oh my god I'm not happy because you've you've curated someone else's existence you haven't curated your own existence and that's a huge problem and where we all really land and we go okay now now what do I do so yeah I mean I think that book that we wrote really helps you to pivot from that what you know the formula is really akin to you it's your formula it's not life's formula it's not society's

9:34formula it's not dictated to you and how do you find that within yourself you know how do you spend time alone looking at yourself deeply and as uncomfortable it as it is to be able to pivot and maneuver through that and work through all those issues and things that are inside there to be able to move forward and take some leaps of faith and know that things are going to work out for you without being imprisoned and stuck you know in that reality for you know forever but if we have a system such as John D Rockefeller who created the educational system to be able to let people just follow a bunch of teachers or educators and not allowing us to be able to think for ourselves and we have trained our brain to be able to allow that as being just normalcy how can we now as adults especially if we have established a certain pattern in our in our in our thought process and now when we work in organization when we work for wherever we work for we don't you know we just too afraid to take any initiative and that just and then we teach our kids to be able to

10:38not to think for themselves not to be creative not because if you're being too creative you're not a part of our society because you're you're kind of like thinking on your own and you're not depending on other people to think for you so how's the how's it going to be the future for our the new generation well I'll also I'll speak to that and and there I have two of my favorite quotes one and I'm sure you heard it before it's by Krishnamurti it is no measure of health to be well adapted to a six society that's the first one the second one is you either face your demons or they raise your children and I you know I'll tell you right now a real life experience I'm going through I'm going through the loss of my father and my father you know is it was ahead of a typical patriarchal system where where validation came through success achievement reflecting well upon him happiness joy and alternative pathways never sat well with him and this was a man who was always looking for applause for dominance for success for achievement and now there's no applause there's

11:44just the hiss of an oxygen machine next to him and I had a very difficult time with this because I only operate and well with him as long as I play the role of his favorite son and I'm the oldest of of sex the only the only female and it was a very hard thing for me to do I shut down parts of myself that needed to feel that needed like Greg said to curate joy that needed to think outside the box and now that he is dying I have to navigate through that minefield so that I can show up so that when he is gone probably sooner than later there will be no regrets but in that journey I have to reclaim parts of myself and not default to somebody else's narratives and I think Dr. Dan that kind of goes to the question you were asking about how do we step outside of that well it's it's it's it's very simple but it's very hard which is you don't accept other people's

12:45stories about you and we do we accept the government stories about us we accept mom and dad stories about us our employers our childrens our parents it's and that's what the curation comes down to is what is my story about me it has nothing to do with your story about me or your story about you I can hold space for that like I'm holding space for my dad right now but I'm not required to succumb to somebody else's storyline where I'm never going to be the winner and I'm never going to be happy and I go ahead go ahead Dr. what to say something no I'm just going to say that no it's you go first you go first no I was just going to reiterate what Danny was just saying that if we live in a society filled with lies about you know especially the media how they try to really change the narrative of what's really happening and now when we see some images online about Tel Aviv being

13:47completely destroyed or Jerusalem but then yet some of my friends send me picture to say everything is intact yeah there were a few buildings that were damaged and all that but everything that you see is fake so how can we not being there to be able to prove otherwise of what the the fake media is feeding us with so much shit how can we kind of like figure out how what to believe and what not to believe that's different and with AI it's going to get worse I think we have to rely now more on intuition we have to rely now more on spirit how we're feeling what we're digesting I mean it's going to become more and more difficult but I think Dr. Dan you brought up something that was really really important and it's like the alcoholic that you know drinks and drinks and drinks it's when you admit to yourself that you have the problem that you can see it so you said okay we live in a simulation where so when people start to realize that they can actually see what you're saying that it's tangible to them oh I'm living in a simulation oh I can cure right my own reality oh I can do these things when you realize that that's when you can create an effect

14:50change but a lot of us don't reach that place where we believe that that's happening the alcoholic doesn't reach the place where they believe they have an issue or problem or that they're an alcoholic so you're just acknowledging and talking about hey we're living in a simulation hey this is happening where does allow us to sort of believe a different reality and cure it and create change so I think it's super important what you talked about about you know this exists it's here can you believe and align with me that this is happening then we can pivot in a different direction yeah but being brainwashed by everything that's going on around us even if you try to believe something different we try to educate ourselves to open our eyes to be more self-aware more self-awakened to what's going on around us but yet because society are filled with zombies that are just accepting what are being what they're being fed with in terms of news in terms of what's going on around them then especially if you're an empath or someone that is an HSP which is a highly sensitive person

15:52you kind of try to do everything in your power to be able to please other people so that kind of drought or numb your senses and then this point there's not really much that you can do to be able to change anything around you because there are already changing you well I believe that what is going on right now is extremely disturbing and I am a highly sensitive person as well and I find it extremely difficult every morning to wake up to yet another metaphoric or actual explosion going on in the world around me I absolutely do it the people who have chosen to incarnate right now it is hardcore but I will also say that I believe that this has been fated to happen that this has been this awakening it's been a long time coming because as you said Dr. Dan we have all been like the frog in the pot of boiling water we don't know that we're in it

16:52until it starts to get really uncomfortable and really really painful and we are at that boiling point now but I think we are forced to look at more and more people how we are being manipulated and the the good thing about well the bad thing about technology is like Greg was saying AI so we don't know what to believe but the good thing is that there are many many more independent people getting facts and getting them out there in ways that the mainstream media A never could and B now can't because there's been too much state interference with what's going on at the mainstream level so I am able to listen to actual testimony say of survivors from the Epstein files I'm able to see the documents that that were redacted that technology knows how to unredact and I have reliable sources so that I'm able to see what's happening and at least comfort myself that I am getting a semblance of the truth as I await for as I wait the sort of the greater awakening to take place and it's it's going to be a minute and and we have to just dig in and

17:54understand that this is a marathon and they want us to believe that if we just give up if we just get confused then they will win but they will not okay so and a lot of people a lot of people don't want you know they don't want to be awake you know they don't want to find that truth a lot of people I'd say 85 maybe an even 90 percent are enjoying the comfortable flat line of their life you not a lot happens not a lot of drama and they check out and they die either way they're like I'm good so not everybody is looking to you know seek the transformation to find the higher truth to to live a more meaningful existence not everybody wants that so there's going to be a small core group of people they're going to dig through the crap to find the truth and the rest of us are going to flatline and skate right through it and not see anything at all oh well I believe in the ripple effect though because the more the more awake I become and the more I'm able to move through the world in a way where yeah it's challenging and I have my really crummy days my crummy moments but if I'm able to to to to get to my own personal truth and move through the world in

18:58that truth it it it it has an effect because we are also interconnected we are not all little islands moving around in our own unconscious way we do affect one another and those of us who are here right now who are able to get to the truth within themselves are here to anchor and it's a crappy job I don't want this job you know I don't but I'm here no it's true then yeah that is so true by the same time so now you you mentioned about this awakening of more and more people are starting to really realize that we live in a study filled with fraudsters with scammers with especially a 99.9% of the biggest criminals in this country is the government so when we look at all that and when we look at we how can we fight the government obviously 300 million citizen fighting against them they will not win and this awakening has to come sooner than later because if everyone goes back and putting their head in the sand like an ostrich chances are that they have won and you just mention about things changing but at what expense well it's at the

20:06expense of a system that we were all hypnotized into believing was going to save us an economic system a financial system a governmental system listen it's it's you know I've been I've been privy to information from the 70s and the early 80s where there was the corruption was was there it was just better hidden than it is now and so the gift that we're being given is that they're not even they're not even bothering to hide the corruption and hide the secrecy it's like yeah we we can show you what we want to show you and we're not going to show you we don't want to show you we'll tell you we want to tell you and if you don't believe it too bad we don't care and and that no way is a blessing because it's forcing more and more people to see and and and it's what I went said said in the beginning you know we're we're relying on all these external guardrails but we are the new guardrails of a of a functional if not democracy in the functional society it's got to come down to the community level I don't know if you're familiar with the works of Octavia

21:06Butler parable the solar parable the talons where she wrote she the author wrote this book in the in the 90s taking place in 2025 2026 where it's a world where people are living behind walls and if you leave those walls you're gone and and people are forced to create communities where they are are helping one another it's not about expecting some external system to save you and I think that that's what we're really facing right now is that we have to help each other how we move around the world how we treat each other what what decisions we make for one another day-to-day moment by moment because it's not going to come externally there's no one coming to save us but that's okay because we have it we have it in us to save ourselves we do yeah but then the government connected I mean it's so funny because you know doctor down the NDE's people say wow I went to this place and we're all connected there's this web and we're all part of it it's like yeah I mean why can't we just be on this planet and realize that yes we are I mean it is truth we are all connected but then again when there's so much racism and the government has created so much hate

22:09between us between cultures between religions between all of that how it's a lie yeah but how can we reverse all of that how can we just go back and say that was just a monster that was created by just the puppeteers and we have to detach ourselves from those fake beliefs yeah yeah it's not reversing it it's realizing what's truth and what's not and now we realize oh my god we were digested lies and now okay now let's seek truth what's truth is okay so that dogs come in all colors and fish come in all colors and flowers come in all colors guess what people come in all colors too why is that so hard to digest right so we have to seek truth we have to seek truth the formula and the formula life's got to go behind us now we got to move forward in a different way well it's interesting too what you know you said Dr. Dan about how the government has created you know whether it's racism or in you know other forms of inequity inequality why does the government why are we giving the government the power to create anything and you know we we weren't we weren't

23:11supposed to do I mean everyone goes back to you know if you're talking about the United States the founding fathers but then again the founding fathers believes that black people were two thirds of a human being that women were possessions that you could not vote unless you were white man who owned property so the foundations that this was built on in the 1770s were rotten and now they've been they've been basically co-opted and even you know further corrupted by you know more of the patriarchy and so it's on we the people to undo this and it's very hard to undo 250 years overnight but in a way the horrific things that are going on are a favor to us because and some people will never see some people are in a cult or a trance and and you can't you can't persuade people who are determined to misunderstand because if you think of a lot of the people that are supporting this they have they have no other reality to go to if this one fails they have no other reality so you've got to let them kind of go down with that ship but there's enough of us I think who are who are not willing to go down with their ship I do okay so I'm going to talk on

24:15behalf of our millions of listeners out there because most of them what they want to do is or what they want to know is where do we take it from here I mean everything can be theoretical but we need practicality we need to understand what can we do to start to change that system that has been imprisoning us I think we have a vote go ahead no no no Greg you go you go no I just I mean we have a voice in a different way now we have social media we have YouTube we have we can be out there we can have we can run our own show like we are doing right now as people that can inspire and create a ripple effect we can expose truth wherever we'd like to expose it and there are large masses of people that are doing that the problem is is what we're curating you notice with AI too you start to follow a certain thing and maybe it's not a thing that you find truth in maybe it's a lie and AI will continue to feed you the lie and help you believe this lie and it starts curating more and more of the lie within your feed and then Facebook

25:17starts showing you more of that feed it's really scary it's really scary and so it's up to us really to like expand ourselves in multiple universes in a sense to to really expose ourselves to you know the good the bad and the ugly to decide for ourselves intuitively what is a line with us what works and then creating that ripple effect with our own voice the trauma steals the voice within us and it is us that has to strip that away and be able to come forward and use that voice to create that new ripple effect to educate to feed people to give them energy to inspire I have a couple of practical solutions Dr. Jansson since I'm a very practical person too I'm I'm a camper corn I got a lot of camper corn plants I'm very I want bottom line don't give me you know I don't want airy fairy you know so basically these systems that are that are overrunning us whether you want to call an authoritarianism or fascism they bank on our nervous systems being overrun overrun by

26:20information overrun by stress overrun by too much saying yes when we want to say no so you know I'm old at this point well I don't want to say oh I'm 62 years old but I'm old enough to know that I have to take care of my nervous system above everything else and that means saying a lot more no than I used to and and people from people pleasing families from messed up traumatic systems know that people pleasing is a survival mechanism it's it's better just to say yes and go along so we don't make people upset and we don't put ourselves in a situation when we don't feel safe so it's it's incumbent upon each person to put their nervous system above everything else at the top of that pyramid and to do what we have to do to protect that whether I don't know whether it's you know somatic yoga whether it is something creative artistic I'm a writer I write whether it's something involving art like you know I know Greg's a painter artist and I know that's really important to him but we are all in charge of finding that place and spending enough time

27:23in it so that we don't crash out our nervous systems that's the first thing the second thing is if you care about doing something to effectuate change you'll pick one thing that you want to continue to speak out about maybe it's immigration enforcement maybe it's the child exploitation pipeline maybe it's war but you can't do all things all the time and find out what's going on about everything all the time for me personally it's the it's the children it's the child exploitation pipeline why because I spent many years as an educator I've taught kids from kindergarten to 12th grade I've worked with kids from from at risk background both as a teacher and involuntary programs for kids whose families were you know had had addiction and alcoholism so I understand the the he that we have a huge vulgar a huge system a population of vulnerable children that get sucked into these pipelines and I understand how it happens I know exactly who these kids are so that is my thing that I speak to that I listen to and I can handle it because

28:28I did not experience that kind of trauma not everybody can handle this because to handle here to read some of these books and to listen to some of these testimonies are very triggering and I wouldn't want that for people that can't handle it but that's my thing other people it might be separation of families it might be what's going on with the detention centers everyone should pick one thing and not shut up about it that's one practical thing to do yeah actually it's brilliant Danny so before and I could go on and talk with you guys and I would love to be able to have you both coming back as you know for I would say part two of this podcast because we can go on and on and talk about you know everything that's been going on or that is going presently going on and the the key here is to be able to bring people to awaken to get their head out of the sand and to be able to realize what's going on around them so before we end can you tell us where can people find your books now so Gregory Coppola dot com is probably the easiest way because there is an author section Danny and I both share a part of that page where you can see

29:29how the books I am pink is is really the award winning book of that Danny and I just recently published and we really feel it would be applicable to your audience as far as what it's like to kind of get rid of that formula and pivot and find a new life that's more aligned you know to you spiritually to who you are as a person without following all the stuff that we were told to follow when we kind of land and going wait I'm not happy what happened so Gregory Coppola dot com is probably a good space to land and find that you can go to amazon and other spaces too but it's probably easier there I also have on that page paintings that I've moved into a black and white space so I have a lot of professional black and white really kind of cool impressionist paintings that I do and there's a little blurb about stir up the paint and how we're you know creating a ripple effect and inspiring people through art therapy which after the pandemic has been really critical to kind of like heal a lot of the the brokenness that we're all feeling absolutely well Greg and Danny that is all the time that we have for the day's podcast and again thank you both

30:34sincerely for taking the time of your busy schedule to join us and we all appreciate your participation to this episode by sharing the importance of being awakened humans to live a meaningful existence and teaching others on how to get their power back when everything in our society is not aligned properly now we see more and more people realizing the many lies we were forced to believe by those in power and many citizens are now taking actions more and more people are realizing how fake the system is and how to things for ourselves so to our millions of listeners out there we hope that you've all enjoyed today's episode as much as we did now we're very excited for what's ahead in season 34 of the happiness journey with our student podcasts featuring a lineup of incredible guests with powerful stories that will continue to uplift and inspire all of you so here are some concluding words of wisdom being truly awake means seeing the world as it is not as we were told it should be it's about reclaiming your power understanding your

31:34value and choosing purpose over complacency in a society where so much is misaligned awakening allows us to navigate life with clarity and courage each of us has the ability to break free from the false narrative we were fed and to teach others how to do the same real change begins when awareness turns into action and courage replaces fear as more and more people recognize the illusions around them a collective strength emerged that can reshape communities and lives awakening isn't just personal it's a call to guide inspire and uplift others every small act of clarity and empowerment contributes to a larger movement of truth and freedom when we live consciously and intentionally we create meaning purpose and a life that truly matters our power is not given it's reclaimed and together we can rise my name is dr. Dan Amselag and you may all keep pursuing your amazing journey of life stay tuned for our next episode