Reprogram Your Mind For Success: Overcome Self-Sabotage & Unlock Motivation w/ Dr. Albert Bramante (Inspirational)

What if the only thing standing between your dreams and your destiny was the story you keep telling yourself?

In this deeply motivational and inspirational, Reginald D sits down with Dr. Albert Bramante — a talent agent, psychologist, and certified hypnotist — to uncover how to break mental barriers, defeat self-sabotage, and step boldly into your purpose.

Discover how Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), hypnosis, and understanding your personality blueprint can transform your mindset from fear to focus and from limitation to limitless growth.

This motivational speech–style conversation blends psychology, spirituality, and real-world success habits — giving listeners the power to rise above the script that once defined them. Whether you’re an artist, entrepreneur, leader, or dreamer, this episode will inspire you to reprogram your mind for unstoppable motivation, inner peace, and success.

1. Break Free from Self-Sabotage: Learn how subconscious scripts and limiting beliefs shape your reality—and how to rewrite them for success.
2. Master Confidence and Calm: Discover daily psychological and visualization exercises that help you perform under pressure with unshakable confidence.
3. Unlock Your Motivational Blueprint: Understand your “Big Five” personality traits to maximize productivity, creativity, and purpose in your personal and professional life.

Press play now to hear this inspirational and motivational conversation with Reginald D and Dr. Albert Bramante—and start reprogramming your mind for success today!

Dr. Albert Bramante's Contact Info:

Website: https://albertbramante.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dralbramante

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/albertbramante

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/albert.bramante

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Transcript

Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D. On today's episode, I have Albert Bramante. Albert is a talent agent, psychologist, and a certified hypnotist.

Welcome to the show, Albert.

Dr. Albert Bramante: Thank you for having me here. I'm really happy to be here.

Reginald D: Yes. And thank you for taking time out of your schedule to hang out with me for a minute. I've been waiting on this.

So I have. I'd like to start out asking my guests this question.

Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Well, yeah, I was born and raised New Jersey. Still live in New Jersey. My childhood was interesting, you know, uneventful.

I am the youngest of five. I have older brothers who very much into sports. I wasn't, you know, my father was a paw coach.

My brothers were, you know, played on the football team, baseball team,

and for me, I had zero interest or ability in sports. I was,

don't know what, you know, really what happened. And of course, you know, my parents, my, well, my father, my brothers,

you know, that's going to be me being another male thought, okay, let's suit them up. Let's put them out and give them a ball and a helmet or a bat.

And zero. I couldn't, I, I could care less. It was not,

not for me. I couldn't do it. And at first I thought it was, oh, well, it's tough in this kid up.

And this wasn't for me. But I loved reading books.

And so I was kind of like the outlier in my family to some level because I really, I was a type of kid that was just different, you know, like, again, everybody was sports and, you know,

hanging out and,

you know, athletic endeavors. Me, I love to read.

Nobody else did in my family, so at least my father said. My mom was a teacher. School teacher.

Yeah. And I think between the combination of, between my brothers and father being the coach and my mom being a school teacher let me down to be like an educator.

Now as an adult, it was kind of like in my blood.

So why most kids are only playing sports and, you know, other activities. I was reading books like,

you know, how to Win Friends Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I was reading also, you know,

the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey or, you know, feeling Good by David Burns, which is a primer for cognitive behavioral therapy that was published in the early 90s.

So that was like, what I was reading.

And so it just led me down to insatiable curiosity about people, behavior As a child, which I kind of look as a superpower now.

But as a child, I was often sometimes chastised or yelled at a lot for being nosy,

you know, now just having the stage called curiosity.

Reginald D: So.

Dr. Albert Bramante: And I just like, you know, being with the gossip and all that. So I was like, really into that.

So I think if I knew by nature was kind of meant to be psycho, you know, was a major in psychology. And I knew my sophomore year in high school that I wanted to major in psychology.

I knew that.

And.

But I was also interested in the arts, too, because I was also involved in the drama club in high school for like three years.

My sophomore, junior and senior year, I was involved in drama club. And then in college, I took some acting classes. So I was very much involved both in playing high school and college, Very much involved in extracurricular activities,

clubs, organizations.

So a lot of community service.

And I really enjoy it, you know, and I just enjoy being around people.

So that's kind of like my childhood in a sense.

Reginald D: Okay. You know, and I think one of the things about it, you know, when you different than most in the family, that you become,

I say sometimes, a lot of times,

the one that really stands out when it's all said and done.

Dr. Albert Bramante: Right. Well, I mean,

yeah, I'm no longer ashamed of it. When I was younger, maybe I was a little bit, because again, I couldn't really fit in. I didn't understand what was happening.

And,

you know, I. I don't. I don't want to say, like, you know, there was no abuse or nothing that anyone like maltreatment. Everyone treated me great.

You know, I got along great with my brothers.

I don't think they really knew how to hang out with me. And I didn't know really how to hang out with them either. So it was like a mutual thing that was a bit awkward on both our parts.

Reginald D: Right.

So, Amber,

you are a rare bleed of talent agent,

psychologist, and a certified hypnotist.

What inspired you to merge these worlds?

And how did that fusion begin? Changes the way you work with performance.

Dr. Albert Bramante: Well, okay, so I kind of, you know, I was involved, I guess, at that drama club in high school and took some acting classes in college as electives.

I was interested in creative arts, but I was still really determined to be a clinical psychologist. I was a research guy, you know, really much of thinker, didn't watch too much tv.

I found myself when I finished, got my master's degree,

which I did see in all university in New Jersey.

I found myself luckily, by luck's chance,

I landed an internship out of New York City talk show. It was a very unconventional internship and that got me my first professional experience in show business.

And what happened there was that experience spurred other opportunities. So after I graduated with master's degree,

fortunately, I say fortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately, 9, 11 had happened. So.

And that was a major,

you know, worldwide tragedy, especially in New York.

So I started doing a lot of volunteer work and I started doing like crisis intervention and counseling work and I started working with actors and I started working alongside of actors and kind of brought back my college and high school days where I was like, well, let me try this acting thing.

And like most people who work, you know, with actors, either as an agent or some type of coach,

we started off as actors. And I did that. That's how I started off. I started off as an actor and it wasn't for me the job or the lifestyle, the skill.

But what I enjoy doing is working with actors.

But I still love psychology.

And at the same time, I was hired to start teaching part time in community college in New Jersey.

And this is in 2003, and this is kind of when I started fading out a little bit of the acting side. I wasn't too sure whether I wanted to do this anymore an actor, but I wanted to still stay in this world because I love working with actors.

And so that's where I kind of began in that aspect.

And I found myself, as we're doing some soul searching of that, like, okay, not, not I don't want to be an actor, but I want to work with actors. So I did a little casting, I did a lot of film festival work, some little production work, but then it led me to,

I still kept coming around like, I love actors. I don't know what's about it, I just love actors.

So 2004, I started my first company to kind of represent being advocate for actors. Didn't know where this was going to go.

And then during this time as I was teaching and building a mage,

let me go back to school,

you know, add more things to my plate. But I always wanted to have a Ph.D. and if I wanted the full time position in teaching or if I wanted to have a full time career as a psychologist,

I needed to have a PhD and I wasn't sure whether this talent thing was going to take off. So I was like, okay, let me go back to a PhD and so that's what I did.

One thing I noticed through all of this, there was a lot of actors that were self Sabotaging and shooting themselves in the foot.

And when it came time to pick a topic for our thesis or just a doctoral dissertation,

the light bulb went off and it said, okay, well the idea was to solve a real world problem.

And for me,

that real world problem is why are these actors self sabotaging?

And so that's what I spent my doctoral thesis or dissertation in.

It was self defeating behavior, performing artists.

And so that's sort of how that happened. And that was really my first indication that I'm blending both worlds now,

the talent agency with my psychological studies.

That started happening.

And then finally,

you know, through all of this, as I was wrapping up my PhD studies, my coursework,

what I realized was I didn't really want to be a clinical psychologist anymore.

I was more interested in this, you know, self defeating behavior and boss within their mindset work.

So I wanted to really just graduate in time. Because in order to get a clinical psychology degree,

I had to do a 750 hour practicum and then a 2000 hour internship on top of that.

And I was teaching and building company. There was no way that I was gonna be able to do that in time.

So I kind of made the decision. I'm like, well, what's the best way just to get, you know, a general PhD in psychology with maybe a research and education practice?

And you know, come on, Said, you said take like two or three extra classes and then just complete my dissertation. So that's what I did.

Now the hypnotism and NLP came in because during this time I became very interested in the field. So I briefly studied it a little bit when I was in grad school.

And I liked it because I like solutions focused therapy approaches, which is more where that falls under. So I was like, okay, well if I'm not gonna be a clinical psychologist, let me at least study, you know, hypnosis and nlp.

That'll kind of bring, you know, everything together full circle.

So I mean, that's how that started in a sense. You know, like all worlds kind of started blending together.

And really it's all about helping,

you know, actors or anybody, any performers in general get out of their own way and really, you know, like be the person or performer that they're really meant to be.

Reginald D: Right.

Dr. Albert Bramante: And so that's really the type of work that I do.

Reginald D: Okay, let me go back on something,

Albert.

Can you explain what NLP is? And can these techniques genuinely reprogram deep seated fears or limited beliefs for actors?

And what does that process look like in practice?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Sure. Well, NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming.

And it's a system that's kind of like you almost uses the mind as a metaphor of a computer. That's where programming comes in. And by changing and entering the different language, like you know, changing language using imagery, you know, because of language and image, you can change in neurology,

which will change the way we approach things.

So how does this act? Well, it really works to improve the limiting beliefs in a sense by reframing them and eventually changing them. So very often we develop limiting beliefs because of our childhood or maybe sometimes we carry baggage from our childhood.

Maybe we had an over critical parent or you know, some critical teachers in our education studies. And unfortunately what happens is we kind of internalize the critical remarks that they've said and we start moving that forward and that becomes a reality.

Well, you know, the teacher said this or our parents, this one must not be.

And so therefore you start to carry this belief, either you're not good enough or that you're not talented enough or not worthy enough.

And then that what set's going to do is that's going to start impacting the type of work you do because you're not going to be really working towards your fullest potential or what you can do.

It's like there's going to be that I know I should work hard, but at the same time I know I'm a failure or I know I'm a fool. You know, again maybe messages that you inadvertently heard from your childhood or internalized.

So what happens there is, you know, a good coach or a good NLP practitioner is going to help you change those beliefs by challenging those viewpoints.

Having you imagine,

you know, and go in these, you know, mental exercises of like even just visualization, like just imagine yourself being, you know, successful, whatever it is, and even just changing the language that you use not only to other people, but even to yourself.

So especially with actors, a lot of times some actors will identify with the idea of them struggling actor almost starving artists. And that's going to lead them in the time in a sense where what's going to happen there is that becomes a reality, that becomes a script that the world is struggle,

the world's hard, I must be poor, I must be deficient.

And so you know that can lead to problems later on because your mind says okay, but you're, I know you're starting, you want to work hard and do all this stuff.

Remember you were starving artists so you're not supposed to make money,

you're not supposed to be successful.

And therefore what very often happens is we get very close to something and then, you know, take three steps back because we're not supposed to be successful. I want to believe.

And this is not even conscious a lot of times.

And that's why you got people that are like, why can't I do anything right? Where can anything go? Well, for me, I'm like, well,

it could be perhaps that you're your own worst enemy and that you're getting in your own way.

And one thing I like to kind of say,

especially people, is when you stare in the mirror, sometimes your own worst enemy is staring at you. Met right back.

It's not other people, it's you,

right?

That's gonna be your arch nemesis,

Right?

Reginald D: So you often reference personality frameworks like the big five traits. How can understanding one's own personality help an actor improve both their craft and their career choices?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the big five, I felt, is really a great model just to understand ourselves and optimize our personality.

So,

and just, you know, to give you guys context, it refers to openness, conscientiousness,

extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Think of the word ocean. You know, kind of like the word ocean. Each letter of the word ocean signifies one of the five traits. And the big five.

So the first one is openness.

And what that refers to is like, you know, being open minded and especially to be a creative. That's what creativity is.

You know, being able to look at more than one solution to a problem or look at new perspectives. And so you have to be open to some degree if you want to be successful as an actor or an artist.

The next trait is conscientiousness, and that refers to work ethic,

discipline,

focus,

all the skills that are required to be a successful person overall in any profession or field. Conscientious is one of the biggest predictors of success.

And so that's really important to know. And so one of the ways to do that is by increasing your,

you know, accountability, putting, you know, keeping a calendar, keeping, you know, momentum going,

staying focused, you know, following through on things,

setting reminders if you have to.

Because a lot of people overestimate how conscientious they are.

You know, they don't realize that's a struggle for a lot of people to be that focused without assistance.

And then there's, you know, extroversion, which,

you know, now when we talk about extroversion, I'm not meaning you have to be the life of the room or the life of the party.

But you do have to know how to connect to people and communicate with people and be comfortable doing that. And sometimes, especially as an actor or creative, that may be a large group of people that you have to be somewhat comfortable with.

And then you have agreeableness. Now one of the important traits, and this is really for anybody,

is you have to be coachable.

If you want to be a decent actor and get good training,

you have to be coachable, which means you have to implement and agree with what the coach tells you to do or the teacher tells you to do and implement that.

So agreeableness is extremely important. And then neuroticism,

which sounds a little harsher than what it is, but what that really is, what's your tolerance for stress?

Now people that score high in neuroticism,

or those that get easily stressed out or, you know, are anxious or depressed,

you know, over little things that would, you know, you often will be scoring high neuroticism.

So now how this relates to actors, and this is what I found in my research study for my dissertation.

The combination if you are high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness,

that's a recipe for self sabotage.

And it was like, almost like a perfect storm right there.

So what do we need to do first? We need to kind of lower the temperature, develop skills, develop like self calming skills,

self soothing skills,

but also at the same time teaching business skills, teaching, you know, have a better business sense.

And that might mean, you know, having a planner, you know, using calendar, using apps, planning, you know, time blocking your day so that you reach goals that you set out to do while also developing tools to kind of develop a more resilient mindset or growth mindset so that, that will lower the neuroticism.

So it's one of the first perfect models to understand personality.

Reginald D: I love the way you broke that down. I really did.

So let's talk about hypnosis.

Hypnosis is used as a treatment plan and it's basically going into a state of deep relaxation and it's used as a complimentary therapy.

Can you tell me the benefits and if there are any risks to that?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Well, there are a lot of benefits and it's, you know, sometimes it can be a relaxed state, but actually true hypnosis, you don't really need relaxation. You just need to have more focus, like to be focused and paying attention.

Like, you know, like advertisers. Even just general mind control is hypnosis and the media is the news.

Is a great hypnotist,

sadly sometimes.

And it's really about a changing perceptions now it depends on what your intentions are. So you know, in therapeutic sense I would hope that all the practitioners are doing it for sort for good,

with integrity and having, you know, and respect.

But you can also create mass hysteria too,

you know, by ramping up fear, fear mongering, you know,

so there are some downsides there, you know, but it's more about a state of attention and focus. I mean now in a clinical sense or even in a professional setting, we may use relaxation.

The reason why we use relaxation is to,

you know, really command your attention and focus and, or, and zeroing in on things. So maybe we might use relaxation, but we don't need to relax somebody to put someone in amnonic graph.

I'll give you some day to day examples of how this would work. See the thing about,

we go into the state hypnosis several times a day. So some examples is that anybody's driven somewhere and you get into the car and then you just arrive at the destination,

not losing track of time.

Because what really happened was your subconscious mind took over.

Especially if it's a route or route that you've been like traveling many times. It's like automatic pilot.

You just kind of drifted off.

You know, your mind and everything else was so hyperconsert in the road,

but you, you just kind of drifted off. That's why sometimes people know can drive and get to a destination and not realize that 40 minutes has passed and it's like, well, I just felt like I just love the house.

So it's a little bit of time distortion.

Or you sit down, you watch a movie or a TV show or theater and you,

you know, consciously what you're about to watch is fake.

You know, all made up actors. There's no real situation here.

And you still get moved to either being scared,

laughing,

crying.

It's a suspension of disbelief that happens there. Even though you know what you're watching is false, but you're convinced.

And the same thing with time distortion happens there too sometimes. If it's a really. If the movie you're interested in,

you know, movie could be three hours long. You don't just realize that three hours gone by that only seemed like if you, you know,

maybe less than an hour in your perception.

So you lose track of time. It's like time distortion. And then even simple remarks like let's say you come home from work and your spouse or family member says, you know, you look really tired, you Got some bags under your eyes.

Now all of a sudden, you then start yawning and say, you know what? I really am tired.

Meanwhile, 30 seconds ago, you weren't tired,

but they told you you were tired, so now you're tired.

That's, you know, hypnosis in real life.

Reginald D: Right, Right.

Dr. Albert Bramante: And now I think a lot of people get scared or skeptical hypnosis because they see the movies or TV shows where someone's doing a pocket watch and making someone like, look, look a chicken or do some outlandish stuff,

you know, keep in mind that all that stuff is voluntary.

And a person already volunteered to be, you know, a participant in the show, so they already consented to do that.

And it's really about being suggestible. And everyone is suggestible because we couldn't learn if we weren't suggestible.

So everyone is hypothesisable, everyone on this planet.

It really determines upon your trust and comfort level, though.

So we cannot really do anything against someone's will,

conscious will.

So,

you know, no matter how gifted somebody is in hypnosis or nlp,

we cannot change free will,

you know, so if you're determined, you know, not to do something, there's nothing we can do.

So, like, if people come to you and say, you know, you can't hypnotize them, you're right, because I know no matter what, I, you know, they already have that mindset of it's not going to work.

Now. Skepticism is a different story. They say, you know, I'm not too sure that's more of a conversation we can have then.

Reginald D: Understand. So, Aaron, can you tell us about your book Rising above the Script?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Sure. Well, Rise above the Script came out of like, you know, was influenced by my doctoral dissertation,

and that was,

again, was self sabotage. But I outlined it and I have it in different parts because I kind of just mimic the outline of a dissertation. So I focus. There's a whole unit on self esteem.

There's a whole unit on self efficacy.

And then I go into detail on the big five. And so just kind of wrap them briefly like. So I have a chapter on each one of the five traits and tools and techniques that you can optimize all five of them.

And then the last chapter, the last unit I talk about is fear of success.

I talk about fear of failure, fear of success.

And then I go into relationship with money, because that's going to be a lot to do with self sabotage.

So the book is really geared towards actors, but anybody can benefit from it. You know, I wrote it with actors in Mind because those are the population I really work with the most.

But really anybody can benefit from the book. There's a lot of techniques that are general to everybody.

And the reason why I came up with that title is because, you know, most artists and actors know the word script because that's what you work on every day.

But I was really referring to the scripts in our mind, you know, so that's not rise above the script.

Rise above the scripts, you tell yourself.

You know, the limiting beliefs.

Reginald D: So in there you talk about the happy file.

Can you explain how artists or actors can use this simple idea to boost their motivation and self esteem on tough days?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Sure. Well, the happy file is, it's similar to a gratitude journal twist.

And this is something I kind of learned from another acting teacher who I credit in the book.

So the happy file is you take a list of everything you do,

everything that's good that's happened to you. It could be you got as an actor, you got good review on your performance, you get a callback from an audition,

you get good feedback on an audition, your acting teacher praises your work or if you're in a play,

you get a good review in a paper or an audience member comes up and says great performance.

And so you document all of that in an actual journal.

And it's every one of your wins.

Doesn't matter how big or small they are, every one is a win. There's also something of the small win.

And then a moment when you're having these self doubt moments or like maybe there's not a lot happening in your career at the moment you pull out your happy file and kind of remind you of why you are in a sense doing what you're doing.

So it's like again your, your happy file in a sense. So, and this could be tailored for anybody, you know, whether even if you're a teacher, anytime you could feedback from a student or a parent, you can document that.

And so the moment when that self doubt comes in or an apostle syndrome starts rearing its head and you sit there and fill out your happy file and say, okay, let me, you know,

let me re remind you why we're here doing what we're supposed to be.

Reginald D: Doing makes a lot of sense. I like that.

So Albert,

you discussed the fear of failure in depth.

What's one powerful reframe that helps turn failure into a tool for growth instead of a trigger for quitting?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Well, you look at failure as feedback and you look at his failure instead of it taking one step back. You're Actually taking one step forward.

So you're selling forward.

I forget, you know, I don't remember the exact. Whether it was Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson when he invented something,

he had failed over a thousand times beforehand.

And, you know, and what he said was,

it's not a bad thing because it was a thousand opportunities to come up with the right invention.

So if you look at that idea that failing is feedback and learning.

It's like every time you fail, you do something that doesn't work out in your favor or doesn't go the way you want it to.

It's just one step closer to what you set out to do.

And you can even take a lesson from babies here and toddlers.

So if you. They've been around babies and toddlers and learning to walk,

for instance,

that's a very challenging task, if you think about it. You know, for motor control, the coordination to be able to stand up and for the first time and then take steps on your own requires a lot of coordination and balance.

And the baby's body is developing, so very often they will fall down several hundred times,

but when they do, they get right back up again,

and eventually we all walk flawlessly now.

So why can't we learn the tenacity from babies and apply that to every aspect of our life by saying, okay,

we fell down,

you know, situation didn't go our way.

We just get back up and do it again.

And we tweak what we need to do so that,

you know, will eventually get that close. Because you, you know, all babies learn to walk.

Reginald D: And that's life.

Yeah, that's life in general. I tell you.

I tell you.

So I have a. What are a couple of your favorite daily psychological exercises for building unshakable confidence before an audition or performance?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Visualization, I would say, is very powerful. So. And you could do this several times, not just one time,

but just like, close your eyes and just visualize. Put the scene in front of you. Like you're about to give that audition,

you're about to give that monologue or that scene or that presentation.

And imagine the group in front of you.

And really not only is imagine a group, but imagine hanging on to every word you're saying.

They're applauding you, you're feeling great.

And then what I'll do is I'll anchor the feeling in there that. That feeling greatness, you know,

from, like, head to toe.

And you do that several times before, you know, an audition,

so that instead of being nervous,

you're now excited for that interview. Or for that audition.

Got it. Got it.

Reginald D: So finally, Albert, how can people follow you or purchase your book?

Dr. Albert Bramante: Well, you can purchase the book on Amazon and it's available like, you know, as a Kindle or paperback or audiobook.

So if you're on Audible or Spotify,

you can get the book that way. We're all major audiobooks are sold,

so I would definitely encourage you to check that out. You can follow me on socials. I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn,

and I'd be happy to connect with you and have a conversation.

Reginald D: Absolutely. Albert Bramante, thank you so much, man. I really enjoyed it today.

Dr. Albert Bramante: Thank you again, Rachel, for having me on here.

Reginald D: Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in to Real Talk with Reginald D.

If you enjoy listening to Real Talk with Reginald D, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. See you next time