Speaker 1: Always tell people that meditation helps you discern signals from static,
Speaker 1: and the static is the ego and the voices and
Speaker 1: the scripts that were given as kids telling us you
Speaker 1: have to fit in this box and do this, and
Speaker 1: like all that stuff that doesn't quite jive with us.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Our guest this week
Speaker 1: is Christopher Carter, and the reason that you're hearing my
Speaker 1: voice instead of our trustee, Chris Forbes voice is that
Speaker 1: I met Christopher Carter at Camp Good Life Project, which
Speaker 1: I have tweeted about and some other things have been online.
Speaker 1: And Chris was the ringleader of ceremonies there and we
Speaker 1: got to see a lot of different sides of him.
Speaker 1: He led us in meditation at first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: He walked around with a megaphone, kept everybody motivated. He
Speaker 1: led a garage band where we played a lot of music.
Speaker 1: And he is a truly inspiring and dynamic guy. And
Speaker 1: he is from Ohio, where we are from. So I
Speaker 1: was able to travel up to Akron to meet him again.
Speaker 1: I had dinner with his family, his three kids, which
Speaker 1: was quite an adventure, and then we were able to
Speaker 1: go out to his studio and record this interview. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it. Hi, Chris, welcome to the show. Here.
Speaker 1: We are sitting in your office slash studio here in Akron, Ohio.
Speaker 1: So I'm always happy to do interviews in person. It's
Speaker 1: a much better experience in Skype. So it's great to
Speaker 1: be here. And we just had dinner with your family
Speaker 1: and so I'm sorry, Andrew, welcome now. It was it
Speaker 1: was good. So um Our podcast is called The One
Speaker 1: You Feed and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves,
Speaker 1: where there's a grandfather's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks, and he says, well, Grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Sure, first of all, I
Speaker 1: love the fact that you have a whole series of
Speaker 1: amazing interviews based on that parable. It's very very cool
Speaker 1: to me. Um, so many ways to interpret that. And
Speaker 1: for me and thinking about the last few years of
Speaker 1: my life becoming a creab on yogi, studying yoga a
Speaker 1: deep level lot of meditation, Um, it really brings up
Speaker 1: the idea of discernment, of being able to consciously choose
Speaker 1: which wolf you're going to feed day to day, Which
Speaker 1: of these terrible habits that were handed to me as
Speaker 1: a child or that I nurtured as a child are
Speaker 1: gonna serve me, and which ones need to be cut
Speaker 1: out like a cancer basically. Um, So I I try
Speaker 1: to head into each of my days with just more
Speaker 1: of a kind of a polished lens of awareness and
Speaker 1: being able to be open to what's serving me and
Speaker 1: what's not. And that's kind of what the parable brings
Speaker 1: up to me. I think that all of us have
Speaker 1: a front row seat for our you know, the best
Speaker 1: aspects of ourselves, but also the very terrifying aspects of ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I've through meditation and some other things, I've had
Speaker 1: to come face to face with all of it, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I guess just reminds me where to direct
Speaker 1: my energy. The parable is one of those things. And
Speaker 1: in some ways the show is all around that parable,
Speaker 1: and it comes up every time, but the answers to
Speaker 1: it tend to be I always find the follow on
Speaker 1: is to be so illuminating because the answer, largely it
Speaker 1: is is about, like you said, I think discernment is
Speaker 1: a great word. It's about, you know, our what are
Speaker 1: the choices we're making? Um. But I do like what
Speaker 1: you're bringing to it about because we talk about action
Speaker 1: a lot, but what you're talking about is the step
Speaker 1: before that, the clarity to even know. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: you went to summer camp with us for GLP and
Speaker 1: uh I talk a lot about right action. You know,
Speaker 1: the Yogis don't consider all action to be created equal.
Speaker 1: You know, we're taught in our culture that take action,
Speaker 1: work hard, and make it happen. Now now, now, now, now.
Speaker 1: But Yogis were more of the opinion of maybe I'll
Speaker 1: go meditate for about six hours, Maybe I'll take a shower,
Speaker 1: go for a walk, spend time with a guru or
Speaker 1: a disciple or whatever, and take right action. And that
Speaker 1: one right action might preclude or eliminate countless other actions
Speaker 1: by just taking that right. So again, the meditation is
Speaker 1: about discernment. So whenever I'm faced, you know, it seems
Speaker 1: increasingly more each more lately than whenever I'm faced with
Speaker 1: giant workloads, I have to be really concerned about taking
Speaker 1: right action. So that's where you know, the meditation I
Speaker 1: think comes into it. So tell me about your you're
Speaker 1: becoming a yogi and that spiritual path. How did you
Speaker 1: you know, maybe how did you get on that path?
Speaker 1: And tell us a little bit more about that, because
Speaker 1: that is a particular path here on is one that
Speaker 1: I just am not I don't know too much about Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's um, it's a rigorous path. It's it's
Speaker 1: really um the science of meditation and self realization through meditation,
Speaker 1: as taught by Paramahansi Yogananda. Most people would probably know
Speaker 1: the name from the book Autobiography of a Yogi came
Speaker 1: out in the forties. He was one of the first
Speaker 1: swamis from India to come over in the nies and
Speaker 1: bring over this ancient science of yoga to the West.
Speaker 1: And so most people think of yoga now is downward
Speaker 1: facing dog, happy baby yoga stretches and stuff. But um,
Speaker 1: this was really kind of the step beyond. It was, um,
Speaker 1: the half of yoga and the stretch of yoga is
Speaker 1: to prepare the body for meditation. So the type of
Speaker 1: yoga study is more so UM, a series of techniques
Speaker 1: that kind of just keep on deepening your perception over
Speaker 1: time if you're practicing, right, I mean, and some days
Speaker 1: are great, some days or not. I mean, it's meditation. Um.
Speaker 1: But how I found the path was really you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up um suburban Cleveland, Um latch key kid,
Speaker 1: and you know, talk about having access to every possible
Speaker 1: bad habit and bad influence including all the you know,
Speaker 1: craziest eighties hair metal headbangers, ball bands and uh you know,
Speaker 1: um drinking beers in the creek behind my parents house
Speaker 1: at the age of twelve and playing in rock bands
Speaker 1: and all these things that you know, I have respect
Speaker 1: for now, but just had the potential to really lead
Speaker 1: me astray and really like, um, really kind of engage
Speaker 1: that seeker in me that maybe there's a better way
Speaker 1: to do things than to you know, be drunk every
Speaker 1: weekend or whatever it may be. And um, years and
Speaker 1: years later, in my twenties, I had an experience that um,
Speaker 1: you know, I nearly passed away from that was stress
Speaker 1: related UM illnesses and symptoms. And after that whole kind
Speaker 1: of big upheaval, I started getting hardcore like you in
Speaker 1: a personal development and professional development and where I started
Speaker 1: to realize, as it sounds like you had his wealth
Speaker 1: and the interviews I've heard is that where the personal
Speaker 1: and professional development work ends, usually the spiritual path begins,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they overlap. It's like a guy like Stephen Covey,
Speaker 1: who I have tremendous respect for a seven habits high
Speaker 1: absolutely because he understood universal, profound, timeless truths, and I
Speaker 1: would argue that Wayne Dyer has that same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: Wayne Dyer and Stephen Covey all so happened to be
Speaker 1: like the U two of that whole arena. So of
Speaker 1: course they're looked at it like, oh, I could you
Speaker 1: know take or leave that? You know, it's like two
Speaker 1: on the shelf of every wal March or something. But
Speaker 1: the fact is it's so based on you know, Wayne
Speaker 1: Dyer is talking about the Dow, He's talking about the
Speaker 1: Baga bad Gita, all these things. So as I started
Speaker 1: to go more and more down that road, autobiography of
Speaker 1: Yogi kept coming up. More and more people would say, Chris,
Speaker 1: you should really read this book. Because they knew I
Speaker 1: was a seeker, but they also knew that I was
Speaker 1: pretty hardcore, Like I was a scientific seeker, Like I
Speaker 1: have two speeds off in eleven. So if I wanted
Speaker 1: to go down a spiritual path, I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be rigorous. I wanted to, you know, measure my own results.
Speaker 1: I wanted to experience, hopefully the expansion of my consciousness
Speaker 1: on some level. And that work absolutely did that for me.
Speaker 1: So I started, in a very beginning of two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: I sent away for the at home lessons, I started
Speaker 1: rigorously meditating. I've been meditating for about ten years prior,
Speaker 1: but just kind of tripping over decent meditations once in
Speaker 1: a while. And this just kind of gave me the
Speaker 1: structure and the outcomes I needed to really pursue it.
Speaker 1: What sort of meditation were you doing in those years
Speaker 1: before that? Yeah, so the first time, you're kind of
Speaker 1: fascinated by the topic because there's so meditation, so many Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I met this woman on an airplane when I was
Speaker 1: nineteen and I was getting ready to fly down to
Speaker 1: Texas to tell my dad I was going to drop
Speaker 1: out of school to tour with his band. So I
Speaker 1: was really um in a low depressed state. I was
Speaker 1: terrified about this conversation with my dad. So this woman
Speaker 1: wakes me up on the airplane and essentially tells me
Speaker 1: that I'm her reincarnated brother and all these things that
Speaker 1: hairdressers from California might tell a young traveler from Ohio, right,
Speaker 1: And so I was skeptical to say the least, you know,
Speaker 1: But by the time I got off this flight in
Speaker 1: O'Hare Airport, I was beaming. I was felt connected to something,
Speaker 1: and my eyes were glowing, and I just felt really um,
Speaker 1: I felt that look blissful kind of love sensation. And
Speaker 1: I ended up running into her again in this like
Speaker 1: crowded airport and she asked me to come outside, and
Speaker 1: she just really dropped some knowledge on me. She said,
Speaker 1: it's your path to meditate. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: a basic technique to start with and promise media practice
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll practice. And it's it's
Speaker 1: a technique that I still teach to people when I
Speaker 1: teach companies to meditate these days. However, it took me
Speaker 1: another few years of floundering before I really tried it.
Speaker 1: And I tried it. I tried meditation like most people
Speaker 1: do you know. I I was like, don't you meditate
Speaker 1: at the end of yoga the savasana? Meditate the corpse pose,
Speaker 1: And of course what happens when you do that, you
Speaker 1: fall fall asleep. So I did that countless nights of
Speaker 1: Oh it's it's just a new way to fall asleep,
Speaker 1: that's meditation. And but one night, on the third night,
Speaker 1: I remember in Chicago. Um, when I was years later,
Speaker 1: I was living in Chicago, I was laying on the
Speaker 1: basement floor my studio and I did the savasana meditation
Speaker 1: and I somehow transcended. I felt my body is something
Speaker 1: distinctly different from my soul, and I felt like a
Speaker 1: body buzz kind of feeling, and I thought, this is it,
Speaker 1: this is the dragon I will chase to the end
Speaker 1: of my days. And and that was enough to do it.
Speaker 1: And it just kind of since then, it's been that's
Speaker 1: been about ten years. It's been just really polishing the
Speaker 1: technique and trying different methods to get me back to
Speaker 1: that place. Yeah, I've been on again, off again. I
Speaker 1: was writing something today about my earliest meditation experiences a
Speaker 1: long time ago. At this point, I think it was
Speaker 1: like seventeen and so on again, off again, And it
Speaker 1: really isn't ntil the last year that I feel like
Speaker 1: all right. I got it like every day consistently. And
Speaker 1: the thing for me was I had to I kind
Speaker 1: of had to give up wanting any experience from meditation
Speaker 1: because I think that I thought I was supposed to
Speaker 1: feel good while I meditated, and I think some people do, right,
Speaker 1: and I think some people don't. I generally didn't. I
Speaker 1: would sit there and think, I I don't feel peaceful,
Speaker 1: I don't feel calm. My mind is racing. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the clock. I want to stand up, you know.
Speaker 1: And and I finally went I just went to a
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna treat this sort of like
Speaker 1: brushing my teeth, like you know, brushing my teeth. Maybe
Speaker 1: I enjoy it, maybe I don't. It doesn't matter. But
Speaker 1: I get clean teeth. That's the benefit the other twenty
Speaker 1: three hours and forty you know whatever it is. I've
Speaker 1: got clean, healthy teeth. And I'm just gonna treat this
Speaker 1: like mental hygiene. And once I relaxed about that and
Speaker 1: didn't expect to have any experience, I was able to
Speaker 1: settle in enough that I started to get to the
Speaker 1: place where I was like, oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times it's enjoyable. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: still not. I still sit there, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: I want to get up, I want to go. I
Speaker 1: want to you know. And but I think just that
Speaker 1: and all, you know, all meditator teach all meditation teachers generally, hell,
Speaker 1: you just relax and don't be hard on yourself. Yes,
Speaker 1: your mind is going to race, it's gonna run, you know,
Speaker 1: Just that's fine. It's an exercise and compassion. And then,
Speaker 1: as John Cabinz then says, it's a it's an active sanity.
Speaker 1: You know, I can love. I love your term mental hygiene.
Speaker 1: That's so great. I gotta I gotta totally steal that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I stole it from somewhere. But when I tell,
Speaker 1: when I tell people, when I talk to people about
Speaker 1: meditation specifically, you know, companies are executives. They they think
Speaker 1: that meditation is sitting in a beautiful white room with
Speaker 1: candles lit, you know, a nice pillow, the absence of
Speaker 1: thought totally then all white, robed or whatever. No, the
Speaker 1: act of meditation is some of the hardest work you
Speaker 1: can do. It's showing up for yourself, sitting there at
Speaker 1: all costs while the thought monkeys crawling through the windows
Speaker 1: and just trying to clear the screen to white, trying
Speaker 1: to clear the screen, you know. So it's that it's
Speaker 1: that intentional act of bringing your meta attention back over
Speaker 1: and over, no matter what the weather. And and I
Speaker 1: realized now after doing it for so many years that
Speaker 1: that if um, if people think that I've made any progress,
Speaker 1: it's from that. It's from training my meta attention. And
Speaker 1: the only way you do that is by sitting your
Speaker 1: butt down and doing it. It's it's like working out
Speaker 1: a muscle group. And I had I gotta tell this
Speaker 1: really quick funny story. Is that hum a few months ago,
Speaker 1: I was so busy, I was traveling all the time,
Speaker 1: and I forgot that we had scheduled our roof to
Speaker 1: get redone And at the time, before the studio is done,
Speaker 1: I was meditating up above our bedroom and our finished attict. So,
Speaker 1: like every day I go up there, my habit loop
Speaker 1: kicks and I opened my eyes and I think, I
Speaker 1: have to meditate now before the kids feet hit the floor.
Speaker 1: That's my that's my habit loop. So I get up,
Speaker 1: I go and before I light my candle. Once I
Speaker 1: light my candle and my meditation althar, that's me committing
Speaker 1: for an hour. So I think long and hard before
Speaker 1: I light the candle. You know what I mean, Because
Speaker 1: an hour is an hour and a substantial commitment. It's rigorous,
Speaker 1: and that's what the path that I'm on kind of
Speaker 1: requires it. It's a lot of techniques, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of um, it's a lot of time on the cushion.
Speaker 1: So before I am, before I light the candle, I think,
Speaker 1: are you ready for this? And sure enough, let it.
Speaker 1: I sit down. As soon as I sit down, this
Speaker 1: truck pulls up and these Amish men storm the roof
Speaker 1: like which spiders. They crawled to the top. They're banging,
Speaker 1: they're whacking, they're ripping, their shredding. The kids come, My
Speaker 1: little children come into the rooms, trembling like Daddy, what's happening?
Speaker 1: Crawling into my lap, candles falling over the shades or
Speaker 1: I mean, it was chaos us. But the interesting thing
Speaker 1: was I sat with it, and I told them to
Speaker 1: call me gun downstairs for breakfast. Dady'll be down in
Speaker 1: fifty five minutes. And all I could do was kind
Speaker 1: of sit in that chaos and try to find the
Speaker 1: one Amish guy on the corner of the roof that
Speaker 1: had a rhythm to his hammer, then find the guy
Speaker 1: that was taking care of how he tore things off,
Speaker 1: like to become really mindful and a total chaotic situation,
Speaker 1: and it turns something that was totally unnerving into something
Speaker 1: really interesting exercise. But I couldn't have sat there for
Speaker 1: thirty seconds a few years ago. Yeah, Well, I've been
Speaker 1: meditating lately outdoors. Whenever I can, I can, I get
Speaker 1: you know, can I get the sound of crickets or
Speaker 1: birds or and it sounds seems to be the thing
Speaker 1: that has worked for me, I mean, locking in and
Speaker 1: just sort of paying attention to sound. But the place
Speaker 1: I do it most often is in an industrial park.
Speaker 1: So there's just there's birds, there's crickets because there's they're
Speaker 1: a little pollen. And then there's the sound of semi
Speaker 1: doors slamming and forklifts going you know, and cars going by.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm just gonna treat it all as
Speaker 1: you know, and just make it all sound and not
Speaker 1: be like I like that when I hate that sound
Speaker 1: and this sound disturbs me, and this and just like
Speaker 1: and that's been a good experience for me to sort
Speaker 1: of try and non non judgmentally or non preferentially just
Speaker 1: relate to what's there. Well, it brings you into the scene,
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes when you're in a museum and
Speaker 1: you you see those people that aren't truly appreciating what's
Speaker 1: there or just missing most of it, you know, just
Speaker 1: you know, going quickly painting to painting, judging, judging, judging.
Speaker 1: But then when you catch the right thing, you kind
Speaker 1: of become you come into it a little bit, and
Speaker 1: meditation brings you fully into your life experience like good
Speaker 1: and bad. I mean, you know, I lost three people
Speaker 1: close to me over the over the summer, and I
Speaker 1: haven't experienced like that many Um, grief experiences that close together,
Speaker 1: and it still comes and goes. But because I'm a meditator,
Speaker 1: because it's like my refew usion, my strength and all
Speaker 1: those things, it allowed me to process the grief. Um,
Speaker 1: I think more quickly, but also on a very what
Speaker 1: I feel like it is a deeper level of understanding
Speaker 1: because I would have thought before if I would have
Speaker 1: lost one of those people, I would be derailed and
Speaker 1: out of the game for months or years. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I would recover. But um, something about the
Speaker 1: lens you cultivated, meditation brings you into a state of understanding,
Speaker 1: being able to stand above the maze of your life
Speaker 1: and to see adjacent possibilities and reasons versus being down
Speaker 1: in the maze and right fearful of that next corner.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I think that's meant whether it's meditation,
Speaker 1: which I think is a great way to do it,
Speaker 1: or but whatever way we can get perspective. I always
Speaker 1: think perspective is really whether that perspective, as you said,
Speaker 1: as that you sort of rise up and look down
Speaker 1: on the situation. Another type of perspective I always find
Speaker 1: interesting is to play with time. How will I feel
Speaker 1: about this in five hours or five we you know,
Speaker 1: what would you know? Get because we just get so
Speaker 1: mired in this. But anything we can do to sort
Speaker 1: of change the frame of reference so that we think
Speaker 1: about those things from a different angle. And I agree,
Speaker 1: I think meditation is I mean you're going back to uh,
Speaker 1: you know the Stephen Covey. I mean that book. The
Speaker 1: very first thing in it or very early is right
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response, there's a space, yeah, the Victor
Speaker 1: frankl you know, then you get that and the and
Speaker 1: that What I found with meditation is like that space
Speaker 1: increases that that space between all right, I have got
Speaker 1: a stimulus and my response. I just have a little
Speaker 1: bit more chance to go, Okay, what what is happening here?
Speaker 1: What do I want to do? Versus just immediately? And
Speaker 1: I've always been pretty good at not like I'm not
Speaker 1: like you say something to me and I immediately hit
Speaker 1: you kind of got or I start immediately start screaming
Speaker 1: you know. But what I do do is I immediately
Speaker 1: go to an emotional reaction that I attached you pretty
Speaker 1: strongly sure believe is the truth. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: most of us are wired to do that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a lizard brain for a reason and serve
Speaker 1: us very well for millions of years. Um. But the
Speaker 1: more often you can consciously try to put your focus
Speaker 1: up into the front of the cerebral cortex or the
Speaker 1: Christ consciousness or any of those higher faculties you know, you,
Speaker 1: chances are things tend to work out a little better
Speaker 1: for us. Yeah. I just did one of the recent
Speaker 1: many episodes on exactly that sort of thing about why
Speaker 1: is it that we're inclined to focus negatively? And it's
Speaker 1: tends to be because that's what our brain is wired
Speaker 1: to pick up. And but exactly what you just said,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can move your you know,
Speaker 1: if you can move that attention to call it whatever
Speaker 1: you want, you know, Christ consciousness, you're you're the front
Speaker 1: of your brain, your higher self, whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: if you can move out of out of lizard brain mode,
Speaker 1: out of binal mode and perspective is a is one
Speaker 1: of the ways to do that. Yeah, yeah, I for
Speaker 1: for my for a lot of my work, I do
Speaker 1: a lot of curriculum design stuff, and and part and
Speaker 1: parcel with curriculum design is to receive immediate feedback. You know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like coding software. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to have immediate feedback work to improve otherwise you'll just
Speaker 1: never solve the true problem. And when you move into
Speaker 1: that space, you feel really raw because you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: always under attack. Everyone just wants to like rip apart
Speaker 1: my beautiful work all the time. But what I realize
Speaker 1: is that the feedback it's such a gift now because
Speaker 1: that's you know, one of the main components of flow states. Certainly,
Speaker 1: like you have to have a good feedback channel open
Speaker 1: to you know, work at the highest level of your
Speaker 1: creative capacity. But the meditation and mindfulness it just keeps
Speaker 1: you from jumping into that defensive mode of like how
Speaker 1: dare you attack my beautiful curriculum module there? And you
Speaker 1: you get to a state of wow, we're all here
Speaker 1: to make this better and isn't this great? And are
Speaker 1: we were like truly collaborating? And the end users all
Speaker 1: who matters, because that's who keeps our lights on all
Speaker 1: these higher ways of perceiving a situation where a lot
Speaker 1: of people cross their arms, get defensive and take it personally.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was absolutely one of those people
Speaker 1: for a long time. But you know I can't afford
Speaker 1: me a minute ago. You use the term lens, and
Speaker 1: so I want to take this moment to maybe change
Speaker 1: a little direction a little bit and talk about your UM.
Speaker 1: You've got a website called the Epic Life, and UM
Speaker 1: in it, you've got a manifesto, So maybe could you
Speaker 1: talk through what this Epic life is? And then one
Speaker 1: of the parts of that manifesto is about upgrading your lens,
Speaker 1: and so let's maybe move into that now. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: So the manifesto was created I released at the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand and twelve when I was doing a
Speaker 1: lot of training with both with a Good Life Project
Speaker 1: led by Jonathan Fields, as well as doing all this
Speaker 1: crea yoga meditation. So that whole year was really kind
Speaker 1: of the scorching of the earth. It was like really
Speaker 1: shattering who I thought I was. It was dismantling the ego,
Speaker 1: it was everything was up for grabs. And I had
Speaker 1: a sabbatical in that year in April, and our company
Speaker 1: is great to give you a three week paid sabbatical
Speaker 1: in your fifth year. You have three weeks to do
Speaker 1: whatever you want with And I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was going to do except these three small kids. So UM,
Speaker 1: I decided to keep my normal business hours and pretty
Speaker 1: much meditate all day long. I went running and I meditated.
Speaker 1: That was pretty much all I did from eight to
Speaker 1: six pm every day for three weeks. Really ideal circumstances
Speaker 1: to come up with something creative, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like and and I think that I was just insane
Speaker 1: enough at the time to actually do it and stay
Speaker 1: with it. I called it the Radical sabbatical. And during
Speaker 1: that sabbatical, I um, I just had a kind of
Speaker 1: an answer came to me. And my my big question
Speaker 1: over that period of twelve years leading up to that
Speaker 1: was always why do I always feel like a jack
Speaker 1: of all trades, master of none? Why do I why
Speaker 1: do I tend to look at all these different talents
Speaker 1: and skills have a mass and accumulated as more of
Speaker 1: a curse than a blessing. Um, why can't I just
Speaker 1: pick one thing and focus on it and be excellent
Speaker 1: or outstanding at that thing versus wearing all these hats.
Speaker 1: I was a professional musician since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was and an attainer. I had this, you know,
Speaker 1: I was I was starting to get really into meditation,
Speaker 1: I was starting to get really into running. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to prove that I could do all these things.
Speaker 1: It was like I felt like these things made me me.
Speaker 1: And so somewhere in the sabbatical I got this idea
Speaker 1: for the framework. And the framework is this is that
Speaker 1: you can control your entire perception of life by having
Speaker 1: a n what I call a lens statement. Companies have
Speaker 1: typically very cheesy, crappy missions team. It's like we will
Speaker 1: serve the people by selling more widgets every quarter in
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. But if you think about a guy
Speaker 1: like Stephen Covey, who was like highly guided by virtues,
Speaker 1: and it's it's like kind of that deep values work
Speaker 1: that people will do a lot of coaches do, except
Speaker 1: I kind of skipped the step of values and I
Speaker 1: went straight for the capital views, which is virtues. And
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I was ruling into the stoic philosophers,
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers. This this aristotic poine I read today, the
Speaker 1: toy reminds me of the work you do on the
Speaker 1: show that to be excellent, we um we we just
Speaker 1: can't think excellent, We must act excellently. You know that
Speaker 1: your action has to be congruent with your virtues. So
Speaker 1: the Lens statement was really just a frame around the
Speaker 1: whole thing of um tightly tied to my virtues. I
Speaker 1: say it to myself every day after meditation when all
Speaker 1: my channels are open, and it's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me who the hell I'm trying to be and
Speaker 1: who the hell I'm becoming on a daily basis. So
Speaker 1: that's the Lens statement. And at some point in our
Speaker 1: development we realized, and you and I were talking about
Speaker 1: this before the interview, is that sometimes you just outgrow
Speaker 1: what served you well up to a certain point in
Speaker 1: your life just doesn't serve you anymore, and you have
Speaker 1: to change a little bit, right, you know, Sometimes like
Speaker 1: Yester years, bad Wolf might serve you in some way,
Speaker 1: or the things that you thought were great that you
Speaker 1: conquered ten years ago might not be anywhere near near
Speaker 1: as deep as you need to go, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's the Lens really gets at that is how can
Speaker 1: I upgrade it? For to perceive the world around me.
Speaker 1: You know, and I say about the lens that it
Speaker 1: could either enhance or diminish all you experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty heavy duty. So you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people's lens they kind of accute, they acquire them,
Speaker 1: or they adopt them by default. You know, like if
Speaker 1: your parent was a worrior, maybe you're a worrior. If
Speaker 1: so and so is a doubting Thomas, maybe you are too.
Speaker 1: I was lucky to have very amazing role models as
Speaker 1: a kid with with my lens. So, but the lens
Speaker 1: was core for perception. And then the framework moves into
Speaker 1: defining non negotiables, which are to me like the things
Speaker 1: I rattled off before my art, my family, my vitality,
Speaker 1: and my work, my spirituality. So it's it's five not ostiables.
Speaker 1: And the thinking is is that the lens has the
Speaker 1: capacity to magnify and deepen those non negotiables. So by
Speaker 1: making them non negotiable in my life, I'm saying I'm
Speaker 1: not only saying that, like I'm not giving these things
Speaker 1: up because I don't know any better. These are the
Speaker 1: things that make me me um. I'm saying that over
Speaker 1: the course of my lifetime, I will absolutely pursue mastery
Speaker 1: in any and all of those areas. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get there. I'm not saying I have gotten there,
Speaker 1: but I will trip over. Moments of what I call
Speaker 1: full life integration is when all of the non negotiables
Speaker 1: are working together and they're kind of spinning together. The
Speaker 1: lens is working with it, and the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: a musician makes me a better parent. The fact that
Speaker 1: I'm a decent parent makes me a better meditator, the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm a meditator makes me a better businessman.
Speaker 1: All those things that make us us stop working in
Speaker 1: separate silos and start really working together to make something
Speaker 1: profoundly unique and powerful. I'm fascinated by that. I was
Speaker 1: doing a keynote addressed today at a solar energy conference,
Speaker 1: and I had the moment when I when I walked
Speaker 1: away from that and I went, what the hell am
Speaker 1: I like? I've got so many different hats? And I
Speaker 1: had that moment of exactly like you said, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: maybe I should focus on what if I focused on
Speaker 1: one thing? And but what I've realized is that I
Speaker 1: don't know as conscious I don't know if I realized
Speaker 1: it as consciously as you have, But anytime I've gotten
Speaker 1: to that point, I've went but that's just not me,
Speaker 1: Like if I did that, like I just am never
Speaker 1: going to be interested enough in solar energy to spend
Speaker 1: all my time thinking about it. I'm interested enough in
Speaker 1: it to spend a fair amount of time thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I'm but not all of it. And and so I
Speaker 1: think that's really And when I read that about your
Speaker 1: I was really fascinated by that idea of how do
Speaker 1: you bring up how do you bring all those pieces together?
Speaker 1: So what you talked about the lens so is when
Speaker 1: you talk about non negotiables or what we're saying is
Speaker 1: these are the key parts that make up me. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to say that these are going to be
Speaker 1: part of my life. And and so, you know, I
Speaker 1: know one of the things one of our very first
Speaker 1: guests on the show, and it's kind of stuck with
Speaker 1: me when I asked him, what does feeding the good?
Speaker 1: You know, we read the parable and he said it
Speaker 1: means making time to do the art. And so for
Speaker 1: him it was his battle was it's really easy for
Speaker 1: everything in life to pull me away from doing that.
Speaker 1: Family obligations, work obligations, all that. But when he doesn't
Speaker 1: do that, he just becomes an asshole. Yeah, and and so, um,
Speaker 1: I was sort of struck by that. So is that
Speaker 1: what you mean by non negotiable? Yeah? So I define
Speaker 1: non negotiables as sacred life ingredients, like sacred is a
Speaker 1: key word. They are sacred life ingredients that cannot be
Speaker 1: removed or substituted. And what I say in the manifesto
Speaker 1: is that, Um, you've already disproven all the haters and
Speaker 1: nonbelievers by just saying showing up year after year and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I am an artist. I might not be
Speaker 1: excellent at my craft today, but I'm going to get there,
Speaker 1: and I'm getting there and I'm working on it. And
Speaker 1: that was always Music was always that for me. That
Speaker 1: was the thing that I couldn't not do. It brought
Speaker 1: me joy. It was my the first language I spoke
Speaker 1: with any level of confidence. And now I would argue,
Speaker 1: when you're up there speaking at you know about solar energy.
Speaker 1: The fact that you're a great guitarist or musician or
Speaker 1: a podcaster, dad any of these other hats you wear
Speaker 1: absolutely benefits you being at the podium talking about solar energy.
Speaker 1: You know, you might not be able to make the
Speaker 1: direct correlation to it, but it's kind of the unique
Speaker 1: thumb print on who we are as people. And to
Speaker 1: dishonor all of those other things by saying like I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just a guy in a suit today, and
Speaker 1: then I take the suit off and like, okay, I
Speaker 1: have my dad time now, and then I have my
Speaker 1: music time. You know, Jonathan, my friend Jonathan Fields, when
Speaker 1: he interviews a lot of people, he's really obsessed with
Speaker 1: work life blend. I mean, you've spent the last hour
Speaker 1: and a half, two hours with my family. You kind
Speaker 1: of see how my work day goes. You know. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of rock and roll, a little bit
Speaker 1: of business, a little bit of kids and diapers and
Speaker 1: food and all these things. That's my life. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't um I could. We could do our best
Speaker 1: to separate all those things and the nice little clean
Speaker 1: buckets of here's where my money comes from, here's when
Speaker 1: I get to do my craft in my hobbies whatever.
Speaker 1: But I was never into hobbies. I was always like,
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna do it, I want to try to
Speaker 1: be good at it. I want to be proficient, and eventually,
Speaker 1: as as you moved down the path, you realize that
Speaker 1: I will be that crazy coot on my porch at
Speaker 1: the age of seventy rock in my base, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's just who I've always been, It's who I
Speaker 1: always will be. So why not make them non negotiable?
Speaker 1: And why not have all of your work benefit from
Speaker 1: the other non negotiables in your life? What? But what
Speaker 1: you just said that you know you've sort of proven
Speaker 1: their nonnegotiable because they're still there. But I know, certainly
Speaker 1: at times in my life things that I think are
Speaker 1: non negotiable now I've let slide under under pressure. How
Speaker 1: do what? What? How do people go about sort of
Speaker 1: finding out what those things are? And can you is
Speaker 1: it really sacred if you've let it go, can you
Speaker 1: bring it back? Yeah? Yeah, you know. I as part
Speaker 1: of the and this isn't isn't to really pitch my stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's part of the manifesto. I did create a
Speaker 1: workbook that helps people do that. Um, it's all the
Speaker 1: same process as I did when I put together my
Speaker 1: own framework because a big part of my work is
Speaker 1: trying to live my own case study and trying to
Speaker 1: just trying to break the model and seeing if if
Speaker 1: it's truly legit. So how I usually help people do
Speaker 1: that is, um, non negotiables are usually things that people
Speaker 1: either thank you for, thank you for bringing to a
Speaker 1: certain gathering. You know. I get calls all the time
Speaker 1: like do can you please bring your acoustic to the
Speaker 1: bonfire and rock out like eighties hair metal songs or whatever.
Speaker 1: And um, it's it's the things that just adds such
Speaker 1: an intangible quality that nobody else might be able to bring.
Speaker 1: You know, He's that guy you call when we need
Speaker 1: him to do that, you know. And um, and what
Speaker 1: I started realizing about my own is that mine could
Speaker 1: be segmented in a way that could apply to a
Speaker 1: large art of the population. Like I really highly recommend
Speaker 1: a soul practice of some level. You know, it could
Speaker 1: be mindfulness, it could be meditation. For some people, that
Speaker 1: could be like needle pointing or anything that helps you
Speaker 1: transcend thought and just kind of get into the moment,
Speaker 1: you know, vitality. We all know that we need to
Speaker 1: maintain these human apparatus is or they're going to fail
Speaker 1: us eventually. Um. The family is, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: mixed bag and nuts for everybody. You know. Um, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways are families of origin are more
Speaker 1: pain than pleasure. So I always thought, how can I
Speaker 1: try to improve the situation I'm in? And art, I
Speaker 1: feel like everybody has an art and some capacity, you know,
Speaker 1: and even the most hardass business man who has never
Speaker 1: picked up an instrument or a paintbrush. Maybe it's the
Speaker 1: art of persuasion, or maybe it's the art of conveying
Speaker 1: ideas or packaging thoughts. Um. And then finally, work should
Speaker 1: be no negotiable for people because it's pretty much an event.
Speaker 1: It's inevitable in life, you know, we need to work
Speaker 1: in some capacity, so why not make work benefit from
Speaker 1: those others. So I just ask people to really think
Speaker 1: about what people thank them for and think about the
Speaker 1: things that truly bring them joy. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like Stephen Covey's quadrant too, which is like, what's uh,
Speaker 1: not urgent but important. You know. Um burn a Brown,
Speaker 1: who I'm a big fan of, she had this great quote,
Speaker 1: you know, unused creative energy is not benign. And I've
Speaker 1: seen so many musicians. Yes, that's just let that one
Speaker 1: sink in, because how many musicians did you grow up with.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been in bands, I'm sure since you're
Speaker 1: a kid. The guys that don't hang their guitars in
Speaker 1: view that they can't reach for their guitars when they
Speaker 1: want to, they manifests itself. First is bitterness and envy
Speaker 1: and jealousy, and then they become the critic of all
Speaker 1: other music. And then down the road, maybe they end
Speaker 1: up with cancer or they end up with some sort
Speaker 1: of manifestation that's so much deeper or so much more
Speaker 1: painful than just being yourself and picking up your guitar,
Speaker 1: because that's who you are, you know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of things that I really
Speaker 1: struck me from what you're saying. I think that quote
Speaker 1: is really amazing. But I think this idea and there
Speaker 1: seems to be more of it. You hear this more lately,
Speaker 1: and I know some of our interviews have reflected this,
Speaker 1: which is I think we all have a tendency to
Speaker 1: be to bring the person to the situation where that
Speaker 1: we think should be there. Yeah. Right, like you said,
Speaker 1: I'm now at this thing. So I'm the business guy, right,
Speaker 1: and so I need to fit there, and so I
Speaker 1: mold who I am a little bit to that, or
Speaker 1: I even if it's not so much as I mold that,
Speaker 1: I bring out the parts of me that work there
Speaker 1: and the parts that don't just sort of sit quietly
Speaker 1: until I go over to the other area. And I
Speaker 1: have been I mean, I wrestle with this one a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean I have, I have done that. And what
Speaker 1: I started to realize was that I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of what you're saying, and it's not easy. But the
Speaker 1: thing that actually is counterproductive, I think your to your
Speaker 1: to my business career because I'm not really there all
Speaker 1: the way, right I am. I am part of who
Speaker 1: I am There, I am a fragment of myself, your facade,
Speaker 1: and and so I don't connect or resonate with people
Speaker 1: in the same way that I do when I go
Speaker 1: I'm here, and you know what, yeah, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I do these things that are at least in this
Speaker 1: circle would be considered oddball. But there who I am,
Speaker 1: and then I'm there and and things change, at least
Speaker 1: for me when I bring all of my entire I mean,
Speaker 1: we are we are you know, if we're icebergs. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the limited facade that's above the surface. That the
Speaker 1: rest of the world sees. And then there's this the
Speaker 1: waterline is kind of this thin layer of static between
Speaker 1: you know, us and the bigger us, and the bigger
Speaker 1: us is enormous and in so many ways it frightens
Speaker 1: the crap out of us, and we're afraid to show it.
Speaker 1: But the tagline from my side or my my coach
Speaker 1: Cynthia Morris helped me figure this out is be who
Speaker 1: you are, wherever you are, and we feel fully integrated
Speaker 1: and we feel fully alive when there is no toggle
Speaker 1: between who we are and what we do. That I
Speaker 1: could show up rocking my Mala beads to a board
Speaker 1: meeting or two meeting with Jonathan for Good Life Project
Speaker 1: or too, you know, in my family situation, and I
Speaker 1: don't care about judgment. I don't care about because I'm
Speaker 1: just who the hell I mean, you know, taking So
Speaker 1: how do you I mean that that is a that
Speaker 1: is a bold way to live right and right? I
Speaker 1: mean so I think that's a that is a there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fear to overcome getting to that place.
Speaker 1: So what are some of the things that you know
Speaker 1: people can do? You know, short short thing or two
Speaker 1: and one of the things you say I I love,
Speaker 1: which is basically um. You know, keep in mind that
Speaker 1: when it comes to your inner alignment, there are no shortcuts.
Speaker 1: So I'm you know, you're not going to give me
Speaker 1: the too easy to head. I never right. But but
Speaker 1: what are some of the mindsets that people can start
Speaker 1: to bring when they go, you know what tomorrow at work?
Speaker 1: I want to be more me or know what when
Speaker 1: I go home to my family tonight, I want to
Speaker 1: be more who I am instead of who I've been
Speaker 1: or who they expect me to be or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's you know, my wife. You met
Speaker 1: my wife briefly. I mean, she gives me a lot
Speaker 1: of inspiration in this department because she's always been unapologetically
Speaker 1: who the hell Gail is? Like, that's Gail, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh it was something to aspire too. She's way
Speaker 1: more assertive than me. She just you know, she rocks
Speaker 1: her tattoos. She's who she is. Um. But me, what
Speaker 1: what I would recommend for people to do is there's
Speaker 1: so many great surveys you could take now a lot
Speaker 1: of them for free to attain what I call ruthless
Speaker 1: self knowledge. Ruthless self knowledge is taking the v I
Speaker 1: a Strength survey, which is like a positive psychology survey.
Speaker 1: That's that's so dead on in terms of nailing what
Speaker 1: your core strengths are. Remind me to get that in
Speaker 1: the ship. Yeah, I'll give you. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: whole list of them. Uh, there's that one. There's a
Speaker 1: three sixty Reach survey, which is kind of a branding
Speaker 1: survey for anybody doing like personal branding. I just did
Speaker 1: that from my website Strengths Finder. Tom Rath is the
Speaker 1: book Strengths Finder. Um. The lens statement is absolutely one.
Speaker 1: That's that's one of my exercises I I do and
Speaker 1: use religiously. Um but but all of this ruthless self
Speaker 1: knowledge is great because what you'll start to see, oh
Speaker 1: m B T I is one of the most famous
Speaker 1: ones that's been used in work situations forever, like it
Speaker 1: helps with teams work together Myers Briggs. It's called um
Speaker 1: but ruthless self knowledge. You take all these different things.
Speaker 1: Oh and the other one that blows my mind is
Speaker 1: the angiogram. Have ever heard of the angiogram? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: thing is wild. It's kind of like astrology on steroids.
Speaker 1: It's it's a way of looking up looking at the
Speaker 1: world through a series of numbers, and I know for
Speaker 1: a fact I'm an indiogram number seven. So what does
Speaker 1: ruthless self knowledge give you? Well, it gives you the
Speaker 1: ability to lay out the results of these different things
Speaker 1: and maybe just take two or three of them. Because
Speaker 1: I only have one speed eleven, I probably took eleven
Speaker 1: of them, and I look for pattern recognition. I look
Speaker 1: for you know, humor shows up in every single one
Speaker 1: of these, So I know that humor isn't a crutch
Speaker 1: for me. Humors strength. So how can I use humor
Speaker 1: at work to get executives to the table that wouldn't
Speaker 1: otherwise work together? Then I become the guy that people
Speaker 1: tapped to bring people together for things. So you start
Speaker 1: small and working from an area of your strengths. I
Speaker 1: started injecting spirituality came up and all my stuff I
Speaker 1: I started taking meditation into the workplace and people thank
Speaker 1: me for doing This is stuff I would have done
Speaker 1: for free anyway. But you know, was that was that hard?
Speaker 1: Was it hard to out there? To to go into
Speaker 1: a corporate setting and say I want to bring meditation here.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of spoiled and my company, I'm spoiled because
Speaker 1: we have such a remarkable culture. We've it's a company
Speaker 1: called Centro. We've won the best place to work for
Speaker 1: four years in Chicago. They are so open to anything
Speaker 1: and everything. Our founder, Chief Shawn and other Ohio boy,
Speaker 1: he grew up Mennonite, so high principles. He's basically an
Speaker 1: Amish that can party and use technology. He he always
Speaker 1: had this culture that said, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: make it as spiritual and open and loving as possible.
Speaker 1: So Chris, you've got an idea to do it. And
Speaker 1: so at first, when I started with the company, I
Speaker 1: was really afraid to hit send on some of my
Speaker 1: crazy emails about meditation, and you know, I'd wrap a
Speaker 1: lot of humor into them, but I knew that a
Speaker 1: certain percentage would think I was very weird out there,
Speaker 1: and some of them still do, frankly. But I have
Speaker 1: their utter respect on some level too, because I've never
Speaker 1: deviated from that. They know, like a lot of these
Speaker 1: executives that I've come up with at the company the
Speaker 1: last seven years, you know, one of them asked me
Speaker 1: to officiate his wedding next weekend in o Hi. So
Speaker 1: it's it's when you when you find the courage and
Speaker 1: you get the footing to just rock a little bit
Speaker 1: of your truth and live from your strengths. It leads
Speaker 1: kind of the next one, and each one's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a risk, and you push a little bit farther.
Speaker 1: But I swear there's times and this is crazy, Eric,
Speaker 1: but you know, remember those jobs we have all had
Speaker 1: where you had to hide the fact that you're a musician.
Speaker 1: You try not to talk about it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be that guy like you know, used to be
Speaker 1: in a band like whenever. Now I show up at
Speaker 1: work events and people seriously asked me where my guitar is.
Speaker 1: They're like, did you bring your guitar? And if I
Speaker 1: don't have it, they're they're kind of concerned, why didn't
Speaker 1: you bring your guitar. I could have never imagined having
Speaker 1: a day job that paid me well where I could
Speaker 1: even think about bringing up music, let alone being that
Speaker 1: so But but it came from that long again, long road,
Speaker 1: long commitment of saying I'm gonna push it, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be myself in these situations. But the more you do that,
Speaker 1: the more people come to trust you, the more people
Speaker 1: come to rely on you and value your perspective on
Speaker 1: things because you're not packaging it, and because you're yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not packaging it, and the politically correct thing to do.
Speaker 1: I have to tell executives all the time, like, I
Speaker 1: appreciate your idea, but it's a terrible one. I have to,
Speaker 1: you know, give because I love the company, I have
Speaker 1: to be direct. However, they know that, Um, I'm also
Speaker 1: the first one on their side when it's a great idea. Hell, yes,
Speaker 1: let's do it, you know, because authenticity, it's really at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's our true currency for
Speaker 1: how our lives and our career unfold is authenticity. And
Speaker 1: everything works better for me when I put radical in
Speaker 1: front of it. So I would argue radical authenticity very
Speaker 1: painful for some people. Yea. For me, it's it's been
Speaker 1: painful to a point, but I realized now that there's
Speaker 1: no going back. I just have to keep moving towards
Speaker 1: more authenticity. Yeah. Well, you whatever challenges you may have
Speaker 1: had with that, you seem to at least anywhere I've
Speaker 1: seen you be past you know, you seem to be
Speaker 1: pretty much you. Yeah, I mean in a in a
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable way. Thanks man, you had a great um
Speaker 1: seat for the best job of my life in the
Speaker 1: last few years, which was being the camp director for
Speaker 1: Good Life Projects Summer Camp. And it was one of
Speaker 1: those things I knew months leading up to it that
Speaker 1: I was made to do this role. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: a ring master, I'm gonna be an m C, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be a DJ motivator, a musician, all these things,
Speaker 1: and who else would be crazy enough to try and
Speaker 1: try all that stuff, but to show up there and
Speaker 1: to just be fully and meshed in the moment and
Speaker 1: to be rewarded for being who I am, showing up
Speaker 1: in pajamas on the second day and doing like the
Speaker 1: intros for the keynotes and pajamas and those things. It's
Speaker 1: it's not a look at me, look how much fun
Speaker 1: I'm having kind of thing. It's say, Wow, what took
Speaker 1: me so long to get here? You know this? You know.
Speaker 1: I see guys like Bob Marley. I see guys like
Speaker 1: you know, John Lennon, people that were unapologetically who the
Speaker 1: hell they were from a young age, like almost fell
Speaker 1: onto the earth like that. And it takes some of
Speaker 1: us a lot more years to take that baby step journey.
Speaker 1: But once you trip over it it's hard to go back. Well,
Speaker 1: it's I certainly think it's encouraging to see because I
Speaker 1: think if you didn't watching from the outside and not
Speaker 1: knowing you, you would seem like this guy hadn't been
Speaker 1: born that way, right, because you were so clearly just
Speaker 1: they're out there having fun, completely un self conscious. And
Speaker 1: but I think it's really important that you know people
Speaker 1: here that wasn't the way you were, that you can
Speaker 1: get there, that you can you know, those those um
Speaker 1: that weight that we carry to be somebody different than
Speaker 1: we are, you can. So one of my things, one
Speaker 1: of my exercises every once in a while, as I
Speaker 1: try to post something on Facebook that literally makes my
Speaker 1: skin crawl, because James Altur is the same way. If
Speaker 1: you ever listened to his podcast, he's he said, you know,
Speaker 1: he he knows it's this successful post by the degree
Speaker 1: to which he scared sless to post it. And um,
Speaker 1: when my when my dad passed this summer, I was
Speaker 1: with him as he passed. Was a very emotional time
Speaker 1: for our family. But somehow being in my parents house
Speaker 1: over the weekend, I found this this hidden on a shelf.
Speaker 1: I found this like little book of my senior photos
Speaker 1: yearbook photos, and they were the most horrific photos, like
Speaker 1: floral vests, brooches, band letters, band whistle, doogie howser, haircut.
Speaker 1: I mean, just you have a dab a damn painful
Speaker 1: to look at. So I thought, I gotta practually, I preach,
Speaker 1: I gotta. I'm gonna post these one by one and
Speaker 1: just kind of see the response I get, you know,
Speaker 1: And and so I still absolutely take those risks and
Speaker 1: endure that pain to say, you know, and in some
Speaker 1: way it's honoring that kid, that geeky, super concerned with
Speaker 1: what everybody thought of him, kid that we all were
Speaker 1: at some point. Honoring that and saying, you know, these
Speaker 1: days I try not to have any apologies for who
Speaker 1: the hell I am, but um, all of us kind
Speaker 1: of start from that place. And you know, but but
Speaker 1: waking up the next day and seeing kind of like that,
Speaker 1: that bag of support and like total all my friends
Speaker 1: like jumping in and reminding me what a complete dark
Speaker 1: I was and stuff. You know, it's, uh, somewhere in
Speaker 1: there is what I'm trying to leave behind. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: I like that we talk often on the show. It's
Speaker 1: about small steps. I mean, for some people, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes just taking a huge jump is the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. In a lot of cases, for people, it's
Speaker 1: just one small step, you know what, what what one
Speaker 1: way tomorrow, in one conversation with one person, can I
Speaker 1: be more meat? Yeah? And then oh that went okay,
Speaker 1: Well all right, let me try that again the next
Speaker 1: day with a different person, or let me take one
Speaker 1: more step with that person, or it's you know, those things,
Speaker 1: those microscopic steps add up if they're consistent. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: again it's for me. Meditation is where that's cultivated. I
Speaker 1: always tell people that meditation helps you discern signals from static,
Speaker 1: and the static is the ego and the voices and
Speaker 1: the scripts that were given as kids telling us you
Speaker 1: have to fit in this box and do this and
Speaker 1: like all that stuff that doesn't quite jive with us.
Speaker 1: People meant well when they gave it to us, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't serve us. And then the signal, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes absurd, sometimes inspired, sometimes scary, but your unique signal.
Speaker 1: If you could use meditation or a mind from this
Speaker 1: practice to tune into that and be guided by that,
Speaker 1: those risks become less about the risk and more about
Speaker 1: your duty to fulfill because to me, that's your mission,
Speaker 1: that becomes providence, that becomes and all the all the
Speaker 1: audacious people in history, I mean, Steve Jobs summed it
Speaker 1: up beautifully. The thing differently campaign you know that it's
Speaker 1: um those people that change the world, and it's it's no,
Speaker 1: it was no easier for them to step into that
Speaker 1: responsibility because it is a responsibility than it is for
Speaker 1: any of us. But at some point we realize that
Speaker 1: we have to do it. Yeah, And I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, the the uncomfortable nous for the
Speaker 1: pain of not doing that, it starts to become a
Speaker 1: pretty big motivator. I used to joke about it, like
Speaker 1: when I was younger and would be scared to ask
Speaker 1: a girl. I would eventually eventually got to the point
Speaker 1: where it's like the pain of being a chicken is
Speaker 1: worse than the pain and rejection. At this point, I
Speaker 1: can't stand my chickenness on this, you know. And and
Speaker 1: then you try you get past that, and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not being true. Ourselves is far worse. Although
Speaker 1: it not, it doesn't seem like it for a while,
Speaker 1: but eventually, at least for me, that hits a hits
Speaker 1: an inflection point where I'm like I can't. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: you had. You had a great quote on one of
Speaker 1: your podcasts I listened to the other day, which was
Speaker 1: one of the short ones where you were talking about
Speaker 1: pushing through procrastination to take good action, and you said
Speaker 1: something about you can't think your way into action, but
Speaker 1: you can act your way into You can't think your
Speaker 1: way into right action, but you can have your way
Speaker 1: into right thinking. Yes, yes, you have to lead with action.
Speaker 1: And and most people aren't wired to take that action,
Speaker 1: you know. They have to really go through so many
Speaker 1: crazy cycles of getting the hell beat out of them
Speaker 1: before they say, Okay, I've had enough, I'm gonna try,
Speaker 1: you know, to to pursue this. So yeah, well I
Speaker 1: think we are at the end of our time. Actually,
Speaker 1: this has been a long one, which seems to be
Speaker 1: happening more and more as I get great people and um,
Speaker 1: but thanks so much for taking the time, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's been fun. And I will make sure that on
Speaker 1: our show notes that links to your your site and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, will make sure we get some of
Speaker 1: those personalities studies out there also tests. I appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and always great to make another good friend in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. Yeah, you can learn more
Speaker 1: about this podcast and Chris Carter at one you Feed
Speaker 1: dot Net slash Carter and don't forget to go online
Speaker 1: and sign up for our email list. And you can
Speaker 1: get Eric's free four part series about the seven habits
Speaker 1: of highly affective people. Thanks Spite,