Aww Shift

In today’s episode, our guest is an author and speaker, Mel Robbins. She was the world's most booked female speaker, with a fee of $100,000 per hour. She had numerous audiobooks being listened to every day. The 5 Second Rule was Audible's nonfiction bestseller in 2017 and the most successful self-published audiobook of all time, with 2 million copies sold in 33 languages and 100,000+ five-star ratings. Today, she will share with us her journey on how she figured out how she can change her habits and be a more confident and fulfilled person. Stay tuned!

[3:02] Why should we listen to you?

I don't think you should, and I believe that you should do what you authentically want to do. And if I have a vibe or energy about me that clicks, then you'll want to listen and talk to me. And if I don't, you shouldn't listen or talk to me.

[4:04] Do you find you've ever had conversations where you feel like “I'm supposed to be important,” and then someone makes it clear you're not to them?

I recently had this interview where it was a guy who I think had been in broadcast forever. He had invited me to come on his podcast. And he's not on camera. He keeps his camera off. And I say, hey, I've done some research, but could you tell me about your audience and your ideal intention so that I can make sure that the way I show up in this interview aligns with what your audience likes? And he's like, “Oh, it's a generic audience.” He was dismissive. Then he asked me the first question, which was, “So, tell me about the high five habits.” It was a wide-open question. I was explaining whatever, I've just written a book about it. And so I'm telling the story, and all of a sudden he goes, “You know, could you stop talking? We need a back and forth. I don't need you to give me a goddamn presentation.”

[8:41] “It's hard to see the label when you're the one inside the jar.”

What that made me think about is that one of the biggest challenges that I have as a mom is dealing with any issue where our kids feel anxious because it triggers my own anxiety and then I rush in to try to get rid of the anxiety and solve the situation which only makes the anxiety stick around and come back because I'm not teaching them how to problem solve through it. I'm rescuing them. And so that's been a really difficult issue for me to try to work through. But that's not the label of my job this year.

[11:00] It's hard to see the label when you're inside the jar. And you know you're inside the jar because it's frustrating to try to get the lid off no matter how hard you're cranking. I think the label on the jar I've been trapped in is successful but miserable.

[16:24] Your fears are so much a part of who you are that every time you go to level up or ask, “Well, what's next? Or what do I want to do?”, you will immediately level it back down based on that fear. That's the only thing that will allow me to get out of that fucking jar.

[18:48] Harmony

I love the word harmony. Whenever anybody asks me about life balance, I say I don't believe in that. I believe in work-life harmony. Things fit together when they're in harmony. One of the most important things for creating harmony is boundaries. They will only fit together if they aren't competing with one another. And that doesn't mean the rigidity of this. It just means you don't want to find yourself in a zone where it's not kind of the black and white kind of weave together. Everything's a gray blob because you're always working and there's got to be a little bit of separation.

[22:18] What do I want my life to look like?

I'm looking for areas where there is friction. I'll give you an example. This morning, I was talking with somebody that works on my team. And we were talking about the newsletter that will go out this week to our newsletter list. And we have a huge newsletter list. And I have to be honest with you, I hate writing the newsletter. Because the process of writing it, creating it, all of it creates a ton of friction. For me, the process is broken. I'm not clear about what I'm doing. It's just not joyful. And one of the things I know that I want in my life is to have more fun and be more joyful in the process of doing work. And there's a lot of things that I do in my work, a life that is fun and has no friction.

[30:02] My medium happens to be making videos, writing books, talking to people, soon to be podcasting as well. When I finally permitted myself to realize that being a businesswoman, a dealmaker, and an artist are the two things that I love to do. And it means that I'm always going to be creating something. With every project or new thing that we take on, there's always something that you're going to learn.

[36:54] Life Lesson

If there are some lessons learned, it would be to reach out for help sooner. So reach out to people that are two steps ahead of you. Go to their seminars, d...

In today’s episode, we have invited Jonathan Fields to the show. Jonathan is the Founder/CEO of Spark Endeavors and the lead architect behind the Sparketypes. An arch typing system and set of tools used by over 500,000 people and organizations to identify, nurture, and cultivate work that brings people alive and equips organizations and leaders to more effectively unlocking potential, motivation, impact, and joy. He is also an author and has been featured everywhere from New York Times, Wall Street Journal Fast Company, Inc, The Guardian Vogue, and more. Tune in to this episode; you are going to love it!

[2:39] Why should we listen to you?

Don't listen to me. If I start speaking to you, it's probably going to be to invite you to start listening to yourself, to your heart, to the whisper that lies deep inside of you that you've probably been ignoring for a long time. When I start talking, it's usually to ask questions or make an invitation that doesn't have to do with you listening to me but you tuning into yourself.

[5:01] Navigating people to listen to themselves

We've become so disembodied and not trained to pay attention to what's going on within ourselves because it's an uncomfortable exploration. The bigger thing is not necessarily that there's some deeper trauma, but we're just taught that there is an ideal that we're expected to live into.

[6:55] Nobody ever gave us a process or set of tools that would help us navigate it. So we're left unaware and unequipped. And so we follow the path that seems like it's all laid out for us.

[7:37] Human's desire to be part of a tribe and not be solo

The research around belonging, a very clear, well-defined physiological and psychological need, is one of the primal needs we all have to belong to. Not the avatar of who we project ourselves to be but the actual essence of who we are. We need that to belong. We have this really deep, deep need for people around us to see us, know us, and be accepted. A lot of folks say that it's probably primarily grounded in survival.

[11:06] We as human beings, there's something weird in our brain that says, if we make a statement or take even the tiniest action. This is what I believe where I support this particular thing, we want to be seen, we want to see ourselves, and we want to be perceived as up by others as being consistent with that initial thing. But we want to be seen as consistent within the group or community of people taking similar actions and making similar decisions because we were terrified of being cast out.

[15:37] How would somebody leave that bubble of being that limbo of it's just me, and build into that new kind of group, a new community, new tribe?

It would be cool if we were emotionally equipped to step into the best as the next move, rather than step into the next community. My sense is the way it normally happens is somebody finds a much better-aligned group of people and then rather than stepping into the best of let me figure this out, and then go in search of another group. They don't leave the current group until they find the next one. And in no small part, I sometimes think the reason for that is because they don't realize how poorly aligned they are with a group or community until they see a different group of human beings.

[30:19] Thoughts on how to get a person who is aspiring to something and it needs to be something they can almost do unconsciously

The question for me is, why are they not doing it in the first place? Is it not their vision? Imagine every step, every action you're going to have to take, every hour you're going to have to devote to getting to that place, reverse engineer, and map the whole thing out in detail. Because if you don't, and you can't find a way to want it, and state the end state isn't yours to own, it's better to make peace with that and find an end state that is yours to own. Where you are willing to see all the effort to get there rather than diluting yourself and saying this is the thing that I want, this is the thing that I meant to be, but never actually owning the fact that you will never do the things needed to get to be or accomplish it.

[36:40] Opportunities

My fundamental impulse or effort is to make ideas manifest. I love the process of creation. But part of that is I'm constantly teased by seeing all these different things to create. As part of my work this year in 2022, I'm asking myself, what steps do I need to take? What are the resources that I need to harness? Who are the people that I need to bring into my orbit to allow me to earn myself back to this place of fewer things better? I sort of have the year as like I'm building a plan to map myself back into this place where I get to know that there is the beautiful impact that's being created by the media that we're producing on one company and the tools and assessments that we're producing at ...

In today’s episode, our guest is Kailee Scales. Kailee has been on multiple national publications and now sits at the top of running Pencils of Promise. She served as the first Managing Director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and supported the development of a solid infrastructure around the decentralized organization, allowing it to grow from a hashtag to a political and cultural powerhouse for Black people worldwide. Stay tuned and learn more about Kailee!

[2:18] Why should we listen to you?

As a stranger in a cafe in the middle of a pandemic, I have something very important to say if I talk to you. I like to kind of keep to myself. Once we start talking, we could talk. But I'm not one to strike up a conversation.

[2:48] I'm a strange paradox. I am very engaging, I love people, and I love talking to people. But I can be nervous. I think all of us have a bit of a paradoxical little part of our personality.

[4:00] Kailee’s career

First, I'm a mom. First thing when I wake up in the morning, it's school. Then I go right into my work, and sometimes I just kind of look at my work a little bit as I'm getting ready for school because I love what I do so much, particularly with Pencils of Promise- the organization that I lead. It is just so empowering, especially when we feel a little uncertain and all over the place; it's great to be able to do something to help the world.

[5:22] World movements

All the things that happened in my formative years just pointed me toward a world change of transformation. I realized I was familiar with a lot of the world's issues, and I was always mobilized and had opportunities to volunteer and do things. As a result of that, I realized that we all have a part in this world; whether or not we like it, we all have a part. We can affect change. I wanted to make a shift to making sure that that happens. So the process of contributing to Big World Problems makes me feel better.

[6:58] Making it happen

It's always about identifying the North Star, identifying what you're trying to accomplish, and being firmly resolved to accomplish that thing—and then being open to realizing that there are many pathways to that thing and not judging. The way it happens will be strategic, will be exactly the way it's supposed to happen, will teach you lessons along the way, will allow you to purposefully take a different pathway to see if it'll work and see if it will fail. If it does, you fail fast and move back the other way. You won't be as connected to how you're doing it as you are to what you are trying to achieve.

[18:49] Building a platform to have a communication channel

We want to create these things to end these personas, platforms, and brands to appeal to others. We forget that each of us has high value and each of us has gifts. We all need to stay centered, honor, expand and expound that because no one can be you, and no one has what you have, even if you're a twin.

[19:34] It's always really important to me to know who I am and discover that and not be afraid of the things that I may not like. The North Star analogy also pertains to us as individuals; what is our individual North Star?

[28:03] What would you attach your success in the area you are to?

It was the skill, acknowledgment, and awareness that change is possible. I shared the commitment with many of my colleagues throughout my career and found those like-minded people who understood that change is possible.

[29:05] I value myself, know I have gifts, and honor those. I value you and I know you have gifts, and I honor that. Along the way, sometimes, we need help. Sometimes we need support. Sometimes we need to be seen. Sometimes we need encouragement and comfort. We always need love. That's the spirit in which I engage all the time. I treat others as if they engage that way all of the time. I think that's what brings me in these environments with like-minded people who also value themselves and value their gifts and want to make sure that the world sees that and that helps the world promote that.

[31:04] Handling people that will come with inflammatory words or statements

These questions go unanswered because these disparities exist because there are people who inherently disagree and want to keep things the same way. When you do this change work, you are changing. You are raging against a machine and institution, individuals who disagree with you, which is why you have to dismantle those feelings. You have to flat already just out commit to that.

[35:23] When do you know you’ve won?

It's one step at a time. It's one person at a time. It's again, back to that whole Northstar self-actualization: your goal is your peace and joy and your ability to appreciate the process, whether or not it's working because you feel fulfilled. We also have to calibrate our goals, desires, dreams, and h...

When we think about physical fitness, it helps us improve our body. So we're stronger. We can do more physically. Marc's area is great because it's one of the underserved areas, which is mental fitness, and why we do not want to have a strong mind. In today's episode, our guest is Marc Champagne, who will share about mental fitness.  

[5:11] Why should we listen to you?

I think other than what you pointed out with the unique care and interesting last name of champagne, I think the other unique part is my characters. I'm just obsessed with questions. So for me, good quality questions are something that I collect, and I collect them off the show, and other podcasts and books and whatnot, and I would probably start asking you questions to unpack or at least leave that conversation, so I've got something new to think about when it comes to an excellent prompt. Cause I feel like it's a universal language that we all ask ourselves these questions. Sometimes they're bigger when we have big life decisions and whatnot, but at the end of the day, if we upgrade the questions, we upgrade the life.

[6:25] How do the questions tied to mental fitness?

The thing I like about mental fitness, just like physical fitness, is that there are just so many different ways you can do it.

[7:15] Someone might try meditation and be like, it's just not for me. What about journaling? What about breathwork or just reflection in general. And that's how it ties in for me. It allows us to pause. I really think that we're in a default kind of autopilot mode most of the time. 

[9:21] How did you stumble upon the beauty and the golden questions? 

Was I was coming out of university; I was starting a corporate-type job. Everyone's going through the same type of training. And I remember asking myself, what if we're all doing the same training? How could I come out of this a bit forward if I'm going to do the same thing? So what I started doing was getting up a little bit earlier and started reading blogs at that time.

[10:00] Robin Sharma was a big one for me. One of his most recent books, the 5:00 AM club, is the principles that I was following, getting up early and just taking in content that would fuel my mind versus starting the day with looping narratives.

[10:42] Then podcasts start coming out, and I'd be listening to these interviews. And there would always be these moments where the guests share that kind of pivotal moment in their life or where they hit a wall and like how they got out of it. And they typically would share this question of some sort. But I've found that the hosts would always just kind of glaze over the question and get into what did you do? And then, all of a sudden, this company has started, or you sold something like whatever the story is. And I was sitting back there, I'm like, hold on, hot one question, pull them out of this and sent them off into this whole other ecosystem or whole other world, and I'd write those questions down. The following day I would journal on them in relation to where I was at in my life. So it was always just again, providing kind of real-life feedback, perspective, and awareness.

[12:23] What's the one that you would share with people?

My big thing is depending on where we're at in our life, the questions change. And that was one of the big reasons why I left that corporate world and started a journaling app because the frustration was there are all these template journals out there that are great, but it's the same thing all the time. It just seems very repetitive.

[13:29]  Something that I've asked myself a lot in the last probably two, three years is what do I want for my life and to really take time, it could be 10, 20 minutes to answer a question and taking time to consciously or intentionally design out the life that you want right now.

[14:52] What do you think happens if Someone in life is not asking the right questions or any questions, and what does that default look like?

I am taking a bit of an audit of what do you want for your life? And then taking a look at this is what I've said that I want. Am I doing those things every day, and are the people in my life and everything tha...

Our guest today is Justin Prince, and our focus is on "Being The One." Our aim is for you to reflect on who you are in this moment and how you can elevate yourself to a higher level. This conversation provides practical models and strategies for making transformative changes in your life, propelling you towards an exciting future. Justin shares compelling stories, valuable insights, and powerful lessons. Without further ado, let's dive into the discussion.

[2:30] Why should I listen to you?

To answer your question, I believe you would find me willing to listen, and the reason for that is my genuine care for people. I possess a deep curiosity about others, a love for understanding their complex stories, and a keen interest in learning. I'd ask numerous questions and lend a listening ear, truly attempting to comprehend who you are, what motivates you, and what sparks your passions.

[3:40] When you look at collecting stories, what does that mean to you?

I'm a person who tends to speak quite a bit, much like you do. For me, every communication should have a story, and every story should convey a meaningful point. I firmly believe that by making points within your communication and weaving them into a compelling story, you can connect with people on a much deeper level. Stories inherently carry a point, and points become more vivid and engaging when they're intertwined with a story. I'm constantly on the lookout for new stories and unique angles. I'm particularly inspired by individuals who provide me with stories that I can use as illustrations to inspire others. I consider myself a story collector' and am always in search of various tales—be it in the realm of business, human experiences, or stories of resilience. I believe that the true drama lies in the intricate details of these stories. Thus, I'm consistently focused on finding and collecting stories to serve as vehicles for moving people forward.

[5:28] Can you tell us a bit about yourself—the human side of you?

In life, we often encounter a universal pattern: the dream, struggle, and victory. Each phase is essential, but stories typically focus on the triumph, leaving the struggle hidden. My journey began with divorce, followed by 13 relocations, limited education, and various odd jobs. I harbored big dreams. At 25, I launched my first business, which eventually failed, forcing us into financial turmoil. My wife and kids shared a small loft while I juggled part-time jobs. I questioned if success was possible for me. Perseverance paid off as I rebuilt my business, eventually selling it. I ventured into private equity consulting for two years and spent over a decade transforming a struggling company, achieving two and a half billion in revenue. This path led to speaking worldwide and writing books, allowing me to inspire others. The essence of my story is simple: dreams are attainable, and extraordinary lives are within reach.

[8:43] What do you notice stops people from moving toward that thing that, for you, seems so obvious?

Firstly, many people lack clarity. They're often confused and uncertain. I advocate for having 3D vision. When you lack vision, you limit your potential to influence and inspire others. Your vision should be crystal clear and always at the forefront of your mind. High performers can articulate their latest goals almost instantaneously, a key sign of clarity. Secondly, fear can be a major obstacle. It can be fear of what others will say, fear of failure, or even fear of success. I've developed a '3 C Success Loop' to address this. It begins with 'confidence,' believing in yourself, which leads to 'commitment.' With confidence, you commit to your goals. Commitment, in turn, leads to 'competence,' improving your skills and abilities. As your competence grows, it boosts your confidence. But to break the cycle of fear and doubt, you need 'courage' to take the first step, even when you can't see the entire path. Courage is what sets you apart, as it's a rare quality. Anything rare holds greater value. Be the one who runs toward the roar, not away from it.

[16:04] What do you find to be some of the common fears that keep people from chasing a lion right now?

I understand the fear of being crushed when pursuing something big, whether it's in sports or any other life endeavor. That fear often stems from the worry of being embarrassed in front of others, especially when you're aiming high. I can relate to a personal experience that occurred when I was just starting my entrepreneurial journey. I was at church one Sunday, feeling inspired and enthusiastic about my new venture, and I shared my aspirations with some acquaintances, what I'd call "church friends." Their response was far from supportive. They ridiculed my ambitions, and it left me feeling small and uncertain. I had three initial emotions: a strong urge to fight back, a desire to take back my words, and a...