Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 147 | should i coach my wife?

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

In today’s episode, We have an awesome conversation with Jason Jaggard which we are so excited about. Jason Jaggard is an entrepreneur, producer, coach, and author whose work has been translated into over 50 languages and featured in Fast Company, Forbes, and Entrepreneur magazines. Jason is the founder of Novus Global, an executive coaching firm working with leaders of Fortune 100 companies, professional athletes, elected officials, and some of the most famous entertainers on earth. He is also a co-founder of the Meta Performance™ Institute, which helps people create six- and seven-figure incomes by learning how to powerfully coach high-performing leaders. In addition, he is the executive producer and co-host of the award-winning podcast Beyond High Performance, featuring interviews with coaches and people at the top of their fields, exploring the question, "What am I capable of?" The new book from Jason Jaggard, the Executive Coaches at Novus Global, and the Faculty for the Meta Performance™ Institute, Beyond High Performance: What Great Coaches Know About How the Best Get Better, releases this summer. Beyond High Performance is a manifesto for leaders and teams who are ready for the question: What do you do after you're good at what you do? Join the Beyond High Performance Network and Get Early Access to the Book and other Valuable Resources. This episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro ▶ Our listeners get a special discount. You can save up to $50 by going to https://www.apolloneuro.com and using code couplethings50 This episode is also sponsored by Modern Fertility ▶ Modern Fertility is offering our listeners $30 off the test when you go to https://ModernFertility.com/eastfam30. This is a limited time offer for $30 off!! This episode is happily sponsored by Good Ranchers! ▶ For our listeners, you can get a year’s worth of America’s best chicken for FREE - a $149 value - when you subscribe to any box at https://goodranchers.com today. That’s healthy protein to stock your fridge with all year long! Plus, you can get a bonus $20 off with our code Eastfam at checkout. You can join The Beyond High Performance Network by signing up here https://novus.global/book/ where you will receive a free chapter of Jason's upcoming book, Beyond High Performance. Follow Jason ▶ @jaggard_ Follow Novus Global ▶ @novusglobal Make sure you’re following along with us as well!! Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My TikTok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok! ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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a couple things with Sean and Andrew a podcast all about couples and the things they go through this one isn't necessarily about couples but for couples and four individuals because we believe that the more you work on yourself and like bettering yourself constantly the better you can be as a couple yeah and here's the question I was trying to answer through this interview with this phenomenal expert was is it my job in our relationship to lead you to push you to hold you accountable? Is that even appropriate for marriage in our relationship? And if so, what does that look like? What is ambition versus contentment? There's a lot of kind of deep, complex topics we talk about here. And the difference between contentment and complacency. This is one of my favorite

conversations. This is actually the second time we've talked to him. Jason Jaggard. He actually worked with Andrew while you were playing in the NFL. He's a leadership coach. And he is a guru of a lot of wisdom. And I felt like I could have talked to him for hours. He helps coach and train the world's top executives. Like we're talking business leaders that have companies that are household brands, like big, big companies. And he works with the leaders of those companies to help them do what they do best. And so we wanted to bring him on because he's just generally really wise guy. His backstory is also really interesting. He was a pastor before he did this. And so has some really unique insight into that as well but i'm thankful for jason and the fact that he joined us he also has a book coming out i'm so

excited about this book yeah we're excited about the book like i asked him if he could just send us one now please yes it's not out for you yet as this episode airs live but be on the lookout and uh be checking out for jason jaggard because this guy has some really good things to share so anyway if you want to find out more about him we'll link some information down below but without further ado let's get into it with Jason Jaggard. Wow. Jason Jaggard. Here we are again. Every time we talk to you, Sean's like, that was one of my favorite conversations I can remember having. And a lot has happened since the last time we got to talk to you. So really excited to have you on and thank you for joining. Oh, thank you. I love your show. I love it. I love what's happening on. It's fantastic.

Thank you. I would love for you to give our audience a little bit about your background because it's like, it's pretty diverse. I feel like you've done a lot of things and would like to hear your synopsis of it. my synopsis of my background you know there are parts of my background uh that are that don't talk about very much publicly anymore so we'll do that we'll do that now we'll do that now well you know like so i used to be a pastor like in my 20s i spent a decade being a pastor and if i was flying somewhere and i did not want the person next to me to bother me i would just tell them that i'm a pastor and they would just leave you alone. It's like, oh, gosh, this guy's going to, you know,

tell me what I'm doing wrong or judge me or whatever. And so it's not necessarily like the coolest brand. But I loved it. I loved it. I was, for a decade, I worked, or about a decade. I worked at a faith community called Mosaic here in Los Angeles. And it was so much fun. I learned so much.

And it was one of the best seasons of my life. And then transitioned out of that. I'm giving you a vocational background. That's okay. Like, you know, I transitioned out of that into a little consultancy company that didn't frankly go very well. And so going from pastor to consultant in some ways makes some sense, but in other ways, it makes no sense. And so I did that and was, I don't know if any of your listeners I've ever experienced just like rowing uphill, you know, into the wind. And I would,

I would like wake up. I was doing consulting with colleges. And I could pay the bills with it. But I would wake up in my pajamas into this little apartment that I was barely able to pay for in Los Angeles. And I had a spreadsheet. I would cold call universities and email like 100 universities and then wake up and do it again and follow up. And that was my job while I was writing a book, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. And then the true story is my life fell apart a little bit. I had some really painful experiences. And I was married at the time.

and has some painful experiences there, and the marriage collapsed and I was really looking for some tools that could help me navigate uncertainty, navigate pain, navigate when things aren't going the way that you'd hoped. And a buddy, my neighbor invited me to this thing that doesn't really exist in that form anymore. But it was a four-day self-leadership training experience. And I'd never experienced anything like that before. It was just when I needed right when I needed it. And I immediately started using the tools with my immediate family. And I reinvented my relationship with my parents. And I was like, I love this. And then there's there's like, that's like the personal side. And then there was this corporate side. And I got

really interested in that. So I got trained in that. And I'm sure you two have had that experience when you find whether it's the right sport or the right person to marry, quote, right person to marry or, you know, the right business or whatever things to start clicking. And that really clicked for me when I got into coaching and then briefly didn't want to do that alone, really committed to winning with teams. I think you can win faster with others versus trying to do it yourself. And so started a firm called Novus Global with some of my friends. And now years later, here we are. We have coaches all over the world and multiple companies. And we work with hundreds of people all over the world ranging from mayors to professional athletes to some

of the most famous entertainers on earth, of course, business leaders running multi-billion dollar companies. So it's been a little bit of a ride. I'm so excited to get your insight and have this conversation because you have this unique experience of working with some of the top leaders in the world, like top executives, managing tons of people. And I'm curious, a couple things. First, would you say that top executives, corporate executives, that skill of being a good leader in that realm correlates to being a strong leader in a family or like in a relationship no i would not say that and i think probably your listeners can know that intuitively i would say they overlap but there are some distinctions that are important so like

the same the muscles half the muscles you use in the corporate environment um not only can hurt your relationships at home they can they hurt they can hurt they can hurt relationships at home if you don't finesse them. I had a therapist years ago who used the metaphor of the, she called it the gold sword and the silver sword. And one of those metals is softer than the other. This is a long time ago. So I don't exactly remember how the metaphor goes, but I do remember that work, you use the sword that's kind of hard and sharp and then at home you use the sword that's the more tender and a little more. And so, but I will say people who ascend to certain levels of leadership, just like in certain levels of sport, they have a certain mindset in terms of,

you know, an athlete's mindset, a championship mindset, a learner's mindset. They, they tend to be assertive. They tend to lean in. They tend to go after things that they want. Those skills for sure help be a husband or a wife or a father or mother. But then you've got to wrap it in other, other, get a compliment with other skills. Otherwise, it's going to cause a lot of damage. Is that hard for you to kind of draw that distinction and divide between like your being like your background and being a pastor and your like biblical beliefs and now coaching very successful people around the world who might not be phenomenal fathers, wives, husbands, mothers? Yeah, that's a great question. I love, I wish I had the training that I have now when I was a pastor. I would have been a lot better pastor, but specifically with the coaching modalities.

And the coaching frameworks really resonate with the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Like I see the scriptures in a, in a, I like it better in a more vibrant way for me now as an adult or as an older adult, I guess, in the coaching space. That being said, the, you know, we started, Andrew's question was about leadership and coaching and leadership. are distinct as well, they're not necessarily the same thing. And so coaching is about, and I'm sure you've been here because you've worked with lots of great coaches, everybody has this sense that there's something more they have to offer. You know, they have this, and it's like they don't know what to do with it. You know, is it right?

Is it wrong? But they have this sense they have more potential than what they're flushing out into the world. And people tend to deal with that sense poorly. you know some people feel guilty about it they feel shame about it and then they and it haunts them and that can be like a really toxic driving force a lot of people avoid it you know they kind of push away from it and try to pretend that it's not there or covered up or or get busy and not really think about it what coaching does is that that sense of potential in some ways it's like having a child like you you want to steward it and and love it and take care of it and nurture it and help it grow and you know a lot a lot of like therapeutic modalities to talk about about having an inner child most of us don't think about that we also have like an inner adult or inner leader and what does it look like to take care of that leader and to to help it grow and to be a steward of that and that's what coaching ultimately is about is it's helping

people and teams nurture and not ignore not shame out but also like really responsibly grab a hold of that piece of you that says i think that i was meant to do something really significant and really special in the world and then pouring as much uh gasoline on that fire and then building really healthy fireplaces to capture that heat to where it can be something really beautiful rather than destructive. That being said, that's profoundly biblical. Like what I just, everything that I talked about there is really biblical. So when I'm coaching executives, I feel like I get to have all the spiritual conversations without the explicit spiritual language. And then oftentimes they will say, hey, like this sounds like God or this

sounds like spirituality. And then we can have really beautiful spiritual conversations, which I really look forward to. Sometimes I get caught in this tension of like, am I a partner or a leader or both to Sean? Like in my marriage, it's such this, I feel like oscillating role of like, hey,

I simultaneously am like your accountability partner. I can see things in you that I don't know if you can see in yourself. Like I want to encourage you and push you in certain ways. But also sometimes, that feels like me tugging her along and like creating this resistance. Do you feel that way? I don't know. Yeah. Well, I think it's hard because I mean, I think the question goes down to can you have two simultaneous leaders in the same business household or do you always have to have one like does it have

to be a yin and yang that you're constantly balancing back and forth? Yeah. Well, one is whenever I'm talking about marriages, there should be an asterisk next to it. I'm divorced. You know, I'm dating someone now and hopeful about the future, but every sideline quarterbacking relationships is a really dangerous thing for person who doesn't, you know, the worst advice in the world are single people in LA talking about what married people should do. That being said, you know, it's just like trying to give parental advice. The worst advice you get is from people without kids. That being said, some thoughts I have about that dynamic, because I think marriage is probably the most important team that a person can ever be a part of or create for themselves and family

then is an extension of that and i think that to lead is to sometimes follow so i think that there's and i and i also think that leadership isn't necessarily like a a noun like i am a leader it's more like a emergent property that that happens between people and so it's the question isn't is Andrew a leader. The question is, are you and Sean creating a leadership culture together? And that's a very different animal. It takes both of you to co-create a leadership culture. And so that's, I think we get in trouble a little bit like who leader, who's the follower. Yeah, that's my take. And then one other thing you mentioned was wait for it. Oh, leadership and partnership. Are they exclusive or no?

shoot it was um it's something i really care about i can tell i don't even remember it i'm here if you want to just completely change topics i'll listen to anything you have to say jason so just take it wherever you want to well there's the um man oh so important so important uh because that is a challenge of leadership when you feel like you're dragging someone where they don't want to go and and i appreciate you kind of outing yourself that sometimes it might feel that that way husbands and wives both are tempted to do that. Kids are tempted to do that, you know, whether it's getting a dog or, you know, deciding, I know your biggest podcast you had last year was about having a third child.

Like, whenever people want different things, it's going to create that push, pull. And so that's why, and if I can spiritualize just for a second, that's not necessarily the nature of our work. But, you know, there's one question that Jesus asked more than any other question. And Jesus probably was the greatest leader of all time, or at least certainly one of those influential, irregardless of what your beliefs are about them. And the question was, what do you want? And that is an evocative question. And it is about desire. You know, so I was, I was on a call last night, yesterday I did a call with one of the few female traders on Wall Street, like one of the most successful female traders. And we're having this intro conversation. I'm not going to do the

coaching with her, but I was getting to know her and then handing her to somebody in our firm who could really work with her. And she is awesome, smart, talented, everything. And the first question we ask is, you know, it's not like, here are our rates and, and, you know, here's our program, here's what we do or, you know, whatever. The first question we ask is, hey, like, what is it that you want? Like, what is that you deeply, truly, really want? And we believe that that is the question that mobilized, that is the leader's primary question. And it's the question that mobilizes almost all functions of leadership because you can't leave without desire. And what's really beautiful about that is people's desires are like a river, you know, we want all sorts of different

things, including things aren't great, including things that can hurt us. But what's cool is you can't, you can't really deal with the unhealthy desires until you start really nurturing the healthy ones. And part of leadership is pouring gasoline again on those healthy desires. And that way you can kind of quarantine the unhealthy ones. And then after a while, all you want are healthy things. And that's kind of the goal is you move towards that and become more spiritually healthy. Wow. I, that question, what do you want? I haven't boil it down as succinctly as you had, but I've been thinking about it because the past year was wild with friends going through certain things and, um, addictions and whatever else. And it's like, I've been

thinking about, man, it is important to have something that, that gets you excited. Yeah. Like to want something that gets you excited to wake out of bed. And it's something that like will, from a career standpoint, even though I think that's low down the list of priorities, like will propel your career. And I think that's when, you know, people who are concerned about money, it's like, well, what do you do with it if you actually have it? Like, it's important to know the answer to that question of what do you want. It's amazing. Yeah. It's life changing. And, you know, for your listeners, there's a really interesting exercise. First of all, a lot of people don't know what they want. And a lot of people judge what they should want prematurely. And so an exercise for your listeners could be just every morning

and I did this for a long season. It's really beautiful. Every morning you wake up and part of whatever your daily rituals are and just take like 60 seconds or five minutes max and just write down what you want in that moment and maybe what it is is to go back to bed you know maybe what it is is to never talk to person X in your life ever again maybe it's i wish i was i wish i was rich you know like whatever or but oftentimes it's like oh like i really want my wife to have a great day or oh my i really want my son to to make the team you know or whatever and the answer isn't really the point. The point is you just pausing and to reflect on that question, what do I want?

And you'll notice your desire will begin to grow in you. It's crazy. So I have friends that are dating too and it's like, all right, well, you ask them, what are you looking for in a spouse? And they don't really know the answer. It's like, imagine one, knowing that the person you're going on a date with is actually quality candidate because you've kind of like as much as you can chiseled out the riffraff of, oh, well, that person is not what I want.

and I know that. But, like, that's where, you know, people would say write a list of, of what you're looking for to date. But then also, how much more is that conversation, how much more interesting is that conversation on the first date when it's like you show up and you're excited about, you're just excited, like, you're an excited type of person. And Abraham Lincoln had a quote of, uh, discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most.

And I feel like to your point, like it transforms like in marriage. There's, there's kind of this really hard, I feel like refining process that I had to go through where it's like man well what I want now is for me to go hang with the boys for like two weeks right but what I want most like really and this took a long time to actually like just set this in my heart of I really want my wife to respect me I really want her to be happy I really want a marriage that is like healthy and and meaningful but anyway that's that's my tangent on wanting no I like that And a lot of people, not to bring spirituality into it too much, but a lot of people think that God wants to eliminate your desires, but what he really wants to do is mature your desires.

And so, you know, the maturation of desire means you actually get to desire more than you ever have. And pain actually is a role in that. So, you know, when you get married, increasing pain in your life, you're increasing other things too, but you're also increasing the pain your life and that pain is what is the is kind of the breaking open and the excavating of desire and it's the same thing when you have kids you're increasing the level of pain in your life when you have children but it's also breaking you open and excavating it creates more space for desire and what it's doing is is kind of stretching your capacity to feel and that's why you get like such the big highs and that's why everyone says you know marriage and family is the most it's the most difficult

thing I've ever done and it's the most enjoyable thing I've ever done you cannot separate those two things. And I think the object of life, the option of the game of life is to give yourself to the things that are going to mature your desires as quickly as possible so that you can have as fulfilling as a life as possible. I know. I feel like I just listen to Utah. I'm like, yes, yes. I could run to a brick wall right now. Um, going down the business route a little bit in like your coaching profession. And I really think all of this is very relatable on every aspect of life within marriage dating business all of it but and i had a conversation on the way to drop the kids off this morning at their school and it was like philosophical discussion of how do you unlock

opportunity as a human being like we're talking about wealth levels and listening to podcasts on all this but how like when it comes to coaching someone who's at a certain phase in life and they're wanting to take it to the next level how do you recognize opportunity in a person and two how help them unlock or overcome whatever debilitating weakness it is that's limiting them from succeeding at whatever it is they're desiring. Yeah, that's a great question. That's a great question. Can I play with the language a little bit?

Yes, please. So, yeah, so I like the idea of the metaphor, because metaphors matter and we're going to talk about that in a second. And in large part, you know, so of course, actually not of course. I've got a book coming out this summer and I don't know when this episode is going to drop. But it's my favorite thing I've ever done. I'm so... Let's go.

That's huge. Thank you. Yeah. It's my second book. The first one I wrote, and it's okay. But this one, when we started the process, I really committed to making it as excellent as I can. And now it's going to the printer, I think, today. That's cool.

Congratulations. Thank you. I'm so, it feels so good to be proud of something. You know, I don't know if anyone who's listening to your podcast, like, and I think, Sean, I do this, or Sean, this way, too. It was like the, the perfectionist thing. and which kind of perfection is this interesting thing because it it's it can zap the joy even out of really excellent things yes and it is i i resonate with that like nothing's ever good enough and you're always trying to work harder and there's good things to that because you grow faster

but then you really rob yourself of of joy sometimes which i do and so i'm i'm surprised at how happy i am with how it turned out and uh of course you know people can read it and decipher themselves if it's any good or not. But the reason why I mention it is because that's one of the things we want the book to help people with is this idea of, and now I'm going to play with the language. The idea of, I would tweak it because I don't unlock opportunity. I unlock mindsets to help me see opportunity. And I think that's what you're really, that's what you were saying.

Because the opportunity is there. If a person, if the three of us could actually see the opportunities that are around, us for what they were in every conversation, in every moment with our spouse, in every moment with our kids, in every business meeting, like we would literally, our nervous system would not be able to handle it. It would completely overwhelm us, the capacity for wealth, the capacity for generosity, the capacity for creativity, or whatever the things are that we long for. And so a big part of the journey is developing relationships and tools to help us learn how to see opportunity. And of course, you were mentioning this.

You kind of hinted at the solution and your question, which is at any given moment, every person is training themselves how to see themselves. And a big part of the process is walking with people and helping them learn how to see themselves in new ways so that they can see reality in new ways. And then they will spontaneously begin making different choices that will take advantage of the opportunities that were always there in front of them. but they just didn't have eyes to see it. So help me delineate because I don't think you're speaking about opportunities like self-advancement.

Like if I'm with the family in a moment, like in the play room with the kids, I'm not trying to be preoccupied with like opportunities. I want to be like just present and open myself up to whatever whimsical thing is going to happen. So can you define that a little bit? well that's a great example right so some when you are present the more present you are the more aware you are of opportunity you know i think on the court they call it like court awareness you know it's like michael jordan or coby brian or lebron james like they are fully present which means they help they develop this almost bizarre six sense of what's happening around them on

the field which which is the resource by which they are able to create new things they see opportunity where other people just see motion or blur or or chaos or whatever right and so when you are present with your kids you one of the one of the opportunities is being present it gives you access to energy to be spontaneous is you access to energy to come up with new ideas you know whereas the less present you are the more committed you are to how things quote should go the less adaptable you be the more rigid you'll be and so part of part of of this mindset that we're talking about is learning how to be present, but it's not just learning how to be present because there are some people who are fully present who still are completely blind

to to a moment to encourage their spouse or to a moment to play with their kid or to a moment to ask for a raise or or talk to that person about creating a business plan or whatever they're into. Interesting. I like those opportunities to like encourage, encourage my wife. Yeah. And you need to do that wrong. Well, this podcast is an example of that, right? How can we, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if you said on your show. You know, in the book we talk about Desirenez and Lucille Ball. And it's a tragic story in some ways because as soon as they stopped working together, their marriage fell apart. But I think you could also say it was a really beautiful component of the relationship where they essentially, were two actors, totally disparate, independent careers. They were wildly in love with each other. And they were like,

how can we figure out a way to be around each other? And they were like, well, let's make a show. And so they made I Love Lucy just as an excuse to be around each other. Yeah. And I think that's wonderful. And I think that that showed up in the art. You know, the best art is born out of love.

And that was something they were aware enough and creative enough and bold enough to see that opportunity and then to grab a hold of it. and then to create it and those were the good years and then of course things started to deteriorate after that that's why we created a couple things so that Sean and I could be together more oh yes that's how I feel yeah we spend so much time together I'm okay fine I have so where do like do you deal much with insecurities and like how that hinders people or what's your take on insecurities in general I mean personally I'm why

mildly insecure, like neurotically insecure. And I don't, that's always a work in progress for me in terms of getting clear on what it's costing me. So, so you look, you want to say some, Andrew, sorry. Well, I was just, I've been thinking about like, I feel like when I'm insecure, it's, it's because I'm thinking about myself too much. I don't know. Yes.

There's my, my effort and thoughts are probably better used if I'm like, all right, well, what can I do for Sean? Or like, instead of me scrolling through Instagram, it's. like, oh, and feeling insecure, you know, people always talk about, you're watching the highlight real estate. It's like, well, what if I was just like shopping for a gift for Sean? I don't know. I got thoughts on it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, you know, my old boss, Earl McManness, the only guy in mosaic, he has this great quote. He said, courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the absence of self. And so like the more committed to others you are, the more brave you come across.

And I think conversely, the more, the less insecure you feel or you may still feel insecure. but your feelings about yourself become less and less relevant because it's just not taking up the bandwidth in your mind. I like that. I love that. Well, and one of the questions I wanted to ask is what do you see is like the most prevalent limiting factor to people and like advancement of any kind?

Because I was going to ask about insecurity, but I think it, I don't know. You were going to ask the same question I was? Similar, yeah. I also, part of that was like, why do you think self-doubt and insecurity is such like a rampant thing? Why is that the fallback for most people?

Because I don't feel like anybody's born just being like, I can do anything. Maybe they are. Maybe that's stripped from them. That's a great question. The short answer is I don't know, but I would imagine in terms of what we see with our clients and every person. So one is I think some people think poorly about fear. you know there's a lot of people think that fear is inherently bad or wrong and then they feel

shame when they experience it and one of my buddies uh brian ferguson uh he's a former navy seal and he's like man uh fear it can be really helpful sometimes fear can be really motivating sometimes when you're in afghanistan like you know when you're there and it sharpens you and it can really help increase performance the problem is is most people misuse fear and they they use it as a primary motivator versus a secondary tertiary motivator that you just pull out when you need it and so i think that's that's that's part of it is learning how to be present to fear and how to be with fear without judging it or or uh or ironically being afraid of it you know so i think that's that's that's part of it um the see it never goes away that's and that's the

other part is every person's life is uh perfectly contained by the fear of in their life. So everybody has like a governor in their life, a fear governor. You know, like if I were to say right now, what's stopping you two from having, uh, 500 million listeners on your podcast? You know, I don't know what the, I don't know what the listenership is now, but I'm imagining it 500 million is probably a little bigger than what is currently. A little bit just by a little. Yeah. And by the way, it's not undoable. You know, like Dwayne Johnson, uh, has I think like 600 million when you all across all of his platform is about 600 million people who are following him in some capacity. So it's not like a human being can't do it.

But if I were to say, like what's stopping you two from being the, this is not the great way to say, but the Dwayne Johnson of family, you know, my guess is there's some excitement that comes up and then also some fear that comes up. And that's everybody. You know, for you, it might be 500 listeners on the podcast. For someone else, it might be an extra $1,000 a month in the bank. You know, everybody's governed by fear. And so the challenge isn't to make fear go away.

The tip is to continually develop a vision. And that's one of the things we talk about in the book is developing a vision that pulls you forward past your fear or a vision that compels you more emotionally and whatever fear you may have does. So, yeah, go ahead, Andrew. Well, I just, I think about this with Sean's career of how, I mean, Olympic gold medalist, right? She achieved something extraordinary and, like, optimized every aspect of her life to achieve that goal. But that doesn't – one thing we talk about now as parents and being married is, like, that's not good in this, like, for us right now. If she was going to be like, I want to go win another Olympic gold medal in gymnastics, I'd be like – It wouldn't work.

I'd be like, all right, we'll see in four years. And that's probably not – so everything points to that one thing. And that's where, again, there's a little tension between, like, ambition. and, I don't know, like lifestyle for me, but anyway. Well, that leads to, go ahead. Yeah, well, briefly, it depends on what you're ambitious for. You know, so again, I don't, and maybe I'm overdosing on ambition. And, but I will suggest that it seems as if your ambitions have shifted and matured.

You know, so having ambition to be the best athlete in the world, there's nothing wrong quote with that necessarily. But it's incomplete. No human being was designed to be the best athlete in the world. That's only one part of a life. At the same time, Sean was designed to be an extraordinary human being.

And that includes a loving, as part of the choices she's made, a loving wife and a mother and entrepreneur and whatever other adjectives she wants to add after that. And so I think leveraging her ambition towards that is, and then you discover that the muscles work different that way. But levering your ambition towards that is a beautiful thing. A couple of things is brought to you by Apollo Neuro. We recently discovered the Apollo wearable.

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No, this is wild. What were you going to say? I don't know, but he's going to go into a challenging tangent with you for the next hour. I'm curious your thoughts on complacency, though. Yeah. Well, I think the three of us have talked about this before. I think, so wisdom is able to distinguish between commitment and complacency. And I think most people really struggle.

I think most people confuse the two. Most people confuse contentment with complacency. And so they feel content sometimes, but really they're being complacent. And so complacency is saying, I don't want anymore. Contentment is saying I don't need anymore. When you're content, it's like, I love my life. And by the way, I wake up every morning, I tell myself, life is a gift. You know, the miracle of life is, even if it's hard,

and sometimes it is just so wonderful and bizarre and awesome and I get to be alive. Like that's contentment. Like, man, I just, I don't need to change anything about my life to be really deeply happy right now. But complacency is then when you say, and therefore I'm not going to do anything today. Yeah. Versus and therefore I want to create something magical with you, with my friends, you know, or whatever.

So this was brought up in another philosophical discussion we had on the way to drop off. we do new year's resolutions and goals every year it takes us hours hours and hours and hours we go line by line through categories through like every aspect of our life we dissect and reflect on the last year we write down all of our goals all these things it's like one of our favorite days of the year and i would say for the past how many years have we been doing it five or six every single year when we go to write our goals they look drastically different than the last year They might be heading in the same direction, but they're like drastically different. Yeah.

And I had this like almost fear based moment this year because we went through our goals and we were like, it doesn't really look different than last year. And we had this conversation of, and I told Andrea, I was like, I am terrified that we're being complacent or not dreaming big enough. But is that going to forfeit? what we're enjoying, like what we're doing, I don't know. I just like being such a perfectionist and like success driven and like forward advancing driven person, it scared the crap out of me.

I was like, are we just, I don't know. I didn't know how to handle that. Well, so it sounds like your intuition was chirping a little, a little bit. And we talk about that a lot, right? So most people, and we talked about addiction earlier. So there's a phrase in the coaching work. You don't want to trust your intuition. You want to test your intuition.

And we can go down a rabbit hole with that. But just briefly around that. So your intuition is like saying, huh, you know, it just kind of feels like there may be more. No, we don't know if that's, we don't know what's running that. We don't know, is that the perfectionist? Is that unhealthy fear? Is that, you know, who knows what could be running that?

Or that could be sacred. That could be divine. That could be something really beautiful worth listening to. And so as a coach, what we want to do is you want to slow that down. say, hey, let's listen to that a little bit and see what that's coming from. And then you two can talk and, and, and wrestle. And then be like, you know, you know what? Like, that was coming from a kind of perfectionist in place. And we actually want to reorient our ambition towards relishing this season versus trying to maximize or expand something. And that's totally fine. Or you

might be like, hey, you know what? I do think that we got just a little more in the tank or a lot more in the tank. Or there's this other thing over here that we just haven't even been thinking about. And we were just kind of scared because we didn't know how to do that and protect the thing that we have. That's where the fun goes. And one other brief thing, action-oriented people and Sean, I make up that you are, like action-oriented. Action-oriented people sometimes conflate the idea of dreaming

with executing or committing. And so part of the coaching work is slowing things down so that you can dream without having the need to commit or execute on anything. We're just window shopping. We're just talking. And you can get it out and leave with it and play with it and play with it and like so next year i recommend this next year give yourselves like a month or a couple months to dream and let it seep into your bones like like a crockpot like a stew and then you're

in a better position to say okay now we've been dreaming these things have legs to them these things seem really valuable these things are like nope this is ego this is this is fear this is perfectionism this is mismanagement or whatever you don't really know and sometimes we people people don't want to dream because they feel responsible that they if they you know if you dream it you can do it it turns into if you dream it you must do it it's like that's not that's not how it works otherwise then your dreams become like a god in life and that's not healthy the conjuring last rites on september fifth Array! Array!

The Conjuring Last Rites, only on theater September 5th. Andrew's a thousand percent. If I ever dream it, it has to be done. It has to be done today. Yeah, and that's a strength, right? But you want to make sure you manage it versus it managing you. Do you think you can train your wants or desire? like the question of what do you want I'm thinking about like a parent who had an amazing

career and then they had kids and now they're a stay-at-home parent and then so it's like is there contentment to be found there or am I how do you what's the balance there yeah I mean my personal opinion and this my personal opinion is I look at it's a mystery so I think there are things you can intentionally do to shape the river of your desires. And I think you can shape your desires more than most people think they can. And then every now and then there's just that thing. You know, every now and then you see her across to the restaurant or you have the sense that you're meant to be a parent or, you know, you just, you put a ball on your hands for the first time and something clicks. And it's not like you chose it. It chose you. And so I think

wisdom is dancing between those is taking responsibility for the for the desires you can shape and then it's finding ethical expressions of the ones that you feel like are just a part of you you said ethical expressions yeah because you know um there's a quote so like internet wisdom is awful generally speaking there's so many memes out there I start taking screenshots now when the people I follow on social media post things and I'm like I screenshot like this is awful if you live your life this way it's going to ruin your life but it's like yeah feel good Uh, so example of that is like the heart wants what the heart wants. And that has been used to justify so many affairs, you know, like so much, so much damage.

Uh, and, and one of the things we talk about in the book is, uh, if you don't, if you, if you, if you allow the, the, the tangent on the tangent is this idea of authentic. Because that's kind of what we're talking about. Like what desires are authentic, what are inauthentic. How do you, if you're shaping your desires, what does that mean? and how do you live an authentic life? You know, I think most people want to live an authentic life. But there's two pieces to authenticity, and most people think there's only one. Most people, like a common definition of authenticity is like whatever feels natural. You know, like that's the, that's the, I want to be an athlete or I want to be a musician or I want to be a mathematician or I want to be or whatever.

Or that's the, you know, I naturally love this woman or I naturally love this man or I naturally, you know, that kind of thing. And so I'm going to pick someone that I naturally jive with. And that's a legitimate definition of authenticity. That's not so bad. But there's another definition of authenticity, and you two have experienced it, right? There are moments in your relationship, and I've even seen it on your show. There are moments in your relationship where the most natural thing to do would be to be biting or sarcastic or or passive aggressive, you know, or selfish or whatever.

You know, like that's the most natural. In that moment, what I want to do right now is put you in your place. or what I want to do right now is protect myself from you or what I want to do right now, right, fight or flight. That's natural. And I've seen you, both of you, choose not to do that. I've seen you choose to be gracious. I've seen you choose to be supported.

I've seen you choose to be encouraging or choose to kind of receive something in a channel into something to make it valuable for the audience. And that is not natural based on a typical definition of authenticity. And so in this definition of authenticity, that we use in the firm and that we talk about in the book. Authentic isn't just what comes naturally. Authentic comes from what you're most committed to. So you two are committed to creating a loving marriage.

So then it's authentic to honor each other. It's authentic when you can't stand each other. It's authentic to be forgiving when you don't want to forgive. That's authentic, not flowing from what your desire, but flowing from what you're committed to. And so oftentimes when we're working with people, we're going to say, hey, like, why don't you start redesigning what's authentic to you based on what you're committed to versus how you naturally feel? And then usually that opens up all

sorts of possibilities in their lives that they'd never thought of before. You kind of deal in the business of like leading people on a treasure hunt to see what else they can achieve, I feel like, right? Yeah, I like that. My in-laws, if you don't mind me talking, we were talking about how we're going to see a marriage counselor and I was like have you guys I was I was talking to my mother-in-law and I was like have you guys ever done that and she was like no like we're good and to a certain extent like and she really is content in that yeah yeah and I had this thought of like it's interesting there's a bit of you can get into some messy stuff like if if they went to marriage counseling and like went on this treasure hunt of like well you know we saw the

counselor and they brought up this issue and I am discontent over this and I don't like how you do it. It's like, it's a weird, it's a kind of a, it can be a dangerous game, no? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you can overwater a plant, you know, but I think that their marriage isn't the only plant of their lives. So, but I don't know. And I was certain, I certainly wouldn't want to like force them to do something. But it comes back to that question, you know, so like if she was on, if her and her husband were on the call, I'd say,

Hey, what are you to want for your future? Imagine it's 10 years from now and you look back and you weep tears of joy because you can't believe what the next 10 years look like. Tell me what that looks like and how it's different from today. That's the desire question. Now they're going to start talking about, oh, well, we'd want to have, you know, we want to improve our relationship with our grandkids and we want to, we want to travel or maybe, you know, honestly, where my mind goes with that is,

how much do you want to export your great relationship to others? you know so other people struggle in their marriages you seem to have figured it out what is it that you know that they don't and what is there any part of you that wants to help other people grow in their relationship and so all of a sudden now I've offered 10 other plants that could be watering that would enhance the existing plant that's already well watered so that's where my mind goes like you don't always have to like strip the screws but there are plenty of other screws out there and if you got a screwdriver let's go let's go build some stuff interesting how does jason jagger date You coach all day and it's like, heady stuff.

What's it look like? You said poorly. Poorly. Yeah, I'm a rookie. You know, relationships is, what's an honest answer? And, you know, my, my girlfriend is more private than I am. And so I want to honor, I want to honor her too. I would say, I do bring these principles into our relationship.

And I will also say that part, I think. think part of a healthy relationship is finding shared tools rather than like forcing someone else to conform to your tools and coaches that's one of their biggest struggles when they date people who aren't coaches is you know you have you have preloaded all these these modalities and mindsets and everything but they won't work if your partner resents you from having them and so part of my girlfriend and a nice journey is going on a search for shared tools you know so we've worked with a counselor as well and and it was awesome because she gave us a tool that both of us really liked and so now we lean into it and now we have like a date night where we're

we use this particular tool about how to, how to share and listen. And I love and she does it and it sometimes is hard and painful because I'm not a good listener and all these things. But, but, uh, but that's, that's how we, and I think she would say one of the things that she likes about me is, uh, I'm always going to want to grow as a boyfriend or a husband or, you know, like I, I really want to be better than I was yesterday, not perfect, but be better than I was yesterday and sometimes being better means being more kind to myself and to her and more gracious and forgiving and all the types of the thing. So I think that's one of the ways that I'm dating. You'd have to ask her if it's any good or not.

I feel like you're perfectly suited to be doing what you're doing. Like with these, these are really kind of psychological, spiritual issues you're dealing with. like when it comes to executives or like people who are creating businesses or creating philanthropic organizations or whatever it's like it really at the end of the day does come down to like spiritual issues of like what what do you want and then that comes with it all this other stuff and your background it's pretty cool to think about how it's panned out for you so just a side thought but yeah no I appreciate that leadership is spiritual and leading teams is spiritual and people have souls but so do marriages like marriages

have a soul families have a soul and i don't mean that necessarily in the literal sense but companies have a soul you know and there's there's a you know i'm on the west coast like a vibe and energy you know that kind of thing but they have a spirit they have like emotional they have a personality and i i am i love leadership i have a lot of room to grow i i i uh But I think it's one of the cool. I went to a leadership conference when I was 19 years old. Freshmen in college were not allowed to go. But I begged the people in charge, hey, like, I'll sit in the back of the bus.

You know, like I'll behave myself. I'll be quiet. You know, whatever. And I went to this thing that was a leadership conference, I never been to one. And it blew my mind. And it was like, it was like mainlining drugs. It was just such an exciting, intoxicating thing that you can, that you can intentionally, invests in yourself and others in a way that makes the world better and that it has to be a team sport.

Otherwise, it doesn't count. You know, like, there's so many things about leadership that are just so much fun. And, uh, and I love it. I love that I get to be a part of it. What makes you so joyous about your, your new book, Beyond High Performance? I'm excited to talk about it. I'm excited to read it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I would love to get your, uh, get it into your hands.

Uh, and honestly, your honest feedback. Um, well, man, I threw the kitchen sink at it. like that that's one of the things you know we had a choice like making like a little short read and uh it's over 250 pages i just tried to cram up full of as many things as i can and we gave it to beta readers we hired this consultancy agency and got in the hand of beta readers and the read the readability scale off the charts so we structured each chapter almost like a movie script so like it's hard to put down it's kind of a page turn and keeps moving you through the process which i'm so happy that we wrote a book that's long but also easy and fast to read. And so that's fun. It's fun to like get that feedback. But more than that,

uh, it is, it's, it's, it's going, it's going under the hood of all the things that our coaches use to help the best get better. And part, that's part two is we have this acronym that we use called go live, uh, as a like a philosophical framework for our coaching and we walk you through that. And then the first part is what we've been talking about. Like there's a draw on culture. There's a chapter on teams there's a chapter on performance there's one of my favorite chapters which i think if you sign up on our list we can give you an advanced copy we give everyone an advanced copy of chapter two where we talk about you know most people when they're talking about work um they think that they talk about relationships at work you know like you two have a relationship at work and

there's people around you in that room uh there's all these relationships with work and uh but the most important relationship at work is your relationship to work and so we dedicate a whole chapter uh talking about how people relate to work. And that chapter particularly, I would really love to get your thoughts on as recovering perfectionists is like, how do you, how do you continually expand your potentiality without overdosing on perfectionism? And that chapter is an attempt to answer that question. So am I able to read it if I'm not an entrepreneur or executive?

Well, first of all, you are an entrepreneur and you are an executive. Yeah. So that would be, that's an interesting, that's an interesting, uh, I would love to hear your thoughts on his, I meant for our audience who are. Okay. Yeah. Well, uh, yes. Yeah, I would say one of my big chips on my shoulder. So one time I got to watch, uh, Larry King get interviewed, which is really cool. Wow. And someone asked him, uh, what makes a great audience member for your show. And he had a whole list of things, but the thing, the last thing he said is a chip on their shoulder. An interesting guest has a chip on their shoulder. And I've always remembered that. This is probably 15 years ago,

I heard him say that. And I've always remembered that. One of the chips on my shoulder is that people do not see themselves as they really are. People do not see themselves as leaders. And everyone is a leader. So in some sense, we wrote this book for everyone, whether you're leading a family or leading yourself or, you know, leading a small company or, you know, if you're a solopreneur, photographer, you are a leader. You've got to lead your clients. You've got to lead the marketing team. You've got, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, John Maxwell has this saying that leadership is influence. Your kids were leading you before they were born because they're having influence on you before they even

enter physically into the world. They're influencing you. And that's leadership. You know, So, Sean, every time we talk, the three of us talk, you are always kind of doing the elbow nudge with Andrew. I always say he never gives himself enough credit. Yeah. And, and I would agree. And I, and it is, and I think, Sean, you and I both agree, Andrew's only getting started in his capacity to have a positive impact in the world.

and he's not alone in that. Now, you know, if I was working with a coach, hope that should be telling me that. Like that comes with the skin. And so it's not, it's not Andrew's unique in a million ways. And extraordinary in a million ways. The propensity to undervalue oneself is not unique. All three of us are doing that in ways we don't even realize right now.

And so part of coaching is creating a safe space, a shame-free space. for you to explore how we do that why why we undervalue ourselves how we do it how it gets in our way and then what comes next and we talk a lot about that in the book i i've c s lewis talks about how faith is a choice and like applying the idea of faith in into the statement of what you just said of andrew's just getting started of like all right is my faith going to be in that or is it going to be in am i just going to be reflecting on how no i think i'm tapping out like my NFL career is over i've done i've already failed the x y and z it's like i could believe

that or i could believe jason's evaluation and that that really is a pivotal choice to make of oh you know what i am just getting started let's go like yeah we can do this you know like my and applying it to marriage it's like man this is something i learned sean is is the most loving thoughtful patient incredible person i know yeah but she's also super forgetful and annoying sometimes and it doesn't you know have aware and it's like she's both of those things but which am i going to believe that's that makes a big difference you know makes it makes a big difference yeah and that goes back to the disciplines of training yourself how you want to see her how you want to see yourself those are all they're not totally

controllable but they are moldable and there's a difference you know and it is important by the way you don't have to take my word for it. And two, I think we should point out, in this conversation, Andrew has dropped now CS Lewis quotes and Abraham-Baking quotes. I know. If there's a resident scholar on this call right now, it's Andrew. And to go with that, so C.S. Lewis has a great book. I highly recommend it called The Great Divorce.

Yes. That's where that's from. So good, right? And I believe in there, there's a quote that says, and it might not be from this book, but I think that it is, where he says, if if you could see people for how they really were how they really are if you could see people proud god made them you'd be tempted to fall down and worship them and that's everybody that's everybody that's you know whoever's listening to this in kenya that's you that's me that's

whoever's listening to this in a shelter somewhere in ukraine that's whoever's listening to this in a suburban house outside of chicago that's everybody and i think part of the purpose of being alive is learning how to take that seriously uh in a way that's really fulfilling you know that's what that's why he wrote the book that's what coaching's all about i think that's why you do this podcast you know really holding up the the possibility of creating extraordinary families uh we need that and it's possible it's not a pipe dream uh and and i think we need a little divine help in order to do it but i think that that's fun i you know it's way more fun when you get to partner with other people especially when you're partnering with god wow that's good stuff i

I'll text you this document I with the passing of my dad it was like interesting like obviously pretty emotional thing and then yeah and then it was like this I don't even know I've always just been guy's son it felt like for for a long time and so one of my mentors challenged me to write like an identity statement yeah I didn't know I didn't know he was like not about your career not about what you've accomplished none of this it was it's like who is Andrew at his essence and I didn't know what else to do but go to the Bible and like see what like who does a Bible say I am and it was actually really it was amazing there's there's probably like a page and a half of like hey Andrew is fearfully and wonderfully made like Andrew is put here for such a time as this I'm made in the

image of God and it's like this is not specific or special to Andrew but it's like that's actually dude it changes the game when you view people anyway it's it's very exciting stuff but it is exciting and I love that you so I have a I we can swap so I got a list of I pick seven statements every quarter and I redo them every quarter things I remind myself and ground myself in and actually so if you want I don't know if this is completely boring to your audience but I I recommend everyone doing what Andrew did I've done it too and then I recorded myself saying it to myself so I can listen to it in my head earphones. And then also, and I got this, by the way, from working with my coach, Steve Hardison, who lives in Arizona, him and I worked together for about a year

and a half. And so we worked together on this. And then also, I hired a vocal performer here in LA to like say it about me. And that sounds a little narcissistic, but it's powerful to hear somebody else say it. So I had me saying it about myself. And I, in the hearing someone else say it about me. And I, and when I'm locked into the ritual, I listen to it every day. And then no one knows this, but then I have like little scripture references next to each one. So it's not like overt scripture. It's kind of a riff on scriptures. But each one is like, biblical from my perspective anyway. And so it's fun to like ground myself and things. And they are like these amazing things that if you said about yourself and people didn't know you were quoting

the Bible, they would think that you were like this arrogant person. But it's like the Bible says these like really beautiful precious things about you yeah and it's it's quite wonderful i feel like phase one is like saying it about yourself yeah and that helps because it'll prevent you from walking on the path of like addiction or suicide or whatever that dark place is but then like phase two is also hey when your when your business is going bad or when your marriage is going bad or when you're frustrated with your co-workers like you actually just fill fill in the blanks with their name too and it's the same thing. And that's when it gets like, I just think there can be so much impact when you when you're generous with how you define things. Yeah. Jason, always love to talk. Yeah, hit it.

No, do it. Sorry. I know I know you're just lame the plan and I mess it up. One more thing is, if you want to add to the document some other time, add who Sean is to you. And there's power there. And don't tell her what you write. Just let that be private. Let that be between you and God. And you can even if you want, you can do it for your kids. You know, like you can, and then it's just, it's just a private thing. No one needs to know. It's not virtue signaling. It's not like that.

But it's this private thing. And waking up every morning saying, Sean is the greatest gift to me that God's ever given me. I will honor Sean's desires in heart. You know, I will, I will, whatever, whatever that list is. I'm just now beginning to bring my girlfriend into my document. And, yeah, because that's like a precious, sacred thing, right? Wow. And so, but it's interesting just grounding yourself in that, how it changes, this is,

this is where we started. It changes your lens and it changes the opportunity. It reveals opportunities to serve and love that you cannot see until you ground yourself in that. And so if you want, if you want, if you want, we can text back and forth. I'd love to. And we can kind of compare notes and encourage each other. Yeah. I would love to get your take on it. But, um, all right. So your book is coming out beyond high performance for those who are interested in getting a really beautiful perspective and I think superpowering supercharging your business career but also I think there's it's been apparent there's a lot of carryover into family relationships marriage so we'll link that down below check it out I'm excited I'm a big fan of yours Jason I appreciate you you jumping

on the show yeah thanks thanks for what both of you do I love it and I'm rooting for you here's to the future here's to the future here's to the future Thank you. All right. We're both in book clubs, so I know what our next book will be.