Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #281: TAP Into Your True Self With Wylie McGraw Founder Of Radical Performance Acceleration

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  Facing your own truths   Eradicating stressors   Holistic healing  How to optimize your success  Resources: Website: www.wyliemcgraw.com Listen to Wise Words & Whisky  Email: [e-mail]  LinkedIn: @Wylie McGraw Instagram: @wisdombywylie Twitter & Youtube: @WylifeMcGraw Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  STOP talking about going outside of your comfort zone, and START doing it! By digging deeper into our true selves, we can begin accelerating our success. As a former professional athlete and combat veteran, Wylie McGraw felt called to work with fellow veterans struggling with PTSD, and help them transition back into their civilian lifestyles. He’s here now to clue us in on the BEST ways to optimize our performances, and take our lives and careers to a whole NEW level! Sometimes we’re so used to living with our pain or stress that we fear what it will feel like to let it GO!  About The Guest: Wylie McGraw spent years as a professional baseball player, competitive bull rider, and served as a combat veteran in 3 wars! Today he serves as the founder of Radical Performance Acceleration where he works with Fortune 500 CEOs, Best Selling Authors, Athletes, thought leaders, and Hollywood celebrities to help them accelerate their personal and professional performance. Wylie’s work began with combat veterans who were struggling with PTSD while trying to transition back into civilian life, and now he’s here to help us all LEVEL UP our entire lives!     If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: Unlock The EMPOWERED Mindset With Colin O’Brady 10X World Record Holding Explorer How To Stay Positive When Things Don’t Go To Plan, With Heather!  Be Your Own #1 Fan With Heather!

Human beings have a hard time facing their own truth. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. It doesn't matter what your background is. It has nothing to do with how much money you have or your notoriety. At the end of the day, the majority of humans say they want to step outside their comfort zone, but very few actually know what that really looks or feels like. So they seek out resources that do challenge them slightly, do give them results through this outside an approach, as I like to call it, where they are problem solving from their own background and their own education. and their own experience versus going into the life of the client and seeing what's really going on where the difficulties truly come from.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest today. Wiley McGrath spent years as a professional baseball player, competitive bull rider, and also served as a combat veteran in three wars while leading soldiers in the most extreme situations. Today, he is the founder of radical performance acceleration, where he works with

Fortune 500 CEOs, top athletes, bestselling authors, Hollywood stars, public figures, and prominent plot leaders across industries to accelerate their personal and professional performance beyond what they had ever imagined possible before. His clients include leading personalities at Warner Brothers, the U.S. Navy and Army, NBC, Whole Foods, the National Football League and Major League Baseball. Wiley has been helping high-profile and prominent people optimize their performance for 10 plus years. And to do this, he provides a Navy SEAL-like experience that reshapes them holistically. He started out working with fellow combat veterans who were struggling with PTSD while trying to transition back into civilian life. Wiley's success with them got him lots of referrals, which led him to

make himself more accessible to others looking for and asking about similar next level of performance. Wiley, thank you so much for being here today. Heather, it's a pleasure being here with you. Thank you for having me. Okay, first of all, thank you for your service. I come from a family of a few different people who are service members. So thank you so much for our freedom. I so appreciate you fighting for our country. You're welcome. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. That's huge, huge deal. So I'm interested. Let's go back to you working, with combat veterans to help them with PTSD. I can't, number one, I can't imagine something more rewarding or more needed.

This is an issue that is not addressed at any type of scale. Tell me about what that meant to you and in the results that you saw. Yeah, that's a good way to start the conversation is diving into those elements of where my work really just took off was the fact that being a combat veteran coming home after three tours overseas, I saw the gaps in the performance of what the VA was offering to to people like me coming home, the transitional resources that were lacking, different elements of family support groups and readiness groups, et cetera. So I felt compelled from this internal fire that I had inside about being a combat veteran having served with 101st Airborne

Division with different units across the spectrum of the military. I found that ignite. And I drove myself towards having conversations, opening my mouth, going into places that, you know, I didn't care what the outcome was. All it mattered to me was getting these veterans an opportunity to actually heal and resolve through PTSD without it just being a pharmaceutical regiment or a talk therapy kind of approach. Again, it goes back to me recognizing a gift that I came to this world with and then uncovering and understanding that in the throes of war coming home, I knew I had an ability to support others like me because I'd been in their shoes. So I want them to know what it's like to accelerate and get to a place of peace, being able to sleep at night, being able to relate to

their wives, their children, their partners, sustain a job, college, whatever their goals were. So that really became, you know, my bread and butter for a little while. And it was, you know, where my heart was pretty much set. And I was creating such unbelievable results in a matter of weeks with these people. That's when the VA started to take notice and started to ask un Officially if I'd be willing to kind of take on some other veterans that don't want those therapies and those drugs and everything else that's thrown at them. To get results from PTSD in a matter of week sounds unbelievable. What were you doing?

What is this gift? Give it to us. Well, that's the thing is it's putting these, it's putting people in the right environments that contain them properly, first and foremost. It's a big component in the personal development space that I find as well on my journey to that self-mastery learning more about myself when I got in military that I also saw a huge gap in where we're not providing containers. that are powerful enough to challenge people that causes a newfound level of healthier stress

so that we can erupt those unhealthy or stresses that we carry around inside us. So the nature of my work with combat vets is, number one, I've already got the trust because I've been in their shoes. I've served in war with them. So they've got that connection right out of the gate. But number two is we are in a relationship together. They are in this container with me where I'm in their life on a daily basis for a certain amount of time where I get to see what's really going on with them and providing them that

container and pushing them and showing them the truth about the demons that plague them from war or family upbringings prior to combat service, et cetera. That's what's really allowing the acceleration to happen in the work that we did together. So it was really my ability that I came into this world with, Heather is just to erupt this stress, these deeper demons that people carry and eradicate it through that containment that I provide them and through real world challenges as I'm starting to experience the different ways in which they are relating to life around them. So that's the nature of why we were able to create such accelerated results. But the biggest component to it was that I built, started to build a big network of resources around me

from doctors to therapists to naturopactic medicine all the way to chiropractic. I was creating this more holistic model that I found that human beings really need. because we're not compartmentalized silos. We're these dynamic natured entities, and we need to be able to tap into all areas of who we are and simultaneously optimize that if we want to create that success in our lives. So that's why I was able to do it so fast with them.

It's so crazy hearing you talk, and obviously I've never faced anything like what someone at war has faced, however, I've faced my own demons and my own challenges in my life. And when you were just describing what holistic healing looks like, I've spent my life building that, right? It's so insane that we live in a world, you know, now that that isn't the solution for everybody and that people like me have to go out on their own and try to figure out.

I only learned about a chiropractor a couple of years ago, right? Why wasn't that something that was discussed when I was younger and was an athlete? And, you know, why were people sharing all this information? How did you know that you were qualified to take something like this on coming from a background of professional baseball and bull writing. Well, that's the thing is understanding, number one, qualification should be viewed from the results you get, not from some studies or formal education,

because there are many of educated, there are millions of educated derelicts out there, have Ivy League degrees, et cetera. So for me, I would just say to qualify, really it comes back to what kind of results do you provide other people? And if you're experiencing those consistently, I think that would be the ultimate qualifier for anyone.

I'd rather work with someone who's providing me an atmosphere, a relationship, and the results that I need for who I am, rather than trying to find someone who's got all the pedigree and initials behind their name, but can't seem to solve whatever the simplest problems I might be facing with. First and foremost, that's where I would go. The other part of it is being trained by professional athletes growing up, being in that mindset, learning how to discipline, focus, commitment,

translating that into the competitive bull riding world. when I walked away from baseball because of the expectations of others, the pressures from my father, had to be perfect no matter what, to be that star pitcher. Competitive bull riding really ignited that more holistic nature of who I was. It introduced me to that warrior that it was inside me that was being suppressed by family dynamics and the stress of being perfect in baseball. I carried those elements with me into the military. I became a leader in the military.

I went to war and I recognized this is why I experienced. experience as a kid, all of the stress that people would bring to me. This is why wherever I went, people were erupting around me. It makes sense now. So now I want to pursue what this innate ability is by going down through my own path of growth, holistic healing, and discovering that as I tapped into different areas of life, different types of resources, I found my own performance accelerating, which is why then I turn around and recognize it's time for me to build something to provide that type of environment for people that are looking for the same thing, finding like-minded people that want to optimize their lives because the byproducts of that will be success in business

and successive relationships, et cetera. So there wasn't a blueprint for this, obviously. You're creating this as you go, which could not have been easy. What did those steps look like? Yeah, that's, I don't even remember being steps. I think it was just this unbelievable, you know, dynamic movement through the creative process. of learning how to build something around me and not necessarily being, you're right, no blueprint. I didn't study someone else's philosophies. I didn't go to school to get my degrees for this business. I did all those little elements for my own personal desires, but really was just taking this gift, taking this innate ability to be an interruptor, recognizing that, hell, I'm a demon slayer.

I meant I'm built to come into this world, the challenge, and go into the trenches with people to battle through that with them along their side. I took that philosophy, and elements of military and sports along with me and just started to create an environment where I was meeting the right people. I was going to events. I was going to parties. I was being invited to conferences and masterminds. Never needed a website. Never needed a business card. I never needed media or PR. I did that for 12 years before the pandemic hit. Now I've got the digital stuff coming out. But reality was it was just passionately staying connected to the beacon that we had that I had about getting out there and really optimizing leaders because I saw that they're the ones that are

infecting all of us. They're the ones that have the biggest impact on our policies, our laws, our rules, how things are operating in society as a whole. And to me, I recognize the connection there. So I just opened my mouth and started to go meet people and tell them, this is why I see the gap. This is what needs to have happened. And people just started to lean into that and recognize, I want to know what you could do for me too. If your anxiety, depression, or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't need just another meditation app. Takayatri makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days. Takayatry is 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations,

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Quince.com slash confidence. What did that transition look like? How did it go those first few times that you started working with people outside of combat? It was when I was working with the veterans, it's interesting that how to say this is when I accepted that I possessed this certain energy or essence about me, And I just allowed it to be when I met my, my now business partner of 14 years, who she says, this is exactly the type of fires you're going to be fighting. And I thought, well, that's interesting.

It feels right. That's the veil she pulled back. She's like, you're meant to go this direction. This is the power you carry with you. My first client showed up. A veteran just showed up and said, hey, I want to work with you. Help me. I want to know what it's like to be confident.

I see you walking around how you carry yourself. I see the happiness in your face. Can you show me what that's supposed to look like? And it just became this word of mouth thing where, hey, what's going on with you? Your life is completely different. What are you doing? And people are like, you've got to meet this guy that I'm working with. He's not a coach.

Whatever we're doing is nowhere near the definition of a consultant. But it's radical. It's different. It's challenging. It's very intense. And it sometimes pisses you off. But at the end of the day, I'm getting results every single day. And I'm starting to experience these changes that I want.

So that's where the referral came from where they were talking to the doctors. They were talking to the friends of our lawyers. And eventually I had a forced recon guy that I was working with who said, I have a good friend of mine who plays professional baseball, if you noticed my life transform, wants to know if you'll sit down with him and his agent, have a conversation about how you can support him too because he's going through the ringer right now.

And then I just got passed into those industries and then it just became this popcorn effect. And you're working with people across so many different industry situations. Are you seeing common threads or common issues that come up more than not? Yes. human beings have a hard time facing their own truth. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. Doesn't matter what your background is. It has nothing to do with how much money you have or your notoriety. At the end of the day, the majority of humans say they want to step outside their comfort

zone, but very few actually know what that really looks or feels like. So they seek out resources that do challenge them slightly, do give them results through this outside an approach, as I like to call it, where they are problem solving from their own background and their own education and their own experience versus going into the life of the client and seeing what's really going on where the difficulties truly come from. So what ends up happening here is that these leaders across these industries are in control of their resources. And my philosophy and how I look at it is the only way you're actually going to transform a human being because of the psyche and the ego that we possess is when they are absolutely out of control with the resource that's challenging them.

They're absolutely vulnerable in a way they cannot close down on and hold on to. They have to surrender into those elements. And most people don't want to do that. So I've seen that time and time again from Wall Street to Hollywood. They're all humans that are just willing to suppress their stress, cope with life, and override everything so that they can just consistently build a bank account. and most of them have built their empires on the back of chaos and trauma, and they've never done anything to face those demons and eradicate them.

I feel like that's the majority of people I know. It's human nature, unfortunately. Yeah, and it's our society, too, right? I mean, society's feeding into you that you're not supposed to burden other people with what your truths are. How are you doing? I'm fine. How are you?

Everything's supposed to be very superficial and everyone's supposed to kill themselves for work. and that's just expected. Well, then they look at it this way is it's weakness. You know, that's the big thing, especially when it comes to men. But I understand that there are women out there that unfortunately were infected by that mindset as well, is that emotions equate to weakness, especially in a corporate job. I know your background as well. You know that very intimately.

It's like you've got to understand that we have all of these components of who we are for a reason. And the idea that we should surgically remove them through society's, you know, ideas of what it means to be successful is why people are very unhappy and unfulfilled, why they suffer in silence, and why we constantly have divisiveness in our society as a whole. And to me, it's like that's, that's the problem. But again, everybody wants the shiny, feel good idea to personal growth and transformation. Transformation is ugly. It's destructive. And it happens in the dark corners. It will never happen when you go to a concert like event or if you go over here and buy a program online, not to say they don't have benefits and they don't create results,

but if you're truly looking to be the best version of yourself, you really want to experience that grounded piece with your successes and feel that freedom that comes along with it and be able to manage and utilize stress in your life as an asset for you, it's a completely different mindset altogether, and you have to be willing to jump into those unknowns that you can't control, and that's the biggest piece that's missing. When you were talking about women being conditioned this way, too,

having been in corporate America for a very long time and getting to the level at which I was, you know, it was conditioned. There's no crying in baseball, right? And I just say that that was a, you know, a joke that I used to always say, but there was no crying at work. And I learned early on because I cried once when I was a young leader, never let them see you sweat, never, you know, put this armor up around you, you know, pull as ice and always know the answer. So how do you deal with someone like that. Let's use me for an example. I was making a lot of money. I made it to this proverbial height of your career that you wanted to be at. Everything on paper looks like it should be perfect, but I was not happy. I was not fulfilled, but I was not willing to make a jump to see what

was out in the unknown. Where do you go with someone like that? That's because you got used to carrying that rucksack. And I'll use a military terminology here with that. When you get used to carrying that kind of weight becomes normalized. You actually don't feel it the way you first felt it. anymore. So it's in those pivotal moments when someone is in your position that starts to feel the weight of that, it behooves them to take a moment to reflect. Okay, clearly me stepping into this role or this position or this industry is going to put a lot of my plate and probably a lot more that I'm willing to actually carry or I don't, you know, I'm not ready to carry. If you don't take that moment to self-reflect, you become accustomed to that weight of that rucksack.

So if somebody comes up behind you, and I'll give you an example like we did in the military, I took a rucksack off one of my guys once. We'd carried after 32 plus miles. We were on foot during an operation. And when I went to take it off, he screamed. And it was the pain that he had in his shoulders from carrying it. So he was so good. He said, put it back on, please.

So I put it back on him and he's like, I'm good. And he's laid down with it. That analogy says everything about, especially the corporate mindset, is carry the weight, get used to it, suck it up and deal with it. And at the end of the day, what ends up happening is you start to deteriorate from the inside out. And then what you do is you chase relief. You look for things to create coping. I've seen people use yoga as a coping tool, meditation as a coping tool,

or you got all the way to the extremes of the alcohol industry, the entertainment industry, these are all forms of escapism. What ends up happening is nobody's willing to say the harsh things to do the harsh stuff, put people in the right containers that squeeze them the right way, so they can stop operating at an asymmetrical fraction of who they really are and get to a place of balance. But again, it takes people willing to do that to change the culture, especially in a corporate job or a business like that. Yeah, that is a huge, huge undertaking. I mean, I just, I can't tell you how many people that I know still back from corporate America that are still

carrying that weight that don't know it because they're still in it. And it's so bizarre that today, five years after I got fired, I'm so grateful I got fired because I don't know that I would have had the foresight or ability to make that leap, which then allowed me to understand what my purpose and passion were, which allowed me to let go of this mask that I was wearing that allowed me to transition into a more real version of myself, which has brought peace into my life, joy into my life, things that, so I don't have to shop as much, right? All these things like you were saying that we create to drive our show, fill of or distract ourselves or whatever it may be and we're not truly aware that we're doing it when

we're knee deep in it. So do you have moments with people where they, I mean, they must look at you with the things that you're trying to get their attention with and want to kill you. Oh, well, you know what? That's if I'm not in a fight with my clients, I'm not doing my job. So at the end of the day, one of the things, and I want to touch on something you just said too. It's like you had literally the universe, God whatever, fired you because you need, you, you, your soul was dying to get somewhere else. You were already built for something else. Corporate's kind of like, I have a good friend of mine who's, you know,

America's manager for a big multi-billion dollar company and runs a team. And he's like, they want to promote me. And I don't know if I want to take it because I can feel all the pressures that come along with that. And he's got a relationship. He likes to play. You needed that yourself. Something extreme had to happen to redirect you.

That's the only way you could transform to get to where you want to go, an extreme situation. So that's what I just want to. to touch on that, but to go back to what your question was around my clients is one of the biggest philosophies that I live by that I always have, but I truly embody in my work is you only truly know someone when you fight them. That's when their real character is revealed. And Anne Frank was the one that said that. It's been used in like the Matrix movies as well. But for me, it's, it's really a very deep truth that when you fight someone, you get the most vulnerable version of who they are. You get their real character. You get the truth. The actual.

ugly truth, not the truth that they're presenting to you. So in my relationships with my clients, because it's not a program, what I do is I'm in a dynamic with them. I integrate into their lives with them. I live with them, travel with them, and every aspect of their lives is completely optimized from the inside out. So if I'm not in a battle with them, I'm failing at my work. So at the end of the day, they're going to hate me. And I just met up with a former client of mine the other day when I was on a trip a few years ago, public figure guy. And he goes, you know what, I realized all these years later, he's like every single time I was feeling like I hated you. I was feeling this like pain inside. It was my pain that you were helping me get out. It was my

terror. It was my fears. Even though I've built multi-million dollar, 100 million dollar businesses, et cetera, he goes, I could not find peace and satisfaction. And it was because I carried all of these things that no one else would ever go after. My therapist wouldn't touch. My coach. wouldn't look at and you came after me and I hated you the whole process but I knew you were here for a reason. So it's that dynamic where they could feel into who I am. They intuitively know I'm the safe trusting place but I am no holds barred and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get them to where they want to go. And that's why I'm able to confront these powerful people and get them the results in a very fast manner is because I've battled them and fight them. It's so interesting

because I was a psychology major in college and psychology or traditional therapy is such a slow burn model years and years and years you can go and again nothing against traditional therapy and I think people should do whatever works for them I don't judge but you know it's just interesting to me later on in my life to be aware of so many different options that are out there and available to people now that we don't promote or shine a light on and give people that chance to say yes therapy's it can be you know a great solution to but these other things are options too what what can you do or I would imagine most people don't know about the type of work that you do. Well, that's the thing is they don't.

And everything that I have done up to the pandemic starting was all behind the scenes and the shadows. I felt good there. I thought that's where I belonged. I was going to be passed along. I was going to work with very specific types of prominent people, leaders that have impact in their industries because that's my job. That's how I was built. Impact the leaders, the masses naturally can grow in a more positive manner. But the pandemic hit and people were saying, hey, look, I have no idea how to talk about what you do.

There are people at a PR gal friend of mine. She's like, Wiley, she's a movie writer for lifetime. She's like, look, you need to get out and talk about your work because there are people I know in my industry that don't even know you exist, but have been looking for something similar. And that's the nature of why we're now out into this more digital space and talking about the work. But it comes back to the fact that leaders need, it's the capacity they possess. Like, you're a successful person. You have a different capacity versus someone who's starting out down here as small business or working at Chipotle. we're all at different levels of capacity.

So it's meeting the capacity with the right type of work, the right type of environment that matters, that matches who the person is in their ability to perform at the level they are. When you have a CEO of a Fortune 500 company trying to hire a regular coach, that doesn't match because that coach is not going to be able to stretch that CEO's capacity based on who he is or she is and how they perform to get to where they are. So it's about finding the right resources, which is why it's so prevalent today that people are constantly in those slow burn therapy sessions and coaching programs and spending more money and never really kind of get where they want to go is because it's not matching them

in their capacity. And to me, it's like you've got to be willing to find the things that may scare the crap out of you and hire those things to do that kind of work. You know, for me, it goes back to being curious too and always being a constant learner that you want to be listening to a podcast like this one or reading the book or watching the TEDx talk. there's so much overwhelming amount of information out there that what you need is getting lost in those pracks. And if you aren't constantly asking and inquiring and trying to find out more, you will never get access to that solution that already, I'm sure your solution is the solution for people that are listening right now, but they had no idea about it before.

Right. And I want to add something you just said to it. I think it's important here is that knowledge, and this is part of like even some of the stoics that I've studied over the years, is knowledge without application is purposeless. It's pointless. And people will read and they will overconsume books and seminars and podcasts. And it's great. You're building up a vast library of knowledge in your mind. Phenomenal.

But those things are just, I would say, they're assets to transformation. They don't actually stimulate real internal transformation. You need challenges that are outside of your control. You need to be able to embrace the fear of the unknown and yield to that and recognize that when those elements are showing up, the books and the seminars all have added value to your growth. But what people do is they forget this part over here, which is the challenge, the stuff that's intense and scary often. And they just want to stay over here with the things that stimulate the bind and maybe make them feel like things are kind of shifting.

And they do. But again, when you want something more, it's going to require a completely different approach. Yes. And I'm glad that we're talking right now. I want people to understand that this kind of work is available to leaders and people in these positions have influence and power because you need to be at the top of your game personally and professionally together. They are not mutually exclusive. I worked with a hedge fund, private wealth team where they were like thinking, my personal life gets shut off at the door when I walk through work. I'm like, you're out of your mind. That's why you guys are failing right now. It's why you're about to lose your jobs. And guys are making three, four, five hundred grand a year in salaries. And you guys are

literally swinging in the red the entire time and panicking. But you think your personal life does not affect your professional life, and that is absolutely another thing in our society, Heather, that is completely false. You've got to recognize that they go together and that when you optimize your life, if you're listening to this, you personally affects how you operate professionally.

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their pledge to all customers don't wait protect your privacy build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes visit northwest registered agent dot com slash confidence free and start building something amazing get more with northwest registered agent at www. northwest registered agent.com slash confidence free. I remember when I first graduated college, my first decade in business saying all my friends were dating and getting engaged. And I remember saying, no, link into work.

Like focus 100% on work. Heather, make a name. This is your time. And I did. I went all in and I did. I did it really, really well. But I look back on that now after last weekend being with my friends of 30 plus years. And so many of them are with their spouses for 20.

20 plus years that they dated and then married during that time that I was like lofty in only business, only business. And it was something that I thought that was a fine. You know, the result, the results show that I was doing great. However, in the long run, it definitely didn't, it made it much more difficult for my whole life in the long run, although I thought in that short run it was the right decision. Yes. And I love that you said that because I want to add something into parlay into that message is

success. People keep asking me when I run into it. to them is you talk about as you climb the ladder of success, your stress goes up with you, but it should not. It should be going down the other way. And they say, how is that possible? Because when you have more responsibility, when you make more money, stress is naturally going to grow. And I said, that's the problem. That's the mindset right there is what's the point of success when you're stressed out? What's the point of a bank account and nice material things when you hate yourself at night when you go to bed, when you can't sleep well, when you're fried, when you're miserable, when you are

drinking to deal with life, when you don't get to spend time with your friends as much as you want to, when you don't get to experience balance. What's the point of success? Success should be defined by how well you live your life and recognizing that that will power you and fuel your ability to make more money and have better notoriety and grow companies, but we're doing it backwards, especially in corporate America. That's the mindset, right? It's all about past clients and those big businesses and they all thought the same thing. I got to hustle and grind and I got to sacrifice my health, my relationships, my sanity because I've got to, I've got to grow the bottom line quarter reports coming in. The companies tell me I got to show up. I got to front load all my

P&L and my balance sheets. I got to get these clients handled. I can invest more money here. And then they go home wondering why they're not living and feeling peace in their life. What's the point of that? Truly, what's the point of success if your stress is just going to join you? To me, it's unacceptable. Well, it is commonplace, right? I agree with you. It's not the way to be, but it's challenging when that's what you know to say, okay, now I want to transition. Because now fear comes into, well, that's what made me successful before. And how do I balance it and what does that look like?

But one thing I will say to what you just described, because I very much was living my life like that in corporate America, is once I got fired, I became so much more a more creative version of myself. which I didn't know that existed, right? But that was something that just happened organically because I was just all of a sudden without all of those external forces on me. Like you said, the P&L and the stock price and like all of this. It was so much I couldn't think. I didn't have time to think.

I just had time to do. And I had done it for so long. I could just go do it and get the results. But now that I was sitting on a couch, suddenly ideas started coming to me that I had never had before. And I thought, this is so bizarre. I always attributed only to, I used to attribute. good at only to being around a negative person that was blocking, you know, a lot of opportunity

for me. But then part of it also is like what you're saying, giving yourself the time to think, giving yourself, you know, moments of not constantly doing, doing, doing so that you can reflect on, you know, what else could possibly come to you or what idea could come to you. Right. And one of the biggest philosophies with that is lead in leadership is sometimes it actually behooves us to take a step back. Leaders do it in the military all the time. We don't go, go, go, nonstop. Because if we did, number one, we'd become tunnel vision and we actually could get people killed. Number two, it'd burn us out and burn our soldiers out, our Marines, our seals, whatever.

So a lot of seal commanders talk about this. A lot of military people, I talk about it with my team, is sometimes taking that step back, gives you a bigger sight picture to see really what's going on so that you can re-approach it from a different place. Take a deep breath, have a different mindset, shift your ideas, shift your ability to tap it, to that creative side. Like you just talked about, you were sitting there on the couch and having that space, you took a step back. What ended up happening was it opened you up and actually it unleashed that creative side of you that had been suppressed by this gold-driven organization for shareholders or stockholders. Get it done no matter what. I don't care what you got to do.

Work the 80 hours a week plus. Make the money. And all you had was your creative side was focused only on that. You didn't get to explore that holistic side of Heather, which is why you experience it unleashing when you just had that space. It's powerful when you even take a moment as a leader in any company, even if you're the corporate drone right now and take a step back, breathe and recognize you're not going to lose track. You're not going to lose momentum if you do that, but it will start to shift just that internal side of you so you can become more creative in your corporate job or in your business or in your profession. It's amazing when we give ourselves just that space for a brief moment, how much creativity can come, which is why

when I work with these leaders, it's the same aspect. I pull them out of the chaos, and it's amazing what they start to see and recognize. Oh, my gosh. A good analogy for that with chaos. I just went through it recently is I just moved for the first time in 17 years. And when you live somewhere for 17 years, and I'm not the most disciplined person with organization, this whole concept of outer order intercom, I suddenly had to get my house completely clean and organize and get rid of as much old, you know, as I could, because the realtor said, this is what I need you to do. And upon doing that, it was such an amazing feeling, letting go of so much that didn't serve me that I didn't need that was just cluttering up space.

And again, allowing for more creativity, allowing for space for you to think it was a really powerful physical event that occurred that anyone could implement in their life. Right. And you had that somatic release too. Your body was like, wow, this is what it's supposed to feel like when I actually have space to breathe and get creative and experience life. And it's going back to a thought you just mentioned a moment ago is it's a very hard transition for people in your industry to step out and kind of get into that more holistic living and get to a place of balances because of the fear that shows up. But that's okay. You can recognize if the fear shows up when you want to get out of that, which I had a client that did do that.

He left after 15 years managing a billion dollars in assets for a Fortune 100 company. And he got scared. He jumped into the world to being a coach. But what he realized as we started working together that the fear was telling me this is where real change is happening. And it's telling me I had too much of my identity tied into the job I was doing rather than being me working this amazing job. It's just that such a finite way to shift the mindset where stop attaching yourself to what you're doing and recognize you're a human being. You are the power source for the work you're doing.

When you can shift that a little bit, it starts to create a little bit more resolve within you and your ability to then make massive life changes that are very scary for you. So you see fear as that means you're on the right track. I look at this way. And in my experiences from being in the sports world, especially in the bull riding world, that was a big part of my life, huge transformation from me and my age, was that fear is an inherent part of who we are as human beings. This idea that we can get rid of it is a fallacy.

We can't. We might be able to quiet it down. we might be able to sit at a side, but fear is inherently part of who we are as humans. It tells us we're facing something challenging, scary, different, transformational. Here's where real change is going to happen for you. When those feelings come up, that's fear, scared of having, you know, going out and speaking in public, asking for the raise. That's telling you you should do it anyway.

What I have discovered and what I have learned to create with the work that I do is give people the permission to learn how to yield like driving on a on ramp to a highway, yielding to the fear allows you to then utilize that fear as an asset for you to step into that challenging moment that's presenting itself. When you can embrace that fear and you can take it with you and say, you know what, you're here for a reason. I get it and I'm still going to go execute on this. That fear will then take a, it'll take a seat. It'll dissipate, but it will never go anywhere. And then when you step into that next big one, you'll feel it come up again. He realized, oh, my goodness, this is a good thing for me. I'm learning how to be comfortable in the

discomfort of fear showing up. That means I'm on the right path. And then when I get to that place where I can respect that part of me, then I know what peace is supposed to actually look and feel like. It's amazing how that works, but it's right through that darkness that everybody wants to avoid. That's where we find those elements that we're looking for, that we're searching for as these seekers as human beings. Oh my gosh. That's so true. And the more you do it like anything, the easier it it begins to get. And you start to feel, oh, I've already seen this movie. I know I'm actually going to survive this. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but I'm going to be okay. And when you start getting to that place, like you said, it's never easy. Just today, I was interviewing someone who has been

a pastor and continues to be a pastor, but is one of the top keynote speakers in our country right now. And when we got off air and shut down, he said, Heather, tell me how I can help you. And I said, oh, I'm good. I didn't have any specific ask I wanted from him. And he said, have you ever thought of preaching, you know, in a church? And immediately my heart got so incredibly. I, you know, I wasn't, this wasn't something I felt confident in or something that I felt was, you know, expected for me.

So fear came in immediately. But this time when I felt it, I said, you know what? That sounds incredible to me. Can you help take me down that path and see what? that looks like because I knew it. If I leaned away, I'm going to shrink back and become a lesser version of myself. But if I'm feeling fear and I lean into it, I'll figure something out along that way. Right. And you never know what's going to happen with that. You might go to his church, let's say, and speak in front of his congregation. And what you say might shift some of the people that are in

that audience that are connected to these people. It's amazing the byproduct that can happen when you just step into that. He's not saying, hey, convert to this and do this. He's saying, just come speak. preach because you've got a great voice. You know exactly how to keep a dialogue running. So come do that. You never know who's life you're going to change doing that. And then the next thing you know, you're actually being asked to come do these unbelievable events for these other organizations. So it's amazing that we call it a seed. You got to plant that seed and let it grow. But for me, it's just embracing and yielding to the fear of the unknown like you did. You're like, I'm going to just say yes. Doesn't mean it's necessarily going to manifest. I may not actually go

do that. But if I can just say yes to these moments, where my capacity, then stretches, opens up more doors for me as this natural, it's almost effortless byproduct. People don't realize that when we stretch our capacity through embracing those moments, internally, energetically, physically, mentally, emotionally, like we do when we go to boot camp and specialty training to become elite soldiers, is things actually start to show up for us, without us really having to do so much extra work to make those things happen, not saying that you don't have to actually create certain situations for you to have the conversations and relationships and business.

But you'll start to notice like, oh, wow, why did that person show up the way they did in that moment that I said those things to these people? Great. Let me embrace that. Now let me, you start to create this unbelievable flowering effect of your own success. And it's just a beautiful way to live your life because you can still stay in that place of balance and peace and happiness while you're doing it. I'm so here for this. But Wiley, you continue to step into the unknown and continue to create now with wise words and whiskey with Wiley, your new podcast. Tell us about it.

Yeah, it just launched today, actually. That's pretty exciting. I got to tell you, a ton of moving parts, but it's been a passion project that we've been talking about for the better part of half a decade. And everywhere I've gone, people say, you know what, I want to see the side of Wiley that's kickback, well, likes his scotch. You know, I'm a big single bolt scotch guy. myself, but I do like just really good whiskeys all around. And I want to have low-key conversations on all things high performance without it being such a hustle and grind type of atmosphere. And it's taking me away from the intensity of my demon slaying work that I do and creating this atmosphere where people to kick off their shoes, pour glass, hang out with us and just listen to a casual conversation with people that are really cool, that got great insights to provide these, provide these wise words for more optimal life. And that's why we decided to go ahead and execute on it. And today has been the magic day, and it's unbelievable. But we're doing a

whiskey giveaway as well for people to subscribe to the show. They can, you know, jump into that giveaway. It's a bottle of premium whiskey with a rocks glass set as well. So it would be pretty cool to see what turns out from this. I'm excited. So where can everybody get your podcast and where can they find you? It's launched on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Stitcher. Those are the three places I know. Wiley McGraw.com. I have it a pop up there where they can jump into the giveaway, and they can sign up for that whiskey giveaway. We might be doing that actually monthly for a little while, just to kind of entice more people to come hang out with us

and have great conversations. So those are the places they can go. Who doesn't want to hang out for Wise Words and Whiskey? Wiley, thank you so much for all the work you're doing. And please keep it up and the world needs it. Thank you, Heather. I appreciate it. All right, guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence.