High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 496: Embracing the New Normal Mindset with John Register, Inspirational Speaker

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

John Register failed to clear a hurdle as he trained for the Olympic Games—a move that led to a tragic accident and altered his life forever. He shifted his focus and embraced a “new normal mindset.” The decorated Persian Gulf War combat U.S. Army veteran world champion became a two-time Paralympic Games Silver Medalist, professional speaker, and global influencer.   Register “amputated his fears” and founded the U.S. Olympic Committee Paralympic Military Sports Program. He authored 10 Stories to Impact Any Leader: Journal Your Way to Leadership Success in Spring 2020 and works with business leaders to hurdle adversity, amputate fear, and embrace a new normal mindset to win life's medals. The artificial leg he used to win the silver medal is displayed in the Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  In this interview, John and Cindra discuss:  His definition of the “New Normal Mindset”  3 ways to develop the “New Normal Mindset”  How we can “amputate our fear”  10 Power Words to overcome any obstacle   How we can each “hurdle” the adversity we experience  HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/496 FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highperformancemindsetcommunity  FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/  FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong  TO FIND MORE ABOUT JOHN: John Register | Inspired Communications International - John Register - Inspired Communications International, LLC  Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901 

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Cindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm grateful that you're here listening to episode 496. Before I introduce you to our guest today, I'd like to ask you a few questions. Have you ever had to make an impossible decision? And after you committed to the decision, did you have second thoughts or question if your decision was actually possible? Did you ever believe that there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel? Well, if you have, you're going to be glad you're listening today. And if not, well, maybe you're in self-denial. Our guest today is an overcomer who makes global impacts.

He is a combat army veteran, a four-time track and field All-American, and a two-time Olympic trials qualifier. However, one misstep in life cost him his leg and ended both his Olympic dreams and his military career. Yet since this injury, he won the long jump silver medal in Sydney, Australia, advised four U.S. Secretaries of States, and founded the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee's Paralympic Military Sport Program, which helped wounded, ill, and injured service members use sport as a tool for rehabilitation. Today, he is here to talk about his own art and his own mindset. And he will be saying a new word on mindset to win the battle. as a tool for rehabilitation today. Welcome, John Register, to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. How are you doing today?

Cinder, I'm fantastic. Thank you for having me on. I'm happy to share with your audience today. I appreciate everything that you are doing in this space just to elevate excellence. Absolutely. And I'm excited to talk with you after learning more about what you speak on and what you write on and your story.

So thank you so much for joining us here today. We spoke at the Winter Conference at the National Speakers Association, and I had been following your work for some time, so it was really fun to get to talk to you. And so maybe just to get us started for the audience, tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about and what you're doing right now. You know, I think the passion that I have is always about creating or getting people to

understand that they have value. And what I mean by that is the value towards their vision of what they desire to do. What is the outcome that they are pushing themselves toward? A lot of folks that I've found kind of in my keynote speaking have been looking on or chasing or following the dreams of someone else, or they're following societal dreams and trying to, maybe that's the best thing I should do, or maybe this is the best thing I should do. Well, what do you want to do? And that is kind of what I love relishing in that moment is to get people to have the courage to commit to the vision, the dream, whatever it is that they were looking to do. And I call it,

you have to clear, you have to hurdle that what's in front of you. And so then that's kind of where my passion lies is get people to make that courageous leap. Yeah. Well, John, that's powerful. I recently read that only 7% of the population is visionary. So it made me think a lot about people really don't know what they want. And you're right that they might follow what other people expect of them or want for them instead of what they really are excited about and passionate about. I think that's one of the reasons we're having, I guess some people call it the great resignation. I think this is a great mind shift, right? People are shifting their minds and they're

realizing that the work that they were doing for other individuals was not as satisfying as they once thought. Some companies, not all companies, but some companies, they were trying to protect the bottom line when the transition, when the pandemic first came on board and was really, this is beyond two weeks, it's beyond three weeks, it's beyond four weeks. And so what happened was all of the people that they had on, that they hired to say that these are the best people for the job, started getting laid off because they were trying to protect the bottom line. They began to operate with a scarcity mindset,

which gave space for those individuals who found themselves in that situation to reevaluate if they really wanted to return to an organization like that. And so now there's a great resignation. We can't find workers, or so we say we can't. And all of a sudden, these individuals have chosen a different path. Some become entrepreneurs. They shifted gears. They went a different way. Some got out of the workforce altogether. And I think that's what we have to consider. The cop-out, I believe, is saying that all these workers left the workplace and now we can't backfill positions. That was always the case. Even if every single person came back into the workplace, we'd still be millions of people below the delta

of what we need to actually fill all the job positions. So it just spun up what we were dealing with in the first place a little bit faster, right? So I think that's what we have to really understand and not try to scapegoat onto somebody else what we can't do ourselves or refuse to do ourselves. And that goes back again to having the courageous commitments to what our vision, what our dreams are for our companies, for our families, or whatever that we want to put in. Well, I know you personally have gotten some clarity on what exactly you want and have obviously followed your in. Well, I know you personally have gotten some clarity on what exactly you want and have obviously followed your passion. John, let's back up a little bit and tell us a little bit about your story. Tell us about what the experience was like for you specifically to

lose your left leg due to a hurdle accident, a high level athlete competing at the highest level at that point. Tell us what that experience was like for you and how that has led you to do this work today. So I usually try to bucket people, especially when I'm teaching folks that want to become professional speakers, inspirational speakers, I'll qualify for for that is what's your story archetype you know what what makes sense for the audience to hear and for me when i began to do that exercise for myself this my story archetype is a riches rags to riches uh story archetype that's one of them uh i can also have like this overcome the monster too but the riches rags to riches is kind of where we start why because i was a world-class athlete. I ran track and field for the Razorbacks. I twice went to the Olympic trials, was a four-time

track and field All-American, enlisted in the United States Army to continue to run track and field, even though I had a degree in radio, television program, and production that would take me down to Mississippi to an entry-level position, which I foregoed. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to continue to run track. The Army had a world-class athlete track and field program, which allows a soldier athlete to train two to three years prior to the next Olympic Games in their discipline, as long as their national governing body of sport says they can do it. USA Track and Field News, my national governing body of sport, NGB, said I was a bona fide

contender. So I signed up for this program. But on the way to my training, Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm came up. And I got called to serve in the Gulf War. Came back without a scratch. Went to run the high hurdles for my second Olympic trials. And I just didn't have it. So I switched gears to the 400-meter hurdles. And in my fifth race ever qualified for the trials in 1992.

And I had my race. But when I was training for my third Games, the great Edwin Moses, who still comes on my little podcast things now, he said, you're on the same trajectory I was on. And, of course, he won the most wins of anybody, any 400-meter hurdler at the Olympic Games. He says, I'm on the same trajectory he was on, and of course he won the most wins of anybody, any four-meter hurdler at the Olympic Games. Since I'm on the same trajectory he was on, when I went across a hurdle and I dislocated

my knee, I severed the artery behind the kneecap, and seven days later, I went from world-class athlete, combat veteran, on my way to officer candidate school to an amputee flat on my back with which way is up. So life can change with us with one wrong step. It was my wife, Alice, who poured into me, said, you know what, we'll get through this together. It's just our new normal. And when she spoke those words, she baselined my entire existence. And I began to pick myself up and retool, find the people that surrounded me and got out of the military, started working for the military. And 26 months post my amputation, I, after swimming for physical therapy, I swam in the Paralympic games in 1996 in Atlanta. So athletes running and jumping with

artificial limbs had a leg made for running four years later, won the Paralympic silver medal in the long jump in Sydney, Australia. And then after that, after I hung the spikes up, I began working for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and built out what's now become known as the Paralympic Military Sport Program, which turned into Warrior Games and turned into Prince Harry's Invictus Games. And so that is kind of what I've been doing. And as well as, you know, speaking and training and teaching anybody else how to overcome the challenges that they may face in their lives. Wow. Well, that's a lot of challenges you had to overcome. I was just actually speaking with a USA track and field athlete earlier this morning about, you know, like when you're faced with an injury, you know, and how difficult that can be. I mean, you went from

being a world-class athlete to like losing your leg. Tell us a little bit about what that experience was like emotionally for you at that moment, because I think that's really helpful for people to know like what actually you overcame, you know, to do everything else that you've done since then. That's great because most people think when I talk, and myself included, until I had a revelation that I overcame the amputation of my left leg. So going through that whole transition of having the injury on the track, I believe what is inside of us during our difficulty, our time of testing is what comes out of us when we're actually in the test. We think we know who we might be. We think we know who we would be

or like to be when a transitional moment happens or when some type of trauma hits us, but we really don't until we actually get in that situation. Then what's inside of us comes out. Now we can learn from that experience afterwards, but in the moment when the heat is on, whatever's coming out, that's who we are at that time. And so in my moment, this is by eyewitness accounts,

not for me because I was in a lot of pain. The first word out of my mouth when my leg snapped in half and was looking like the letter L, when I have a look out to spin was hallelujah. Why would that even come out of my mouth when my leg snapped in half and was looking like the letter L, when I have a look out to spend was, was hallelujah. Why would that even come out of my mouth? Because I had been doing a lot of Bible studies and teaching, and it wasn't just for show. It was something that was a part of my life. It wasn't a go to church on Sunday type thing. It was instilled in me and was a part of wanting to see everyone else around me elevate and pour into them.

And so that naturally just came out of me. And I still don't remember saying it, but I have three or four soldiers that were around me say that, how did you even do that? I have no recollection of it. And so I think that's the first thing to the audience is what is on the inside of you? Who are you surrounding yourself with when those times of testing actually happen? I had people who would not allow me to fail in that moment, even though I knew I wasn't going to Olympic trials anymore. My leg was looking crazy. Right. I didn't know I was going to lose it at that time. But I knew that I couldn't lift myself up and walk off of that track. So who's around you to lift you up when you can't even lift up yourself, when you have no power to do it on your own any longer? I think we found that out or we're finding it out, at least in

the United States, about what happens to us when we, I call it losing oxygen out of our environment. We lose oxygen, we panic, we do crazy stuff, right? So what do we do when the pandemic first hit? We bought toilet paper because that was going to solve COVID, right? So those things I think we have to really share with ourselves and then share with others what's going on in us and who is around our lives to actually help us elevate during our time of testing. Yeah, that's really powerful. Like what's in the inside comes out and the outside when you're experiencing the adversity. And I think about, you know, there's a model called the Kubler Ross model that kind of, it's like, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's when, you know,

it's when we go through the grieving process. And there's some research that athletes can go through the same process when they're injured, right? Like where they have denial and then depression and anger, and then ultimately acceptance. So I'm curious for you, what was that like for you in that moment? Yeah, I went through all of it. I mean, I don't, I think I went through some phases faster, but I experienced every one of them and some longer, you know, with there's always when we have everything's going kind of our direction, our way, and some type of trauma event or traumatic event happens, the thing is we're not trying to overcome the adversity at that time.

What happens is we have a desire to return and want to do it over again. We want to do over, and we don't get that. And when we realize we don't get that, that comes kind of as a first bucket, what I call the reckoning moment. We don't get back what we desire to have back. I want to get, maybe if I just didn't run that hurdle that day, maybe if I would have just, you know, took the day off, maybe if I, on all these maybe ifs, don't get you to the place of where you actually are. It's just a hypothetical of what if the thing didn't happen in the first place, but it has happened. And so it comes out like this in our everyday language today.

I just wish things would get back to normal. If things just get back to normal, I'd just be all right. I'd be fine. And that's that cycle. We haven't graduated from there. We just continue. Something traumatic happened on our everyday life, and I just want to get it back to the way it used to be. And that's phase one.

John, one of the topics I talk about is grit, right? Having passion for what you do and persevering towards your goals. And last year, we did a study where we asked professional athletes how they developed their grit. And the thing that surprised me was 75% of them said it came from a significant adversity. So it was something like a parent's divorce or their own seizing ending injury or, I mean, their own cancer that allowed them to persevere. So it's really interesting in the moment, right? You can have all these emotions, but the first step is reckoning.

You know, one of the things that you've been talking about for a super long time before we've been using this idea of like new normal, right? Tell us what the new normal mindset means to you. Yeah. Yeah. I got a little jaded with everybody out there. I bet. But I said, well, somebody called me and said, you just need to embrace it. Right. And then own it. You'll own that you've kind of founded it. And I think why I was not really upset. I think the reason I was kind of getting frustrated with it was because people were using it as a term of destination or a place where they wanted to be and could no longer get there. So the words were powerless when I had been using them as powerful. So I'll give you an example. We just had, when I was talking about, I wish things would get back to normal.

When we look at the terms new and normal, people are using the term, I just wish things would get back to normal as the normality of things, but that's not true. That place is gone. It's moved on because you're in this new reality right now. You're doing new things, right? And the present state is people will say, well, I guess this is just our new normal. And they kind of throw their hands up like, there's nothing you can do about it. Well, I'm just guess we're here. We're here.

No, that's not it either. Right. So new, the definition is no prior point of reference, no prior point of reference. So why would we then if new is no prior point of reference, why would we be using old thoughts, old ideas, old systems to put into a new bucket, a new environment to get a different output. It's the definition of insanity. It's true. Right.

So, but we did it. We continue. We just, we're trying to fill the gaps. I got to get people back in the office now. Right. I got to just got to come back. We got to get back to the way it used to be. When we should have learned something over the past two years, a lot of companies were accelerating and did greater work.

They did their best work in the past two years. And now they want to bring everybody back in. Why? To go back to the way it used to be? To have lower revenue? I'm not sure I understand that. So can we get our head around that? The second is the normal. Normal then is the everyday typical occurrence of a thought or an action. Everyday typical occurrence of a thought or an action. So

what are the rituals we have in place that lead us to a rhythm, that elevate us to a rise and create the desired results that we're looking for. So as we're looking at our own lives, there is a pattern that we can follow. And if we get good with that pattern, it becomes ritualistic. The rituals become the rhythm and we get into this rhythm. And that's what we call that normality, right? So that's what we're looking for. There's always going to be a normality of what we do every single day. And that can be broken as we have seen. But how fast can you get back to that normality of putting those widgets in place? My mother passed away December 9th and I was devastated, right? When I got back to the office, I'm trying to figure out what do I

do next? It was this little acronym that just came to my mind called SMERP. You got to SMERP it, John. SMERP. SMERP. S-M-E-R-P. So you got to do your sales, do your marketing, get out and get some exercise. Now you need to educate yourself on what it is that you might need to learn, do some research, and then prepare for your event or prepare for the next day. So that gave me a

ritual that I could do, and it turned into a rhythm that elevated me to a rise that created the desired results that I was looking for at the end, because I couldn't get it done myself. I just didn't have it. So I got myself the ritual. So that equals the new normal mindset, which then is not the destination. It's only a plateau by which we grow. So going back to your Olympic analogy, the Latin words for the Olympic motto are sitius, altius, fortius. Those Latin words are not written in the superlative of the word. So in English, it's translated into English as swifter, higher, stronger. They're not the superlative.

It's not swiftest, highest, or strongest. They're written with an ER stem ending, that we can be the swiftest today and be swifter tomorrow. Jump the highest today, jump higher tomorrow. Lift the heaviest weight today, lift heavier weight tomorrow. And so if that's the mindset, then the new normal can never be a destination. It's only the plateau by which we grow. If Olympians and Paralympians are training four years from today, the way they're training

today, they've already lost the gold medal. So that's what we have to look at, I think, as individuals. And so that's how I define the new normal mindset. I love it. Well, I think that the power of it is, you're right, that so many people say, I wish it was the way it used to be, right? But that's impossible. And I love the idea of like everyday occurrence of thoughts and actions, building the routines to help you succeed. How might you tell us and everyone listening, how do we use this new normal mindset every day to be the best version of ourselves?

I think it begins with the honest assessment. And the honest assessment comes, I call it begins with the honest assessment. And the honest assessment comes, I call it, in the transitional moment. So we talked a little bit about the reckoning moment where we don't get things back. And when we realize that, that's our graduation from the reckoning moment, that we don't get it back. So once I realize that, now I'm free to go into the transformation moment, the transition and that trans transformational moment ends with a hurdle. It ends with a jump. Um, and it's in the jump is a commitment. So I have a hurdle coach. I just met with him, you know, a few days ago and, and,

uh, every, he was my, one of the best hurdle coaches. He still is one of the best hurdle coaches in the, in the country. Uh, but all the hurdles that he taught me and all the things he taught me how to run hurdles with and putting that mindset together to run the country. But all the hurdles that he taught me and all the things he taught me how to run hurdles with and putting that mindset together to run the hurdles, he never ran a race for me. Yeah. So it's up to the individual to run the hurdle, to build the momentum, to get the tools they need to actually attack the hurdle that's in front of them, the individual. And so this is where I do my work because there's so many people that deal with teams. Teams are great.

There's so many people that deal with the after effects and how to move afterwards. I deal with, right, are you going to make the jump? If you do, if you don't, you're usually dealing with justification, justifying to yourself and justifying to others why you were not courageous enough to make the jump that you know you needed to make to the vision that you need to have. So in that moment to answer your question on how do we use this every day is the assessment begins with having your truth outweigh your fear. Because when your truth outweighs your fear, you will commit to a courageous life. You'll commit to courageous acts. But we usually don't because we're held back by two things. Other people, other people believing for us what we

can or cannot do, which is based on what they believe they could or could not do if they were in our situation. And society, society putting on the pressures and dictates of how we should be how we should live how we should act all those folks that were down there that that horrible shooting that my daughter my granddaughter was supposed to go to that school in uvalde texas my son went to the texas southwest texas junior college they all came out big, brass, big old cowboy hats on. And as soon as we found out that they didn't go in and try to stop that, cowboy hats were off. Does that tell us something? Right?

Are we paying attention or are we just going to what other people are doing, other people are saying, what society is dictating. And then once we understand that, is it our responsibility, no matter if we're going to be ostracized or left behind or not be in a place of belonging with those other people that either had the hats on or hats off, right? If we go a different direction, do we have the courage to do it? Yeah. And that's the issue right or do we maslow said uh underneath maslow's hierarchy of needs right the first line of um of of the needs was the uh food shelter clothing and all that right underneath that is belonging yes and so if i don't feel as if i belong i will tear stuff down to fit in just so i'm not ostracized. So it's really hard to make that commitment to jump that hurdle when you have other people that I might not be invited to the picnic anymore,

or I might be the talk of the barbershop or beauty shop. How could you do that? How could you, right? So that is the hard part. We don't want to feel as if we do not belong. If we do make the jump, when we do make the commitment and on our backs against the wall, we know we've made a commitment because we can't get back the choice that we just made. I made the choice to amputate my leg. I cannot unmake that choice once the doctor cuts my leg off. So when you cannot unmake the choice, that's when you've made the commitment. So when you cannot unmake the choice, that's when you've made the commitment. So would you say these are the three steps then to have a normal mindset is the reckoning is the first step. And I'm hearing in that step is like acceptance of what's

happened. Right. And then the next one is transformation where you're making the commitment to get over the hurdle or whatever the hurdle is for you, that type of adversity, right? You're making a commitment to move forward. What's the third step? So that equals, I will put acceptance plus the transformation equals the new normal mindset. So now there's work that you have to do inside of the new normal mindset, because just because you made the commitment doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Now I made it over here. No, we started, we started the rebirth because the rebirth is extremely hard.

Those two phases, the jump and then the rebirth, extremely hard because now that you've amputated whatever that fear was and your back's against the wall, you have to move forward. You now have to unlearn. I know you really can't unlearn stuff, but you got to unlearn for our conversation today, what was already in that noodle of yours and begin to put in new inputs, new information to get a different output going. That normal, normalcy of mindset has to move forward. What are the new rituals you have to put in place because we know through, you know, brain science that our synapses lock in at a certain age and some type of trauma has to unlock them to actually get put in new inputs for it. So if that's the case, then what are the new inputs that you have to put into

your mindset? For me, it wasn't, you know, when I was in the hospital bed, it wasn't looking at the Paralympic Games. I'm going to be a great Paralympic athlete now. No, it was standing. How am I going to stand up on a good leg for 15 seconds? Can I stand up now for 30 seconds? Can I get to a minute without shaking and have him sit down? Can I manipulate my wheelchair to a prosthetic appointment? How do I put on this prosthetic leg? How do I walk between these parallel bars and walk with balance? And now balance from there to the four bar walker, walker to crutches, crutches to a cane, cane to free walking, free walking to swimming, swimming to running, running to jumping, jumping to a Paralympic medal. That process took six and a half years.

Wow. We want it right now just because we made a commitment. I made a commitment. I'm ready to go. Sign me up. I can be the coach now. I can be the speaker. No, you got some work to do. And it takes time. One of the things I heard in the example that you just gave us was that you were every day choosing the new normal mindset, like every day moving past your obstacle, whatever that might have been, standing for one minute without shaking. And then the next day, like you kept on moving past that hurdle. And I think how that's so important

because people stop growing. And I think about the topic of the title of the podcast is having the high performance mindset. And I think that means moving towards your own future with courage and facing the obstacles instead of like wishing it wasn't there or ignoring the obstacles. What,

what other ways do you, besides like in your own life, what are the ways do you see people using the new normal mindset and how has it helped them? I see people using it most recently in masterminds. And, you know, if you look at Napoleon Hill and in the kind of the Andrew Carnegie and those, they always point back to actually saying

the first mastermind was Jesus and the disciples. That's what they point back to. And that's in a different book that he wrote. But when you look at masterminding, right, it's people that have alike goals, but not necessarily in the same industry. So they begin kind of pushing ideas against each other to help them cover their blind spots of what they cannot see, and then holding each other accountable for the next day. One of the challenges I often will do with groups is at the end of our presentation, maybe I'm the closing speaker, and I'll say, you learned a lot of information here today or yesterday or

the course of our time together. What's one idea that you have that you know you need to implement? I said, you can't, and you're not going to get done before the end of the week. So just put that off the table. So, but you can do one step towards it. And I believe you can do one step for towards it tomorrow by 10 o'clock.

So maybe you got to call somebody or maybe whatever it is, you know, whatever the one step is that you can make towards it to begin the process, do it before 10 o'clock tomorrow. Then I say, who's going to hold you accountable? And usually somebody always says, I'm going to hold myself

accountable. I said, no, you're not. You're not going to hold yourself because something's going to come on your plate. It's going to push it off the plate. It happens to me all the time. So you need an accountability partner. And so I have them find an accountability partner right in that room. And I have them now put their telephone number in your phone. This can be used as a phone too. You're not going to text them. You're not going to email them. You're going to pick up the phone and call them at 10 o'clock,

whatever the time zone is, your time, whatever time you decide. 10 o'clock is, you know, but it's just an example. So at 10 o'clock, you're going to give them a call. And ask them a question. How far did you get on? Did you accomplish what it was? And you should see people squirming back up on the commitments that they know they need to make. Yeah.

It is hard. So you start going to, I don't know what my boss is going to think about that. What do I do? I mean, I had to run this by. You know that's the right thing to do. Do it. Get it done. And I'm not saying that as preaching.

I'm saying that this is something I have to do constantly myself, like you're saying, with the hurdles. It's over and over again. A flight of hurdles is 10 hurdles in a hurdle race. So it's just not one time you're doing it. You're doing it over and over. And then that set is done. That race is done. You go back and you do another race.

And you go back and you do another race, another flight of 10. So that is, you know, that's what I say. And it's not easy. It's hard. I'm trying to do a professional speaker class for the inspirational speaker only, only the inspirational speaker. And the challenge becomes, I see all these coaches out there that say they're going to get you a class, I'm not class, but they're going to get you an event, they're going to get you a speech. I said, are they going to do that for the rest of your life? They're going to do the work for you

to get you this? We're going to teach you how to go get the class or get your first speech. No, I'll give you a roadmap. That's your work. That's your work. It's not my work. I know how to do this. I've done it. I have a breadth of work, a certified speaking professional designation that say that I've done the work, which only 70% of the people in the world have that designation. What I'm going to do with that is say, I'm going to teach you exactly how to do this. And I don't want anybody to come in there. I only want the serious folks. I don't have time to work with anybody else.

That's just half-stepping. Go to somebody else. If you want to get this real done, you're going to come here and you going to hit that that trans transformation moment and you're going to make a decision whether or not you're going to make this thing work and i'm not going to get you one i'm not going to get you one speech i'll guarantee you that right well i think you're on to something i think that we tend to look for the easy route many times and we let fear, you know, I think you said something really powerful, like choosing truth over fear. And John, I know one of the things that you speak on is like how you amputated your fear of your disability. And tell us a bit about

like, what did you learn about fear? And what did you learn about yourself like going through that? So when I talk about the fear, I'm not saying that fear is not that we have a fight or flight. Right. So if there's a snake and there's a poisonous snake, you want to run. You want to. That's I'm not talking about that type of fear. I'm talking about the immobilization of going towards a dream or an obstacle that you know that you need to do. Let me be very specific about that or or or an opportunity that you know that you need to do. Let me be very specific about that. Or an opportunity that might be before you and you just don't open the door for that opportunity to be there. The discovery I made, not necessarily in fear, but of what I actually overcame, came when I was about to bail out of a TEDx I was invited to speak for, because they

said I had a new thought, a new idea. I was like, I don't have anything. I have nothing. And so I was really about to call the curator and say, this was like three days before the presentation. I was like, I don't got it. I'm out. So I was sitting there talking to a friend of mine at a coffee shop and I was telling the story. I'm like, I don't, I don't got it. You know, this is nothing. I, this is, this is, I'm just not gonna do my speech because the speech, even though it's this decent, it's not the new thought that's there. It's not electrifying. It's not there yet. It's not the, the, the, the lightning in a bottle. Right.

And I realized that I knew that. And so, yeah, I'm doing it, but I'm trying to hone. I'm trying to find the voice. Yeah. And then he said, well, you know. Well, I said to him, you know, he asked me a question about my amputation. He said, because you did overcome that adversity. And then I said, you know, had I overcome the amputation of my left leg, you know, I'd have my leg back. And he said, oh. right. And that was it. That was the first thread. Wow. That was the first thread. And I said, there's something there. There's something with that. And what it baked out to be is what we kind of been talking about this whole time is that we have these moments and we're desiring, we think what we're overcoming is the actual event that happened in our lives. And it's not the event. It's our mindset around the event and how

we achieved or did not achieve with the choices that we were making towards that event that happened in our lives. Somebody has been through a divorce. Somebody lost a parent. Somebody, their pet just died. We're lost a parent. Somebody, their pet just died. We're on a boat with a woman whose pet just died. And so they're having an emotional experience because the attachment that they had to that individual experience, but they're not reliving that experience over and over. That experience is gone. It's past. It's a past state. My mother's death is past. So what I'm dealing with now is the remnants of that and how my memory of that experience or the mental capacity I have has to move forward. So what's holding me back? I have

to be honest with myself on some of those things. And that's where my truth comes into play. I can drown myself on my cell device and work and not deal with it. I can find, this is water in this cup, but you get coffee, overdose on caffeine, or you can overdose on some type of drug. You can do anything. You can do anything to negate what it is that the truth is that you have to reckon and deal with. And that's why I say, when your truth outweighs your fear, you'll commit to the courageous life. That is huge because that again, it goes to the individual. And yes, sometimes we need help. We need somebody to

bring that out of us, maybe professional help to help us get through those moments to get to that other side, to make that commitment and choice to ourselves. Thank you. Well, and you said something super powerful that I want to go back to. And you said, like, it's not the actual event. It's our mindset around the event. And I think how true that is, no matter what we're going through, it's like our own thoughts about the event, how we're creating meaning around the event.

What's our self-talk around the event, right? And I'm curious, I know when you're speaking about overcoming obstacles, you have these 10 power words. And I was thinking that that might help the audience really think about how are they talking to themselves? How are they creating meaning around the event? Whatever that hurdle is in their life, right? It could be something related to growing their business. It could be something at work. It could be a hurdle related to their family, right? Like what's the best way that we should talk to ourselves so that we can accept the hurdle? Because that's what I heard as part of your new normal mindset is like, accept the hurdle because that's what I heard as part of your new normal mindset is like accept

the hurdle be willing to move towards the hurdle and like you know the transformation and continually doing that throughout our lives yeah you know I you know I have these these I try to put things in little acronyms that I can remember. And then sometimes they work for somebody else. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But it's usually something that I'm struggling with. And then there's, as I'm doing my daily works or walks or bike ride or swim, I'll get a vision of something and I'll stop and I'll just kind of write it down real quick and I'll go back to what I'm doing. And what happened in this case was people were throwing around the word resilience a lot with not really understanding that it's a resilience is like a muscle, right?

You have to exercise it. And if you don't exercise it, it atrophies. So we have to, it has to hypertrophy. So you got to build the muscle. You got to strengthen the muscle. And one of the things that I developed these 10 power words that it's, these are my power words, 10, you can get your own, right? You don't have to just get your own words.

I don't want people to miss the message just because of these words. I want them to think about what drives me, what pushes me forward. And so at this particular point in time, there were these 10 words that came, which were all on the word resilience. And the first thing I noticed of these 10, because there's 10 hurdles in a hurdle race, 10 letters in the word resilience. I like it. So we got that. And then the other thing is, Sindra, is when the starter calls everybody to the start, the announcer will say quiet for the start and embedded in those 10 words of

the word resilience is the word silence. So hearing your own voice first, being quiet, getting yourself in a place where you can actually listen and hear. So here's the first one. So resilience. I have the three R's. The three R's are, we've talked about them, the ritual, rhythm, and rise, right? Those are the kind of three R's. So that's the first. And then E is endurance. So you have to make yourself ready for the long haul. S is silence. Be silent. Remember, inside the word

resilience is the word silence. I is ingenuity. Can you be creative? What's your inventiveness? What's your imagination? Then you listen and learn. There's no particular order either, but these are for me, right? I've got to listen and learn. So when do I look inward and when do I get an outside voice to listen to, to actually hear what I need to. I, the next I is intensity. I need to be powerful, forceful, with vigor, not just lazadazical and doing these things. And I have to be engaged. That's the E of it. Immerse yourself fully and totally in the process. N comes from the Arkansas Razorbacks, never yield. That's one of our mantras of never yielding. There'll be times when you want to turn back and you never yield. You continue to press

forward. I call these sometimes plus one days. What is what you're going to do that your competitor won't do on this day to get the competitive advantage over them? C is courage, grow and grow in our character and what we commit to the courageous acts through our truth. Elevate and evolve is the last ones. So move you to a higher position, a higher plane, evolve, not be the same person that you were yesterday, that you are today, that you will become tomorrow. Move to your new normal mindset. So that's kind of what helps me with my 10 words that are off the word resilience. You can get your own 10 words. You do not have to use my 10 words. You don't need 10 words. Maybe

it's three for you. Maybe it's 12 for you. Maybe it's 15. Maybe it's eight. I don't know. But there should be something that you can just draw upon that pushes you forward when you need that extra, that gumption or that push that you need, that grit that you need. Yeah. I think all those words are really powerful. And I think about the importance of what we're telling ourselves shapes the way that we experience the situation or the world, right? And even pre-planning some of these thoughts, when I face adversity, I'm going to tap into my three words, whatever those three words might be. If it's endurance or silence or courage or evolve, I like them all. And I like the importance of choosing your own words to help you keep going.

John, I know you have a book called 10 Powerful Stories to Impact Any Leader. Tell us a bit about where we can find that book and where we can purchase it and tell us a little bit about the book so people can learn more about what you have written. trip to Dubai and I was speaking for our United States government on behalf of our U.S. government. And I guess the work I did was good. So I get a call from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and I've been with three other secretaries of state before, both administrations, you know. And he says, I have a, or his aide said, I have a dinner for all of the Chargé d'Affaires and the ambassadors. They're coming into Washington, D.C. We'll be in the Ben Franklin room. We just got rid of our other speaker, and we want you to become the speaker for the event. I said, that's cool.

I was amazed at who I displaced. I was like, what? I'm not going to say it. But I was blown away I was amazed, like who I displaced, like what? I'm not going to say it, but I was like blown away. Like, holy cow. I will say it was a Superbowl NFL champ coach champion that I, so that was one that was crazy. So, so I was like, well, why do, why do you want me to come in?

Cause they wanted me to talk about coaching. I was like, I think that person would be a better person on coaching than me. And so what happened was I recognized pretty early that this was the beginning of COVID. We didn't know what was going on at this point in time. So just take yourself back to there. But we did know, our ambassadors started to know because their countries were really, the people in those countries were really getting sick. They were falling out and some folks were dying and the rates were jumping really quickly, right? So it hadn't hit the United States yet. But what had happened was it was in those smaller countries

and they were losing multiple people of their populations and they didn't know how to really manage that situation. So what I did was I said, you all need a story to tell. You got to have some type of story to get your staff on board with who you are. And so out of that was birthed 10 power stories to impact any leader, journal your way to leadership success. And it was written only with the thought of, let me just give you 10 stories that I usually don't tell in a keynote address, the lessons I learned from it.

And then I know there's a thought that came to you as you read that little quick little story that you can now, let me teach you how to build a quick little story that you can go into your group and whatever that group is and share that story with the story that you came up with after you read the book, right? So you should have, after you read 10 of my stories, you should have 10 of your own stories. And now I've taught you how to kind of put them into a bucket. And now you can, when the trauma happens, you can have those stories. You don't need to call me to come in. I had a great boss told me, always work yourself out of a job. So yeah, I'd love to go travel the world and do it, but I want you, I don't want to

have to wait to get on a plane to go do it when you have a story right there that can get your people through. So that's why I wrote that book. And it's on Kindle. You can just find it on Kindle, Tim Power Stores and Packing Leader. You know, buy it. It's like three bucks or something. It's easy. We're going to put it into a paperback. We're actually working on it right now. I think we're going to probably price it about $10, $15. I don't know, something like that. And I think it's not a novel, folks. It's just a help book, right? You get it. It's an easy read. You just get it and you just follow the instructions. But what I know, whenever I offer that or have somebody say, call me, no one usually does. So I just keep putting it out there because we don't take the jumps we know we needed to make.

So that's what I'll say about that. Excellent. Wonderful. And if people want to learn more about your speaking and the other things you offer, tell us how we can follow along with you. And I know you have an awesome website. So just tell us a little bit about that. Well, thank you. Yeah, we're going to kind of blow the website, not really blow it up.

The website is very functional. So if you're like a meeting professional, meeting planner that's out there, there's a page dedicated just to you that shows you how, you know, kind of a little bit of what I do. And then we give you everything you need to make your event successful. You don't have to come back to me. You just do it, right? You can just make it happen. And then there is for the media folks, we have some media stuff that's on there for you. So what are some questions that you might, but would be good for me to, for you to ask me,

or maybe I ask you as we, you know, do our little podcast as well. The other stuff is just around there to kind of give testimony of, you know, who has used me in the past on the website, which is johnregister.com, johnregister.com. And if you go on there, you're going to get some video, you're going to get some, you know, some social proof, some, you know, just, just whatever. And just, it's only that it's, I'm not trying to sell on there to, to, to, I'm trying to really be of service so that you can make a decision quickly. If I'm the right person, great. If I'm not, let me help you find the right person.

That's, I know a lot of speakers that are out there. And then we do have a, we're just beginning our coaching session. I said I would train the inspirational speaker. There's a huge difference, I think, between inspiration and motivational speaker. Inspiration is the one that the person that breathes life into someone and you never need to come back to them again because you have life in you. The motivational speaker is more that you just kind of like the, you know, what I love Chinese food and I love, you know, Asian food, but usually after I eat it about three hours later, I'm hungry again.

I got to go back to the source to get some more food. So that's kind of like the motivational speaker, which is needed. It's great. That person is awesome. But I'm just giving you the difference between the two. I'm the one, they're like the car you jump into and you got to pop the clutch and get the car going. And then you got to do it every time you got to restart it. The inspirational speaker is the one that comes from the word inspiro, to breathe life into. And that's what we're doing. We are breathing life into your business, into your opportunities. And so that's the difference if you're going to choose

Inspired Communications and myself. We talk about the go forth, inspire your world because go is your command, forth is your direction, inspire is your vocation, your because only you can do this work and world because it's your sphere of influence. Awesome. So if you want to learn more about becoming an inspirational speaker, you need to go to johnregister.com. And your book, which you just mentioned, can be found on Kindle, 10 Power Stories to Impact Any Leader. John, when I think about what I got from our conversation today, I appreciated your new normal mindset equation, right? Like the reckoning plus transformation, or you said acceptance plus kind of the commitment to moving past the obstacle is a new mindset and new normal mindset. And I

loved how the example that you gave of when you were in rehab, right? And just continuing how you use the new normal mindset. I really liked how you said, like, it's not the actual event, it's the mindset around the event that creates our experiences. And your 10 powerful words really help us better understand what are we thinking about

related to our own hurdles in our life. So thank you so much for joining us. I'm so grateful to learn more about your message and thanks so much for impacting so many people today on this podcast. What kind of final thoughts or advice would you have to people who are listening? Thanks for the questions today. I enjoyed being on with you and to hear from you and hear your thoughts and the way that you do your interviews. I'm learning already how you're just gifting back the words that I spoke. So I think that's is the catalyst to motivation. Motivation in turn causes actions. Actions lead us to transformational results.

And those results, they re-inspire us or they allow someone else that's watching the process to catch their vision. And so for the audience that's listening out there, remember that you are the inspiration and the inspiration is the breath, the life that goes into somebody. And when somebody's life is done like that, the ripples will go out. And so you don't have to worry about the ripples that come out. But every once in a while, an echo will come back. And the echo moments are what I measure our company's success by. It's not about really the revenue dollars. The revenue dollars will follow if I do everything right the first time. And so the echo moments are when someone comes back who

has never maybe heard me speak and will come back and say, your speech changed my life because I heard it through somebody else. And that course corrects me to say, I'm either doing it right, or I need to make a course correction to get back on the path. So listen for your echo moments that are out there, people that are telling you that you are on the right path and continue to inspire your world. I love it. And thanks for the echo moments today and inspiring all of us through your words. So thank you so much, John. Absolutely.

Thank you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.