Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Scott Simon and John R. Miles on Navigating the Journey to Becoming Your Ideal Self EP 414

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on Passionstruck. You wrote in the book, a coming Passionstruck isn't a destination. It is the never-ending pursuit of harnessing all that you are in service of realizing your best self, so you can help to elevate the bar for the rest of humanity. Welcome to Passionstruck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles.

Starting point is 00:00:21 On the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passionstruck.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Hello, friends. Welcome back to episode 414 of Passionstruck, the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn and discover new ways to live better, be better, and make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this for a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.

Starting point is 00:01:23 We have episode starter packs for collections of our fans, and we organize a convenient playlist that gives any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or CashionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And in case you missed it, earlier in the week we had two fantastic interviews. We kicked it off by welcoming Angela Duckworth, the number one New York Times best-selling author of GRIP. Herosely Nager Ching, professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Angela joined me to help launch my new book, Passion Struck. And we discuss GRIP, self-control, personal agency, and tensionality, as well as she gives a sneak peek about her upcoming book.

Starting point is 00:01:59 I also interviewed Forrest Galante, the executive producer and host of Shark Week, known as the modern-day Charles Darwin, forced dedication to wildlife biology and conservation. It's not just about adventure. It's about making a significant impact on global conservation efforts and changing the way we view the natural world. Please check both of those out. And I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. If you love today's episode or either of those others, we would appreciate you giving it

Starting point is 00:02:24 a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. In today's Momentum Friday episode, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude for the overwhelming support during my book launch earlier this week. We celebrated that official launch on Tuesday evening, hosted by my dear friend Scott Simon, a remarkable entrepreneur, author, and founder of the Scare Your Soul Purge Movement. Scott guided me through a series of insightful questions

Starting point is 00:02:50 about the book, and I've decided to share that enlightening interview in today's episode. We'll delve deep into the book's fundamental principles and explore Scott's personal insights and takeaways. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me, to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

Starting point is 00:03:10 So good evening, everybody. My name is Scott Simon. I am the founder of a courage movement called Scarier Soul. And I am so honored to be with you and to welcome you to this very special event, a book launch for John R. Myles. Passion struck. I first met John after the launch of my own book, Scare Your Soul. It was that first frenzied week after the pub date where I was doing interview after interview and podcast after podcast and getting emails from my agent. And she finally picked up the phone and actually called me and said the following, I want you to be on the passion struck podcast. It is outrageously successful and impactful. And you have to meet this host, John R. Miles. So I did some review of what John was doing and familiarized myself with it, and I have to say that he completely blew my mind. This was somebody who was literally

Starting point is 00:04:16 interviewing the best of the best, the people that make our world vibrant and purposeful and resilient and engaging. And when we finally met and had the podcast together, he was next level curious. And our conversation ranged from stories to ideas and mutual loves of human potential. And in that conversation, it became a game changer for me and my own career sandwiched in between Seth Godin and Marshall Goldsmith not bad the episode brought sunlight to my own ideas and truly shepherded by John and his curiosity So when he told me that he was writing his own book, I was thrilled

Starting point is 00:04:58 Not just for myself, but for you and for the world People started to notice John's ideas when he started to put them out. For example, Seth Godin said, "'John R. Miles reminds us that we can lead and contribute with intention if we choose.'" Chris Carr said, "'This book will ignite a fire in your belly.'"

Starting point is 00:05:21 So true. And Marshall Goldsmith said, "'Passionstruck is a transformative book that empowers individuals to unlock their purpose, find fulfillment, and create the life they've always desired. Awards started to roll in the next big idea book club February 24, must read books included, passion struck. The curators of that award are no less than, by the way, Susan Kane, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Yes, great company. And the book is already winner of the Best Business Minds Book Award for 2024. I wanna open up the conversation with John tonight and we'll have time at the end by the way for Q&A if you'd like to join in and ask questions you can also add them into the chat But I'd like to begin talking with John about something he wrote about how this all began for him and John writes I lived what I once thought was a great life and it most certainly was great on the surface.

Starting point is 00:06:26 By all standards, I enjoyed an incredibly successful career. I had achieved my professional goals of becoming a multi-industry CEO, making it to Fortune 500 C suite and a practice leader in a Big 4 consulting firm and a decorated Navy officer. I had earned many awards and recognitions that most would die to have on the resume, and yet something was missing. So John, what was missing, and how did you find it and what did you do? Scott, thank you so much for that fantastic introduction. You're an author too, and I think none of us know

Starting point is 00:07:02 when we put something out in the world how it's going to be received. And I have to tell you, it's quite terrifying in many ways. And two of the first people who ever read this book were Seth Godin and Matt Higgins. And I was so nervous when I sent it to both of them because you got these two best-selling authors. And it turns out, Mr. Seth read it. As you mentioned, he wanted to do the lead endorsement and asked me if he could run the forward to it. So it just gave me that confidence boost that kind of validated that the things that I have in the book were striking a chord.

Starting point is 00:07:37 You asked about how I ended up reading this book and what led me here. And I think our lives take really different paths sometimes than we think that they're going to accomplish. And maybe when I was a kid, never in a million years, I had this dream that I was going to be a business executive. I thought more of being a soldier or being an action hero or things like that. And so when I went into the military and was getting out, my path wasn't to go into the group of world. I had accepted an appointment to the FBI to be a special agent. And at that time, during the Clinton administration, it just so happened

Starting point is 00:08:17 that it was one of the first times in our history that Congress couldn't get their ink together and pass a spending bill. And we're seeing that play out right now, but it had major ramifications for me on the rest of my life. Because three days before my class was supposed to go, it got recycled. And I had no play and be. I mean, who thinks that your ink behind the lens is going to get canceled, not me. And then I used the detailer thinking it would be maybe a week or two before i get recycle to go back in. Any time me it's at least 18 months more likely over three years i did what i would do in that situation i. I did and i ended up getting three job offers and i remember one of them was to be on the assembly line. As a project lead working for Honda. Another one was as a tester working

Starting point is 00:09:09 for WorldCom and the third one was to take this job with this management consulting firm called Booz Allen. We did the three actions transitioning from the military. The consulting one seemed like the best being because we had no idea what to do in the consulting or business world. So I thought it would give me the best meet because I had no idea what to do in the consulting room or business world. So I thought it would give me the best exposure. It's not, I think from there, life takes you on a bike sometimes. I call it a portfolio crew where you end up in this place

Starting point is 00:09:35 that you never expected and then you start leaning into it. And for me, the more I leaned into it, it meant how do I get the next promotion, how do I get the next promotion? How do I get the next advancement? How do I get the accolades, the title, the money, and all those things? And before long, next thing I knew, I'm in this Fortune 50 senior executive finding myself at work, but the internal time, it was as if I felt I was in a master's degree, and I was wearing a mask every day that hid who I authentically was because I had transformed myself into something that I never had in my corner who I wanted to be.

Starting point is 00:10:21 I think the pinnacle of this heat, when I was at transition point, when I was a senior executive at Lowe's going to tell, I just felt this inner sense that something was completely unf... And I started to hear this voice come to me, not a schizophrenic voice, but a voice just saying that, John, you're not following your purpose. You have this calling

Starting point is 00:10:46 where you're supposed to help. And the words I was given was the helpless, the lonely, the bored, the beaten, the broken, the bad, and the little and the abuse. But when you're in this bank and you're an executive and you've got a real company and life ahead of you, when you get this calling that's all the way over in left field, I did what I think most people would do. I ignored it and the more I ignored it, it went from a whisper to a loud tapping on the shoulder to then a kick in the knee to a push in the back to biblical events such as scorpions falling from the ceiling and bed bugs and termite infestations

Starting point is 00:11:26 and floods and other things. It just made me realize that the life I was living, I had built this great service to helping others achieve their goals, but I wasn't working to achieve making my own goals reality. And that's the brutal foundation that I think all this stem from. You know, you and I share this lovely idea that we have this passion inside of us and sometimes it gets covered up and we end up living lives that we think are successful

Starting point is 00:12:02 because society tells us that they are. And then we find ourselves in those moments. And you talk a lot in the book about the concept of intentionality. And I'd like to explore that with you for a minute, if you don't mind. I was really struck by the fact that not only do you bring up Thoreau's great quote, which is the mass of the mass of men lead lives in quiet desperation, which is such a cornerstone of what's happening in the world today. But then you go very deeply into the concept of intentionality. And I think that this, this really is such an evocative part of your book.

Starting point is 00:12:45 And here's what you say in the book. Here's what many people don't understand. The opposite of joy is not unhappiness. The opposite of joy is the lack of intentionality in our lives leading to chronic hopelessness. This state of meaninglessness, akin to nihilism, is a dire condition where the very essence of existence loses all significance. Can you tell us your thoughts about intentionality

Starting point is 00:13:13 when you started to see this as a critical aspect in your life and how did it set the foundation for your thoughts about passionstruck? Yeah, Scott, thanks for opening up with that. That quote from Henry David Thoreau is haunting and it's profound at the same time. And I think the fast paced success driven society that we find ourselves in is becoming just mover and mover, people living in quiet desperation. And before I touch on intentionality, I just wanted to make this real for people because this is exactly what we felt. I felt like I was weighed down by all the burdens of the world

Starting point is 00:13:52 and I was stuck because we find ourselves in a lifestyle that we have to support. We have the burdens of our payments or a mortgage, the lifestyle that we're leading, and it is so difficult to break away from that. And instead, we a mortgage, the lifestyle that we're leading. And it is so difficult to break away from that. And instead, we go inward. And that's exactly what was happening to me. And I found myself in the state of complete empathy and numbness,

Starting point is 00:14:15 like I had never experienced before in my life. And it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone else, which is pretty much the reason I'm trying to teach people how to break through and to not be in this quiet state. I think the statistic's just alarming. If you look at what Gallup has put out in 2021 and 2022, they say that there are 900 million people in 142 countries who are unfulfilled with what they do in life. There is also incredible research coming out of Cornell University led by Tom Gillibich, where he ended up examining thousands of people who were nearly in death and he ended up asking

Starting point is 00:14:54 them what was the greatest thing that they regretted in their lives. 76% of them came back with the same thing. It wasn't the mistakes that they made in life. It was the what is the same thing. It wasn't the mistakes that they made in life. It was the what is the should have. And it was this regret of not living the ideal self, of not trying to become that. And so really to this profound conclusion that just empathy is a choice. Being intentional about where we direct our lives is a choice. And this whole concept of attentionality really took on meaning for me because I'm a big fan of Angela

Starting point is 00:15:29 Duckworth's work, so ecstatic that she helped me actually launch the book today in an episode of Passionstarch that was incredible to have someone I admire so much on the show. And I remember reading her book and her talking about cadets at West Point and how it was through passion, perseverance, and physical ability that they say that these cadets graduated. And I thought about that and being a midshipman at the Naval Academy, which was a very similar experience, something to me at Dimension was missing. I learned that you can have all the passion of perseverance and physical ability that you

Starting point is 00:16:11 want in life, but if you're not derailting it in alignment to your aspirations, your core values, and your ambitions, then you're going to find yourself stuck or in places that are leading you to where you want to go. And intentionality, to me, really comes down to the choices that we make every single day. We get to make 60 to 90,000 decisions and so many of them we end up doing on repeat. We find ourselves stuck in these lives of idiotity and being intentional is really aligning those choices or those actions with the ambitions and with the aspirations that we wanted life. And to me, that's why it's so profound. I think part of the wonderful nature of your book is the rich number of stories from luminaries, academics, theologians, thought leaders that you use to great effect in the book.

Starting point is 00:17:05 And in talking about this, it reminds me of a story that you told about Mark Benioff, who had had a storied career at a very young age at Oracle and elsewhere, and then made a very serious left turn in his life. Can you describe that story and why that has something to do with the choices that we make about what really means something in our lives? I have known Mark at this point for over 20 years. I originally met him when he was a vice president at WarCult, and I was a vice president at Lowe's and we were working on the solution to be the home contractor of choice for everyone in America. And as we were starting the pilot projects, we were using Oracle and some other tools to do it. And a little bit after that, he ended up leaving Oracle, which was pretty remarkable because he was the golden child. People thought he was going to replace Larry Ellison.

Starting point is 00:18:05 because he was the golden child. People thought he was going to replace Larry Ellison. I think he made vice president by the time he was in his mid to late 20s. He asked Larry if he could go on a civilian call. I think when he was 31 or 32. I think he had reached a state that I had reached. I think he was facing quiet desperation. His career, although it was on fire, he didn't feel fulfilled by what he was doing. He really took a year off and got deeply immense into mindfulness practices and started exploring everything that he could about what is broken in the software industry. One day, as he tells it, he was swimming with dolphins. When this idea came to him, that on-premise software, which was what everyone was using at that time,

Starting point is 00:18:52 meaning running software in your own data center, was something that could be disrupted and there was another way of doing it by offering software as a service. So he found that to be his life calling. Re-enter me, again again now at a different point in my time at Lowe's. We are now one of the first Fortune 50 companies actually using Salesforce and I reinvigorate my life with Mark and he notes to me he lived right down

Starting point is 00:19:22 the street from Michael Dell in Hawaii, and the two of them were having a conversation. Michael signed a deal to implement Salesforce, and he asked Merck, who would be the person that you would recommend to lead this turn, Virginia. He mentions me. So, it led me to go into Dell. And the deal was that when I went to Dell and was implementing this, Mark asked Michael if he could remember me to go on a series of talks throughout the world

Starting point is 00:19:49 to talk about this revolution of cloud computing. And Scott, I just have to tell you, we sometimes were at a dental with four or five CIOs. All of them telling us that Mark's idea was full of crap and it would never go anywhere. Sometimes we're in front of 10,000 people speaking on a stage. But the thing that just never left my mind was just how passionate he was about the pursuit of this problem. And he was never going to let anything get in the way. He was willing to risk it on whether that meant reputation risk, whether that meant financial risk, whether that meant people telling him he

Starting point is 00:20:30 was crazy. He was so convinced that he had this problem that was worth solving, that he was willing to pursue it to the ends of Earth. My journey from the state of quiet desperation to rebuilding it. I'll bring it. I just need to think about what was that, oh, that work out, what made him different? What made him go from being stuck to the state he was in? And I happened to be talking to another long-term friend, Keith Crutch, who's the former chairman and CEO of DocuSign.

Starting point is 00:21:01 And I was explaining this concept to him and Keith goes, John, what it sounds like is you're talking about someone who's stuck in their life, and they become fascist from it. And the light bulb just hit. If you use that example of Merck Benioff, he filled so many of the qualities that will bring to life in this book.

Starting point is 00:21:19 So thank you for bringing that up. Your stories about Katie Milkman and Angela Duckworth in creating this idea of intentionality and how that was birth was these are just priceless stories and the book is so incredibly full of them. I want to talk just for a moment. We've now introduced the term of passion struck. I don't want to let it get past us without hearing your views on what that really means to you, what it means to lead a passion struck life. You wrote in the book, a coming passion struck isn't a destination. It is the never ending pursuit of harnessing all that

Starting point is 00:21:57 you are in service of realizing your best self so that you can help to elevate the bar for the rest of humanity. Now, I know that you and I are very service focused people. We believe very strongly that our destiny and our goal in life is to leverage who we are to serve others. But tell us more about what passion struck really means to you now that you have delved so deeply in it and do it every single day of your life. What is leading a passion-struck life? With a quote by Sharon Salzberg. If people aren't familiar with Sharon, next to the Dalai Lama, she is probably one of the most recognized authors and prolific people around mindfulness and what that means in our lives. She has this quote that I love that I'm going to read.

Starting point is 00:22:47 She says, there's no commodity we can take with us. There's only our lives, whether we live them wisely or whether we live them in ignorance. And this is everything. And to me, that quote and what it means to be passion-struck correlates so well because being passion-struck is really choosing to live your life wisely. It's this inexplicable drive to mold your life in the pursuit of becoming your ideal self. And if people aren't familiar with it, there's something called self-discrepancy theory that has three states in it. There's your actual self, which is who we are in our immediate sense. There's a lot of self, which is who we think we should be because of the burdens and societal expectations that are thrown on us. And then it's our ideal self, who we could become. And I think so many of us end up living,

Starting point is 00:23:45 we're life chasing our lot self instead of chasing our ideal self. And that's the core difference about what it means to become passion stroke. It's this, it's undertaking transformative mind-sinten behavior shifts that are required to achieve this state. It's not just about what we do or aim to accomplish, it's fundamentally rewiring how we think, feel, and it's a back-transcendent or conventional achievements to focus on a higher purpose, a purpose that is inextricably linked to one's core identity and values. And to me, that's really what differentiates individuals like

Starting point is 00:24:26 Merck Benioff, Oprah Winfrey, Novak Yilkevich, astronaut Chris Cassidy, Dwayne The Rock Johnson and others that I grew file in the book, because they have not just reached the pinnacle of success on the respective fields, they've shaped their lives to mirror their innermost values and aspirations. And it's a relentless pursuit of personal mastery, where success for them isn't the destination but a byproduct of the master stroke life. So with that, why don't we delve into the book itself and we'll talk a little bit about, first of all, how the book is structured. How did you decide to focus on mindset shifts, behavior shifts, and the psychology of progress? How was that decision made?

Starting point is 00:25:14 And how did you lay out the book in a way that you thought would make the most sense to the reader? I actually started thinking about this concept at this point about nine years ago. I started thinking about this concept at this point about nine years ago. As I was trying to do research on how to build my life back, I started to think about these exemplars that I just mentioned and what separates them from the rest of us. If I could rebuild my life brick by brick, how do I do it? I'm doing it more in alignment with the knot that they took. What started as me examining five, ten individuals over seven years turned into researching about 750 of them. As I was doing this, I started to see certain patterns in religion. It originally

Starting point is 00:25:59 started with about 30 different things that I saw. But as I really looked at more and more people, I was able to narrow it down initially to 11 principles, and then late in the game, I added a 12th one, which we'll talk about later. But ironically, during the same period of me search, I also started to get very deep into my own mindfulness prudence and into studying psychology and behavior science and disciplines of alternative health. As I was looking at these different principles, it was removable that they each

Starting point is 00:26:33 and in coordinating to behavior science or to psychology. And it turns out that they equated to six shifts in mindset and six shifts in behavior. And let me just go through this a little bit because your mindset shifts are the first step where transformation begins. And to me, mindset is extremely important because it molds our beliefs and our values

Starting point is 00:27:02 and it clarifies, well, in human why and influences how we approach challenges and opportunities. And then that behavior shifts come into play because once a mindset gets recalibrated. The next logical progression is to do shifts in behavior. And this is where perseverance becomes so crucial, because our behavior is the what. It's the direct reflection of our mindset dictating how we act in pursuit of our goals. And then the way that I brought this all together is if you have those two things, nothing is going to happen without deliberate motion underneath them, fueled by intrinsic motivation. And so that became really the four components of the book.

Starting point is 00:27:48 It's arranged into three sections, mindset shifts, behavior shifts, those 12 make up the Asheshark framework, and then the psychology of progress, which is really this combination of intrinsic motivation, deliberate action, and an overall sense of momentum in our lives. I love these shifts, and they're all, they all have spectacular descriptors, the mission angler, the brand reinventer, the fear confronter, the perspective harnesser, the action creator. These are the mindset shifts.

Starting point is 00:28:23 But I'd like to focus on one, and you and I have talked about the fact that the mosquito auditor, it really requires and engenders this significant mindset shift. I absolutely loved this chapter. It begins with a question or something you had seen on television where someone had asked what the most dangerous animal was. And it one oftentimes thinks of a shark, for example, as being the most dangerous creature on earth. It's very much not that. Can you describe what you learned about mosquitoes and how that relates to the concept of the mosquito auditor?

Starting point is 00:28:59 Yes, sir, Scott. So as I was approaching this chapter, I was thinking about the framework on how you build your life. And the first principle that I talk about is something called a mission angler, which is all about when you become a life crumpler. The second principle is about why do you constantly reinvent yourself, something I call brand reinventer. So if you think that you've now figured out this path you want to take to becoming your ideal self, and you're going down the path of reinventing yourself, what's the first thing that's likely going to happen? You're just showing up very differently in the environments that you find yourself in and in the people who surround you, and they're going to see something that's different. The way to look at this is something that Jonah Berger calls invisible influences.

Starting point is 00:29:48 And so I was pondering, what do I do with this chapter? And I was on this walk. I happened to turn on, as you mentioned, a program and the announcer came on and said, we're just the most dangerous animal on the planet. And he asked everyone to comment on it. And the audience was coming back like you said with sharks or snakes or spaters or jellyfish and it wasn't even remotely close. The mosquito kills more people in a year than all the sharks put together will kill in

Starting point is 00:30:18 a hundred years. It was standing like a hundred and like 1.5 to 2 million people per year. And yet when we think about the mosquito, especially since I lived down here in Florida where we have a ton of them, they're almost invisible. I mean, a lot of times we didn't even notice they're there until they bite us or there are new scents and we hurt them buzzing, but we just swat them away. And I couldn't be thinking that the same is true for the human mosquitoes who quickly treat our lives. And I just want to make the contrast because you brought up shoots.

Starting point is 00:30:53 And to me, I introduced this in the book because we think that the sharks are these dangerous animals. Well, if you think of shows like Shark Tank and Matt Higgins who is a shoo, they're often the mentors that we have in our lives and they're the people who show up helping us. Whereas these mosquitoes are typically influences and environments people who are driving us away from the very ambitions and aspirations that we have. I would do this in a fun way and so I came up

Starting point is 00:31:23 with three different names for these. There are more mosquitoes than this, but I wanted to at least give the reader a starting point. And I define them as the blood sucker, the invisible suffocator, and the peat. And so the blood sucker, you can think, as Terry Cole, my friend, likes to point out that they're angry destroyers. These people just want to dry out every bit of blood that they can. They ignore your professional and personal boundaries. They make intrusive demands of your time. They question your decisions. They give you unsolicited advice that leaves you feeling undermined and disrespected.

Starting point is 00:32:00 I think we can all relate to those. The invisible significator are those pessimists in our life who engage in constant complaining, which can dampen the mood and morale in a team environment or destroy the dynamics of a friend group or family situation. This is like the aunt or uncle who's at the family meal where you tell them you've got this great young opportunity, can only tell you about the negative things that are going to come with pursuing it. And then the penis, you sometimes refer to as pieces of work. I refer to them as pain in the asses.

Starting point is 00:32:32 But these are those people who thrive on drama and conflict. They instigate disputes, they gossip, they create tension and discomfort, and really just wreak havoc on our lives. And so what I really and discomfort and really just wreak havoc on our lives. And so what I really want to do in this chapter is give you this idea of what these mosquitoes are, so that you can do something about them. And an easy way to sort this journey is just picture your looking at a tour get where you're shooting a bow and arrow and imagine a bull's eye in a couple concentric circles. And just take 10, 15 people from your life and put five in each concentric circle and run them against this case with any of them, these mosquitoes, if some you've got a major boundary issue happening, and

Starting point is 00:33:14 now at least it gives you the ammunition to recognize and then to do something about it. You have something at the end of the chapter. And by the way, for everybody listening and watching, there is a great deal of information. There are resources, QR codes with bonus materials. And I love the fact that there are tangible actions at the end of every chapter. So just to expand on this just for one second, because I love this concept of the mosquito auditors,

Starting point is 00:33:43 that you take us through the ability to conduct a mosquito audit, which includes the following steps. Identify the energy drains, reflect on your inner circle, evaluate the impact, set boundaries, and seek supportive relationships. in essence, helping us walk through this process of deeply understanding who in our lives are serving us, who are fulfilling that role that you so ably bring out about the mosquitoes in our lives. Have you heard anecdotes or responses from anybody who you've shared this concept with? Have you heard this resonate with others? from anybody who you've shared this concept with. Have you heard this resonate with others? Yes, this is going to be one of the topics that has resonated more with anyone. And I ended up being asked to do articles on it in Chief Executive Magazine, CEO World, and built in three great publications. You think about how much toxic environments inhibit us. I mean, who hasn't worked in one

Starting point is 00:34:45 where you've got coworkers or it could be your boss who's one of these mosquitoes? And it is just something that I think Rex Havett on all of us professionally and personally. So this one really struck a chord with a ton of people. In the behavior shift section of the book, you have a chapter entitled The Conscious Engager, which I understand was amongst one of the final ones that you penned.

Starting point is 00:35:11 I'm hopeful that you can share with everybody the significance of this chapter for you, and why was it so meaningful for you to write this chapter? This chapter wasn't originally in the book. I think it was the last chapter. This or the one on the different steps you take on the journey to becoming Passionstruck. These were the last two chapters I wrote in the book. And this one happened after I had done an interview with Gloria Mark, who's a professor at the University of California at Levine, and she wrote this book called Attention Span. And I also interviewed a gentleman named Dan Dapani about the same time who's a Hindu priest. He wrote a book on unwavering focus and they correlated for me. We live in this digital world right now where our attention span has gone in the past decade from being interrupted once every eight to ten minutes

Starting point is 00:36:07 to What Gloria puts out in a new book is every 45 seconds for some and it got me really thinking about the life that we're living in and So many people use the term autopilot and I think we do find ourselves in this repetitive notion that autopilot conveys. However, what I don't like about the term autopilot is that when you're not autopilot, you're still going typically in a positive direction. You're still pointing the plane towards a destination. And I don't think that's how the majority of people today are living. I think And I don't think that's how the majority of people today are living. I think so many of us, and I've found myself living this way, can be described more like

Starting point is 00:36:49 a pinball in the game of pinball, where we are so distracted by everything that's around us, all the bells and whistles of life, all the social media, all the social pressure that's hitting us, that we end up just bouncing away through our days, and days become months, and months become years, and we find ourselves in this pinball existence. The way that you have to break free from that is by developing the skill set of unwavering focus about the main thing in your life. This chapter reminded me of a sermon that I heard from one of the most prolific ministers I ever went to when I lived in Moorsville, North Carolina. And he did

Starting point is 00:37:32 this sermon one time that the main thing about the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing. Which, I mean, it sounds kind of jokingly obvious, but it was so difficult to do. In fact, my friend Jim McKelvie, the founder of Square who I interview in the book, says that the biggest thing he sees that disrupts startups is that they lose the main thing because they get distracted by so many other things that they lose the inherent value of what they were trying to accomplish to begin with, that major problem that they were trying to solve. This is something that I saw Mark Benioff do extremely well. He was so focused on that main thing that everything else was just noise.

Starting point is 00:38:17 And Stephen Pavey, who I talk about in this chapter, has a great way for you to think about this. So let me set this up. So there are two ways that you can look at your priorities in life. The best way to do this is to look at your calendar and your checkbook. Where are you investing your time and where are you spending your money? And here's what Stephen Covey says. If something is important and it's urgent, then you need to do it. If it's important, but it's not urgent and planted. it's a movement, but it's not urgent, then plan it.

Starting point is 00:38:46 If it's urgent, but it's not important, then delegate it. If it's neither urgent nor important, then eliminate it. And I think it's such a simple framework to use, to apply to so many of the decisions that we make in the daily lives, but so few people do it. And in this chapter, I decided instead of honing in on living individuals, I thought I would go into two stories of two of the most prolific leaders

Starting point is 00:39:12 in history, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. And I'm just going to show you a little bit of the story about Abraham Lincoln, because I think we see him now as arguably the greatest president in US history. Yet what people don't realize is that for over 80 percent of his life, he self-described himself as living in quiet desperation, as being a driftwood. Just going along with the current, like a pinball, just bouncing off of one thing to another until he found something so compelling, just like what Benioff did, that it lit this infongue in him, that he couldn't let it go.

Starting point is 00:39:48 And slavery and abolishing it became his main thing, and he never deterred from it. And from that point, his crew strongly did. And so I think it's just an important lesson, and that's what the whole conscious engagers about. Love it. Love it. Love it. I can't let the time get away without talking about the topic of fear. It's something that you and I both ruminate on. Think about work with, try to harness. I know in our work in scarier soul, it is all about pushing comfort zones and doing them consistently and

Starting point is 00:40:22 doing them within a community. And you have a absolutely beautiful and powerful chapter about being a fear-confrontor. I want to read how you begin it very, very simply. Hopelessness is the enemy of aspiration. You are the most challenging critic you will ever face. So with that as a foundation, tell us a little bit about being a fear-confronter. So Scott, I've got this dear friend, Lisa Edwards, and she has this saying that she says to me repeatedly over the past five or six years, and it is so profound. When you look in the mirror, the person who's serving back at you is the greatest individual that you will ever encounter in your life. But in the same respect, that same person that you're looking at in the mirror is also the biggest competitor that you

Starting point is 00:41:16 will ever find in your life. And this chapter is really about self-sabotage and a concept that I often talk about as a way to help people visualize this is something that I call the visionary arsonist. We have this vision for these hopes and dreams and aspirations that we want in our life and yet we arson the very things that would help us publish these goals because we become this visionary areness, we end up saying in our minds that we can't, to life-changing opportunities, whether that's a cause of imposter syndrome, perfectionism, or own limiting beliefs, fear, whatever it is, we put up all these roadblocks in the way from achieving this remarkable life that's just on the other side

Starting point is 00:42:06 of our potential to achieve. So this chapter really goes through how do you recognize that you weren't in fear of... How do you recognize the fears that are inherently in your life and then do you become a fear confronter so that you can move through being a visionary or a personess to becoming that hero of your own story. Can you give us a sense from your own personal life of what's scaring you these days? You've written this spectacular book. You interview every single week the top leaders in the world on so many relevant and powerful topics. What's keeping you at your edge? What's keeping you being a fear-confrontor these days? If I'm honest, I'm about ready to go back out on the keynote circuit, and it's something that I haven't done in a while. I have never been a person who has been very comfortable

Starting point is 00:43:05 keynote speaking, even though I've done a ton of them. Because I have an auditory and sensory processing disorder, and so I lose words, I mispronounce when I'm on stage. So it causes me a ton of anxiety. But I guess the way if I would use your scarier soul model that I'm approaching this is you can either let that define you or you can do something about it to break through. And so I purposely myself into some pretty uncomfortable situations for the past six months, I've been taking improv classes. And right now

Starting point is 00:43:37 I'm doing long form improv, which if anyone's done it's quite terrifying. I've also been deeply involved back in Tim's Masters, put myself on a weekly basis into two situations where I'm having to push myself to become a better speaker. And this is something that I had like in the book. This is just one example, but I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is we think that in order to change ourselves, we need to do something huge overnight. Fact is, is whatever got you to where you are currently didn't happen overnight. So the only way you're going to get to where you want to go is by taking small micro choices that start building upon each other.

Starting point is 00:44:18 And that's exactly what this example highlights. By putting myself in these situations, I'm making the choice to put myself in an uncomfortable situation. It's giving me the courage to then take the next step and once you do that, it ends up influencing so many other aspects of life and you see this thing happen pervasively across all of it. I mean if I'm being completely honest, that would be the thing right now that across all of it. I mean, if I'm being completely honest, that would be the thing right now that can be most grateful. Well, I love it and I love how you are leaning into what you already know are some areas where you where some fear resides and doing it in a way that is lively and fun, but pushing comfort zones. I often find that it is the inevitable identity shift

Starting point is 00:45:08 that occurs when we take those microactions and we go from just being a person leading their life, taking little courageous actions to actually being a courageous person living life. And that shift opens up all kinds of possibilities for love and connection and depth and vulnerability. And the last topic that I'd love to explore with you today, and that is the topic of leadership. And for seems to flow through so much of your work. And I'd like to explore with you the concept of self-leadership. You discuss in the book quite a bit about transforming leadership. And I'd like to know how does it redefine self-leadership so that we're leading more intentional and passionate lives? I believe that in order to lead anyone, whether that's your kids, people at work, anything in your life, it all starts with leading yourself.

Starting point is 00:46:13 And I think the thing that so many of us get really, and we certainly was, is the first thing that tends to go is our own self-care programs, our own self-awareness. And so to me, self-leadership really equates to mindfulness and self-awareness and self-compassion and realizing that we don't have to look at things in our life in a linear way, that it's either or we can look at it as both hand. We can sometimes be self-critical and be self-compassionate. We can work on our mind and our body. The book redefines self-leadership as a holistic approach to living. It's really encompassing clarity of purpose,

Starting point is 00:47:00 passion-driven decision-making, and the courage to pursue one's aspirations despite the obstacles that come in your way. It's this really deep dive into understanding one's true passions, values, and strengths. It's an upsetting vision for your life, life-gnafting it with your core identity and using your vision as the compass to guide your choices and options. The book is so full of actionable ideas. You and I could have this conversation for absolutely hours on so many different levels. But for those that are newer to the passion

Starting point is 00:47:40 struck mindset, the model that you lay out in the book. If somebody was just starting, what would you suggest that they do in terms of an actionable step, a microaction, where would you tell them to start? So I'm gonna take a script from you actually and I'm gonna tell them that maybe they should do a courageous auction challenge.

Starting point is 00:48:04 And what I'm gonna describe is writing a fear letter So write a letter to yourself addressing a fear that's been holding you back and be honest about it What are your apprehensions and doubts? Poor you aren't Into the paper because this is a safe space for you to confront your fear. And then visualize that fear's impotent that it's having in your life. What did it matter to you if you conflict this fear? How would it transform your life for the better?

Starting point is 00:48:32 What opportunities would it bring to bear them that currently do not exist? And then once you do that, identify a small notion that you can take this week to face that fear head on. It could be making a phone call. It could be signing a phone call, it could be signing up for a class like I did, it could be setting a meeting with a therapist,

Starting point is 00:48:50 where someone who is pausing you issues in your personal life, then take the leap, commit to doing that courageous action through the entire week. And then lastly, share the journey with someone close to you, or if you really want to be a Scarier Soul participant, you can share it with Scott and I and put a hashtag

Starting point is 00:49:12 on either Scarier Soul or Passionstruck Challenge and share it on social media. But I think that is just one easy way writing a fear letter that you can take a positive step after today. Fantastic. Love it. You quote Oprah Winfrey in the book and she says the following. Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. And it is so clear to me and it will be so clear to everybody reading this book that this excites you and your words leap off of the page. The concepts are powerful and I cannot express how honored I am to know you be a part of your world. I'm excited for everybody who is going to pick up this book

Starting point is 00:50:04 and begin leading a more passion-struck life. One thing I'll talk about is people ask me all the time, who's the book for? To me, I would screen rate this for a diverse group of people because, I mean, when you look at what Gallup is saying, and 900 million people are feeling this gap in their life, it's a lot of people. So there are really a few different groups that came to mind. One, these people who are stuck and they're in this life that they just

Starting point is 00:50:33 can't seem to pull themselves out of. How do you do it? How did I do it? Yeah. Another one is I dedicated the book to my two kids, Josh and Olivia. They want this to be the blueprint for high school students, college students, or recent graduates on how you can life craft your life the way you want it to be. It could be for the high achiever who wants to get further in their career, but as Mungstall Goldsmith says, what got you here isn't going to get you to where you want to go. So it gives you a skill to understand where you are in your journey. And you can come into the model at any place and take steps to better it. It's those groups and even more. Wonderful. Well, I know we're all going to see you on the biggest stages around the world. I have no doubt that your keynotes will be spectacular.

Starting point is 00:51:26 Your improv training and all of the work that you've put into making yourself a better person, and we're better for it because when you share your ideas, you allow us to be more passion struck. And that's a very, very special thing. John, thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this and congratulations on your book launch. This is going to be a spectacular period of time for you and for everybody who gets to read this book. Scott, it was such an honor and I would just tell everyone if you like Hashemstruck or anything that I'm talking about, then you will also love Scare Your Soul because Scott wrote just an incredible book and it's got his own movement where he encourages you to take courageous apps similar to what I'm

Starting point is 00:52:11 talking about here to change your life because that's all it really takes is courage to want to change and then to take those necessary steps to do so. Thank you, John. It's an honor. Thank you, everyone, for joining. I hope you all love the book. I hope you find it as meaningful as my own hopes it will be for you to discover what PassionStruck means to you as well. So thank you very much for coming. I hope you all enjoyed the show, and I wanted to thank everyone who wrote in this week,

Starting point is 00:52:40 and especially those who tuned in to listen to today's episode. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our Eclipse channel at Passionstruck Clips. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles, and you can sign up for my personal development newsletter, Live Intentionally at passionstruck.com, or my work-related newsletter, Work Intentionally on LinkedIn. You're about to hear a preview of the Passionstruck.com, or my work-related newsletter, Work Intentionally on

Starting point is 00:53:05 LinkedIn. You're about to hear a preview of the Passionstruck podcast interview that I did with Morgan Housel, a mastermind in the world of finance, behavior economics, as well as psychology, and the author of the international best-selling book, A Psychology of Money, which has resonated with over 4 million readers globally. I engage Morgan in a thought-provoking conversation, diving into his latest work, same as ever, a guide to what never changes. So I have no idea, or neither has anybody else, when the next bear market is going to occur in the stock market. But I know with certainty how people are going to respond with greed and fear and uncertainty and their tribal influences and how they interpret the media and the incentives

Starting point is 00:53:42 of investors, the incentives of advisors, the incentives of the media, that's never changed. And it will never change. So we know, even if we don't know what's going to change, let's put all of our attention in these things that don't. As a student of history, I'm always most excited reading history when I read something that took place 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago. And you realize that if you just changed the dates on what you just read from 1823 to 2023, every word would fit right in. So when you find something that doesn't change,

Starting point is 00:54:12 you know you found something that's particularly important in the world that you should put a lot of your focus and attention on. Remember that we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those that you care about. And if you found today's episode useful, then definitely share it with someone who can use the guidance that we gave. Greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you care about. And if you found today's episode useful, then definitely share it with someone who can use the guidance that we gave. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to

Starting point is 00:54:27 share the show with those that you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become Ashen Star.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Scott Simon and John R. Miles on Navigating the Journey to Becoming Your Ideal Self EP 414

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