The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – New You! Who Knew : Surprising foundations to get more done, feel more connected, and stay balanced in a rapidly changing world by David Edwards

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

New You! Who Knew : Surprising foundations to get more done, feel more connected, and stay balanced in a rapidly changing world by David Edwards Life is messy. It flashes by as you wonder what your future will be and how to influence it. You struggle to take charge of your life and it’s frustrating. Trying new things never works as well as you hoped. Why isn’t your story as wonderful as those you read about? YOU are the focus in New You! Who Knew? Each chapter helps you build the core skills you need for everything else to fall into place. The surprising but enduring foundations encourage you to build a life to be proud of. Without these, many people experience unnecessary frustration and disappointment. Be the captain of your own life! Follow step by step to learn the fundamentals needed to overcome challenges, accomplish goals and persist when the going gets tough. By making the principles your own, every relationship and effort will improve, guiding you to lead your own way through life. The book helps people living real lives with real struggles achieve a new normal of accomplishment, relationship, control, and balance. Written for average people working on the front lines of business and life you must get a lot done with fewer resources and less help. The most amazing lives are always built on enduring principles. This book is built on the ten surprising, enduring principles that lead to success in life be it personal, relationships, or work. It invites you to put some realistic effort into becoming the captain of your own life and shares principles and tools that have proven effective through history, updated with the latest in human science. No hacks, shortcuts, ridiculous promises, or BS. Easy to read, easy to follow, powerful and effective. A self-help book for regular people who desire and are willing to put a bit of consistent effort into creating an amazing new normal, overcome challenges, persist through struggles, and lead their own way through the journey of life. No other book on the market: Is written specifically for this vast and underserved audience. Covers the foundations of your values, self-efficacy, and self-compassion in an approachable way. Avoids the hyperbole and inflated promises that so often lead to discouragement and even lower esteem. Is easy to digest and learn from wherever you are, whatever your background, whatever your age, whatever your income. Is grounded in enduring principles and the latest in behavioral science. Will help you be more successful in every other effort you make. Guides you through the process of becoming the captain of your own life.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here in our great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. Be sure to go to all of our places on YouTube.com, Forge S. Chris Voss, LinkedIn group or massive LinkedIn group, our LinkedIn newsletter. Check that out as well.

Goodreads.com, Forge S. Chris Voss. You can see my books over there and all the books we're reading and reviewing and all the other groups that we have across the social media network there. Today, as always, we have a brilliant author on the show. We love people who write books because they make us smarter and make our craniums bigger. I had to order a new one from Amazon the other day and tape it over the top of my head so that I can keep expanding the knowledge inside of it. Plus, getting smarter makes you sexier. I don't know.

I don't know if that's an official study. We'll check with the lawyers and see if I can say that. Anyway, guys, he is the author of the new book, New You. Who knew? Who knew? Surprising. Who knew this was coming out? New You, Who Knew?

Surprising Foundation is to get more done, feel more connected, and stay balanced in a rapidly changing world. Let me correct that. David Edwards is on the show today. He's going to be talking about this book and some of his experience and what he's done and insights. He is, of course, the author of the new book. A few years ago, he was the CEO of a community health center creating the leading integrated person-focused primary care center in the country. In his interaction with patients, advocates, and professionals from different disciplines and his own pondering and study, he had an epiphany, a wow moment.

People are missing core skills that if they had would make their lives so much better. I left my well-paying job, or he did, I should say, I'm reading his bio here, off his website and embarked on researching and writing this book to help regular people learn the principles and skills needed to become the captain of their own life. And the captain is here. Welcome to the show, David. How are you? Thank you very much.

I'm doing great. There you go. Thank you for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your .coms, your plugs, where people can find you on the interwebs. I think davidredwards.com is the simplest and everything from there. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? I kind of touched on it, but I think it's better in your words.

As I noted in the bio, I've worked in healthcare for 35 years, and most of the time, I've worked serving more vulnerable populations, lower income populations, ethnic minorities, Native Americans, I mean, different populations. And I knew something was missing. And the last probably 10 years of my career, maybe 10 to 15, I was really focused on whole person primary care. And this is kind of like it's duh, if you think about it. But you were born, I was born, everybody was born with the head and your body connected. And everything you do in your brain affects your body. And everything that you do in your body affects your brain, right?

We can't separate them. They're inseparable. And yet, the way the health system in the United States has evolved is we've gone into this reductionist model, which, okay, has lots of benefits. way, in a very profound way, we wanted to design a system that would flex around a unique individual. Wow. So you, Chris, are the unique individual. We would have maybe a primary care provider, maybe a dentist or a hygienist. You might have a therapist. You might have a counselor, something we call the BHC, a behavioral health consultant. Let's say you have diabetes and you want some help with the mental processes of how do you manage your diabetes, right?

Because a lot of the challenges with how we manage our physical selves has to do with our mental processes. Right. But it's not like I have a typical mental health diagnosis. And so it's mental health for physical health stuff. Right. So we had all these characters and more nurses, et cetera, et cetera, that we could wrap around you based on what you need. Right. You don't need a lot of stuff. then you don't have to use it, right? I don't want to force anything on you. That wasn't the idea. That's not efficient.

That's not effective. It's wasteful. And so we're trying to design this, and we build a brand-new facility to build around that model. And as we were in the construction process, I had this, my wow moment, as you noted, my epiphany that said, unless we can help the patient become the captain of their own healthcare team, we really wanted them to say, it's my body, it's my life, you see me a few hours a year, so the other 364 days I'm not there i'm in charge so we wanted them to be in charge if we couldn't help them

fulfill that role in a more effective way then all this work we had done all the money we've spent all the research and energy and whatnot would have limited effect and that wasn't the idea right the idea was to have mass maximal massive effect. And so I started thinking, well, what's necessary for the individual be to the captain of their life. And that's really about change, right? Both our own self directed change, and being able to cope with if you will, or manage in an environment that is changing at a breakneck speed. Yeah, definitely. And so you wrote the book, Knew You, Who Knew? What made you choose that title? Well, I wanted, just like our work had been around helping you be the captain of your own life,

and by extension, the captain of your healthcare team, it was about individuals, right? Because we're all different. And I've listened to some of your guests. We're all coming from different places, different backgrounds, different experiences. And so there was two kind of components to it. One was we have to be constantly changing. If we're not, we're falling behind.

There's no neutral. There really isn't any standing still. You're either keeping up and moving forward, we're falling behind. There's no neutral. There really isn't any standing still. You're either keeping up and moving forward or you're falling behind. And so new you is about, are you continuously in little small ways reinventing yourself? And who knew? I mean, who knew that this was even possible? Who knew that this was a thing? And so that's what the title is about, trying to be very personal and individual. Now you claim on the, I'm reading the Amazon thing here. It says, no, like this is like no other book in the market. Tell me how this is different than other books on the market. Well, for one thing, the book is written to an audience of people

earning just as generic as I could come up with it, earning less than the median income. And that's half of all people, so that's a pretty big audience. Not very good targeting on my part. But anyways, these people have to do more with less. I was talking to a business owner the other day, I mean, just earlier this, and he said, I've made more than six figures most of my life. But there have been a few times when I made less than, in fact, a lot less than. And so he said, when I went home the other day, I don't know, he said, my wife called

me on the phone the other day, and she said, sweetheart, the sink is clogged. And he said, well, call a plumber then. Why are you calling me? I'm at work. And so he said, if I was back when I was making $25,000 a year, there's no way in the world I would have said, call a plumber who's going to charge us $150 to do it. I would have said, wait till I get home. I'll go by Home Depot on the way, and I'll pick up something that costs $ eight bucks and I'll make it work. Right. And this is the reality of your life. And it doesn't matter if it's your plumbing or your career or your retirement or whatever. If you have more resources, then you can hire people to help you with stuff that needs to be done. And you can make up for

a lot of problems. If you're rich enough, right, you can be a rock star and be a drug addict, literally, and appear to be semi-functional because you hired all these people to keep you on track and keep the money flowing in and you can do that. But if you're making, working at the Home Depot, you don't have those kind of options. You've got to make it happen yourself. So these people, as a group, they've got to get more done. It's not about being lazy. It's not about being stupid. It's not about bad character or any of that kind of generalization that we do

where we judge people. It's really just a fact of life. You've got to get more done with less. And so to make that work, to feel like you are the captain and like you are moving forward in your life, a sense of well-being, if you will, you have to attach yourself or attach to yourself. I almost kind of hate this where I'm going with this. You have to incorporate in your life principles that are enduring and that guide how life works. It's just like if you're growing a plant in the garden let's i like fruit trees as a metaphor if you plant it in the right place

and you nurture it and trim it and you fertilize it and you water you do all those normal things it's going to grow up and it's going to bear fruit. Right? It's the way nature works. So we have to find out what those principles are for human life. And I didn't invent any of these things, but I feel so strongly that these 10 principles that I discovered, if you will, through my research, are fundamental foundations of any effective, productive, connected and balanced life, which is what we all want in the end.

And that's kind of how I got there. There you go. There you go. So what are some people going to learn from your book? What's some of the things that they're going to find that are going to be important to them? So, again, my book is written to a very lay audience, kind of average people, and it's going to explain some core principles. I'll talk about the first one, for example. The first chapter and the first principle is values.

And values generically are kind of interesting, right? People talked about values. Most companies have like a statement of what their values are. And most of us have some general sense that I got values, right? And we notice that mostly when something happens or somebody says something or somebody behaves in a way around us that makes us uncomfortable. Most of us, according to the research, have not taken the time to make our own core values explicit. And that's a process, right? And in the book, I talk about it. It's actually very simple. It maybe takes two hours to do the whole thing, and it's absolutely free.

What are the benefits? The benefits are off the charts. By making your own values explicit and following that simple process. And I just noted some things and sometimes contrast itself. All right. So apathy is a sense of I don't care. Right. I'm not disengaged.

We talk about at work. Right. 70% of employees are disengaged at work. Right. Well, a lot of us are disengaged with our own life, unfortunately. So what's the alternative to that well the alternative is that you have meaning in your life languishing you know languishing that sense of kind of just hanging out you're going with the flow versus a sense of well-being like

my life is okay i'm on track i'm not perfect i'm not terrible terrible, right? But I feel like I'm moving in the right direction at least, right? Clarity versus being fuzzy. Focus versus regret. So these are the costs of not making your values explicit and some of the benefits of making your values explicit. It's very simple. And I don't know why we aren't taught it in elementary school, but or high school or college. I mean, it's just not common. So these are things that people need to learn. And I guess a lot of people skip these things in their journey. And it sounds like you skipped some of the hyperbole and inflated promises that many find that lead to discouragement and even lower self-esteem. You help them with that through your book. Thank you. A pleasure at heart. So many things that we read on the internet, right? All over the place. And many of the books,

frankly, that are written, I don't want to speak bad of any books, but it's a lot of the stuff is like, how can I be rich? How can I be famous? How can I be in the 1% of successful people? The problem with that is only 1% of the people are successful in the 1%. I mean, that's why they're called the 1%. That means 99% of us are never going to attain that. And I don't want to be discouraging for anybody. If you want to be the 1%, good for you. Great. But it's really not realistic.

If you just look at it mathematically, it isn't going to happen. Does that mean that you can't have a life that is full of well-being, of energy, of purpose, of success, of learning and growth and enjoyment and relationships, all these things that bring richness to life. Well, the answer is, of course you can. And you can actually even have a pretty affluent life and a really comfortable retirement, even if you're not in the 1%. And so what I try to talk about is foundations and building foundations. And I'll go back to the fruit tree as a metaphor. A lot of what we see today is how to stuff, right? It's all about the top of the

tree. If you take my bald head as the trunk and my shoulders and arms as the roots, we're always focused on the fruit. How do we have more fruit, right? More results, more outcomes, more stuff that we can get done. And that's where we focus. And we got tips and tricks and hacks and all this kind of stuff to do that. But if we don't have a strong trunk and strong roots, what happens is we try to build all that stuff and then there's a drought or there's a COVID or there's a windstorm or there's a tragedy in your life or whatever it is, all kinds of influences. You just have a hard time for a little while. If we don't have those strong roots and trunk, we tend to blow over, right? And we see the words like the great resignation. We see epidemic levels of depression, of burnout, of anxiety. We see all these artifacts

of focusing on outcomes without building the foundations that would, if we built those foundations normally and naturally, create positive outcomes, positive fruit. And it's kind of a paradox, if you will. And if we just focus more on these foundations, then everything else we want to do is easier, it comes more naturally, and we take it in balance. Because inevitably, there's going to be challenges and setbacks in life. But what we find is that when you've built those strong foundations, like your values developing awareness habits learning intentionality some of the core these are chapters of the book as you focus on

building those skills which anybody can build no matter what your background culture history what you've done what you've not done your, none of those things matter that much because anybody can build these. They're open and available to everyone. That's the beautiful part about it. I mean, we can all grow. We can all change. We can all prove ourselves. But it's up to us.

We've got to be the ones that, as you say in your book, be the captain of your own life. So that's really important. It was interesting. I was listening to one of your guests earlier this week. He wrote the book about his bucket list. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. And so I was listening to your podcast, and I was like,

I was just kind of checking these boxes off. It's like, oh, yeah, he had a sense of his values. He wasn't comfortable with his job and career. So this is his values. That's where those come in. And so I was kind of learning from these conversations that I had. So this was awareness, right? So he's building awareness.

He's getting some feedback. And then I, and those are, you know, the first two chapters in the book. And then it was like, and then I just had this desire to do something different and more of that. So this is intentionality. That's chapter four. And I was just going through the book and it's like, he's never read my book.

It just came out. These are natural and normal principles that guide our lives. And he came upon them through his own route, right? Without even making them explicit, but I was just checking off. It's like, yeah, he's gone through all these things. And now he's saying, don't just think about it.

You've got to act on it, right? So planning is chapter 5, and chapter 6 is on actually doing stuff, right? It's like faith without works is dead, the Apostle Paul said. So it's like you've got to get stuff. You've got to work on it. And then he had to have some belief or some faith that was possible, which is chapter 7. So I like going through this i'm like oh yeah this guy could he could be an advocate for my book because his life is an extension of identifying those principles kind of through the hard way and then applying

them in his life to have this really superior wonderful outcome um which is what we all want with our life but he just took that captainship and fell into these very naturally. And it was actually quite gratifying to listen to and say, yeah, I keep getting this validation up. There you go. It's quite interesting what you put into this stuff. And what are some other teasers that you can tease out about the book? We, of course, want people to buy it and read it. What other teasers can you tease out on the book that entice people to pick it up? So one of the little habits and habits are great, right? Habits aren't enough though without foundations, but with foundations, habits are super powerful. But one of the habits

I talk about is what I call on being intentional in the morning. So you get up in the morning and you are intentional about two kinds of things is what do you want to do in the day? And I think equally important is what do you want to become during the day? So this is starting the morning with intent. And what that does is you start to activate, you talked about your cranium earlier, right? And you've got a new one on Amazon. I'd like toanium earlier right and you got a new one on amazon i'd like to know which site or you got that from but so anyways this is the natural way that the brain works and the scientists call it plasticity i don't want to get fancy or scientific i really definitely try to avoid fancy words because it's not about me looking fancy it's about

practical things that we use but what happens in your brain is that when you use your brain, just like when you use a muscle, your muscle builds and grows, right? You do exercises, you build muscle. The same thing happens in your brain, not with like physical mass, but connections. And your brain rewires itself based upon what you focus on, what your intent is, what you plan to do, and what you actually do. And it's all of these build pathways. So you start in the morning, you start building those pathways. And over time, as you do this incrementally, slowly but surely,

every morning you get up, what's my intent? What's my intent? You go through the day, and at the end of the day, you accountable so it's intent in the morning accountable in the evening that's the trick or the hack or the whatever but if you can do that you build pathways and during the day you start to remember right you do this every morning every evening you start to remember it during the day more and more you build build pathways in time. Science tells us 30 days to six months, depending on how new it is, how different it is from the rest of your life.

It can take a long time, but over time, it becomes normal and natural. And once it is, you've built those pathways. They're there. They're robust. They're like superhighways now. And then it's normal. You don't have to think about it anymore. It's just the new you that you've begun to create who knew that could happen but that's exactly how it happens and then you pick another thing and say well that's normal now i'm going to pick a new

thing i'm going to be intentional about it in the morning i'm going to be accountable in the evening and you just keep up the habit and if if you fall back, you know what? You say, I fell back. I didn't do it. I messed up today. And instead of beating yourself up about it, this is another tip, if you will, beating yourself up, even though maybe your dad thought that was the best thing to do, or your friends or whatever, right? You stupid. stupid why how did you do that haven't you learned this yet right we want to avoid that kind of self-talk which is chapter seven i mean eight and you work on that self-talk but anyways you don't beat yourself up and you just say that's done it's passed right i can't see it now it happened and then you decide how do i move forward so there's another tip is that you can

ruminate on it and you wonder well why did somebody say this or why did this thing happen right and it's out of your control so overall your life you spend vast majority of your time attention and focus on things that you can control, right? Things that you can influence. And then you're going to have a lot more success in your life as you make that a habit again. You make that something that you're intentional about, you're accountable about, and over time that becomes normal for you. There you go. I mean, that's one of the things you talk about in your book, not only the captain in life, I like that sort of metaphor, but you know, building the core skills. I don't think anyone would sit down and go, Hey, do I really have the core skills to be operating

in life? Do I, do I have the basics down? Cause the basics are really important. They really are. Well, again, it's like we talked about the metaphor, the roots and the trunk where I worked before it was a rural area with a lot of orchardists. And so I knew a lot of orchardists. And it's very obvious there that if you don't build strong roots and trunks, you're not going to bear fruit. You're not going to have a bountiful harvest. And you're not going to have the resilience. We hear that word a lot these days, resilience and perseverance, right? Well, those are built on those foundations. I mean, the ability to resile, I love that as a verb, and to persevere as a verb, right? Those are actions

are built by having foundations. And so really, my book is all about foundations. There's 10 of them. It's pretty simple and pretty straightforward. It's not the masterclass, right? There's other people that have masterclasses on those individual things, but I wasn't able to find with all of my reading and looking and researching any book that said, what are the foundations that have I built lead to success? And so that's why I wrote it the way I did. Definitely. Definitely. So anything else you want to tease out on the book before? So here's something that I think is important for us in life, especially if we earn lower than median income is that stuff happens. And the difference between people who succeed in the long run and the people who don't is that when something happens the bad stuff happens

setbacks happen which is inevitable in every life the people that learn from it are the ones that move forward so just recognize it happens it's normal it's natural everybody but learn from it and when you learn you're that much smarter and the next time something like that happens because it repeats it's like those groundhog day movies right that repeats and we just languish in the problem as opposed to learning from it and saying well if this happens again what can i do better how do i respond versus react and again it's just being patient, being kind to yourself, but being consistent as you can and know that it gets better and you get stronger and build those foundations over time. Yeah. On your website, I noticed that you do consulting too. And I think there's a login

on your website. I've been playing with your website because we've been chatting, looking for topics here. Tell us about what you do in your consultant role. Well, my main focus, and this is really brand new, all right? So this is kind of at an early stage. So I'm thinking with the book, it's written to individuals. It's really written to listeners and your audience as individuals. I had the thought that some of them might like be managers or leaders and own their own businesses. So if you wanted to offer a gift to your employees as a leader or a manager, without a lot of kind of selfish reasons behind it, like most of what we do, honestly, and I've been a CEO or a CFO since 1985. And so a lot of what we do is about getting results for our business.

I mean, that's what you're in business for, right? But if you want to do a gift to your employees, which in my kind of worldview are not assets, they are the sole source of value adding to meet your mission and to serve your customers. And so any investment that you make in your people that builds foundational skills is going to help them throughout their life. Right. It's going to help them at home. It's going to help them in their associations and relationships, it's going to help them at work. Because through all of these domains, the person we become, the new you, that we are in the process of creating, hopefully intentionally as the captain of our life, is going to help whoever your employer is. Because you're going to be more competent.

You're going to be more caring. You're going to have more energy. You're going to have more focus. You're going to be able caring. You're going to have more energy. You're going to have more focus. You're going to be able to be a better worker employee, better able to serve customers, discern and serve their needs. So as a gift to them, if I could come in and help your employees understand what their personal values are, and we talked about those amazing benefits of spending two hours to understand your values and making them explicit. And then allowing them to create a roadmap from their personal values to the organization's values. So they have engagement and seek connection between those two things as a foundation of a business that wants to make a

difference, that wants to be different, wants to attract and retain and energize and engage their employees. I think it would be the greatest gift an employer could do. And that's what I'm starting to set up to do that kind of work. I'd love to talk to somebody who that resonates with about how we might do that. That's definitely important and some good stuff. Do you do any coaching or anything? You know, I'm not at this time. I haven't set up to do it. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Anything more you want to touch on or tease about the book before we go? The only thing I would say, if any of this appeals to one of your listeners or viewers, if you don't buy the book, how in the world can those concepts help you? And I hate to be such a shameless plug,

but I mean, it's a fact of life, right? If I have a bucket of money in the closet and I never open the closet door, that bucket of money is going to be absolutely no good. So I invite you to open the door. It's so cheap. I could have done it for a lot more money, but I set it up to price it so that it would be affordable for literally anybody,

either as an e-book or as a paperback. And so check it out. Try it. I'll leave this part in thought. If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples, how many apples do we each have? Two. No. We have one each. We each still have one apple, don't we? Yeah. And most likely you'll think that your apple is a little shinier and a little bigger. So you feel like you are taking

advantage of when we change those apples, right? There's going to be a winner and a loser and hard feelings potentially. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas, how many ideas do we both have? Infinite amount. Well, we have at least two. We have at least two, yeah. We had just one. So it is only possible to be additive.

If you get one thing out of the book that makes your life better on a daily basis, is that worth, you know, six bucks? Yeah. I think so. I mean, it does change your life. Exactly. Change your life for six bucks. I mean, exactly. I mean, that's nothing.

I don't care if you're making $15 an hour, you know, working at Target, six bucks to invest in your life is nothing if there's only one good idea. And so buy books, try things, make it a part of your life. And you don't have to become like the self-development. This takes all of my time in my life. And it's all about positive thinking and all these things, right? There are some people that are into it and that's great. But the typical people that read my book are not really into it, but they do want to have a better life. They want to feel like they're in control of their life a little bit more than they feel like they are right now. And for them, this book is going to be,

I think, and I hope by design, just a good thing. Yeah, I hope so too as well. Give us your plugs as we go out so people can find you on the interwebs to get to know you better. So my website, I tried to like everything focused on that. So davidredwards.com. And I think I try to put when I have ideas or post something new or some insight.

I wrote the book, but I have insights. I still read and study and talk to people like this, and I have things on, wow, look at that, and I might put it in a blog post, and so I put a lot of stuff on my blog. It's really awesome. I was reading through it as we were going through the show, and there's a lot of stuff on there,

a lot of great inspirational stuff. Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it, David. Thank you, Chris. It's been a pleasure. There you go. And thanks, my audience, for, Chris. It's been a pleasure. There you go. And thanks, Moniz, for tuning in. Go order up the book.

You definitely want to get a hold of it so you can take and improve your core, be the captain of your life, and definitely improve it. The book is called New You. Who Knew? Surprising foundations to get more done, feel more connected, and stay balanced in a rapidly changing world. We definitely need that because there's a lot of kind of depressing stuff going on lately. So definitely pick up the book and order it.

You can also go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. You can find us on youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. All of our accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all those different places. Check them out as well. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.