The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Why Your Expectations Are Destroying Your Relationships | Jamie George

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Join Dr. Josh Axe as he sits down with renowned life coach Jamie George. With over 30 years of experience empowering high achievers like executives, entertainers, and athletes, Jamie is here to help you move beyond self-doubt and unlock your fullest potential. In this thought-provoking conversation, Jamie shares profound wisdom on: The #1 reason relationships fail How to prioritize your top goals amidst busyness Understanding the difference between pain and suffering to eliminate the victim mentality Leveraging micro shifts, structure, and accountability Parenting advice that will transform your relationship with your kids Don't miss this powerful discussion packed with proven strategies to transform every area of your life. Tune in and walk away inspired to shed limiting beliefs, confidently reinvent yourself, and thrive like never before! Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook TikTok Follow Jamie George Instagram Facebook TikTok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter ------  Links:  Check out Jamie’s podcast, The Thrivalist Podcast → https://www.jamiegeorge.com/copy-of-books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, Dr. Josh Axe here. Welcome to the show. I'm coming live from a different spot today. Actually, a new friend of mine here, Jamie George. I'm going to interviewing him today. And we're going to be talking about how to overcome limiting beliefs, how to become your best self. And we're going to probably dive into some deep psychological truths today as well. And so Jamie George is the author of the Thrivaless Handbook.

He owns the Thrivalist Company. And he is an executive coach. So he coaches and trains a lot of entrepreneurs and business leader. and how to grow, both are business, but also one of the things I'm excited about to hear from him today about is how to grow in life. Also, quick note, I attended to his church. He was a former pastor, and so I attended to a church service. He was leading years ago. Amazing sermon and lecture. And so Jamie, excited to be here with you today. Thank you, man. It's great to be with you. Well, you know, one of the things that I've appreciated as I was reading about your background and

thinking about some of the things that you've been really able to add value to people with, I think that I've heard you talk about most people today are just trying to survive. Right. So, and I think I experienced this when I first opened a clinic years ago and I started working with patients. I started realizing, like, if I would ask most, especially moms, hey, how are you doing? What's going on in life? The word I kept hearing from people is, I'm overwhelmed.

I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. I'm tired. I'm anxious. I'm just trying to survive. Yeah. And so one of the things that I'm, you specialize in is helping people go and go from this mode of I'm just trying to survive to thriving

and living, having great relationships and being more effective at work and having a great marriage and all of those things. So walk me through a little bit about that process of one, why do you think so many people today are living in this state of just trying to survive and how do you get them into a state of thriving and growth and success? Yes. It's loaded, man. There's so much better. a lot. Good. Well, you know, I think there is, in today's world, we, we have expectations about how we're supposed to live, what we're supposed to own, how we're supposed to look. We live in a world, we've always lived in a world of comparison at some level, but now the comparison is at the highest level because we're thumbing through. And we're watching the snaps, before we watch the

snapshots of movie stars and political figures. And we might feel a little envy that, gosh, they have a great life. But it was like kind of, it was a full step out because we're like, well, I'm not them. Now we thumb through our Instagram or Facebook or some social media platform. And we see the best moments of our friends' lives. Yeah. And we go, their life is awesome. Like, look at their Christmas decorations.

look at their holiday travel. Look at how much their husband loves them. Look at how perfect their children are. Like, we just get to see the best of everybody's life, multiple, not just one person, not just some Hollywood star off in California. No, this is my friend down the street. Everybody around me's life is so perfect, but mine is now. And I think there is an energy that's generated that goes, what am I doing wrong?

I guess I need to work harder, faster, do more. And so we tend to then bite off more than we can chew, get stuck in this loop of not having. I mean, it's not new news. I mean, there's a wonderful book in the 80s written by a guy named Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And he was talking about how we get hooked in entertainment and constantly consuming things, right? So it's no new news that we live in kind of a materialistic society where we are some of the, especially if you live in the West, some of the largest consumers on the planet.

Yeah. Right? We leave the biggest carbon footprint, you know, in some ways. So that's not new news. But I think the comparison piece has contributed and added to this sense of stress and overwhelm. So in terms of the why, I just think that's a big part of it. And I'm simplifying to say, what if just one, what if you just removed comparison? Hmm.

How might that change how you live? today. Yeah. It's been said the comparison is the thief of joy. Yeah. And so what we're not doing

is thumbing through most people, are thumbing through Instagram of all the homeless people on the planet. What if every homeless person had an Instagram account? Hmm.

If we're thumbing through those, we probably have a different energy. That's right. We probably have some compassion and some sadness and maybe we even have this gratitude that sneaks up on us that we weren't even aware of.

Like, oh my gosh, that's horrible. I feel so bad for that person and oh my goodness, somebody needs to help him. And man, I thought my, I thought my day was rough, right? Like, it wouldn't it be interesting if all your Instagram were just homeless people. Yeah. Or all your Instagram was everybody who showed how horrible their moment of the day was. It would be a different energy.

And I'm dropping in just on the comparison thing because I'm just trying to put my thumb on one thing. There are lots of things. But one of the things I try to do with clients is go, could we just make one micro shift? what's one little shift we could make today and let's go do that for about 30 days let's let's experiment let's see how that changes your life so somebody was listening in there like yeah i feel overwhelmed and so you feel overwhelmed hey don't go to social media for a month yeah and set a set a mindset set an intention that goes hey the moment i feel this temptation to compare myself with someone else's life i'm driving down franklin road in brentwood or wherever i am in the world i'm

i'm i'm driving this thing i'm having this conversation and i'm seeing what someone's has that I don't have. In that moment, if I feel the temptation to compare, if I go, no, no comparison, in the moment where I feel tempted, I'm going to do a quick review of what's good in my life. It would be interesting to see how that might affect you're overwhelmed. Wow. And it's powerful. You know, I heard a psychologist talk about this not long ago that, you know, now because of

social media today, we are exposed to people. people that are all over the world, all of these different people, and we can now compare ourselves to so many more people versus in the past, you might have grown up, somebody might have grown up like for myself, grown up in a city of 20,000 people. And there are people in all ranges. But, you know, you had more of an ability to maybe even feel special and unique because when you're comparing yourself to one, and let's even call a smaller part of your community, one in a thousand people, hey, you were maybe the best at this and the best of this, whether it's athletics or it's music or creativity or your work or profession, whatever it is. And it was a little bit more about,

hey, your roles, your responsibility, your identity within the community. Well, today it's turned into this thing where it's like you've got millions of people. And most of the time people are following it. You're following the one in a million person. Right. Right. And that, I mean, if you're comparing yourself to that person, that can be devastating to a lot of people if they're living in that state. So the positive I do see is, I think for some people, maybe it causes them to say, well, I can do more with my life if they have the right perspective. But I think most people are living in that other area that you're saying is they feel it's almost defeated because of it.

Yeah. Then that's the way when they come to me and say I'm overwhelmed. Yeah. See, the reverse is, here's where, here's where let's live. And I, and I'm the kind of person. So my way of being in the way I work with clients is I always say there's no judgment. So we're just making observations. And I just go, well, are you suffering?

So if you're overwhelmed, sounds like you're suffering. and you have maybe some fear and anxiety. So that might be a, like, is there a comparison happening, right? But let's say they, how are you doing? Oh, my gosh, I've been on Instagram all day and I'm so inspired. Ah, tell me about that. Well, this person's doing this person. And I've been sitting on the couch.

And I, like, and you know what? I know there's no or more in me. I mean, I'm at like 80%. I'm not leaving it all in the field. That guy's leaving it all on the field. I want to leave it on the field. Coach, what do I do? Ah, okay, cool.

Let's go, right? It's a different conversation. That's right. So it's not that Instagram or something media is bad. It's what is it doing for you or to you. Now, that little phrase is an interesting phrase. It's been said that you could sum up all of life in this one phrase. Life is either happening to me or life is happening for me.

Life is happening to me. I'm a victim. If life is happening for me, I'm an owner. I have, you and I talked about this previously, I have free will. I have, I get to make an empowered choice. So I, this is fundamentally one of the things I deal with people. If somebody comes in and they're in this, they're in a place of suffering. You know, that's usually I go, what's working, what's not working, right?

It's a pretty easy place to start. And the not working, if they, if they're language or their tone or the story they tell themselves is that I'm a victim of something that's happening externally, the economy, the political system, my mother, my marriage, my kids, my job, my boss, whatever the thing is. And their energy is I'm the victim of what somebody else is doing. And one of the things I'm going to say, so life is happening to you. Oh yeah, I'm the victim of it. Well, what can you do as a victim?

Well, virtually nothing. Because I don't have any power there. It's all happening to me. Only thing I can do is try and manipulate someone else or manipulate the external environment so that it will give me some kind of temporary reprieve. And we've all done this, right? Yeah, oh yeah. Right?

But it doesn't last. It's extremely temporary. I finally got my wife to do this, or I finally got my kid to act like this for like a day, you know, and then they came back and they were disrespectful again, and now I'm upset, right? So what if instead life was happening for you? If life's happening for you,

then that means you get to take ownership. I have some friends of mine who are therapists, and we talk a lot about what, what shapes people and creates the makeup in someone, right? And one thing they say is that when they deal with someone who's an abuse victim, they'll say, hey, the moment you were abused, you were a victim, and it mattered. And the next moment, you were not. If you continue to live as if that's your identity, your identity is you were abused in that moment, right?

As a child or by a spouse or by a boss or by a religious system or whatever the thing is, if that's your identity, then you always live in this down place without any power, without any ability to choose. But if you can go, no, that mattered. So I'm not going to deny it and I'm not going to look over it. No, that moment mattered. It impacted me. But I'm not going to live there.

I'm going to make a choice now. Today I'm going to make a choice. What will I now do with what's happened in my life? And ironically, a lot of people, when you go look for their why, their why is often from the place of pain in their life. Yeah. So, you know, in a Christian framework or a spiritual framework, I've heard the phrase, God redeems all things. Like, this is where this actually can, you can look back and go, oh, wait, that thing that I thought was bad or horrible is now been made for the good.

Yeah. I was listening to Chris Rock and Jerry Seidfield were doing those comedians having coffee and cars, whatever that thing was called. And I remember Chris Rock was saying, and this is. years ago, so he probably actually did it. But he said, I'm working on a bit on bullying. And he goes, everybody wants to get rid of bullying. He's like, I don't know. I think it's a good idea. Like what? He's like, well, I mean, if you don't get bullied, who's going to invent fossil fuel, right? Like, like, some of us go back to that place of pain. And it's been the motivator for us actually to show up in the world differently and maybe give to someone help. Sometimes I think we're

trying to help heal people while we're healing ourselves. And so that's why I look at it. Like, Hey, there's no judgment. Even if you're a victim, there's no judgment. I just say to my, so they say my clients, like, is it like, what's that like, what's that like, is it working for you? Do you have any power there? It sounds like there's a lot of suffering. So first we have to kind of come to that.

Are you willing to take ownership of your own life? And that's a shift. Yeah. Right? That's a starting place where someone goes, yes, I'll take ownership. My temptation will be tomorrow to blame someone because I got neural pathways and I've done that for a long time. And we all do. I do. Something doesn't go wrong. I'm in the left-hand lane and this person doesn't move and I'm the victim of this slow driver because I didn't plan enough time in my drive,

right? Like, I mean, I did all the time. So all of this brings us to the place each day where we get to recognize we get to make a choice. And that's one of the things that's fundamental to all my coaching is, hey, you always get to make a choice. Yeah, that's so good. You know, one of the One of the things as you were sharing this, I think I would love to hear from you on is, what are some of the things people can start to do now? If somebody's in that place, they say, you know what, I know I've got a victim mentality. I know I blame other people. I'm not taking full ownership.

But I don't know where to start in terms of some of the things, in terms of take ownership. How does someone go about breaking that neurological cycle and start taking full ownership? First start with compassion. So when we're, when, I'll use me, when I'm in a victim place, it doesn't help me to judge myself for it. Like, there you are again, Jamie, you're being a victim. Jeez, what an idiot. Like, you even coach on this.

How are you kidding me? Judgment doesn't serve us. It just takes us to shame. So instead, if I can go to compassion and go, oh, there's my ego. And my ego is trying to keep me alive. The ego walks around on the planet just trying to stay alive. That's the survival. Fight, flight, or freeze.

way back in my past there were dinosaurs that chased me you know the saber tooth tiger was out there and if I can go hey my ego is the primal part of me that's trying to keep me alive I don't have to judge it thank you ego

but I only survive there and I like to thrive so I've got some compassion I recognize that's and you know as you said I come from my background grew up on a Christian paradigm but then got into psychology

and like you some of the studied a lot of Eastern perspective on faith and medicine. So I've kind of this broad view. But when you look at it, you can language in a lot of different ways. This is your shadow self or your ego self, but it's that part of us that keeps us in suffering. And so we can come above and out of that place if we'll awaken to this other part of who we are in this higher self, true self in psychological language, Christ self in Christian language. I picked the language. And how do I get into the true self? Well, I got to go back to ownership. So,

In that moment, so if I'm in a victim thing and I want to shift, first compassion, ah, there you go. It's okay. And it's teaching you something. Life is there as my teacher life is happening for me. So there's an opportunity for me to learn. Now, why do I see myself as a victim right now? Almost every single person.

And I find very few exceptions here. They will find, this will be the next thing they discovered. I have an unmet expectation. You could almost. say that every single relationship problem we have comes down to one thing. Resentment. Yeah. Yeah. Resentment with myself. Resentment with you. Resentment with the driver. Resentment with the waitress. Resentment with the president. Resentment with my mother, my father, right? And the resentment is this. Resentment's a strong word, but resentment is I've got some residual

energy that I've not let go of because you didn't meet my expectation. Yeah. Expectations are what we believe about how other people will behave. And the problem is they don't always behave according to what I expect them to. You and I were talking about the eneagram earlier, right? So if you're wired as an eight and I'm wired as a three, you're wired to challenge. You're going to see, you're going to naturally see something. You go, oh, I should challenge that, right? It's a compulsion you have.

I'm going to be wired to be diplomatic. So you might see somebody that we need to take that. We need to talk. Somebody needs to talk to that guy. And I might be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. I mean, let's give a couple different perspectives, right? Yeah. Because of how we're wired, right?

It's okay. Neither of them's right and wrong. Yeah. But if you go, Jamie, I expect you to be a challenger and I say, hey, Josh, I expect you to be diplomatic and you're not. Yeah. I might be resentful of you. Yeah. And you might be resentful of me.

Yeah. And these little micro resentments happen all the time. And so one of the things I say to people, this is one of the very, like first session with a client. One of the things I'll invite them to is, hey, would you be willing to never have another expectation ever again? Like, wait, but I even have job expectations. And I'm like, but are they expectations? Now, nothing exists in a vacuum. So if you do remove expectations, you have to replace them with something, right?

So what would I replace them with? Well, what if you lived your life, not by expectations, but by agreements? So what if you replaced all your expectations with agreements? Now, rather than me having an expectation about how you'll be, we could replace that with an agreement. So let's say you and I, we've got a friend and his friend's struggling with the thing. And you're like, man, we got to challenge this guy. Let's go in. I'm going, I'm going to stick my finger in his chest.

Like, let's go. And I don't know. I think he needs a little more compassion. And before we walk in, I go, hey, you know what? Let's make an agreement. Good cop, bad cop. Anyway. And you go, no, let's do good cop, bad cop.

I'm like, okay, well, I. I use this thing that I got from Stephen Carlin in the 1960s called the drama triangle. He says there's three unhealthy ways of relating. And then there's three healthy ways of relating. So there's really two triangles. There's a red triangle. That's the ego self. And then there's the green triangle.

And that's your higher self. Well, in this higher self, I take ownership. That's the top of the triangle. I set boundaries for myself. And then I negotiate with other people because they also get to set boundaries. And that's the world of agreements. So we're walking in and we go, hey, let's negotiate. You go, let's play good cop back up.

This is going to be really good. It's really effective. I've done it before. I know it's going to work. And I'm like, yeah, but I know his personality. Like I'm thinking about him. I'm really empathetic and I don't know what that's going to be. But we negotiate and we come to an agreement.

We both go in. Whether it works or it doesn't work, neither of us is resentful with each other because we made an agreement about how we'd go in. Yeah. I agree with good cop back up. I don't think it worked, but I agreed to it. Right. Now there's no resentment.

Here's the other thing that's powerful about an agreement is I'm not managing you and you're not managing me. We're just managing the agreement between us. Yeah. But this is really a really powerful relationship principle. I mean, incredibly powerful. I'm thinking about most relationship issues today that you just shared. And it's, you know, my, my sister, I was just sharing this with somebody else, but my sister-in-law just got married. And it was, and she was in her robe on Sunday, like ready to relax and watch something. And, you know, it's their first Sunday, one of their first Sundays of after after just getting married and then he's got all of his you know football gear on at 1120 like hey you know we got the the game here and we got to go to sports bar

you know let's you know sort of and uh I mean early on marriage is just such a okay so what are you doing right this is like how is this even in question it's football day right and she's a whole we just got married are we going to sit and have coffee yeah right totally those are the little things that show up all the time. What I love about agreements is that it just, I don't have to take it personally. And I'm being playful with you and I, but like you and I went into

that thing and we agreed on the good cop, bad cop, and we went in, had this conversation with our buddy. And whether it goes well or not, I'm not taking it personally like, Josh didn't do it my way. I'm going, well, we made an agreement. Hey, I don't think the I don't think that worked.

So I just go back to you and go, hey, can we make a new agreement? I don't think that worked. Or it did work. I'm like, wow, good call. Or let's say we break the agreement. We go in and I go, I say, hey, you agree with me. Go, okay, I won't do good, hop, bag, hop. You know, we'll be empathetic and listen to his story first. And geez, I got to sit here and listen.

Right. And then, but something happens in you and you're like, no, somebody's got a chance. You can't say that. Somebody's got a challenge. So you jump into your challenge. And I'm like, hey, we've got a broken agreement. Yeah. Right.

I'm not taking it personal. You don't like me. You didn't respect me. I'm disrespected. I just go, hey, we got a broken agreement. Yeah. You go, ah, my bad. You're right.

I did agree to that. Okay, can we have a new agreement? Yeah, yeah, okay, new agreement. And you see how suddenly we might have conflict, but the conflict is just around the agreement. It's not me taking it personal. Because how many times you hear somebody like, I feel disrespectful or, you know, not, you know,

that I don't love me, right? I mean, men and women, especially, right? That's one of the two biggest things we get hooked on. And so suddenly I was with a client just this week. He was like, I just feel so disrespectful for my wife. And so I said, well, can I say this story back to you? And I said the story back to him from her perspective. And I was like, because he gave me her perspective.

I'm like, do you think maybe she's just a nurturer who really feels concerned about how the house is going to look with this and that because of the kids? And is it possible she's not, is it possible she's really driven by this primal urge to take care of the children? And he goes, well, yeah. So is it possible she's not disrespecting you? she's really standing solidly for something she believes is true. Yeah.

So did you have an agreement around this? No. So you're taking something personally because neither of you agreed. You walked into a thing blindly and had two opposing opinions. And then you wound up arguing about it and you walked away with your feelings hurt. What if before you walk in you set an agreement? And so it's just this, it's a thing you get to have between you. And you, I just, I try to remind people and myself, like, I mean, me too, like I'm walking

this journey out. How many times I'm disrupted because I just have an unmet expectation. Yeah. So good. So, yeah, that's a big, that's a major part of the shift. I love it. I love that. It's, yeah, it's a former negotiation.

You know, there's Chris Voss, you know, and, you know, and, you know, I think I became even more lightened to this when he was watching it watching something he did and he said you know what like I negotiate with my daughter like sit down and negotiate with my daughter today and I start realizing I've got a three-year-old right now and I negotiate with her all day every day on you know on putting on her pajamas or whatever it might be there's literally negotiations all day every day and coming to it in coming to an agreement I mean again this is this is part of every part of our lives yes and I really want to affirm that by the way this is beautiful and I hope people who are listening who are young parents.

I love that you're modeling this because here's what you're doing. You're saying to your three-year-old, oh, you're actually a human with dignity. And I'm honoring your choice. I grew up in parenting. Here's some of my regrets as a parent. We got, I've been married 31 years. We had kids pretty early on. I was, we were 20.

We got married 22. I had, we had twins. So I had two kids by the time I was 25. So, oh, sorry kids. So, you know, I had to learn on the older ones, my twin boys and then my daughter. And then we had a fourth later on that we parented a little differently. But in the beginning, it was about behavioral adjustment. You're too loud.

Stop doing that. You're hitting your brother. You're throwing your food. You're not eating. And early on, our reactive parenting was just change the behavior because it doesn't fit my preference. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

That was simple parenting. I don't like that. I don't think this is good for you. Don't do it. Then I stumbled upon choice theory, which is if you actually honor a choice, which is to me what you're talking about, and you say to your kid,

you know what, you can eat your food or you can not eat your food. If you eat your food, you'll get to watch Barney later. Right? If you don't eat your food, you don't get to watch Barney. You get,

now, which choice would you like to do? But that simple shift of allowing them to see themselves as an empowered chooser. Now, you're still giving them a tight little world of which they have choices, right? But isn't it wild? That little negotiation allows them, I think, to have a different level of confidence when they're older. Yeah, it's so true.

And I think one of the things that Chelsea and I, my wife, she's a physician too, and she's studied a lot of, you know, parental psychology. And I think she's the one, I think she really did a great job with bringing some of this into some of our parenting. And I, part of me sometimes is like, again, I mentioned this. already. We're just, it's an all-day negotiation. And I'm trying not to also at the same time make it bribery. Did you know what I'm saying? It's this thing of like, okay, it's not like, okay, if you do this, you get your, you know, chocolate or your macaroni or whatever. But it is a little

bit of that. It's like, hey, listen, if you eat your entire meal, you can have this. If you don't, you don't, right? So there's a, there's a way to do that. But think about us as adults, right? Like, hey, by the way, if you work out today and you eat healthy most of the day, then you could treat yourself with this piece of chocolate or whatever thing, right? Because by the way, you're taking care of yourself and you're acting in moderation. You get to treat yourself as opposed to, we talked about this earlier. We had another conversation about how sometimes when it comes to health and wellness and stuff, like, oh, you're taking this from me.

Right? Just that difference of like cheat day or treat. day is a very different way of seeing it, right? I'm treating myself because I actually was really responsible in this area. And so I think even as an adult, I think it's helpful to go, well, as adult, there's a, there's a risk reward. There's a, right? Yeah, I think the one thing I'm just conscious of trying to, we're, for instance, we're in Target. She wants the toy. Now, I don't know that she's done it to this degree. Chelsea goes a lot more than I do. So, but, you know, if she were melt down and cry because we didn't get the toy.

Like, we're probably not going to do a bribery. My point is, but I do, there is a level of, hey, honey, calm down. Hey, you can keep crying like this. Hey, you can get a toy in the future. We got toys at home. We got the, you know, anyways, there's a, there's a conversation that's happening. And, yeah. I'll give you one piece for there that was really helpful.

We had a lady on our, on the show called her name's Anna Skates, and she does this thing on parenting. And she had a lovely piece for this. And she said, well, sometimes what's happening in a meltdown. And she talked about a kid at a store meltdown. Let's say you're leaving in the, you know, Chucky Cheese or some funnoy. They're having a meltdown. I don't want to leave.

I don't want to go. I don't want to go. Right. And they're standing at the car. They won't get in the car. They're having a meltdown. And she goes, was a parent, you're typically like, dear God. Like, I got to get this kid in the car and we got to stop this.

She said, if you pause for a second, again, remember you're dealing with another human being, not just a child who you need to all. you need a behavioral adjustment. But here's another human who's having a moment. She's like, you know, if your best friend was having a meltdown, you probably wouldn't be like, oh dear God, shut up, get in the car, right? She said, if you remember that, you tend to get good about being curious. And so, and by the way, and I, this is a great little parenting thing,

but I think it works cross relationships. Pause and go, hey, hey, tell me what you're feeling right there. Tell me why, as soon as you catch your breath, tell me what's, happen. I don't want to leave. I don't want to go. I'm mad. I'm sad. Oh, so leaving this, it was so fun for you. It's really sad for you to have to wrap up your time of enjoyment. Oh, there's a word we call this grief. Like, oh, you're just grieving the fact that you have to stop doing something you enjoy. You know what? I know what I know what that's like. I have had that feeling too many times in my life. Unfortunately,

It's 20 degrees out and it's really cold. And we're going to get in the car now. But I honor the fact that you're grieving. And you might want to cry for a little bit longer in the backseat. We're not going to cry out here. So like here's the boundary, but here's also the space for you to have your human experience. And I think if we remember that, it's so tempting to judge someone according to how we see the world. And there's that old saying,

Judge not unless you be not judged in the same way. This is Jungian psychology, by the way. He says that everyone's a screen. And the moment you're annoyed with someone and the other person is the thing you're unconscious of that's going on in you. That sucks. Yeah. Every time you're annoyed with someone else

and you point out their flaw, his point is just so you know, it's the subconscious flaw in you you can't see. which by the way is the spiritual teaching chosen on the speed not just the moment you point that out you're actually pointing it something in you it reminds you of this sort we were talking about Anthony de Mello and why awareness is so important yes

and I think when I when I think about the people and we both talked about we we've both spent some time reading about a lot of saints and and in people that have had a big impact on the world and when I think about those people their level of awareness spiritually self-awareness, social awareness, whether it's a Mother Teresa or a St. Francis of a C.C. Or an Anthony L. or a lot of these people. It is so, so high. Is that something? And I know you took time. You traveled around, you know, the Middle East and Europe and all those areas and looked at as studying saints and poets and those sort of things.

Is that something you found? And if that's something you found, why is this awareness so important? And how do people become more aware? Yeah. You know, most of us don't change. until we've suffered enough. I wish it were different. I wish it were different. I wish I changed every time I was inspired. And I've been inspired and I have changed. But unfortunately I would say that more drastic change

and the stuff that I've given more attention to is stuff that when I've been in pain. Now, I happen to believe that pain is part of the unit of experience but suffering is optional. So, and there's some semantics here, but if you look at it from this frame, we're all going to experience pain. We're all going to experience loss. We're going to, there are going to be things that don't go the way we prefer. There's going to be physical pain.

There are going to be things outside of our control. We're going to experience pain. But suffering is when we get caught in a loop. And the suffering almost always, we're right back to the same center, is because I had an expectation. I had an expectation that I'd be healthy until I was 50. I had an expectation that I wouldn't lose my father, my friend, right? And so the suffering is all, and this is de Mello. Suffering is always I have an attachment to an outcome.

I happen to these is all spiritual teachers. They all are saying this, right? My suffering comes when I'm attached to an outcome. I don't think there's anything wrong with desire. Desire points me towards something I value. So I can desire. I'm like, man, I desire for peace in the Middle East. I desire for health in my body.

I have this desire, and I might be limited in my actions, but I'll take the actions that I can, but I can't control the outcome. So I'll act on my desire. That gives me focus, and it allows me to see where I'm going. But I don't know exactly how it's going to turn out. I can't put it, I can't put it on a time frame. I don't know exactly how it's going to happen. So that to me is actually the epitome of faith.

I will take it. Faith is motion. I have a desire. I'm going to act on it. I just, and I can't even imagine what I hope it will be. But I can't control

exactly what it will look like. And so when I let go of my attachment to the outcome, I cease to suffer. I may go through difficulty. I may go through pain. I may go through hardship. I may go through struggle.

And that's part of the human experience. But I let go of the suffering when I let go of my attachment to outcome. I think that that is where awareness is incubated in the human experience. That's why busyness too, I think is such an issue is because when you're busy, you're tend to be less aware. You're so busy, you're just not aware of anything distracted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so one of the things fundamentally, when I take people through a process, it's I invite them to take ownership about what they value. And I, so I'll give you an example of one of the exercises I do with people. I actually got this. It's a modification of something I actually first heard from, Warren Buffett.

But he had people go, write down 25 things that you long for, that you want, that you really want. And you use the word long, like long for, like you yearn for this, right down 25 things. And it's funny, a lot of my men have trouble. They're like, I only got to 14. Like, okay, but I want you to connect with what you want, what you actually want. I don't care if you want to eat more steak. I don't care if you want to travel to Europe.

I don't care if there's a dollar amount. I don't care if it's, look, you know, I want to be, have a deeper relationship. with the divine, whatever it is. Write down 25. It's vulnerable. Because I'm actually acknowledging that there's something that I want. Yeah. Have you found that you said men have a, you just mentioned,

I can see men having a much harder time with this than women. And I think it's due to, I mean, it's the same thing. Like, is my dad, no old military, you know, guy, he's not very, vulnerable. My mom incredibly vulnerable, you know. And so I, I really see that. I think that's a good, you know, and I've read Joseph Campbell, you know, he, yeah, yeah, love him. He really gets into this hero's journey and really talks a lot about like what the, the core part of it here is they just deeply desire something. Yes. They deeply desire. And this could be everything from Jesus. He deeply desires something. And this, as you mentioned, desire is important. Right.

You just want to make sure you're desiring the right thing. Right. And so I see this being really, really important. And so talk to me about, like, when you're working with clients, I love to hear a little bit more of this process for people, and maybe this is something people can do themselves, or maybe someone's an executive, they could reach out to you and learn more

about some of the coaching you do, but walk me through a little bit more of the process in terms of, and do you ever say, do you really want that? Like, do you ever have anybody put on a list like, I don't. No, no, no, no, because. Did you ever ask, let me give you just what I'm thinking is, is that, you know, I had, there's someone I'm thinking of, and he's, actually, there's a lot of people I'm

thinking of. They're really successful. And we've heard, he drives a Lamborghini. He's got this house, whatever, but he just got a divorce. He's sleeping. And I just see his light, he's absolutely totally miserable. But I know what he would put on his list. And he's actually achieved it all. Yes. So I'm just, and I think these desires are important, but also, I did, you ever asking, question. Why, why do you desire that or why is that to the top on the list? I mean, yeah, I know I just asked you like 17. No, no, no. I'm seeing. Feel free to where you're at. I'm totally cracking. So I think I grew up feeling this, I grew up with this fundamental, um, belief that eventually was really not helpful for me. The belief was this. I'm responsible for everybody.

Okay, wow. Anyway, keep, keep, I resonate with it. Let me just, and then I'm going to let you like, okay. Like, I remember when I first started taking a lot of responsibility as a student doctor, right before I went out, I started having all these patients. And I went into my pastor at the time. And I went in and I sat down and he was just this amazing, like, he was a surfer to, like just very aware. And he just didn't say anything. And I'm like, and I just, and I just, can even look him at the eye and I was like Larry I was like I feel like I want to just cry and ball and have the weight

on my shoulders but I can't I can't even do that like I just felt this like wait because I was trying to take on like if a patient didn't follow the plan I was like that's my everything was on me and it almost just broke me yeah I just yes and I think this is where some religious systems are not helpful because like I

grew up hearing things like the blood of people's lot their souls are on your hands if they don't you know wow and go to heaven and like it's your responsibility to convert people like i i had a lot of that heavy hand and so what it developed in me was a codependency so codependency defined really simple definition is if you're not okay i'm not okay so i have to do whatever it takes to make sure you're okay. So think about how that plays out in your life. If you're not okay, I'm not okay. So anyone who, and we, I think we all deal with the level of codependency.

Yeah. So, because the temptation is always there. But if I'm spending all my time, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? And you, oh my gosh, you didn't follow my plan. You might have cancer.

You might get sick. You might, right? And because I was, I was in church work for years as a pastor. I felt the same thing like, oh, I'm responsible for you. responsible for and a fundamental shift for me and it came through a very dark season it was a really a breaking for me is to go oh you're an adult and you're responsible for yourself you're responsible for you and I'm responsible for me we can make agreements and if I break an agreement we'll break a trust and we might lose the relationship but that doesn't mean you're a

person or I'm a bad person. It does mean now I'm responsible for you or you're responsible for me. It just means we have broken trust and so we may choose not to be in relationship with one another. But now I don't, I'm not fundamentally broken or shifted because I didn't get you to do a certain thing. And you're not broken because you didn't get me to do a certain thing. So now watch how we go into the 25 longings. So now a guy writes down as, or lady, I've coached both, somebody writes down their 25 longings and I, in it, I want to, now Maserod. I want like I want I want I want to make you know 50 million this year my portfolio I want whatever thing is right like okay it's not for me to manage life comes to as your teacher

and I actually fundamentally believe go after it like I'm kind of like okay let's go let Maserati now I might ask questions like this this will be the one place that I the the one probably I will ask clarifying questions like now does that feel true I will ask that question. And the reason I'm saying, if fundamentally I'm inviting all my clients to take ownership, then I want them to really dig in. I'll take them if you're

convinced that Azarotti's the thing right now. I want them to dig in because a lot of people spend their time exporting their responsibility to other people. You and I talked about this with doctors. Well, whatever the doctor says, what if you did some of your own study

and could you take responsibility for your own health, whatever the pastor says, whatever the religious system says, whatever, like we, I mean, you can look through history, World War II, you listen to, you know, I've read a bunch on that era of history, and German soldiers are like, well, whatever the Kaiser, you know, like, whatever, you know, whatever Adolf Hitler said, he was, he's my, he's my guy, right? Like, so I export my ownership to what other people tell me I'm supposed to believe or do. I'm fundamentally inviting when I'm with clients, hey, would you take ownership of your own paradigm, how you see the world and I happen to believe that there is a spiritual connection here that you can tap into

so I'm actually you to tap into that so I'll say so I might ask the questions that feel true yep feels true I want to get him right I was right cool all right and by the way maybe it was great because the guy sure because because the guy lived super poor and he was like the rich man poor man guy the whole like wonderful or another guy he's like I got it and oh how you know we're a week later what's it like I had one guy he bought probably one of the most expensive cars in the city and What's it like? He's like, oh, it's in the garage. I don't want it to get scratched.

And then, like, I saw him the next month. I'm like, wow, that car is freaking awesome. How, what's that like? He's like, I hadn't pulled it out of the garage. And then I saw him the next month. I'm like, hey, well, how's the car? He's like, ah, I turned it back in. Yeah, yeah.

It was fun to buy it. Right? Then it lost the book. So, okay, but it came as your teacher. So I don't mind them writing that stuff down. Oh, yeah. Because it gets them somewhere. Yeah.

And when I do the process. by the way so if somebody wants to do this exercise it's a really great exercise right down your top 25 longings then cut it down to five and orin buffett says you're the other 20 are your avoided all cost wow because because the neural pathway stuff where focus goes energy flows disparate attention prevents me from actually getting to the thing I want because most of us are going to take the path of least resistance and we get distracted I can't want that over here. But if I go, no, no, no, avoid it all costs. These five are the only five you're giving attention to. I mean, mathematically, very close to it's the Pareto principle. Right, right. You know, the 80-20.

I love that. I mean, it's a good sort of essentialism. Let's focus on the same that matter. And it's a great exercise. I hadn't heard it done with that with desires and longings and once. That's a, I'm going to use that. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it today.

It's really good. It's fun. And now I get to take ownership. Like, okay, these are the five things I'm saying I want more than anything. And usually what I'll get is I'll get a little mixture of they will be items that are measurable that you can get to like I want to buy a car or I want to make a certain amount of money. And then I'll also get like, hey, I want to feel closer to God. Or I want to have the best marriage ever, right? And so I don't, or it might even be I want more peace. So it might be a way of being a thing.

So what I'll say to them then is, all right, we're going to give these attention. As we go, these things that are a little bit more ambiguous. We'll get some clarity around them. But they remain your five until one of two things happens. You achieve the event or the thing. And then once it sounds like I bought the car, I can take it out of my five. Now I can go revisit my 20 list and pull another one in. Or that way of being that I wanted, it's now, it's become my way of being.

And this is where I talk about conscious and subconscious. If you look at a glass of water, this is my conscious energy I have every day. It's all I got. Everybody gets a certain degree of energy every day, right? And sometimes maybe you're even around, we're like, oh, they took a lot of energy for me, right? You can tell something, you know, the story of Jesus, like somebody touched me. Like something went out.

I can tell something, right? So we have this energy. This is kind of what I have. When you go, oh, I'm so exhausted today, you know, like I just really spent all that energy, right? So this is my conscious. I can only consciously be attentive to so much. subconscious, like what is it, 95% of I think. It's driven by the subconscious, right?

So my goal is to take those things, those ways of being, and I want to make them part of your way of being and let them drop into your subconscious. So let's say you're like, I want to be more patient, and I'm not. It's right now conscious energy. Your kid walks up and does the thing, you're like, I want to be more patient, okay. Take a deep breath.

Okay, all right, son. All right. And what else did you break? Okay. all right and and tell me about the car okay right yeah and I'm and I'm worried I'm being attentive to it it's in I'm in nine neural pathway pathway is fusing and I'm and now it's now it's starting a new groove and now I'm repeating it I doing it over and over again and eventually I keep showing up like this wow this patient

thing has become a part of my way of being and it drops into my subconscious and now I don't have to give it attention anymore it's become who I am this is where the premise, this is to me where neurobiology helps us more than ever before to go, now you have neuroplasticity. You don't have to say, well, that's just my personality. You can change. Yeah. It might be hard work.

It takes, and here's my thing. It takes structure, accountability, and reinforcement. Without those three things, rarely does anyone experience change. Well, walk me through what those three things would look like with a client. So, let's say a client says, I want to be more present. I got a lot of high achievers, so this would be a thing that, like,

I'm not real president, preoccupied, my phone's right here. I'm picking it up during the meal. Like, I want to be more present to my kids. Okay. So, first of all, what are some, what we'd identify, what are the places where you're most distracted

and you're not present? I'm thinking about my job, but let's get real practical, and we're going to make some micro shifts. Let's take the phone. It's an easy one. We'll start with the phone. all right so here's the structure so when you go home you're going to tell your assistant

i will not be on my phone or you know whoever in the office just so you know i'm going to put my phone down and i'm not going to be on it when i get home i'm home by six i'm not going to be on it the rest of the evening well there is no way i mean i'm the CEO there's a i'll tell you what um if there's a problem call my wife she'll keep her ring her on now i got the emergency thing resolved. But my temptation is I'm going to look at my phone. Oh, and then there's a notification. I should check my fantasy team. Right? Right? So, this is a little

one microshift. I want to be more present. Here's the structure. I'm not going to put my phone. And you're going to see me every week. So I'm your accountability. So did you put your phone down when you went home? Well, Monday I did, but on Tuesday I didn't. So do you need a hug? Do you need a kick in the hand? Like, we're like, which one right now do I need to give you? Yeah. Right. So

like, if I'm given them, if I'm challenged, I'm Like, well, I thought you said you valued your kids. So do you value your kids? Do you value your agreements? Okay. All right. Let's start over. Give me the next seven days.

Put your phone down. Okay, okay, okay. I'm on that. Right? Structure, accountability, and then reinforcement. And I do a lot of positive. Like, they'll come in. I made it a week.

Like, wait a call. Like, this is amazing. And by the way, what was like? You know what? I kind of listen to the story. My kids told, like, way in ways I never had before. And I played this, did this puzzle with my daughter. And I watched a movie with my kid.

and like, ah, I'm still kind of preoccupied in my head, though. I don't know if I'm really present. Okay, now let's work on that. So we'll make micro shifts using structure, accountability, and reinforcement. And so, but we'll start at that kind of really practical, tangible level. Because we don't work in the abstract, right? Like, life happens in the dirt. So I really try to get people down to, like, let's start with what's the thing that's keeping you from being present.

Then we'll start into the mindset stuff. So this would be, I'll stay with it for a second. Let's say, so they go, okay, I'm doing much better. I don't pick up my phone when I go home. I'm there with the kids, but I'm still got stuff racing through my mind. All right. Next practical thing. You're going to keep a notebook with you.

Whatever's in your mind. Oh my gosh, I got a call me CEO about this. And if we thought about this firm, I got a marketing idea around this. And that commercials made me think, blah, blah, blah. You keep a notebook with you, not your phone. You keep your notebook with you. and you can write every time you have a thought that's racing through your mind, you write it down. And keep writing till all your racing thoughts are out.

Are they out? So go practice that. All my racing, any more racing thoughts? No, I think that's all that is. Okay. Now go get on the floor and play, do have a tea party with your daughter. Okay. And we'll practice that for a week or three weeks or two months or however long, right?

Like, did that work for the racing thoughts? Yeah, but what is, well, now I just keep thinking I need to work. more. Okay. So it sounds like maybe there's a discipline you'd like to add to your life. Okay, when are you going to work out? Well, maybe like three times a week. What days? So to me, coaching is as granular as possible. I will literally put a calendar up on my screen and go, what time, what day, how long, what's the workout? I don't know what workout. Call Dr. X. Yeah, I mean, I think where people tend to fall off is the scheduling part. Yes. Yes. It's like, hey, I'm going to eat healthier and I'm going to try and work out and whatever.

And then they'll go a few days and then it's just not solidly in the calendar, like going to job or going to school or whatever it might be. They have to pull it out in front of me. I do this with special. That's so good. Pull it out. Is it in there? Is it on repeat?

What time is it? Do you have an end time? Where will you do it? Because otherwise, if they go, yeah, I want to work out more. Okay, good. I'm going to work out three times a week. Okay, great. All right.

I'll see you next week. accountability is such a big deal i mean this is something i think part of our more isolated and when you i spent a lot of time looking at mental health and the studies around loneliness is it's it's it's an epidemic and that's partly leading to a lot of i mean mental health issues have greatly out uh started outrun um you know cancer and heart disease in terms of the growth rates are very high and so but i think part of it is due to lack of community and a lack of accountability. And I think if you have that, and we talked about this earlier, just a little bit, just sort of mentioned, I see this an issue with some of the church

today and some of a lot of things is when you don't have accountability. And I think, like, when I think about the ways that I've grown the most, it was through mentorship. Because I had a mentor pouring into me and giving me advice or I was going to them and that sort of thing. And then maybe there was a level of accountability attached. And I think the same thing with my team members, when I see the team members that are taking off and growing the most, it's I'm being the best leader when I am saying, hey, here's your top five thing. We're making an agreement.

By the way, that's by far the best thing is when it's like, hey, I want you to pick what the goals are. I want to, and then we're going to come to an agreement on what it is. And then we're going to meet in regularly for accountability. So what you're sharing, just the way you help people in growing in life and their business, is the same way that entrepreneurs and executives need to lead their team members. Yes.

And here's where accountability works. Accountability works if you feel emotionally safe. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And especially in today's society. Bray Brown, a lot of people know who she is. She got, had a TED Talk that went viral and blew up.

But to me, one of her great gifts to the world is she talks about the difference between shame and guilt. She says, shame goes after identity. And it tells you're an idiot. You're stupid. You're dumb. And really, I think, pulls up the core. wound of the core lie from your childhood. I think everybody takes, the ego interprets their childhood, something in their childhood,

and winds up taking a core lie or a core wound. And shame just beats the crap out of you with that lie, right? That's shame. It buries your head in the ground, you know, stick your head in the water. It's going to drown you, right? That's the energy of shame. Gilt is different. Gilt says, oh, yuck, I don't like that behavior.

That's actually not who I am. I want to change that. It's kind of a lighter emotion, more at the top, and it's uncomfortable and it needs to be because it's saying, oh, you know what, I haven't been to the gym in two weeks. Like, I don't like the way I feel. I kind of feel guilty. Okay, good. Act on that.

The guilt dissipates. I'm going to take an action. So shaming people, which was a large part of society for a long time, shaming people to me is not helpful. But holding them accountable, letting them feel the guilt of their own broken agreement. That's motivating. You said something that's really powerful that. I just want to point out. Of course you know this, but the biblical narrative around this, right?

It's like Adam and E feeling the shame. This is something that's this core identity issue from the beginning of time. And when I think about there, there's, Carl, Carl Jung gets into this. Yes, yes. And really. Yes. Of one of the things in relation to that is he talks about,

I'm curious your thoughts on this, in order for you to grow, he has a, he has a quote and it's related to this and it is if you want your branches to reach up to heaven your roots need to reach down to hell and part of that too he says is you should know your capacity for darkness but you shouldn't live

there yes right you should be aware that I am a sinner I have made mistakes there should be a level of guilt and healthy conviction with it and when you have that realizing I'm not perfect I'm not living in pride there's a level of humility around that I am capable of great things I think sometimes there's

a lot of maybe even some, not all at all, but there are some churches that kind of almost keep people in that level of shame and guilt of saying, you're a sinner. Let's focus all of our efforts on only that versus what about the part you're redeemed, you're a child of God, there's a plan and purpose for your life, you're actual saint as the Bible calls you to be a saint. All these identity issues are so big. It's so true. I'm with you 100%. I so appreciate you're saying. I totally agree. I'd stumbled across a book years ago by Matthew Fox called Original Blessing. And he's like, I think, oh, I'm stuttering because I also saw a film on St. Francis, who I know you like. And in this film, I watched this film, this is like a year ago. Somebody

told me, watch his father, son, sister moon. I don't know if I'm getting the title right, but something like this. It's this kind of cheesy 70s movie on St. Francis. And it's pretty cheesy. But if you're kind of watching it, it's super 70s. And somebody recommended, I'm like, I don't know, this is tough to get through, but okay, I'm watching the film, watching them. And the next thing, you know, there's, and I actually

in one of my books tell the story of St. Francis, and so Francis goes in to see the Pope at the time. And in the film, they show this story. And the Pope is Alec Guinness. Alic Guinness, Obi-One Canobi. And I'm like, whoa, that this movie was cheesy, but Alec Guinness, said, well, this is cool.

Right. So the Pope comes out, Francis has this moment and there's this big kind of disruption that France is this if you know any of his story. He's super poor. He lives in poverty. He's dirty and all these and all the kind of rich people in the courtroom are like why was this guy allowed in here. And so and so he comes in and he's shocked by the opulence. And he's like, why have you spent all your money on this? And he's in he's challenging the court. It doesn't even realize it's almost like his own naivete. And they immediately start dragging him out and they they start berating him and judging him and the pope gets off its throne whatever his chair walks down the stairs and kisses francis his feet and the people are freaking out

in the moment and alleghenous playing the pope says thank you we've been so preoccupied with original sin that we forgot about original blessing and this is a true story by the moment sharing yes is and I think the term I think the term in the movie he used was we forgot about original affection oh and I like kind of like that even more like that you're loved by God you you're you're liked by the divine like you're not just love but even the divine likes you loves you're connected to the divine you're an expression of the divine you're an aspect of the divine as opposed to you're just this horrible person and I'm so I'm grateful you highlighted that because I do think you're right, it gets stuck in our psyche.

And the young young end quote is amazing. Like, hey, do I have a shadow? Yeah, do I have an ego? Absolutely. Somebody was talking about these rage rooms. Have you heard about this? You know what? I think I have a baseball bat or something.

Yeah. But I've thought, because I'm wired a little bit like you. I'm pretty positive guy. I'm upbeat or whatever. But I've thought, if somebody took me into that thing with a baseball bat, I probably could go find some rage. So in Chinese medicine, this is interesting. They, if you have, everything's consistent.

We talked with this. If you have, the primary emotion is related to anger, frustration, and patience. And if you're living in that zone, you have, you have to release it or else, like, it actually leads to, like, chronic constipation and a number of things. So it's called liver stagnation or stagnation to where things aren't moving through your system. So now they tend to recommend boxing or swimming or tennis, pickleball, anything where you're able to hit or whack something or release something. So anyways, this goes back.

thousands of years. Now, I think the, you know, padded room at the baseball, about it's a whole other kind of level, but it is a therapy that can you just for a really, really long time. So good. Because, because that's like, it's in us, right? I'm still going to have those emotions. And like I would say, that's a development place for me. It's learning really how to feel through my feeling as opposed to move around them. That's my own. And this is part of wisdom and awareness, too, is I'm not letting my feelings control me. I'm, I'm reading them and understanding something needs to be done. That's not that I do nothing either, right?

No, that's exactly it. So what I, especially I work with a lot of men, a lot of high achieving men who don't have time for feelings. So my whole thing is, well, you may not have time for those feelings now, but they're going to show up because feelings buried alive, never die. So they're going to show up somewhere. They're going to come out sideways, right? And this is what you deal with every day.

So, and I am an example of this working through it in real time. So my practice has been, first can I name the feelings? which is hard for me at times because it's inefficient yeah time to name a feeling right okay maybe I might feel a little sad and now what my practice has been this is what I invite my clients into give it 90 seconds it doesn't have to change your state you don't have to become obsessed with this this is not to find who you are the feelings like the heads up display in your car like oh you're running law on gas right it's telling you something it's it's informative so you feel sad just

be with it for 90 seconds okay i think i feel sad feel it feel all the way through it like a wave like it's just gonna be have a pass through i feel sad is there anything you need to learn there ask the sadness is there anything you're supposed to be aware of i may maybe i miss my mom and dad you know 53 and dad just turned 80 and i think i had some christmas i was missing them i've had a little sadness okay anything you want to do about that maybe i'll call them tonight okay anything else nope There we go. Right.

And off we go. Like, I can continue on. But instead of just avoiding, suppressing, repressing, um, practice feeling them.

Yeah. It doesn't, and I like the way you said, it doesn't define me. It's just a feeling. It's telling you something. It's informing you. And their feelings we're less comfortable with,

like anger and rage and some of those things. But that's, hey, I'm having a human experience. They might be in there. And so be it to pay it. Do I have an expectation? Oh,

I'm angry because I got blocked goals. Yeah. I had an expectation that you would act differently. And by the way, I'm going to take ownership and responsibility because we never had an agreement about it. I just had an expectation, you, whoever you are, would act differently. And so I'm going to forgive myself for putting that on you and putting myself through that experience because I never invited you into an agreement. I never actually was curious about your perspective.

I just made an assumption you'd see the world the way I do. And that wasn't kind. This idea around agreements is really important. It's something I want to revisit in the future and I want people to dive into because I think that's so important. I think the list of the 25 things and narrowing that down to the five to go after is so good. What was the three pronged part is I think identifying those desires, having structure. Yeah.

Accountability. And then reinforce. Reenforce that. So good. That's how we change. I love being in your office here. Thanks so much for hosting. You've got a lot of amazing books.

I was looking at everything, you know, crime and punishment. We got. I was looking at, you know, Milton's Paradise Law and so many good things over here. What is, what are, give me your top three in ranking order, most life-changing books you've ever read for you. Oof. The first book comes to mind is Exquisite Risk by Mark Nipo, who's a poet. It was life-changing for me because when I read it, he gave, you know, when somebody says something and you're like, oh, I didn't know how to say that. But that's how I felt.

in that moment it was a whole book of that of like oh my gosh you're describing an inner world and experience i've had that i had limited language for and to me good coaches and guides and mentors that's really what we're doing i feel like in many ways my i just spend my days as a linguist like i i give here's a word or here's a phrase or here's a tool and try it on does that work for you okay if not great if it doesn't work okay but he did that for me exquisite risk and it just it's just this beautiful poetic expression of the human experience can I tell you Tim Keller does a sermon on identity

and he says there's really three things that most impact our identity stories slogans and songs oh it's good because they all impact yourself narrative and so what you're saying they're like poem like that's a slogan it's in a way that you're saying over and over and over again that affects your identity yes it's it's so powerful by way you've had a lot throughout our conversation here a lot of little anyways kind of those zingers that I've really

you know well our brain hooks on like feelings buried a lot you know yeah feelings buried a lie never die like that which is the title of a book it to me those there are there where focus goes energy flows right at first I think I heard Tony Robbins say that first time but when those are they're good for our mind

it's just an easy hook to remember because remember we're back if I want to change I start in that conscious energy thing and I got once with my structure my accountability with reinforcement if I can Focus goes, energy flows. Okay, so what am I giving attention to? Okay, what am I giving attention to?

Right? It helps me be accountable. Those little phrases help that way. So, straight line leadership by, it's a Swedish name that I don't know how to pronounce. But it was, when it comes to coaching, it was really one of the most helpful books. And it's really, really action-oriented. So if you're wired in such way that you're the kind of person that's like, I want less esoteric, and less esoteric and I just want to like get after it.

It's that. It's really good. And then one kind of connected a little bit more to the spiritual place would be Universal Christ by Richard Rohr. Which was, again, it was one of those validating like, oh, this is how I've experienced the divine. And it felt like someone else had experienced the divine like I did. And so for me, it's funny, I read crime and punishment last year.

and I've kind of made an accountable action for me was I want to go back to some of the books I hated reading when I was in high school in college. I want to go back and digest as an adult some of this old literature. Yeah. It was painful. Gosh. I mean, to be in the mind of someone like. Yeah. Yeah. But to be, I can't remember the main character's name now, but to be in his, just be in his head. Because, you know, a book is a fiction book. You're in the psyche of the right protagonist. It's brutal because this guy is completely torn apart by his own internal resentment. But it was also meaningful. So this is why it's helpful, I think, to read fiction is it reminds you of like,

oh, yeah, these are the thoughts we all have as humans. You forget about what happens in our internal dialogue. Most of us don't share that with everybody, right? I mean, it's internal for a reason. And when you read a fiction book, you're like, oh, other people think this too. Yeah. And the place of validation normalizes. Like, I'm not crazy.

Yeah. I'm just a human having a human experience. It removes some of the judgment. That I think is one of the gifts of fiction. I feel less judgmental about myself. And I go, oh. I think the great stories, too, they have, it's what you're saying is they have these patterns that I think we all recognize

and allow us to better understand the world. That's well said. That's it. That's it. And other people. Yeah. The other book I was thinking of East of Eden. I read that earlier this year.

And John Steinbeck, another classic. And oh, it's so good. That one, it was good. That was not painful. That was really good. And all these different characters, and you're like, whoa, people are really, this is what they deal with internally. And it, for me, it elicits compassion, both for myself and for other people.

So those would be some of my favorites. So good. Well, I know you've been doing a lot of interviews here in podcasting recently. and it doesn't have to relate it to the podcast, but what's the best piece of advice you've ever received? Holy cow, best piece of advice I've ever seen. It's hard because I think I would probably go to different seasons in my life. Advice landed on me different ways.

But I think the most fundamental one would be take ownership for your life. That's good. Be responsible for you. I'll add this. I heard a Russell Brand podcast. Somebody sent me a link. I was like, listen to this is so good. And then I heard a John Mayer podcast.

Somebody else had sent me to. Listen to this. I listened to him a week apart. And they'd both been asked this question. What would you go back and say to your younger self? And they both said similar things. They both said, I'd go back to my younger self and say, you're going to be okay. And I was really struck by that.

And I think that sense of there's just, I have. my whole life had a temptation to judge myself harshly and to feel a sense of I'm judging myself harshly because I'm not I felt this constant compulsion to take care of everybody else in this sense that I was always failing and when I began to let go of that and go I'll let you take ownership for you and I'll take ownership for me I don't have to live in judgment I can live in curiosity that was a massive shift in my life That's good. What's your single best piece of advice for somebody who wants to go from this? Was we open up talking about survival mode to thriving?

Make agreements. You'll be shocked at just that. If you drop your expectations and replace them with agreements, your whole world would change. It's so good. That's a big takeaway for me. I got a lot from this interview. So thanks so much. Well, thank you, brother. It's a pleasure and privilege being with you. Thank you so much. Well, everybody, I want to say thanks so much for being part of this interview with Jamie. George. Hey, if you're watching on YouTube, let us know what is your biggest, the biggest nugget of wisdom, that thing that really struck you about what some of Jamie shared with us today. And also, don't forget to subscribe here. And hey, if this impacted your life in a positive way,

thank you for being on mission with me and for sharing this podcast and episode. Hey, thanks again to the wisdom of Jamie George. And we'll see you on the next show.