The Jordan Harbinger Show - 145: Philip McKernan | Why Your Truth Matters and How to Speak It

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

Philip McKernan (@PhilipMcKernan) is a speaker, filmmaker, and author of One Last Talk: Why Your Truth Matters and How to Speak It and Rich On Paper Poor On Life: 3 Paths To More Meaning (And Money). What We Discuss with Philip McKernan: Do you rarely follow the life advice you'd give -- without hesitation -- to others? Why doing what you're good at isn't always a match for what makes you feel good. How honest vulnerability (not dinner party oversharing) helps you gain insight into what makes you tick and gives your life meaning. Why people travel thousands of miles and pay thousands of dollars for clarity about their own situation they don't actually want. The deep lessons you can learn about yourself in 15 minutes from Philip's One Last Letter exercise. And much more... The folks at BiOptimizers understand why you're skeptical about probiotics as a way to increase your digestive and gut health. But without sharing TMI, we can confirm its patented P3-OM superstrain actually does what it's supposed to do! Curious? Go to p3om.com/jordan for 20 percent off your first order and a full money-back guarantee! Get two months of Skillshare -- unlimited access to over 18,000 classes in design, business, technology, photography, entrepreneurship, film, writing, and more -- for free at skillshare.com/harbinger! Blinkist gives you access to 2,500+ bestselling nonfiction books, transformed into potent little packs you can listen to or read in just 15 minutes. Try Blinkist Premium free for seven days at blinkist.com/jordan! Need custom graphics, logos, or Web design? Access a community of 600,000+ designers by registering at designcrowd.com/jordan and enjoy up to $100 off with The Jordan Harbinger Show bonus offer! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. Now, when I had to restart the Jordan Harbinger show from scratch in early 2018, it forced a hard reset on a lot of the plans I had for my life and business moving forward. One thing I realized was that I really loved some elements of my work and others I'd been doing for years simply because I'd been doing them for years. That's not a good reason to structure your life around an idea, a person, or a business. So when I met Phil McCurton and found out about some of his work, especially when it comes to keeping people aligned and what gives them meaning in their lives, I wanted to get him on the show to discuss getting clarity in our work. Now, I've known Phil for a long time, but I thought his stuff didn't apply to me as much, but recently that's changed. And ironically, while people seem to seek clarity in their work whenever we look at their words, we see that many of us are actually scared to death of finding what we really want out of our work and out of our lives in general. Phil and I also explore vulnerability, not the fake dinner party stuff, but the real deal,

and how this can help us gain insight into what really makes us tick and keeps us happy and fulfilled. This is an incredibly deep episode with Phil. This is not a surface guy, as you know, if you know, Phil, or if you don't, you're in for a treat. And if you want to know how I managed to make all these amazing friends like Phil McCurton and build great relationships and a great network around me that saved my butt when we had to restart the show, well, check out our Level 1 course. It's free.

It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash level one. It's a bunch of skills I wish I'd known my whole life and just learned over the last, let's say, 10 to 15 years. This is game-changing stuff. So go grab it at Jordan Harbinger.com slash level one. All right, here's Phil McKearnan. Phil, thanks for coming back, man. It's been a long time.

It has been a while, yeah. Thanks for having me. You are welcome. And I'm glad to have you here because we go to a lot of events. We see each other at a lot of these events. And the one topic that resonates or seems to resonate a lot with the audience's clarity, really, when it comes down to it. And I think clarity is like purpose in that nobody knows what it means and also nobody seems to have it, except for the people that swear

they have it and are also selling it. Yes. So what's going on here? Why do we need clarity? Is it just for entrepreneurs? How is it different from being on purpose? And I put that in air quotes for people who are listening only. Well, I don't think we need it. I think it's a personal thing. I mean, I think there's an obsession about people who are just sitting around saying they need clarity about every aspect of their life. So, I mean, I think it really comes down to it's an individual thing and then clarity about what. And I find that almost every single person I talk to who's looking for clarity in X, actually the real issue is Y. And when they get clear on Y, or they begin to address Y, which is the thing they're often ignoring, then X, which is the area they're seeking the clarity, tends to almost kind of sort itself out.

So that's number one. Number two is I actually believe, and I'm going to put myself out of business straight away here, this one is the clarity that people seek, they already know. They're just scared shitless about stepping in and addressing that. So generally, generally speaking, I say it joking me that people will travel thousands of miles and in some cases pay thousands of dollars for the clarity that they don't actually want. The clarity that they don't actually want. Yes. So you mean that they're going to get some clarity and it's going to be the clarity that in theory is genuine, but that they never really wanted it in the first place? Yeah. Sometimes they're seeking clarity in an

area that either it's not really a big deal because they're using that to avoid maybe a decision they need to make in their business or a relationship decision or a parenting decision, for example, or maybe addressing a misalignment in their life. So generally speaking, it's less about attaining clarity and it's more about what are you not addressing in your life. So, so for example, if someone says to me, Philip, I want to get clarity about, you know, growing my business and making sure I'm in alignment. I go, great, why are you in this business? And they go, well, because I want to make money. I submit. And then I'll dig into the business. And then I'll dig into the business. And what you'll always find is there's some element of something that's right in front

of them that they're not addressing and yet they're seeking additional clarity but something else. So in other words, they're almost creating more, they're looking for more complexity. Right. Yeah. So this is clarity, so it's clarity or fake clarity as an avoidance mechanism to avoid the thing that they're already may be clear on, but that they're scared of. It can be often. Okay. Yes. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Any idea? I think to some extent, and this might sound weird, is we're in a world today that's obsessed with finding its passion, finding purpose, you know, understanding what people want to do when they grow up. Right. And I think to some extent, actually, there's a part of it that we're obsessing too much about that.

You go back to cave drawings thousands of years ago. There's not a cave drawing that was found or any writings that have ever been discovered that man obsessed around passion or purpose. They got up in the morning, they went, they killed, you know, animals. They found food. they came back, they fed themselves, their family, they tried to keep themselves warm and then they reproduced and that was it. Maybe we've evolved, maybe we've gone backwards, I don't know.

But I think some extent, we often know the things we need to do. For example, somebody said to me recently, I want to create a business, I believe I'm on purpose with this business and I just, let's go, let's get stuck in and I want you to support me. And I'm not a business coach in the traditional sense.

And I go, great, just curiosity, you're living in where? And they mentioned the city they're living in. And I said, do you love it there? And they go, oh, no, I hate the place. And I go, well, why would you start building a business in a city you don't want to live in? Oh, no, well, then when I make enough money, then I can leave. And I'll go, it doesn't really work about that.

Right, sure. What have we addressed where you live first or in tandem with growing the business that you want to grow? Right. That sounds like golden handcuffs. I used to work on Wall Street, as you may or may not remember. And it's like living in New York, living in the financial district, and then you get this job. And you don't really want the job, but you have crushing debt from. law school or whatever. So you go and you get that Wall Street job, work six, seven days a week,

and then you're making money and you're paying off that debt, but you're really miserable. So what do you do? You get a summer home somewhere in the Hamptons or whatever, and then you keep working, and you're working, now you've got to pay off that home and you got law school debt. Then you meet somebody, you get married, so now you get a wife or a husband to support. You have some kids. Now you get them to support. That's fine. People have done that on less than $500,000 a year, or so I hear, right and then the kids have to go to private school and then you buy a boat to go in the summer home because that's what you do and all your friends have boats now if you want to leave that law job good luck you have millions of dollars of crap you got to pay for so that's why we call

it the golden handcuffs because you're it looks like you got it made but you can't leave ever because you've adjusted your lifestyle to fit what you're doing to make you happy because you hate what you're doing yeah i mean i my my sister and i hope she never watches this, not that she doesn't watch your show, but this episode based on one of my she'll skip this one because she's, I've heard this guy so many kids. Yeah, totally. But I remember sitting down with her one day and she was, let's just say she was kind of complaining about her kids and how stressful it was and how busy it was. And I just looked at her and I said, well, why didn't she stop having kids?

And she didn't appreciate that comment at all. Oh, man. And, you know, I think what we do is the time that you're most likely to build an extension, have a baby or buy a puppy is just when you're about to, discover something very important about yourself or perhaps your life. And I've literally witnessed this where I'm sitting in front of a guy, again, he thinks X is the problem. We start to focus on Y.

He gets very uncomfortable. And I said, by the way, when you leave this room, just watch the pattern. You're going to want to do something. You're going to want to spend money, which will rationalize and justify in your brain that you shouldn't make the leap to something of more meaning in your life. And he says it's so funny because myself and my wife last night discussed building an extension onto her home, which would cost us a lot of money, and that nest egg, which has a degree of freedom around it, would be gone. And that is very, that's often the case

with people. Right, thereby locking him into whatever he's doing now that he doesn't like. Absolutely. So is this just Murphy's law here where, oh, right when I bought that boat, now all this stuff hits the fan and I realize I hate what I'm doing? Or is it because we're subconsciously doing this to ourselves by spending, like you said, spending money so that we're locked in so that we don't have to think about it because we're locked in anyway because we just bought the we got the extension we got the boat so it doesn't matter there's no point even thinking about whether this is right for me anymore because i got bills absolutely but if i don't have bills then i have to sit there on the couch with my free time and my flexibility and say is this the best

thing for me and that that opens up all kinds of uncomfortable yeah i think it's murphy's i think it's avoidance i think a lot like i was chatted to a girl let's just call her mary and let's call the company google yeah it's not mary it ain't good and she was telling me that she was on the phone to me to talk about transition to something of more, let's just call it aligned or something of more meaning. And I discovered something and I just found her saying something that's really dangerous. She said, you know, I think the reason I'm not I'm not leaving is because I'm just so comfortable. And I looked at her face. It was on a Zoom call. And I said, you know what? I said, that's a really dangerous statement. And she goes, why? I said,

because you don't look comfortable to me. And then I just shut my mouth. And with, within, I would say, five and a half seconds. The tears started to come. And in that case, I think she's telling herself a story that prevents her from having to make a decision. And she knows she's really unhappy, even though she's paid well to do a job. But she doesn't feel, she's not getting the satisfaction from it, but she doesn't feel she's adding value.

She feels she's overpaid. She's not doing enough work for the role that she's got, but she's not been stretched from, you creatively she's not been stretched, which is a problem for her. But comfortable if she meant I'm getting money and I don't have. to worry about money. Exactly. And then everything else doesn't matter because at least I can pay the rent. Yeah, but she's not in touch with the, she's not in touch with the cost. So I was at a conference, you and I spoke at a conference, a similar conference in Vegas. And I remember going to a guy in the audience and he said, I get this whole passion thing. And I wasn't speaking about passion specifically.

And he said, you know, I'm in a job, but I just don't know what else to do. So I'm just going to stay where I am until I figure it out. And you know what, though, that doesn't sound so bad. So people are like, oh, I would never do that. Everyone does that. Yeah. Of course. Why would I switch jobs if I don't know what else I'm going to do? Of course I'm going to stay here.

This is how you... I did that for 15 years. At least 15 years. And then I looked and I said, you know what? I said, I'm not sure you want to change. And he goes, I do. I absolutely, I hate this job. And I said, well, I'll prove it to you.

And I said, how long have you been in this job? And he said, under his breath, 14 years. And I pretended... I pretended. And this went down live. It's all unbiased. And I said, and he literally went 40 years. And I said, 14 years.

And I said, I cannot hear you. No. And he said 14 years. And the whole audience shifted. Because at that point, I thinking, where are you going with this? Yeah. And I said something to him, I said, and I said, let me ask you a question. Have you got children?

And he said, yeah. I said, give me the name of one of your kids. And I just said, he called him Johnny. Fast forward 20 years or 30 years from now. And Johnny comes to you with the same predicament. What would you say? Yeah. And with that missing a beat, he didn't even, my last syllable hadn't left my mouth before,

he launched into, oh, get out of that job, Johnny, don't do something you hate, certainly don't do it for 14 years. And I said, here's the challenge to you. And I'm not trying to knock him. I'm not trying to judge him for staying there. Of course. That's not my job. But awaken him to see what's possible. And I said to him, do you want that to be a lecture in 20 years?

Do you want that to be a conversation with your son truly looks at you and goes, I'm listening because you did it. I remember you did it. Or do you want to create an environment where maybe the conversation never even happens because your son is brought up in an environment to put a value on his own skin and not to settle? Sure, yeah. Johnny might be afraid to ask his dad because he goes, my dad did a job he hated for 34 years. Yes.

I'm not going to ask him if I can follow my passion. He'll kick me out of the house. Absolutely. Yeah. Meanwhile, the dad's like, I hope he doesn't get stuck in the same rut that I got stuck in, providing for him so that he doesn't have to do this. Correct. Right.

So we do repeat patterns a lot. I mean, my dad works for Ford. I know, I think he really liked it, actually. But he worked a lot. You know, I talked about this a little bit pre-show. And then he retired probably in like 98, turned to a totally different person. And I was like, this is kind of BS.

You know, I'm 18, and now you're nice, and you got tons of free time? Like, what the hell, man? And I guarantee you that if I told him I was really unhappy and whatever I was doing, he would tell me to go find something else. He'd probably say, there's plenty of opportunity for you. It's not that hard. Yeah.

This is a guy who for sure never thought for one second about leaving Ford because he wasn't having fun anymore or because he didn't feel the spark, if that were indeed the case. Yeah. Because he worked his butt off so that I didn't have to do stuff like that. But then I just fell right back into the pattern. You know, and I definitely didn't think, hmm, well, when I'm leaving law, maybe I should ask my dad if I should start my own business. I naturally was a little more stubborn. But I found myself repeating that pattern, even my old business. and you and I had a call about this where I was really comfortable.

I didn't like working with the partners I was working with. I grew tired of the things you were advertising. I stopped believing a lot in what we were doing because I was doing my own thing and there was a lot of toxicity and negativity, but I didn't think I could leave. And the answer that I gave to zillions of friends of mine when I brought them all of this litany of real problems that were in that business, they said, well, why don't you just go off on your own? And the answer was always, well, they're never going to.

going to let me go peacefully. That part turned out to be true. The second part, though, was, well, I'm making so much money. I'm never going to be able to just jump into something else at the same rate of pay. I'd take a huge lifestyle hit. And when the company finally did fall apart and I left and did my own thing, I took zero lifestyle hit. I have less money going into investments and things like that. My lifestyle, as far as consumption, has stayed exactly the same. My happiness has gone through the roof, and the only real difference is I'm saving differently for retirement, and this is only the first year. So I expect that problem, if you can even call it that, to be solved. So that's when people go, oh, well, sorry to hear what happened

to you, and I say, no, no, this is the best thing that ever could have happened to me. There's two out of every four people go, like, sure, getting your butt handed to you is the best thing that ever happened to you. And then there's two more guys like Cam Harold or somebody, some other guy who's been through it and they go, no, no, no, I get it. This happened to me 12 years ago. It's really the best thing that's ever happened to you. In fact, some of those guys, CEOs and all these old sort of salty entrepreneurs, these guys were the first people I called and they said, oh, you're lucky. You just don't know it yet. Because you never would have made that decision on your own. You had to get your ass kicked by fate or, you know, your business partners or the

universe or whatever higher power there is, because you would have stuck in, suffered for 20 more years and not thought to just pull the rip cord. I know. And the rip cord gets pulled for you. And it chokes you initially and then you're fine. It always gets pulled for you. Yeah. I was going to write a book called Wake Up Call.

And I'll give the premise of the book now. So even if I do ever write it, no one needs to buy it. So the basic premises, I interviewed tons of people who had a wake-up call, whether it was a business failure, a personal failure, depression, facing their own mortality, sickness, somebody else passing away, close to them, et cetera. and I interviewed them based on what they were doing, what the wake-up call was, and how they pivoted. If they pivoted in their life, there's an assumption in society

that if you ever have a wake-up call, you're just going to change things. Well, that's not always the case. Some people just go back to doing what they were doing, maybe under a different lens. But the essence of the whole thing is people just simply gave themselves permission to do what they always wanted to do, whether it's adventure, travel, you know, being an entrepreneur, or whether it's, you know, whatever it happens to be.

That is in the essence. Everyone said that. Then what's the catalyst for that? Because there's a lot of people right now going, great, all right, I'm writing this down, give self permission to do whatever I want to do. And they're doing this at the red light on their way to work. And then they get home and they go, yeah, but, and then just fill in the blank, right? Well, I'm talking to people who had real wake-up calls.

Not everyone sitting on the red light is having a wake-up call. They think they are, they think they can kind of preempt this. I mean, this sounds dramatic, but I almost died. twice. And not that I would wish it on anybody. You almost died twice. But yet I would almost wish it on everybody. I think when you come close, extremely close once and pretty close to the other. I was white water rafting trip, pulled out of the water, unconscious. Everyone thought it was dead. But the other one was even closer. And that was an elephant chased me down in Nigeria. Almost got me. And if he got, like within feet, and if he caught me a bull elephant,

if he'd caught me, he was going to squish me to death and back. And Those two times, I mean, you know me. I can't stop talking. I could not speak for two or three hours after the elephant. Just adrenaline, complete shock. So that's a cool way to almost die, though. I'll give you that. Well, in hindsight, there's a lot of other lame ways that you can almost die.

That's a good one. Being hit by an Uber is not quite as sexy. Not nearly, yeah, I wasn't wearing my bike helmet. I fell. But, cool. Honestly, it's only looking back is like it creates, it awakens you at a very different level. And therefore, when you're sitting at the rest of, I would have been sitting here listening to this podcast and saying, yeah, yeah, great, yeah,

but I've got my bills to pay. I got my mortgage and I'm trying to get my shit together. When I have enough money, then I'll have the freedom to go and do what I really want. Then I'll have a choice to, you know, a time to look at what's my passion and what my purpose. Right now, I'm just barely above water right now. Don't give me any more shit to think about or give, don't give me any more information that's going to make me even feel worse about myself. Right.

I find a lot of personal development and personal development arenas. They may not set out with the intention, but actually it fires. everybody up initially, but then you start to feel inadequate. I used to leave these events feeling I'm a total loser based on what this guy is doing and what that guy is doing. So I think that's one of the downsides of a lot of this conversation about passion, purpose, you know, what am I going to do when I grow up, etc. It's a problem because you're right. What it does is, for example, if you and I are both friends and we're both trying to lose 30 pounds and you say, hey, let's go to the gym, I just signed up and I go, cool, I'll do it next week. And then you go to the gym for the next six months and you lose 30 pounds and I

never got around to it. It highlights all my inadequacies. But these events are just that friend, except you're surrounded by a thousand of them, and it's all jammed into two days. Yes. So you get out there and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do it. And then you realize in the Facebook group or all the maintenance things afterwards that everybody else seems like they're doing a bunch of stuff and you're not doing anything. So then you shy away from the group. You distance yourself from the community of other people that are moving forward. And then you don't want to go to the next one. or you think you want, you need to go to the next one to get pumped up again, but it's just this weird cycle and nothing ever really gets done.

Absolutely. Basically, each one of those pumps lowers yourself esteem another notch or two because you realize subconsciously that you're never going to do anything. Yep, absolutely. And I feel like that happens a lot with not just self-help stuff, but people thinking about, all right, well, I love photography. I'm going to start a side hustle. And then that doesn't happen because work gets in the way.

So what is the catalyst, other than the wake-up call, Like, can I not almost get killed and also figure out how to get myself together and follow something that I want to do or increase my level of fulfillment? Or is it all about chasing your purpose somehow and figuring out what your one thing is? Because what I want to avoid is people going, okay, I have to find the one thing that I'm going to be best at in the whole world and then only do that as a job. Otherwise, I'm a huge failure. Yeah. Well, I mean, the example I use when it comes to the one thing, which is an enormous amount of pressure. pressure is like, I use it as it relates to where you live. So I'm going to find the place I want to

live and I'm going to make that decision. And I'm sitting in Vegas and let's just say I don't like Vegas. I know that for certain. My answer, if it's really bad and you really don't like it, well, then move. And then people go, yeah, great, well, where, Philip? I haven't found the one place anywhere. Like move anywhere and give it a go. But what happens if it doesn't work out? Well, then it doesn't work out. Then what do I do? Move again and then keep moving. I'm not talking every six months or 12 months. But keep doing things and keep, keep, like, keep that momentum going. I don't think there is this one thing.

I mean, people say that I'm born to do what I do, but how I do it will change and morph and move. But I think this obsession we're trying to find one thing is really actually potentially very dangerous. I agree with you. Yeah. Okay, good. I wanted to make that distinction because I think there's a lot of, I don't know, Instagramers

or YouTubers or whatever self-help people that are like, sit down and write out your passion right now. That's what you were born to do, never give up. And it's all these platitudes, but what it does is it makes people feel like crap because not everybody's supposed to be a professional toilet paper sketcher or whatever the hell it is. Sometimes things are just hobbies and that's the way it is. And it doesn't mean that you're never going to live a life of fulfillment because you're not the next humans of New York guy or whatever.

And I see that a lot of people are really hanging everything, putting all their eggs in that basket of purpose. Before we move on, though, moving, it's a great idea. generally to change environment. We know that. How do we know if we're just being an escapist? Well, now everything's screwed up in New York. I'm going to move to Israel. Well, Israel, magic didn't happen, didn't meet the person of my dreams and moving to Paris. Well, this didn't work out. Reality sets in. I'm going to move back to L.A. How do we know if we're escapeists or if we're changing our environment and things are actually getting better for us? Maybe we don't know initially

until afterwards in hindsight. Hindsight. Hindsight's a great thing potentially. Our two is it really comes down to a level of self-awareness. I don't believe, I really don't believe people are doing a lot of deeper, richer work on themselves. So when I went back to a time that I was very lost, I was chasing my passion. I was going to these personal development events, walking in. And I remember this guy finally talked about, some guy talked about meditation. I remember sitting in the audience going, it's meditation. That's the missing link for me. That's the only thing I haven't tried. So I came home and I did meditation for 45 minutes in the morning, 45 minutes in the afternoon or the evening. By the end of the week, I hated meditation.

I hated the guy who spoke and I hated myself even more because I couldn't do it like I should and it just drove me absolutely nuts so to me I think a lot of a lot of the challenges that a lot of people are not doing the deeper work

they don't have a degree of self-awareness and therefore when they make a decision they don't understand why they're making it they make it from here from their head but they don't make it from a slightly more emotional intuitive place because they don't know who they are You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Philip McCurnan. We'll be right back.

Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode, so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Philip McCurman. That link is in the show notes at Jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe.

And now back to our show with Philip McCurnan. I know that you work with a lot of professional influencers, speakers, things like that. And we talked about vulnerability on a previous show. And I think you and I've talked about vulnerability before. There's this other tricky layer, though, of false vulnerability where we all feel like, okay, well, I have to be vulnerable

because that's what makes me relatable. But since I don't really know who I am on that last thread, I'm going to just fake it because that's what everybody expects of me. But instead of taking away layers of the onion, instead of peeling away the veneer that we wear socially that we expect other people to have, we're actually adding layers on, but they're just really, they're really convincing, right? It's like a painted skin where it looks like you're being true to yourself, so you're confusing even yourself, but really you're just playing a show for the audience, which is really difficult. And I find, I found

myself doing that years ago too. I have to be entertaining because I'm on video. Oh, I have to be upbeat all the time because I'm in the self-help industry back in the day. Or I have to make sure that everyone thinks I'm cool because if I'm not, then nobody will want to listen to this. And that's a lot of pressure. And I think we do that not only if we're a performer like we are, but somebody who's sitting at home who's a soccer mom is doing the exact same thing. Whether they're sharing at a crappy Silicon Valley dinner party and selling some fake story about vulnerability is one thing. But I think all of us are trying to pretend that we know who we are because that's what other people expect of us. And yet that's just taking us further away from knowing who we are in the first place.

Yeah, I mean, I said at a keynote, out of context, and even in context, it might sound arrogant. But I said to a group in Silicon Valley, I said, I hope you're half as happy as you pretend to be on Facebook every day. Yeah. And I don't think that originated from me. I don't know where I heard it or where it came from. but, you know, I think there's this, I think there's people out there who are using vulnerability genuinely to manipulate people. Yes.

I think that's a minority. At least I hope it's a minority. Yeah. But there's other people out there, and my heart goes out to them because they're trying to share a story that they haven't done the work on. They're sharing a trauma, a part of their past, and insecurity within themselves. But they've never actually done the work. So they're talking about the work, but they haven't done the work.

So we had a speaker, speak at an event, you know, basically about a year ago. And I turned to my wife and I said, what do you think? She goes, I just didn't believe him. And I think one of the challenges for a lot of people is they'll sit in an audience and they'll give way too much respect to a speaker because they're a bestselling author or because they're running whatever event or a podcast, whatever. And I don't think that person deserves that. They deserve perhaps a degree of respect and maybe a degree of trust initially

so you can really listen to their message. But if you really just observe them, not just what you think, but actually how you feel. I mean, I read an article recently about what famous or successful people eat for breakfast. And they talked about their granola that Richard Branson eats. Okay. Now, it wasn't a nutritional, high-energy magazine. It was basically implying indirectly that if you eat this breakfast, you're going to have the same results.

That's so ridiculous. And I had somebody in an event that you and I were out recently just turned around. I said, one quick question, Philip. He says, what should I do with my life? Oh, yeah. Real quick question. Are you kidding me? Like, we're giving so much of our power away to individuals, including myself.

I don't have the answers. And even if I do, it's my answer, is not yours. And we're just giving up so much of who we are. I know I'm off topic a little bit. It's okay. The vulnerability thing, I think vulnerability is magical. I don't think it's a tool. It's a gift.

And we can share it where we feel it's appropriate. And some of us don't do it at all, but others are doing it for the wrong reasons. Yeah. In fact, I've learned to spot this. I'll give this a quick practical here. you can tell when people are BSing you with the vulnerability thing. Tell me what you think about this. Because their vulnerability, the thing they're being vulnerable about is always years past.

So that's the first tell. That's fine. Hopefully all of us don't have present trauma that we draw on. But the other thing is there's never anything in the present, right? It's always I learned years ago I used to be broke and sleeping on Phil McCurnan's couch or something like that. then their story somehow magically mirrors the hero's journey where it's I'm dipping into this pain and now I figure this thing out and I solve this problem and now it's been now it's my calling to help other people solve the problem

still these two things put together not necessarily evidence of a con man we all drawn our experiences to try to help others but they set up this aspirational vibe right where it's like I used to be like you but now I'm inviting you to be like me yeah That's the real one because the difference here is, look, your vulnerability, some of them are in the past, right? You're dipping into the pain of having done the things that you've done in the past to help other people get clarity because you've been through that. That's fine. But you're never, you don't say, look how great everything is for me now. That could be you, just sign up for my $5,000 course.

And anyway that says that run by the way. I'll give you an example. I'm not sure. I think it does build on this. I'm in Vancouver. I'm on the 30th floor of this office building. I do a keynote talk. or there wasn't a keynote.

Keynote sounds very elaborate. It was a, it was a talk. It was a gathering. It was a long talk. A long talk. That's what a keynote is. A long talk. At the end of the day.

And this guy walks up to me, he goes, God, I really want to do what you do. And I'm thinking to myself. Actually, I don't think to myself. I say it to him. I said, oh, the fact, that doesn't happen. Yeah. And he goes, what do you mean?

I said, I hope you do what you do and whatever. But I said, by the way, what is that? What is that that I do? It's inspiring people and whatever and speaking. And he goes, and I said, so what's your story? And he says, oh, I knew you'd ask. He said, I was really wealthy, really successful, got into drugs. And I went down a nasty path, and then I blew it.

But I'm building on the way back up. And I said, so when are you going to speak? He goes, when the story's right, when it's finished, like when I'm back to where I was. And I went, ah. So I brought him over, put my arm around him. I brought him over to the window. We're at a window like this. We're looking down in Vancouver.

And I said, there's drug addicts down there. And he goes, yeah, of course there is. So there's people down there that don't even know it yet, but they're going to become drug addicts. the next year. There's people down there that were drug addicts and are just barely, barely keeping away from going back and going back in time. And you're standing up here waiting for the perfect goddamn story. I said, you've no right to be a speaker, unless you have the courage to stand on the stage and tell, this is what my life was like. I haven't figured it all out. But you know what? I'm going to do everything I can to help you to support you, whatever. But if you're looking for

the perfect story, you're looking for the magic bow and therefore, for you, my view, other people may disagree with that. I said, you've no right to be a speaker. I said, they need help now. Not when you've got back to the top of the mountain and you can say, here, look at me, I've done it again. It makes you, well, the audience changes, right, depending on where you are in your own story.

So if you're a kid who's just gotten an amazing dream job out of college, your audience is kids who want dream jobs out of college or are stuck in a job they don't want. And I think you're right, this perfect bow that people are looking for, that sort of, it's like the trappings of success that say, you are now granted permission to tell other people how to live because look at your life, it's so great. And that encourages a lot of these online, especially influencer people, to exaggerate their position, which makes other people feel worse having seen it. It's like, well, I don't have a jet, so I can't teach people sales. Well, I don't have a life where I'm nomadic 360 days a year with my family in a RV.

so I have no right to tell people how to be happy and have a functional family. These things are just not true. That actually was the last bullet of how I spot the fakers, is they always set these aspirational goals that are financial or other aspirational goals. Like, you can do this and you can be like me, but you need to have all of this amazing stuff, right? You have to have the ability to be a photographer and travel around the world and live based on your Instagram.

And these things just aren't not true. Absolutely. Going back to your earlier point about whether people even want clarity, it seems to me like a lot of people would rather fail at a job that they don't want than fail at a job or an occupation or a calling that they really do want because it's easier on the ego somehow. I think that's at the core of why a lot of people don't want clarity. And what's very interesting is when I present that possibility to people or that reality to people that actually maybe the clarity about what you need to do professionally and what's next, you don't. want it, just their reaction is interesting. If they're curious, they go, wow, and really, you think that's possible? But if they get very shitty in the defense of a rat, which almost everyone does, it just tells you you, you've struck a court, immediately tells you you're

onto something. But I agree with you. I mean, you know, it's easy to look back at having failed in a relationship of business or a job or as a parent. And, well, the parent's probably not the greatest example, although it could be. And you can always, the get out of jail card is, yeah, but my heart wasn't really in it. It wasn't like the thing. And notice that a lot of people go to these kind of five-year increments. I'm not talking about, it's okay to pivot every five years. It's okay. But what they're saying is, I found my latest passion. And what you'll find is that passion doesn't run out, but excitement does. And often they're just, it's excitement. You know, it's not use an affair as an example. Sometimes people have an affair because it offers a degree of excitement in what might be a stale relationship. But it's not love, necessarily. So that's an example, albeit maybe a silly example, but I see that all the time. And real estate is a great, a great, you know, one of these where I, a lot of my clients, historically, I came from the real estate world, would say I'm really passionate about real estate. And I remember at a conference picking up, I got a, a contractor friend of mine, brought a big

two by four piece of wood and a big brick. And I stood there in the stage, and I said, so you're passionate about this. I said, no one on earth is passionate about this. And I dropped the two of them and they hit the ground. and the organizer came in and they thought that stage had fallen apart. And what I was trying to make, and I think it came across as I was judging people, which was not my intention, I was trying to make the point that you cannot be passionate about bricks and mortar. It's what it represents and what it does.

It's the people element is what always, in the end of the day, stirs people emotionally and intellectually at the same time. That difference between passion and excitement, I think is important because we see people, there's a lot of people listening right now who will write into you or I and say, yeah, I get really excited about something. So photography, and then they'll even do it for, it's either a month, six months, a year, 10 years, whatever. Usually it's a shorter period of time. And then they're on to the next thing,

and they're on to the next thing. And this is damaging them because they can't get businesses off the ground or they lose interest in even the circle of friends that they have. And they find that, I think we call the shiny object syndrome where it's just, oh, well, I like this thing and then I want that. And then they use that as an excuse. well, you know, I'm wired to look for the next shiny object, so I'm always on to something new. And it's kind of subconsciously we're just protecting ourselves all the time.

Absolutely. You know, I mean, what I do, I'll be doing what I do now for the rest of my life. How I do it, I can pivot. So that's my way of experimenting, because I'm similar in the sense that I like the variety. I won't just do the same coaching program, the same coaching calls, the same conversations. I'll get bored. But I pivot how I do it. but what I do, I will do for the rest of my life.

And I think the challenge is that when you're experimenting with something, don't you start telling the world, this is your passion, this is the next greatest thing. And what a lot of people don't know about me is I used to coach people for six weeks, one hour every week in a pub in Dublin many, many, many years ago. Okay. Because I couldn't afford a meeting room. Why did I do it because I loved it?

Why did I do it because I wanted to do? Why did I do it because I felt that this at some level was something I needed to try? And I'd meet them for six weeks, and it was a flawed business model from a financial standpoint. And at the end of the six weeks, they would write a check for whatever they felt it was worth

to the charity of their choosing or the charity of my choice. Well, there's your flaw in your business model right there. You didn't make any money. Exactly, but it wasn't my primary thing. But it proved to myself in hindsight that I was so keen to do this.

And people are picking up cameras, picking up guitars and going, this is my passion, and I'm going to monetize it straight away. Right. And the amount of people that say to me, I want to do what you do, And I'd go, well, I'd love to know what you think I do.

Well, let's leave that aside. And I want to make 250 grand doing it. And I want to speak on those big stages. And I go, great, one client. And they go, no, no, no, you didn't listen to me. You didn't answer my question. And I go, I did answer your question. You just don't like the answer.

One client. Because when you do one coaching call, one coaching client for six weeks, you and I'll be having a very different conversation. It'll go something like this. Well, I don't like, you know, talking about business. I don't like talking about relationships. I don't like. You'll know what you like or what you don't like. And suddenly you'll start to, you know, question it and everything else. If somebody wants to work with me and become a coach or train, whatever, unless they're prepared to take on one client, I have no interest in working with them.

And then we'll assess it after that and see how good they are. It's a great way to find out what you like. And like you said, it's a great way to find out what you don't like, which both, would you say those are both equally important? Extremely important. I won't, and, you know, people have judged me for this. I'm not paying for my kids to go to college. every time I make a statement about what I'm going to do with, you know, my, our kids, depending on our perspective, myself, my wife are aligned on something and often we're not. And people say, oh, well, wait until they get older and it'll change. And I've yet to deviate. I'm open to changing, but I want them to leave school if they stay in school for the entirety of it.

And I want them to go and experiment for two years, at least. And then they come back. And if they really have something they truly want to pursue, then I will support them. I'm not going to fund them for another five or six years. And the assumption that they're, they may or may not pursue this thing because I need a lot of people going to college and coming out of college and they just did it for an extra four years because they weren't certain what else to do. Oh, that's exactly why I went to college. And then I'll tell you what, that's why I went to law

school. Yeah. crap, I'm done with college. Well, let me go get a job at Best Buy, which if you don't have that where you live is basically like this electronics store. And then I went there and they're like, yeah, you've got to sell CDs for two years and then you can move up to computer repair. And I was like, wait a minute. I have to, I have to sell CDs. Look, I'm not above any kind of work. I'm just saying that I built my own computer and the guy who repairs it back there is looking for the...

He doesn't even know what he's doing necessarily. I'm not even interested in music. What am I going to do for two more years? Well, here's an idea. You like to argue, Jordan, go to law school. So that's exactly how I became an attorney. There was no... People go, oh, man, did you always want to be a lawyer?

No, I never wanted to be a lawyer, including and... Up and until... And including the application process for law school during all three years of law school and after law school. and after law school itself. But it brings up an interesting point

because often we make decisions from a place of what we don't want in this world. Sure. And that can be both, it's good to know what you don't want, but it's not good to allow that to fuel all your major life decisions. So, for example, my wife grew up in poverty. It wasn't like, you know, living on the streets,

but they were pretty poor. And she decided, in her mind, over a period of time, that she ain't going to be poor. And then the career guidance person said, you're great with numbers. and your sister's an accountant, and that's a way for you to pursue something, get well paid, and off she goes.

The worst accountant in the world. I mean, the worst, not because she's bad with numbers and can't use a calculator, but because she was never meant to do that. I mean, honestly, this is an example of, like, chalk and cheese, like not meant to do this at all. And it was just, I think a lot of us spend a lot of our times. We build entire businesses, corporations,

sometimes based on what we don't want, But then eventually sometimes it's just really cool to stop and say, okay, I've run from that. I've outrun that. I've proved the point. Now, what do I want in life? And I know that sounds so ridiculously simple, but so few people do that. I want to get into how you recommend people do that, but I want to find out how you discovered all this about yourself.

You said you worked in real estate and you were passionate about that. You had a stint with coffee. Yes. What's going on here? I mean, these things don't sound so bad. Real estate, coffee, wine, and vitamins. And they were all, in hindsight, very exciting industries. There were a lot of fun.

And I met some beautiful people. But they weren't leaving, in my mind, a positive impact in the world. And I do believe, for me personally, that's at the core of, that's very important to me, where now I feel I get a degree of meaning. The work that my clients do is all them. That's all them. I'm a catalyst for it. I'm a minute part of it.

but to play a small role in something that really changes somebody's life, and not even changes, that even creates an environment for them to step in and become more of who they're meant to be. That's a very special place to be. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Philip McCurnan. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air.

To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheets for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're listening to the show in Overcast for iOS, please do us a little favor and hit that star with the episode. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Philip McCarrenan. So how did you find out that you didn't want to do those things?

I mean, were you just busting your ass and you decided one day this isn't for me? Yeah, I mean, you can scare the internet. There's very few things I'll say I'm good at. Very few. I'll allow other people to decide that for me. but I'm very good at, in the absence of clarity, taking action. And I'm very good at getting a sense of when things are run out of steam and not waiting to figure out what's next.

And some people would say that's irresponsible. So when the Vikings got to shore, they'd often burn the boats because there was no going back. And I would be, like, I would be dishonest to think that I don't believe that that is required sometimes. So at the end of five years, the vitamin business walked into my boss, said I'm done, heading off around the world for a year. He goes, yeah, go on, how much more money do you want? I said, you know. Nice. He thought you were leveraging a range. You know I don't operate like that. Yeah. And he goes, I would have been surprised. And I said, I'm done. Not because of you. The business is great. It's just time. And I've been very good at calling that time. And then I joined, I went into the wine business. I worked in a winery in Australia. I was going to say a system wine maker, but that's very glorified. I was a cellar rat, cleaning up, washing shit, you know, clearing up. Stepping on grapes? Well, almost. Almost. And then I pivoted from there and take coffee with my brother. and we built a, you know, very successful business, but that was 99% him.

I played a small role there. And then again, five years increments. And I eventually realized, but each of those five years, I was lost. And I was not in a good place because I was suffering with a degree of like almost depression from the realization that this wasn't my greatest thing, my big gift, my purpose, and the uncertainty and the worry about what's next. And that would, they were, they were kind of, they were downer time. And I think one of the challenges as humans is we're afraid to feel pain.

I don't think we should wallow in it, but we're afraid to feel pain. And sometimes the pain can give us a tremendous about insight in who we are and what's important to us. So how do we lean into that? Because you're right. We avoid pain. When I was in my old company and things weren't going well, I would either find something I really like doing, ignore everything else, or try to minimize pain for other people. Like, oh, you don't like working with this guy?

I would isolate my team from the people they didn't want to work for. or with, and I was sort of the conduit between those two, so I was sheltering other people, and then I would minimize my contact with those people as well. So I would just say, like most humans, I'm pretty good at avoiding pain too. Are we supposed to lean into the pain itself? Is that what we're trying to do? So what does that look like in practice? So I'll give you an example. So I think examples are probably a good way to do this. I remember a gentleman giving himself a birthday, and the birthday was to come and spend a week in Ireland with me, and doing deep, deep reflective work.

And the story in this particular experience, we go back into your childhood, unapologetically, because it has a purpose as it relates to this work. And then we look at the present, and I believe that the past, you know, has created the presence of who you are, what you've been around, this is, you know, where you were in society, the people you've met, the things that have happened, the things that have happened to you, the choices you've made, the choices you didn't make, have determined who you are today. who you are today is determining your outcome of the future. So therefore, a lot of us are forward-facing.

We're looking at the future to pivot, change, attain, grab, whatever, build. But yet, if we go back into the past, we'll see so many of these patterns of why we sabotage, why we do this, why we do that. And one man was determined to hold on to the story that his childhood was brilliant, and it was free, and he was independent. And people were actually joking, like, not in a malicious way, we're going, oh, here's Mr. Happy, you know. He goes, guys, I'm telling you, my childhood was happy.

I had my little bike, and I cycled around, I had independence. And then we're having a pint one night in this bar. And he goes, well, fella, what's the problem? It's like, it's like everyone expects me to find shit in my childhood. And I said, well, maybe it's not there, number one. He goes, oh, good. Thankfully, or maybe you just don't want to see it. And then he looked petrified.

Maybe you're too busy telling yourself a story of how great it was because you don't want to face the reality that it was painful. Now there's a purpose here. I don't just dig up shit for the same. Yeah, I was going to say. There's a purpose. There's a purpose. And then he comes in the following morning.

He puts his hand up. He says, can I speak? And I said, absolutely. He said, the story I tell you about independence was bullshit. He said, I was just lonely. And I was extremely lowly child. And I'm extremely angry with that loneliness. And every time I met this man, and he's an amazing human being,

but I could always tell, don't ever push him too hard. Don't piss this guy up. Don't poke this bear. And he would have this open door policy in his business. And he ran a very sizable business. And he'd tell everyone he is an open door policy. But they were all scared, shitless of him. He was very passive aggressive.

He would surround himself with people who would challenge him only as far as they felt safe. And he had this wall between himself and his kids and his wife that he didn't even know about. And it was because of the anger. And when he got in touch with it, he could not believe how much anger he was holding towards his parents,

towards himself, etc., etc. He was able to name it. He was able to process it. He was able to let some of it dissolve, accept some of it. And I'm not exaggerating, Jordan, when he said he went back and he literally changed the way he did business and how he lived his life. And the conversations he had after that

changed the trajectory of his relationships. I'm not talking about 360 changes. I'm talking about 20%, 30%, 20 degrees, small shifts. But to this day, he was, would say that was probably the biggest realization. And it was negative. It was a negative thing, but he learned so much about himself as a result of that. I think that there's strategic ways that we communicate with other people, and it's kind of all about manipulating the outcome, right?

Like, if I can convince you that my childhood was good, then somehow that'll help me realize that as well, even though I know that maybe that's not true. And there's probably a better example of this. It's just not coming to me right now. But there are these strategic ways in which we communicate that are about manipulating the outcome of our discussion or about what other people think of us so that we think of ourselves differently. Do you see this a lot in your work? I do. You know, I see this really around, I see it in lots of areas, but I see it around money. I see a lot of around money. I mean, I remember spending a half a day with clients and telling them in advance, which I don't normally do. And I said, we're going to spend some time

in money. Two women, two entrepreneurs sitting in the room, said, how long are we going to spend on this? And I said, probably half a day. And not investing money and not making money, but your relationship to me. And two of them looked at me and just went, like, half a day, like there's other more important things I want to talk about. Fast forward 45 minutes later, one was vibrating. One was vibrating with anger. And the other one was bawling crying. Oh, man. Because one realized that she had every decision she'd made, she told herself, It was from a place of intuition and beliefs and all this. She made it purely based on money, which is not a bad thing.

It's just being aware of it. And when she's aware of it, when she now has a further decision to make, then she can look at those things. I'll give you one other quick example. A beautiful lady came to work with me, and she found a way to get around to everybody in the room before we even kicked off in the first morning to tell her tragic story about her ex-husband who had ripped her heart apart. And when I came in and sat down, and said, right, guys, we're going to kick off.

I just want to check in with everybody. Why, in essence, are you here? Give us a sense of who you are. This woman was like, let me go, you know, and I said, yeah. And the minute she started her story, back to your vulnerability point, I'm thinking, okay, this woman wants to be heard, what's the point? And she told this dramatic story about her husband cheating on her.

It was horrendous and everything else. And it was tough. It was a tough story. And I looked and I said, did you see it coming? She was absolutely not. And I'm amazed you would ask that question. And I said, I don't believe you. Yeah.

I said, you're way too smart and way too intuitive not to have seen this coming. And then she looked at me and she was so mad. And I said, I see the anger. I know it's directed at me. Now, let's just get me on the anger. And my question still stands. And then the tears started coming. And she said, I knew the day I met him.

And I knew the day we walked down the aisle. Oh, man. That sucks. To have that level of responsibility. Now, here's where this gets really powerful. Up to that point, she was telling herself a victim story where she, and she was hurt, don't get me wrong, she was hurt, but he was the bad guy and therefore she was blind.

And there is a 90% chance she would find herself in a similar situation attracting the same energy unless she understands there's a degree of responsibility that lies at her door. I don't want her to take all of it. I just want her to seek some of it, because then she's informed and then she can make better decisions. Right. So the awareness around things like money, for example, the reason it's important to know our motivations for decision making is so that we can then what constructs our life accordingly?

Because I'm thinking if we know that, all right, I've got to do these three things so that I can make money, I want to make sure that I know that those are for money because if I don't love them, then once I have enough money, I can stop and not worry about it. But if I'm lying to myself and I'm saying, my purpose is to create online zero. Zoom call mentorship, whatever, then we keep doing that, even though we have enough money, which was the real reason that we didn't want to admit to ourselves, we keep doing it, we keep doing it, we keep doing it, we keep doing it. And five years later, we're like, I hate my business or I hate my job or I hate my life because I built this thing that I thought was my passion, but really I was just lying to myself.

I needed to do it for money. Could have stopped on round three. Now I'm on round 300. Absolutely. Still going. Absolutely. Okay. I had an entrepreneur recently who said to me, he based on an awareness of how he grew up around money and his parents went bankrupt.

And he would have said, no, they went bankrupt, it's no big deal. It's just one of those things that happened. Never took the time to realize how deep that ran and the friction and the problems that caused at home. And he had such a charge around money. And he was making these decisions to acquire other businesses and getting to a point where his life was really super complex. He was owning these businesses he didn't even want. And he just couldn't understand why there was so much stress in his life. And when he started to piece to pieces together, that actually the trauma that was created,

the hassle, the struggle, the pain that was created when his parents went through this bankruptcy and this loss of a business. His dad shut down emotionally. The mother disappeared as well. He was isolated. There's a lot of anger in the house. And he got in touch with that and he said, he said, that's scary. So I didn't realize I held that.

he said now when he walks into a meeting, he just knows that that's there. And he says, am I making this decision based on a place of my intellect and intuitiveness? I'm based on based on pure fear of the past. And now he feels stronger in his decision-making process, if that makes any sense. It does, yeah. Because if we don't know why we're making decisions, we can't really focus on the things that we need to focus on in order to make those decisions appropriately. Correct. Yeah.

So you end up doing things for this reason that's not really accurate. and you have no idea how to navigate. Yeah. Yeah, this makes sense. Okay, so tell us about one last talk. So one last talk is a platform that we've created, a movement, if you like, where we do live events, where people who, in many cases, have never spoken publicly before, stand on stage,

and in 15 minutes or less, share the one last talk they'll ever give. So the question is, if you had one last talk to give to the world, what would you say and who would you say it to? Okay. And so they have to decide who this is going to be. This sounds terrifying already with the public speaking thing. Well, I think public speaking is interesting. It's been proved that it's the greatest fear in the world.

People say that, though. But it's not. Come on. It's not at all. Yeah. It's what it represents. And what it represents is that you're afraid you'll look stupid. You'll be caught out.

You'll embarrass yourself. That people won't like you. But ultimately, the big human fear below it all is that you won't be loved by the audience or by other people. Any world that has fighters, public speaking is not the worst thing you can do. Totally. So it's never public speaking. And the reason we created this is that we believe that this is one way, it's not the only way, but it's one way to help people get super clear on what's important to them,

and to share a part of their personal truth, our narrative that perhaps the world has never heard before. And that truth is about them, but it's not for them. And I believe to my core that your greatest gift lies, your greatest gift lies right next to your deepest wound. Why do you think that's the case? Well, I have seen people stand on stage. and share the thing that they thought the world would judge them for the most. Yeah. So, for example, one man who shared his story about committing suicide or attempting to commit suicide, obviously.

And actually he started off with spoiler alert. It didn't work. I was like, wait a minute. But his talk was so funny. He started off by saying spoiler alert. He talked about it. In the middle he said spoiler alert. That might sound, you know, kind of obnoxious to people who have experienced suicide.

Yeah. He just brought this beautiful humor when he literally talked about standing on the edge of a building, closing his eyes to lean forward, and he fell backwards and opened his eyes. The first thing that crossed his mind and the first thing he said out loud, you're such a loser. You can't even kill yourself. Oh, man. Which, by the way, I think is at the core of white people really struggle and that is a self-worth issue. I believe that is at the core of every problem that humans face are at least the major source of it. and he shared this talk.

He really struggled with the idea of sharing it. I didn't push him to share it or force him. I certainly nudged him. And then he realized that actually the world didn't judge him. The world accepted all of his story and saw him differently. And then people reached out to him as cousin, for example, who was thinking about suicide, didn't want to share with anybody, heard his talk, reached out to this man, shared his story. Now, I don't want to be dramatic.

Did he save his life? I can't say. But this gentleman Matt, he said it's just changed how he's seen, how he perceives himself in the world. It's his connection with his family, everyone around him now that his big dark, shameful secret is out and no one judged him. In fact, the opposite happened. And I do believe that that is an insight into Matt's gift as opposed to his talents in this world. That makes sense, right? So our wounds or whatever's causing us pain often brings us through an experience.

that can help other people experiencing similar pain. Yes, but also the other thing is, it goes back to your point earlier on, is it also removes that, dare I say, reason or excuse from your life. So the thing I told myself for years is, I can't write a book. I'm dyslexic.

Oh, yeah, sure. I'm dyslexic. And I kept telling myself this, and it's practical, there's real practicalities of it, but then one day I woke up and said, McCurton, you can write, you just can't spell.

And when I said that to myself, I had to own that, okay, you're going to write a book, and I've gone on to write a number of them. But, you know, we use these things behind the scenes as ways to not necessarily live in a more fulfilled way. When you're this is totally off topic. I don't care, though. It's my show. When you're writing something and you're dyslexic and you're typing things in and you can't remember how to spell, do you turn off spell check? Because it feels that would be so annoying to see those red lines under all these words that you're typing. It's a fair point. I don't. I tend not to write much at all. I try to not write. Emails included. But yeah, it's a constant reminder of how stupid you are. Yeah. It's all these red lines. But no, I don't. What about autocorrect on the phone? It must guess wrong all the time. And you're like, come on. It can't be useful at all. Yeah, all the time. And it's on the simplest of words. I find the most, the more difficult the word. I focus more in it and I sometimes get it right. But it's the simple words. And then, like, I've spelled people's names wrong and that people feel, need to come on and tell me I've got a spelling mistake here.

Oh, man. Yeah. So it's just highlighted for you constantly by. Yeah. I mean, here's an example. I spoke in Zurich in Switzerland and the night before I was so excited we had our DVD. I did a documentary a few years ago. And we had a DVD and we chipped them all over and I'm thinking the world gets the DVD,

the documentary. This is the first audience, two or three people in the audience, kind of a high level kind of leadership kind of conference. And I'm in my room the night before and I've got this weird pit on my stuff. stomach and I'm looking at the DVD and I'm thinking something's off but I can't figure it out. And we used Pablo Picasso a quote on the very front cover of the DVD. Okay. We called him Pablis.

Oh, no. Nobody else caught it though. That's... No, but here's the thing. If this was five years ago, I would have freaked out and I would have blamed the person that had edited and designed the front cover. But this time I said, no, this is your mistake, buddy. You take ownership.

Number one. Number two is I rang my wife. I was crushed. When you understand, you're sitting in a classroom every day feeling like a complete loser because you can't do what everyone else can do. And the teachers made a fair job of letting me know in many cases how stupid I was. And I discover this. And I'm thinking, and they have all the DVDs downstairs.

They're already been distributed in bags or whatever. And my set to my wife, and my wife is like so honest, where this would normally be reversed. My wife said, will anybody notice? I just let it go. Like, when anyone notice? And I said, I fucking notice. Yeah, yeah. I would notice too.

So I go down the stairs, the following morning, I get onto stage, and I open up with the mistake. Yeah. And I name it. And I felt I just needed to do that, to honor myself, to honor the audience. Didn't go on and on about it. Just named it. And I said, I'm so embarrassed. But I'm here.

The mistake is made. Let's get gone. Is that okay? And it was such a cool thing to do. But we called him Pablis. Pabli Picasso. I mean, is eye next to the old? on the keyboard, it has to be.

Yeah. Some of that, I don't know. That's too bad. That's, there's a, there's a little, you're laughing doesn't help the situation right now. My confidence is going to get, but like, this is where you need spell check. Like, probably, not a word, Pablo, it's totally a common name. Totally. Oh my gosh. All right.

So one last talk is the, is the event itself where people find essentially the, their gift next to their wound, which makes sense. At least to begin to explore it. To begin to explore. Okay. Yeah. How can people at home dig into this a little bit without being at the event itself? I know you have a concept of writing a letter to yourself.

Yeah, so how we do is we structure, in the book, we have a series of exercise that people go through just to kind of get the juices flowing. And what we don't want, what one last talk is and what it is not is, it's not an opportunity to tell the world what they should do. There's enough conferences out there doing that. It is not an opportunity to talk about. It's my job. Yeah, exactly. it's not an opportunity to talk about the political landscape or the health system or gun control or whatever. It's a part of your personal narrative, typically something that the world has never heard before. So we ask people to say, just if we're going to do in a workshop, hey, write a one last message.

Napkin kind of job, you've got like 30 seconds, what would you write to the world? And typically people write things like, oh, live your dreams, go for it, whatever. So it's kind of telling people what they should. Flatitude, crap. And we just do that just to get the ball rolling. And then we move into kind of other exercises. One is where I would encourage everybody who's listening or watching this is to write your one last letter. And then people say, okay, great, what is that?

And I go, well, it's your letter. I'm not going to tell you what it is. You got one last letter to write. Who would you write it to and what would you say? And I feel that on purpose, people don't need any more prescription on that. Because if you over prescribe these things, then people, you end up almost drawing people in a direction that you feel they should go. I've asked people to do that in different workshops around the world, and the letters have, in their own right, being profound. Their letters of apology, their letters of love, their letters of forgiveness, their letters, extraordinary letters.

And just that, if you did nothing based on the show, you just took time now or later on to sit down and just one piece of white paper, not 25 pages, what is the one last letter? and then I would encourage you to consider giving that letter to that person. Maybe. But don't think about that in advance of writing it. So if I ask you to write a letter today that you'd have to read out in front of the cameras or write a letter that no one will ever read or hear, it's going to be different letters. And that exercises. And typically it shifts from here's what you should do to something much more personal within you.

And then we bring them on two other exercises just to get open up. and that is the five happiest days to look at your five happiest days your life. There could be moments in there. Like they're not nine o'clock to nine o'clock at night. Sure. Euphorically happy all day. And when I did that exercise, then what you do is you hierarchy them one to five.

And in other words, what was the number one day? And for me, my number one day was my books party or my stag party, my bachelor party. Yeah, bachelor party. Yeah, that's a party. I thought he said books party. I was like, wow. And then that inspired a retreat. And then the second day was the day myself, my wife had in comments.

You learn a lot about yourself and the people around you. And then go into your darkness because actually that's the place a lot of people avoid. And the five darkest days and understanding what they were, but why they were the darkest. And you learn a ton about yourself. And that starts to build towards equipping you with the knowledge and the information of what you might deliver in a one last talk. So the five happiest days aren't necessarily. to show you what you're happy doing? Or are they?

Because I'm imagining people put like, the birth of my child, the day I got married, the, I don't know, watching my son graduate, something like this. Whereas it would be easy for me to go,

my five happiest days are, so these are specific days, not like generally I'm really happy when I do this. These are very specific moments within a day, so it could have been just a moment. And what you'll find is a number of things.

One is every single one of those days contains people, our relationships. Okay. whether it's with yourself or other people. And then what you ask is the question behind it is, just very simply, why? Why was that a happy day? Because it's not about getting married.

It's not about having a baby. It's about what it created around. The feeling associated with it, having people around you, being surrounded by people. And life leaves clues if you're willing to see them. And some of the five happiest days can give you an insight into what really fires you up and what turns you on. And it literally has been, that exercise alone,

has been a catalyst for me probably doing the most important work that I've ever created because the second day for me was a day in an orphanage and I'm thinking, what the first of the fuck did that come from? My wife's second-happiest day was an orphanage. Her first day was her wedding day.

My wedding day wasn't in my top hundred, right? Oh, whoops. Not even in my top hundred, so that was a bit of an awkward conversation. I'm sure. And then how do you create more of these days? Not more weddings, more babies, but necessarily,

but how do you create more these days? And myself and my wife got together and then we brought our first group on a giving project and so on and so forth, and then it created the documentary. So that one exercise has created probably the most important work that I've ever created. That's super interesting. The reason I wanted to fine-tune those instructions are, because I initially tried to do this a little bit yesterday,

at least in my head and I did it totally wrong. Yeah. Because I was like, oh, my happiest days are when I'm recording, when I'm doing it, and I did not go when I did this very specific thing. And there was a lot less information that I gleaned from that. Because I already know, of course, I'm happy doing my show. Duh, you know. But doing one specific activity or being with specific people is a completely different ballgame.

And do it with your team. Do it your friends. Do it your kids. And what you'll find is little Sarah's happiest day was in Disney. And little Johnny's happiest day was fishing with his dad. And then you're going to go, hang on a second. He doesn't really get Disney like she does. So why don't we bring her to Disney separately?

or mom goes with her or dad. But let's bring, you know, so you can start to understand people and then why it's the most important day. What is, that exercise, what it's done for me as a parent is extraordinary. I won't get into the details right now, but it's allowed me to understand my kids what is meaningful to them and why it's meaningful for them. It's really simple, what it is so, the challenge is,

it's so easy to come in here with complex exercises. Would you believe, and I know it sounds very, you know, maybe I'm very slow, but it took me so long just to create these exercises. exercise the context around them to simplify the shit out of them. Sure. Because it's really easy to create complex exercises that people struggle to do. Yeah, I like the idea of not prescribing it too much and letting people follow what they think

they're supposed to do because that's probably where they're going to find the most meat. When you say five darkest days, this is the same concept, five darkest moments, what are we going to get from that? Because aren't we just going to find things, well, I think I already answered my own question. Aren't we just going to find things? I'm not supposed to do that on the show. we're just going to find things that made us sad, but some things would have more information than others.

Like, what if it's, oh, it's when my parents passed away or something like that, right? Knock Wood, they're alive and well. But, like, people will say that. What do we learn from something like that? Of course I'm really unhappy when this happens. Yeah, I mean, I'll just give a personal one, which I've never shared before, but the most humiliating day of my life was a day I was dropped from a rugby team. And again, it doesn't sound very dramatic in the context of the world.

but if you understand where I was in my life, how it happened, the way it happened, the significance of it, people may realize, for me, it was a massive issue at the time. And I've always struggled with this sense of people not coming. People like not coming to my work, people not, you know, buying, you know, my services or whatever, whether it's in coaching or previously. And I always took it very personally.

And it was almost like if they didn't want to buy wine off me, it wasn't like, okay, cool, they don't like my wine. It was like, I went really deep. and I would get like rejection and it was this. And it wasn't until I remember that day and the significance of it. And every time someone said no to my coffee, my wine, my coaching or anything else, they weren't saying no to the product or the service. They were saying no to me.

And that's just one simple nuance. And it allowed me just to reframe it differently. Rather than taking it personally or allowing me to spiral into a negative spin and allowing maybe a couple of days of negativity, take productivity away from me, it allowed me just to go, hey, that's just that rejection thing. I'm scared shitless about it because it happened when I was 14. So dramatically, it keeps playing out today.

So then how do we interpret these things? So let's say I write something out like the day that my first childhood dog passed away and I had to bury him. That actually is a true example. I had to bury my own dog. It was really sad. My parents tried to make me do it for a week beforehand, dig the hole. And I was like, I'll do it later. And they didn't push me because it was, you know, it was going to be sad.

The worst thing was doing it on the day that we put him to sleep because I couldn't even see. And I was like so upset. and I had to dig this hole in the backyard, that stuck with me for a long time. How do I interpret that, though? Does that just mean, oh, I really loved my dog? Does it mean? What does that mean?

How do I know what it means in the context of my life when I do this? I don't know. I don't know if it keeps showing up. I don't know. I can't answer that. Yeah, it probably doesn't. It's probably a red air. But maybe it's just a case of it was just a traumatic time,

and you were really sad, and the dog represented something. But then, and I don't want to read too much into something. But let's just say maybe the dog, you know, I'm just playing with something. Maybe the dog represented too much in your life because maybe your parents weren't as available emotionally. So the dog represented almost everything to you. And therefore, you can start to piece some of the pieces together. Or maybe you just love dogs and the dog died and you were sad.

Yeah, yeah. My cat Jimmy died and I was devastated. Do I have to read into that? Not necessarily. Right. But if my parents didn't allow me to mourn, if I was told to, hey, pucker up there, you know, stop crying. Are you, is your lip shiver in there? bury that stupid animal if they didn't like animals, whatever,

then that's traumatic. And that plays out in different ways. So I don't want to get caught in the past that that is the only source of what's going on today. I just want to plant a seed for people to say that what we tend to do is either get lost in the past or we never look at it at all. And what I'm saying is by looking into it, dipping your toe and going back, not all the time, you can learn a lot more about yourself than you can imagine. and you can learn about yourself why certain patterns keep going on.

So I'll give you a quick one. A couple, I do a lot of couples work now and again. And a couple came to work with this. We're doing this couple's thing. And this lady put her hand up and said, what do you guys do with money? I said, my wife. And I said, like spending it? No, what do you do with it physically?

Do you put in one account, joint accounts, whatever? And I said, and it's interesting. I tend not to answer those questions because first, I want to see what's going on for her. And I go, so tell me what you guys do. We have separate accounts. I looked at him and said, what do you want to do? He goes, I want one account. Hence the question.

Right. And I said, so why is separate accounts important to you? She says, I want my independence, which sounds very logical. But I don't buy that because I want to go deeper and I go, great. So talk to me about independence. As a woman sitting in front of me today, do you feel in your life independent? She goes, no. So it's not the bank account.

So it's nothing to do with the bank account. It's nothing, and it's never money and it's never time. If someone says to you, my biggest challenge, or the reason for this challenge is money or it's time, it's never either. Oh, it's like sales. Always below. I don't have time and I don't have any money. Okay, both of those things are not true. What's the real reason?

Oh, I don't really like what you're selling. Now, let's get into independence. And then it went back to her mother wasn't independent. Her mother was reliant in a man who was abusive and everything else. And that is simply playing out in a new relationship because she hasn't done the work and she's asking the wrong questions. And he was sitting there going, oh my God. then he starts to get an insight. Oh my God.

It's not that she wants to take my money or she doesn't trust me. She just has this trauma from the past. And now she's just trying to protect herself. And then he got compassionate and he was being an ass about it up to that point. Right. Because she wants security and he's thinking, why the hell won't you put your money in the bank account? Nothing to your money. Nothing to a bank account.

So write that letter, create those five. And how do you set this up? Are you sitting down for an hour and thinking about this? I know the answer is as long as it takes, right? You get a white piece of paper. You sit down, you set a timer, and you give yourself no more than 15 minutes. You do not think about it. The more you think about it, the more you'll screw yourself up.

Right. The more you fine-tune it or editorializes the words. 50 minutes. And be open to the fact that maybe you're going to write the letter to a person who's not walking on this earth. Whatever your spiritual beliefs, the person's up there, wherever they are. But somebody who may have passed away. That's who you might end up writing. But this is not a letter to the Trump administration because you're pissed off about something.

This is a letter that is deep and meaningful. it's the last letter you'll ever write. And maybe you'll write it yourself, maybe you'll write it at your kids. But it's typically to somebody that you know really well, somebody very close to you, somebody you have a lot of love for, and just go with it and see what happens. And that exercise alone, I'm not exaggerating, I can't even speak now, exaggerating Jordan that, that exercise alone has blown,

just open people up to possibilities and different things, create a closure. Sometimes it creates closure. Move on. That's one thing in life I've been working, a lot with people is. I almost feel like, let's just use the analogy of the light at the end of the tunnel. I just use the light at the end of the corridor. And there's five doors here and five doors here. And they're all open and they're sucking all this oxygen out of the room. I'm not

getting on great. My dad, number one. Another one is I've got this legal thing that's hanging over me. Number three, the number thing is I've got my sister myself don't talk, but we haven't had the conversation. I'm all about closure. Close all the doors. One at a time systematically. You don't lock them. There's always openness if you want them. Close. those doors, close that energy and move on. And the amount of people that have at any given time so much uncertainty going on their lives about different things that they could, you know, they could execute in these so fast. What is the most important conversation that you're not having today? What is the most important conversation that you're simply not addressing?

Everyone is a conversation they're not having. And the freedom and the peace of mind that we'll get from having that conversation that we know we need to have. And someone will say to me, hang on, McCurnon, my purpose represents 80% of my energy and my big quest. The issue of my dad

that I've been avoiding is only 5% of the pie. Great, I'll take 5%. Yeah, sure. I'll take 5% all day long because that 5% can have a create a capitalist or a domino effect.

And those 5% represents a lot. So that's a question for your audience. And one other question, just to try out there, that is my favorite question that I created about six months ago, and we've created, we've had entire conversations on this, is what do you know deep down you need to do, but for whatever reason, you're just not willing to do it now. And it takes the urgency and the need to execute off the table. But everyone

knows deep down what they need to do, but just take, and but the problem is they won't name it because then they think it goes into a contract. What is the thing you know deep down you need to do but for whatever reason you're just not willing to do it now? That is an incredible question because it'll stir people in different ways. This exercise and all these exercises will be in the show notes. Phil McCurney, thank you very much. Is there anything else that I haven't asked you that you want to make sure you lay in here? The only thing is the book, One Last Talk, it's just out and it brings you through a deep dive.

It's not for everybody, but anybody who takes it on, I encourage you to go through the process and deliver your one last talk to at least one other human being. Otherwise, it doesn't have the kind of therapeutic and cathartic, you know, you your result and it doesn't free you of that suffering or pain or that story and certainly doesn't help humanity. So that's the ask. Right. So they have to give it in front of someone else because that's the accountability, right? Otherwise, you're doing it in front of the mirror and it's just bouncing right back at you. And it's a part of your truth as opposed to just your story and they're often very different things. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. So like I said, Jason,

and Philip McCurnan, not exactly the shallow end of the pool, always likes to get straight to the point, and doesn't sugarcoat a lot, which I like about him. Great big thank you to Philip McCurnan. The book title is one last talk, and it's getting quite a response from people who wrote in to tell me about it. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people, like Phil and manage my relationships with a great network of supportive people,

well, I've got systems, tiny habits, designed to take just a few minutes per day. I wish I'd had these skills my whole life, and I'm giving them to you in a free course. it's all online. You can find info there at Jordan Harbinger.com slash level one. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway from Phil McCurnan. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, and this show is produced in association with podcast one.

And this episode was co-produced by Jason Going Clear to Philippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes by Robert Fogarty, worksheets by Caleb Bacon, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love. Share the show with those you don't love so much. They need it to. We've got a lot more in the pipeline,

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