The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 043: Philip McKernan – Living A Meaningful Life: Being Transparent & Authentic

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

Episode 043: Philip McKernan – Living A Meaningful Life: Being Transparent & Authentic Philip McKernan is one of the most interesting human beings I’ve ever met.  Philip had no fear in challenging my beliefs and even some of the ways I asked him questions during this conversation.  I absolutely loved it.  After we stopped recording, Philip gave me an impromptu coaching session (for 45 minutes) to help me prepare for a speech I have coming up.  He said, “Think about what that audience needs to hear… And tell them that.”  It was incredible.  I am so grateful to now call Philip a friend.  Philip speaks around the world about the importance of overcoming personal obstacles, gaining clarity, and cultivating the confidence to believe in yourself. He has shared stages with some well-known speakers…Steven Covey, Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama to name a few, and the feedback is generally overwhelmingly positive.  Through live personal leadership experiences, he has worked with all sorts of people from housewives to Olympic athletes, TV personalities and entrepreneurs, people who’ve gone bankrupt to billionaires and everything in between, and he’s uncovered that people’s dysfunctional relationship to money and their inability to get in touch with their own deep intuition inhibits their ability to gain the authentic clarity they need to live an authentic, and meaningful life. His book is Adversaries into Allies: Win People over without Manipulation or Coercion. Episode 043: Philip McKernan – Living A Meaningful Life With Transparency & Vulnerability Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Radio. The Learning Leader Show “In the absence of clarity, take action.” Some Questions I Ask: What is your definition of success? How did you reinvent yourself? How do you help people become aware of the cost of not doing meaningful work? How do you help people know what they want versus knowing what they think they want? What’s your process for public speaking? How do you prepare? How can people get outside of their comfort zone? What are your thoughts on people who are “busy?” “Busy people are running from something.” “Complicating their lives and justifying why they are doing it” – Philip McKernan In This Episode, You Will Learn: His work with clients focuses on: education, knowledge, wisdom, awareness How The pain of doing what he was doing became insurmountable Knowing what you want vs. what you think you want.  You need to focus on the why. Head and Heart Transparency and vulnerability are the keys to success A great process for public speaking – NEVER go on auto-pilot A learning leader is constantly evolving The elements that define a quality life “We put on a mask to get others to like us.  We must be vulnerable. Transparency is the key to success.” – Philip McKernan  Continue Learning Go To Philip’s website: PhilipMcKernan.com Read: Rich On Paper Poor On Life Follow Philip on Twitter: @PhilipMcKernan You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector With Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 002: How To Take Over And Set Bigger Goals With Chris Brogan Episode 004: How Todd Wagner (and Mark Cuban) Sold Broadcast.com To Yahoo! For $5.7 Billion Episode 010: Shane Snow – How To Accelerate Success Using Smart Cuts Did you enjoy the podcast? This was a jam packed episode full of great content.  Philip McKernan is a leader who is constantly learning in order to help us all live a better life. Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell   Bio From PhilipMcKernan.com    Philip speaks around the world about the importance of overcoming personal obstacles, gaining clarity, and cultivating the confidence to believe in yourself. He has shared stages with some well-known speakers…Steven Covey, Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama to name a few, and the feedback is generally overwhelmingly positive.  Through live personal leadership experiences, he has worked with all sorts of people from housewives to Olympic athletes, TV personalities and entrepreneurs, people who’ve gone bankrupt to billionaires and everything in between, and he’s uncovered that people’s dysfunctional relationship to money and their inability to get in touch with their own deep intuition inhibits their ability to gain the authentic clarity they need to live an authentic, and meaningful life. Philip’s greatest skill is listening – although many would say it’s talking – his ability to pinpoint your deepest want or need is precisely what makes him so sought after. He cares deeply for people, and believes each of us has so much more within us, than we allow ourselves to see and therefore shine. Philip loves the simple things in life, his wife, 2 kids, extended family, friends and spending time with himself! He loves to travel, having visited well over 70 countries around the globe for work and pleasure. He’s a keen golfer, likes to hike and loves to get out in nature, especially in his home country, Ireland. He moved to Canada in 2007 and currently resides in Vancouver. With a knack of getting into all sorts of scenarios – he’s caddied in golf for the President of Ireland, been chased and nearly killed by a bull elephant in Nigeria, made wine in Australia, has worked with orphans in Sri Lanka and Guatemala, written 4 books despite being dyslexic – this list is endless….his wife would say “life is never dull with Philip around”. Philip believes the path to a happy and fulfilling life is found through the meaning we derive in life through the WORK we do, our relationship to OTHERS and the most important relationship of all, the one with one’s SELF.   Philip’s soul focus is helping people create a life that means something and make money doing it.

Our gut, our natural guidance system, our intuition is the gateway to any challenges that we are facing. And here's the ironic thing. And Ryan, I could give you example after example after example of clients who sat in front and may go, yeah, but I don't know what's next. I don't know what to do. And sometimes it means them to change their business and move away from the business they're in. And sometimes it just changes how they do business or how they run their teams or how they run their organization.

But every single person knows at the core. and it's just an inch away from them. Sometimes it's just at the end of their nose, but they don't want to see it often. That's my work is where I come in and actually get them to see it as opposed to tell them it's there, because when they own it and they own that journey, they've done it, not me.

Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawke. And welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk.

Excited for this episode tonight for you guys to hear from our featured leader. It's Philip McCurnan. Philip is a philosopher, an international best-selling author, and a public speaker. Philip has traveled the world speaking about the importance of overcoming personal obstacles, gaining clarity and cultivating the confidence to believe in yourself. We went deep in this conversation tonight with Philip. A couple of things we got into. The extreme cost of not doing meaningful work, a powerful part of the conversation.

Also, why vulnerability and transparency are the keys to being a successful leader. And this one might be a little bit controversial. Why Philip doesn't set any goals. He's against goal setting, and we go much deeper into that aspect of it. I think you guys are really going to find interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I'm really excited for you here from Philip McCurnan. All right, Philip, you travel the world.

You've been around so many successful leaders, successful people all over this great world that we live in. And I love to hear from you. What is one or two common characteristics or traits that the successful leaders, the successful people have in common that you've encountered. Yeah, well, my definition of success may be different to some of your listeners and maybe some of your previous guests.

So if we look at it purely in monetary or economic terms and aesthetically from the outside, well, then, you know, my definition and what I've seen in those people will be very, very different. My definition of success, not my definition of success, but what I look for in successful people is the eyes. You look into the eyes and you can know if somebody's aligned to the work they do and the businesses they run and they have peace of mind. And to me, they're one of the same things.

arguably. But if someone's got peace of mind, it emulates and it just kind of comes out of their soul, therefore out of their eyes and you can look them in the eye. And I think I've honed the ability to really use the eyes as a gateway to see, you know, to call bullshit basically for want of a better term. And you don't see it a lot. I mean a lot of very successful people on paper who would be societally would be considered very successful or even in the public domain or in the media. a lot of people want to be successful. And, you know, again, they don't necessarily have the peace of mind. And they're not necessarily aligned to the work they do.

In other words, the work is not an expression of their soul and who they are. It's what they do. And that, to me, comes at a cost if it's not aligned. Wow. I love it. I love looking in their eyes. I think that visual is just incredible. So when I say success or you say success, do people come to mind?

Is there a person or two that you can think of that is, you'd say at heart is defining success? Yeah, you know, often people say, say that about me and I'm not the person to judge whether I'm successful and I'll leave that to other people. But I think the thing is that, I mean, there's two parts I want to say to this is that we have this insatiable need and appetite to put people on pedestals as human beings. And it's to an extreme, I mean, yeah, we can learn off other people. Yes, we can be inspired off other people. Yes, we can use their path as maybe a guidepost to our own existences and so on and so forth. But the problem is that we only get to see X percent. of this person's, you know, current reality. So we see their success based on their businesses and based on the media and everything else, but we don't get to live with them. We don't get to spend time with them. We don't get to stand over their bed, not that we would want to and not what they would want us to do and actually see can they sleep at night, for example. So we have this very, and I'm not suggesting you do, Ryan, but in society with this very narrow definition and benchmarks for success. And I just think if we broaden it into the personal space, how are the relationships

at home? How are they in their own scale? and how was their relationships with their kids? Do they have real deep meaningful friendships? Are they just crazily constantly busy and on a Blackberry all the time? But if I had to name one person that I believe is very, very successful, based on intuitively and intellectually what I know about them, would be a gentleman called James. I'm sorry, I'm always disastrous with his surname, Kulhorn, I think is how they pronounce it.

And James is the filmmaker behind Hungry for Change and Food Matters. Hungry for Change and Food Matters. And he basically did two documentaries. And he's now created a concept called FM TV where it's like the Netflix for the health and wellness industry, if you like. And I've eyeball James and a number of times I've been very fortunate to get to know him a little bit, stay in his home and meet his wife, Laurentine and his beautiful little boy. And I've also got the chance to have him come and speak to some of my clients on a very small intimate basis. And this is a guy that his life, I'm sure, is not perfect.

But he just emulates groundedness. And he doesn't feel the need to tell you how great he. is and how great things are going and who he's met, which tells you that he's secure in his own skin to a greater degree, then perhaps he even realizes. Now, I really don't use that name. If you look at any interview or any video I've ever done, I've probably never mentioned one individual as somebody that I believe is successful. But if you had to put me into a corner, that would be the person I would name. Well, I appreciate you doing that here on the show then, of Philip, because I like to ask that question because for the specific reasons that the word success

a lot of different definitions depending on who you speak to. And so I think it's an interesting way to learn about somebody in the way they view it, as well as people that maybe they know that maybe is somebody that I don't know that I'd like to go to learn about them a little bit more. So I appreciate you answering that. So Philip, obviously we can hear the great accent, but for the few people here that don't know you that are listening, that part of your tribe, maybe that's if it's newer listeners, could you take a minute or two? to describe what you're all about, how you've gotten to this point in your life, and, you know, what you're currently working on.

I assume you said two or three hours, but maybe not. I'm Irish. You know, I came from Ireland. Ireland's a big part of who I am and a big, big, big part of what is as really kind of, I suppose, shaped me as a human being. So I left the country that I love around seven, eight years ago to reinvent myself as corny and as cliche as that would often might appear. You know, I was basically kind of moving up the business world, if you like, and building businesses, successful businesses on paper, but I wasn't necessarily

successful within my own soul. I wasn't very happy. I had that niggling little itch that was telling me that, listen, you know, there's something else out there for you. And I didn't do what most people do. I did it for many years, actually. I think that's the truth. But I eventually just stopped doing it, and that was staying busy and staying away from facing the little voice in my head, which says, McCurnan, this is not your lot. This is not your destiny. This is not your calling. You're not aligned to this at the core. So I came to Canada. I flew into Canada about seven or eight years ago with a dream, a dream in one hand and a suitcase in the other. And the dream and the aspiration was to work with individuals, connect with people through speaking, through co-I didn't really know, quite frankly.

I didn't have a big vision. I didn't have a big. But the niggling voice that on the other side was, you know, who are you? Who's going to listen to you? You know, you're dyslexic. you don't have an education, you don't have a qualification. I mean, who do you think you are kind of thing? And, you know, I'd love to say I was strong and I pushed that voice away with that voice today even comes back into my existence. And today I find myself running retreats and running coaching programs and working privately with some fairly well-known public figures that I don't talk about and helping them with transition. I'm like a personal guide. I basically check in with people, you know, in terms of the strategy for their own lives. They come to me not seeking validation and

permission for decisions, but checking in. And what I do is I'm kind of a, I suppose I act as a bit of a moral compass and say, really, why are you doing this? Why are you getting into that business? Why are you selling that business? Why are you moving into a partnership with this person? And they seize me as a sounding board. So now I travel around the world and I create meaningful experiences to help people get in touch with what is meaningful in their own lives. And often that requires them to transition or make a change. And what I do is I literally, not literally, sometimes maybe I do hold their hand, but just walk beside them and keep them account. and keep them honest.

Wow, that sounds like it's just an incredible, I don't know if you call it a profession, but your life's work is how would, you know, how did you get started? What was it like? Take me back to you get off the plane, you have a dream and a suitcase and nothing, at that point. I mean, you accomplished a lot prior to that, but you're essentially starting over. So I think a lot of people could identify with this. Maybe they have certain similar thoughts to what, to the ones that you did. how do you reinvent yourself? How do you get that part going from basically scratch?

I think, well, I think first and foremost, I don't mean to contradict you, Ryan, but it's, it's, and I understand why you would say that. But it's like, in my mind, though, I didn't achieve a lot. I hadn't achieved a lot. I think that's the point. I think a lot of people. Right, but I think, yeah, like exterior, from the exterior, people would look at it and say, you know, you made a lot of money. You're big in real estate. You've done a lot of big things. In your own mind, you didn't feel like that. was big, but others would think that you did. Yeah, and I felt like a fraud. I felt like a fake. I felt like I had been doing these things for the wrong reasons. I've been doing it to massage the ego. I'd do it because I was so insecure. I wanted to be the guy at the dinner table saying, yeah, I own real estate in different parts of the world and I own this business and I own that business. So everything I was doing to that point was really about everybody else and it wasn't about me

or was about trying to be somebody else. And when I got on that plane, I'd love to tell you that I was so clear in my heart that, you know, what I needed to do. And even when I got to Canada, I still was kind of trying to build a real estate portfolio over here in a business and a kind of investment business. And the truth was, I knew in my heart and so as I believe every single person knows what they're destined to do. I mean, people often use the lack of clarity as a reason, justified or other, are an excuse not to move forward. But I have a mantra that I started to live by probably eight or nine years ago, actually, ironically, it's funny, maybe about two years before that, which actually probably helped me frame the move to Canada, and that was in the absence of clarity,

take action. Even when you're not clear, sometimes you need to make a move as opposed to just staying stifled in a corner. And then when you made that move, additional clarity shows up. So the move to Canada was one of the most courageous things I made because I wasn't running away from the law. I wasn't running away from my family. I wasn't running away from the pending catastrophic economic downfall because that came maybe a year and a half later. So I wasn't running away for those traditional reasons that people leave a country. I left because my heart was broken. My heart was, breaking and not from a relationship standpoint, but from the fact that I was living this life, and I wasn't aligned. And basically, if I just sum it up like this, Ryan, it was basically

the pain of constantly doing what I was doing and not addressing what I'm here to do, even though I didn't know what it was, became so insurmountable that I had kind of a gut to a precipice where I had really nothing to lose. I wasn't like miserable. People think they need to be miserable in order to make a move. But there's this whole, whole gap in society where we're all saying, oh, no, it's too bad. No, no, my job is good. No, my relationship's fine. That wasn't enough for me. And the only, the thing I can put that down to is what really made me shift is I took time out to work on me and my self-worth. And as my needle of self-worth shifted, I recognized that the life I was living didn't match the increase in self-worth that I was giving myself and self-respect.

And then when that self-respect got to a point, I had to make a change. It became imminent and it had to happen. So that's where it started. So what did you do? I mean, I'm thinking about actionable tips because I think people listening can, I want them to be able to listen to this and it'd be educational as well as entertaining. And from an educational standpoint to where they're taking down notes, this is what this is what Philip did when he realized.

basically that he wasn't doing what his life was meant to do. He didn't feel worthy, so to speak. So what were the specific things that were done? You said initially in Canada, you were almost doing the same things trying to build up the portfolio, but then you had a moment. I'm thinking of when was that specific moment, and then what did you do after it? Well, I think the moment that were kind of, I suppose, maybe potentially skipping over is the moment the realization of the pain is so bad because I appreciate the need for that kind of

educational steps so people can get their teeth into something. But I think here's the problem is that if we take that approach, well, then one could argue that that approach is, makes a lot of sense to a very heady intellectual person, a person who lives in their head, very strategic, very tactical. It makes tremendous sense because they want the steps and tips in order to be able to make their change. The problem is that when you layer those steps in on top of somebody who hasn't actually really understood the pain and actually sat in the shift, of staying in their current existence, they just become tips and strategies and ideas for people as opposed to the emotional shift. So what I'm talking about here is the difference between education

wisdom, or sorry, education, knowledge, wisdom, and awareness. What I really do is what I do with my clients is move them into a place of awareness because they're consumed with information, they're consumed with strategies and tips. And what I do is I get them to be really aware of the cost of not living, not making a change, the cost of doing the same. The cost of doing the same. thing, the cost of staying in a job that doesn't serve them, the cost of staying in a relationship that's not working, the cost of not doing meaningful work, et cetera. And when they do that, what I find is when they really get in touch with that, which most people don't want to, what becomes evident, what's next starts to show up? It's already within them. So me being a

speaker, a writer, a coach, whatever you want to call me, it was always there. The problem is I didn't want to see it. The problem is I didn't feel I deserve to see it. The problem is I didn't have enough value in my own skin to see it. When I shift the value piece, it started to emerge. And that's why there's so many people living these unauthentic lies because they're looking to external forces to validate and give them permission to what they need to do. My work and what I'm about is, you already know what you're here to do. Now, are you going to stay busy and stay away from it? Are you going to pretend everything's okay? Are you going to run the risk, God forbid, of actually being happy and step into the thing that you're here to do. That's my message is all about if that

makes any sense whatsoever, Ryan, I'm not sure it does, but hopefully it does. It's awesome. This has already been so impactful to me and I know the people listening. You have a phrase that I've heard, you know, as I was preparing for our conversation, I read obviously a lot of things you've written and said and watched videos and listen to you talk. And you say people struggle knowing it's knowing what you actually want versus what you think you want. Could you expand on that a little bit? Absolutely. And it just fits in beautifully to your previous comment.

And I completely understand that you have people listening who want those tactics and I want those steps. And you're trying to provide that entertainment and the strategy piece as well. I completely get that. But I suppose what I'm asking people to do is just to stop for a second and let go of the need to know how and just more focus on the, on the why. And when that starts to clear, how always tends to work itself out. So really what we're talking about here is the difference between intellectual desires and intuitive desires, I suppose,

one between the head and the heart, the head and the soul, whatever you want to call it. I believe mindset is completely overrated. I think it's important, but it's not as important as we have historically given it in society and a business acumen. What I've dubbed it is called SoulSet, and that is the place where you lead a bit more intuitively, you allow your life to flow a bit and then you use the intellect, the brain, to tactically implement or execute something. So to me, you know, I just think we've given, I mean, Steve Jobs spoke a lot about this. I mean, I did an interview about intuition the other day, and people often think intuition is a soft, fluffy concept that's only available to yogis and really doesn't have any place in the

business and entrepreneurship world and leadership world. And I couldn't agree more. I couldn't disagree more. the application for intuitive leadership is extraordinary. If you think about how many times in your life alone, I'm not asking you, but just think about it or the listeners, how many times in your life, even over the last two or three years, you've ignored your gut, made a decision financially, personally or otherwise,

for it to come back and haunt you. So I think we've just become so busy in our heads, and we spend so many times. So I wrote a short book called Dead Man Walking Around This, concept of people living in their heads. And they're almost like robots. And they're living their lives intellectually. And I think we need to find a place and a space to honor the intuition, which is basically our soul or our heart. And when you bring those both together, it's an extraordinary explosion of creativity and tactical implication. And what ends up happening is people's businesses

start to grow. They start to make more money. But at the same time, what I call real well starts to appear. And that is they have a smile on their face. They're engaged. They're. They're start to do things they want to do. They take time off. They have better relationships to their family. So you get both sides of the coin, the financial wealth and the personal wealth. Wow, that's incredible. So we already talked about success and we talked about the different definitions of that. Do you, what are your thoughts on success and your relationship with other people, friends, colleagues, people you're networked with? Can success harm relationships and if it can, how also. Can success harm relationships? What I think of success harms relationships, real core,

authentically aligned relationships, well, then I would question the success that you have. I mean, I would question the authenticity of the success. I mean, whose success is it? I also think that there's a, there's a huge cost of, you know, this is this ironic, and I've never spoken about this in this format, and I'm just kind of piecing this together in my head, and hopefully it'll make sense, maybe it doesn't. But, you know, I have a belief that we're very, you know, I use the word very, very intentionally. I think we're kind of obsessed by what people think about us. And I think that we work very, we work tirelessly as human beings. And again, I'm generalizing.

Obviously, Ryan, I'm not talking about you specifically or your friend, John, who's driving down a highway, listening to this now or in the future. So don't take offense. But I have to generalize to make a point is that, you know, in societal terms, we often pick up a mask and put it on to kind of fit in in a playground scenario. and then we pick up a mask later on when we're in college to fit in to the group, and then we put another mask on when we move into the corporate world. We put another mask on when we get on the pitch and play football or whatever.

And before we know it, we've got 10 or 12 masks on. And a lot of these masks represent things that, you know, it's kind of driven by kind of a supposed to deeper insecurity and a need to be seen and to be heard and to be felt and to be recognized. But before we know it, we've kind of become and we've started to kind of become somebody we're not. because we want those relationships around us and we want those people around us to admire us and to see us. And ironically, what we end up doing is we keep those people actually away from us

because what we don't do is we don't express vulnerability, which is the gateway to deepening any relationship in the world. So does success harm relationships? I think sometimes relationships can harm success, actually. Hmm. You said, so we need vulnerability. And when I think of that, I think of people who are very transnational, transparent. And when you look at successful leaders, in my opinion, I view them as being very,

very vulnerable, transparent, open. And so that's part of my definition. When I see a leader like that, that means to me, they are very secure in themselves. They're willing to change their mind. they're willing to learn from others if they bring a new viewpoint that maybe you hadn't thought about something before. So talk to me a little bit about that when it comes to vulnerability, transparency from a leadership perspective. I think one of the most incredible opportunities we have in the context of leadership is through the gateway of vulnerability. It's a leadership. I wouldn't even call a leadership style because as soon as you say style or strategy or tactic, it's almost feels like it's heady

and it's intellectual as opposed to intuitive, and therefore it starts to move into the realm of manipulation. In other words, using vulnerability in order to get into people's hearts, using vulnerability in order to communicate in a group environment. I mean, ironically, I just came back from Santa Barbara. There was an organization in L.A. who brought me in to do a, they asked me to do a team building day with them, but what I did was I did a team deepening session with them.

And basically, I took their kind of executive team away, and I brought them through this process, which I won't bore you with now, where basically they really got to see, and it was invitational. It wasn't forced, but they got to see each other's stories. They got to really know each other. And the invitation, very, very carefully, what the invitation was to be vulnerable if they wanted to be. I mean, it was all invite only type of scenario. They didn't have to be.

And these men and women chose to open up about aspects of their lives. And as they opened up, they inspired other people to open up. But other people in the room start to see, oh, my God, they're not just vulnerable and not just have they had shift in their lives. they're human and they're giving me permission to realize that I'm human. So all the competition, all the boundaries, all the niggling stuff that's going on, the competition started to be removed by, dare I say it, in a corporate business environment, compassion and understanding. Now where that escalates into, it escalates into team cohesiveness, a deeper kind of understanding and bonding and wanting to succeed as a group, a wanting to help each other out.

It's a very different approach, but historically vulnerability has been seen as a weakness. Leaders need to be strong. Parents need to be strong. Mothers need to be strong. Mothers need to be strong. And yet, I think we've missed this unbelievable opportunity just to be vulnerable. I believe, I don't know what it says in the dictionary. I don't know what the dictionary's definition of vulnerability is. To me, vulnerability is simply our truth. It's the pieces of myself that perhaps I don't want the world to see, the pieces of myself, perhaps that I am insecure around about it. the pieces of my life that I have weakness maybe in. But basically, if I don't want to allow people to see my vulnerability, I'm basically saying I don't want people to see me.

I don't want them to see my truth. And all you do by allowing people in to your vulnerable space, as long as it's authentic is you give them permission to see you and to be human themselves. And what ends up happening is you can't butt deep in relationships with them. But the big caveat, the big red flag is you should never do it for strategic and unauthent. reasons, otherwise it backfires and blows up in your face. But to me, it's one of the most

underrated gateways to leadership in any capacity in society and business. Why do we struggle so much with it? Because I think it goes back to what I said earlier on. We're obsessed by what people think. And we'd rather go on Facebook and put a photograph for herself with four inches of makeup on. And I'm not necessarily talking about myself right now. On a good day, you know, with a gold medal around my chest as opposed to a day where I woke up out of bed and I haven't got any makeup on and I'm looking bad. I'm not talking about women here. I'm talking about men and women who basically pretend their lives are better than they are in reality on Facebook every day because we are consumed by what people think about us. Yeah, I'm thinking where did that come from?

It's just the way inherently that people exist, that it's like I just have to try to show something that's better than what it truly is. I guess I'm trying to wonder why it is. that way and it's like you've been able to understand this and do something about it, you know? Yeah, but honestly, Ryan, I'd be lying to say I still don't do it. I mean, I still think there's a, there's a pattern within me that basically does the same thing. I mean, I think I do it like 90% less than I used to and I'm so aware around in many respects, but it doesn't stop me doing it. I want to put my best foot forward as well because I do care what people think. And you've got people out there who often say, oh, I don't give a shit what people think. And that's just not

necessarily always the case. That might, that might be their outward percentage. but internally, they do care. They care deeply. People's need for security is, you know, people have this absolute need and desire for financial security, freedom, freedom of choice, everything else. And, you know, all the money in the world has shown me. I mean, I've worked on both sides of the coin. I work with people who want to make money. I work with people who have no money, and I work with some extraordinarily wealthy on paper people. And to me, what all it's done is validated, what I fundamentally believe about money in the context of the work I do, is that money does not, even though we all know it doesn't buy happiness, it does not buy freedom and we'll never

buy freedom. Freedom comes from within. Now, having a certain degree of money gives you choices, but it doesn't buy you the freedom. And I think, you know, I think, you know, we just, we're so, we're so in need of security. And the more we're in need of security, that's driven by a deep insecurity within ourselves. The people who are most insecure or the people who want to be secure. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So I want to shift gears a little bit. And this is in regards to the fact that you are a great public speaker. You can already tell that just by the way you speak on this podcast. But for the people who haven't seen your speeches or heard you, I'd encourage you to go check them out online. You could just, you could find them through Google. So I was recently asked

to give a talk to the athletic students, the student athletes at a university. So I'm preparing for this. And so part of my preparation is obviously understanding my message and getting that crafted so that it can fit nicely and the time allotted for me. I'm making sure that I give the student athletes their time investment. I want to make sure they're getting a lot out of it. I'm curious to you, how did you craft, you know, what's your preparation like? Maybe now it's kind of you can almost autopilot because you've done it so much. But what's it like for you to get ready to give a speech to a lot of people?

Yeah, I mean, I don't speak as much as people think I do. I think I've just been very fortunate to be asked onto stages that, you know, they're kind of, I suppose, well-publicized stages. And I think, like, you know, Mastermind Talks is a great example of that. And I think therefore people think I'm this big speaker. I'm not. And that's kind of by design. And also, I'm the guy that typically when I speak at a conference,

no one has any idea who I am, which is kind of cool. I mean, I'm fine with that. I don't have any big issues with that piece. And I don't have any desire to be the guy that everyone kind of knows. I love my isolation. I love my space. When it comes to creating a talk, I hope I never get to autopilot. The day I get to autopilot, I want to be removed from this earth because that's the day that I haven't become very, very clinical and very good at delivering. That's the day I've lost the emotional connection. That's the day that I've given up and I basically dust off the same old talk or the same two or three talks off a shelf, blow off the dust and deliver them and try to create the passion and the engagement. And I hope that that day never arrives. Now, the cost of that is that the stress I go put myself on. under and the pressure I put myself under to create a kind of unique keynote every single time I'm asked to speak. And that is something that I choose to do because I care deeply for the audience.

I care deeply about my work and about my message and about my philosophy. And I always want to have that edge. So to me, the preparation is less tactical and about it, you know, okay, how long do I have and who's the audience and everything else? To me, it's a lot of about, okay, what am I feeling? What do I need to speak about right now? What's coming up for me? What do I believe because you see you can do two things and there's no right or wrong this is just for Philip McCurn and this works for me is that I can deliver the speech that I think the the organization or the community or the audience want to hear or I can deliver the talk that I believe they absolutely need to be exposed to and one requires you know and I'm not I hope this doesn't come

across the wrong way but it requires a lot of courage to deliver the second one because it's it's easier to walk into an auditorium, a room of 10 people or 1,000 people, and deliver a talk that's kind of, kind of lift their spirits and make them feel better about themselves. It is a lot more challenging to walk into a room to deliver a message that some people don't want to hear. Some people are not ready to hear, and some people are just, like, falling off their chair because they have been waiting to hear it, but they didn't even know. And what will end up happening in that space is you're judged. You get a lot of people who go, my God, he's a wacko. Or some people go, wow, that's just bang on or shit, where's this guy been for the last?

last 20 years type of thing. So you get this mix of emotions, but you are judged and you will have some kickback. So to me, it's about really delivering what I really feel is important for me right now. And also obviously respecting the audience as well. It's not about coming in and just downloading what I believe. It's also about taking the audience into consideration, but not crafting it all around the audience. I don't know if that makes any sense, Ryan, or does that answer your question? It definitely does. No, I think it's in line. with a lot of what you believe in how you've been on this entire, this podcast, which is, which is really great. And I already have, I'm taking a lot of notes. So I really, really appreciate it.

I'm learning a lot. And that's the whole purpose of doing this. So can I share, can I share an example? So, so I think this often maybe just makes more sense. So for example, I was asked to go and speak at a U.S. military base. And I had the opportunity to go in. It was transitioning soldiers moving from, the military world into civilian world. And it's not because I'm Irish. living in Vancouver, spending a lot of time in the United States and love the country, absolutely love the United States, and always have. And I just actually got awarded a very cool visa about two or three weeks ago. It means I can live in the United States if I wish or spend a lot of time there and there.

I'm very excited about that. But I went on stage, and again, this is a risky strategy. But it's not a strategy, I suppose, that's the point. I went out and I spoke my truth. I said, guys, you're heroes. You know, you walk into a Starbucks, and sometimes you can't even buy a coffee. And if you do it, you probably get a discount on it. And most likely, if you've got your uniform on, people say thank you for your service.

Now, you're not my hero, nor should I believe you should be anybody's hero to that extent. And I'll tell you why. Because when you take that uniform off in a year or two years or three years from now, who you're going to be, your identity is so tied up in who you are going to be. And the further up that pedestal you are in societal terms, the bigger and the greater the fall. I see this with Olympic athletes. I went to London four years ago with a group of Olympic athletes. I'm very fortunate to be brought into that space and work with them. But identity after, you know, post-London, who are they going to be?

Who are business owners? Who are they when they take off their suits? Who are they when they take off their titles? Like, who are we at the core? We've become what we do as opposed to who we are. So I went into the military base and I spoke about their identity. I spoke about the fact that perhaps this hero thing that there is is very respectful, but it's got to a point where it's bordering and unhealthy.

Now, that's a risky strategy because you're running the risk of being judged, insulting people, which was not my intent. I deeply appreciate the commitment and the cause and everything else at many levels. But I was trying to focus on the personal challenges they're going to have. I was inundated, okay, inundated with personal emails, Facebook private messages of soldiers who were in the auditorium and said, I cannot believe you just spoke to my heart. He spoke to me. I am lost. I have no idea who I am. And as a result of that, I don't know what I want to do next. And then I got invited back to a base in Monterey recently and the message deepened. So it's an example of, was I a little bit nervous that I might offend people? Yes, but it was my truth. And it's what I absolutely believe these people face, amongst other things. Because here's the thing. 22 military are killing themselves a day committing suicide when they leave the military because they don't know who they are. Many, many thousands more are on drugs. or alcoholism or, you know, taking medication to suppress, you know, all sorts of kind of depression,

et cetera, et cetera. So obviously there's something, there's something allay here. And it's not a military issue. It's a human issue. So that gives you some context of the types of messages that I go into an organization with, despite the fact that they may not be socially, one could argue that, oh my God, it's a little bit socially kind of unacceptable what you're saying. But it's the truth. It's my truth and I believe therefore it's their truth to some extent as well. Wow, that's a powerful talk and it's definitely, it takes some guts. There's, there's risk there and there's a chance you're going to, you're kind of setting yourself up to potentially be polarizing, but it's what you truly believe. So I think everyone's got to respect that, respect that you're willing to go there because a lot of people, I think, do have their, their regular talk and they, you know, they might tweak it a little bit based on the audience, but they give their talk.

people say, oh, that was pretty good, and they kind of go about their lives. So for you to want the audience to be, I don't know if I say changed, but to be affected for the betterment of their lives is ambitious and awesome. It truly is. So I admire that. And so I'd love to keep this conversation going with you even after this podcast, because this is really interesting stuff to me, Philip. So I really, really appreciate it.

I talk about a couple things regularly with Great Leaves. like you and one of them is goal setting. Are you do you set goals for yourself? Is that something that is a regular practice that you do? No. No goal setting. Why not? No. I'm very clear on this one. Very clear on this one. I did goal setting

for years and you know what? I was brilliant at it. I was brilliant at setting them and I was brilliant at achieving them and that was the problem. So I achieved all sorts of goals and aspirations and I found myself looking at my life going, wow. So this is it. And every time I got to the top of that mountain and achieved a goal, I'd stop for even just a brief second and I go, wow, this is, okay, this is as good as a guess. So that eerie feeling of being successful but not being satisfied, having that eerie emptiness that going, I expected it to be a little bit more powerful than what I'm experiencing

right now. And then I did what most people do in society. They look down the valley, they look across the horizon, they say, ah, now I know what the problem is, I climbed the wrong mountain. Now, when I achieve that mountain over there, which is a metaphor for another achievement, another business, another lifestyle choice, whatever it happens to be, career. When I get to that mountain, then that's, you idiot McCurnan, you should have known that was the mountain, you should have climbed. And then I'd come down off the mountain, walk across the meadows, rock across the valley, which represents another three or four or five years of my life,

climb the next mountain, I'd have the same. It might be slightly better, but I have the same eerie feeling. And what I realized was the goals I was setting were based on how well I knew myself and how well I thought or what I thought would make me happy. And again, that intellectual mind trick coming in. I don't trust my brain. I never trust my brain. I use it as a calculator, but I don't live through my head space.

So when I stop chasing goals and I stop, you know, writing goals down, I move from chasing opportunities and I open myself to the possibilities that life had presented. And this might sound a little bit airy and fluffy to some. But trust me, there's something of fluidity that's come into my life. And over the last two to three years, it's accelerated beyond belief. There's shit that's going down in my business and the work that I do that I couldn't have made up, even if I tried the opportunities, the people, the people that are giving me these beautiful invitations, including the one to be here with you today. Some of this stuff just wouldn't have happened necessarily. So also, the other thing about it is goals are typically things we want to achieve in the future.

And the more goals we have, I do a trick on, not a trick, but I do this exercise and stage. I've done it maybe once or twice in my entire, you know, the last seven years is where you basically give a rule. rope and you get somebody who's a big goal setter and they hold the rope and then each goal is represented by a person and one person adds on to the end of the rope and then another person and another person before you know if they're holding the rope gently then they're holding tight and then they're barely holding on and then they're leaning back pulling the rope like a tug war and then eventually as we layer in all the goals and all the goals the person gets pulled over they're being pulled into the future so it goes against everything we believe about the possibilities

and the wonderfulness of living in the now, of being present, of being able to look your kids in the eye and be present at home as opposed to either a blackberry in our hand or a blackberry in our brain, which basically means that we're in front of our child, look on them in the eyes, but our head is in the office, wondering about the next deal or wondering where the next check is going to come from, are the human resources issues we're having, or the growth issues we're having, or our next launch.

So to me, goal-setting, people say, oh, you're the anti-golds guy. Well, you know what? If it comes to the cost of peace of mind, yes, I am. If it comes to the cost of authenticity, yes, I am. If it comes to the cost of connection within ourselves and the people around us, yes, I am, yes, I am, anti-goal setting. Just to use it as a tool to keep ourselves to rationalize and justify that we are actually successful, to validate this perception we have of ourselves, but it's not actually real. Yes, I am anti-goal setting. So I don't say that we should throw all goals out, but goals can be, incredibly dangerous because they're so powerful. And that to me is something that I'm really crystal clear on and has worked really, really well for me. That's awesome. I've heard, in relation to that, I've heard some people who I think are intelligent say, busy people are incredibly lazy. What do you think when you hear that? I think when I say, when I hear the words incredibly lazy. I feel and hear absolute judgment. And so I'm not deeply drawn to that statement. And I think there's some truth in it. What I would say, busy people are running from something.

Yeah. You know, busy people, busyness is a, is a beautiful convenience. It's a wonderful convenience because it prevents us from stopping and facing a reality and facing the truth, which is maybe, maybe, oh my, just maybe, we're not in, you know, my work is all about alignment. It's all about helping people transition into something that's more aligned. And in that space, what we do is we hopefully create more meaning in the three core elements or relationships of our lives, the work we do, the relationship with ourselves and the relationship with other people. When you focus on bringing more alignment into your life and more meaning, the byproduct is happiness. The byproduct of happiness. But one of the biggest challenges I come across with business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders is they're so chaotically busy.

But here's the problem. They don't recognize it. They actually justify and rationalize. I have a saying or a quote, humans are great at or masters of two things, complicating their lives and justifying why they do it. Complicating their lives and justifying why they do it. But we do it because, you know,

we think busyness equals success. And it doesn't. Business does not equal success. So I would necessarily call them lazy, but I would call them, I would say that they're, I would strongly suggest they're running from something. I was busy for most of my life, very busy and busy doing shit that wasn't even relevant.

And I didn't want to see it because I didn't want to see my truth. I didn't want to see myself and I didn't want to see where I was misaligned in my life. But when I did, the short-term pain of that, which is uncomfortable, it's hard. It's like standing on the edge of a bungee cord. When I went through that, the magic on the other side, my life is not perfect. But the engagement, the passion, the work that I get to do every day is remarkable, not because I'm doing it, because these people come and lean into conversations. And I play a tiny part in helping them shift and transition their lives so they can go out and make a bigger impact in the world.

And that's pretty cool. You said the word uncomfortable. Another thing I like to talk a lot about is your comfort zone. When that phrase is brought up, what's going through your mind when you hear comfort zone, people maybe having a fear of jumping outside of it? Thoughts on comfort zone. I, the word that comes up for me is settling. They're settling in life. They're settling.

They're settling for mediocre life. Now, why would they do that? I'm always about why. So someone comes to me and says, I want to grow my business to the next level. I want to turn it from a $1 million business to the $20 million dollar business or $100 million dollar business to a billion dollar business. I go, why? And they go, oh, why do I want to grow my sales?

No, no, go, why are you even in the business to begin with? It's all about understanding why. And to me, to me, people are, you know, one of the, I, are, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I mean, honestly, I find it just sad. I don't mean that sad in a judgmental, condescending way, but it just saddens me to the core when I meet men and women who are choosing to stay in this status quo, this okay place, this good place, and yet they don't know what is available to them. They have no reference point and concept of what is actually available to them.

One of the military guys that wrote to me and sent me an email is he said, you talked about the unknown, you know, the fear of the unknown. And he said, and I quote, literally quote, digging up bombs in Afghanistan and being in gunfights did not even come close to the fear I face of the unknown. Digging up bombs in Afghanistan and being in gunfights does not come close to the fear of facing the unknown. That's an actual, and I'm paraphrasing it very slightly because I'm not reading it here. I have no notes in front of me. but that just gives you an insight into the fear of the unknown people have.

And yet 99.9% of the time, the fear of the unknown is exaggerated, grossly exaggerated, in the home of all paranoia and all fear in this beautiful little box we call our brain and our mind. And yet we talk about mindset as the gateway to unlock everything that we need to do so we can transition into places of greater success and more meaning and great, living and better connection. And yet the paranoia and the fear, it might escalate in a physical sense in your belly, like that not in your belly, but the fear is conjured and created and the paranoia is created in the brain.

So why would you trust your brain to strategically and tactically look after you when it's the very thing creating this, the voice, like, who the hell are you? You're not going to do this. You're not going to succeed. You're destined to play small, my friend. So, like, that's where you have to bypass the brain. The brain is just a computer. It's just a calculator in our bodies that we carry around every day.

Because if the brain was that important, we wouldn't need the rest of our bodies. We could just put two little legs at the bottom of our neck, and we wouldn't even have to waste all this energy carrying the rest of our bodies around. Our gut, our natural guidance system, our intuition is the gateway to any challenges that we are facing. And here's the ironic thing. And Ryan, I could give you example after example after example of clients who sat in front of me going, yeah, but I don't know what's next. don't know what to do. And sometimes it means them to change their business and move away from the business they're in. And sometimes it just makes changes how they do business or how they run their teams or how they run their organization. But every single person knows at the core. And it's just

an inch away from them. Sometimes it's just at the end of their nose, but they don't want to see it often. That's my work is where I come in and actually get them to see it as opposed to tell them it's there. Because when they own it and they own that journey, they've done it, not me. man it's powerful philip i really uh appreciate this i definitely love to keep talking but i have for this particular episode i have one more question for you and so this this podcast is is all about like we talked prior before we hit record is all about leadership it's about learning it's about improving uh understanding you don't know at all understanding that there are others out there that you can learn from that could help you and for us as a whole to help one

another. And so when you hear the phrase learning leader, how would you best define that? Learning leader. Well, I mean, I think on an intellectual level, I would say somebody that's a learning leader is somebody who's, you know, just basically to take what you just said, somebody who doesn't believe they have all the answers is constantly open to evolving and growing as a human being, but I think a great way to finish, not because it's coming out of my mouth, but maybe is just to go back to something I touched on very, very earlier in the conversation. I didn't expand too deeply on it, but I think this is maybe a great place to do that, is that, you know, we have this obsession with information. We're in the information age.

Now, we need to leave the information age. We have to leave the information age, because it's simply not working for us as human beings. In terms of our advancement in science and our advancement in technology and our advancement in productivity and all those things, yes, but in terms of human connection and the ability to look at somebody's eyes and say, are you successful in your bedroom as well as the boardroom? Most people, unfortunately today, say not really. That misalignment. So to me, we're missing this beautiful opportunity to move the world that we live in into the

world of wisdom, the world of awareness or the world even of knowledge, because I believe that here's the sequence of absorption and learning, is that we're consuming information like the speed of light. We're consuming it now faster and in more quantities than in the history of mankind. Never before have we had such information available. And so it's access to that information. But because we're constantly consuming information, we don't allow it to penetrate into us,

to land within our being, is to move into part of our DNA. And therefore, that information doesn't turn to knowledge. And sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't. Therefore, it rarely ever transfers from knowledge into wisdom. And wisdom to awareness is the missing piece. And that is almost non-existent because we're too busy reading the next book. We're too busy reading the next book. We're too busy reading the next book. And it's not because we have this sensationalable need to learn. I actually am starting to believe that

it's actually driven by insecurity, by this fear of missing out. If I don't read four books a month, I'm missing out. Now, just to be clear, I'm not the anti-books guy. I'm not saying that we don't, we shouldn't consume information. Of course we should. But we should give it space to land within us. Some of the greatest work that I do is we do work and then we create space and nature. And I remember having a lady one day at a retreat going, yeah, Philip, can we just stay in the classroom today and just do more work? And I said, I appreciate, I appreciate the question. I appreciate the suggestion. And I appreciate the feedback. Now get your hiking boots on and I'm going to see you outside. And like six hours later, we're hiking through this most magnificent

landscape. And she looks over me with a little Cheshire grin in her face. And I just looked at and I nodded and she just, she nodded it back. And that's all I need it. In that gap is where it all landed for her. But we're not giving us ourselves space to actually allow the information turn into knowledge, knowledge transfer into wisdom, which is authentic, you know, taking the pieces that we've read and absorbed and actually making sure they're authentic aligned and therefore translating that and that transforming into awareness.

And unfortunately, that's the piece we're missing. So maybe it didn't answer your question. exactly, but I hope it gives a little bit more context of what I believe and therefore what's available to us. I absolutely love it, man. I really do. This is so meaningful to me and I really, really appreciate you being a part of my show here. And for me getting to learn from you and all the listeners, I know I'm very grateful.

So thank you very much for being here with us, Philip. I look forward to hopefully continuing this dialogue as we both progress in the future. Thanks, Ryan. I'm really, really grateful. I mean, if there's, you know, often people ring me if they ask me to do an interview. So, you know, we've X-mental listeners to me. If there's just, you know, one listener that listens to this and get something out of it, I'm more than happy. And for that, I'm very grateful and honored that you would even have me on. So thank you. It means a lot to me. I really appreciate it. And like I said, look forward to continuing this dialogue, man. Take care. Thanks, so. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over. But we have plenty more to keep you.

Locked in until next time. Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.