Your Transformation Station - 47. YOU Can Skip This

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Join Greg Favazza podcast host based out of (St. Louis, Missouri (MO) as he asks himself: "How do you create a transformation in others if there's no transformation in yourself?"  PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com⁠⁠ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/apple⁠⁠ Spotify: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/spotify⁠⁠ RSS: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/rss⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/youtube⁠⁠ SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Facebook: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/facebook⁠⁠ - Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/instagram⁠⁠ - TikTok: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/tiktok⁠⁠ - Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/x⁠⁠ - Pinterest: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/pinterest⁠⁠ - Linkedin: ⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/linkedin⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

definition of success. If I could go back, there's not many things that I would go back for, but... What do you do when you lose your purpose? It's okay to struggle. It's okay that you're not okay. I am your host, Greg Favaza. Together, we will go on a journey. This show is all about surpassing our internal dialogue.

Rediscovering your true identity. honing new foresight we have a chance to make the world a better place for our job start living in the example today and become your future self tomorrow if you can leave our viewers

with some good advice to follow what would you let them know these things that you're afraid to do go do them if you make noises east away go away please Yes, that's Barley.

Wait, home station station. Yes, that is barley. Welcome to you, transformation station, station, station, station. I don't know. I have an issue. Clap.

Clap. Clap. Yeah. Don't make noise. Clap your hands. But, too hard. How can I help you?

I guess there's like a little lag here. How can I help you? Oh, good. Well, uh... Ladies and gentlemen disappear. Welcome to your transformation station. Let.

How can I help you? God, I love to you. And I don't know if we got my message. And we have that. And we have that. We already said it as fuck. Ladies and gentlemen, no, no, no, no, no.

We are on your transformation station. Uh-huh. We are on your transformation station. They want to know, like, are they the only person that had the, they walked into the, the woods and they found the old box of porn in there over there. Like, they wouldn't. Yeah. They wouldn't. I had that happened before.

Is there a relatable situation here? I'm happy that, you know, we're talking about kind of a box of porn in the woods. I haven't talked about that in 20 years because it's so weird. But you just made 20 years of my life, make, you just, you close the gap. We have these running tabs in our brain that it's like, damn, my shirt's too tight. Like my guts hanging out. I should have wore the black one. I look better in black.

And I do red red dread puts attention on me and I don't want it. I want them to look at me with like he looks good and he looks like like dripped his shit. Like that's the guy I want to talk to. It's going well yourself. And I think that's fantastic. I like your background you got going on. Thanks, man. I like here.

What are you in like a, oh, you got your sound panels. That's what it is. I'm actually in my son's closet. I turned it into it. Welcome to your transformation station. Socrates once wrote, the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

It's time to rediscover your true identity and purpose on this planet. Together, we can transform our community one topic at a time. from groundbreaking performers making their elixir your dose of reality, your transformation arc. This is your transformation station. And this is your host, Greg Favaza. I mean, I hit 30, and I realized that I'm going to be a dad. And I'm also fathering two children that aren't mine.

I have a blended family. So I had to make a decision, well, Greg, what are you going to do? Well, we can't stay in this apartment. so I went out and bought myself a house. And now do I continue the podcast? Do I go back to school? How am I going to support them? I don't know, but I'm just going to do it.

That's the decision. It's are you going to do it or are you not? And then when you don't, you're going to have to do it later. And it's just like after the emotional breakdown or before. A hundred percent agree. And I always use the- I want to stop you because usually when thoughts are flowing, we got to hit it.

Otherwise, I lose it. I just want to understand if we're going through that, what's missing. And I've noticed that I can connect this with the midlife crisis topic that a lot of people aren't embracing their vulnerabilities as their authentic selves. Yes. And that's why they kind of feel like something's missing. Like I have the job. I have this.

But why do I feel like I'm missing something? And it's because you were afraid of a lot. allowing your guards to be down. You choose to wear a social mask. You wear your occupational mask when you're at work. And then you barely show your loved one your real self. I could not agree more with you. And it's, yeah, I had masks on and I was protecting myself.

And I had like different personas. And I mean, part of it is also I just didn't know who I was myself. Like I and this goes back to. when you're a child and what are your survival mechanisms? And those survival strategies are carried into your adulthood. Yes. And the work of mental fitness is about like learning about what are those survival mechanisms?

What are those conditioned tendencies that you have? And part of my condition tendency as a kid, I used to be this, the nicest little kid, but then I got bullied all the time. you know and I got and and so my survival mechanism was I'm going to be a hard ass I'm not going to let anybody in I'm going to punch your face if you try to you know like that's became yeah you adapt you adapt to protect yourself and now people have this misunderstanding about you that oh I don't want to mess with her she's a hard ass I can't deal with her it's like well if you actually spent some time interacting with her you'll know she is very very soft and gooey. But you don't. You make a judgment based off your own understanding from previous engagements.

Oh, that she meets the criteria of an asshole or a hard ass. And that's where there's so much confusion in this world is we base all of our previous experiences on what they think is relevant right now when

it's all bias. It's all flawed. I had that exact description of what you said as far as walking around and with this straight back, just no personality. I was just what the Army trained me to be, just right to the point, direct. This is how it's going to go. No if, ands or buts. And it took me a long time to get through that after I transitioned out, but it came down

to purging those experiences that I've had in my past. that led to me having these guards up. But once I started to love myself, that's when my true character is finally starting to shine out. So I agree with you 100%. And I bet not just your true character, but all of the genius in you, you know, all of those places where you have something to offer that no one has tapped into because they weren't looking for it. They weren't allowing for it. There wasn't the space for it. But once you were able to kind of work through it all, I've seen people blossom.

I've seen them blossom in their personal lives when we make their work life beautiful, you know, a place where they want to be. They want to connect with these folks. They want to work together. And, you know, I've never seen an organization that can have people keep their personal lives outside of their work space. It just doesn't. You just, you're asking for the impossible. And so this is one of the ways that we can say, you know, don't be afraid to, you know, show care and empathy

and give your time to those around you who need you and who want to know that you care. And don't be afraid to let down your hair for, for lack of a better way of saying it, but, you know, let it just take a breather, relax, you know, learn to be okay with you. That's one of the hardest things I think for people. We tend to say things like in our heads, you know, we should do it this way.

We should be like that. And all those shoulds usually come from our previous experiences. So we liked this person. So we should be doing things like this person. We didn't like this person. So we should not. You know, we shouldn't be doing those things. And then at some point, all of those shoulds become.

in, you know, the way that I would see it is they kind of paralyze you because you are now layering all of this. I should be like this. I should talk like this. I should lead like this. I should, you manage this way. And then you lose who you really are so that, you know, we, the buzzword of, you know, your authentic self. It's a strong word and I love it. But we have moved so far from even knowing our, we're afraid.

even to know our authentic self sometimes. You know, it's hard to look at yourself and say, hey, you know, this is where I'm, this is where I can do really, really well, but this is an area, you know, I've got these little pressure points. And if you, you know, pick on it, I'm going to react or, you know, I'm human. And so. You backtrack a little bit. Let's, with those layers, okay, because now I'm, I want to, I want to jab at this a little bit,

because I'm getting it mixed up here with identifying my future self. Like we all have this person that we desire to be as our future self, and we have these certain things that we identified, whether it's embodying these specific values that we want. And how do we not get that confused with that type of person versus the person that is in the past that has. experienced those issues and now has developed a safety net to avoid further trauma. Yeah, but you're asking a good question, and it's not an easy, it's not an easy task to weave it all out. But I'm going to try. Thank you. When we think about when I said the shoulds, you know, where you pick up things that you really liked in a leader, there's different layers of that.

So it's not you should. It's the question you should be saying to yourself, should, I just use that word, but the question is, what about this person resonates with me? What about this person's behavior or the way that they handle the situation resonates with the me, with the person that I am? And you will adopt those things, and that's good. It's really good. Now, if you continue and put more and more of this on you with that you have adopted, But then on top of that, in the back of your head, you keep saying, I should, I should, I should. Now you have locked yourself in to saying this is the person that I am and will always be.

So you put the words should on you as a pressure, as, okay, no other way is going to work for me. But the truth is we, none of us, we all evolve, we all grow. So the person I was 10 years ago as a leader is quite different. And I have different skills and different things that I've adopted from other great leaders. I agree. I've done it. I was that person that was nothing to doing something every day for five and a half years straight to now I'm, I have to get back to that very person I was when I was in the military. Because I was forced to do it.

And then I just was able to hone it from there. Life gets in the way. when you're a parent, when you're a full-time student, when you just have an outside life, what if I can't make it consecutive? Then I feel like I fucked up and I need to start over. It's like, how do I know that doing, how do I know it's a delayed outcome?

Beautiful question. The reality is life is messy and some people's lives are more complicated than others. And I think for anyone, And if you have one of those ambitions, the question always is time. We all have the same number of days and hours in the day. So for me, if I'm going to have a fitness goal, I have found unless I exercise before seven o'clock, the whole day, it'll never happen. Family happens, life happens, those kinds of things.

So then that's a learning for me of going to the gym or whatever it may be before that window. So that means there needs to be contextuals, put, place before you go out and just say, I'm going to start reading this and this. I mean, one, you can't just start three things consecutively if it's difficult. Because one, you're not going to, it's like a crash diet. You just try to just stop eating for like, I'm not going to eat for two weeks. It's not going to work. And then you're going to overeat.

And then you're even in a worse place than you were two weeks ago. So then what questions do I need to ask myself? I can make sure that this is going to be a successful transformation. So go back to something I said earlier, which is quality is a consistent application of a high standard and the keyword is consistent. You don't grow, you know, the amazing body for one time at the gym. But the question is always it's humble beginnings, right? Every time you go to the gym, you're making a deposit in the account.

Sometimes you might not do it as well. Sometimes it doesn't matter. You have to give yourself that slack. But it is, if you look at the greatest writers, they had their own rhythm. They would wake up and they would write from five in the morning till eight o'clock and then put it aside. And they found their rhythm to achieve their goals. So I think part of that is finding your rhythm. And yes, there are many other things that can distract us and we live in a world of distraction.

But it is about protecting that time as someone who's creative trying to change. protecting your time to enable you to accomplish those goals. I don't think you should kick yourself in the teeth because you missed a day. The best thing is to go the next day and make sure you go and get back on the horse, right? The reality is life can be complicated. It is fluid. But as much as you can, corral time to enable you to achieve your goal. It's a penny that builds into a dollar.

And that's what those immediate pieces are. And it could be very humble. So if your thing is to reach out to other writers and network, then you can set yourself a quota. I'm going to reach out to 10 people this week. Two a day. Right? So how do I appreciate that process?

And what you mean by appreciate? I know once you start, I know how it works with the building a habit and developing yourself. Like for me, the very first day of starting something that I'm going to do consecutively and consistently, it's a nail biter. I don't want to do it. But right after I do it, I'm satisfied.

And I can't wait to do it tomorrow. So how do we get people to just get them to jump off the ledge, but not in a suicidal way? Yeah, I think the reaction is you can leap and jump. and experience something new. We don't grow until we stretch. I think the real issue is not necessarily jumping in and trying. We all know that because when something is new, it's exciting and different and sparkles with enthusiasm and inspiration.

The lull is, you know, day two, three, and four. Or month two, three, and four. That's the grind piece. And I think it's important to understand that there is that excitement, the initial excitement, you have the low? Let's say you're not seeing the changes you wanted to see. But pushing through that dip enables you to come out the other side.

Because there is that initial excitement. And if it's true of all change, personal, professional, organizational, there's excitement, there's curiosity, you see initial gains. But then that's that low, what you know is going to happen. And that's where, you know, your stamina and enthusiasm, resilience, critical, but then if you can get through that lull, it does become the habit that 90 days wonder, but it also then you start seeing the results that you're trying to accomplish. So let's see. I'm going to go straight to core beliefs. This is probably the best representation.

Of course, we have like mission and vision and management style and communications and stuff, but these core beliefs, I think embody like our attitude around our work. So we are agents of change. We make the world a better place with our work. We believe in the power of a positive can-do attitude, which is crucial. We value consistent, clear, honest, transparent communication. We are quick to take personal initiative and ownership. We maintain a strong moral compass operating in the best interest of the end user. We do not take rejection personally, which is super important in your first few years. We are open to new ideas. Nothing is permanent and everything can be improved. We solve problems before they arise. Prevention is better than damage control. We know that each

subscriber represents a real human life and every life is important. And the last one is, we learn from losses, celebrate victories, and praise others for a job well done. So that is like who Cope Notes is as a corporate culture. Wow. That it's refreshing. to hear a company that promotes well-being over the accomplishment of the mission. LifeLock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four taxpaying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud. What do I do?

My refund, though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. LifeLock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.

One in four was a fraud-paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.