To me they overlap, but this is not a faith based message. Our focus is, your spirit, which I think of like your energy and your “vibe” if you will. Thinking on spirituality, I grew up in a religious construct where many people who were devoted to their spirituality, had very poor and lacking spirits, in my experience. Think of people in your life who you enjoy being with. Really enjoy. How would you describe their spirit? Their energy? Their attitude? A few years back a book came across my desk, The Full Spirit Workout: A Ten-Step System to Shed Your Self-Doubt, Strengthen Your Spiritual Core, and Create a Fun and Fulfilling Life. The author is Kate Eckman. Kate had success as a competitive swimmer. Then she did stints as a model, a tv anchor and an international broadcast journalist. Then in a short span of time, two very close relationships in her life committed suicide and Kate found herself in tears at the pharmacy counter grasping for antianxiety meds and knew things were just not right. This began a significantly new trajectory of her life with a focus on our spirit. If you want a fit, strong and resilient body you nourish it, exercise it and allow it time to recover. How about your spirit? Your mindset, emotions and very soul? Are you working it out daily in order to keep it fit and resilient? In this conversation I walk with Kate through the pitfalls we all encounter in being strong and at peace with our self worth, confidence , self doubt, comparing ourselves to others and the struggle between our external and internal life. As you’ll hear, Kate has much wisdom to offer, but in a very compassionate and raw...spirit. We hit some profound points and laughed...and cried. You can find Kate at kateeckman.tv and her podcast, Rawish.

When COVID hit we all wore masks, so as not to infect each other or get infected. I and many others perceive that a more dangerous virus is among us, and it’s a victim mindset, which results in a victim identity. So how can we protect ourselves? My guest is Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., a cognitive psychologist who is among the top one percent most cited scientists in the world for his groundbreaking research on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. He is the host of The Psychology Podcast, which is frequently ranked the #1 psychology podcast in the world. He is a professor of psychology at Columbia University and director of the Center for Human Potential. Dr. Kaufman’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review, and he is the author of eleven books, the latest of which is called, Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your True Potential. We dig into this issue of victim mindset and identity in a candid, and likely not very PC discussion. As you’ll hear, I’m just as susceptible as anyone at falling to my own victim mentality, so as usual, I entered into this with a student mindset. And…I was schooled. I think you will be too.

I’ve given focus to how we perceive our stories. We’ve also looked at toxic positivity and the damage of just trying to paint a pretty picture. We all encounter circumstances and events in our lives that challenge us. From massive traumas and tragedies to just disheartening disappointments. They all matter in regards to how we go forward in life. Following is a conversation that does not culminate with a formula. There is not contrite quote to sum it up. My guest is Karena Kilcoyne, who is a former trial lawyer who specialized in criminal defense, including complex white-collar and civil litigation in federal and state courts. Later in her practice, she worked as in-house counsel for a publicly traded worldwide manufacturing company. She was a success. But Karena started life as a kid. A kid who saw her dad taken to prison, and her mom succumb to mental illness. It’s as hard of a story as they come. And it took its toll on her and drove her to succeed in the world and keep dying inside. Until, she gained a new vision of possibility. No fairy godmother or self-help epiphany, just a real, raw story, that I feel we can all relate to, and find hope and equipping with. She wrote a book about it titled, Rise Above The Story: Free Yourself from Past Trauma and Create the Life You Want.

A book landed on my desk a few years ago called, Ask - The Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny. And lo and behold the author was Mark Victor Hanson and his wife Crystal. Mark is cited as one of the bestselling authors of all-time, as he is credited along with Jack Canfield for the entire Chicken Soup For The Soul franchise which has sold over half a billion books. I took the opportunity to talk about…asking. Asking for help, guidance, insight, wisdom, direction and more. We used to be a culture that lived in community and part of the normalcy of life was asking. It was the only way you learned anything. Today, we find ourselves very isolated. We “ask” google. We have few friends, teachers, guides, mentors or anyone who is speaking to us personally. People are turning to AI and a collective conscious instead of anyone who actually knows them personally. And I think we continually suffer for it. At 54 years old I find myself asking people for help and guidance and insight more than ever, and I’m finding more valuable direction for my life than ever. I’m also fulfilling the role of teacher, trainer, guide for others more than ever. So following is my conversation with Mark and Crystal where they lay out the grand opportunity we can all claim for ourselves if we will learn how and when to ask for guidance and direction in our lives. We dig into the concept and discuss why we don’t ask anymore, and how we can get comfortable and proficient with asking and get past our fear and pride and I feel misled independence. You can get the book at Amazon and then Mark & Crystal invite you to join them at Askthebookclub.com

Most everyone is aware of their personality style. You’ve likely taken one or five personality tests and quizzes where you answer a bunch of questions about yourself. What are your propensities and predispositions? I appreciate them all and have found some value from each in helping me understand and get some insight into myself. Yet I’ve also struggled with them being self-reporting. I find it hard to sometimes answer how I really am and how I want to be. And concern myself with possibly swaying answers with how I perceive myself that may not be very true, as we so often see ourselves with a skewed perception. About two years ago someone told me about human design. It’s a similar concept, but all you provide is your birthday, place of birth and time of birth. In my past I would have shunned this as some crazy, spiritual, hoodoo guru junk. However, I’ve taken the human design blueprint profile, paid for the big version and I’m now two years into finding great value for myself. So what do you do with something you find great resonance, value, and validity from, even though you don’t understand it? For me, I’m just using it. Of interest though is looking up the ones we habitually use in personal development and psychology that have become pillars of our culture, and where they originated. Look up, “Who invented….” and insert your favorite profile. The Enneagram was developed in 1915 by a philosopher. The Disc profile was developed in 1928 by a psychologist. Myers Briggs in 1940 by two women based on Carl Jung's teachings. The Type A or Be concept was in the 1950s by a cardiologist and then finally in 1987 we get the human design from what I’d say is a spiritualist who used to be an ad exec. None of them seem to be any scientifically based and proven method. So in this episode I’m back with Erin Claire Jones who is one of the world’s leading experts in Human Design. Through her coaching, content, and digital products, she has helped hundreds of thousands of people find value through human design. She has culminated her story and work in a new book, How Do You Choose?: A Human Design Guide to What's Best for You at Work, in Love, and in Life. My point in this podcast is to help guide you to your own personal growth and evolution, just as I pursue my own. As you’ll hear, I have and continue to find great value in this human design outline of how I function best. I’m blown away by it and I continue to hear the same testimony from friends of mine and people I respect who are checking it out. So…here you go. See what you think. And you can find Erin’s book and the blueprint at https://humandesignblueprint.com/

I feel most of us are looking for a bit of new knowledge, something to help us improve our results. Kind of like weight loss and you just want to drop 5 or 10 pounds. So you make some little shifts and changes. Then you have someone like a friend of mine who went from morbidly obese to losing well over 100 pounds. Such a life change. This is a story of someone who made a massive change in who and how they are. And like someone who loses 100 lbs, becomes nearly unrecognizable from who they used to be. I bring you the incredible story of Tommy Breedlove in this episode. Tommy is a high end executive life coach who has influenced the lives of many of the leaders I’ve had on my podcasts. His story is one of an abused kid in poverty who was mercilessly bullied, and grew up to be a bully. At 18 he beat someone up so badly he was charged with felony accounts and imprisoned. Later he put his anger toward business and made a lot of money until he came to his end, again. Ultimately his story is someone who went from a heart of darkness, to a heart so many now turn to for light. It’s a dramatic shift and we discuss it in depth in this episode. If you want more of the story, get his book on Amazon, “Legendary: A simple playbook for building and living a legendary life, and being remembered as a legend,” and visit his website at https://tommybreedlove.com. I feel a story this profound can help us feel the changes we want are more possible and feasible.

I grew up in the world of self-improvement when personality profiles became popular. The idea then was you had a core personality style and it was pretty solid, like your hair color. Culturally we like to label people’s personalities, “She’s a classic type A personality,” and “Oh, he’s super introverted.” In regards to changing one’s personality, I question if we want to change who we are, or just how we are? I think we all have tendencies we are dissatisfied with. We find ourselves anxious, depressed, worried, frustrated, angry, sad and more. I don’t think we’d look at any of those with desire. I’ve never woken up in the morning deciding to be more worried than normal. Usually the opposite. So, can we change ourselves? My guest is Olga Khazan and she devoted a full year to trying to change her personality. Olga is a staff writer for The Atlantic has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and more. She is a two-time recipient of the International Reporting Project’s Journalism Fellowship. Olga said she didn’t like much how how she was being, and with every reason to be happy and at peace, she described herself as fairly neurotic. I appreciate this line from our talk, she said, “What if rather than trying to make everything in the world go my way, I changed the way I responded to the world?” So she had specific aspects of her core personality, she literally wanted to change. And she embarked on the experiment as the reporter she is. She documented it all in a book, titled, Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change. I appreciate that Olga didn’t come out with some big, bold claim, but simply stating what she didn’t like, what she wanted to change, and she documented the journey. And today, she says that yes, she’s still her, but…less neurotic. She’s still Olga, but, enjoying life more. You can find Olga at the Atlantic or on Substack. I felt this conversation helped me better understand and embrace myself, and, consider how I could be me, but better.

Listen to those three questions again - Can I Succeed? Do I Belong? Am I Loved? I’m tempted to feel those questions address the root issue of every human on earth. As I continue to research personal identity and how we as a culture seem to be more fragile and threatened than ever, I feel these questions are primary. So I had a conversation with Dr Gregory Walton. Greg is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Labs. Dweck as in Carol Dweck, the legend of mindset. Greg is also a professor of psychology at Stanford. Much of Greg’s research investigates psychological processes that contribute to major social problems. His research is supported by many foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As weighty as all this sounds, Greg’s quest is to discover simple psychological shifts that build trust, belonging, and confidence. He’s culminated his findings in a new book, titled Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts. So can addressing these huge questions be so simple? What I came to as we talked, was, yes, the answers can be simple, because they cut to the root cause issues of ourselves. But. I don’t call them easy. Not at all. At the top of the show I pull this quote out from Greg, “An hour-long surgery can change your life forever. Is there any reason a precise psychological exercise can’t do the same?” But going under the knife is a big decision. So is choosing to believe differently than you have.

We are at a time when anyone with a message is pushing to have a book and a podcast. I have been in the podcast game a long time and things have changed a lot. But the question of what makes a good podcast and if you should even have one, hasn’t changed. So I’m bringing back a discussion I had a few years ago with Jordan Harbinger. Jordan has an incredibly large and successful podcast with The Jordan Harbinger Show. He started his show from scratch and built it up by doing the hard work and playing the long game. He’s fairly skeptical about podcasting and right at the beginning of this talk you’ll hear Jordan flat out state he feels very few people should start or have a podcast. Do not be disheartened, as he qualifies this throughout the show and I strongly encourage you to listen and I think you’ll find incredible insight into podcasting and whether you will be well served to have a podcast. Or not. This episode will give you some wisdom on having a valuable podcast, and likely save you a lot of time and hassle if you realize it’s not a good fit. If you appreciate Jordan, find him at The Jordan Harbinger Show wherever you get your podcasts.