The Kevin Miller Podcast

I’m back with Wendy K Smith, expert on organizational paradoxes and co-author of Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, and we are walking through her personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive her to help us avoid the pitfalls and anxiety of either/or thinking, and what she does to design a life that fulfills her. Which of course includes holding the tensions of…both/and thinking. Some highlights…she shares her Jewish upbringing and rabbis who advocated ongoing conversations where Wendy cites, they rarely came up with conclusive answers. Which of course is highly relatable to her topic of holding the tensions of paradox where it’s just not black and white, right and wrong. She discusses the obvious tensions most of us have with work and family. Her health and wellness goals center around what will help her, “Show up in the world in the most productive way.” For her career, a perspective she strives for is, “It’s not about making the right decision, but about making the decision right.” And even though she’s just had her book come out and is a more than ever sought after speaker, she cites a favorite achievement as of late, witnessing the emotional intelligence and empathy from her 10 year old child. That and more is coming up. Again, you can get Wendy K Smith and Marriane W Lewis’ book, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems at Amazon or anywhere. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are talking about possibly the number one, easiest way to make an immediate positive impact in your health and wellness, whether it’s losing weight or getting more energy. You ready? Track it. What you track, you just can’t help but improve. I am not a big believer in “hacks”, but if there are any, this may be the one, most true health and wellness hack. The simple act of tracking certain aspects of your daily life will literally result in bettering your health and wellness. It’s simple psychology. If you write down or take a picture of everything you eat every day, for a week, you will almost inadvertently make better food choices. If you track your physical activity every day for a week, you will end the week having done more physical activity, even without being very intentional about it. Awareness changes our behavior and action. In this episode Dr Randy James and I discuss how the simple act of tracking key areas of our lives like Sleep, Heart Rate, Food, Activity and a few others will by proxy elevate your health and wellness. Of course you can go further than mere awareness and take solid action to utilize the data you receive and improve it. Tracking is an incredibly powerful tool and as you will hear in this episode, making it possible to ascertain and improve areas of our lives we would otherwise be ignorant and impotent to address. I can say it is also an absolute propensity of our world’s most successful, influential, and healthy people to track their health and wellness, just as they track and budget their time and money. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We can better solve tough problems and make decisions we feel confident about, by not taking an either-or, black and white, or right and wrong approach to them. We are in a culture and media that is radically doing just that. And yet most truths and daily decisions we must make are not a result of right or wrong issues that we will live or die from, but rather, choices we make where one may prove more beneficial than another. When we hold things as right/wrong, good/bad, and either or we cause ourselves undo anxiety. And further, we are pressured to make one sided decisions without the wisdom we’d benefit from if we didn’t view different perspectives as opposing forces. This show is meant to equip you to make smarter decisions, and with less anxiety and more confidence. With me is Wendy K. Smith, a Harvard educated, award-winning academic and the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at University of Delaware. She is an expert on organizational paradoxes, exploring how leaders and individuals effectively respond to contradictory, yet interdependent demands. She spends her time continually working to better manage the paradoxes of life that we all face. Wendy’s research focuses on strategic paradoxes – how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory agendas. Not with us, but a co-author of their new book,"Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems" is Marianne W. Lewis who is dean and professor of management at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. Marianne too is thought leader in organizational paradoxes exploring tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Again, the book containing the message in the following discussion is Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems which you can find at Amazon or anywhere. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wrapping up my series on Dr Benjamin Hardy and the message from his latest book, Be Your Future Self Now. Tom Ziglar joins me today and the conversation veers into Tom calling us to not fall in love with success, but with the habits that create success, and I absolutely agree with the concept. Think about it. The healthiest people I know, and the ones most at peace in their health, are not those that love looking in the mirror at themselves or love the scale, they are the ones who enjoy the daily activities of moving their bodies and procuring and eating whole and healthy foods. They enjoy slowing down to be present. They are in love with the daily habits of health. You can say the same about financial health and success and relational health and so forth. If you want to achieve success in any certain area, you’ll be best served to find habits leading to it, that you truly enjoy and look forward to. For one person with exercise, they may love running indoors on a treadmill with the TV on or a book, while another only enjoys it outside, while another loathes running and looks forward to classes at the gym with friends, while another would far rather chop wood and mow their lawn for physical activity. The point again, is finding habits of growth you enjoy. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is my Functional Friday episode and I’m of course with my dear friend and frequent co-host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert. We’re going to talk about nutritional supplements. Are they really necessary for you to spend time and money on, and if so, why? We seldom feel much difference in our immediate health from these expensive pills, powders, and tinctures and they are generally just a hassle to maintain. The compliance rate for taking nutritional supplements is horrific. We heard from a rep it was about 6% after 90 days. My experience says this is true. Traditional medical practitioners downplay the validity of nutritional supplements while the health industry generally way overdoes it and everyone’s supplement is promoted as the magic pill for…everything. Which is a stupid and impossible claim. If you’re not taking any nutritional supplements, we’ll give you some key ones to consider. Conversely if you’re taking a handful a day, or more…you might want to question if you’re really able to assimilate that much. And just because some supplement changed your friend’s life, it doesn’t mean it will do a thing for you. In this episode I believe you’ll hear information that will take some of the doubt, frustration, and confusion away. For most of you, it should help save you money, hassle, and increase the efficacy of any supplements you choose to partake of. I will say, my co host Dr James is a believer in supplements, but quite a minimalist. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with Dr Benjamin Hardy to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and his blogs have been read by hundreds of millions. His latest book is Be Your Future Self Now and was our topic in part one of our discussion, in episode 1047. I actually walked through Dr Benjamin Hardy’s habits for success in March 2018 when I had him on the show, so here we really looked at how his values and habits have changed since then. He is not his future self, four years later. And attesting to the power of really looking at who is is becoming, he shares a lot of his own evolution. Some highlights...spiritually he recognizes his past self was a lot more human doing, than human being, and his continued desire to slow down and...be. This is the top of my list as well. Relationally, even though four years ago he says he was a devoted father, in some ways he had not truly embraced being a parent like he's striving to today, making it more of a priority and sacred role. He is also growing to be much more relationally oriented and collaborative in his life. We get into an interesting discussion he credits Dan Sullivan for bringing to him, of relationally being a buyer more than a seller, and our propensity to all generally be trying to sell ourselves to others. In health and wellness he culminates by admitting he's overall just striving to be better to himself, and what this looks like. Mentally he is working to be less reactive and with money he talks about his chosen perspective of everything happening for you, not to you. You'll hear more in the episode. Ben’s new book, Be Your Future Self Now, can be found everywhere, and check this out, if you’ll go to futureself.com/free, those of you in America can get free Kindle codes and get the book…free! No catch. He just bought a ton of codes and offered them to me to share with you. You can connect with him at benjaminhardy.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are talking about your future self. Who are you becoming? Who do you want to become? And the question is, can you conceptualize and connect with that person right now, and from this connection, drastically accelerate your personal growth and success? I’m with Dr Benjamin Hardy, who you hear me refer to often. His first book, Willpower Doesn’t Work, is at the top of my book referral list. His second book, “Personality Isn’t Permanent” is up there too. His recent book with Dan Sullivan, The Gap And The Gain, is a runaway best seller. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and his blogs have been read by hundreds of millions. Ben is also the intro story in my forthcoming book which you’ll see…sometime in 2023. This is my third time having Ben on the show, and the occasion is his brand new book, Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation. When I talked to him about a year ago he shared his research and piqued my interest with the “End of history illusion”, which we start this episode off talking about, and I think you’ll want to hear about it. As we talked in this episode, what intrigued me as much or more than just trying to become your future self now, was Ben’s concept of how powerful it is for our progress and ultimate success if we’ll connect with our future self. This is something we do pretty well as kids, but after entering into adulthood, we basically lose any perspective on who we are expecting to become. And we so often lose our way. Ben is an organizational psychologist and has devoted significant research to the issue and become a leading expert on the application of the Future Self science. Ben’s new book, Be Your Future Self Now, can be found everywhere, and check this out, if you’ll go to futureself.com/free, those of you in America can get free Kindle codes and get the book…free! No catch. He just bought a ton of codes and offered them to me to share with you. You can connect with him at benjaminhardy.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the ability and capacity to pursue all we desire, and the topic of this episodes is Having The Courage To Live Better. People who live with different health habits than the norm often get labeled as extremist. If you don’t partake of the office pizza or the church donuts or the family potlock and you go for a run during your lunch break or play tennis on your date instead of seeing a movie, you’re a “health nut.” Like you’ve joined a new religion. In truth, this reality and social pressure is enough to deter many people from practicing the healthier habits they would otherwise adopt. A core longing of humanity is to belong, and conforming to our surroundings is a natural desire and reaction. When you join a gang, the entire point is to conform to its ways. We all belong to numerous “gangs” of sorts and we generally accept their subsequent social pressures. Most people have three primary gangs; their immediate family, their workplace, and friends and extended family. Bucking the norms is difficult. But for you to adopt a healthy lifestyle that does not include the norms of our current times, requires seemingly “extreme” choices. We live in a time when characteristics such as kindness, compassion, ethics, and justice seem extreme as well. It may simply come down to the courage to do what is best for yourself and humanity. Which often is not in fact, the norm. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wrapping up my series on Kindra Hall and the message from her new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. In this episode I’m joined by my co-host, Randy James, Medical Doctor, Functional Medicine expert, and my dear friend to discuss how we create and accept our stories and the conversation veers towards…striving and aspiring, and the tension between being ok and at peace and in essence, content, with the here and now. With who and how you are and what you have, right now. There is a big piece of all of us who can feel tired of the constant striving and just want to be at peace and have joy, now. And to that, we agree and desire as well. And yet, is that enough? Do we just find a good place of comfort and leave it at that. Coast from there on? Or is there a responsibility, to God, to others, to ourselves, to take what we have, and grow and give? Continually? As you’ll hear, we feel there is. The issue is often simply the spirit of our striving. Like the old religious perspective, do we carry our belief like a song in our heart, or a burden on our back? If your striving gets to feeling like a burden, I’d say…stop. Maybe you need a time of rest. Or recalibration. If you are giving and serving and striving in bitterness, acting as a martyr, and wearing yourself out, you’re likely not helping anyone too much. The goal is to give from a full heart. To grow and strive in joy. This is where you’ll find us discussing and grappling with you in this episode. Find Kindra Hall’s book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life, which was the muse and catalyst of our discussion, anywhere, and connect with her at kindrahall.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with best-selling author and the former Chief Storytelling Officer of SUCCESS Magazine, Kindra Hall, to walk through her personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive her to lead us in the stories we write about our lives, and design a life that fulfills her. In episode 1042, the longest show I’ve ever published, Kindra and I talked about…story. Specifically the message in her new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. Here we go behind the scenes into the ever evolving story she is writing in her current life. The Cliff Notes I think you’ll want to hear more about, regarding her spirituality she pondered that her purpose is easy when she understands it, but hard when she doesn’t. A key for her health and wellness is to consider the most essential uses of her time. On mental health, Kindra said she is consistently paying attention to what is working, and what isn’t. And being aware that what did work might not anymore. In work and career we got to talking about our propensity to feel we need to put in a solid week, 40 hours or whatever, when so often, as she said, "I can create magic in only 10." We ended on achievements and I think you'll be curious to hear how Kindra views her own story regarding what she wants to achieve, as she admits that she's currently aware the big achievements so often did not provide as much fulfillment as the achievements she wasn't even looking for, like yesterday's testimonial from a teacher about her child's character. Kindra is the 191st guest I’ve had on my show and is one of the most thoughtful and interesting conversationalist I’ve experienced. Find her book anywhere and connect with Kindra at kindrahall.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cost is one of the primary deterrents many people cite for healthy living. Buying whole foods, nutritional supplements, exercising, and seeking alternative health care simply costs more money and can often lead us to minimizing or abandoning the effort altogether. Then there is the time expense of working out every day and grocery shopping for fresh food and cooking and cleaning. It is not convenient and time is...money. It can all be overwhelming and demoralizing in an already busy life. When it comes to fast food and processed foods, many people who would be willing to eat healthier simply fail due to convenience and time savings. So what do you do? In this episode we talk with empathy, but also with some helpful perspectives and solutions to help you on your journey and desire for health amidst the increased cost of money and time. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all wake up every day and participate in what we feel is simply our reality. Yet it’s truly a storyline we’ve created, or accepted, or feel we are forced to live and in that case, agreed with and submitted to. For you, which is it? This is not some hoodoo guro motivation that life is make-believe and we simply decide to have it be something else better. That is offensive. But it is interesting how we live our daily lives and we let things like marriage, children, getting hired or fired from a job, an injury or even a windfall of money, totally change our story. If that’s the case, can’t we not only do things to change our stories for the better, but can we also change our perspective of our stories right away and make things better? And I have with me, Kindra Hall. Kindra is the best-selling author and the former Chief Storytelling Officer of SUCCESS Magazine, whose work and research teaches individuals and brands to harness and leverage the power of their stories. Her first book, Stories that Stick debuted at #2 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List and Forbes said it “may be the most valuable business book you read." Inc.com said her newest book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life is "the business book you need to read in 2022." I however read this new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life and felt it was a must-have conversation for…all of us. As humans. And what follows is my longest interview to date because the topics are so profoundly important. Find her book anywhere and connect with Kindra at kindrahall.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wrapping up my series on Elliott Bisnow, co-founder of the Summit Series events, part festival, part personal development conference. His book, Make No Small Plans, gives focus to the entrepreneurial journey, and the power of hosting and attending events. One of the masters in both categories who I know personally, is Dan Miller, author of 48 Days To The Work You Love and host of the 48 Days podcast. I know him personally as…my Dad. I asked him to listen to my show with Elliot, episode 1038, then join me to discuss it. You’re about to hear our conversation. As this is the Self-Help(ful) show and my focus is just that, this episode addresses some of why we want self-help, and it’s to grow ourselves and live out our values, which we do, or want to do, in our work. And being an entrepreneur is a great way to, help ourselves. So here talked about what evidence you look for in being an entrepreneur. We then discussed what makes for great events in this day and age and how Dan has done it with so many events where it was more family gathering than seminar. A week prior to this recording we attended a podcast convention together and we share what we learned and the opportunities in both podcasting and events. Then we dwelled a good bit on just that, opportunity. In podcasting, event hosting, and so many areas of business endeavors, things are evolving at a more rapid pace than ever. The good news is it leaves the door open for innovation and entry for anyone who comes in savvy. A reminder you can find Elliott Bisnow’s book, No Small Plans, anywhere, and connect with him and his events at summit.co. Dan Miller you can find at 48days.com or his podcast, 48 Days. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the ability and capacity to pursue all we desire, and today we discuss the sensitive and actually volatile topic of your health being your fault. Your genetics matter. Heck, you could be born with a severe deformity. You could have been dealt a bad hand. Which means you must do harder and work more than someone else to be at your best capacity. And your best capacity may be less than someone else’s and even less than the norm. The good news here however is simply how much power and control you do however, have over your health and wellness. Why did we get to the place culturally of not wanting control and responsibility for our health? Would you rather know you have significant power to help yourself feel and be better? Also, the biggest area of blame most of us have regarding our health and wellness is simply ignorance. What we don’t know. But again, this is great news, as we are highly capable of learning. I encourage you to brave up and listen to this episode and you may very well find a new level of hope and confidence in helping you feel and perform better, so you can do what you want to do. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with Elliott Bisnow to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive him to produce the massive Summit Series personal development events, and design a life that fulfills him. Elliotts life is spent with the elite of self-help and business success and he has some incredible insight he puts in place for his own success. Such as using meditation as a tuner for the brain. His exercise is being a sparring partner for elite tennis players. On the health and wellness front, he battled bad asthma until doing a dietary cleanse, basically an elimination diet, and his asthma disappeared. His daily decision making process is focused on making decisions that will create less stress in the future. In business he talks about how we do business being more important than what we do in business. And regarding money and his own success he places more value on not wanting things, than what more he wants. It’s a quality discussion. You can get the book, Make No Small Plans, which we discussed in episode 1038, anywhere, and find Elliott and his pals at Summit.co and info on their November 2022 event I’m looking to attend. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We take a bit of a detour from pure self-help in this episode. I started off with the story of a guy who wanted to be an entrepreneur, yet had no idea how to be, and was as he said, “socially uncalibrated,” which in his case meant he was the guy always trying to sell you something that everyone avoided. His first two attempts at being an entrepreneur, completely failed. Completely. Meaning he created a business and didn’t make one sale. It’s a great story for anyone who feels out of their depth or who is meeting literally zero success in some endeavors. My guest, is Elliot Bisnow. Elliott’s somewhat ridiculous story takes him from literally zero, to now being co-founder of Summit Group, which began and still includes the Summit Series events that are as much festival as self-help conference. They’ve held 250 of the events, loaded with celebrities, thought-leaders, billionaires and politicians. And lots of people like you and me. The event has hosted luminaries like Jeff Bezos (bay-zos), Richard Branson, Jessica Alba, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, and Al Gore in some of the most beautiful places on earth like Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Squaw Valley, California, and Washington, D.C. In this talk though, we really got into discussing the nuances of what makes the events so successful, as opposed to all the events you are used to attending. How they focus on who is attending and where the event takes place, even more than who is speaking. So if you have any interest in holding events, whether paid for as a business, or even just socially, you’ll want to hear this. We even talk about what to look for in events as an attendee. Just really intriguing. A little more on Elliott, he’s a startup investor, having made almost 50 early stage investments, including Uber, Coinbase, Warby Parker & Allbirds. At the start of the show in a moment, you’ll hear he’s talking to me from Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah, America’s largest ski resort which he is co-owner of. Elliott and his three biz partners recently published the book, MAKE NO SMALL PLANS, which entails the again, fairly ridiculous story of how four, very average guys, created such a successful company after doing so many things wrong. I think you’ll find great comfort and come away feeling you can be as clueless, and successful, as they have been. The story really inspired me to think bigger than I have as of late. You can get the book, Make No Small Plans, anywhere, and find Elliott and his pals at Summit.co. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title “How To Feast On Fasting” is meant to help us change our paradigm. Look, I adore food and eating. I’m generally always looking toward my next meal. I enjoy it so much I won’t waste the effort or calories on just any food. I want quality food and excellent tastes. I also don’t like to deprive myself, and in my perspective, I literally don’t. I do however, often delay. I look at fasting this way. I grew up with fasting being a spiritual discipline, which is surely can be. I also know of some radical puritans who abstain from many pleasures as a lifelong discipline. Great for them. That’s not me either. I look at it more mechanically. Most of us are running on too much anxiety and cortisol, we eat on the run and thoughtlessly, and we are very, very often eating foods that our body struggles to deal with and a lot of inflammatory ingredients like gluten, dairy, sugar, and chemicals. So think of it like your car overheating and realize most of us have some overheating going on internally in our gut and digestion. What do you do when a car is overheating on the highway? You pull over and let it cool down. You have to. Or it will blow. Think of fasting this way. Whether you do some intermittent fasting and eat less often, or go an entire day. Or two. Or five. You are simply letting your body recover from digesting. Mentally as well though, we can fast from all varieties of things for the same reason, or just to increase our gratitude. I’m joined by my co host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert at truelifemedicine.com. While we don’t expect to get you excited about fasting, I think you’ll find yourself better able to consider the benefits and find ways to do it that you can handle. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Series wrap up on Andy Norman and his book, Mental Immunity. Here I bring on my frequent co-host, Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar and son to Zig Ziglar, to talk about this concept of how we view our beliefs. What came out on the discussion was a question of what is more important. Our beliefs, or relationships? In our culture now that is arguing and polarizing about beliefs, what we most have is just a fight from two warring sides. And how similar is it often in our personal relationships? No one is considering the other, they are just arguing their side. Without putting the relationship first, it’s hard to find validity for even making an effort. We lead off discussing a Facebook post Tom made after listening to my initial talk with Andy in episodes 1033, where Tom said, "To reject unconditional love is to embrace hate." Think about that? As you’re about to hear, this was from talking about how we view and fight for our beliefs. You’ll want to hear more and see how you feel about the statement. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with Andy Norman to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive him to help us create mental immunity and consider our beliefs, and design a life that fulfills him. Previously in episode 1033 we talked about the message in Andy’s book, Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. Andy is striving to help people develop immunity to bad ideas, and my focus with him was looking at how we define and embrace our beliefs. Here we cover Andy’s personal values and habits. The very things from which his own beliefs are derived from. He discusses how he sifts his own ideas through a filter of asking if it’s actually useful or true. Relationally he talks about “emotional dislocation” and we banter a bit about the issue of “objective reality.” Spiritually he cites his upbringing simply expected a devotion to serve a greater good and this still guides him today. You can find Andy’s book Mental Immunity anywhere and connect with him at andynorman.org. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a story for you. A case study of health turnaround and success for you. Dan Miller is the bestselling author of “48 Days To The Work You Love” and a prolific writer, speaker and coach. However at the end of 2018 at age 71 he found himself barely able to work. He shares the incredible amount of resources he sought for help, including his Primary Care Physician simply stating, “Hey, you’re getting old, make peace with it.” Today he is back to more energy, vitality and overall wellness than he’s experienced in many years. He said, “I didn’t simply get back to where I was before my decline, I’ve far surpassed it.” As you’ll hear in the show, he’s now excitedly finalizing two new books for his publisher and planning out the next 20 years of his productive life. It’s no miracle. It’s just the basics. It’s the things you can do too. Now at age 72, I’d pit his cognitive abilities and much of his physical abilities as well, against the average 50 year old. I believe you’ll relate to much of what you’ll hear in this candid conversation between Dan, Dr Randy James, and myself, as you found out…how Dan did it. What the story is.. And for disclosure, Dan is my Dad! Many of you will know him from his top ranked “48 Days” podcast. You can find him at 48days.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I grew up with very strong beliefs and I viewed being resolute and concrete in them as a strength. In our culture today we see this played out every moment of every day as the media pits one side against the other and everyone’s belief as right or wrong, even to the point of the other side as being flat out evil. Social media isn’t a place of consideration, but of unabashed opinionating. In this episode I’m with Andy Norman, a PhD who is the award-winning author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today, Skeptic, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist. He has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, public radio, and The BBC’s Naked Scientist. His research is on the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to disinformation, propaganda, hate, and division. Bottom line, Andy is striving to help people develop immunity to bad ideas. My focus is really on the harm we do to ourselves and others when we are so rigid in our beliefs we won’t consider anyone who differs. Andy showcases how many, if not most of our beliefs, are more tied to our self-image than truth, and how this hurts us and everyone else. It’s ok to have strong beliefs, but if you feel strong in them and it’s not just to support your personal bias, then wouldn’t you be strong enough to allow someone to explain their differing beliefs and actually seek to understand them? Even if you don’t change your belief, you are showcasing it by being willing to understand another side. And in doing so, you’ll help your own peace of mind and build better relationships. Andy directs the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and is the founder of CIRCE, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative. You can find him at andynorman.org. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wrapping up my series on Terry Real and the message of his book, US: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. I’m with my co-host Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert and you’re about to hear a very candid discussion on this concept of being we, without losing me. Randy listened to my conversation with Terry in episode 1029 and came into the discussion with his own insights, questions, and grapplings. We hit on some big issues, like the wedding tradition of each person having a candle, lighting one candle in the middle, then blowing out their individual candle. Is that really the intended idea of marriage? And do you come into union with anyone so they “complete you” as the Jerry Maguire movie celebrated? Are you not to be complete on your own? Randy and I have been best friends for nearly a decade and partnered in multiple business endeavors and much of this US concept is relevant for our relationship, and we also bring in parenting to this US concept. I’m eager for you to hear this conversation and would be honored to hear your feedback. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your personal relationships are likely to make or break you. This is our Functional Friday episode and we are finishing out the four foundational pillars of Functional Medicine with the third episode on Relationships. In episode 1025 we talked about the vital relationship between your body and mind. In episode 1028, the relationship you have with yourself and the world through hope and purpose, faith in essence. Here then we land on your relationship with - other people. I think we all realize to a great degree the positive and negative affect relational health or lack thereof has in our lives. But from a medical standpoint and literal pathologies of body and mind, nothing could be less mainstream. If a stressful marriage and your anxiety, anger, or despair is eating away at you and causing you physical and mental abilities, chances are 99.9% that any traditional medical doctor will never ask, address or uncover the root issue but will treat the symptom with a pharmaceutical. And that is exactly what medical school trains them to do. It’s what they trained my co-host Dr. James to do. So you’re left taking a drug to mask and manage a symptom that you have no idea is being caused by relational strife. We have dramatically impacting relationships in our family, friends, co-workers, employees, business partners and more. Great exercise and good nutrition and solid sleep will help you withstand challenging relationships, but ultimately negative relationships will take down even the mightiest of men. And women. So how does it really affect you and what can you do about it? This is our show, right here. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with internationally renowned family therapist Terry Real to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive him to devote his life and livelihood to helping us have better relationships, with ourselves and others, and what he does to design a life that fulfills him. If you listened to our first discussion together, you heard some of Terry's traumatic childhood. In this talk he discusses relational practices and struggles with his wife, enduring two bouts with cancer, how even into his 50s he loathed himself. And now what he does to help him hold himself tenderly and his testimony that today it's really pleasant to live in his skin. For some reason Terry delivers his insights in a way that is so incredibly humble and real, and I can relate to. He has such understanding and compassionate counsel. And he's a great storyteller, and you'll hear some great ones here. His new book again that I am wholeheartedly endorsing it US: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. Get it anywhere, and find him at terryreal.com where he has courses and classes and incredibly valuable resources to take advantage of and benefit from, immediately. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’ve been fairly candid about my own, ongoing work with counselors, historically, and today. My current counselor really got deep with me into my relationship with myself and recommended a book called “​​I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression,” by a therapist named Terry Real. I got it and read it and it opened up a whole new level of understanding myself. Terry just recently put out a book called US: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. My therapist got it and right away said, “Kevin, I want you to get this book.” I did. It revealed aspects of how I behave unhealthfully in relationships that are nothing less than revolutionary for my life. As an individual, spouse, parent, and more. And bigger picture, how we culturally live as “you and me” and individuals when the bedrock of our being is relational and us. It will either wow you as it did me, or you’ll have to fully dismiss it. And I don’t think you will. I then went to find out who this guy is and found this book US was was published by Goop press, which is founded and owned by famed actress and client of Terry’s, Gwynyth Paltrow. Same with actor Bradley Cooper who emphatically endorses Terry. But then people like famed psychotherapists Esther Perel and Lori Gottliev I find are touting Terry and this book us. And interestingly, the forward is from one of Terry’s patients. The forward alone rocked my world. It’s by a singer you may have heard of. Bruce Springsteen. But it’s not the celebrity component that impresses me, it’s the humble and heartfelt words they shared about their life changes. Bruce said, “At age thirty two I hit an emotional wall and realized I was lost in a deep dark forest, largely of my own making without a map. So began forty years of trying to find my way through the shadowed trees, down to the river of a sustaining life. Terry Real has been a guide and this book is a map through those trees. I agree. I wanted to share Terry with you, so this episode is part one of my discussion with him. Find him at terryreal.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The fourth pillar of Functional Medicine - The Mind/Body connection. Which we view as a relationship, and as such, are covering different aspects of relationships. I’m joined by my Functional Friday co host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert, and appropriate to be following my last episode where he and I talked about “what’s your Everest” from rock star explorer Colin O’Brady, this is about purpose and hope. Randy is often treating people with physical ailments, often chronic and long term issues. Where most doctors are looking at the lab results, tests, and symptoms, Randy is looking at the person’s life. If he sees a significant lack of purpose and hope, it’s often a root issue to whatever physical symptom they are manifesting. Randy and I candidly cover his experiences around this subject with patients, and the dire need for help in our culture that seems to be losing touch with hope and purpose, and how you can clarify and leverage it in your life, for your overall health. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wrapping up my series on 10-time record breaking explorer Colin O’Brady and the message from his new book, “The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life.” With me is my frequent co host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert. We give focus to Colin’s two main topics. First, his concept of “What is your Everest?” We really bring it down from some epic, exotic adventure, to really, just what gives you purpose? That is the best Everest ever. Can you do this in the day to day of your life? Then we hit the primary concept of the 12-Hour Walk, which is rebooting your brain. Something we in our culture today, rarely do. Sleep is like recharging your phone. Needed. But it’s not an operating system upgrade. That’s the concept in this 12-Hour Walk idea. I encourage you to listen to the discussion, even if you have zero intent to go on a 12-Hour walk. Plenty of other ways to achieve it. The goal would be just to do…anything. Though Randy and I are both planning what we decided to name, a 12-Hour meander. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We walk with 10-time record breaking explorer Colin O’Brady through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive [him] to set world records, but ultimately, and design a life that fulfills him. You’ll hear us hit on something he says in his new book, The 12-Hour Walk, about so often being asked if he’s ever afraid of dying during his epic quests up Mt Everest and across Antarctica. And he says…yes. But he’s more afraid of not truly living. Experiencing life. It’s not a pithy answer and I dig in on what this looks like for us. I’m not interested in death defying feats, but I sure want to get all I can out of my life. Colin’s feats include the world’s first solo, unsupported, and fully human-powered crossing of Antarctica, speed records for the Explorers Grand Slam and the Seven Summits, and the first human-powered ocean row across Drake Passage. Colin’s expeditions have been followed by millions and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, and Joe Rogan, that guy with a podcast almost as popular as this one. Colin’s TEDx talk has nearly 3 million views and he is author of The New York Times bestseller The Impossible First and now his new book, The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life. Find him at colinobrady.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are talking about How your body gets derailed by your mind (and vice versa). I’m with Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert. The fourth pillar of getting you well in Functional Medicine is dealing with Relationships, and your foundational relationship is between your body and your mind. We hear plenty about “body and mind” connection but very little that we actually understand how to apply to our everyday lives. We continue to see people pursuing health in their bodies but being derailed by issues of the mind. There is a very real truth to the “physical manifestation of emotional pain.” This is a bad response to...stress. Relationships, trauma, financial issues, and even exciting events can build up to ongoing anxiety that will manifest poorly if not managed well. On the other side we have depression and hopelessness which is almost always treated with a mind focus, while we often find the body in disarray is often a primary culprit. Ultimately if our mind is in bad straits it will often play itself out in physical ailments and we can say the same in reverse. When we are properly tending to your mind but your body is in disarray, your mind is compromised. You may have seen much on the gut/brain connection, or come across Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps The Score. In this show we aim to simplify the concepts and give you a viable understanding of the “chicken and egg” of mind and body connection. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you literally increase our minds and bodies' ability and capacity? As you’ll hear shortly, think about not just recharging your smartphone or computer, but when you get a new operating system and the thing reboots and boom, more capability. Wouldn’t you like to do that for yourself? Ten-time world record breaking explorer, speaker, entrepreneur, and expert on mindset, Colin O’Brady is my guest today. His feats include the world’s first solo, unsupported, and fully human-powered crossing of Antarctica, speed records for the Explorers Grand Slam and the Seven Summits (that’s Mt Everest and all the other biggest mountains on planet earth), and the first human-powered ocean row across Drake Passage. Colin’s highly publicized expeditions have been followed by millions and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, and Joe Rogan, that guy with a podcast almost as popular as this one. Colin’s TEDx talk has nearly 3 million views and he is author of The New York Times bestseller The Impossible First and now, The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life. We really get in depth in this talk, just looking at why we go from kids with big ideas and goals, and then relegate ourselves to working to pay bills and just exist and hope to get some entertainment, but, watching the exploits of guys like Colin. I think you’ll find much to resonate with. Find him at Colinobrady.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we one, handle them with health, and two, allow them to make the good things in life even better? This ends my series on Susan Cain and her book and message, Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Susan was my guest in episodes 1020 and 1021 and now I talk with Tom Ziglar about it, and it’s such an interesting discussion. Tom is of course son to Zig Ziglar. Zig is one of the most renowned names in inspiration and motivation worldwide and known for positivity. I’m concerned people think he was just Mr lemonade out of lemons with books like See You At The Top and don’t realize he also wrote Confessions of A Grieving Christian after his 46 year old daughter Suzan dies of a lung disease. This was at the height of Zig Ziglar’s success, influencing over 250 million people to embrace positive perspectives. As you’ll hear Tom share, following Suzan’s death, Zig walked his dog and cried, near daily, for two years. He didn’t deny the sadness and the pain, and even after he made some recovery, he never forgot. But he also let it refine and strengthen him and he stayed true to his faith and purpose. As you’ll hear, this is much of our discussion, how our faith and purpose ultimately influences how we weather the daily disappointments and let downs, and the big traumas of life. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hard work of true relaxation and renewal. In our last Functional Friday episode we talked about us only being as strong as our level of recovery. Daily there are things we do, with sleep being paramount. But there are other important aspects as well. We often pursue relief, but not renewal. Kicking the shoes off at the end of the day. Watching a game or binge watching a show. Reading a novel. Eating out. But do we ever finish these things and feel renewed and refreshed? Do we stand up, stretch our our arms and say, “Man, do I feel great now!” Not usually. We might feel some relief, but not renewal. How about vacation? Do you generally feel refreshed when you return, especially those of us with kids? Or do you feel inspired by some good experiences, but fairly exhausted, needing a vacation from your vacation? So when do we find actual renewal that truly strengthens us for the long haul? Or as you’ll hear my co-host Dr Randy James talk about, how do you go about The HARD work of true relaxation? This is a significant part of the self-care you need understanding of and permission for if you are going to get closer to functioning at your full capacity. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1021: I’m back with Susan Cain to walk through her personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive her to write bestselling books and design a life that fulfills her. Susan Cain’s book, QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, was beyond a best seller. It has spent seven years on the New York Times best seller list and as of this recording is still in the top 500 books on Amazon. Her record-smashing TED Talk has been viewed over 30 million times on TED.com and YouTube combined. Her new book is called Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, and it was an instant New York Times best seller as well. It was the topic of our first episode together. Here we walk through her values and habits in the key areas of life and as she shares about her personal life she also shares how the research on Bittersweet evolved some of her perspectives, starting off with her spirituality and faith. She shares her focus on connecting with others, how her goal is to be a millionaire. Of time. And her love of tennis. Find Susan’s book, BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, anywhere, and connect with her at https://susancain.net/ Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1020: In 2013 Susan Cain published her book, QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. It was beyond a best seller. It has spent seven years on the New York Times best seller list and as of this recording is still in the top 500 books on Amazon. Her record-smashing TED Talk has been viewed over 30 million times on TED.com and YouTube combined. When they told me Susan was publishing another book, I didn’t hesitate. The book is called Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, and it was an instant New York Times best seller as well. The most beautiful and joyful experiences of my life have also held an ache and a longing, and this is what Susan is speaking to. She gives focus to the four Hippocratic temperaments of sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic. Most of our world’s greatest creativity and art comes from a melancholic temperament, but Susan writes, “We’ve organized American culture around a sanguine-choleric outlook (forward leaning and combat ready), while Freud labeled melancholic as narcissistic and the main stream culture often views sorrow and longing as clinically depressed.” Susan asks, “How did a nation founded on so much heartache turn into a culture of normative sunshine and enforced positivity?” What you’ll hear is a candid discussion that gives us permission to feel the feels and allow sorrow and longing in, in order to more fully experience joy and beauty. Find Susan’s book, BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, anywhere, and connect with her at https://susancain.net/ Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1019: Our very existence is only as good as our ability to recover. We love to hear about putting in big efforts, whether it’s only sports field, or in the office, or even at home. But those big efforts deplete us. It’s our recovery that allows us to come back for another big performance. A great example is working out to gain muscle. When you work out, you are tearing your muscles down. Your will power as well. It’s when you are in recovery mode that you actually grow stronger. If you don’t recover, you just stay torn down. So if you have times of feeling torn down and just worn down, and it continues…than you are not recovering. I’m joined by my cohost Randy James, medical doctor and functional medicine expert. You’ll hear Dr James change your paradigm by stating that our evening and our sleep is actually how we are starting our next day. How we prepare for sleep, how long and how well are bottom line what are fueling our performance for the next day. All our output, the topic of our previous Functional Friday episode, is subject to our rest and recovery. Many of us are not recovering and every day is a dip lower in our ability...or we’ve stagnated at a mediocre performance level. If we are taking out more than we are depositing, ultimately we’ll end up bankrupt and that’s when we are forced to rest via sickness, disease and disability. I believe you’ll find different information and perspectives on recovery and sleep than you ever have and get clarity on what you can do to best support all the “doing” you desire in your life! Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1018: I’m back with Tyler Merritt for part 2 to talk through his personal Values, Motives, and Habits. To see what drives him. In part 1 together our focus was stereotypes and marginalization. I’m a 6’ tall, white, American male who has never experienced a negative stereotype or marginalization. Tyler is a 6’4” dreadlocked Black man in America who absolutely knows what it’s like to be negatively stereotyped and marginalized. I encourage you to listen to that episode if you haven’t, but now…we go behind the scenes. Tyler Merritt is a Nashville-based actor, activist, cancer survivor, founder of The Tyler Merritt Project, and author of "I TAKE MY COFFEE BLACK: REFLECTIONS ON TUPAC, MUSICAL THEATER, FAITH AND BEING BLACK IN AMERICA." Over the course of his career, Tyler has gained recognition through notable acting projects including "Kevin Probably Saves The World," "Outer Banks," and "The Outsider," as well as serving as the face of the worldwide teaching curriculum for The Gospel Project for Kids. Most recently, Tyler Merritt made headlines with his 2018 viral video "Before You Call The Cops," which has been viewed by over 100 million people worldwide and appeared on Jimmy Kimmel, MSNBC, and the New York Times. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1017: Tyler Merritt is a 6’4” dreadlocked Black man in America who absolutely knows what it’s like to be stereotyped and marginalized. While Tyler is a steadfast activist in the face of racism, I invited him on to talk about stereotypes and marginalization overall. To a great degree, if you are not a white, American man, you have experienced marginalization, and that is our focus. How can you flourish amongst it with strength and compassion? And if you’re a white, American male, I’d encourage you to tune in so you can increase your own strength and compassion. Tyler Merritt is a Nashville-based actor, activist, cancer survivor, founder of The Tyler Merritt Project, and author of "I TAKE MY COFFEE BLACK: REFLECTIONS ON TUPAC, MUSICAL THEATER, FAITH AND BEING BLACK IN AMERICA." Over the course of his career, Tyler has gained recognition through notable acting projects including "Kevin Probably Saves The World," "Outer Banks," and "The Outsider," as well as serving as the face of the worldwide teaching curriculum for The Gospel Project for Kids. Most recently, Tyler Merritt made headlines with his 2018 viral video "Before You Call The Cops," which has been viewed by over 100 million people worldwide and appeared on Jimmy Kimmel, MSNBC, and the New York Times. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1016: Your daily output is in essence, your work. All of it. The daily tasks and duties in which you exert yourself to fulfill. Personal maintenance, parenting, your job or schooling, relationships, home and life maintenance...everything. Your capacity for daily output is finite, even though we like to think of ourselves as needing to be limitless. How often do you feel spent and you’re only halfway through the day? Or maybe you make it strong through the day but by evening you have nothing left for your family and relationships or a new venture you desire to put effort into? Everyone wants more energy. We’ve created billion dollar companies around energy drinks to give us more energy. But imagine your car being overheated and bogging down and you just keep shoving more gas in the tank! The question is…what is zapping it’s energy? For you, what daily activities, exertions, environments, and mental activities will more quickly deplete, OR… help to better sustain and further your daily output and capacity? This is what Dr Randy James and I address in this episode. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1015: Habits and goals; what to do when our plans are disrupted. This wraps up my series on Michelle Segar and her book, The Joy Choice: How To Finally Achieve Lasting Changes In Eating And Exercise. Her focus is just that, the habits we intend to fulfill, and how we so often fail. We look at them as all or nothing and when life happens, we let them fall. And the key is being prepared for this, expecting it even, and having a plan. In this episode I bring Tom Ziglar on to discuss this, and how it also relates to our overall goals. Tom is CEO of Ziglar, son of Zig Ziglar, and of course my frequent co-host. He’s grown up in a goals culture and knows well what derails us. We discuss strategies for making consistent deposits and how to pick up when we lose momentum Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1014: I’m back with unhabitor and author of the Joy Choice, Michelle Segar, to walk through their personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive her to guide us in making habits actually sustain, especially regarding eating and exercise, and design a life that fulfills her. Michelle is an award-winning, National Institute of Health funded sustainable behavior change researcher at the University of Michigan and a lifestyle coach. For nearly three decades, she has pioneered methods to create sustainable healthy behavior changes that are being used to boost patient health, employee well-being, and even gym membership retention. I’m pulling info from her new book, The Joy Choice: How To Finally Achieve Lasting Changes In Eating and Exercise. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1013: Movement. Exercise. My co host Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert, have been covering aspects of input, and now we move to output. Our bodies were created to move. To elevate our heart rate and stress our muscles. If we don’t, we decline. Simple as that. For the greatest span of history we had to move in order to live, so there was no need for exercise. Life was exercise. Today we can run our lives with near zero movement, and it’s showing. Our sedentary lifestyle is eroding our health. If exercise isn’t your favorite word, just think about movement. What can you do, that you don’t hate, near every day, to get your heart rate going and stress your muscles a bit? Randy and I talk through this with a compassionate and real-world look at how to get consistent movement into your routine, and if it already is, how to make it sustainable and help you get the most out of it. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1012: How do you make effective, lasting change in your life, especially regarding eating and exercise. In all our areas of life where we seek to develop new habits and get new results, there is new information that the areas of diet and exercise don’t work like the others and are the areas we most fail, because, life happens. This new information is brought to us by Dr Michelle Segar who I have with me today. Michelle takes our cultural concept of habits to task. We’re going to talk about her groundbreaking, decision-making framework—and the science behind it—to give hope to the millions of what she calls, and labels herself as, “unhabiters” who are frustrated with their failure to keep up all the good habits they intend to engage with, and discuss a behavior-change solution designed for them. We are enamored with creating habits in our lives that will give us the success we want, but what you’re about to find out is the normal framework and perspective of habits we have doesn’t work for…a lot of us. But there is a solution that will, and it’s why I have Michelle on the show. Michelle is an award-winning, National Institute of Health funded sustainable behavior change researcher at the University of Michigan and a lifestyle coach. For nearly three decades, she has pioneered methods to create sustainable healthy behavior changes that are being used to boost patient health, employee well-being, and even gym membership retention. I’m pulling info from her new book, The Joy Choice: How To Finally Achieve Lasting Changes In Eating and Exercise. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1011: We wrap up my series on Tim Schurrer’s book, “The Secret Society of Success” by discussing the concept of finding your fortune without having to seek attention and fame, with Tom Ziglar. Tim spent a decade as COO for author and leader Donald Miller, leading the team outside of the spotlight, and this is the focus. We’re in a culture where everyone is trying to get attention. To be in the spotlight and on the stage, to get likes and followers. And for everyone in the spotlight there are scores of people supporting the effort. People making lots of money, having lots of fulfillment, and we debate, possibly experiencing more joy and peace than the person grinding it out to be up on stage. Tom Ziglar spent a lifetime watching his father, Zig Ziglar, on stage and in the spotlight. He helped support his dad. Today Tom is in the spotlight, so he’s experienced both sides. Further, he grew up amongst his Dad’s peers on stage and got to see the good and bad of the spotlight, and rub shoulders with thousands of people supporting those people, so he is a veritable expert on both sides. This may be the only podcast series not trying to push everyone to push for the spotlight, the stage, and for attention for everything they do. It’s honestly not where the most opportunity is. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1010: What are you coming into contact with on a daily basis? Dr. Randy James, MD and I are going to open your understanding to what you need to know. To take an extreme, what if you let a daily dose of radiation wash over you every day. Just a mere second, not too much. But every day, over time, what would happen? Enough would be catastrophic. As our world is increasingly filled with pollution and toxins, the very air is truly suspect. What is touching our skin, what are we smelling in through our nose, irritating our eyes? Allergies, mold, toxins and chemicals. Should we all walk through life wearing surgical masks and radiation suits? Environmentally it wouldn’t hurt, but it might cramp your social life. What DO we need to be on the lookout for? What is most threatening to us? How much of our physiological and psychological maladies are related to what we come into contact with via our skin and the very air we breath? Let’s find out. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1009: I’m back with Tim Schurrer to walk through his personal Values, Motives, and Habits, and we land on two really profound perspectives. One is coming back to asking, in our work and life, “Who am I here for?” And then Tim comes out with a quip about how we make our best decisions when we are grateful. We get into his personal quest to be a musician and his love for golf and basketball, and how he practices “prehab” to avoid the need for rehab. It’s a thoughtful show I believe you’ll be inspired and equipped by. Tim Schurrer recently authored the book, The Secret Society of Success: Stop Chasing The Spotlight And Learn To Enjoy Your Work [And Life] Again. He spent a decade working as COO with Donald Miller and launching Storybrand and then Business Made Simple, and while Don had the spotlight, Tim ran the business and built and led the team that made it all possible. Before that Tim worked at TOMS as well as Apple Inc. He is the host of the Build a Winning Team podcast, where he offers listeners actionable advice as he interviews some of the top leaders in business. We talk about the far greater opportunity for success and fulfillment, outside the spotlight and off the stage. Find Tim at secretsocietyfree.com and get the first two chapters of his book free. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1008: Everyone is chasing the spotlight. Everyone wants to be, or feels they need to be, the superstar, in order to succeed. To have a platform and followers and an audience. Write a book, star in social media, start a podcast, and get enough attention to pay your bills and pad your ego. But one, not everyone can be in the spotlight, and two, does being on stage really give you the best odds for success and fulfillment? With me today is Tim Schurrer who recently authored the book, The Secret Society of Success: Stop Chasing The Spotlight And Learn To Enjoy Your Work [And Life] Again. He spent a decade working as COO with Donald Miller and launching Storybrand and then Business Made Simple, and while Don had the spotlight, Tim ran the business and built and led the team that made it all possible. Before that Tim worked at TOMS as well as Apple Inc. He is the host of the Build a Winning Team podcast, where he offers listeners actionable advice as he interviews some of the top leaders in business. We talk about the far greater opportunity for success and fulfillment, outside the spotlight and off the stage. Find Tim at secretsocietyfree.com and get first two chapters of his book free. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1007: You are listening to messages that program who you are and how you feel nearly 24 hours a day, and you have control over the vast majority of these messages. All day long you are listening to two things; the auditory messages from every direction you tune into or expose yourself, and often from them, you then continue to listen to those messages as they play inside your head as thoughts. The social media and news headline fighting, the snarky memes, the negative bent of most media, the complaint of friends, family, and co-workers, the music, videos and on and on. If you build a house would you build with wood and steel and brick, or garbage? Every day you are building your mind and attitude. What are the ingredients you are giving it? This is our Functional Friday episode and Randy James, medical doctor and Functional Medicine expert, joins me to discuss the effects of our audio input and how it impacts more than just our mind, but our physical aches and pains as well. And the main point is how you can help yourself, be well, by safeguarding what you hear and listen to and ultimately…think. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1006: We continue the discussion on aging from my conversation with Becca Levy, author of Breaking The Age Code who I featured in episodes 1003 and 1005, but here I bring on my favorite medical doctor and dear friend Randy James to discuss positive and high performing aging through a Functional Medicine lens and just real world walking out this concept of not accepting the demise we currently do in our culture, where you hit your mid 20s and 30s and start saying, “Well, I just can’t do what I used to do,” and meanwhile this March, 2022, Kenichi Horie at age 83 set a world record sailing solo across the Pacific without stopping, the same thing he did at age 23. That’s 60 years later. He says he hopes to continue such voyages till he’s 100. We quickly just write him off as an anomaly. But is he? Or is he simply living out what could be attainable for us all if we didn’t expect and accept an earlier and earlier demise. Join Randy and me as we talk about our personal views and expectations on aging, how Randy approaches it with patients, and how you might change the trajectory of your own aging to something with more capacity. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1005: I’m back with Dr Becca Levy to talk about Values & Habits in the key areas of life fulfillment, and look at how we have positive and negative perspectives and expectations around aging. And “aging” these days seems to be expected at earlier and earlier ages. To a great degree, we will age as we expect to age. So in this episode we talk to an expert around just that, the expectations we have and will likely manifest in our lives. Every day older we become, we should be adding to our ability. Yes, at some point late in life we may find some lessening strengths, but that is not a given. Animals are not hobbling around. They are full tilt till the end. Why can’t that be you and me? Dr. Becca Levy is an award-winning Yale Professor of Psychology and Global Health. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. She has given testimony before the United States Senate on the effects of ageism and contributed to briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court in age-discrimination cases. She is credited with creating a field of study that focuses on how positive and negative age stereotypes affect the health of older individuals. And she is the author of Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Love, which just came out. Find it anywhere you get books and connect with Becca at becca-levy.com. I encourage you to listen to our previous episode, 1003, where Becca and I dig into ageism and how we can age better by viewing it more positively, and of course, taking more positive actions. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#1004: We are talking about how to control your direction by controlling your visual input. What you look at is where you go. As we continue with the first pillar of overall physiological and psychological health and wellness, following the structure of Functional Medicine, Dr Randy James and I are talking about INPUT. The good and bad we do and do not put into our bodies. In episode #3 we covered the huge aspect of what we do and don’t put into our mouths. In this show we address visual input. This is not an area we give much thought or weight to unless we’re thinking of…looking at naughty pictures. In all truth, I expected it to be a 20-30 minute discussion, but as you will hear, some of our points really expanded. Just like the food we eat, everyday we choose or allow a steady and full diet of visionary input into our minds. We discuss the effect screens have on us, not just what we watch but the very real issue of blue screens themselves. Ultimately, we address what cumulative visual input is harming us and taking away life, and what is helping us and giving us life? We have control over the majority of this if we’ll take it. Videos, news, pornography, social media, ads and consumerism…there is a virtual-visual onslaught and reality in our home and work environment. I think you’ll find your eyes opened, pun intended, and your mind convicted. You can take immediate and significant action right away. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices