Manage to Engage
Josef Shapiro
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Dedicated to the evolution of you, because businesses grow when people do. Work is far more fulfilling when you use it to become who you want to be and to reach your personal goals. This podcast is about personal growth in a professional context, training leaders, managers and people who will be in the skills they need to not only be successful, but to be clear and open as people.
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Apr 8, 2023
What’s This Really About?
Today’s episode is, like the last series, from my course, “The Art of Asking Questions.” We talk a lot about the importance of deep listening and using questions to get to the heart of the matter in this conversation, with some interesting real-time examples.
I’m a business coach, spiritual educator, and therapist and I specialize in helping leaders get out of their own way. For more information about what I do or to become part of the conversations you hear on this podcast, please visit clearandopen.com.
This and future episodes are available as video at youtube.com/@clearandopen
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Nov 28, 2022
Existential Curiosity
I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it’s my truth that – with the right tools – anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.
This series is from the course entitled The Art of Asking Questions, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com
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Nov 21, 2022
Curiosity & Critical Thinking
I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it’s my truth that – with the right tools – anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.
This series is from the course entitled The Art of Asking Questions, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com
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Nov 15, 2022
Curiosity Isn’t a Skill
I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it’s my truth that – with the right tools – anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.
This series is from the course entitled The Art of Asking Questions, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com
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Oct 17, 2022
The Tragedy of our Incurious Conditioning
We begin a four part series today from my course entitled “The Art of Asking Questions”, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com. I’ll talk about the nature of curiosity, our poor conditioning about learning and what to do about it, how embarrassment can be productive, and a lot more.
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Sep 19, 2022
The Dead-End of Strival
This is the third and final part of the excerpts on excellence from my course entitled Embodied Values and Virtues, which you can find at courses.clearandopen.com. In this installment, we relate excellence to the 5 stages engagement, which you may remember from previous episodes, and the dead-end of striving.
Then we connect passion work and soulmates to the final stage of flow, the place we’re all headed whether we realize it or not. Again, this series is from my course, “Embodied Values and Virtues.”
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Sep 12, 2022
Excellence Earns
Today is part two of a three-part series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” We’re focusing on excellence and apply this to the domains of soul-mates and passion-path today, the person and work that is inextricably intertwined with your destiny.
Spoiler alert: doing your best with what’s in front of you is the path to get there, and we’re not entitled to anything we haven’t yet earned.
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Sep 5, 2022
Don’t Never Give Up
This episode is part one of a series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” The topic today and in the next two episodes is excellence, and it’s quite relevant to the “quiet quitting” stuff we’re hearing about in the news these days. In this episode: why never giving up is bad advice, how will-based excellence isn’t sustainable, and the terror of letting go of what once worked, but no longer serves you.
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Aug 29, 2022
How Judgment Can Help You
This episode is part three of a series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” We continue the conversation about compassion today by deconstructing the ubiquitous judgment of judgment in our world, and how counter-intuitively accepting and investigating your own judgments can lead to authentic compassion.
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Aug 22, 2022
Deconstructing False Ideas About Compassion
This episode is part two of a three part series excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” We continue the conversation about the limits of repressing feelings, fear or otherwise, and the process of dead-ending principles by living them out to their logical extreme. Then we transition from courage to compassion and deconstruct some of the most common misconceptions of compassion that tragically stop us from embodying it.
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Aug 18, 2022
The Failure of Emotional Repression
The last series was excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues,” and we’re following suit. This episode begins a three-part series taken from the hour that followed. We talk more about courage and move onto the next virtue on the list, compassion. We talk specifically about the importance of not repressing fear, which is the most common misunderstanding of courage. Related to this, I field a question about how to productively steer yourself into fear, in the name of healing.
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Aug 8, 2022
The Cake and Eat It Too Seduction
This episode completes our four-part series on courage, excerpted from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” Today we explore “the cake and eat it too” dynamic, the necessity of diagnosing root causes, living paradigms all the way to their logical conclusion, the red herring of confidence, and finally, to wrap up the series, the punchline: get intimate with your fear. That’s what courage really is.
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Aug 1, 2022
Curiosity and Courage
This is part three in the courage series from my course Embodied Values and Virtues.
In this episode, we talk about the similarities between parenting and management and the importance and power of being curious about another’s experience. We also discuss the limits of nervous system regulation based models, treating symptoms vs. root causes, western medicine’s inability to diagnose and heal emotional issues and a lot more.
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Jul 25, 2022
The Courage of Ownership
This is part two in the courage series from my course “Embodied Values and Virtues.” Today we talk about the courage it takes to no longer need supervision. The expectation we have to be supervised comes from our school conditioning and unfortunately follows most people well into their adult lives.
We also discuss the courage required to take responsibility for the people you draw and learn the lessons they’re there to teach you rather than playing victim.
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Jul 18, 2022
Courage Without Control
The next four episodes are excerpted from my Embodied Values and Virtues Course which was live the first quarter of 2022. We spent an hour or so on each of eight virtues of Clear and Open, which I based off of the list created by the Samurai.
The virtue you’ll hear about is courage, and in this episode specifically what it means in peer relationships where you don’t have control. I’ll talk about the self-image that people-helpers tend to build in order to never have to be vulnerable, and also the pitfalls of using the written word for accountability.
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Jul 11, 2022
369 - What Marketing Really Is - Part 3 - How Marketing Informs Action
Last week, we learned to recognize that marketing is not an action, but a discipline. And the discipline of marketing leads to the three activities: client fulfillment, lead conversion, and lead generation. Identifying how it fuels each of those is essential to effective marketing. Advertising is only a tiny part of marketing, and it’s a disservice to the art to stop the discussion there.
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Jul 4, 2022
368 - What Marketing Really Is - Part 2 - Knowing Your Worth
Most people think they know what marketing is… but they aren’t actually doing it. And those who think they hate marketing don’t even really know what it is. When we hear the word “marketing,” many of us jump straight to advertising. But that’s not right. If we think of marketing not as an activity but as a discipline, the content starts to fall into place. Once you address the beliefs behind marketing, everything else makes sense.
I’d love your feedback. _Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts._
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Jun 27, 2022
367 - What Marketing Really Is - Part 1 - Making Time for What Matters
In the coming weeks, we’re going to start talking about what marketing really is and why most people have it wrong. But before we get to that, it’s important to understand why we sometimes find it difficult to get our most important work done. We all have a very limited amount of time to do anything to our best ability, and it usually occurs at the same time each day. When we fill those hours with meaningless tasks, it’s no wonder we find it difficult to get our focused, more trying work done during the non-optimal hours. It’s important to find a balance between what you are moved to do, and what is most important to do: that is the art of living.
I’d love your feedback. _Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts._
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Jun 20, 2022
366 - The Root of Responsibility Issues - Part 4 - Accountability & Consequences
The role of the org chart is to make the responsibilities of each person within the organization as clear as possible. It’s crucial that responsibility is not shared, because shared responsibility avoids accountability. Without accountability, you can’t have consequences. And without consequences, we negate our whole reason for being. The only way we can learn our lessons is by acting out our truths and experiencing their natural consequences – with some help from teachers along the way.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 13, 2022
365 - The Root of Responsibility Issues - Part 3 - The Existentialism of the Org Chart
to you) brings up all of our deepest existential issues with power and free will. When you try to put someone in a role, it can make their unconscious need for control feel threatened. But, through that friction, and recognizing the consequences of their actions, is where a sense of freedom truly emerges. Our beliefs have to crash with the boundaries of reality in order to discover genuine truth for us.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 6, 2022
364 - The Root of Responsibility Issues - Part 2 - Recognizing the Value of Work
There’s value in a job well done. Think of the difference between a reward earned after some hard work and one you’ve treated yourself to. We value the things we’ve worked towards, but we can often “cheat” our way to the same goal – but doing so isn’t truly satisfying. It’s a lesson everyone, at any level of an organization, needs to learn on their own.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 30, 2022
363 - The Root of Responsibility Issues - Part 1 - The Free Will Paradigm
As humans, we have an innate desire to be free. But we also don’t recognize the realities of freedom. Free will exists: you can do whatever you want. But you can’t escape the consequences of doing it. And the role of life is to hold us accountable to reality and show us what happens when we take our truth to its natural conclusion.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 23, 2022
362 - Visioning From Your Soul - Part 4 - Embracing Your Own Authority
Having a vision as a leader is one thing, but successful leaders need to inspire others to invest in that vision as well. To do that, you need to prove to them – through words as well as actions – that your vision serves their own best interest. Feeling as if you know what’s best for others can be uncomfortable at first, but it must be embraced. As long as you believe in what you are doing (and allow space for others to tell you if you’re wrong), you can become someone worth following.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 16, 2022
361 - Visioning From Your Soul - Part 3 - Resist or Learn
Life has a way of putting us right up against the change we require, but it doesn’t make us any less resistant to adopting it. You have a choice: resist or learn. In order to become who you want to be, you have to look hard and realize who you are not. When we see the stories of great leaders, it feels as if they knew what they were doing all along – why else would they take such crazy risks in the face of seemingly impossible odds? But ask anyone in the midst of their soul’s journey if they felt that way and it’ll likely be a different story.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 9, 2022
360 - Visioning From Your Soul - Part 2 - Resisting Your True Self
What’s holding you back from making the change necessary to step into your truest expression of self? Being our true selves sounds great, but most of us don’t live that way. Making change requires parts of our current self to cease, and those parts will fear and resist the change. Facing your destiny can be a scary prospect, but we often see the biggest growth on the other side of fear.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 2, 2022
359 - Visioning From Your Soul - Part 1 - Resisting the Change
Leaders tend to want their outsides to change without having to change themselves. But the truth is you cannot become a leader without change. Being a leader – the kind that truly inspires people to follow – requires becoming a better version of you. And part of that change is creating a different relationship with authority and instruction.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Mar 28, 2022
358 - Psychospiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram: Uncovering Courage - Part 3 - The Willingness to See
The first step of personal growth is the willingness to look at anything (and everything) within yourself. Anything you refuse to look at is only going to create internal division. Facing your weaknesses is a very difficult thing to do, but it’s something you become better at with time. Look for opportunities in your everyday life to reveal parts of yourself, and you’ll only grow stronger for it.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Mar 21, 2022
357 - Psychospiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram: Uncovering Courage - Part 2 - The Courage of Discomfort
Some types get a bad reputation due to the worst parts of them, especially in certain cultures. We have to look at the shadow side of ourselves and realize how those actually become our strengths. But that takes finding the courage to closely examine those shadows, deeply understand them, and find out where you stand. Most of the problems we face in life – regardless of what our enneagram type is – stem from not having the courage to bear emotional discomfort.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Mar 14, 2022
356 - Psychospiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram: Uncovering Courage - Part 1 - Why Self-Examination Requires Courage
We’re going to delve back into the enneagram this week. We started this journey by looking at and identifying the best parts of ourselves. Then we took an uncomfortable look at the dark, shadowy parts. The truth may set you free, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be difficult to look at. That’s why we’ll be exploring courage – the courage it takes to embrace emotional discomfort, and how we’re conditioned against doing that.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Mar 7, 2022
355 - Effective Hiring - Part 4 - Hiring is Marketing
__Hiring the right people means beginning with the end in mind. You have to work backwards from the qualities you want in an employee and create questions that will reveal those qualities in your candidates. This is where curiosity comes in. If you are not genuinely curious about who your candidates really are, you will never find the person you are looking for. This is a skill that takes practice to master, but it will pay dividends in your business.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 28, 2022
354 - Effective Hiring - Part 3 - Driving the Interview
The governing power of hiring is curiosity. It’s essential for finding out what drives people, and knowing that is critical in making the right hire. Part of being curious means being prepared to ask difficult questions. Interviews should be uncomfortable. When you’re hiring for someone who’s coachable, honesty is key. They need to be open about their weaknesses and their flaws, and driven to improve them.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 21, 2022
353 - Effective Hiring - Part 2 - The Untrainable Qualities
When hiring, we’re looking for qualities that you can’t get just by training. We subconsciously hire people who are less capable than us because we feel threatened, or we hire people who have the skills that we could train for, but that we just don’t want to. Ideally, we should hire those who could become equal to (or better than) us, but just haven’t been managed well enough to get there yet. Candidates can sense the difference, and it’s often what they really want when looking for a role – even more than money. It’s what you want as well, even if you don’t realize it.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 14, 2022
352 - Effective Hiring - Part 1 - Hiring for Management
I recently shared the difference between management and supervision. But how does that play out in the hiring process? Supervision is based on content; not context. You look at their surface level skills and rapport with you instead of the context of who they are going to become when they work with you. If you want to hire effectively you have to be present, and, in order to be present, you can’t be busy.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 7, 2022
351 - Living a Soulful Life - Part 4 - The Razor’s Edge
What does it mean to live a spiritual life? Recognizing the fact that you do not always know what’s good for you. The spiritual path can often be confusing, but it’s pointing you in the right direction. We need to find the edge of where exact clarity and total abandon meet, taking your dreams, ambitions, and purpose and, at the same time, letting it go. The mind can’t grasp this – it’s a paradox. But the soul can.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 31, 2022
350 - Living a Soulful Life - Part 3 - The Universal & the Individual
When things get difficult, the ego will steer us away from our next step or halt us completely.
Religion often promises spiritual experiences without the difficulties, but that ends up being a false promise. The path to spirituality is one that can only be experienced firsthand. It’s a journey into the unknown. It requires us to get out of our own way and to trust the outcome.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 24, 2022
349 - Living a Soulful Life - Part 2 - The Natural Order
Humans have the unique ability to live out of harmony with their own nature. We have free will, which allows us to deny our own needs – even though we can’t escape the consequences that come along with it. The downsides of repressing our own needs can come out in the form of resentment, anger, passive-aggression, or even cancer. This becomes even more difficult to manage when we realize that we don’t often know what’s good for us. So how do we find it? Through trial and error, and deep introspection.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 17, 2022
348 - Living a Soulful Life - Part 1 - Serving One for the Whole
In this episode, we talk about spirituality – what it is and isn’t. One of the topics we are most conflicted about in life, spirituality sits right alongside money, sex, love, power, and death. And like those, it is widely misunderstood. Part of that comes from a misunderstanding of self-interest and the role it plays in our lives. We’re taught from an early age that self-interest is bad, and interest in others is good. The truth is that self-interest can come in both healthy and unhealthy forms. We are all a part of the same whole, and the only way to serve the whole is to serve ourselves, rather than sacrificing our own needs in service of others. We have to break free from a lifetime of programming that says we have to spiritually disconnect from the self in order to serve the other.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 10, 2022
347 - Management vs. Supervision - Part 4 - Supervision is Rooted in Ego
At the root of the conflict between supervision and management is the issue of power. People are subconsciously afraid of their own power and therefore want to be supervised. And those who are in management positions, knowing that the people below them can do everything they can become threatening to their sense of power. We all have those voices inside of us. But that’s just the ego, and we can’t let the ego rule us.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 3, 2022
346 - Management vs. Supervision - Part 3 - Dare to Be Useless
Now we know the difference between supervision and management, and how falling into the trap of supervision prevents us from doing the strategic work that will truly grow your organization. If you catch yourself supervising, don’t defend the action—do something about it. It’s not hard to figure out what you need to do. It’s not even that hard to find the time to do it. What’s holding most people back is the willingness to do something uncomfortable. You’re never going to find out what your employees are capable of until you put some pressure on them, but most managers get caught up in being the one to know it all that they willingly hold their organizations back. But if you’re willing to not be needed, everything can get better.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Dec 27, 2021
345 - Management vs. Supervision - Part 2 - Doing the Strategic Work
The employee mindset—or default human nature—is to exert the lowest amount of effort possible to accomplish the task at hand. If you show someone that every time they drop the ball you’ll be there to catch it, then they’re not likely to get any better at catching—let alone stepping up for more responsibility. When you build a culture of supervision, the result is that you begin dragging down each and every role in the organization. And if you can just follow the breadcrumbs and see where you continually fall into supervision instead of management, you can completely transform your organization.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Dec 24, 2021
344 - Management vs. Supervision - Part 1 - The Difference Between Supervision and Management
Supervision and management are often used interchangeably, but I’m going to make the argument for why that couldn’t be more wrong. Supervision means, quite literally, to oversee. In action, that typically means making sure the people who already know what they’re supposed to do, do it. That’s not a great use of time, though it is occasionally necessary. Management, on the other hand, is about developing people and helping them to evolve. It’s getting people to a place where they don’t need you at all.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 22, 2021
343 - Claiming Self-Authority: Excuses as a Drain of Power - Part 4 - Love the Truth
You have a choice. In every moment of your life, you choose how to react. That’s how we started discussing the idea of excuses, a few lessons back, and to some, that thought is terrifying. Even continuing to live every day is a choice. Instead of being terrified by the idea, let the power to choose empower you. If you want to, you can choose to make your life better. No more excuses.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 15, 2021
342 - Claiming Self-Authority: Excuses as a Drain of Power - Part 3 - Use Your Excuses
Excuses aren’t all bad news. As we explored last week, the areas in which we make excuses are likely the areas we don’t want to look at. If we use that to our advantage, tracking what we make excuses around can be one of the most powerful tools we can use to reclaim our power.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 8, 2021
341 - Claiming Self-Authority: Excuses as a Drain of Power - Part 2 - You Always Have a Choice
What is an excuse, really? Making an excuse comes down to denying your role in an outcome. If you had the ability to respond to a situation in any way, whether you did or not, you had a hand in that outcome. To deny that is to make excuses. We always have a choice. And if we’re refusing to acknowledge our choices, there’s likely a choice we’ve made that we don’t want to look at. That’s where the opportunity to learn something about ourselves lies.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 1, 2021
340 - Claiming Self-Authority: Excuses as a Drain of Power - Part 1 - Saying vs Doing
It’s quite easy to say “don’t make excuses.” Obvious, even. But it’s one thing to say something, another to know how to do it, and something else entirely to actually apply it to your life. Knowing something is not being something. Making excuses (or not) is a moment-to-moment decision – one you have to make every day for the rest of your life. You never stop deciding, but you can get better at noticing those moments.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
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Oct 25, 2021
339 - Claiming Self-Authority: The Code of Conduct - Part 4 - The Training Montage
Gaining mastery is a slow process. As much as we’d love a hyper-focused training montage across a week or a month that leaves us at our goal, in reality, mastery requires slow, methodical application of curiosity. Curiosity is essential no matter what it is you are striving to achieve. The downside – or so it may seem – is that curiosity can often lead to discomfort. But you can’t grow without discomfort, and once you realize that, you can start to view discomfort as a good thing rather than something to avoid.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Oct 18, 2021
338 - Claiming Self-Authority: The Code of Conduct - Part 3 - Curiosity Cures Miscommunication
Clear communication could solve the majority of problems business leaders face every day. Imagine how much time would be saved if you asked your team to do something, took the time to make sure they understood it effectively, and they got it done on the first try? When you don’t take the time to confirm that something has been properly understood, that time gets wasted exponentially on the back end. Following up and even redoing work takes far more time in the long run. A little curiosity upfront or after the fact: did they understand what I asked them to do? Or, if not, why is that? Asking those simple questions changes everything.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Oct 11, 2021
337 - Claiming Self-Authority: The Code of Conduct - Part 2 - The Responsibility Paradox
Let’s reframe responsibility. No one is inherently responsible or irresponsible. Responsibility is simply the ability to respond to a situation. You have the opportunity to respond in every situation you are in. And the irony of it – what I call the responsibility paradox – is that people who aren’t being responsible don’t wonder if they are being responsible, because that is the responsible thing to do. One of the most powerful ways of harnessing responsibility is to respond to a situation with curiosity. When you are curious, you start to look at the things you normally wouldn’t notice, and that’s when real insight can be found.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Oct 4, 2021
336 - Claiming Self-Authority: The Code of Conduct - Part 1 - Self-Knowledge & Self-Authority
One of the best tools for claiming self-authority is the enneagram. It’s one I use constantly. When you learn to understand and use the enneagram well, it is completely life-changing. Rarely do we understand how differently people think until we really dive into this work. And when you know yourself, how you communicate, and how other people perceive you, incredible things happen.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Sep 27, 2021
335 - Claiming Self-Authority: Deconstructing Your Self - Part 4 - Be True to You
I discussed the willingness to lose it all last week, and I want to start by clarifying something: being willing to lose it all does not guarantee that you won’t lose it all. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s true: the stronger your will, the higher the likelihood that you will have to fail – and fail hard – to achieve true self-authority. You won’t know the price until you take the leap, but let me tell you this: it is absolutely a price worth paying. How bad do you want it?
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Sep 20, 2021
334 - Claiming Self-Authority: Deconstructing Your Self - Part 3 - Be, Do, Have
Last week we talked about why “follow your passion” is poor advice. It’s understandable that we’d think that. We’ve been conditioned to think that acquisition leads to action, and that action leads to feeling or being a certain way. But what if we’ve had it backwards all along? What if it’s the being that leads to doing, and that leads to having what we want? That’s the true path.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Sep 13, 2021
333 - Claiming Self-Authority: Deconstructing Your Self - Part 2 - The Passion Path
There are two things that define the mature self more than anything else: a soulmate and a passion path. Neither are something you go out and get – you attract them by being the kind of person who deserves them. But we’re not conditioned to work on who we are. Instead, we’re told to define what we want and acquire it. “Find your passion.” We have to deconstruct our current paradigm and start working on being the kind of person who does what they are passionate about, not the kind of person who’s always chasing.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Sep 6, 2021
332 - Claiming Self-Authority: Deconstructing Your Self - Conceptualization is Not Reality
Our society places such concern over intelligence. We’re led to believe that getting good grades, going to college, and gaining certified knowledge will lead to happiness, but the reality is just the opposite. The more intelligent you are, the better the mind gets at obstructing our feelings. The first step to overcoming this mental block is to realize that it exists. We can’t conceptualize ourselves into being happy.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 16, 2021
331 - Claiming Self-Authority: Reclaiming Reality - Part 4 - Giving Power to the Collective
As you explore your own authentic power, you need to be aware of the ways in which you give your power away. Maybe you’re bolstering your lack of authority by joining a group dynamic that gives you a sense of control or power. And of course, being a part of groups is not a bad thing. But unless you’ve forged yourself in the fires of loneliness, you will never know how you are leaking your power to others in order to remain a part of those groups. See where you are giving away your power so that you can gain more individually.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 9, 2021
330 - Claiming Self-Authority: Reclaiming Reality - Part 3 - The Art of Doing Nothing
Doing nothing is hard. You’ve done the hard work to dredge up feelings from the deepest crevices of your mind, and now you’re supposed to stop… but doing nothing is still doing something. It is an active process.
Any behavior that serves to numb feelings is suspect. Treating the symptoms rather than the cause only leads to feeling worse. When you really see what’s happening in your life – without trying to change it – that’s when things start moving.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 2, 2021
329 - Claiming Self-Authority: Reclaiming Reality - Part 2 - In the Light of Day
We’ve learned to challenge our parents’ reality and establish emotional boundaries. That’s hard work. But many of us are afraid to keep tugging on that thread and see what unravels. When your emotions are all out in the open, what are you supposed to do with them? All you have to do – as simple or as complex as it may seem – is to look at it, embrace it, and feel it. And do it without judgment. Wishing it weren’t there is only going to make things worse.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 26, 2021
328 - Claiming Self-Authority: Reclaiming Reality - Part 1 - Taking a Hard Look
Doing the work is, surprisingly, only half of the work. The second – and often more challenging – part is to take a closer look at what comes out. Previously, we had looked at some uncomfortable parts of our pasts: acknowledging our weaknesses, examining the flaws of our parents, and looking at the relationships between them. We’re going to take some time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned, as well as why it can be so hard to adjust the perceptions of our parents in our minds.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 19, 2021
327 - Rishon Blumberg: 10x Talent - Part 4 - Intentional Management
We’re in a whole new world of work. We have the dominant generation creating higher and higher demands for their work while, at the same time, businesses try to find the balance between meeting their wants and honoring their own internal hierarchies. Then there are the challenges of remote work. We’re starting to see the benefits and drawbacks of having a remote workplace. How can we get the best of both worlds? There’s going to be a lot of discussion about how work works in the future… but for now, we need to learn how to manage the position we’re in the best that we can.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 12, 2021
326 - Rishon Blumberg: 10x Talent - Part 3 - Living in an On-Demand World
I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it’s my truth that, with the right tools, anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 5, 2021
325 - Rishon Blumberg: 10x Talent - Part 2 - Managing High Performers
Last week, Rishon Blumberg shared his concept of hiring “10x” talent. Today, we’re going to look at how you can manage and retain that talent – or, if that talent is you, how to make sure you’re getting the most from the companies that hire you.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 28, 2021
324 - Rishon Blumberg: 10x Talent - Part 1 - Hiring for EQ
Rishon Blumberg is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Brick Wall Management, an entertainment management company. As they hired freelancers to build websites and apps within the industry, they kept bumping up against the same problem: good, reliable talent is hard to find.
When people started calling tech talent “the new rockstars,” Rishon and his co-founder wondered if they could take what they do for the entertainment industry and introduce it into new markets. In the first part of this interview series, we’re going to explore finding “10x” talent: what it means, how to hire it, and, most importantly, how to retain it.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 21, 2021
323 - Claiming Self-Authority: Access to Authentic Power - Part 3 - Reparenting Yourself
Previously, we looked at how your relationship with your parents — and more specifically, your acknowledgement of their flaws — is essential to claiming self-authority. Ignoring reality is dangerous. In the short-term it gives us relief and removes the discomfort of non optimal experiences. But in the long-term, ignoring reality makes us incapable of recognizing what’s actually real. The job of any adult is to reparent themselves, and in order to do that effectively you have to recognize where the deficit is.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 14, 2021
322 - Claiming Self-Authority: Access to Authentic Power - Part 2 - The Parent Trap
The biggest roadblock to becoming stronger is our refusal to get deeply intimate with our weaknesses. As an extension of that, far too many of us are unwilling to acknowledge the faults in our parents. There is nothing more important than looking at your parents weaknesses, because it’s easier to see than your own. And the more we learn about our parents, the more we learn about ourselves.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 7, 2021
321 - Claiming Self-Authority: Access to Authentic Power - Part 1 - Work with Your Weakness
We’re always told to “play to our strengths” while downplaying our weaknesses. We strive so hard to hide our shortcomings — both from others and ourselves. In reality, they are both two sides of the same coin. Without understanding both, we never see the full picture. Our biggest challenges are an expression of our greatest strengths. Let’s learn to see the best in ourselves — by acknowledging the worst.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Claiming Self-Authority course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 31, 2021
320 - Competence - Part 4 - Mind the Gap
Competence lies in the gap between who you think you are and what is actually true about you. The role of a teacher or mentor is to help people look into the gap between. If you never risk achieving excellence and finding out where you fall short, you will be stuck succumbing to mediocrity. A healthy ego should oscillate between believing you are awesome and seeing how far you have to go without dwelling too much on one thought or the other. And working hard to close that gap is where true fulfillment comes from.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 24, 2021
319 - Competence - Part 3 - The Zone of Mediocrity
The path to competence is paved with failure. Failure is the moment when you realize that your competence is an illusion and clarifies what you need to gain it. The problem is that so many people are afraid of failure. And fear of failure leads to mediocrity. The safest thing we can do to avoid failure is to never try at all. To achieve competence we have to become friends with failure.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 17, 2021
318 - Competence - Part 2 - Earn Money vs Make Money
As we’ve discussed recently, money is a symbol of value. Applying that in our lives can lead to a paradigm shift in how we approach money. But first, we have to repair our relationship to producing value which has been warped since childhood.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 10, 2021
317 - Competence - Part 1 - The Origin of Incompetence
Like money, competence leads to problems when we think we know what it is… and we think we have it, but don’t. To get to the highest peaks of excellence you have to take a deconstructive approach to competence — that is, focusing on where you are incompetent. We’re going to delve into the true definition of competence, and where incompetency is born.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 3, 2021
316 - What Money Actually Is - Part 4 - The Struggle is Optional
The true essence of money and the way it is expressed in the world are at a complete impasse. That’s where so much discomfort around money comes from. We do not feel comfortable with the reality of money as it exists in the world, and yet we see no path to change it. So what are we going to do — change the way the world views money? Or change our world? That’s what we have control over, and the only real path to changing the world is through ourselves.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Apr 26, 2021
315 - What Money Actually Is - Part 3 - Value, Not Worth
The discomfort many of us have around money shows up in different ways. Now that we know what money truly is, it’s natural to start applying that to our current perception of it. As we clarify and further understand money, we become more comfortable with our relationship with it.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Apr 19, 2021
314 - What Money Actually Is - Part 2 - The Neutrality of Money
Before we can talk about money and our relation to it, we have to come to a common definition of it. Today, I’m going to define what money is — and what it isn’t — to parse out how that relates to you.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Apr 12, 2021
313 - What Money Actually Is - Part 1 - Stirring Up Muddy Water
It’s surprising how little we are actually in control — most of us, anyway. We think we’re sitting in the driver’s seat. However, we’re really in the passenger seat, staring out the window, occasionally shouting out directions but never really paying attention to the road. The truth of the matter is, you’re never really going to take that wheel. As you do the work, you’ll become more comfortable with being the passenger and hand over trust to the driver. You will, however, keep your eyes on the road.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been stirring up a lot of uncomfortable notions such as this in order to realize how you can improve them. Today and over the next few weeks, we’re going to stir up some more truths about money — and what you can do about it.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple…
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Apr 5, 2021
312 - Do You Hear That? - Part 4 - What Are You Not Willing to Give Up?
Today, we are on the precipice of awakening… and even the idea of that is probably going to stir some stuff up. So, let’s address the fears and the questions that the ego often wields to hold us back and the tools we have to get beyond those obstacles, both through short-lived shortcuts and long-earned practice.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
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Mar 29, 2021
311 - Do You Hear That? - Part 3 - Schrödinger's Ego
Our conversation kicks off with a really insightful question about the nature of ego from one of the students who was participating in the live call: is the egoic process entirely in our conscious mind or our unconscious mind? Both?
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
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Mar 22, 2021
310 - Do You Hear That? - Part 2 - The Spirit of Exploration
As we continue to work our way through the Meditation for Awakening course, I want to talk about the importance of curiosity and exploration in a meditation practice.
In a lot of ways, this is THE most important thing — but we need to be careful about not letting our curiosity lead us into the common trap of comparing ourselves to others in the process. It’s in the act of comparison that we create the possibility of a failure state, and when we remove those expectations from the equation, we get one step closer to effortlessness.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
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Mar 15, 2021
309 - Do You Hear That? - Part 1 - The Noisiest It’s Ever Been
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been doing a deep-dive into Meditation for Awakening. And so far, we’ve been laying down the macro-level groundwork: what meditation is and isn’t, separating yourself from your thoughts, why most people practicing don’t actually get the greatest possible benefits of meditation, and the nature of “The Spiritual Instinct.” Simply put, we’ve been looking at thy Why of meditation.
Today, and over the next few weeks, we’re going to start getting into the micro level — or the How of Meditation for Awakening.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
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Mar 8, 2021
308 - The Spiritual Instinct - Part 4 - Allowing What Is
We’ve spent most of the last few weeks answering questions asked by the people who were originally on this coaching call, which is great, because those questions represent the fears and pre-existing notions that hold most of us back from awakening and enlightenment.
Today we’re going to look at what successful meditation looks like and what happens when you give yourself over to what I call “The Spiritual Instinct,” which I’ll also define here for you shortly.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Mar 1, 2021
307 - The Spiritual Instinct - Part 3 - Letting It Be
Today, we’re going to sink our teeth into the meat of meditation: what the end goal of awakening, or enlightenment, actually looks like. And to start, we’re going to look at how my favorite Zen teacher defines enlightenment.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 22, 2021
306 - The Spiritual Instinct - Part 2 - The Ego Hijack
We’re continuing our exploration of meditation for awakening, and today, we’re looking at what really holds us back: the ego.
The ego is going to hijack your experience of meditation — and life, really — as long as it’s in the driver seat. We can’t kick it out of the car altogether, but we can demote it to the passenger seat by developing a better understanding of what “you” really are.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 15, 2021
305 - The Spiritual Instinct - Part 1 - It Commands You, Yet It Obeys You
Over the last few weeks, we’ve gone through the basics of meditation. Now I want to shift into, more specifically, meditation for awakening — and the true goal or purpose of meditation.
Meditation has never been more popular, but it’s also been perverted into a utilitarian tool for productivity in its most accessible forms. I liken the common meditation apps of the day to welding training wheels onto your bike: it’s definitely easier to start, but they’ll slow you down forever.
Meditation can have a transformative effect on your experience of life, but if you are pursuing meditation as a means to an end, as a way of achieving a specific goal, you’re probably going to be disappointed… and you’re definitely going to miss out on the greatest benefits of meditation.
This episode was originally recorded as part of the Meditation for Awakening course, available at ClearandOpen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podca…
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Feb 8, 2021
304 - Meditation for Awakening - Part 4 - The Meditation Paradox
Back in episode 301, I told you about my preferred way of teaching: by introducing students to a concept in totality, making them aware of the most advanced way in mind from the very beginning.
I prefer this because, when I was a student of meditation, I was only shown part of the story, and I ended up developing some really bad habits. I don’t see any advantage to practicing from limitation.
So, today, I’m going to introduce you to one of the most advanced and paradoxical aspects of meditation. It may be a little overwhelming or hard to wrap your head around, but we need to be aware of what success looks like before we can assess whether or not we’re being successful.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 1, 2021
303 - Meditation for Awakening - Part 3 - Do YOU Pass the Five Senses Test?
In the last episode, we talked about what the ego is and isn’t. Today, we’re going to reframe Ego as a verb. That may sound a little silly based on the cultural context of ego that we’re all familiar with, but I think it’s ultimately the most productive way to approach the transformative process of meditation.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 25, 2021
302 - Meditation for Awakening - Part 2 - Your Thoughts, Your Ego, & You
In the last episode, we went over many of the things that meditation isn’t and why people often quit when they start approaching the reality of meditation: realizing that you are not your thoughts.
Today, we’re going to delve into who you are if you’re not your thoughts, which we can’t do without talking about the ego — both the modern, bastardized conception of ego and the actual definition of ego.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 18, 2021
301 - Meditation for Awakening - Part 1 - What is Meditation?
Over the next few weeks, I am going to introduce you to meditation: what it is, and just as important, what it isn’t. Because there is definitely some confusion there.
I know that some of you already have a meditation practice, but I urge you to keep going — because there’s a good chance you were taught how to meditate the wrong way, or you weren’t provided the whole picture.
How do I know? Because I spent 20 years thinking I knew how to meditate and what meditation was… and when I realized I didn’t, I was kinda pissed off. And I don’t want you to go two decades building bad habits, too.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 11, 2021
300 - Surrender vs. Submission - Part 4 - Glamorizing the Rebel
To wrap up this series on surrender vs submission, we’re going to look at two important footnotes:
One is the phenomenon of the rebel, a character we all love to love, and the dangers that come with glamorizing rebellion — there is a fine line between a rebel and a consummate teenager.
Second is one of the most common forms of resistance that you are likely to experience in life: your natural fears when confronted with an opportunity to change.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Jan 4, 2021
299 - Surrender vs. Submission - Part 3 - The Submission-Rebellion Loop
Now that we have a firm handle on the context of individual consciousness, we can dive into the content: specifically, the distinction between surrender and submission, how our society tends to conflate the two, and why this distinction is actually critically important when it comes to coaching, self-management, and growth.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Dec 28, 2020
298 - Surrender vs. Submission - Part 2 - The Consummate Teenager
In the last episode, we examined how individual consciousness evolved rapidly, from the invention of the printing press to the establishment of the United States of America to pioneering the school of psychology.
Today, we are going to look at the shadow side of this nation’s obsession with individuality, which is very much present in our world today.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Dec 21, 2020
297 - Surrender vs. Submission - Part 1 - The Evolution of Individual Consciousness
Before we dive into the content of this course focusing on the dynamic between healthy surrender and unhealthy submission, we need to look at the context of the historical evolution of individual consciousness — how it evolved rapidly from the 1400s to the modern day and how our concept of individualism is still very much in flux, especially in the United States.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Dec 14, 2020
296 - The Addict in All of Us - Part 4 - The Student in All of Us
About two-thirds of the time, your shadow, your addict, is sitting in the driver’s seat.
This keeps us stuck where we are — and, if you’re listening to this, where you are right now probably isn’t where you want to be — and, inevitably, we end up driving right into a wall of reality that rebuffs us for living in delusion.
To close out this series, I’m closing the loop on Learning for Change, and offering you an alternate orientation towards life that will help you slowly shift that ratio and, eventually, if you continue to intentionally lean into the work, kick the addiction to overwhelm altogether.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Dec 7, 2020
295 - The Addict in All of Us - Part 3 - Embracing the Addict
The addict in us has ideas about reality that aren’t true — and they’re asserting that into our beliefs, the way we orient towards problems, and the way we engage with life .
That’s why, for so many people, real change only happens after hitting rock bottom. But that doesn't always have to be the case.
Today, we’re going to talk about embracing the addict to move towards something more productive and in line with reality — both as a manager of others and a manager of self.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Nov 30, 2020
294 - The Addict in All of Us - Part 2 - Addicted to Sameness
What do overwhelm and opiates have in common?
They’re both addictions that are far too common in our society today.
One may seem significantly worse than the other on the surface, but the deceptive nature of our addiction to overwhelm is truly insidious — and don’t let it tell you any different.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Nov 23, 2020
293 - The Addict in All of Us - Part 1 - The Seduction of Reduction
We’ve been spending the last couple months going through a few classes from the Learning for Change course. Learning to orient yourselves to change in a healthy and productive manner is an important skill set for anyone who endeavors to go down the road of self-mastery, but it’s also a critical skill set for everyone in the world as we know it at the end of 2020, when this episode originally releases.
This series focuses on how most of us tend to orient ourselves towards the process of change, almost as a default, and how we can shift that to more easily embrace the reality of change.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Nov 16, 2020
292 - 4 Stages of Relating to Change - Part 3 - The Whole Hog + Postage
In the last episode, we looked at the first 2 of the 4 stages of relating to change — Ignoring and Dabbling — and how they correlated with the first 3 of the 5 stages of engagement. This week, we’ll examine the last two stages of relating to change, which will bring us full circle and parallel our conversation about discovering your one thing.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Nov 9, 2020
291 - 4 Stages of Relating to Change - Part 2 - The Context of Change
Sometimes in life (pretty often, actually), reality holds up a mirror and forces you to see a reflection of yourself. This doesn’t always come in the form you expect, it’s almost never when you expect, and it’s generally easy to shrug it off and just keep ignoring whatever reality is trying to remind you about. But if you do keep ignoring life, you will continue to experience suffering — because life doesn’t cooperate with being ignored.
In this episode, we’ll discuss the first two stages of relating to change, beginning with ignoring, and how you can start evolving the way you relate to change and your one thing.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Nov 2, 2020
290 - 4 Stages of Relating to Change - Part 1 - Your Ego Vs. Your One Thing
We just wrapped up a series on The One Thing from the Learning for Change course. Over the next three weeks, we’re going to continue working through this course, focusing on the four stages of relating to change.
We’ll build on what we learned about The One Thing, and you’ll hear from some people who are still grappling with what their one thing is and how it relates to their values. This series will also build on The 5 Stages of Engagement, which were introduced in episodes 90 to 94 and expanded on further in episodes 277 to 279. You don’t have to listen to all of that to get value out of this series, but those episodes will provide additional context to help you navigate change.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Oct 26, 2020
289 - The One Thing - Part 4 - Reverse Engineering Your One Thing
We finish up this series on The One Thing by examining some tools that can be used to identify it, like writing your own eulogy or reverse engineering your one thing from your greatest achievements.
If you’re willing to go deeper and commit to finding your one thing, you can sing up for the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com.
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Oct 19, 2020
288 - The One Thing - Part 3 - What Does Fulfillment Feel Like?
Last week’s episode brought up a big question: What is your one thing? Or what’s the question that you will dedicate your life to?
But don’t worry if you don’t have a definitive answer to those questions yet. Even just thinking about the question with intention puts you closer to the right path.
And today, I’m going to give you some questions and tools you can use to continuously re-orient yourself towards fulfillment as you stumble towards your one thing.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Oct 12, 2020
287 - The One Thing - Part 2 - Identifying Your One Thing
Last week’s episode brought up a big question: What is your one thing? Or what’s the question that you will dedicate your life to?
But don’t worry if you don’t have a definitive answer to those questions yet. Even just thinking about the question with intention puts you closer to the right path.
And today, I’m going to give you some questions and tools you can use to continuously re-orient yourself towards fulfillment as you stumble towards your one thing.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Oct 5, 2020
286 - The One Thing - Part 1 - Co-Authoring Your Life
Management is a constant exercise in shepherding change, internally or externally.
But most people don’t like change, internally or externally. It makes most of us feel uncomfortable, and maybe even a little icky.
Which leads me to what may be bad news for some of you: whatever it is you want in life will require you to change.
But how do you even know what change is necessary or what steps you’ll need to take? That’s the question we’re going to address today — and when you’re able to find an answer, it’s going to make almost every single other question easier to answer.
This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.
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Sep 28, 2020
285 - What is Adulthood? - Part 3 - Adulting
Being an adult means never having to say, “I have to.”
At the end of the last episode, I shared why this idea that you have to do anything is just one of the most commonly shared delusions — a delusion encouraged by the structures of capitalism, sure, but a delusion nonetheless.
What does the alternative look like, then? What does it look like to practice adulthood as a verb and embrace saying “I get to” instead of “I have to” or “I should?”
That’s what we’ll be exploring in this final piece of our dialectic on adulthood.
If you want to keep going deeper on this subject and start applying these lessons, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.
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Sep 21, 2020
284 - What is Adulthood? - Part 2 - Emotional Adulthood
In the last episode, we started a dialectic to investigate the truth about adulthood. When does it start? What does it mean to be an adult?
The answers to those questions aren’t so simple, though, and the definitions seem to keep shifting over time, both for us as individuals and for society as a whole.
This week, we’re going to move past the logistics and legal considerations for adulthood and start addressing the concept of Emotional Adulthood and the “I have to” delusion.
If you want to go even deeper on the subject, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.
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Sep 14, 2020
283 - What is Adulthood? - Part 1 - Defining “Adult”
Do you consider yourself an adult?
If you’re 18 or older, you probably answered to yourself, “Yes.” You might even have thought it was a stupid question to ask. And by the way, if you’re not 18 yet, kudos for listening — you’re way ahead of the curve.
Now, especially if you rolled your eyes at that first question, consider the answer to this: What is the definition of an adult?
The answer isn’t quite as obvious as you might think, and there’s a good chance that you’ve just never considered the question. But it’s a critical question to answer on the The Accountability Path, both as a manager of others and a manager of yourself, and it’s the question we’ll be engaging with over the next three episodes.
If you want to go even deeper on the subject, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.
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Sep 7, 2020
282 - Matt Niblock: Hiring & Recruiting - Part 3 - Creating a Good Candidate Experience
To close out our first guest series, Matt Niblock shares how to identify the best candidates for the long haul in a high-pressure job and how hiring managers can create a good candidate experience — which doesn’t always mean making the candidate comfortable, although any good job interview should still be a safe space for truth.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 31, 2020
281 - Matt Niblock: Hiring & Recruiting - Part 2 - Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Appease
Matt Niblock returns with more hiring and recruiting insight. We’ll walk through the early stages of the hiring process, touching on some common mistakes that people make along the way, when the hiring manager should push back against applicants, and how the idea of “gut meets data” that we discussed last week can be applied in practice.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 24, 2020
280 - Matt Niblock: Hiring & Recruiting - Part 1 - Where Gut Meets Data
Every organization has to deal with hiring and recruiting. So it’s funny that so many of the people who are responsible for hiring have little to no idea what they’re doing — even though there are experts out there who are happy to tell you exactly what works.
Experts like Matt Niblock, VP of Employee Experience at Phase2, who has been working as a recruiter since you had to mail or fax in your résumé. And in the first part of this three-part interview, Matt will introduce us to some recruiting best practices and how hiring managers can start looking for the right person instead of the right skills.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 17, 2020
279 - The 5 Stages of Engagement & Accountability - Part 3 - Productive Failure & Finding Flow
In the final episode of this series looking at the five stages of engagement through the lens of accountability, you’ll learn what keeps most people from achieving flow for more than a few fleeting moments of their life and how you can get closer to achieving flow — if you’re willing to put in the work (or, paradoxically, stop working so damn hard to get there).
Take the course:
* The Accountability Path 2.0
Learn more about the Five Stages of Engagement model:
* Ep 90: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part One – Crisis
* Ep 91: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part Two – Survival
* Ep 92: The Five Stage of Engagement - Part Three - Security
* Ep 93: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Four - Thrival
* Ep 94: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Five - Flow
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Aug 10, 2020
278 - The 5 Stages of Engagement & Accountability - Part 2 - Mediocrity Vs. Excellence
In the last episode, we reviewed the first three stages of engagement: crisis, survival, and security. Most people get stuck in those first two stages, engaging with a chronic stress response that makes upward momentum seem insurmountable for most of their lives. And if they eventually reach the stage of security, it can feel so comfortable that they settle in.
But for those of us that don’t want to settle, or for those of us that don’t feel comfortable with security, there are two more stages: Thrival and Flow.
In this episode, I’ll talk about making these critical transitions, especially as it relates to your level of accountability and the accountability of those who you manage.
Take the course:
* The Accountability Path 2.0
Learn more about the Five Stages of Engagement model:
* Ep 90: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part One – Crisis
* Ep 91: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part Two – Survival
* Ep 92: The Five Stage of Engagement - Part Three - Sec…
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Aug 3, 2020
277 - The 5 Stages of Engagement & Accountability - Part 1 - Stress & Security
In this series, we will be revisiting the five stages of engagement — but this time, we’re going to examine the model through the lens of accountability. If this is a new concept for you, you won’t be lost starting with this episode, but you can find a more foundational introduction to the model back in episodes 90 to 95. Links below.
Take the course:
* The Accountability Path 2.0
Learn more about the Five Stages of Engagement model:
* Ep 90: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part One – Crisis
* Ep 91: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part Two – Survival
* Ep 92: The Five Stage of Engagement - Part Three - Security
* Ep 93: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Four - Thrival
* Ep 94: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Five - Flow
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 27, 2020
276 - COVID-19, Your Ego, & You - Part 4 - As Simple As “I Don’t Know”
A fair warning before going into this episode: it starts on a pretty emotional beat, and it might be a little triggering for anyone who is currently being overwhelmed by feelings of grief or loss.
However, if you can listen through that, I think hearing the participant on this coaching call walk through her feelings can also be a healing experience that helps you process those emotions, as we discussed in the last episode.
This experience of working through grief also serves as a microcosm of the spiritual journey that I first discussed in part one of this series, and hearing that process should help anyone who is committed to spiritual evolution.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 20, 2020
275 - COVID-19, Your Ego, & You - Part 3 - Processing Emotions
Over the last two episodes, we’ve clarified the content of our reaction to COVID-19 and the context of that reaction — the content being our egoic emotional reaction and the context being the perpetual state of not knowing.
But getting to the point where you can hold both of those simultaneously is difficult. It doesn’t feel natural because it’s not common in our society, but our minds are actually well equipped to process these emotions and move beyond them. We just have to learn how to let it happen.
So, in this episode, you’ll learn how to go about processing the fear, anxiety, grief, and other emotions that are being brought by the pandemic, get what you need to from those emotions, and then make room for that emotion within the greater context of yourself.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jul 13, 2020
274 - COVID-19, Your Ego, & You - Part 2 - The Context for COVID
In the last episode, I asked a question: What happens if you experience your experience from something other than ego?
If you think about all of the things we don’t know about what the future holds, about how things will (or, unfortunately, won’t) change as parts of the world re-open amid still-growing COVID-19 cases, and you experience that through our egoic reaction, then you will probably experience some degree of fear and anxiety. For some, that anxiety and fear of the unknown can be crippling.
But if you find the center of that “I don’t know,” if you take away the content of a possible future — a future that, if nothing else, this pandemic has taught us is unpredictable — and sit in not knowing, you can move past the egoic emotion to find a sense of calm.
That’s why I view this time as a spiritual opportunity for so many, and in this episode, we’ll explore what happens when you make this spiritual transition and why our recent shared experiences create an oppo…
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Jul 6, 2020
273 - COVID-19, Your Ego, & You - Part 1 - The Content of COVID
We’re doing something a little bit different for this series of episodes. While the format won’t change, we’ll be directly addressing some recent events: the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent worldwide economic shutdowns.
The effects of the pandemic are ubiquitous and — as you’ve likely read many, many times already — unprecedented. Economically and emotionally, relatively few people will come out entirely unscathed.
But, at the same time, there’s a spiritual opportunity.
So, over the next four weeks, I will illustrate why this sudden disruption represents an invitation to wake up to reality and go beyond the content of your egoic experience.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jun 29, 2020
272 - Accountability: A Teacher - Part 4 - Abiding with Truth
When you strip everything else away, accountability boils down to abiding with truth.
The truth, however, can be a bitter pill to swallow... at least at first. When you start to experience the benefits, though, you grow accustomed to the flavor. You even come to like it, to seek it out, as you develop a true sense of self-mastery.
So, to finish this series on accountability as a teacher, I’m going to share some more examples of what it looks like when the truth presents itself, looking at the results people get when they abide with it versus when they continue to resist.
If you want to immerse yourself even deeper in this content, check out the full Accountability Path 2.0 course.
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Jun 22, 2020
271 - Accountability: A Teacher - Part 3 - The Accountability Path
Over the last two episodes, we’ve established that the cause of all human suffering is resisting change.
Life is kind enough to tell us when something needs to change, often gently at first, but it is persistent. If you ignore the letter, it’ll leave you a call. If you ignore the voicemail, it’ll come to your door. Accountability will make itself known. And any act of resistance is just childish.
That’s the content of this lesson. In this episode and the next episode, I’ll be providing some context around how you can apply this knowledge to the accountability path.
If you want to immerse yourself even deeper in this content, check out the full Accountability Path 2.0 course.
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Jun 15, 2020
270 - Accountability: A Teacher - Part 2 - You Are Not Your Thoughts
When you experience pain, when you repeatedly endure the same suffering, that’s reality asking you to participate. That’s the highest form of accountability.
Some of us will just wait for the acute pain to pass and move on without doing anything. Some will actively seek out a distraction, which is abundantly easy in this world of ours. Others will change superficially, change what they’re doing in an effort to get a different result. But when life is pushing you to change, you can’t just change your actions — you have to change your self.
A critical part of this process is learning to differentiate between your thoughts and yourself, and in this episode, I’ll walk you through the process of disidentification.
If you want to immerse yourself even deeper in this content, check out the full Accountability Path 2.0 course.
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Jun 8, 2020
269 - Accountability: A Teacher - Part 1 - The Cause of All Suffering
Before you get into this episode, I encourage you to pause for a moment and consider the answer to this question: What do you want and how is life telling you to change to get it?
Really, take a couple of minutes and think about your answer. Interrogate yourself. This will help you actively engage in the discussion and get the most out of not just this episode but this entire series on accountability as a teacher.
If you aren’t willing to do that, this series may not be for you. This isn’t a quick-fix solution. But if you want to create lasting and real change in your business or your life, and you’re willing to put in the work necessary to do so, then I urge you to pay attention.
And if you want to immerse yourself even deeper in this content, check out the full Accountability Path 2.0 course.
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Jun 1, 2020
268 - Real Curiosity - Part 4 - Surrendering to Radical Curiosity
Over the last few weeks, we’ve established the value of engaging with life through a curious lens and how people show up differently as managers when they express curiosity. We also established that the main obstacle between you and a more curious life is fear.
In this episode, I offer you some tools you can use to start overcoming the obstacle of fear and deconstructing the egoic conditioning that covers up your innate curiosity.
And as a final reminder, this series was taken from the epilogue to the CLEAR Thinking course. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to start living more intentionally, you can find the full 11-week coaching seminar at clearandopen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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May 25, 2020
267 - Real Curiosity - Part 3 - Curiosity Kills the Cat?
How many times have you heard someone say, “curiosity kills the cat?”
That is the way our society depicts curiosity — it’s a risk. So, even though we’re born innately curious, society quickly teaches us to stop. As a result, we tend to overcorrect and we transition from curious beings to fearful beings.
That’s how most adults operate — chances are that’s how you, reading this right now, operate. But the simple fact that you’re listening to this show means that your conditioning hasn’t completely covered up your curiosity, so that’s a great first step towards living life with real curiosity. And you’ll learn more about how you can start doing that in this episode.
By the way, this series is taken from the final session of the CLEAR Thinking course, an epilogue that explores the importance of real curiosity and its role in how we think. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to start living more intentionally, you can find the full 11-w…
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May 18, 2020
266 - Real Curiosity - Part 2 - The Opposite of Fear
Last week, we started a conversation about curiosity, real listening, and asking questions, and we established that good managers don’t just look at the content of the questions they’re asked — good managers also consider the context in which a question is asked.
This is an expression of real curiosity. And in this episode, we are going to look at how people express both fear and curiosity in their lives — and, critically, how that expression relates to the ways in which they engage with life... or don’t, as the case may be.
This episode is an excerpt from the final session of the CLEAR Thinking course, an epilogue that explores the importance of real curiosity and its role in how we think. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to start living more intentionally, you can find the full 11-week coaching seminar at clearandopen.com.
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May 11, 2020
265 - Real Curiosity - Part 1 - Listening Really Well
This is the first episode in a four-part series exploring the critical importance of curiosity, how you can start approaching life with real curiosity, and how you can help the people you manage do the same.
This conversation is an excerpt from the final session of the CLEAR Thinking course. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to start living more intentionally, you can find the full 11-week coaching seminar at clearandopen.com.
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May 4, 2020
264 - Consciousness and Conditioning - Part 3 - Deconstructing Your Consciousness
In the last two episodes, we discussed how your identity consists of your conditioning — and why the conditioning that most of us received was inadequate.
So, why do we cling so tightly to this conditioning, even institutionalizing it? Because, deep down, we’re afraid of losing who we are. This is a reasonable response from your lizard brain, but it’s holding you back from evolving your consciousness, which is really my goal with Clear and Open.
The pursuit of consciousness is the lifelong pursuit of deconstructing who you are and what you believe so that you can cast away all that isn’t true — it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s necessary if you want to break free of the prison you’ve built around yourself and live a full life.
I also want to remind you that this episode comes from the CLEAR Thinking course. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to stop floating through life and start living intentionally, you can find the full 11-wee…
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Apr 27, 2020
263 - Consciousness and Conditioning - Part 2 - The Root of the World’s Problems
We’re all trained that, if we can learn to hold and process information better, we can become a more intelligent human being and, as a result, become successful. This conditioning puts us in the situation where we perpetually feel that, if we can just get one more piece of information, we can solve our problems.
But this has no reference in reality — and this shared delusion is causing way more problems than it’s solving. Today, we’re going to look at an alternative: how consciousness, as opposed to intelligence, can be used to solve just about anything.
I also want to remind you that this episode comes from the CLEAR Thinking course. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to stop floating through life and start living intentionally, you can find the full 11-week coaching seminar at clearandopen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Apr 20, 2020
262 - Consciousness and Conditioning - Part 1 - The Nature of Conditioning
We’re going to start this three-part series with something that’s probably become pretty familiar to long-time listeners: a quick rebuke of the Western educational system.
We’re going to look at how one of the beliefs and assumptions at the core of our education system not only doesn’t help us but actually sets us all up for lives full of overwhelm. Pretty much every single one of us experienced this same conditioning as a child, but it’s not doing us any favors now that we’re adults who don’t have to regurgitate information to pass tests.
This series shares the final session of the CLEAR Thinking course, which focuses on the role of Consciousness and Conditioning in CLEAR Thinking. If you want to take this extra time at home as an opportunity to stop floating through life and start living intentionally, you can find the full 11-week coaching seminar at clearandopen.com.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Mar 30, 2020
261 - Engaging in Disengagement - Part 4 - Surrendering to Life
In the last episode, I introduced the concept of engaging with disengagement (to both you and myself, at the time).
And that’s not just a step towards getting what you want — that process of inquiry, that working on why you’re not working on something, is what you really need. The journey is the destination. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see that when you’re still early in the journey, but my goal with releasing this coaching call is to guide you towards that perspective.
Although I can lead you to the water, you still have to choose to drink. Or, at the very least, ask yourself why you’re not drinking when you’re so thirsty.
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Also, I’m excited to announce the next upcoming live course called “Meditation For Awakening: How To Get With Reality” that begins April 16. Meditation has never before been so popular, but when things get popular they tend to become dilute.
Meditation offers more benefits than I can name here. It reduces stress, can eliminate anxie…
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Mar 23, 2020
260 - Engaging in Disengagement - Part 3 - Working On (Not) Working On It
Over the last two episodes, we’ve been talking about the internal conflict we feel between growth and comfort, between “I don’t wanna” and “I wanna” — and we’ve established that these conflicts are man-made, not some inherent aspect of being.
The easiest way to see the conflict for what it is, two sides of the same coin, is to develop a healthy obsession with whatever you’re conflicted over… but developing that obsession is not, in and of itself, an easy thing to do.
However, there is a path of inquiry you can follow to get there: you can get obsessed with curiosity, you can get engaged with disengagement.
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Also, I’m excited to announce the next upcoming live course called “Meditation For Awakening: How To Get With Reality” that begins April 16. Meditation has never before been so popular, but when things get popular they tend to become dilute.
Meditation offers more benefits than I can name here. It reduces stress, can eliminate anxiety and depression…
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Mar 16, 2020
259 - Engaging in Disengagement - Part 2 - Struggling Self-Discipline Vs. Healthy Obsession
In the last episode, I asked you to consider those moments when we feel like there’s an internal conflict between growth and comfort — between the ‘I wanna’ and the ‘I don’t wanna’ — a misleading conflict brought about through social conditioning.
We’re told to muscle through these conflicts with self-discipline. That’s a big part of the hustle mentality that’s taken over a lot of the conversation in the entrepreneur space over the past few years, and that’s probably something you were told by parents and teachers growing up. You just won’t want to do some things so you need to develop the discipline to do them anyway.
That’s not really the best way to do something well, though. That’s certainly not the best way to learn, to grow, to become masterful at something.
So, in this episode, I ask you to consider how you can achieve growth through healthy obsession, as opposed to struggling self-discipline, and how you can start to develop a sense of healthy o…
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Mar 9, 2020
258 - Engaging in Disengagement - Part 1 - A Misleading Conflict
Every single day, you are likely presented with an internal conflict — do I do the thing that’s hard but rewarding or do I do what’s easy?
Over and over again, we weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages of growth versus comfort. It can feel like two different parts of ourselves are competing for our attention, and we’ve been trained that it takes self-discipline to overcome the part that just doesn’t wanna do it.
But what if that social conditioning, that version of self-discipline, is a narrow and limiting way to perceive this internal conflict?
Today, I offer you a new way to engage with the perceived conflict between growth and comfort.
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Also, I’m excited to announce the next upcoming live course called “Meditation For Awakening: How To Get With Reality” that begins April 16. Meditation has never before been so popular, but when things get popular they tend to become dilute.
Meditation offers more benefits than I can name here. It reduces stress, can…
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Mar 2, 2020
257 - How Everything Is True - Part 4 - How to Use CLEAR Thinking in Your Life
To close out this series on How Everything is True, we’re going to make CLEAR Thinking more practical. And to start, I want to break down the term “CLEAR Thinking” a little further.
CLEAR Thinking is thinking that is critical, logical, evidence-based, analytical, and reality-based. This is serious, productive thinking that actually changes you. This is a valuable skill because literally every single thing you do begins is a thought; thinking is the software that dictates how your biological hardware operates.
So, as you practice CLEAR Thinking, you are better able to control the very thing that controls your actions. And it really is a practice.
That’s why, after you listen to this episode, I challenge you to try the exercise that the students in this class participated in: create an argument in favor of something that you don’t think is true, like the earth being flat, and commit to it. Really put yourself in another person’s shoes.
This will help you meet the peopl…
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Feb 24, 2020
256 - How Everything Is True - Part 3 - Questions for Self-Inquiry
Over the last two episodes, we’ve established the value of being willing to advocate for any belief, even if that means putting yourself in the shoes of someone who subscribes to a truth that deviates from your own.
Today, we start to examine the questions that you can ask yourself to practice this particular brand of self-inquiry.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 17, 2020
255 - How Everything Is True - Part 2 - Equal Opportunity Advocate
We start today’s episode with another student advocating for an idea that they consider to be untrue — and this one’s a doozie.
So, why are we doing this? Why are you about to hear someone make an argument in favor of a flat Earth?
It’s because I want you to understand that what we were taught about the value of strong convictions is misleading — being convicted in your beliefs and being willing to advocate for them passionately isn’t a sign of good character or a considered perspective.
And if you’re rigidly stuck in one point of view, a point of view that you likely developed as a kid before you were even conscious of having a point of view, then you will just keep butting up against reality until, inevitably, you either suffer or surrender.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Feb 10, 2020
254 - How Everything Is True - Part 1 - The Root of Unclear Thinking
This series on How Everything is True builds on a lot of what we discussed in the previous four episodes on How You’ve Been Conditioned to Think Unclearly. So if you haven’t listened through that or need to refresh yourself on what Transjectrivism is, you might want to go back and listen through those because we will be looking at truth through a transjectivist lens throughout this series. These series are both parts of the CLEAR Thinking course, which is now available online at clear and open.com.
CLEAR Thinking, by the way, is reflective and independent thinking. It teaches you to use your ability to reason and it makes you an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information.
And when you learn and practice CLEAR thinking, you can better control the thinking that is controlling you. That’s why this episode begins with everyone’s favorite libertarian making an argument in favor of the minimum wage — because changing the way you think about and perceive trut…
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Feb 3, 2020
253 - How You've Been Conditioned to Think Unclearly - Part 4 - Transjectivism
The rapid rise of extreme subjectivism — which we’re still experiencing, and it’s really impossible to tell when we’ll reach an inflection point — has led to the rapid death of critical thought. We can see it everywhere, especially on social media.
So, today, I offer you an alternative to either objectivism or subjectivism, a philosophy I call Transjectivism.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 27, 2020
252 - How You've Been Conditioned to Think Unclearly - Part 3 - The Erosion of Critical Thinking
In the last episode, we traced the historical development of how Western society shifted from extreme objectivism to extreme subjectivism.
It’s easy to adopt a subjectivist or objectivist perspective on the world, and both perspectives will provide you with the comforting illusion of understanding reality as it is, at least for a while — but both perspectives are inherently flawed and life doesn’t support false beliefs for too long.
So, in this episode, we’re going to look at how this conflict is still developing today so that, next week, you have all of the context you need before learning about Transjectivism.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 20, 2020
251 - How You've Been Conditioned to Think Unclearly - Part 2 - What You Weren’t Taught in History Class
We spend a lot of time memorizing people and events and dates in school, even some big ideas, but we rarely learn about what those things actually mean to us — and that context, that perspective, can be quite meaningful and useful.
So we start today’s episode with a look at the history of objectivism in Western society and how the ideological homogeneity seen in many societies ends up creating these illusions of absolute truth, illusions ultimately used to secure power and control people, that still permeate through the collective unconscious to this day.
Then we’ll look at how absolute objectivism was eroded by systems of belief that favored subjectivity, and how the conflict between the two presents itself both in modern culture and inside our heads.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Jan 13, 2020
250 - How You've Been Conditioned to Think Unclearly - Part 1 - Subjectivity Vs. Objectivity
This series on how you’ve been conditioned to think unclearly comes from a course that I started last year called CLEAR Thinking. My goal with both the course and this series is to show you how to wake up to reality and begin to understand how your mind works...and how it doesn’t work so well.
This series begins by examining the tension between objectivity and subjectivity that occurs as a result of both the nature of the human brain and cultural conditioning. Your mind is constantly filtering its experience (an inherently subjective activity) to validate what it already thinks is true (an assertion of objectivity), resulting in a positive feedback loop of, well, delusion.
So how do we get around that? The answer to that question is the core of our discussion on today’s episode.
As an added note, we start this episode by talking about managing with inquiry. If you aren’t familiar with this concept or you need to brush up, you can go back to episode 236 for a crash course on…
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Jan 6, 2020
249 - Navigating Resistance - Part 3 - You Don’t Choose Life’s Lessons
Life is your teacher, and life doesn’t care about how happy you are. Life doesn’t care about how comfortable you are. Life is fundamentally about your resistance to change, and it is conspiring with the universe to push you towards embracing, looking at, and healing your resistance to change.
So, if you are experiencing significant suffering or pain, pay attention — that’s life providing feedback and trying to teach you. And as I have mentioned throughout this series, you are not qualified to turn your nose up at the solution a teacher offers if you don’t try it. So that pain is an invitation to get honest with yourself about your resistance. The earlier and more actively you do this, the less pain you will have to experience.
After you’re done with this episode, I recommend going back to episodes 206 through 209, which is a series focused on embracing being tested. It will provide you with a useful frame through which you can view the challenges that life presents to yo…
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Dec 30, 2019
248 - Navigating Resistance - Part 2 - Your Relationship to Change
Your job, then, as a person who wants to grow and evolve, is to learn how to track your resistance and make yourself optimally helpable. That means tracking your excuses, tracking your BS, tracking your laziness, and most importantly, tracking your fear. This is true if you are a student, an employee, or anyone engaging in the practice of self-management.
So, today, I invite you to start earnestly examining the iceberg between where you are today and where you want to go.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Dec 23, 2019
247 - Navigating Resistance - Part 1 - The Unconscious Obstacle
Imagine there is an iceberg between where you are now and where you want to go in life. Typically, we’re taught that the obstacle between you and your goals is a lack of knowledge or skill — but that’s just the bit of the iceberg you can see above the water.
The real obstacle is underwater, unseen and generally not talked about. But the act of overcoming this obstacle is also the key indicator of an individual’s success and fulfillment, both in business and in life as a whole.
In this three-part series, I will bring this obstacle into the light, addressing it and naming it, so that you can start confronting and, eventually, overcoming it.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Dec 16, 2019
246 - Deep Practice - Part 4 - Using Deep Practice to Improve
To close our this series, I am going to take the concept of deep practice — a relatively easy concept to understand when put in the context of learning something like a new instrument — and help you connect it to the inquiry and meta inquiry required to grow as managers and people, which is a slightly more esoteric but incredibly valuable and fulfilling skill.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Dec 9, 2019
245 - Deep Practice - Part 3 - The Talent Myth
There’s probably no better argument against the very idea that talent exists than a talent show. Similar to the idea of an “overnight success,” we are really only seeing the byproduct of hours and hours of effort, failure, and persistence.
Yet, our practical mind, audacious as it is, manages to convince us that the practice required to become “talented” or “an overnight success” isn’t rewarding. Finding what you’re talented at and pursuing that sounds so ideal, and the reality that these people are just well-practiced forces us to confront the difficult path to attaining what we want, whatever that is.
So, you could say that deep practice has a branding problem. Being talented is just a sexier idea than being well-practiced. But, with a little bit of perspective, which I hope this episode helps you find, you can see how much more special it is to develop a skill or develop as a person through hours and hours of deep practice.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to…
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Dec 2, 2019
244 - Deep Practice - Part 2 - Defining Deep Practice
Over the next four episodes, I’m going to introduce you to a concept called Deep Practice.
And to start, I’m going to address how we were conditioned by our parents and schools to attain knowledge… and that’s about it. This works when we’re being evaluated through papers and tests, but it’s a shallow form of learning that fails us in the real world.
Because, while knowing about something is a necessary first step, most of life requires skill and awareness — and your knowledge about something just isn’t going to help you.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 25, 2019
243 - Deep Practice - Part 1 - Conditioned to Understand, Not Be
Over the next four episodes, I’m going to introduce you to a concept called Deep Practice.
And to start, I’m going to address how we were conditioned by our parents and schools to attain knowledge… and that’s about it. This works when we’re being evaluated through papers and tests, but it’s a shallow form of learning that fails us in the real world.
Because, while knowing about something is a necessary first step, most of life requires skill and awareness — and your knowledge about something just isn’t going to help you.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 18, 2019
242 - Maturing Beyond Your Ego - Part 3 - Doing The Work
In this episode, you’ll hear how one member of the call applies the self-reflective tools we discussed last week in their own life and relationship, which you can then use to model your own self-reflection.
Then you’ll learn how to apply these same ideas and tools as a manager so that you mentor others towards maturing beyond ego.
As you listen to this episode, remember the questions that we discussed last week from Byron Katie’s The Work:
What’s the thought that you’re holding onto?
How do you react when you’re believing that thought?
Who would you be without believing that thought?
Sit with those questions. Try to experience the version of you that comes up, the version of you that surrenders the egoic response.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 11, 2019
241 - Maturing Beyond Your Ego - Part 2 - A Healthy Distrust
At some point in your life, you have almost certainly experienced pain or suffering as a result of trying to get what you want. And as you learn from this pain, over and over again, you start to practice self-reflection; you start to realize that some part of yourself is steering you in the wrong direction.
This healthy distrust of yourself is a key moment in the maturation out of ego — it’s when you start to understand and experience the separation between yourself and your ego.
Today, you’re going to learn about some tools you can use once you get to this point of maturation, beginning with an exploration of Byron Katie’s The Work.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Nov 4, 2019
240 - Maturing Beyond Your Ego - Part 1 - The Final Stage of Maturation
The ego gets a bad rap, but it’s essential to both our personal and societal development.
We should express gratitude for and acknowledge the good that our egos bring. Our egos got us where we are today. But we also need to understand that they will not get us where we want to go tomorrow, both as individuals and as a species
There’s a final stage of maturation that many people never see, maturing beyond the ego, but it isn’t talked about in any mainstream way. So, even if this is your first introduction to the concept, you’re probably a ways ahead of the curve just by listening to this episode.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Oct 28, 2019
239 - Managing with Inquiry 101 - Part 4 - Not Knowing as a Practice
This our last episode in this series about self-inquiry and not knowing, and today, I’m going to show you how to start creating a practice around not knowing.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Oct 21, 2019
238 - Managing with Inquiry 101 - Part 3 - Knowledge, Skill, & Awareness
In the last episode, I shared a conversation about how our education system is built on the knowledge deficit model. It’s the idea that whatever problem only exists because you’re missing some knowledge.
So, later in our lives, when we bump into a problem — whether it’s a problem with the world around us or ourselves — we first try to solve it by finding that little piece of knowledge that we’re missing. We look for blogs, podcasts, and books, accumulating knowledge just like we were trained to do in school.
But, eventually, after reality punishes us enough for our misguided beliefs about the world or ourselves, we wake up, we take the red pill — and now we’re ready to actually learn something!
You have to have this willingness to face reality before you can truly make inquiry a practice, and in this episode, you’ll learn more about why good managers need to sit in this space and how you can do that.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review…
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Oct 14, 2019
237 - Managing with Inquiry 101 - Part 2 - The Meta-Good Place
In the last episode, I discussed how our schools and society condition us to put a premium on knowing.
Our identity forms around what we think we know about the world and ourselves, and we are afraid to reveal when we don’t know; it feels antithetical to our very being.
As a result, it becomes uncomfortable to sit and face the truth of not knowing — and most of us are never trained how or why to not know, so we just continue avoiding it.
In this episode, I’m going to show you what happens when you start undoing some of that conditioning from your childhood and sitting in the discomfort of not knowing.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Oct 7, 2019
236 - Managing with Inquiry 101 - Part 1 - The Discomfort of Not Knowing
You go to school. You’re presented with a whole host of topics that you know little to nothing about. Then, over the course of about twelve years, teachers repeatedly shove information down your throat, evaluating you based on your ability to regurgitate that information. Twelve years later, you know things. At least, you think you know the things that you were told.
You’re taught that you can overcome just about any problem through this process of knowing.
And you were lied to.
In this four-part series, my goal is to help you undo some of this conditioning and start a practice of not knowing — but, first, I want to share a story that will help illustrate the value of not knowing.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.
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Sep 30, 2019
235 - Excuses, Excuses, Excuses - Part 4 - Embracing Real Change
Sometimes, there really are systems put in place that make our jobs more difficult; there really is an external force causing some of our problems.
However, even in these situations, the solution is the same or similar to what we’ve been discussing over the past three episodes: you have to muster up the confidence or courage necessary to make yourself uncomfortable and talk to people about why those systems aren’t effective and how they should be changed.
It’s time to embrace real change at every level of your life and your organization.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Sep 23, 2019
234 - Excuses, Excuses, Excuses - Part 3 - Managing Excellence
We’ve spent the last two episodes exploring why the questions we ask when we are experiencing a problem are really just excuses – and how we can, instead, turn the mirror on ourselves to find real solutions through radical honesty.
It’s not easy. In fact, it’s downright uncomfortable most of the time. But it’s necessary... if you want to evolve as a person, at least.
Today, we’re going to learn how you can apply this as a manager of others and yourself, including a brief discussion on the origin of all mediocrity in the world and how you’re probably enabling it.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Sep 16, 2019
233 - Excuses, Excuses, Excuses - Part 2 - Replacing Excuses with Incuses
Last week, we talked about how most of us tend to use excuses to not just avoid real change, but subconsciously self-sabotage our lives. Today, we’re going to dig even deeper into the language of excuse and why we should endeavor to replace our excuses with “incuses.”
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Sep 9, 2019
232 - Excuses, Excuses, Excuses - Part 1 - Inviting Radical Change
We spend our lives looking out into the world for solutions to almost every problem.
Need to lose weight? I’ll try that new diet that worked for my friend.
Feeling overwhelmed at work? I bet there’s a good productivity app I’m not using.
Didn’t like a new movie? They ruined my childhood.
We’re always looking outside of ourselves, making excuses instead of searching for solutions – when, really, we should be looking internally if we actually want something to change. So, today, we’re going to explore how our language reflects this tendency and what we can do to start moving towards something more honest and effective.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Sep 2, 2019
231 - Business without Busyness - Part 3 - Mediocrity Vs. Just Good Enough
In the last episode, I asked you to consider where you are cluttering up your life in the name of busyness.
Now, what is the minimum that you could do to have the same impact? What is the minimum effective dose of your time and energy?
Your busy mind may try to convince you that this is an exercise in laziness, but that’s precisely the mindset and conditioning that we’re trying to get beyond – this is the kind of work you need to do to get beyond thrival and achieve flow, the fifth and final stage of engagement.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Aug 26, 2019
230 - Business without Busyness - Part 2 - The Minimum Effective Dose
In the last episode, I made what may seem like a bold claim: busyness very well may be what destroys us as a species.
But I’m not exaggerating. Busyness makes you stupid; It clutters your mind, and when your mind is cluttered, you don’t think as effectively, you’re not as conscious, you’re not as aware, and you don’t take as good care of yourself.
We’re all just doing doing doing. It’s not healthy and it’s easy to see. There’s some acknowledgement of this in society today, as there’s an increasing trend towards scheduling time for self-care, but even that can be seen as a construct of our capitalist system designed to maximize the amount of time we feel like we are being busy and productive.
So, today, we’re going to explore why our relationship with busyness and time is not just ineffective but also unnatural – and how, ultimately, this causes many people to get stuck in thrival, without ever reaching a state of flow.
I’d love your feedback. Click here t…
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Aug 19, 2019
229 - Business without Busyness - Part 1 - Busyness Makes You Stupid
Over the next three episodes, we’re going to get back to the basics of busyness and recuperation.
We’re going to analyze why we, as individuals and as a society, put such a high value on being busy, both consciously and subconsciously.
Because when we tell ourselves we’re busy, I think we’re all just lying in an effort to make ourselves feel better about whatever it is we’re doing – the busy mind is creating an illusion of productivity when, in reality, most of us are practicing inefficiency in almost everything we do.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Aug 12, 2019
228 - Management Vs. Supervision - Part 3 - The Bridge from Supervision to Management
In the last episode, I asked you what management might look like when a parent wants their child to put away their laundry – a tale as old as time, or at least woven fabric.
Because, if your parents regularly remind you to do things, over and over, you will probably become a manager who nags their employees. The nagging from your parent made you resent them at the time, then later, you nagging your employees causes them to resent you
Worse than that, when you supervise someone, you are assuming the worst of that person – you are assuming they aren’t willing or able to change – and the only thing you get in return is the feeling that you’re exerting your power on another person. That exertion of control, then, only breeds more resentment and elicits more childish behavior.
So, in the end, supervision is a lose-lose scenario, which is why I’m going to offer you a solution – a tool you can use to transition from supervision to management, as well as an assignment that wil…
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Aug 5, 2019
227 - Management Vs. Supervision - Part 2 - The Context of the Relationship
In the last episode, we established that supervision is when people don’t take things as far as they can without a manager following up or offering assistance; it is the act of making sure that someone does what they already know how to do. Management, on the other hand, is when someone takes something as far as they can, then a manager supports them in growing and learning.
But that’s just the content of the manager-employee relationship, as well as the parent-child relationship, which is when most of us first encounter supervision.
So, today, I’m going to set up the context of this relationship dynamic through the lens of something we can probably all relate to: not wanting to do our laundry when we were children.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 29, 2019
226 - Management Vs. Supervision - Part 1 - The Art of Self-Management
Over the next three episodes, we’re going to explore one of the most critical dynamics in management: the differences between management and supervision and how the tension between these two causes most of us to experience some combination of lost productivity and existential angst.
We’ll start things off today with some definitions and, by the end of this series, connect these concepts to the art of self-management through an exercise that can help you identify and reduce the amount of supervision in your life.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 18, 2019
225 - Finding Your Passion Path - Part 4 - Gritty & Immediate Engagement
In the last episode, we explored the correlation between finding your passion path, finding your soulmate, and surrendering, and how our natural inclination to be in control can cause us to stray from the passion path.
Honing our awareness of this, as well as our awareness of our core values, is all a necessary part of the process.
Today, we will dissect a pivotal question that can both cause friction and propel you further into a life of fulfillment – a question that we live every day, especially at work.
And after you are done listening to this episode, I encourage you to block off some time to delve more deeply into what your soul-level values are because you have to have clarity on that before you can engage with any other part of this process. Take a few moments to examine the gap between your deepest values and your day-to-day actions, particularly where and how you work.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 15, 2019
224 - Finding Your Passion Path - Part 3 - The Surrender Correlation
Last week, we established that finding your Passion Path is a journey, not a mission. There is no singular end goal that you’re ultimately working towards.
And like any good journey, we can’t control everything that happens. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from trying. We’ve discussed this common delusion before – the shared delusion that people know how reality tends to operate and, as such, can manipulate the outcomes – but time and time again, reality proves us wrong and punishes us.
So, today, we’re going to talk about meeting reality where it is on the passion path and how our old friend surrender, which is always an important tool in our self-management toolbelt, will help us make progress on our journey.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 11, 2019
223 - Finding Your Passion Path - Part 2 - It’s an Adventure, Not a Mission
If you didn’t have to work and you weren’t being paid, what would you do that creates value in the world?
That’s the question I asked at the end of the last episode, and it is the question that will help you find your Passion Path, or the day-to-day expression of your values, whereby you serve yourself as you serve others with your greatest gift.
And this Passion Path is half of the equation that adds up to human fulfillment. So in this episode, we’ll relate the passion path to the second thing you need to have clarity on in order to be fulfilled – and during this process, I hope you will consider where you are on your own journey to clarity and fulfillment.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 8, 2019
222 - Finding Your Passion Path - Part 1 - The Root of All Disengagement
We start today’s episode with some reflections on the previous series about Desirable Difficulty. So, if you haven’t already listened to episodes 218 to 221, I recommend going back and listening to them first. It’ll be relevant later in this series as well.
We then segue into our topic for the next four episodes: your Passion Path.
We will view the nature of work from a historical point of view, revealing how things like slavery and unregulated factory work left scars on our language and cultural perspective, so that we can start identifying and working to change the cultural conditioning that all of us have undergone. In doing this, we can start engaging with work on a more productive and fulfilling level.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 4, 2019
221 - Desirable Difficulty - Part 4 - That Which Does Not Kill You
Life isn’t about comfort. It’s easy to be tricked into thinking that, with all the ways humans have designed a world catering to comfort, but life doesn’t seem to agree.
Because life, again and again, comes back to bite us in the butt when we attempt to pursue lives that embody happiness and comfort.
On the other side of the coin, life always rewards us for choosing difficulty. It may not be what we want, but it always ends up being what we need.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jul 1, 2019
220 - Desirable Difficulty - Part 3 - The Fear of Being Powerful
On the surface, a lot of us fear that we’re inadequate, not good enough, or powerless – but that’s just on a superficial level.
Underneath that, in the core of our beings, we are afraid of being powerful; we are making excuses to avoid the responsibility and expectations that come with our true potential.
Because where you are now is safe. It’s comfortable. And most of the human race is standing right beside you, choosing comfort.
But where could you be if you started diligently practicing self-management? if you started choosing the courageous act of subjecting yourself to difficulty? Well, that’s risky, and it can be lonely – and avoiding that fear is ensuring most people stay stuck in mediocrity.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 27, 2019
219 - Desirable Difficulty - Part 2 - The Art of Self-Management
In the last episode, I introduced you to the concept of Desirable Difficulty, or the idea that personal growth and evolution only happen as a result of butting up against and working your way through a difficult problem or situation.
Is it fun? No. Is it necessary? Again, no.
But is it necessary if you want to achieve greatness? Absolutely.
So, today, we’ll be learning how this concept relates to The Art of Self-Management and how you can make a practice of choosing courage over comfort.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 24, 2019
218 - Desirable Difficulty - Part 1 - Make it Stick
How engaged were you in school?
When you were taught a new principle in class and then given a homework assignment to do before the next class, were you engaged?
What if, instead, you were assigned the homework first? What if you were asked to do something really difficult, something that challenges your ability to think critically and solve problems? You would probably fail and you probably wouldn’t enjoy it – and you would probably be a lot more engaged in the learning process.
It might not be as easy as the way we are usually taught things. In fact, it might be downright unenjoyable. But there is a level of difficulty that is desirable if you want to develop and grow as a human being.
So, over the next four episodes, we’ll be exploring this concept of desirable difficulty and why we are likely all being disserviced by the increasing convenience of society.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 20, 2019
217 - Good Vs. Less Bad - Part 4 - Becoming an Engaged Manager
Throughout this series, I’ve come back to the question, “Who do you want to become and how are you using your job to become it?” If you don’t have the answer to this question, then you are, by definition, not engaged at work – and if you don’t have an answer to this question, I’d venture a guess that the people who you manage probably don’t have an answer, either.
Because engaged managers produce engagement.
And if, after this episode, you don’t choose to take action and figure out the answer to that question, which won’t be easy if you’re honest with yourself, then you will just perpetuate the broken system of disengagement in your life and/or work. Anything else you try to do will just make things a little less bad.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 17, 2019
216 - Good Vs. Less Bad - Part 3 - Closing the Embodiment Gap
If you normally listen to these episodes as a fly on the wall, I’d like you to approach today’s episode a little differently. I want you to put yourself in the seat of a person on this coaching call and imagine that I am asking you the questions that I ask in this episode.
These questions are meant to help you identify where the embodiment gap is in your life, or where your actions don’t express your deepest values – and then, possibly, close it, if you choose to take action.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 13, 2019
215 - Good Vs. Less Bad - Part 2 - The Less Bad Mindset
In the last episode, I introduced you to the Good Vs. Less Bad paradigm. We often have the option to make a system in our life good or less bad, and more often than not, we choose to make it less bad because making it good comes with costs that we don’t want to pay: emotional discomfort, facing the unknown, and actual change.
Today, we apply a critical lens to some real-life problems, reveal the underlying systems that contribute to those problems, and consider the long-term impact of living with a “less bad mindset.”
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 10, 2019
214 - Good Vs. Less Bad - Part 1 - The Price of Good
If you’re consistently getting results that you don’t want, a system in your life is either broken or not working the way you think it is – and you will continue to get undesirable results until you know how the system works AND change something.
Otherwise, anything you do is just going to, at best, make things less bad. And we are all faced with this decision, over and over again, throughout our lives: do we want to make a situation less bad or do we want to make it good?
Today, we’re going to get to the bottom of why “Less Bad” is such a popular choice – and what it costs to actually make something good.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 6, 2019
213 - On Hunger - Part 4 - Managing Evolution
I’d like to start the episode by going back to the question that started this series on hunger: Can we teach someone to be hungry? Can managers teach someone to want to be awake, to pursue excellence, to evolve, to learn, to grow?
Not exactly. You can’t make a horse drink water. However, you can make it as easy as possible for a horse to find water. You can help people navigate The Competence Paradox and realize that they are doing the best they can do, at least today – and, tomorrow, they can do a little bit better.
So, today, we’re going to go through a crash course on managing evolution and inspiring your team.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jun 3, 2019
212 - On Hunger - Part 3 - The Journey is the Destination
In the last episode, we touched on the value of intrinsic value hunger... although, if you have experienced drive or motivation in your life, it probably didn’t take a lot to convince you that it’s a powerful and important element to not just achieving success but undergoing self-development.
And that, really, is the crux of this series on hunger – it’s a tool for self-development, not a means to an end, and as such, it’s an important tool in the manager’s toolbox.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 30, 2019
211 - On Hunger - Part 2 - Excusing Away Our Destiny
In the last episode, I introduced you to The Competence Paradox.
This is the idea that, on one level, people are always doing the best that they can with what they have; the incentives, resources, and awareness that they are equipped with, in that moment. However, in the next moment, that can all change – and that means “your best” is conditional.
But our best also has an arch-nemesis, and it’s a pervasive enemy that we foster and cultivate throughout our lives – excuses!
So, today, we’re going to consider how we use excuses to cripple ourselves and avoid our destiny, what a human might look like with no excuses, and how motivation or hunger can cut through them.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 27, 2019
210 - On Hunger - Part 1 - The Competence Paradox
What’s the most that you are capable of? How do you know?
The truth of the matter is that, whether you think you’re capable of quite a lot or nothing at all, you’re probably wrong. People are terrible at self-assessment, especially when it comes to assessing their own skill and ability, and this one of the reasons people need management at various points in their life.
So, today, I am going to introduce you to The Competence Paradox – something that every manager needs to be aware of if they want to get the most out of their team and help their team grow.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 23, 2019
209 - Embracing Being Tested - Part 4 - Surrendering to Life
Leaders generally become leaders because they are predisposed to choosing challenges – and if you are choosing to listen to this podcast to better yourself as a leader and a manager, then you are probably predisposed to this way of framing life as well.
That means, as a manager, you have a valuable perspective to offer the people who follow you, and you should give it to them. So, to conclude this series on embracing being tested, we’re going to learn how managers can help others dig deep into discomfort and surrender to life.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 20, 2019
208 - Embracing Being Tested - Part 3 - Dig Deep into Discomfort
Over the last two episodes, we’ve established that there’s no mystery shrouding the path to greatness – either you choose to test yourself, or you don’t. It’s a rigorous choice to choose one practice and make it more important than anything else, and when you do, you’ll find that what you learn about yourself is far more valuable than what you accomplish.
Today, we will examine how this dynamic of embracing or not embracing challenges shows up in the workplace, and we’ll consider the role that managers and leaders have to take on to cultivate greatness in their teams.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 16, 2019
207 - Embracing Being Tested - Part 2 - The Difference Between Ordinary & Extraordinary
In the last episode, I extended an invitation to all of you:
When you want to accomplish something great, when you look at a challenge in front of you, don’t just look at the content of it; don’t just look at the skills, learning, and actions that doing the thing requires.
Instead, ask yourself, “How is this challenge testing me? How is life inviting me to be a bigger version of myself here?”
Because, if you don’t consider the context of the challenge and choose to test yourself, then you’ll wind up on the receiving end of what life has to offer.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 13, 2019
206 - Embracing Being Tested - Part 1 - Framing Your Life
Are you great at anything, or do you want to be great at anything?
We’re all good at some things, but only a select few of us are willing to do what it takes to experience greatness – and if you ever have experienced greatness, in anything, you know that it only comes as a result of being tested.
So, in this four-part series, we’ll be looking at life through the frame of being tested, and we’ll start today by analyzing the content of a test versus the context of a test.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 9, 2019
205 - Surrendering the Illusion of Control - Part 3 - Trusting the Surrender
In the last episode, I shared a story about a delightful day I had at the beach – and why getting to that point of contentedness required accepting that I had no control over the arising phenomenon that I experienced, like rain or even my initial frustration.
Today, I want to help you take that practice of acceptance and apply it to the situations that arise in your life and in your business, so that you can then focus on managing the things that you actually do have control over.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 6, 2019
204 - Surrendering the Illusion of Control - Part 2 - The Price You Pay for Serenity
In the last episode, I presented the idea that the pursuit of happiness, the conditioning that happiness is something we will achieve after we accomplish XY and Z, lies at the root of our illusion of control.
It’s a seductive illusion that gives us the comfort because, in one sense, we feel like we have control over our experience. But in another sense, it means we’re also responsible for failing to accomplish XY and Z to achieve happiness, and that can lead to an endless cycle of suffering.
Today, I present to you a path to end that cycle of suffering and find serenity – but I warn you, it doesn’t come without a price.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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May 2, 2019
203 - Surrendering the Illusion of Control - Part 1 - Resisting Reality
You have no control over your life. Also, you have total control over your life.
Both of these statements can be considered true, and that paradox lies at the heart of this three-part series on Surrendering the Illusion of Control.
This isn’t an entirely new concept for the podcast. We’ve discussed, in the past, our collective, innate desire to control reality; this shared delusion that we know how reality works and how it will continue to work, usually resulting in suffering and shame. You can learn more about this in the four-part series Conclusion: Waking Up, which released in March 2019.
But while that series focused on breaking the delusional assumption of control and the resulting shame spiral, this series focuses on the paradox of control in the context of self-management and happiness.
So let’s dive in.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 29, 2019
202 - Mission Vs. Adventure - Part 4 - Engaging in Adventure
Last week, we discussed how both the mission and adventure mindsets are equally valuable and dangerous. They come from a place of either trying to take total control over your life or accepting that you have no control whatsoever, but both of those perspectives are incomplete.
The apparent truth is that you are not always in control and you are not always helplessly experience what life throws at you; you and reality are co-authoring your experience of life.
One needs to have intentions, goals, and desired outcomes – and one needs to be able to let go of those things when life is calling them to adventure, to uncertainty.
So, to finish this series on Mission Vs. Adventure, we’ll share a couple stories about when and how people strike that balance, and how being aware of this duality will benefit you as a manager and self-manager.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 25, 2019
201 - Mission Vs. Adventure - Part 3 - Co-Authoring Your Life
In the last episode, I invoked a modern proverb – Life is a journey, not a destination – but you’ve likely heard this at some point earlier in your life, too. Although this is often interpreted as a suggestion to slow down and smell the roses, this helpful saying can also be viewed as a rebuke to the mission mentality that dominates our society, especially in business.
We are too focused on the objective as our goal, in part because we’re conditioned to relate to things at the level of knowledge. So, we fail to see that the transformation we undergo during the journey is more necessary than the actual thing we are trying to achieve.
Now, you may be thinking that I’m trying to persuade you that there is no use for the mission mentality, but that’s not true either.
Today, we’ll delve deeper into the story of Josef and the Lawnmower, and I’ll share the moment when I accepted the call to adventure – and I’ll share why both the ability to adopt a mission mentality AND…
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Apr 22, 2019
200 - Mission Vs. Adventure - Part 2 - Life is an Adventure
In the last episode, we defined the difference between a mission and an adventure.
A mission is like in a heist film: there’s an objective, a plan, and coordinated execution of the plan – and if the plan is not executed appropriately, the objective can not be completed.
On an adventure, on the other hand, you have a sense of your objective, but you do not need to execute on a meticulously crafted plan to accomplish that goal; you either purposely don’t make a plan or you surrender to the adventure not being plannable.
So, when I approached fixing my lawn mower with a mission perspective, I had certain expectations about how things would go. When those expectations weren’t met, there was suddenly a problem – but I created the expectations that birthed the problem that, then, caused my suffering... so I created my own suffering!
And we all do this. We all crave control and create expectations, then we get upset when they’re not met – but, the vast majority of the time,…
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Apr 18, 2019
199 - Mission Vs. Adventure - Part 1 - The Mission Begins
Over the next four episodes, we’re going to engage in a conversation about how we, as people and managers, approach tasks and getting things done – and today, we’re going to frame that conversation by defining the difference between a mission and an adventure.
But, to start off today’s conversation, I invite you to join me in a brief meditation so that we can all approach this discussion with a similar mindset.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 15, 2019
198 - Being What's Called For - Part 3 - What’s Your Inner Identity Crisis?
I ended the last episode by sharing my inner identity crisis, and now I want you to consider your own. When is life calling you to be something different than your self-prescribed identity suggests you are?
Take a moment to think about that question before we get into today’s conversation about how our skewed perception of identity affects our ability to be managers.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 11, 2019
197 - Being What's Called For - Part 2 - Who Are You Being Called to Be?
Most of us embody identities built on our interpretations of the past, but there’s a huge gap between saying “I’m funny” and believing “I’m a funny person” – and it’s one our minds are happy to bridge through a healthy dose of delusion.
Understanding who or what you are being called to be, in any given moment, requires a degree of meta realization that few people have.
So, today, we are going to expand the practice of realization that we started in the last episode by exploring that question: Who am I being called to be, in this moment?
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 8, 2019
196 - Being What's Called For - Part 1 - What Is Vs. What I Think Should Be
Today, I want to bring your attention to a paradigm that causes everyone suffering, almost every day: What Is Vs. What I Think Should Be.
Everybody shoulds. We are all naturally included to think things ought to happen a certain way because... well, because that’s the way we think it ought to be. But when we impose these delusions about reality onto ourselves, we’re just choosing to suffer.
Realizing the suffering caused by your self-inflicted delusions is a practice, which means you have to practice it every day, and today is as good a day to start as any.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 4, 2019
195 - Managing Disappointment - Part 4 - Denormalizing Disappointment
Most of us are conditioned to normalize disappointment, from a very young age, but that behavior has a dark shadow: normalizing our reactions to disappointment.
So to wrap up this four-part series, I want to help you denormalize disappointment in your life so that you have a frame to start managing it better.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Apr 1, 2019
194 - Managing Disappointment - Part 3 - What Would Josef Do?
In the last episode, I shared a story to illustrate how we fall into the trap of disappointment, and how we can ultimately start managing disappointment.
So, to recap, there are four steps to managing disappointment:
* Notice the disappointment.
* Notice the resistance to disappointment that is inevitably within us.
* Accept the disappointment as being part of life.
* Then operate inside of the parameters that you have.
Today, I will delve deeper into this process, as well as the internal needs and fantasies that can inhibit our ability to go through it.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 28, 2019
193 - Managing Disappointment - Part 2 - You Can’t Choose Your Neighbors
Today, I want to share a story about my neighbor and I.
It’s the story of how I first started managing my disappointment, at least intentionally, and accepting the truth in the idiom “you can’t choose your neighbors.”
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 25, 2019
192 - Managing Disappointment - Part 1 - Inevitability
Disappointment is inevitable. You could even plot it on a graph, with time on the X-axis and the likelihood of disappointment on the Y-axis. Given enough time, everyone you ever meet can be plotted onto this graph.
However, we have a choice when it comes to how we relate to disappointment.
So, to start this four-part series on managing disappointment, we will discuss how people usually experience disappointment and how we can start bringing more awareness and intention to our relationship with disappointment.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 21, 2019
191 - Conclusion: Waking Up - Part 4 - Your Most Important Assignment
As we wrap up this four-part series, we also reach the end of my online course, “Accountability, Metrics, Money, and Shame,” which is free for Clear and Open members.
But unlike most classes you’ve probably taken, this isn’t where your work on accountability, metrics, money, or shame ends – at least, I hope it isn’t. The choice is up to you.
Today, I have an assignment that will help you take this course forward into your life, and it’s the most important assignment from the entire course.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 18, 2019
190 - Conclusion: Waking Up - Part 3 - The Power of Not Knowing
We’ve discussed the Dunning–Kruger effect on the show before: the psychological phenomenon in which people who are not good at something tend to think they’re better at it than they really are. So the less you know, the more you think you know.
But this cognitive bias can only exists in relation our misguided assumptions about reality – namely, our assumption that we know how reality works and will continue to work. And at this point where our assumptions and biases meet, it creates delusion.
When we start chipping away at this delusion – and in the process, start chipping away at our resistance to change – we can actually find a lot of power in the act of not knowing, and today I want you to embrace that power.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 14, 2019
189 - Conclusion: Waking Up - Part 2 - The Shame Dynamic
In the last episode, I asked a question: What universal, daily part of the human experience is irrefutable proof of how deluded human beings are?
The answer is dreams – we all dream, and while we’re dreaming, we usually buy into that reality. Then we wake up and we’re confronted with a contradictory reality.
But despite the fact that we experience this delusion every morning, we go through the day assuming that our mind couldn’t possibly have the capacity to fool us while we’re awake; we assume to know who we are, how life works, and that tomorrow will be just like today.
But if we look back at the evidence we have from our own lifetimes and all of recorded history, what’s really real is that reality is constantly changing and constantly telling us, as individuals and as a society, that we’re wrong.
However, we don’t like being wrong, and when reality holds us accountable by showing us we’re wrong, we often feel shame. So today, we’ll start to explore this compl…
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Mar 11, 2019
188 - Conclusion: Waking Up - Part 1 - Delusional Acceptance
We live in a state of delusional acceptance. We accept that reality is the way we believe it is, in spite of a universal, daily experience that directly contradicts that assumption.
What is that experience? Let’s figure it out together – and on the way, we’ll learn how we can use this knowledge to become more accountable to reality as it really is.
This four part series is an excerpt from the conclusion of my online course, “Accountability, Metrics, Money, and Shame,” which is free for Clear and Open members.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 7, 2019
187 - Self-Management, Surrender, and The Great Mystery - Part 4 - Omnipresence
In the last episode, I invited you to make two assumptions about The Great Mystery: One, everyone can experience it and that does not require belief or being special. Two, it is always there. There’s no more of it in a church than in a gutter.
So if it’s always there, what stops you from being with it? That’s the question we’re going to explore today.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Mar 4, 2019
186 - Self-Management, Surrender, and The Great Mystery - Part 3 - The Ultimate Authority of Life
We often talk about wrestling with our own authority issues, namely the issues we have with our parents. This isn’t due to some Freudian hang up – this is because you can’t truly practice self-authority until you do the work to stop unconsciously or consciously submitting to your parents’ will.
And when you make this shift, something incredible happens – you start to relate to life itself, to the Universe, to The Great Mystery.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 28, 2019
185 - Self-Management, Surrender, and The Great Mystery - Part 2 - A Radical Understatement
Your shadow is running your life.
Maybe not all the time, but your shadow is calling the shots more than you realize, and that’s why it’s so important to recognize those seemingly unimportant moments that we discussed in the last episode: when your shadow feels comfortable coming out into the open and you have the opportunity to make a choice and, with confidence, take charge of your own life.
People think of their shadow as some part of them that drags them down – this cliche of holding yourself back – but today I want to discuss why this is the understatement of the century, and a few small ways you can relieve that burden.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 25, 2019
184 - Self-Management, Surrender, and The Great Mystery - Part 1 - Moments of Change
The moments when change actually happens aren’t the big life moments you might think they will be. They’re these seemingly insignificant moments when your shadow rears its head in broad daylight because it doesn’t feel compelled to hide.
These moments offer an opportunity to practice self-management, to practice being your true and authentic self in the face of an emotionally difficult choice – and if you train that muscle, you’ll be able to use it when it really matters.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 21, 2019
183 - Deconstructive Path to Awareness - Part 3 - Orienting Towards Reality
In the last couple episodes, we discussed how our natural inclination is to orient towards happiness – and why this is, ultimately, a problematic cultural agreement that almost all of us are contributing to.
Today, I suggest a new and more beneficial social contract, albeit a more challenging one: a cultural agreement to orient towards realness. This requires a certain level of awareness, which in itself requires a significant level of mutual accountability, but the end reward is a genuine, real happiness that can’t be altered by personal experience.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 18, 2019
182 - Deconstructive Path to Awareness - Part 2 - Shattering Delusion
When you try to negotiate with reality, when you try to dictate your delusions onto your experience, reality will always win.
Because life doesn’t care about your happiness – but it does care about your perception of reality.
So in this episode, we discuss the role of accountability, for ourselves and others, in shattering our delusions. If you trust the process, trust the outcome, you can trust that life will take care of you.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 14, 2019
181 - Deconstructive Path to Awareness - Part 1 - The Pursuit of Realness
The pursuit of happiness is one of the three “unalienable rights” suggested by the the United States Declaration of Independence – but the very act of this pursuit is problematic, and the single most destructive element in your relationship to truth.
Because real happiness isn’t some destination that you can get to by constructing a long enough bridge. This false happiness is built on illusion, and eventually, life will catch up to you and set you straight.
Real fulfillment is already and always there – and through awareness, we can deconstruct our blocks to it and experience it, regardless of the content in our lives.
So today, I suggest that we have to make the pursuit of truth, of realness, more important than everything and anything else, especially happiness, so you can discover how happy it will make you.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 11, 2019
180 - Management in Action: An Interview with Trey Lewellen
To learn more about Trey’s enterprise, go to Kommercekings.com
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 7, 2019
179 - Navigating Shame With The Accountability Path - Part 4 - The Opportunity to Take Control
To wrap up this series, we’re going to discuss the optimal and non-optimal outcomes of accountability – and how navigating the accountability path will allow you to get the optimal results more often.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Feb 4, 2019
178 - Navigating Shame With The Accountability Path - Part 3 - Holding Up The Mirror
If you want to build a strong foundation of accountability, you can’t wait until someone screws up to hold them accountable. You will find the accountability path much easier to navigate if it’s forged through deep reflections of goodness, creating a context where accountability is viewed as more positive than negative.
The best part is that, unlike some of the other aspects of leading with accountability that we’ve discussed in this series, it isn’t difficult to hold up a mirror and show someone a reflection of the goodness of their being!
So today, we’re going to talk about how leaders can hold up the mirror for the people they manage before they take a step on the accountability path.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 31, 2019
177 - Navigating Shame With The Accountability Path - Part 2 - Seen & Safe
Great leaders help the people they manage embrace rigorous accountability – but to do that, the people they manage have to feel seen and safe.
However, most of us don’t choose to be leaders, and we weren’t taught how to be leaders in school, so we reluctantly end up learning on the job; we are thrust into a position where we have to learn how to be vulnerable with ourselves and put others in a situation where they feel safe being vulnerable... or we can fail.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 28, 2019
176 - Navigating Shame With The Accountability Path - Part 1 - Courage
When we think of courage, we often think of braving some sort of life-threatening situation. But almost every day, even the people who jump out of planes work to avoid holding others accountable or being held accountable because it invites emotional difficulty.
If you really want to be courageous, try intentionally confronting and amplifying your emotional discomfort – now that’s difficult, but it’s also required to start navigating shame with the accountability path.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 24, 2019
175 - Leadership as Spiritual Teaching - Part 4 - Becoming a Spiritual Teacher
To wrap up this series on Leadership as a Spiritual Teaching – in which we’ve discussed the definition of consciousness, how societal conditioning clouds our perception of reality, and how this prevents us from solving problems – we’re going to learn how leaders and managers can start solving problems by learning and teaching a greater sense of consciousness.
The problem is that you can’t just change a person’s conditioning without upsetting them because that’s the lens through which people look at reality. The more it stays the same, the more people feel safe and secure... but we’re lying to ourselves when we insist that life is safe and secure.
The role of a leader or a manger is to take in new information and challenge existing conditionings, to become a kind of spiritual teacher, so that’s what we’re going to do.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 21, 2019
174 - Leadership as Spiritual Teaching - Part 3 - Learning Consciousness
Our society operates using the framework that problems get solved through intelligence – but I argue that problems get solved through consciousness, which has nothing to do with intelligence or skill. It is, fundamentally, the ability to step outside of your conditioning and see reality through a lens other than the one created by your own conditioning.
More often than not, we’re just missing a piece of information we can’t see, or aren’t willing to see, due to our conditioning.
So really, solving your own problems, your organization’s problems, and our society’s problems comes down to teaching people a greater sense of consciousness. Today, we discuss where to start this process.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 17, 2019
173 - Leadership as Spiritual Teaching - Part 2 - Metaperception & Awareness
In the last episode, we started a metaphysical dialectic on consciousness. We established that consciousness requires an awareness of self because reality and our perception of it are not always the same.
Today, we’ll clarify the metaperception required to identify this gap between your story about reality and reality itself, and how the way you are conditioned clouds your perception.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 14, 2019
172 - Leadership as Spiritual Teaching - Part 1 - A Metaphysical Dialectic
To start this four-part series on Leadership as Spiritual Teaching, we’re going to go on an exploration of consciousness.
What is consciousness, how does it affect you as a leader, and how can a lack of awareness hurt the people you manage? We’re going to delve deep into the metaphysical to answer these questions, so let’s take a deep breath and dive in.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 10, 2019
171 - Frustration-Free Living - Part 2 - The Belief that Change is Hard
I am going to say something that might be simultaneously freeing and uncomfortable to hear: living in frustration is completely optional.
If you are frustrated, it is likely due to your expectations of and relationship with change, as we discussed in the last episode.
So today, I invite you to practice a frustration-free existence – which won’t be easy, and definitely won’t happen overnight – and it starts with confronting the belief that change is hard.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 7, 2019
170 - Frustration-Free Living - Part 1 - Your Relationship to Change
People want change, or they say they want change, but really they want to be told how to change – and then they want that process to be easy.
This reflects our skewed and unhealthy relationship with change; we want acute control over when and how change happens to us and in our lives and then, inevitably, we get frustrated because that’s just not how life works.
When we start looking at reality with the assumption that change is predictable and we can exert control over it, what we are really doing is creating the perfect storm of cognitive dissonance and discomfort. Today I want to explore this relationship, how it creates frustration in our loves – and, ultimately, how awareness of this relationship can put an end to that unproductive cycle.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Jan 3, 2019
169 - Shame: The Elephant in the World - Part 4 - Empathy, Courage, & Vulnerability
The culture that you live and work in has a tremendous impact on what you feel. And as a manager, you are responsible for cultivating the culture in your organization – and as a self-manager, you are responsible for cultivating the culture in your everyday life.
Today we’ll look at three things you SHOULD be cultivating in your culture and how doing so can radically improve the lives of the people you manage.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 31, 2018
168 - Shame: The Elephant in the World - Part 3 - The Backfire Effect & The Dunning–Kruger Effect
When someone is emotionally invested in an idea or a group, it’s almost impossible to persuade them to question their beliefs – even if you provide factual information that really should cause them to question their beliefs. Why? It challenges their identity and, as a result, they feel shame.
So, as we discussed in the last episode, people distort reality to protect themselves and their identity, and you can see this playing out every single day, especially online, in the increasingly divided political climate in the U.S.
Today we will examine this phenomenon, how it contributes to shame, and what you can do to prevent it from creeping into your life.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 27, 2018
167 - Shame: The Elephant in the World - Part 2 - Shame, Remorse, & Embarrassment
Shame is dangerous because, in our efforts to avoid it, we often end up distorting reality so that we don’t feel accountable – like, as we’ll discuss more in this episode, the man who sued United after HE knocked out a passenger – but confronting our negative feelings and the realities that cause them is a healthy and important part of personal development.
So in this episode, we will take our first step towards healing from shame and building our shame resilience.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 24, 2018
166 - Shame: The Elephant in the World - Part 1 - Shame Defense
Today, I want to talk about what makes the whole world go ‘round – not money, not love, but shame.
It’s always been a huge factor, and if you look through a history book, you will pretty much find a list of times powerful men tried to cover up their shame. But today, social media magnifies the role that shame plays in everyone’s lives. We’re practically spoon feeding it to ourselves every time we pick up our phones.
So over the next few episodes, we’re going to examine our relationship with shame, the important differences between shame and its cousins like remorse and embarrassment, and how you can start healing from shame.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 20, 2018
165 - Finding Your Resolve - Part 4 - Transcending Mediocrity
Are you doing the best that you can?
What if I give you a million dollars to do better... were you still doing the best that you could? Or does your best change?
The more aware you are of your discipline and engagement, the more difficult it is to accept the excuse that “you’re doing the best that you can.”
We naturally shrug off a challenge, striving to do the minimum required to get by – but we only improve when we embrace challenges, acknowledging that we have the potential to grow. So I want you to challenge yourself today, and then I want you to challenge the people you manage. It won’t be comfortable for anyone, but the continuation of the human race depends on us transcending mediocrity.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 17, 2018
164 - Finding Your Resolve - Part 3 - Surrendering to Accountability
If you haven’t already, take some time right now to do the exercise I described in the last episode:
Consider what you want that you don’t have, and frame it as an engagement problem; the source of the gap between what you want and you don’t have lies at the level of your engagement.
After you give this some deep thought, please continue with the episode and join us as we start surrendering to accountability. Because dedication and commitment don't come without accountability.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 13, 2018
163 - Finding Your Resolve - Part 2 - Managing Engagement
In the last episode, we discussed the first step towards finding our resolve and becoming more engaged: acknowledging just how disengaged we usually are.
With that awareness, we can now start flexing our engagement muscles and practicing this skill, as both managers of others and managers of ourselves.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 10, 2018
162 - Finding Your Resolve - Part 1 - Conditioned for Instant Gratification
When in your life have you wanted something so much that you were willing to do whatever it takes to attain it?
For some of you, the answer might be never, or at least not recently. Because we can have almost anything we want whenever we want it, and as a result, our society is collectively losing its resolve; commitment and dedication are dying... and this could be a dangerous trend.
So over the next few episodes, I will help you engage with life and find your resolve – if you are willing to join me.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 6, 2018
161 - The Nothing That Isn't Nothing - Part 4 - The Power of Zero
Zero looks like nothing – but it’s NOT nothing, and something magical happens when you learn to let go and embrace zero.
Because all of our suffering is dependent on an initial assumption about the kind of experience we’re supposed to be having; a vain attempt to control reality by projecting something onto a situation.
So today we’ll examine the power of zero and what it looks like when you embody nothing.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.
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Dec 3, 2018
160 - The Nothing That Isn't Nothing - Part 3 - Radical Responsibility
Have you ever said to yourself or out loud, “You’re driving me crazy?”
This is a really common saying, but it’s never true. No one else has the power to control your emotions. And when we say this, we’re diminishing our own role in what we’re experiencing – and our own power.
It’s definitely not easy to remain peaceful when we are challenged by other people and difficult situations, but learning to do so will help you manage yourself and others. So today we’re going to talk about the importance of practicing radical responsibility, even when it’s difficult, and how this will help us embrace reality.
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Nov 29, 2018
159 - The Nothing That Isn't Nothing - Part 2 - Your Ruby Slippers
Anyone can lay in a sensory deprivation tank and find peace – but what about when someone cuts you off in traffic, when you are in line at the DMV, or an employee makes a mistake? Then, finding silence is hard work.
But like Dorothy in Oz, you’ve had the power all along. Today I’m going to teach you how to find it.
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Nov 26, 2018
158 - The Nothing That Isn't Nothing - Part 1 - The White Canvas
In our increasingly noisy world, an industry has popped up selling silence by the hour through things like sensory deprivation tanks and a variety of meditation practices. These can be useful tools or shortcuts, but that silence is always there – it’s the canvas on which our experiences are painted.
Over the next four episodes, I’m going to explore the power of abiding with that silence, and how you can start accessing that silence whenever you want.
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Nov 22, 2018
157 - Don't Solve the Wrong Problem - Part 4 - Managing Others So They Can Solve Their Own Problems
As a manager, you can’t step in and solve someone else’s problems, but you can hold up a mirror so that someone can see the problem and start solving it themselves.
And one of the best ways to help someone confront reality and start addressing a problem is by asking a question based in genuine curiosity. The danger here is triggering someone’s fight, flight, or freeze response, which will stop your efforts dead in their tracks.
Today I discuss what you need to consider and pay attention to in these delicate situations so that you can manage lovingly, carefully, and successfully.
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Nov 19, 2018
156 - Don't Solve the Wrong Problem - Part 3 - Barking Up the Wrong Tree
When you identify the thing that is really causing a problem in your life or business, it’s usually not very difficult to solve – but many of us waste time and money barking up the wrong tree because there is some uncomfortable aspect of reality that we’re trying to avoid.
However, all the effort we put into avoiding reality causes disproportionately more discomfort than just looking reality in the face and accepting it as truth.
Consider this episode your invitation to stop resisting the process and start solving real problems before they eat away at your life or business.
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Nov 15, 2018
155 - Don't Solve the Wrong Problem - Part 2 - Our (Lack of) Commitment to Reality
We’re often more committed to things in our life being nice and cozy than we are to reality, even if that coziness is causing problems in our family, our relationships, or our businesses. However, there’s a real danger here because lacking a commitment to truth obscures real problems and creates obstacles that hinder personal embodiment and organizational success.
So in this episode, I want to share a self-awareness practice that will help you identify embodiment gaps in your life and management deficiencies in your organization.
I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTunes.