#119: Playing The Game Of Life For Real with David Wood

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel. I always like to say that's kind of— it's the only time of the day and really at all that I get to just sort of say my own name in full. I introduce myself pretty frequently. Hi, I'm Adam. I'm Adam Markel. It's kind of a fun thing. I highly recommend it. You guys sit in front of a computer and turn on microphone and just say your own name for fun's sake. And this is just nothing but fun. I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to be sitting here in this moment, sitting in my office, sitting in my seat, sitting here knowing that ahead of us in the next little while, I'm gonna have a great conversation with a perfectly new friend. So this is really cool stuff. And just as we were greeting each other, And I'll share more about him and introduce him in just a second. But first thing actually came out of my mouth when we got on Zoom together was just to say, it's a good day to be alive, man. It's a good day to be. And oh, I love it. Yeah. Breathe. Just what a great reminder because so much I think of what I lose track of, and I got to assume this is true for everybody, is just losing track in the moments of the day. Truly how joyful I am to be alive and grateful and lucky and privileged and every other thing just to be. And I just feel like we take those things for granted. I know I do. I take those things for granted. Just like in a business sense, often I find with people that we work with that a lot of people take for granted how good they are at things, how much expertise they have, how much they have that's worth sharing with other people. Meaning how many things they actually have to say that would be valuable for others. And I think they do that because, and I just use myself as an example, because we will take it for granted that this is who we are and this is what we do. And so why is that? At a certain point, if you walk past a wall that has some art on it, maybe the first time you walk past that wall, you think, wow, that's really beautiful. That's incredible art. But if you pass that wall and you pass that art every single day for 20 years, I don't know that in year 18 that you walk past that wall and with the energy of wonder and the eyes, you know, like the eyes of a child, enthusiastic apprentice viewpoint, that you look at that wall and go, oh my God, those colors. And that's just so interesting. And it's so magnificent. I think it just sort of point and go, oh, just a wall. It's just that, oh, it's that art, you know, on the wall. And I think we look at ourselves in the same way. I'm not as wonderful or as unique or as somehow Uniquely qualified to share something with others as I might otherwise believe were the first time I was experiencing myself. Experiencing myself for the first time. So maybe in this moment as we start, we can all feel into that energy of what it would be like and how is it that we consciously create an experience of being that is us experiencing ourselves being, maybe for the first time. Or with just a new set of eyes and appreciating, truly appreciating just how magnificent we we are and how unique we are. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment That more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I think it was in Augmentino's amazing book, The Greatest Salesman in the World, that there's one of the scrolls is that I am the world's— I am this unique creature, this unique creation of nature. I'm the world's most unique being and things like that. It just bears, I think, repeating. So I have the blessing today of being In conversation, just a few moments with a gentleman that I think is quite unique and his experience is certainly unique. And the work he's been doing in the world for more than 20 years is really breathtaking. And we have a lot of common friends and we have kind of a funny story how this podcast came about through one of those just interesting synchronicities, but I'll save that for later. His name is David Wood. And David has a very unique perspective. In fact, His quote is that when you're 10,000 feet above the Himalayas hanging from a piece of cloth, you see life differently. So I want you to imagine that for just a second, everybody, just as we're imagining what it would be like to see ourselves through those— the eyes of a child even. Imagine yourself 10,000 feet above the Himalayas hanging from a piece of cloth. What would you experience? What would you be feeling? What would you be sensing in that moment? He holds the viewpoint that life is the best game there is and asks, are you playing for real? I'm going to get into that. What does it mean to play for real? David coaches high-performing entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders to play the best game they possibly can, living a regret-free life. How? By setting life-changing goals, laser-focused action, and increasing their levels of truth, daring, and caring in both life and work. He loves sharing his message of playing for real on live stages, podcast interviews, and radio shows, and has been best described as playful and deep. It's a great way to be described. A former consulting actuary to Fortune 100 companies including Sony Music, Procter& Gamble, and Exxon, David left his cushy Park Avenue job 20 years ago to explore both the outer world and his own inner world. Along the way, he's coached thousands of hours in dozens of countries around the globe and is the author of Get Paid for Who You Are, with a foreword by our mutual friend, Jack Canfield. David, it's a great pleasure to have you on the show today. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you, Adam. I'm enjoying myself already.

Way cool. Well, that's an incredible bio. And I'd love to know what's not written in that bio that you would love for people to know about you.

Well, you mentioned truth, daring, and caring. And something I'm trying to do more and more of in my life is reveal and transparency. And I think it's so easy, particularly in a bio and on Facebook, to do identity management. We want to present to the world how everything's positive and shiny and all that successful stuff and just kind of pretend the other stuff doesn't happen. So I'd like people to also know that I've experienced loss, deep pain. I lost my sister when I was 7 years old. So it's had a big impact on my life. I've had a lot of experience with anxiety and depression. So it's not like I just wake up every day totally pumped and succeed by clicking my fingers. Sometimes it's an effort to send an email, but we all get to work with what we have. So I just, I think I'd like people to know that I have bad days too. I have terrible days and I have good days and I'm a mixture as I think most of us are.

Wow, David, thanks for going there with that. I feel like I want to reveal something too. I don't want to sort of plus what you've said. I'll just say I've had my own share of anxiety and even though that feeling doesn't sort of come to me too often these days, I still get in my own way in other ways. Sometimes battle procrastination. I'm a sort of maybe recovering perfectionist as a way to I don't want to look at it, but I too can sit with an email, like making more out of it than whatever, or just putting it off so long for things. And I wake up in the morning and even though that's really the crucial point of my day is to start off on the right foot, as my grandmother used to say, some days I just wake up and I feel gray, just down, no lack of energy or pissed off or whatever it is. And you're right, I think identity management is a big activity for a lot of folks. And in many ways, I think it may even be kind of pushing people further apart on some level. Yeah, if you're known as something or you've curated a brand, a personal brand that says you are something in the world, whether that's in the business space or it's otherwise, to do something that conflicts with the brand or damage the brand, I think it's a concern people have.

Yeah, and one thing that I really want for everybody, I want it for me and I want it for everyone, is I want everyone to like themselves more. And I think that this identity management goes against that. The more we present this positive stuff to the world, the more we're really saying the rest of me is not okay. So a great example of this, I'm a big fan of the book Ender's Game. And in the series, someone becomes a speaker for the dead. And when he speaks, he doesn't give the normal eulogy about all the positive stuff. He speaks about the whole person, the dreams they didn't fulfill, their frustrations, their losses, their sorrows, as well as all the rest. And I'm so inspired by that. Let's embrace all of us. And I think that's the journey that we're on. And that's the journey I'm encouraging with everyone I can.

Yeah. Embracing things is so important, isn't it? I mean, what does that word embrace mean? I mean, it's pretty obvious on some level, but David, what does it mean to you to embrace, to really embrace something?

I think the first step might be to tolerate it. So let's say with my energy levels, when I wake up and I feel like crap and I don't want to do anything. The first step would be, all right, can I at least put up with this instead of fighting it so much? Can I share it with some people so I'm not hiding it anymore? Because I think that's the path to acceptance. And then a friend of mine, once I was having a really rough day and a friend of mine said, oh, I hear that you're sad and you're crying. And he said, enjoy the ride.

Yeah.

And that was the best thing I could have heard. It's like, yeah, if I'm going to feel like this, I might as well enjoy the ride. Maybe I'll get some ice cream. Maybe I'm going to watch a sad movie. I'm going to snuggle up in bed. I'm going to enjoy feeling like this. I may as well. It's already happening. So that would be— I can't embrace everything.

Yeah. I mean, think about it. If we resist it, there's another energy that gets involved in it that sort of even maybe exacerbates it on some level. I think meditation has become something that I've been more interested in of late. I've been a prayer. I pray. I love to pray. I love to get into stillness and be with God, but I didn't meditate per se. So meditation is new for me. And in fact, in a recent TED Talk, I sort of outed myself to say my dirty little secret is I'm a crummy meditator. But I got a new, a little bit new leverage on meditation recently in the idea that first of all, there's no right way or wrong way to do it. And the key is That I have to keep my mind still anyway. It's just like allowing the thoughts to be present almost as though you look up in the sky and I'm a big visual learner so as I look at something I take it in. Imagine looking up at the sky and seeing clouds. I mean, it's a very common experience for us. We just look up, see the clouds and you look up 10 minutes later, the clouds are different. It could be that the sun's out 10 minutes later, the sun's not out, it's cloudy, completely feels different, etc. Thoughts are the same way. They just come and go like clouds. It would be almost like trying to reach up. You think about the way we dwell on and go, oh, I feel like crap, or this person's ignoring me, or I didn't get that job, or the money's tight this month, or whatever it is. We always just obsess about stuff, right? And you look up at that cloud of that thing and just try to wrap your hands around it and hold it and keep it, right? That's not the nature of it. It just will change and pass on its own. Except we're trying to make so much out of it. So the thoughts themselves are just not truth. They're literally a thing that does not necessarily represent truth. Do you buy into that or is that—

I agree with you. I think the mind is trying to help. I think that's why that's happening. If it didn't do that, we might die, you know, get killed by a bear or hit by a car or something. So the mind is latching on to something it thinks it's a problem and wants to work on it. It's just that we're not really being chased by tigers every day anymore. So it's not necessary. But you're right. Last night— I had a date with someone recently who I really like. I want to see her again, but nothing's exclusive. And last night she had a date with someone else. It'd keep coming into my mind and I'm playing poker with the boys. I'm having a good time. It'd come into my mind and I can see how I could latch onto it and worry about it and try and work it out and protect myself. And I didn't do that. Fortunately, in this case, I noticed it. I'm like, all right. I'm good. I hope she has a good time. And I go back to what I was doing. So that's part of the game, right? Can we not get latched onto those thoughts or those things that are problems? If you're going to work on it, work on it. Work on the problem, fix it, do something. But if you're just worrying about something that there's no practical action to take, yeah, that seems like superfluous worry.

Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Superfluous worry. I used to say this to myself when I was a lawyer years ago. I would say, you can't win without worry. And it's interesting because on some level I was convinced that my winning in life and in business and in the law, even with the actual cases I took, it was because I worried better than my competitor. I worried better than my adversary. And if I worried more, I would win more. And that was the concept. And I really feel like it's so interesting that I tied this fear to accomplishment. There was kind of a link between those 2 things. That they were together. And now I certainly feel that, as you say, when there's a problem to deal with, you've got to deal with it. But there's also an opportunity to create space for not just for the problem to resolve itself, but for us— for the way I approach the problem to be guided from a different place. Hmm. So as opposed to me being guided from fear, the fear of loss, the fear that something's going to be taken from me, that I have to protect and guard myself. That, that whole guarding way of being just had me competing with the world and endlessly anxious and in angst and angry a lot of the time and unhappy. And that's a whole— I think that's an epidemic in our world that we are so on guard. And we can live on grace instead of being on guard. We can live guided in a guided way versus in a guarded way.

It is an epidemic. I grew up thinking that my circumstances is what would give me happiness or pain. This is how I grew up. It wasn't even told to me. Just everybody lives like that. If you improve your house and your money and your relationship and everything, you'll be happy. But I've since come to believe after a lot of work with Byron Katie, she says the worst thing that can happen to you is a thought. And I've since come around to that way of thinking. It took some time. But I've realized when my thoughts are painful, I'm in pain. And when my thoughts are good, regardless of what's happening around me, I'm good. So I acknowledge that most of the world doesn't live that way, and that's fine. But when you do start to take on that point of view, oh, wait a minute, is it possible, as you're saying, Adam, that my thinking could be causing a lot of my pain and stress and worry and that it's actually not required? Then the question becomes, how do you shift it? And I just had this conversation with a client this week and he was stressed and we identified like what's behind everything. And at the bottom, we finally got to the thoughts because most of us don't even know what the thoughts are. They're just there. It's reality. They're not thoughts. It's reality. No, it's thoughts. Like, am I enough? Am I enough? Are people going to think that I'm enough? That was his thing. And he's found 2 ways to combat it, 2 very different ways. One is we can use— he's using ritual, which is interesting because I know that's a big topic for you. He's got daily disciplines that he's actually doing now and he's feeling great about himself. So we identified that that has shifted his inner confidence, just doing what's right for him. I call it integrity. And the second thing is, which he brought up, is the core beliefs. And I use the Byron Katie work with my clients. for that, which I find is like a mental ninjutsu. Once you identify the thought, you kind of get in there with a little surgery and it can self-destruct. Fastest thing I found to dismantling.

In my head, just debating whether I wanted to share this or not, but I'm gonna go for it. So just recently, I'm very influenced by Emmet Fox. He's been a tremendous mentor to me, and it's one of the cool things about mentorship is the mentor doesn't have to even be alive. So Emmet Fox passed away, I think, in 1951. He's a scientist. He's a scientist and philosopher and metaphysician, spiritual teacher, and a lot of really great, great work. Power Through Constructive Thought is one of his books. I have this around-the-year book. He was in the beginning of the year, he's talking about our mental diet, and then he was also sharing some things about the aspects of God. God means different things to people, including people who don't believe in God. It means something different entirely. I don't mean anything religious by it, and certainly I'm not ascribing it to a particular religion, but the sense for me that there's a Creator and that I'm a part of an infinite creation of the universe that is so much bigger than me, and yet I am a piece of it. So it's like being a spark of a big fire, you know, you're not the entire fire, but you're a spark of that fire, and I feel certainly that's the case. That feels accurate for me. So in describing these aspects of God, Emmet was saying, so God is life itself, not an aspect of life, but life itself. I thought, okay, that makes sense. And there's a little bit of reading about that. And then God is truth. And in that reading, I started to think to myself, so what else is truth? Where does truth, truth with a capital T, exist? And what isn't truth? And that's where this collision of my work on the meditation side and that sort of came together and said, are my thoughts true? And it sort of released, it gave me this great release from the pressure that somehow the things that are going on inside my head, whatever that energy is that my mind is creating, that somehow maybe that's not, that's just a fiction. You know, it's just something made up. It doesn't exist. There's nothing, there's no truth in it. It's freeing.

I'm reminded of your cloud analogy now and thinking about you could look at a cloud and say, That's a dog because it's in the shape of a dog, but it's really just a moving amorphous mass that's changing from moment to moment. There's nothing true about it.

No. I mean, so it's like, it's kind of a— it leaves you in a funny, in a really funny place because you go, so if my true— if my thoughts are not truth, capital T truth, well, what do we do with them? What do I do with them? You can notice them. You can be aware of them. You can—

You can examine them.

Yeah.

That's the Byron Katie work is actually put a flashlight on it and just investigate. Is this true?

Right.

I haven't found one. I don't know if I've found one yet that I'm absolutely sure is true.

Exactly. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, this idea of embracing is also pretty cool, I think, because like you said, there's ways to approach it. You can resist it, you can accept it, you can ignore it, which I think we do a lot of times. Things in our lives we don't want to deal with, we just sort of ignore. And we can embrace them. There's something really, I think, special about Embracing. Ram Dass said, we have to make friends with change. That's embracing. It's loving energy around it. And so I know for me, in fact, when I look back, one of the things that I have had difficulty embracing as a thought, as a pattern of thinking, has been this, the fear of the unknown. Like anytime I find myself stressed and just in old patterns of being driven by fear and then of course angry, As a result, it's usually because there's just something unknown that I can't control. This craving for control and to know what I can't— what is unknowable, like what's gonna happen in the next moment is an example. It's really— it's interesting. So to embrace things, including the things that scare the shit out of us, is an interesting concept. Do you do that? Is that part of what your own path has been?

I think that's the game. You know, when you're playing the game of life, you're playing for real. The game is constantly, can I embrace what's happening? It doesn't mean you can't in the next second try and shift it or change it. But can I embrace what's happening? And I don't always. There are some things that I still resist. But I'm getting better. I think I'm getting better and quicker. And my psychiatrist called me counterphobic, which I'd never heard that word until last year. And he said, you know, you kind of— because I lean into anything I'm scared of. We've mentioned truth, daring, and caring. Well, the daring part of it is I don't want to leave anything on the table. When I die, I want to know that I gave it everything. So, you know, I was afraid of abandonment, so I leaned into open relationships to see if I could breathe through that. I'm afraid of heights, so I fly above the Himalayas in a paraglider. Whatever I'm scared of, I try and lean into it because I don't want

Yes. David, I know that you've had some significant changes in your own life. The word we use in the show is pivot. It's a kind of a fun word for, you know, these changes. Take us into that. What was it like for you to make some of those more significant shifts? And were you embracing it at the time? Were you able to breathe, as you said, while it was going on? Or were you holding your breath and— Wow.

The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every single one of our lives. Success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools I

have this idea based on my experience in the last year and a half that taking on something new when the stakes are high is naturally scary. That's part of this human existence. So the pivot that I made, and it wasn't like I woke up and consciously said, Oh, I want to pivot today. This is my new direction and I know exactly how it's going to pan out. That's not how it went. I was in Bali and I was almost retired. Like I had a nice life. I had staff that would wash my scooter and bring me food and it was an amazing life. And then I had visa problems and I had to leave Bali with hours' notice, like same day. And I had a life there. I had everything set up. I had a villa, whatever. Had to leave. And I realized too, I can't always live on savings. I can't do it for the rest of my life. It's going to run out. So I thought, what am I going to do to make money? And the natural response for me is some kind of service. I have to do some kind of service in the world. And a friend of mine said, you've been a coach for 20 years. Why don't you go back to coaching? Because you're really good at it. But I was burned out on coaching because I just was done with that niche. I've been working with coaches for 20 years and helping them build their business. And I just said everything there was to say. For me. So I started thinking, well, who would I love to work with? And that was the pivot for me. And it didn't just come up in a day. It's taken over a year to work out who I want to work with, to create the Play For Real brand, and to get new clients in this niche, and to prove to myself and others that I'm good at that and I'm producing results. And it's been scary. And sometimes it's still scary because I don't know the future. Yeah. And there's always a chance that your pivot is going to bomb. There's usually that chance. If there was no chance it was going to bomb, you may not be picking a big enough path. You'd be bored. So someone said, one of my teachers who's now dead said, without doubt, what you produce would have no value.

Without doubt, what you produce would have no value.

Yeah.

Yes. That edge, that being on your growth edge. In order for it to—

if you know 100% you can do something, you're going to get bored to tears. It'll have no value.

Do you mind sharing the name of your mentor that's passed?

His name is Vic Baronco. And he created an organization called the Morehouse, which was at one time a university. And the guy just knew a lot about how to have a good time in life. That was what he studied. And people came to him and said, what's going on with you? Can you show us What you've learned. And one of the things that he taught, you embodied in the first and modeled in the first few minutes of this podcast, which was appreciation. He said, where there's appreciation, there is growth. And I noticed you enjoying breathing, enjoying being alive. You talked about enjoying the art. So I was— I'm really glad to get to know you in that way, because I want to hang out with people Like you who are grateful for life. You can still add more on. There's always room for that. But yeah, those are a couple of things that he taught. So I've had plenty of doubt in this pivot. And sometimes I'm like, damn, is this gonna work? And then I have other times when I have faith. I'm like, no, this is awesome. And if it doesn't work, I'll pick something else. But definitely that doubt ride.

Yeah, I find myself falling off the faith wagon a lot.

That's a great line. Yeah, right?

Yeah, I think we all do. It doesn't feel good. Every time I sort of get back up and dust myself off, and then I apologize. I sort of make apology for needing proof again. I'm such a needy child. I wish I wasn't. I really do. And I don't want to be.

I'm so glad to hear you say that. I kind of wanted to like, you know, pound. Yeah, pound it is.

Yeah.

A friend of mine said a long time ago, he goes, oh my God, I'm needy. He's like, I'm needy and that's okay. I never heard anyone say that. It's like, I got plenty of needs and I've been trying to hide them because that's not attractive and no one will want to know me. Well, that's not really how it works. You know, you tell people, these are my needs. Can you help me meet them? No? All right. That's fine. I'll just be honest about it. Yeah. It's a whole different ballgame.

Oh, it's a totally different thing. Randi, my wife and I, we've joked about this and then even shared it in the form of retreats and things around the world at times, that relationships in many ways are challenged because people have expectations. And I remember coming home one day and it was one of those moments where I walked in the house and I said to Randi, I got it. I got it. I got it. She goes, uh. She probably ignored me for the first 5 minutes, but then I kept pestering her. I said, no, no. There's something I want to share with you. Okay. So she stopped doing what she was doing. What is it? And I said, yeah, you know, for the relationship program we're developing, I really believe that the root of the problem for people is that they have expectations of each other. That's the problem. They have expectations. And in classic Randy form, she looked at me and said something like, you're an idiot. What do you mean? You can't not have expectations. Like, what are you talking about? All right, all right, all right. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I went off, you know, like with my tail between my legs and I went off back to wherever my thinking seat was. And a couple of days later it hit me and I went back to her and I said, ah, no, no, no. Now it's finally distilled. I got— I was too enthusiastic. I was overzealous. So it wasn't quite cooked yet, but here's the deal. And she says, all right, I'm waiting now. This better be good. I said, it's not expectations that's the issue. It's unstated expectations that's the issue. And she did what you just did and nodded. And I said, okay. So that's where I think we meet people too in this area of when you don't share what it is that you want or your needs as we were just discussing them, you keep those things to yourself. They're your dirty little secrets, like that you need something, whatever that something is, whether it's in bed or it's by way of any other thing, then you're setting yourself up and that partner for failure. And I think that's one of those frustrating things in life, that people aren't getting what they want or aren't getting their needs met because they're not actually stating outwardly.

Agreed. Which to me is part of truth, is realizing your own truth and then sharing it. I caught myself, I only realized it today. I had a call with a colleague a couple of days ago and found out a bunch about what was going on in her world. And then she said, so what's happening for you? And then I said a couple of lines and then we went straight back onto talking about her. And I realized I didn't speak what was happening for me is that I would have liked her to ask me some more questions about it and have some curiosity. Hmm. Whether she did or not, I could at least share, hey, I'm noticing I have a desire for this. I didn't do that. So I'm kind of setting her up. I'm complicit. I'm complicit in her failing to meet my needs.

Hmm. Could you repeat that? I really want people to hear that one again.

I'm complicit in her failing to meet my needs.

Yeah. Think about that. Wow. How beautiful. Yeah. You're perpetrating. You're a perpetrator. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Which is what I, and I assume, I'm just guessing that you espouse and teach is personal Responsibility. For me, not because it's right or moral, just because it seems to work better. So if I can take responsibility for the fact that she didn't do what I want, I've got more access to it and I'm not pissed anymore. It's like, oh, I could have done a little education there and it might have been an amazing moment. So there's a good chance when I see her that I will bring this up to see what's possible.

Hmm.

Can I touch too on what you said? I love what you said about I fell off the faith wagon. And what I want for our listeners is not that you stay on the faith wagon all the time, because that's not going to happen. You will doubt your own production. And that's fine. What I want is perhaps we can bring those 2 concepts we mentioned together, the doubt and appreciation. Can we appreciate falling off the faith wagon and just acknowledge that's part of the game? That's part of how it works. I'm going to doubt myself. I'm going to talk to some friends. I'm going to talk to my coach. I'm going to dust myself off. I'm going to get back in the game so I can have the big wins or I can have something else that's coming. But can we appreciate that and not kick ourselves for like, oh, I fell off the faith wagon. You got to have faith. You got to have faith. You got to— no, a little bit of gentleness.

Be gentle with yourself. That's a wonderful takeaway from that for me. I want to just tie up a Close a couple of loops. You mentioned a book called The Ender's Game, and I'm not familiar with that game. Who's the author of that book?

Ender's Game, I am gonna look it up now. I think it's Orson Scott Card.

Thank you.

Yeah, well— Ender's Game was a big, big movie recently with Harrison Ford in it. And I'm a sci-fi fan, and the book just blew me away. And then, as I said, The Speaker for the Dead, when that came through, I was like, oh,

wow. Way cool. And then Byron Katie is— she's a member of this TLC group, the Transformational Leadership Council, which is a group—

She is?

I believe so. I believe she's a member.

I would be so surprised if that's true and excited.

Yeah. So, well, I'll check on that too. But you and I are both members of this wonderful organization that was—

I know that's true.

By Jack Canfield.

She's not listed.

She's not listed? I thought Byron Katie was a member. Maybe she spoke there or something and that's where I saw her name.

That would be awesome. I think I tried to make that happen. I just see her like, kind of like an Eckhart Tolle. Like, she's just, I see her as like so far up there. I can't see why she'd want to come and really be relational with people. I don't know that, I spent a bit of time with her. I don't know that that's really her thing. But I would make my life if she came to hang out.

Yeah. You know, there's some people that come and go in that organization. From time to time, you just see them there, like a Lynne Twist, for example. She's not there.

Marianne Williamson.

Marianne Williamson, exactly.

John Demartini. I've seen some people come and

Yeah, and that's where, for people that— little trivia here, but the Transformational Leadership Council is where they filmed The Secret. So Rhonda Byrne's ridiculously successful video and later book, or book then the video, was filmed at a TLC retreat. So one of those little things where all those folks were at the time. What's a great Byron Katie book that you could recommend to our folks?

I think her first one is good, Loving What Is. That's a nice introduction. For me, that didn't do it for me. Like, I read it, but it didn't change my life. I didn't— oh, interesting ritual. I didn't get a ritual out of it. It wasn't until I hired a coach, and the coach would go through the work with me, and that started the shift. And then I went to the 9-day school for the work. Wow!

Hmm.

It was like I was high. It was such a state of consciousness shift being in that environment, and I really did change my life doing that. And then I went and did a month with her at Turnaround House, and now it is a habit. If I'm in pain and I identify the thought, I'll just run it through in my head. So that's a ritual that I use. But Loving What Is is a good intro, and there are plenty of videos online where you can watch her do the work with somebody.

Beautiful. Yeah. There's different mentors for us at different seasons. I've actually gotten into this in the last sort of almost 3 years now that I sort of quietly started taking on some private mentorship clients as we were shifting and pivoting in our business. And so I do quite a bit more public speaking and we lead public speaking workshops actually out of our home, which is a joy for us. But I also started to do some more one-on-one work with folks, which has been so much fun and something that, as you were saying, at different seasons in our lives, we just When somebody can help to move us or help us to find our own movement, we develop new rituals, things change and shift. So you've sort of led me into the place I wanted us to land, which is on that topic of rituals anyway. And you shared already a couple of what you do to deconstruct a thought. Are there other rituals that you have that you do sort of each day even that set you up for success?

Yeah. I have one that you might call a ritual. And I want to let you know in 8 minutes, I have to go. I have a coaching call. At the top of the hour. Will that work?

Oh yeah, we're wrapping up now. So this is perfect. Couldn't get better timing, David, if you tried.

Yeah. So there's the Byron Katie process I found is really wonderful for peace. And I'm exercising almost every day. And that's a self-care. I would call that a ritual. I do it ritualistically. I get out there and I do it even when I don't feel like doing it as a self-care thing. And then something I've been doing in the last couple of months, which is— I love it, particularly someone who works alone and works from home— is I've pulled together a pod of people and we check in at the top of every hour for 3 or 4 minutes. So it's amazing. We'll get in and I'll say, all right, last hour, next hour. And people give a couple of sentences about what they did and what they're going to do. We go through that, then we get back to work. I set a timer for 25 minutes. I'll take a few minutes break after that, then I do another 25 minutes and I am so focused on what I'm doing because I know I told people what I'm going to do and I want to be able to report that I actually did it. And if I don't do it, at least my awareness has increased tenfold. I'm seeing where I'm getting distracted and that I'm actually not doing something. There's attention on it. So I'm a massive fan of regular check-ins.

Yeah. In order to be productive, I mean, productive is a word that's got a lot of charge for me at the moment, just because I see productivity as a word that means in the corporate space, driving people harder, getting more done with less and getting more out of folks. And yet the word itself is not a bad word and I'm not assigning any sort of bad meaning to it, but just that We are, as a society, I think, as a global community, more and more exhausted and have to create more rituals around recovery and what it takes to be more resilient. But the recovery piece is a big deal. And that's— a large part of that is self-care, how it is that we recover. So to have a ritual where 50 minutes is devoted to sort of this more focused activity and 10 minutes is centered around either feedback or Some other kind of renewal is fantastic. We actually have a kind of a 40/20 rule on our side, but I think that's a really cool thing that you've got this little pod, you check in with each other at the top of the hour and check things out. How many people are in that group?

I think I have a thread on Facebook with maybe 6 or 7, and in any given day, it's usually just 2 or 3, maybe 4 who show up for the check-ins. We just commit to what hours we're going to do. All right, I'm going to do 10 until 4 today. And if no one shows up, I still get value because I show up, I get in the Zoom room, and I speak out loud. I say, all right, This is what I did in the last hour. This is what I'm doing in the next hour. So you can even do it alone, but it's nice to have other people to do it. I got the idea from Stephen Robbins, who is called the Get It Done Guy. And he has a program that you can sign up for and do it. And you go over like 2 months or 3 months and you'll do these regular days. Plus he's got some other tools. I've just taken on this key part of it for me.

And you've seen that your focus has increased and the accountability that you have is also ramped up?

I think everybody should go through this process because I had no idea how scattered I was. When I say I'm going to do this and then the whole hour goes by and I did 5 other things, I didn't know that my mind was like a monkey on crack.

Yeah.

So this has been really valuable for me to see if what I say matches what I do and then bring them into alignment.

Yeah. I

think there's huge value in that.

Great tool. So first of all, David, I'm going to wrap things up, say a couple of things and thank you again. But just right now, thank you so much for your time and for the insights that you've shared with this community. Really appreciate you.

You're welcome. And may I make an offer to the community?

Well, you know, what's great about the way we have this set up actually is that our show notes have all of the URLs and things of that sort. So it's Really terrific.

Perfect.

The one thing I will share as we depart is, again, when it comes to these rituals for creating self-care, for being more resilient, being able to just utilize what is, all of these things, I think it's really fundamental that we are committed to something like what you described, just some new practice, especially when we know that we're kind of in our own way. So our community is called Start My Pivot on Facebook. Most of the folks who are listening to this know that already. So feel free to go to startmypivot.com/resilience. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com/book. And not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. And what's there for you is our Resilience Regeneration Toolkit. So it's something we've been working on for many months. It sort of started out as a little project where it was going to be kind of a kickstart guide or something, and then it morphed into what is almost like a treatise on How it is that we can recover mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually during the day to get recharged, recover, and become more resilient. And a big component of that is what you said, David. It's really centered around self-care, rituals for self-care. So I thank you so much for teeing that up. Love this episode. And regardless of folks that are listening to this, however you felt about it, we love your feedback. Love it if you love it, but your truthful feedback is really what's so valuable to us. At adamarkel.com/podcast, you can leave a comment. We'll reply. More likely than not, it's me replying to that. I love doing that and I appreciate the honesty. So please leave your feedback there. And lastly, as we started with our own appreciation for this present moment, I'm reminded of what a blessing it was that I got to wake up today and blessing that, David, that you got to wake up today as well. And for everybody, wherever you are right now, I don't need to know you by name in this moment to know that it's a blessing that you woke up and I hope that you feel that way as well and that you're willing to set the intention as you're listening to this right now that you wake up again tomorrow. I know I'm gonna put my hand here on my heart and set that intention because there's no guarantee that any of us do get to wake up again. And in fact, tomorrow as you're taking that first waking breath as I know you will, I'm confident you will, I have faith that you will. That in that moment that you're taking that breath, that you can be aware that people are taking their final breath. Babies are also being born and they're taking their first breath of life. So something really sacred and even holy about that moment. You can take 10 seconds. This is the ritual, if you will, that I'd love to encourage you and will encourage you to take on, which is to take 10 seconds, just 10 seconds, to put your feet on the floor tomorrow and feel gratitude and appreciation as you take that breath. Appreciation for yourself and for every other divine being in our glorious universe. And if you're inclined to even declare these words out loud, they changed my life. I've gotten to share them all over the world, and maybe they'll offer you something as well. I love my life. Those are the 4 simple words. I love my life. I love my life. David, do you love your life?

In this moment, I do.

Beautiful. Ciao for now, everybody. Full show notes will be available to you. You can find out more about David, his work, his coaching, and ways in which you can In fact, I already know we're going to have a special gift for you waiting there. So, please go ahead and check that out and subscribe, and we'll see you soon. Ciao for now.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.