#144: Living Courageous Living With Ken Foster

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'm sitting here right after the holidays. I know it's always kind of funny when these shows get produced, sometimes they're a little bit delayed. So it's just after New Year's and starting the year 2020 is pretty trippy. I'm not going to I'm not going to sort of advertise my age. I'm 54. I'm going to be 55 on my next birthday. So just the idea of it being 2020 from the standpoint of somebody that grew up for the most part in the '80s, I mean, I have a lot of awareness of things that were going on in the mid to late '70s, kind of from a little bit of Watergate and moving into what was a pretty tough time in the world in the late '70s. but as a kid didn't really impact me so much to mostly experiencing life in the '80s, seeing the wall come down in East Berlin and a lot of changes and the book 1984 being a kind of a seminal warning, I guess, of what things could look like in our world if Big Brother were more prevalent. So here we are, it's 2020. And I have, grown kids and all that kind of thing as many of us do and just feeling grateful to have made it this far. I'm grateful on a ritual basis pretty much all the time and I say pretty much because of course just like all of you, I have my moments when I wake up in the morning and just feel like shit or not feeling myself or feeling even depressed for no apparent reason and it's always a healthy reminder that to have this day is a blessing and it wasn't guaranteed last night when I went to sleep and I feel great today. It's a beautiful sunny day in San Diego. I feel great. Incredibly alive. I feel great that I've got an incredible guest on the show today, somebody who is a visionary. I'm going to read a little bit of his bio. We're going to dig into his scary pivot stories in life, and we're going to learn a lot from him. So, I'm excited about that. I feel blessed for that. I feel grateful. I hope you do feel grateful in this moment for something, for anything. It doesn't matter what, but it really, really is impossible to feel gratitude and anxiety at the same moment. It's impossible to feel fear and gratitude at the same moment. And that's just as close to an antidote or a quick fix as I've ever found. And it really does, in fact, work miracles. So here's to the miracles and here's to the beautiful start of a new decade, brand new decade, 2020. Ken Foster is my guest today. He is a visionary business strategist, radio show host of Voices of Courage, which is syndicated in over 100 countries. Ken fosters courageous living around the world with his Courage Clubs designed to generate a million acts of courage and inspire courageous living to change the world for the better. I would say we certainly need— want that these days. From his starting point as a gas station attendant fighting his way out of a dysfunctional childhood, To his rise in starting and running a multimillion-dollar financial services business, Ken has experienced a transformation and courageous living firsthand. Ken resides, like I do, in Southern California with his wife of 20 years, and we have that in common. He practices the discipline of a balanced life through meditation, yoga, healthy eating, and daily personal improvement. Ken. 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. What a pleasure to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Hey, Adam, it's great to be here. It's good to be alive. It's like you said, 2020, new things are happening and I don't know about you, but I'm dreaming a new dream. I think you are too. We're dreaming new dreams for 2020. And, you know, I'm starting with the end in mind. I'm thinking, wow, at the end of 2020, what do I want to be in awe about? What do I want to wonder now to take me on that ride? Because, of course, as you know, the present moment— actually, the future creates our present moment. So if we're really visualizing that future, We start to take those present moment actions. That's what I've been thinking about. You know, I've been thinking about that a lot in the last few days, contemplating what's next, right? What's next? And there's certain dreams I dreamed last year that didn't happen.

Yeah.

There's other dreams I brought in that were like nightmares. It's like, it ain't my dream. I'll bring it back in.

Just dive right in, Ken. Absolutely. Yes.

I'm not bringing that dream into this dream.

Oh my, oh my, my.

Yeah. You know, I've been thinking about it, thinking about what I have to let go of, what kind of thinking do I need to embrace, and you know, what people do I want to have in my life in 2020. And those relationships that I have right now that just aren't working anymore, you know, they're great relationships when we started out. Sometimes, you know, I have to let them go, and it's I used to get upset losing a pencil, yet alone losing a relationship. But today, it's just a matter of, well, we've grown through this. It's time to move on. Sometimes it is.

Yeah. I want to ask you a question about something that— I mean, look, you and I have both been around the block once or twice. I mean, this is not our first rodeo in business and certainly not in talking about our own personal paths Both the paths that have led to great things we'd be happy to share with people and the paths that I think we often share that we wouldn't have shared maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago because it wasn't as safe or I'll just speak for myself, I wouldn't have appreciated the value in being so transparent and vulnerable, I guess, and risking the shame of admitting the mistakes and admitting the errors in judgment or even Admitting the loss, as you referred to. I mean, there's nothing worse than the loss of a relationship. I mean, even health can be looked at as on some level a relationship between ourselves and our body. And so the betrayal, you know, when there's a betrayal of our bodies, there's just like a relationship. It's something to examine. And sometimes, as you say, there's things we have to let go of, and then there are times when we sort of make a stand. I'm curious, at the end of this decade, so coming to the end of 2019, it was mid-month, around the middle of the month, my daughter, our oldest daughter Chelsea, called me up and said, hey, Dad, tonight's the last full moon of the month. It'll be a great time. If there's things you want to release, things you want to invite in, this is a great opportunity to do that. And I spent a good half hour writing down some things I wanted to let go of and release. Things I'd even actually thought I'd let go of before. I'm pretty sure I had, but still there was sort of a residue of some resentment or some angst about something. And so it gave me a fresh opportunity to let go of some things and also to invite some things in. Did you take any opportunity or spend time, let's say, at the end of last year, either doing something like that or creating a vision board or any kind of—

Every year for the last, since 1992, I have done that release work and I used to do it once a quarter. I do it now usually once or twice a year, but always at the end of the year. In fact, I wrote a book. It's called Release, Renew, Evolve. And in that book, it's just— I've become an expert at asking the right questions. And that probably came from my father was a Los Angeles police detective for 48 years. So he was very good at interrogating and asking questions. And so I picked that up. And I like to ask questions that take us into the subconscious mind so that we can pull out those things that are running our lives, but we're not really aware of it. So the book that I do, and I do the work every year, it's asked people to inventory their mind, to take a peek and look at any kind of regrets or Any kind of places we felt that we were disempowered or we hurt others or hurt ourselves or any kind of shame or blame or guilt or any kind of failures that we perceived that we didn't accomplish what we wanted. And I think it's so important, Adam, to do that. And I'm glad you're doing it. I know for me, I don't want to bring any of that stuff into the new year. And it's a conscious choice. It's a conscious choice to grow. It's a conscious choice to let go. So I do that every year. And then the next part is, it's like, you know, the glass is all filled up. You pour the water out. Now it's empty. Now what's next? And that's really the most important.

That's an invitation. Yeah.

It's an invitation. It's an invitation to re-dream your life. Because this is a dream. You're either living nightmares or you're living nightmares and good dreams, or maybe you're just living really cool, cool dreams and you're really going from one dream to the next to the next and you're You're generating what you want in your life, whether it be in business, relationship, career, health, vitality, but it all starts with energy.

I was going to say it all starts with those questions. And I'm curious if you don't mind the interruption, just to ask you, what's one of the best questions you've either ever asked yourself? That's kind of historical, or maybe it's one that you ask yourself repeatedly.

I can tell you that what that question is. And it's really the basis of my new book here, The Courage to Change Everything. The question is, if I were courageous, what would I do today? So if I was courageous, what are the 3 steps I might take today? Or if I was courageous, who would I talk to today? Or if I was courageous, what would I invent today? So it always starts with that question, if I was courageous, because I found this, Adam, that courage is the bridge between fear And empowerment. So it's the bridge, right? If you're in fear, you go to courage. If I was courageous, what would I do now? What would I let go of if I was courageous? Who would I talk to if I was courageous? What would I admit to myself if I was courageous?

Yes.

What would I do differently if I was courageous? So it all starts with courage.

Yeah. I mean, I go back to the time when I was moving, pivoting, to quote my book.

Yeah.

Well, it's based on the book Pivot, and that's based on real-life experiences of people who pivoted. Like the guy here sitting that spent 18 years in the practice of law and the work and the job of law, and much of that time feeling like it was the wrong calling. It wasn't my right livelihood, as I think is a really important question itself is, what is my right livelihood? I couldn't answer that question in the affirmative based on what I was doing. I guess, back to my lawyer training, it begs the question, how do you define courage? Because, again, that's profound in the sense of, what would I do if I had the courage? What would I do right now if I just was more courageous?

How do you define courage?

Isn't that

funny you ask me that because a lot of people ask me that and I want to say this. It's like, if I were to ask you, well, can you define fear? Can you define what fear feels like? Can you define what fear does to you? How do you think when you're fearful? We all know it, right? But courage is a lost art. So courage is also a feeling. It's an energy. In the dictionary, it's defined as— it comes from the Latin word cur, which means to speak one's heart. I would plus that it's really to live one's heart.

Hmm.

But it's— what is our heart? Well, our heart is that guiding, intuitive, conscious part of ourselves that's leading us where we need to go. And When you feel courage, let me put it that way. When you feel courageous, think about it. You know, courage, all of a sudden you feel this expanse just by asking that question. If I was courageous, what would I do next? Just by asking that, it invokes courage in our being, in our mind. And we start to feel empowered. We start to feel like, you know, if I was courageous, I could go do this. Now, some people's mind might go a little different. Well, I don't have any courage, but that's not true.

Contemplation is courage as well, right?

I have a practice, Adam, that I do every day. I try to do it in the evening, but sometimes I do it in the morning. And that is I ask myself, what's working? What's not working? What do I need to improve? I do it every day. And sometimes what's not working is a big list.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And sometimes I want to go to, oh God, I'll never get this. But the truth is, it's just for me, it's like daily, one step, Every day, 365 days, I do this every year. I'm looking to improve just one little thing. Some things I do really well by that. Other things, they're chronic challenges I've had. Patience is a good one, right?

I'm finding that challenge myself these days. As you said earlier, there are relationships that sometimes have run their course.

It's hard to let go of those.

It does. It takes a tremendous amount of courage. And when you find, I think there are signs of when asking that question, tough question to ask, has something run its course, meaning it's not in your highest interest, your highest good, you or the other person potentially anymore. When you ask that question, it's a tough one. And I think part of what is a signal or signpost of that is patience. Because to me, Randi and I, my wife and I, we're married 30-plus years. We know each other longer than that from college days. Kindness. When people ask us about relationships, so we do some trainings for folks in the relationship area. We do quite a bit of speaker training, individualized speaker training and things like that. What comes up often, people will say is, well, what has sustained you? What has sustained you in the pivot post-law in the professional speaking world? What has sustained the relationship you've had with your wife so long? This ability to be patient, having patience with the process is something we often will say to folks. You've got to trust the process, be patient. with the process. And then in the relational space, that patience also translates into kindness. So I think it's something to pay attention to when you've lost your patience with something or someone. Not that that's the end of it in the moment. It's not a sort of— I'm not coming at it from an emotional sort of make a decision in an instant standpoint. But right, Ken? I mean, patience is important.

I found, Adam, along that— I want to plus that because what you're saying is very important. The piece that I found is that if it's not working for you, it's not working for the other person. So if we really get that concept and just be with it for a while, it's like, well, you're in a business relationship, let's say, and you're going, wow, this partner, I can't believe they're doing this, this, and this. The truth is it's not working for them either. And so same thing with our relationship. I know when my wife and I are off key, which happens in relationships, and then, boy, lots of times because that's how we grow. It's like, okay, it's not working for me. It's not working for her. Why would we want to keep doing this? Right? Why not figure out how it can work for both people? Or like you said, maybe we have to leave the relationship. Some instances we do, you know, people have grown apart or people just don't share the values together or people are, you know, mentally unstable. There's a whole bunch of reasons, but we have to be able to really understand that if it's not working for us, it's not working for them.

Yeah. You know, I'm finding the theme. It's so interesting. Every morning I start with a statement. Most folks know one of the statements, at least I've said it so many times, I suppose. But it's not that statement that folks are familiar with. It's this new statement that I've added to the other things I'll say. But this one I got from a woman by the name of Judy Whitcraft, where she's this magnificent woman in her late 70s. And every day she wakes up, she says, I wonder what miracles are coming today. And you used that word wonder earlier. This is a wondering, it's a contemplating, it's the idea that there's truly a miracle that's possible in this moment. And what's thematically just feeling like the reason, let's say, you and I came together on this show at this particular time is to have this conversation around what do you have the courage to contemplate from a relationship standpoint at the start of a brand new decade? Meaning contemplate whether, what's working for me? What's not working for me? What could be done differently? No judgment. I mean, it's ironic. We use that exact— Feedback loop is what we call it when we analyze, help speakers analyze their performance or how they've delivered a message or what have you. And we use it intentionally because it's not a judgment thing. It's just, it's a perspective. It's a perception at best. Like you said, if my perception is that this relationship isn't, or a part, some aspect of the relationship isn't working for me, it doesn't make it true. It just is my perception. And as you brought up, it's also likely that it's not working for the other person either. Just energetically, if it's not working for you, how could it be possible? How can it be working for them, right?

It's not. But it's really interesting because I've taught that concept to a lot of business owners who they feel like they can't let go of an employee, but they're just not doing their job and stuff. And I'll tell them, listen, it's not working for them either. They've stopped showing up. They've stopped doing what they want to do. They're probably stuck in a situation and they don't want to be here. But you trying to enable them to stay is really a disservice in many instances, right?

Yeah. What do you think the positive aspects of releasing someone from a relationship are? Because that's tough for a business owner to let go.

It's the old adage, of course, if you release the butterfly, maybe it'll come back. But what you're really releasing, and this is the work I've done in our relationship over the years, sometimes our relationship has gotten to a point where I don't like it anymore. It's just like, it's not working. Okay. And like you said, dispassionately being able to look and say, well, what's my part in this? And how can I recreate that relationship in a way that really works? So I think dispassionately standing back and giving yourself that feedback of asking yourself, okay, well, what's my part in this? How can I change? What can I do energetically to show up differently? With relationship, you know, as you've been married 30 years, it's like a question I ask myself a lot. In fact, almost every day is what can I do to make my wife's life better? So I ask that question, what can I make her life better every day? And that adds up. I'm not perfect. No, I forget. But when things stop working, it's like, okay, how can this get— if we're at a 5 or a 6 in our relationship, what has to happen to take it to a 10?

Yes. What's the missing 4 or 5?

What's the missing link? Right?

Those questions you asked, I think, are very powerful tools. I just want to reflect those back for people to not just take note of, but maybe even write down because what's my part for one thing? What's mine to own, let's say, in any situation where it's not working? And again, we're talking relationship today, which is interesting because it can be relationship again with yourself, first relationship we have, a relationship with your body, with another person, with somebody in business. We both do some consulting in the business space. So, often that's an issue. And that question, what's mine to own, first of all, right? And secondly, what can I do to make it better? 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 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 will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Something I can do to make it better. So if you ask that question routinely, as you said, there's a compounding effect to asking How it is that you not only you show up better, but how you make someone else's life better.

There's another piece to that, Adam. It's what are we projecting? What are we projecting in the relationship? Are we walking in the room projecting joy and happiness? Are we walking in the room excited? Are we walking in the room going with blame or shame or guilt or carrying baggage? How are we? What are we projecting? Right? For me, just that little tweak, when I catch and I become conscious, I go, oh, what is it I want to project to the world today? You know, I want to project happiness or love or bliss or kindness. That's an intentional awareness that I show up and I practice that day. And what happens is everybody changes around me, right? Quick story with that. I had a client come in. She was depressed. She wasn't having a good experience in her life. And I said, well, her husband was not treating her well and her children weren't treating her well and the neighbor wasn't treating her well and the grocery store clerks weren't treating her well. It was all about them. And I said, well, you know, why don't you do this? Why don't you just for the next 7 days, just look at what you love. Just think about what you love for the next 7 days and really write it down, journal about it, project love wherever you go. Just be happy. Fake it till you can make it. Put a smile on your face. You know, she came back that week and she said to me this. She said, Ken, I don't really care for kids much, but I had little children coming up and trying to connect with me at the grocery store.

Yeah.

Right? It's about what are we projecting, Adam, right?

It's so true, Ken. I mean, what we project is what we attract. Yeah. It is another way to look at the That oft-cited law of attraction. I'm curious, have you ever read Emmett Fox? Is that a—

I love Emmett Fox.

Don't you love Emmett Fox, man?

Emmett Fox reminds me of the 7-Day Mental Habit.

No, it's the 7-Day Mental Diet.

Diet. That's right.

And the only reason I'm even correcting you, sir, is because I wrote it down a second ago. So, you and I are very much in sync today and would love for people, if you haven't checked this out, it's a tiny little pamphlet, right? I think it's 16 or 17 pages.

Toughest thing I ever did.

It is the most brutal thing. It's the single most ridiculous diet you'll ever be on.

Ridiculous. Yeah.

Ridiculous.

I will say this, just the audience can get what happened for me. It took me a year to complete his 7-day mental diet. And the day I did, I'd forgotten that it was a year. That day I woke up in the morning and literally it was like taking a dark pair of sunglasses off that I didn't know I had on.

Yeah.

Everything in life for 3 days, it was completely— I guess fluorescent was the only word I could use to describe it. The colors were brighter than I've ever seen. My hearing was more sensitive. My senses were heightened. And by the way, I wasn't taking drugs or doing anything. I was just— it was just awareness and consciousness of what I had been missing my whole life because I had a mindset that was critical thinker. I was a negative thinker. I was a person that really looked at what was wrong with everything. And that's how I was taught. You know, I mean, like I said, my father was LAPD for 48 years, so he had some good qualities. He taught me how to interview and go deep into questioning. But there are some also some other ways of looking at life. And you're always on, you know, from that point of view that I experienced, you're always aware of what's going to go wrong. You have to be aware of what might happen. And I lived that life, but I used that diet to change, and I changed permanently as a result of that. So I'm glad you brought it up.

Oh my God, no, it's like the psychedelics without the psilocybin or something.

It's crazy what we could do with our mind. The mind is the cause of our bondage, and the mind is the cause of our liberation. A great yogi once said that, and I've always remembered that. It's just like, yeah, Everything looks real from the point of view that I'm seeing it, but as soon as I can shift my mind into another state, everything changes.

And it is almost like taking on and off a pair of glasses. I mean, it's a lens. We're not forced— it's not like we're born or even at whatever age we are that someone forces us to wear those glasses, whatever shade they are. We do have that capacity. To me, it's the only true freedom we've got. And so you address the root cause of everything that shows up in our lives at the level that truly is the cause of causes. And this is the— this I haven't yet, and I'm still looking, and maybe, maybe there'll be a deeper level at which something is the catalyst for everything else, but I just haven't found it yet, haven't read it yet, haven't heard anybody talk about anything that goes to a grounding level before that.

Well, I can tell you where I found it. I found it in stillness. I found it being still. I tried to find it reading books. Not it. I tried to find it in doing workshops and doing counseling and therapy and coaching and anything you can imagine. I'm a lifelong learner, so I'm always looking to learn. But I really wanted to feel a sense of fulfillment, a sense of joy, a sense of peace, a sense of happiness. Mm-hmm. All the time, not here and there. I tried doing the here and there thing. I'd buy a new car, I'd be happy for 10 minutes, but it was that place where I had to get still. And 2 people that I know have said this quote. One is Leonardo da Vinci and the other one is Paramahansa Yogananda. They both said, isolation is the price of greatness. And I had to really think about that. What the hell are they talking about? And Einstein said it too. He said, all I want to know are the thoughts of God. The rest are details. Yeah. That's Einstein. I thought, well, these people might know something more than me. So I thought, let me tune in. Let me learn how to be still. And I practice that every day. I knew you were going to ask me that. What are some of the practices you do? I wake up in the morning and I, first of all, at night I set my intention to wake up in the morning joyful and happy and powerful. I wake up in the morning and I tell myself I'm awake and alert. Boom. I give my mind a command. Or some days I wake up and say, I'm going to be a cat. I'm just going to lie in bed, but I'm going to lie in bed with joy. So, but I wake up with alert and alive, alert and awake and alive. And then for me, I like to meditate. I like to meditate and go within at least an hour to 2 hours a day, every day. I've been doing it for many, many years, a couple decades. What I found is everything I was searching for is all inside. It's not anywhere outside. Never, never was outside of me. Never outside of anybody else. It's all inside, but we have to get there. We have to learn how to get there. So, that's been my experience.

Yeah. Making time for stillness is— it's almost like saving. You know, they say if you don't pay yourself first, at the end of the month, there's usually nothing left to pay yourself. It's one of those things. So, you've got to take care of that first. So, making the time for stillness or just being alone. I mean, regardless of whether you're meditating or you're praying, I'm a God guy, so I pray and I love to do that. And only recently, I mean, I kind of called myself out in a public forum some years ago where I said I'm just a crappy meditator. I'm not a crappy meditator anymore. I actually really, I mean, I dig it. It's so— it's not just peaceful, it's like getting some sleep for the parts of my brain that don't always rest even when I'm sleeping. Yeah. And it's kind of a funky thing, but while conscious to be able to actually Rest is a big deal because resilience and creating resilience both physically and mentally, more mentally I think today than anything else, is a big part of how it is that we solve or isolate even just solving problems, but where we get inspired. Like you said at the very beginning, dream a new dream or what's your dream for this new decade? Maybe the thing that if you've overlooked doing this is to take some time to be alone.

Just to be alone?

Just to get quiet, get out of the noise, and that means your cell phone and all the noise around and maybe do find something where, as Einstein said, the, uh, you know, all the rest become details. We've got a little time here. Did you get driven into stillness? Sometimes I think for a lot of folks, and this has been the case for me too, it's sort of getting driven to your knees from some life event where it causes you to do something different, to pivot.

Yeah, absolutely.

What's—

1992, I was living in Sacramento. And I had divorced my wife. I was working in a job that was making a bunch of money, spending every dime I had, surrounded myself by individuals that what I call lower companions. My health, I was 50 pounds overweight. I hadn't exercised in years and had collected junk everywhere. I had clutter everywhere. Just, I was afraid to let go of anything. And I was seeing a therapist, and I started hearing this little voice. And this voice said, you've got to feel the pain to make the change. So I walked to the therapist that day, and I walked in. I said, you know, Doc, we've been seeing each other a year, as I mentioned. I said, I've been hearing this little voice, and it says you've got to feel the pain to make the change. And the doctor looked at me. He had steel blue eyes and silver hair sitting in his chair. He looked like Probably Carl Jung. And he says, I can't do anything more for you, Ken. You need to follow that voice. Thank you so much for being here with me today. And as I closed the door and walked out of the office down the street, I was thinking, man, is this guy crazy? Or am I crazy? What's going on? I came here because I'm hearing voices. They aren't good voices. And, you know, but that was the voice that walked me in about 3 days later into a recovery center. So that I could start recovering from the addiction I had to alcohol at the time and drugs. And I was able to find myself again. So it was hard. It wasn't something that I wanted to do. It's not something I talk about, but it's something that I needed to do.

Yeah.

And I needed to get real and I needed to get vulnerable and I needed to have the courage to do what I didn't want to do. I tried it many times. I tried quitting on my own. I tried doing everything on my own. And what happened is that my greatest thinking got me right where I was, which was in a place of destitution and desperation. So I know better. In fact, you know, let me tell you one thing. I asked a lady that owns a homeless center down here in San Diego. She helps people so that they don't go homeless. I said, what's the number one reason of homelessness? And she said, oh, most people think it's drugs and alcohol. She says, but it's not. I said, well, what is it? She said, they've given up all of their connections. They have no connections with a spiritual path. They have no friends. They have no home. They have no social connections. They've tried to do life all alone on their own terms.

It's like being on an island.

Like being on an island. That's the— so listen, man.

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 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.

A lot of us, you know, we could get to places and our mind's very tricky and box us in. Get us to places where we think we're okay. But if you just look at the results, that's all you got to do. How am I doing in my relationships? How's my health? How's my fitness? How's my finances? How's my spiritual life? We just look at the results and we're honest with ourselves, we can change anything.

There's that slogan Nike has, just do it. And when you were saying earlier, even I was thinking about, you know, this it, the thing that you don't want to do or the thing you have to do or forced to do. or have the courage ultimately to do. I think it'd be cool, Ken, someday, and maybe in a parallel life or universe, you and I will create it therapy, IT. It

therapy.

It therapy. What's that it? The it factor is a big deal. And I've really, I've so enjoyed this conversation. My last question for you really has to do with your rituals for resilience because having come through your own Making it as far as you've made it, and this is not judging the results, it's more like we've all lived a life filled with things that we are proud of and filled with things that we're not proud of. And it's a good, bad, ugly. I mean, I haven't met anybody yet that that's not the case, regardless of position, power, money, or anything. But we're here, just like we started the show with, we're here. So we get to start this new decade. We start this new day. It's a blessing. It's a gift. I believe it's for a reason as well. And I attribute a lot of the reason why I'm here and others to this word resilience. What can you tell me about resilience and share with our folks maybe even a ritual that you've got that has kept you or created resilience for yourself?

I gave you a couple of them. First one is how I wake up in the morning. That's a habit I've— success habit that I've gotten into, same thing as meditation. The other thing that I do is Make time for myself. I make time to be alone. I make time for planning in my day. I have spaces in my day, and those spaces are for a reason. See, when I was— 1992, when I just told you that story, what the truth was is I'd forgotten who I was. I didn't have a clue who I was at that time. I didn't realize that I was an infinite being, that I was powerful beyond measure, That I could overcome any obstacle, that I could manifest a life of joy and happiness and bliss. And it doesn't mean there's not crap along the way, but I could overcome anything. I could become fearless. I could become courageous. I could step into parts of myself that I just, they're either atrophied or pretty much nonexistent. So I didn't realize who I was. And I didn't realize from a non-ego point of view, just a place of being the observer of my life and being the chooser of which direction I could go, that by allowing myself that distance between my thoughts, that distance between my physicality, the distance between my environment, I could be in choice and I could do things differently. So every day I take time in the day to read something empowering like this book that I created that has daily It actually has daily astute wisdom that I've studied from the East and also cutting-edge strategies from the West that I read every day. I journal every day.

I

exercise every day. And I project joy every time I think about it.

It's a great distinction, I think, between rituals and habits. Habits are things we are already doing unconsciously, like the way we brush our teeth or how we drive home or where we sit at the dinner table and things like that. Whereas rituals are things when we know, as you said earlier, that maybe not everything's working exactly how we'd like. And I don't know anybody, again, haven't met anybody yet that would say everything's working exactly how I like. I don't

know any of those people either.

We've all got those improvements to make. And I think that what's great is that when we consciously choose to change something to create some new result, we can ritualize it. I sometimes say we ritualize to habitualize it. And reading is a big part of that. So a part of our show notes, everybody, as you know, in the show notes that accompany the podcast, you'll have access to information about Ken's book and Ken's work and links to find out more, etc. So I will leave everybody not just today, but as we enter into or have entered into this new decade, this will be the first time I'm sort of officially reminding myself and everybody else that's listening at this time what that is, and that is that we have a profound choice to make every single day. Every day we get this choice what lens we're gonna put on, the glasses we wear for the day, at the very instant that we wake up, the instant that we become conscious of the fact that we are actually breathing and it's a brand new day. There's no guarantee, of course, like, you know, when you went to sleep last night, you set an intention. I do the same thing. I set an intention I got from an old book called the— oh, it's an Augmentino book, The Greatest Salesman in the World. And there's a tenet in the book that says, I will greet this day with love in my heart. That's an intention at night before I go to bed. I greet this day, I greet the new day with love in my heart. So even at the making of that intention, there's no guarantee we're going to wake up the next day, right? I mean, Ken, you got to wake up today, right? Bonus!

Bonus day! That's what counts. So I'm in the moment.

Yes. So 3 parts of this ritual for everybody. You wake up. That's the first piece of it. And in the moment that you're actually taking that first breath, the first aware, awake, conscious breath, recognize the fact that there are people in that very moment, that same exact moment, who are taking their last breath. And that makes that moment sacred. It's special. That's the first thing, just to be aware of the reality. That's very pragmatic. It's realistic. It's a fact. And at that same moment where you've got that realism right in your face, it's also just as evident that that means you can be grateful, grateful for your life. And the way that I express my gratitude for being alive is by saying these 4 words that are the title of the TED Talk I gave, and it's the message I share as often as I can with as many people. And that is, I love my life. I love my life. What are the words, Ken?

I love my life,

comma.

I love my no

matter what. No matter what. Yeah. It's been a pleasure, Ken. Thanks for being on the show today.

Adam, thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.

Awesome. Way cool. Ciao for now, everybody. We'll see you in the on the flip side.

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