#151: Unleashing Your Greatness With Jonathan Mitchell

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, so thank you so much. I'm a fan.

No, wonderful. Wonderful. What's not written in that brief bio that I just read in your introduction? What's something that you'd love for people to know about you?

Oh gosh, of all the many things. I grew up in Idaho. I was in the middle of 4 girls and I've seen every chick flick that's ever been created. Not by choice. I got outvoted. So, you know, yeah, it's good.

Wait a minute. How many sisters?

4. I'm in the middle of 4. My saving grace— my dad owns a tire mechanic shop up in Idaho Falls. My saving grace was him taking me to work when I was a kid to help me not be so— not that there's anything wrong with being feminine, but he's just like, my guy's gonna be a guy, so I'm gonna take him to

the shop, man. He's just—

That's right.

That's so funny. I'm just getting new perspectives here because we have 4 kids and 3 are the most And our son, who's awesome, to be the little prince in the midst of all these princesses was interesting for him too. They would dress him up and do all kinds of things to that poor kid. But I'm just having a little internal laugh about that right now. So—

Is he the oldest, youngest?

No, no, he's the third of 4. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear. 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 resilient 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. So— oh,

that poor guy. Tell him I feel for him.

Yeah. Well, he's also had a great education. Actually, think about it. He knows more about women, girls and women I'd say, with 3 sisters and a mom, than certainly than I knew or had experience with growing up with just myself and brother. And I think he has a sensitivity that's quite a bit different, which is actually something really beneficial for him as a man in the world. And he's got a steady girlfriend, a great relationship. I think in part that's a credit to the fact that he understands that gender better than a lot of— Young men his age, certainly. So, that's a really good thing. I'm sure that's paid dividends for you as well. Jonathan, I want to talk about the pivot that preceded what you're currently doing because I know you had a change of career. And as you and I were chatting a little bit before we turned on the microphones, that pivot was one, as I was saying in the intro, that was more— it was not by choice, let's say. Sometimes pivots that happen to us are kind of by default because something happens we're not planning for, we don't expect. And sometimes we design them, but this was not the designed version, was it?

No, no, it wasn't.

Why don't you take us back? I'd like to get into the belly of the beast because—

Sure.

There are a lot of people I think who are going to be able to relate to the thing that happened. As open, honest, vulnerable as you feel like being about this. But, uh, in any event, let's go back in time. Where are we? When is it?

Back in time?

Yep.

I neglected to tell you this has actually happened twice. So first time was 10 years ago. I was in a sales job. And the company made some leadership mistakes that caused the sales team to get laid off, and I was one of them. And at that time, I was kind of not embittered, but just kind of like, heck with this, I'm going to control my own destiny. And then I went into music and did music full-time. I did that for 4 or 5 years. Then I got married and my wife was like, I love you do music, super supportive of me doing music, but she needed to have a constant income because music was up and down and not very consistent. So I went into the business world again, but back into sales. And the time that I told you about was the first job I got. I was there for a year and a half. Almost the exact same happened where they redesigned the sales team, and I had a choice of either moving to Toronto or staying in Salt Lake and getting laid off and severance and all that other stuff. And so my option at the time was having to stay, which at the time was really hard because I was still in this place of trying to be— not that my wife and I don't know each other, but I wanted to be that person who supported the family and take care of things and be the man because that's what I grew up with wanting to. I wanted to be that. And after that happened, it really took a hit on my value as a guy, as a man. Took a hit on what I felt like my wife was feeling and thinking about me that she wasn't willing to tell me because

I

know she didn't want to hurt my feelings. And just my own value as far as my skill set and If I had something to give to the world, because this is the second time it happened. And so being that way, I was just like, okay, first off, this keeps happening in sales. I love sales, by the way. Like, I have a great time with it, but it's just parts that I was just like, I need to do something more than this, and went into the more of the training world, both of like leadership development and sales training. I still do sales training because I love it, but that shift happened because it really came down to saying What do I actually like and love that I feel like I'm good at? And what do I think is going to be around that I cannot be— have this happen again and grow into? And so doing a lot of studying and stuff, the learning and development came up as something that I, that I love. I've been a life coach for years and years, and I thought, what is the life coach version in the corporate world? And it's learning and development. Yes. It's training. So using that background, I went into a role where I was doing that full-time, and ever since then, and then now doing my MBA focusing on leadership development and training. I'm in a spot now currently where rewind to 2 years ago, I never thought I'd be in a place where I now have 10 direct reports, over 150 retail stores internationally reporting to me that I never saw coming 2 years ago. I'm happy to get as vulnerable and raw as you want because I had a lot of feelings happen when it happened. So—

It's interesting, right? Because I don't think we could have planned this. So this is a wonderful Synchronicity, I'll call it. But you grew up with 4 sisters and your dad obviously had a business, right? So he was running a business. Nobody gave him a pink slip. By the way, I've never seen a pink slip, so I don't even— I don't know where that term once upon a time originated. Somewhere along the lines, people got fired with a pink slip, I guess. But in any event, the axe didn't fall on him. He was an entrepreneur. He had his own challenges like we all know business owners have. So that was your model. And he took care of things, right?

Yeah.

Financially, etc. So this was the sort of the way the bar was set for you. And I think as men, this is not a conversation we have a lot, but we're sort of genetically programmed. I mean, and if not through our literal gene pool, it's certainly out there in the things we see when we're growing up that one of the roles of a man is to provide and to protect The family, protect and provide, right? Yeah, I mean, when something like that happens, it's like an assault on your— the gut, right? I mean, you call it lots of things— worthiness, your self-esteem, your confidence. What was going on for you? I mean, again, I appreciate you going into this because it's not something we talk about all the time. And I think for the women and the men who are listening to this right now, it's important to know that this shit happens. I mean, I got fired. I got fired from a job. It was the only Well, I've had a couple of jobs. One, I remember my very first job out of college, I was working for a publishing house. It turned out ironically that this publishing house, big publishing house, I'm not going to name them out loud right now, but I really just hated my boss. I mean, she just was like all over me and I was probably terrible at my job. I mean, in hindsight, I probably wasn't really prepared for this to be the assistant to somebody in the role that she was in. Nonetheless, I ended up just— it was so awful and I quit. So, I left. So, that was the first sort of little attempt at being in the business world and that was a failure. I didn't plan on leaving 6 months into my first job out of college and that was a good excuse for me to just go back to the beach and be a lifeguard and a waiter and a number of other odd jobs along the way. Yeah. But then, after becoming a lawyer and starting my own law firm and having a lot of success for 18 years in that role, I pivoted out of practicing law because it was killing me in a different way and knew I had a bigger— similar to you, this is like a larger calling. There's something more that I could be doing with myself. So, I really take a chance at leaving a very steady career, business, income, etc., and I go to lead another organization in a more traditional role in the personal development space and then I don't know, 6 years into that experience, the stakeholders in that business look at me and they say, no, no longer a fit. You know, you're out of here. Wow.

I

get the axe then. And one of the hardest things about those experiences and was for me, you know, what does this say about me? What does it say about me personally and what do I do with it? What do we do with the feedback? Because that's what it is, right? We're getting a certain feedback from the universe. Don't plan on, don't necessarily want even. And what do you do with that? So, take us into that spot. What was going on for you if you can recall?

Oh.

Yeah, that's the first reaction, right?

Yeah. Yes, it's— I mean, it's heavy. So, I mean, I'll just go there and just fill it out for you because I don't mind going there. I think it's important to know. Like you, I don't know if we as men talk about it enough and we're open about it because it's not a topic that's pleasant or fun. I think for me, because it was the second time it happened, and the first time it really kind of took me back and pissed me off, honestly. And this next time I wasn't so angry. It was more of like disappointed in myself that I wasn't like a doctor or a CEO, or like there's something wrong with me internally that I'm not in a place where that could actually happen. That's where I went. And so it's just, I started for a little while, I kind of focused on the wrong thing, saying there's so many things wrong about me. And I have these Mental lists of like, there's this wrong. And going through life coach training for so long, trying to be real and authentic with yourself and understanding your weaknesses, I think is important. For me personally, it's really easy for me to get stuck there and to focus on that until I started saying, okay, I'm gonna step outside myself for a second and I'm gonna talk to myself as if I was coaching myself. What's the stuff that I think is good? What's the stuff that comes naturally to me that other people are like, how do you do that? I'm like, I just do it. Because for me internally, I didn't value what I was good at as much as I found out later that other people value. So once I found that value that naturally came to me, then I could jump out of it. But it took me time. Like, it wasn't an easy process to discover my own value, especially in a place where I felt like I was valueless.

So, or where somebody's sort of telling you that.

Yeah.

Yeah. You're not valuable enough to continue paying you.

Yeah, like my dad, my parents, my family, my wife, everyone's like super supportive. No one externally was saying you suck, but like you said, when you get laid off and it's the second time it's happening, you think to yourself, okay, maybe something out there is trying to tell me that I'm maybe not as good as I thought I was. And I think there's a healthy balance between looking at the things you need to work on, but I've much— I've steered away from that to go to strengths. So I'm not ignoring my weaknesses, but I really want to focus on my strengths and Kind of like Gary Vaynerchuk. I love that guy because he talks about double down on your strengths instead of focusing on all the weak spots. So I kind of came to that place myself where I had to really be in a place where I was allowing someone else to tell me what I was good at because I wouldn't before. I was so stuck in this I suck mode,

right? Yes.

So I had to be open to the fact that someone was actually being honest about what I was good at, not trying to be just nice to me. So I had to let my ego go and just kind of Be open for that. And then being willing to try something not necessarily new, but in a different way, because I never thought I'd be a training person in corporate environment. I never thought that. But once I stepped into it, like, this is awesome. This is perfect. Yeah.

Isn't that interesting also? So when the benefit of hindsight is always a great thing, because it's easy to look back down the staircase and see that even though we were, we were sort of blind as we were walking or making, groping our way To— through things in our lives to get to where we are currently. And then we look backwards, all those stairs were— even in the midst of the dark, they were all just perfectly sequenced. Everything was aligned in the perfect order to lead us exactly to where we're standing right now. Any given point, maybe earlier on in the process and even midway through and even sometimes right before, you know, before something breaks. Favor. If you're asked, how are things going? Or do you feel like things have been in your favor, that these things that have You know, seemed as obstacles or seemed to have blindsided you, were these things actually working to your benefit? We'd probably have said no.

No.

We'd just been like, honestly go, yeah, that whole adage about, you know, everything happens for a reason. And people go, that's total bullshit, right?

Yeah, that's bullcrap.

In this moment anyway, right? In this moment, it's total crap. So it really is a very telling thing. So what were some of the things you do— you did at the time? Like you said, you were focusing maybe on the wrong things, and I think that's probably what most people do at that time. And I'll go back to my own experience right after you share yours, but that's a really important thing. So what were you doing at certain points that enabled you to keep going and to find some of the guidance and even the passion that you currently have for what you're up to?

Well, fortunately at the time, because of being through a lot of emotional healing training and life coaching training. Like, I had a lot of mentors I could lean on that I knew would be honest with me in a way that was brutal but necessary, in both good and bad, right? So I reached out to a few people and said, I'm just trying to figure this out. Talked to my dad about what he thought and like things that happened to him. I just tried to glean on what other people were thinking and what they went through and then ask them, what do you see me doing? I went to the people who knew me best in different roles. And I found this pattern of like, of the strengths that they felt that I had.

That's a great question, by the way. What do you see me doing? So, I know people probably taking some good notes on some of these things right now. That's one I'd write down. What do you see me doing? Asking people who know you well, know you a long time.

Yeah. I had some, some life coach people would tell you not to do that because external feedback, sometimes other people's limited beliefs can hold you back. But at some point, you have to be willing to be open because you never know who's going to say something like, that's it. You just don't know that. Like, some people said, I see you being a rock star, I see you doing this, which I was like, that's not it. I appreciate it, that's not it. You look for the feedback that resonates. As soon as I felt that, I was like, that's it.

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.

I had to be open for that.

We have a truth meter inside ourselves anyway.

Yeah, yeah. It's just that for me, I mean, being a musician, it's like that being in tune thing, like the pitchfork, the tuning fork. Bing! It's like when you hit a chord, you can go into any room and you can find the note of the room, and it just resonates. You can feel the thing just vibrate, right? Look at that. You got one there? Ah, look at that! That's awesome.

It's cool to be able to pull out a tuning fork, right?

Bam! Right there. Oh my God. So it's like, this is getting into the energy musician physics world that I believe in, but I personally believe that I resonate on different frequencies. And there's a frequency higher than where I am that's calling me to rise myself up. So my job is to rise to that frequency in my relationships, my money, my job, my me. And so I really was in that spot of saying, I want to lift myself to the next frequency. What is it? And so as I was going out asking people those questions, I know what that feels like inside of me to have that resonance. And as soon as I felt it, I was like, that's it. I don't know exactly that's going to lead me, but that is the feeling I want to follow. Because I'm, again, growing up with 4 girls, I'm very emotionally in tune, which is, I've found, not common with men. And I, like you said, I have nothing against sisters. I love them. I'm so glad I had them because they helped me date, or otherwise it would have been a mess. But that internal knowing of my soul and being in touch with that was what led me down the path of training. And even where I am, I love where I am, but eventually I'd like to do my own thing and launch my own company. Like, that's the goal eventually. But— Yeah. It's the step at a time of saying, where am I at? Where can I grow? And following that inner tuning fork. Yeah. That's the best way to do it. Yeah.

So, it totally makes sense to me. I mean, I remember when, gosh, when I got the ax from that position. And by the way, just so we're clear, I was the CEO of the company at the time when that happened. So, when your partners tell you they don't believe in you, don't believe in your leadership anymore, I mean, there's a lot of ways to put this. Yeah. It's not like you even look further up the chain of command. I was at the top of the chain of command and it was the people who owned the company that I was in partnership with that said to me, now, this isn't working, etc. So, after the sort of the fog, the haze, whatever, you know, the disbelief, the shock of something like that happens, and for everybody, I mean, it's the same. Anytime you lose your job, you go, well, there's a million things that you could focus on that are going to be impacted by that. And there's a lot of— what-if-ing, a lot of what-if-ing about the money's gone, it's not coming in, or what does it say about me or my prospects for the future? Is this the million thing? What do my friends, family, what do people think? What do I think? All that stuff. And I remember for me, the fact that I had already pivoted out of something and wrote a book about it and had a process was really helpful. I mean, it was one of these funny moments where I remember being outside my house and going out for a walk, and I knew I needed to move my body. I knew I'm a physical person, as we all are, and when I'm not moving my body, things get stuck pretty quickly internally. My mind will become my worst enemy if I'm not exercising. I don't walk or swim or do something to just get energy moving. So, I'm outside and I had this urge, crazy urge, to listen to the Audible version of the book that I had written. So this book, Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your—

Did you speak it, the audio?

So I did. I actually delivered the audio in a booth for 4 days. And so, and I think ironically, I don't know if I closed the loop on this, the first publishing house that I worked for, the one that I quit, actually became the publisher of my book.

Well, that's awesome.

Yeah. So it's kind of one of those funny full-circle moments. So I go out on this hike in these beautiful canyons behind our home and I start walking and I said, you know what? I'm just going to do it. I said, if it's good enough for other people, if it's a thing that I've talked about that would help people in situations like this where it's either you want to pivot or— which was my first situation or this other one that I hadn't really experienced so much about that you get canned or whatever, some other thing happens unexpectedly, I've just got to take my own, literally eat my own cooking.

Yeah.

And so it was agonizing, it was brutal, it was really uncomfortable to listen to my own voice giving me, spitting back the advice about what to do in a situation like the one I was in. But darn if it didn't do exactly what it was supposed to do. And so for me, it became much a process of creating space for higher wisdom to show up. And that's where mindfulness work, meditation or stillness practice, or just even walking to clear your head for that matter, is so effective because we have a lot of answers inside of ourselves. I think we always have all the right answers inside of ourselves, but we're not always tuned in to the station that would play those for us inside.

I love that analogy. Yes.

Well, I'm only riffing on what you just said.

No, it's perfect. I talk about it all the time. I love it.

Yeah. So, it's like if you can get that tuning just right, and I'm old enough to remember when that's what a radio was. I mean, you turn the dial a little bit to the right, you're missing the frequency. A little bit to the left, you're missing the frequency. But you get it right on 95.5,

you

know, before it was even digital, digitized, right? It was like this little bar that would move along, you know. I think that's 95.5, but you didn't know for sure. Yeah. Until you could hear with your ears the clarity of that signal, right? And so, we do have that internal signal, but we're so busy. We're so being assaulted, I think, all the time with everything from what's happening in these apps that we're constantly looking at to all the bings and the pings of our phone and the colors that light up for us to go down these rabbit holes of— This email and that email and that link that we click and just all this stuff that takes us out of a present moment where if we were tuned into ourselves, really dialed in, man, there are just nothing but answers in there. And that's what I found. And that's why this day I do and I'm doing exactly what I want and every other thing that I wanted when I first started to explore what a pivot was. Those things I'm living more clearly than even when I was running, let's say, a company that was teaching that stuff. So, it's so interesting, right? How that just comes the way it does. Jonathan, I want to ask you 2 additional questions. One—

Sure.

About resilience. So, how do you define resilience and how important was resilience in the process of going from that really low, low moment and that inflection point in your life to where you are today?

I used to think it was being positive, and it does have some positive to it, but I would say now that resilience is more about being in alignment and staying in alignment as opposed to just being positive. And then what was the second part of your question?

Well, I wanted to know a bit about how you define resilience and also how important has it been in your process?

Since I define it more as alignment, I now look at everything in my life, my relationships, my work, school, everything, as is it in alignment with me or is it not? And the more I have found that I eliminate my time in places it shouldn't be at, or relationships, and I do the things, I'm with the people, I spend the time listening to, watching, playing, whatever, with the stuff that feeds my soul or lifts me up or brings life into me, the more able I am to deal with crap that happens I don't have control over, if that makes sense. So I just try to find anything in my life. If after a while, and I notice, like, I just take a look saying, okay, this last week I feel like this relationship was draining me. I either need to redefine that relationship, set up some boundaries, or it may be time to be done with it. I used to wait months, months, months. I don't do that anymore. It's like a week-by-week basis. Like, okay, if this isn't working for me, it's gone. It's because I know eventually I'll get to the point where I'm burned out, I'm done, and I'm not resilient. It could take like, I could get a flat tire on the way home and it's just like the worst thing in the world. And now I'm like, it's okay, it's a flat tire, no big deal. It doesn't bother me. So I think the more I'm in alignment and paying attention to what's in alignment is what helps me be resilient, whatever that may happen.

Oh, it makes so, so much sense, Jonathan, because oftentimes the things that are the proverbial straw that breaks our back Are these things that are totally insignificant, right?

Yeah.

They're just not important things, but it's that one more thing. It's that one last thing. We're already exhausted. We're already depleted. Our patience is already worn thin and then somebody cuts us off on the road or some other thing happens and you just can just flip out. You don't even know, but it wasn't about that thing or you come home and it's that one more thing that creates the explosive argument. Or the explosive reaction because it's not about response in that moment, it's a reaction. And it was never about that, but it's because that other stuff, what you just described is that alignment is off. And when the alignment is off, I mean, think about it. I mean, this is kind of funny too. Your dad was in this business. If a car's alignment is off, the wheels are misaligned, what happens on the road? You take your hand—

All over.

You're all over the place, right? You take your hand off the steering wheel, And you drift to the right or you drift to the left. And that's very much the case with us, that when we are out of alignment, that's exactly what's happening. We're drifting. In fact, there was a great book. There are 2 books now that are just coming into my awareness as I'm speaking to you. One was Outwitting the Devil, this wonderful Napoleon Hill book that he wrote sometime after he wrote Think and Grow Rich, so maybe 1937 or '38 or something. And the book wasn't published until many, many years later. 2011, 2012, something like that. And the book, without getting into the details, really talks about the impact of drifting. The drift, as he called it, could be very well related to what you just described as being the misalignment. So I see that as being such a key ingredient in becoming resilient. And this other thing that you just mentioned makes me think of a book called Karmic Management.

I've heard of that one.

Yeah, there's 3 authors to that one: McNally, Roach, and I always forget the 3rd author, but amazing book. In fact, when I actually— the beginning of my tenure as the CEO of this company, I gave out some books. One was this book, Karmic Management, because it was all about how it is that we treat people, how it is that we see our vendors, our contractors, our employees, everybody, our competition for that matter. Could you see them as your karmic business partners? And if so, how would you treat them? And the premise of that book is pretty interesting. At the very beginning, it says that the first rule in everything in life is stop doing what doesn't work. And so, what you just described about checking in and feeling whether something's aligned or to use your words, if something is bringing life into me, it's like I feel more enlivened by someone else's presence, by that relationship, by that routine, whatever it might be. And that could be in business or in personal things. Then that's something that— That is actually creating more alignment for you. It's working. And whereas there are things, people, situations that are sucking life out of you and creating that lack of alignment in you, that's not working. And to wait, it's just ironic. And that's the reason why that business book was talking about this because so often we are continuing to do things or tolerate things in our lives that we know don't work and we somehow expect that It's gonna get better. It's gonna change. It's like, hello, what are you talking about? It's never— It's not likely to change. It's not likely to be any different. The fact is, if it's not working, stop doing what's not working. And they say that's the first rule in the book, and it's everything. We'll always go back to that one rule. Yeah, you know, stop doing what's not working. I appreciate that wisdom from you, Jonathan. That's pretty cool. So what's one ritual that you have that has either created resilience or helped you to maintain that resilience in your life?

Well, you told me this question before we started talking. I've been thinking about it in the back of my mind as we're thinking, like, what am I going to say? And I think the ritual I have, I do almost actually every day. I used to think that feeling negative emotions was a negative thing and that I shouldn't be experiencing negative emotions ever. And now I'm on the other side saying that it's part of this experience. So now my ritual is at night, I analyze my day and I took a look at, okay, what are the negative experiences, emotions, doubts, fears, anger, blah, blah, blah, whatever the negative things I see. And I literally do this energetic dump before I go to bed where I just imagine myself, like I believe in God and I believe that I just imagine, this is how I do it. I imagine him right next to me with a bag. I look at my body. Okay, where in my body do I hold anger, fear, whatever happened during the day? And I just, I like dump it all in the bag. And then once I'm done, I imagine God healing the life force inside of me that's distorted and putting it back inside of me. So I'm filled up. And then after that, I just imagine whatever thing that night I want to imagine, a positive experience in the future that I'm trying to tune into, and then feeling gratitude for that experience in the future. And I didn't used to do that. I used to just focus on the gratitude and good stuff and I had all this icky stuff. And I was like, now I'm feeling it, releasing it and then letting it be healed and move forward. So I do that literally every night in bed before I go to sleep. Yeah.

Holy smokes. You think about it, it would be as if you could continue to fill a container, endlessly fill a container and just not, you know, not have it overflow. And so if you don't have any room, if there's no room left in the container for anything new, What are you gonna do? So it's one of those things, you know, where you go, okay, so it makes so much sense. Like, people listening to you right now going, okay, that makes so much sense. It's, it's scary how much sense that makes, that you'd want to dump things out. Dump out the garbage. Like, you take your garbage out at home when it fills up, or before it fills to the top and is overflowing. You actually take it out so that you have room, that you've cleared space to fill, to allow things to fill in. And I don't mean necessarily having dumped the garbage out so you can put more garbage in.

More garbage in, right?

But without the space, you can't get anything new to fit in there because it's already so up to the brim. So, even that process, like you say, of filling your head with what you're grateful for, if there's all this other stuff that you're not grateful for, there's all this resentment, there's all this anger, there's all this hurt, whatever it might be, there's not really a lot of room for gratitude, is there? Really, there just isn't. Just really. 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 Cool that you shared that process. And I'm not sure if you've heard of this one, but when we've been in Hawaii and, and worked with some people there, we were fortunate to hear of a ritual that's done. And it's with kids primarily. They have this ritual involving these bowls, like coconut shell— coconuts that are cut in half. Mm-hmm. And they call them light bowls. The object for the kids is to— whatever's going on in the day, if there's something that they did wrong, they got reprimanded for something at school, or they made a mistake, or whatever, they didn't follow the rules or something— that every place where they sort of feel bad about something that happened in their life that day, they put a little stone, a little rock, put it in this bowl of light.

Oh, that's cool.

Right? And then at the end of the day, they Empty the bowl. And the next day when they wake up, they have this clean, fresh, new container, this new bowl of light, and everything from the prior day is just gone. All that garbage, like you described, is out of there, and they have a fresh beginning. So that's an incredible ritual, the one that you just described. I know there's some people are going to think tonight, you know what, before I go to bed, energetically I'm going to take a dump. I'm going to take an energetic dump of all that yuck and get rid of it. And again, I'm a God guy too. So to me, let God take it. God can take it easy. And just allow that to happen and forgive it and bless it and all the rest of it so that you've created space for the gratitude. Yeah. So that you can actually feel gratitude and know there's a place inside your body For feeling good and feeling appreciative of everything from your breath, your life, your health, your family, your money, all of it. Wonderful. Jonathan, I've so enjoyed having you on the show.

Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I'd love to have you on mine sometime. We need to get you on.

Well, heck yeah, we'll do that. Absolutely. For our community out there, hope you've loved this. Hope it's been beneficial to listen to a couple of bald-headed, bearded guys. Bearded and bald-headed. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll know, you'll get the gag. But if not, you'll just have to imagine these shiny, shiny, handsome, shiny heads, right? And that you take this information and that it's meaningful to you. Somehow you heard something you were meant to hear today. I feel like there's never a coincidence. So all this was perfectly orchestrated and intended by the divine. I'll remind everyone that when you wake up tomorrow, it's also perfectly intended. It's just as it's supposed to be. And there's a truism or something I remind myself of when I take my first breath of the day, and that is that there'll be people, many people, taking their last breath at that exact same moment. So if you have any doubts about how intended, how intentional it is that you are alive and well and breathing tomorrow, just remember that. Just think about the fact that there's an alternative, and, and the one you got is the one you want. And that'll allow you to be grateful in what— plussing what Jonathan has said, that if you don't have a lot of other stuff that's sort of filling you up, the yuck of the past and the yuck of the negative emotion or negative thoughts that we are focused on sometimes, maybe there'll be room, room to feel grateful in that moment. And then you'll be able to say these words that changed my life and to share them with people a lot. It's a blessing for me to do that. And those words are, I love my life. I love my life. 4 simple words, takes just a few seconds to say. I love my life. And perhaps again, if you have space to feel that, to feel the gratitude that's all a part of those words, it won't matter what else is going on in your life. It won't matter what else might be your focus in that moment. You can actually experience those words and believe it because it's true. I appreciate all of you. I appreciate you, Jonathan. Thanks so much again.

Hey, Randy.

Well, that's my wife, Randy. You got Adam here. Oh, Adam. All good, buddy. I'm glad we got that on tape though. That's perfect.

I know, right?

We're not gonna edit that out.

All right.

Ciao for now, everybody.

Adam, thank you, bro.

I'll see you.

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/podcast. 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.