#152: 150th Episode Celebration: What’s Behind And What’s Ahead

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 am sitting here all by my lonesome this morning, just thrilled and feeling really blessed that I get to be able to share some thoughts on a milestone event in this podcast. It's shocking, actually, to me that we've managed to get 150 episodes in. It's 150 episodes since we started this journey, and it has been a blast. I mean, I knew it was going to be fun. I was excited about it at the start, and there's a lot of energy around, around beginning it, but I didn't know that I'd feel this jazzed up about it. In fact, that I'd even feel more excited, more just good about all the, the work that went into it and everything that's in process and all the things that are to come still. I didn't know I'd feel this great 150 episodes in because sometimes you do something 150 times, I don't care what it is, you can get a little tired of it, a little, I don't know, complacent. And even, I mean, I talk about the cost of complacency in regard to how do you build high-performing teams and where it is that we are usually settling on some level for the status quo. We're settling for Just what's comfortable, what's easy, what's, you know, what's the shortest distance between 2 points sometimes. So I talk about it a lot, and yet I'm the same as everybody else. I get complacent from time to time. And so I'm even marveling for myself at this moment just how great I feel about every episode and all that we've already got booked and lined up for the future for this show. So it's exciting. And you know what? It's a testament to resilience, I would say, that part of what I believe is so important in our world today is that we are developing greater resilience and skills and tools and ways of creating resilience. I mean, that's the thing that with all the research that we've done just as a company and the research that we've read and looked into from other folks, including a very highly regarded people within pretty prestigious learning institutions, lots of them including Harvard and others. And the conversation around resilience is often about how it is that we can maintain energy or maintain our capacity over time. How can you do that over lengths of time? Whereas lots of people will tend to just sort of fade, like at the end of a race, that people fade toward the end of the race because they get tired and they get worn out and they get exhausted. And exhaustion's a big, big issue in our world and our businesses, mental. 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 are you. Emotional, physical exhaustion, all that. So how you stay at a high level of performance is really a tangible thing, a really important skill and tool to learn. And as I'm delivering this particular solo cast, as we call it, I'm just feeling as energized, more even than when we began. And in part, that's because It's been a joy to do it. So I'm going to break it down a little bit for myself and for all of you right now. I've enjoyed the journey. So there's no question that enjoying or experiencing joy in what you're doing on some level has an impact on whether or not you can do it for any length of time. I'll go back to my days as a lifeguard at the beach at Jones Beach in Long Island, New York, on the south shore of that island. It was a rough job. I mean, we dealt with all kinds of crazy stuff on the beach. We had drug overdoses, people would have other things happen, there could be fights, and that's just on the beach, man. That's not taking into account we had thousands of people in the water at any given point in time. On a Saturday or Sunday, we'd have 100,000 people on the beach and thousands of people in the water. And when the waves were strong, when the rip currents were pulling or sucking, as we used to say, and we would have to make rescues on the hour, every hour, sometimes by the dozens. In a day, we'd make easily more than 100 rescues. And I mean, these were serious sometimes, very serious rescues. Sometimes they were us being proactive, like we'd get in the water when we knew people were getting Moved offshore and we could see the look on their face and a little bit of panic and a little bit of uncertainty. And, and we would be very proactive as well and get in the water and just, when they weren't able to do it themselves, swim sideways, swim parallel to the shore to get out of that rip current. We would get in there with buoys and sometimes other equipment like surfboards and move masses of people. And often those times into the water were people actually going down and they were panicking and— You know, you'd have to get folks calm and get them on that life preserver, and sometimes you'd have to get your arms around them, and it was a dangerous situation. And so I can tell you that we did that work day after day and year after year. I was there for 7 years, and we did it very successfully. In fact, after the first summer that I was there where we had had a tragedy, having lost somebody and somebody going down and we couldn't find them, and We created, with the leadership of our captain and the other more senior lifeguards on the field, we created a mantra that we lived with and that inspired us each and every day. And for 7 summers after that one day, that awful day in July, and when I was 19 years old, we never lost anybody again. And that was a pretty impeccable track record. And it was very much a testament to what I was saying earlier about how it is that we can continue to do something for any length of time and not just do it and complete it, but to complete it at a very high level, a gold— let's call it gold medal level of performance. I mean, I imagine many of you in whatever it is you're doing, whether it's a part of your personal life and the rituals of personal activities, or it's in connection specifically with business or entrepreneurship, which is— Yeah. its own very specific category today and has been for a long time for sure. You really have to have tremendous staying power. There's so much unrest. There's just things going on in our politics in the US and North America and everywhere around the world. I mean, the political unrest is everywhere really. And there are physical things that are happening as we can see, devastating things like these fires that have been burning in various places around the world and things happening with our climate and in our oceans and other things going on, even with people getting ill, getting sick from flu and other viruses and the talk of pandemics. I mean, there's just a lot of stuff that is flying around, literally and figuratively. And with all that disruption, to be able to continue to perform at a level that serves the world the way you're capable of serving the world, the way I'm capable of serving the world, that takes some stuff, right? That takes— I think there was a movie called The Right Stuff. It was all about the Apollo astronauts, I believe. And that's a great term, the right stuff. What's the right stuff? And for us, that right stuff is really all encapsulated in the word resilience. That's what we are privileged to travel and speak to groups, mostly corporate groups these days. Do some personal development training as well, and we train speakers by the dozens several times a year, of course. But in the corporate arena, we're hired frequently to keynote conferences and speak to executives, managers, C-suite people about how do you create personal resilience in the midst of all that I'll call it just chaos for the moment, but probably a better word for it, the stuff that's just disrupting our peace of mind and the things that are constantly changing in the world, which that I think is quite a natural phenomenon. That's the nature of nature is that everything is in constant change. And so how do you work within that? How do you create this level of the right stuff ongoingly? It's a fascinating conversation. And in many ways, I think it is like trying to imagine yourself delivering the best performance you can every day. I mean, if that's all we were ever doing, that's all I ever focused on was just today, I'm going to deliver my best performance as a human, as a dad, as a husband, as a business owner, as a leader, anything, as an author, just my best performance today, my goal, what my gold medal performance looks like today. It's a powerful intention. It's a powerful mantra. It's a powerful method, process to engage the day. And that's what it was like for us at the beach, by the way. I mean, we couldn't deliver a bronze medal, or I shouldn't say we couldn't. We didn't deliver a bronze medal day in all the days that I was at that beach long ago because a bronze medal day meant somebody might have perished. It was gold or go home, basically. That was the concept. 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, 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 That's 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 we couldn't be complacent. You know, we just bring— coming back to that point, complacency kills. And I think that that's part of the equation is that we can't settle, in other words, for status quo. We can't settle for anything less than the right stuff because if we do, then in certain contexts like at the beach, people's lives were on the line. But how many people's lives are on the line every day in ordinary life matters, in your life, in the business that you're in, or in your own pursuit of happiness or peace, or being the best parent that you can be, the best friend or son or daughter or just human in the world today? Because we need better performances. We need more gold medal performances from more people these days to combat or to offset, let's say, some of the areas where we're sliding a little bit, where we're sliding sideways just a little bit. I am a perennial optimist, so don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's anything that isn't happening that isn't required to happen. I firmly believe that to be true. Yet, at the same time, I also don't believe in settling for status quo. We don't just respond or, more likely than not, react to disruption. We have the opportunity to self-disrupt. And that's a key component of creating resilience is the ability to self-disrupt your environment. And so as I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about this beautiful podcast that we've had for 150 episodes now, that's a length of time. It's almost— I think it's just over 2 years. Not saying we've gotten a perfect score or gold medal every performance, every show, but that's certainly been what we've sought to do. And it's driven me, it's driven our team to deliver something that we hope you guys have found to be wonderful, maybe some more wonderful than others. And obviously this is a personal thing because not everybody will feel the same way about each show, each episode, each conversation. But I firmly believe that you're listening to this is not random, it's not by accident. There's something that you're drawn to and there's something that's in it for you. It's just like everything that I experience, I know it's always— there's something in it for me. Totally intentional. And it's just a question of sometimes connecting dots, sometimes just finding, just looking at it and asking that question, what's in it for me? What can I learn from the experience? And I've felt great about the feedback as well that we've gotten from all of you and that you feel our love because more than anything, we want you to feel that, that we're putting a lot of love into the show. We want a lot of love to be communicated through the show. We want to Have this show, among other things, be a ripple. You know, that there's a— this is a little pebble that goes in a big pond. We know it's a very big world, and this is one pebble in that pond that we've seen some ripples already and felt it, and it's been beautiful. We hope that's how you feel about it. And if you do, we'd love to hear from you. Certainly, you can leave us messages. There's lots of ways to connect with our team, team@adammarkel.com. You can go to adammarkel.com/podcast and leave a comment. Of course, you can go on and leave a review, and hopefully you'll There's just tons and tons of really great shows. Our team asked me to maybe talk about some of my favorite episodes and all that kind of thing, but I feel like that I'm going to be dismissing some of the guests that would be insulted. I mean, how do I recap 150 shows? I would just say that there are a few that I know for myself that as the show was unfolding, I was having, and many times I have these experiences where I'm getting Chicken skin, goosebumps. And we're having conversations and I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, I just needed to hear that. Or I'm responding to someone and I go, oh, I just needed to say that. I loved my conversation with Michael Beckwith, with Reverend Michael. We had a great conversation. I remember that one. Cynthia Kersey, who's got this beautiful foundation, the Unstoppable Foundation, which we've fortunately been able to contribute to and build a school in Kenya with her and her team. That was beautiful. We've had Sandra Joseph on the show. She's just an angel, just wonderful, beautiful person. We met at an organization we're both members of, fortunately, called the Transformational Leadership Council. It's Jack Canfield's group that he got together, put together many, many years ago with some phenomenal people, and it's a blessing and an honor to be a part of that and associated with it. We met Sandra Joseph, who, if you don't know that name, you can go back and look at or listen to that episode as well. She's the longest-running lead on Broadway. She was Christine, lead actress in a show you may have heard of called Phantom of the Opera. Interesting story about Sandra Joseph too, in addition to us doing that podcast, which was just— I mean, I still think about that and I go, wow, we had quite a conversation that day. So I highly recommend checking that out. She and I both were on the same TEDx stage as well. We both delivered our TEDx talk in South Lake Tahoe in September. I think it was September 8th. Actually, I know that because it's my son Matthew's birthday that day, September 8th, 2018. And we were on that TEDx stage together. She sang, of course, because you can't have Sandra anywhere without getting her to sing because she's got just the voice, this angelic sound that comes out of her. And that was just remarkable. I mean, she's, she's incredible. So Yeah, there's so many shows that I've loved. I know I had a great conversation with Dawa Phillips. He and I definitely vibe on the same level and talked about meditation and mindfulness and creating stillness and peace and love that conversation as well. So, I mean, look, I would say if you're just sort of happening on this now or if you've been listening for a while, man, and you haven't checked out some of the shows at the beginning, it might be fun just to even hear the difference. I have not gone back and done that myself, just listened to the earlier early shows and then listen to more recent ones. But I'm sure that the show has— I know it has evolved because I know what we've done a little bit differently, and it's going to continue to evolve. So we're always being contacted by folks that want to be guests on the show, and of course, we're always looking for people that we think would be fantastic guests. So if you've got ideas about that, or you are somebody in fact who would like to be considered to be interviewed, etc., please let us know. We're going to be bringing in the coming months, some more business folks onto the show, more CEOs and C-suite people. In fact, I just heard recently that there is a new C-suite position that it's just so interesting that this is coming around the way it is, but a Chief Resilience Officer. And I kid you not. I mean, I know there's in the tech startup world where they give chief cook and bottle washer and things like that. They make up titles and By the way, there's no title that didn't get made up at the beginning anyway, so it's all made-up stuff. But a Chief Resilience Officer, really powerful, powerful component of any business that wants to succeed long-term. Again, that idea of being able to create longevity and performance at the same time is a really big deal in our world today, so I was thrilled to see that. We're going to bring on some of those folks. We also have a lot of people that are public speakers themselves, want to be, want to either do some of the keynote speaking that we've been doing or want to get on a TEDx stage. So we're going to have some former and current keynote speakers and TEDx speakers on the show as well. And we, we feel like there's just tremendous room for growth for us to have continue to evolve this conversation around the conscious pivot. 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. And how it is that we are consciously making micro changes each day, each week, each month, each year of our lives so that we can continue to not only be around, but be around and be putting in those best performances, those gold medal performances as often as we possibly can. I mean, I don't know that there's any more complicated explanation. that I need personally than again, to just be able to wake up every day and make an adjustment if I'm looking to create that best day. What's my best day look like today? How am I going to show up as that impeccable person personally and professionally? And what it takes to do that sometimes is just a small, tiny little change, a 1% change in what you're doing, a 5-degree change in the direction, in the trajectory, changes everything over time. You can't change an input in science without the output also being affected, being changed. It's the butterfly effect or the law of small differences that we now call the law of small disruptive differences. All of those things are so impactful in terms of creating something better and something even new and different and not falling— I don't want to say victim, but falling into the trap, let's say, of complacency, the trap of the status quo, the trap of playing it safely, the trap of not wanting to make mistakes, playing the game of business and of life on defense as opposed to being out there on the leading, the bleeding edge and doing what is possible. And then as a result of that, living that very full, exciting, not boring at all life. That you can experience joy, and that's where I started the show. Just feeling joy, feeling joy to be here, be with you, be in the seat, being at 150 episodes of something that we've just had tremendous fun doing. And we hope you can feel that again, and that you've loved it as well, and you're willing to share it with other people and share it with your family and friends, and and that you most importantly that you're enjoying it as well. So I will say ciao for now, everybody, and look forward to hearing from you, hear your comments, and. And just have you be a part of this conversation, which is for us evolving and for all of us, it is only getting better. So again, we'll see you soon. Thanks so much. Ciao.

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.