How To Deal With Change And Embrace The New Space With Dr. Ken Druck

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author.

Of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. 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 feel incredibly blessed in this moment to be here with you. I feel great just to be alive. It's a sunny day in Southern California, which is not exactly an unusual sight, but it gets cloudy here in the mornings times, and we can get some pretty gray days as well. So I just feel wonderful being here with you. This community is growing in such magical ways. And in this moment, what I'm really called to express is how deeply grateful I am. And I'm not necessarily a grateful person by nature. I know it's kind of funny to say that, but I can lean on the side of things not being right at times or complaining even in my own mind. I tend to not do that out loud because I know how deadly that that can be, and I certainly did it in my earlier years more than I do now, for sure. But I can lean toward the side of sometimes what's missing or what's wrong or what needs fixing. So it's not like I just wake up every day feeling like everything is perfect with the world. It's been a practice. And I'll say this, the practice has paid such great dividends because, especially in the face of challenges to realize for me, and this is just my experience of it, to have some awareness that everything that's happening in my life is valid and everything that's happening in my life is therefore required. I don't necessarily know what the requirement is or why something's happening. I know that old expression of, you know, everything happens for a reason. I never bought too much into that. I always thought that's total bullshit, like everything's happening for a reason. Well, just do me a favor and explain the reason, right? And then everybody, you know, people who say that they can't explain the reason, they just kind of, you know, wanting you to know it'll all be all right. And that's. And that's wonderful. But then it occurred to me at some point that everything's happening for a reason, and that reason is there to serve. So the statement's not complete. It's. Everything's happening for a reason. And then instead of a period, there's a comma, and that reason is there to serve. And when I started to feel more that it was truthful, that it was true, that everything was going on in my life was required in order to help me to evolve to some higher level of consciousness or humility at times even, or awareness or gratitude, I started to appreciate that more and more and to be grateful for everything. So as as this day is, is ebbing on and wherever you are now, as you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube, as your day is maybe beginning or maybe it's ending, there's never a moment in the day where we don't benefit so profoundly from gratitude. So I am sitting in that right now. I feel incredibly lucky to have met an amazing man, a person that I have only recently come to know and know a little bit, but so curious about this guy. And he is so funny the way our paths have crossed because several people had mentioned his name to me and I botched his name at the very beginning. One of those mind things where I was thinking his name was Fred when his name is Ken. And just like my dad, and my dad's name is Ken. So Ken Druck, Dr. Ken Druck is the gentleman that's going to join us today on the podcast. You guys are going to just absolutely adore him. I have already, as I say, am in adoration myself, as is my wife, as is our oldest daughter, Chelsea, who met him as well when we were at a recent retreat in Hawaii. And I'll say a little bit about him. I'll read a little bit of his bio to all of you, and then we'll fill in the gaps with Ken himself. And this will be a magical period of time. So wherever you are right now, buckle up your seatbelt, get in a comfortable spot. If you're driving the car, find an exit, find a good place to pull over and just be present and listen and enjoy this incredible conversation that I get to have with Dr. Ken Druck. He's been one of the nation's top thought leaders and innovators for the past 40 years. I don't know where 40 years goes, huh? As an author, speaker, executive coach, and organizational consultant, he's helped countless individuals, families, organizations, and communities turn their greatest challenges into opportunities and realize their highest potential. He's the recipient of prestigious Distinguished Contribution to Psychology and Visionary Leadership awards. Ken's pioneering work in courageous living has inspired and guided countless readers audiences, clients and the general public. His most recent book, courageous Best Years Ever Reimagined, has won high praise from Dr. Andrew Weil, Alan Horne, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, John Gray, famous from his book Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus. It's been a best seller since it came out. Ken's work has been featured regularly in the New York Times, cnn, pbs, Larry King Live, and and on Oprah. Geez, Ken, there's a lot here, and I'm not even reading half of it. You've got an amazing history, a CV of not just accomplishments, but really important work that you've been doing in the world for a long time. And even with that incredible bio, which, when I read it, I can only imagine how you feel about it, it's exhausting just to think of all those things that you done. I'd love for you to fill in the blank, if you will. Is there something that's not in that bio that you'd love for our listeners and our viewers to know about you in the present moment?

First of all, Adam, it's a joy to be with you. It's a joy to meet you and your family. And I'm so glad that we have an opportunity to play together now. And I look forward to all the ways that that's going to unfold as you get to know me and I get to know you. I could ask you the same question. You know, I love the context in which you've created this and convened this learning forum, and that is of pivots, conscious pivots. And I would say that if there, if there were pieces missing from the description of my journey, it would be all the pivot points, those turning points, those moments of truth in my life where something chose me or I chose it. It's been a combination of both. And where I either elected to pivot because I was awake and aware of choices and opportunities and I went for the gold ring, or where something in life happened and something that changed the entire course of my life and presented me with unwelco, unexpected changes and choices. And that was also a moment of truth. So I would say all the seasons of my life were characterized by pivot, pivot points. And that's why one of the reasons I was really looking forward to spending time with you.

Thank you, Ken, and welcome. This is an ongoing conversation about how people deal with change, handle change. It's one of those things which I don't know if it's an oxymoron, but it's a constant in the universe, that everything changes, right? That change is a constant. And it brings up so many things for all of us when things change. Because there are changes that we welcome. There are changes that we're creating that we're being creative about, and there are changes that come out of the clear blue, out of nowhere, and catch us really off guard as well. Changes in our health and in status of our employment and sometimes the people in our lives that we love that are not always there with us the whole duration, all of that. So thank you so much for being a part of this conversation and bringing the thing that you're a special recipe for. Not only how do you approach change, how are you resilient, which is really, I think, such a key ingredient in the whole, in how it is that we live in harmony and enjoy our lives, let alone be happy. I don't know what that is, but that we have some joy in our lives as a result of this ability to embody, embrace change and utilize it. So, again, thank you for. Thank you for joining us on the show. Awesome. Ken, you have done a lot of things. I would love to, if you would take us back some period of time. I think the folks that are listening to this would love to get a sense of the history, why it is that you've gotten into, the work that you've gotten into. What's driven you purpose wise? Was there a pivot that or pivotal moment that kind of revealed your purpose in a more clear way?

Well, Adam, I think when all of us try to construct a story, a narrative of who am I? Where did this start? When did I start waking up? When did I open my eyes for the first time? What environment caused me to do that? Was it inspiration? Was it the music? The symphony music of the masters playing in my childhood in the living room, beaming over the speakers, it's making my heart sing. Was it the tension in the living room? Because I had parents who were constantly fighting, who had come out of an era in history and were trying to find their footing as individuals, as a culture and so on. And for me, you know the story, we can start way, way, way back. I think being the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and growing up on the east coast of New York in the first generation of people who were trying to settle into this country and trying to find a place for themselves and create abundance for their families out of an absolutely unspeakable and horrific time in history, and who weren't sure, they were always looking over their shoulders, weren't sure it was quite a Safe place and trying to create a status, an elevated status for themselves where they weren't living in fear, being put in a box as Jews, as this as that. And I'm sure everybody who's listening can think about the box that you grew up fearing you would be put in as a female, as a male, as somebody who was taller than the kids your age and shorter or heavier or lighter or whatever.

Gay, straight, yes, all the things that differentiate us.

So for me, growing up in a household with a mother especially who sought social justice, my mother was aware and tuned into what was happening in the world. She embraced people of different persuasions, religions, ethnicity, backgrounds from all over the world. And growing up in that culture, I think that instilled in me a sense of social justice. So when I started taking those first steps out into the world and noticing that not everybody felt like the way I felt. And as I grew up and eventually marched on Washington, had the honor of marching on Washington, being part of the civil rights movement, being part of the anti war movement back in the 60s where we were standing up and saying all my friends were going to Vietnam and getting their legs blown off or dying. We were all saying, this is not right. And, you know, here we are again, here we are now in 2018, jumping out of our skin saying, this is not right. So I think when I look back to my origins and the foundation of what I did, it was that and having a sensitivity to human suffering, to people not being happy or people being afraid, I think predisposed me to going into psychology. And that was for me, the gate that I had to pass through. I eventually got my doctorate in psychology and my interest was in who are we as men? You know, you and I talked earlier about the whole thing of being a guy. You know, what does it mean to be a guy? What part of that programming and that basic training has been a gift to us, has favored us, has elevated us, and what part of it has been a block to our joy, to our true success, to authentic self esteem?

So what part represents truth and what is some fiction that we've been programmed to adopt?

My first pivot was to have to face in. You know, we either get to face in or we get to avoid and live in denial. And it was to face into the first frontier, which was gender, and to face into who I was as a guy. I wrote my doctoral thesis and I wrote my first book, which ended up on Oprah and shows like Oprah and Donahue and CNN called the Secrets Men Keep. But that was a pivot point for me to face into and to seek out the ways that I could be the highest and best expression of myself as a man, as a father, as a friend, as a sincere, authentic friend, as a partner to the women in my life, and as an abiding son to my mother and father and sibling. So I think that was the first pivot point. That was the first awakening, major awakening, and bringing those things out as I was discovering them, bringing them out into the world in the form of writing and speaking and doing my life's work.

And, Ken, it seems to me that there's a. I think it's a book by Dan Millman, that's the life you were born to live, where he points out something I thought was really interesting. I mean, there's other great aspects of this book, of course. The thing that really intrigued me was the idea that our challenges are somehow signposts to our true purpose. And I'm looking at the places in my own life where there have been challenges that. In the resolution of those things or in the pursuit of resolving or integrating those things.

You're describing the alchemy of resilience, how we ripen as human beings and on this spectrum, on this continuum, from things that happen, because sometimes our deepest. Our sense of mission in this life is born of our deepest wounds. So on one side, we have those early wounds, those betrayals, that abandonment, that sense of being alone in the world or forgotten or being hurt and injured. And in the other sense, we have those things that made our hearts sing, those awakenings, that music playing in the background, going out to the world, walking in nature, the sense of wonder that we had from nature. And those things create both the adversity that we have, the challenge of turning into opportunity, as well as the gifts and miracles of this life that we just sit and we behold. And it changes something in us. It inspires. It lifts some part of us up to meet it. So I think those are the things that help define and turn us in different directions. And when we look at pivot points in our lives in different directions, and I think my sense, often it's been a mix. It's been the things that I saw as the highest expressions of who we are as people. People standing up. Martin Luther King, Gandhi was a hero of mine. I had a chance to visit his home in India. And looking at people who were icons, Mother Teresa, who I also had the honor of meeting, looking at people like that, who just were the highest and best expression of who we are. Their compassion was unspeakable and their understanding of what it meant to be a good human being. And then also having gone through the adversities of my life, having I was wired in such a way that I had serious learning disabilities, or I call them learning differences, and having to go to summer school every year and. And feeling for the first 20 years of my life like maybe I was not smart. All those adversities are things that are there for us and challenges that are there for us to turn into opportunities to become the better, smarter, stronger, more effective, more humble version of ourselves. So I think you're absolutely spot on.

Yeah. Thank you, Ken. I got two things that I'm tracking inside that I want to follow the thread on. One is the idea that a lot of what we deal with in our lives, throughout our adult lives, on an emotional level, stems from childhood. And it seems that you're of that same experience or mindset about it. How much of these things that, let's say within the first seven, eight years of our lives, there's things that we learn on an emotional level. We learn what love is, for example. And that definition of love may in fact be guiding us the rest of our lives until we have some greater awakening, as you said earlier, or awareness, this idea that maybe love is conditional. Our backgrounds. Well, yeah, our backgrounds are quite similar. You and I are going to have a lot of fun exploring some of that because I also grew up in the east coast and there was a lot of music in my. In my home, which I still to this day. It's just one of the greatest influences was the music that my dad would play when he was writing. He's a fiction writer and he would type and write at night and edit and things. And so I have that. That soundtrack with me always. And at the same time, my parents, while married 25 years, were fighting for probably the better part of 25 years. And certainly through my early childhood, I remember some pretty. Pretty nasty fights and a lot of, you know, loud sounds and other things I couldn't explain. And of course, when you're a child, we make up our story of the world is sort of everything revolves around us because it's how we're built. So when things are wrong and things are off, it's usually because of us, or at least it's probably how we interpret it, that this is my fault somehow. And I think that in our childhood, when we learn things about love, for example, that love is not unconditional, that you know, when you behave, you're loved, and when you're when you get poor grades or when you don't do what I say, you know, or you don't follow directions that you're loved less or you get less attention, that this has a way of creeping in to all of our relations throughout our lives. Business relations, personal relations, all kinds of things. And then in my own experience, I. Looking back at my life, I can see places where I've had sabotage, self sabotage, places where things have gone wrong, inexplicably, things have happened, etc. Whether it's been financially or it's been personally or some other thing or in partnerships, for example. And I've questioned how much of that. Those occurrences were random or how many of them were really sort of tied back to childhood, tied back to a message or a. I don't want to use the word healing because I just honestly don't prefer that word. But rather this resolution or an integration of the. This, this imprint from childhood that wasn't. That I couldn't make sense of. So my child self, the self that's like, can't even put into words because it's sort of a bit of a precognitive thing. But on an, on a feeling level, on an emotional level, I can feel what it feels like to feel abandoned. I can feel what it feels like to feel grief or feel unsafe, for example, that, that fear. And I track the places in my life where things have gone wrong. And that same resonance, that same feeling of that imprint is there. And that's the common denominator between these seemingly random things that were challenges or went wrong? And so the thing I've been playing with recently, and I want to get your opinion on this, is the idea that we can still resolve some of that childhood trauma or those imprints of childhood, these things we didn't understand but defined. Our definition of love, for example. Is it your experience that those things can be resolved later on in life so that the messages that show up in these, these challenges don't necessarily have to continue to repeat themselves for people? What do you.

Yeah, you know, one of the great things we look at the founders and fathers of modern psychology, and I'm going to invoke a name that hasn't been spoken in decades. That's Sigmund Freud. Sure, a lot of Freud's stuff has been thrown on the wayside, but there's one enduring concept, and you're reflecting it in your comments, and that is repetition, compulsion. That we keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. We bang our head against the same wall. We tell ourselves we're not enough, we're not doing enough, we're not lovable enough. We try to please people into loving us. We try to placate people. We try to over adapt and do too much. We become type E's, everything to everybody else without taking care of ourselves. We sabotage. We do all these things and it's having a roadmap and being able to honestly evaluate ourselves. Like, what are my insecurities that drive me? What are my blind spots? What are my patterns? You know, what do I keep having to learn over and over again that I repeat, expecting to get blood out of an orange? Where do I keep banging my head against? What are the mistakes I am making over and over again that might have been born in the unmet needs of my childhood? And here I am trying to do the same thing in the same way and expecting a different result. Einstein picked up where Freud left off and he said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So the question on a grounded level that all of us need to ask ourselves as we look in the mirror and take honest inventory is what are my insecurities? What are the insecurities? What are the places that I get really scared and confused? What are the things that I. The rough edges in me that I need to firm up? Where is my inner work? Unless we do that inner work, we are destined to go over and over and over again. Because our systems operate that way. It's almost like having a shard of glass under our skin. Our bodies are going to keep throwing it up and up and up and we keep pushing it down. It's not going to come through. We have these brilliant emotional systems that are as functional to our survival as our respiratory system, our neuropsychology. You know, every system, our digestive system, our emotional system sends us. We have this incredible internal radar that sends us feelings.

Our pain avoidance system.

Exactly. It's tied into so many things. But what do we do? Especially us guys, you know, to feel is to fail. Our feelings are the enemy. We have to kill the enemy. Because anything other than anger is a sign of weakness. And we get demoted on the male scale to a lesser of a man status if we're feeling scared or confused. You know, we're not comported the way we're supposed to be as guys. So I think it's important for us to, to realize that our emotional systems, our radar systems picking up signals not so that we can become prisoners to the feelings that bubble up, but that we can pay attention to those things. We can pay attention to the things that make us scared. And we can face into those things and process our way through to the other side. So I believe absolutely that we have an opportunity all the time to reprogram, to recalibrate, to redo and to address directly some of our fears, our insecurities, our blind spots, our patterns that are not proving helpful. They slow us down, they rob us of time and of joy and of loving relationships. And that's our inner work. And I think we need a work ethic that's strong, that says, hey, I'm a work in progress. I need to be working, doing this work for the rest of my life. And that's an asset, that's a strength. It's not a deficiency or a weakness because I got a problem. It's an opportunity.

It's a vigilance too, isn't is it's paying attention.

But without becoming hyper vigilant, you know, you and I both know people who are constantly checking themselves in the mirror every 10 seconds. How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? You know, we're there, we're watching ourselves and we're not living. We're so hyper vigilant. We're so distrusting of ourselves. We're so hungry for approval and we're so what? One of my mentors, Mike Friedman, who wrote Type A Behavior in youn Heart Mike, used to talk about status insecurity. Status insecurity that some of us are status insecure. It was a primary cornerstone of Type A behavior. It's people who are status insecure, always worrying, you know, am I an imposter? Do I belong? Do I fit? Am I worthy and constant? So being hyper vigilant isn't the answer either. It's a calm, accepting vigilance that has at the core, self compassion, kindness, encouragement, a gentleness, an ease, a permission to be a work in progress. We don't have to be perfect. We can be a work in progress. And that is the core of a continuous improvement, self improvement, ripening process where we get to be continuously the better version of ourselves.

I think you're defining self actualization. It's a process of not sort of reaching, it seems some place on the mountain where you get to sit and bask in some warmer sun. But in a moment to moment, on a moment to moment level, are we the best we're capable of being? Are we cultivating the best thought in the moment? In fact, I love reminding myself and I'll share this with the community time to time as well. That this is just my opinion, but that the only thing that we have to do, the only duty, the only work we have, is to get this moment right. Imagine if that's the only responsibility that we have, is to get this moment right, to be present in this moment. Cultivate, as you say, a compassionate thought, a kind thought, a self care thought, a loving, a truly, unconditionally loving thought. In this moment, we've got the moment right.

I think we have done a disservice and psychology, modern psychology and positive think psychology has often done people a disservice by saying getting it right in this moment might mean acknowledging that you feel so messed up and turned inside out and so lost and so alone and so empty. And you're being asked to stand in that moment of lostness or of sorrow. And with a faith, with an organic faith, not an external faith, but with the organic faith that if I can summon the strength and the courage and the patience and the faith to stand in this moment and breathe and to hold myself and to allow myself to be held, that I am going to emerge, that there is a fullness behind the emptiness, there is a healing or a foundness behind the lostness. There's going to be a fullness in my life, there's going to be a knowingness that comes from behind the unknowingness that I've had the courage to stand in and to be patient, to have a work ethic and to have that organic faith in ourselves and to know, you know, sometimes it's okay, that it's not okay. It's okay, but it's not okay. And to realize that sometimes life will ask us to stand in those moments and it doesn't mean something's wrong with us. We're not trying hard enough or we don't have, we're not doing. We don't have the most positive attitude. It just means we're being human and we need to just stay with it and keep the faith.

So it's not necessarily about feeling better. As Michael Brown I love this beautiful book called the Presence Process where he says it's not about feeling better, it's about getting better at feeling. It sounds like in the moment, that ability to feel whatever it is that's real, that that's, that's a truthful moment. That's when we talk about getting it right. How could you get it any more right than what's really true for you in that, in that moment? Yeah. So for people that might. Might be listening, guys or women who are listening and thinking, okay, great, so, but what do I do with that? So, all right, I'm here and I.

Go, I feel like shit.

And I'm okay with that because it's real. What do I do with it?

Exactly. You know, part standing in that moment and saying our, ah, shits, and being able to say, this flat out sucks, and being held in that moment, being met in that moment by somebody who isn't gonna run away, who isn't gonna try to fix you or figure you out or put a big psychological or spiritual or religious spin on you, results in you having one of the most powerful experiences you can have. And that is the feeling of being understood. The feeling of being understood is at the core when you look into somebody else's eyes and they say, oh, my God, you really get it. I'm not alone. I mean, I'm alone, but you're with me. You're walking with me. You're standing with me. You're hanging with me. You're meeting me at the very place that I am in my truth. And that's where relationships kick in. Because if we're not standing in our own truth, how do we expect intimacy? How do we expect other people to get close to us? How do we expect to feel loved and supported and give it in return? So I think it's critical that there's nothing to change the narrative. And it may be counterintuitive for a lot of people who are so damn resourceful and so constitutionally strong that you're able to figure out and fix everything. Matter of fact, you're arrogant about it. You are an entrepreneur. You are entrepreneurially arrogant. You think you can figure out and fix everything until you hit a wall and you find out that there are some things you can't fix. There's some brokenness that never becomes better. It becomes different, but never better. That you understand paradox. One of the highest forms of understanding life and dealing with adversity is grasping paradox. That somebody you love is gone. When you suffer a deep loss of somebody whose life you cherish, they're gone. And they're right here, always and forever with you. That you are broken. Some part of your heart was ripped out. You went through a living loss, like a divorce or a bad diagnosis or an accident or an illness that debilitated you or a setback financially, or you're working in a company you started that's circling the bowl. You're suffering a living loss or a life Loss. And it hurts. And it hurts like hell. And you saying this sucks and declaring that and voicing an objection, even though it might be impotent rage clears the path. It makes space here. Rather than you contracting around the pain and becoming smaller, you vent it in a constructive and healthy way. You create breath and space for something good to come in there. You make room for resilience. That's what resilience is on an organic, neuropsychological level, and that's how we achieve it. So it's. Sometimes it's just by allowing life to be what it is on life's terms. Life has its own terms, and you're not trying to resist it, fight it, deny it, hide it, repress it, outrun it out, numb it out, work it. You're gonna stand in and you're gonna face it down. Yeah.

Talk about insanity. If Einstein was gonna really define insanity, he'd define it as trying to outrun life. And will you. Can I. I'm sorry I interrupted you before. I wanted you to say again how you define resilience, because, you know, we didn't, we didn't discuss it at this, at this, to this point. But I do want our folks to know some of the work that you've done because you, you, you've, you're no stranger to adversity and, and to heartache and loss, and you've become, you know, one of the nation's experts in that arena and, and worked with survivors and people that had lost people, lost loved ones in nine, eleven and Sandy Hook and a number of other situations that you. There's no, there's no making any sense out of it. So when you talk about the paradox, you've really worked with people that are deep in the paradox and don't know how to make what out of that. So, yeah, I'd love for you to speak a little bit about that and about resilience so that we all get.

A visceral sense of what Adam, you know me, and you know enough about my backstory to know that my oldest daughter Jenna, died at age 21. So my phone rang at 10 o' clock at night with the phone call. That is the terrifying horror and fear, the unspeakable fear that every parent has when the phone rings or when you can't figure out, you know, we all go through a moment of, you know, where is, what time is it, how come she's not home, or how come he's not home, or these kinds of things. So we all go through these moments of unspeakable terror where all of time stops. And it stopped in my life in 1996 and my journey since then has been defined. And you talk about pivot points when you have your heart ripped out and somebody whose life is more important to you than your own dies, Especially one of your kids. And my daughters are the light of my life. Truly, it put me in on a journey through grief, through light, through dark. The ancients used to call it the dark night of the soul. So my litmus test for whether something's real and whether I can really say something to somebody is could I say that to a grieving parent who just. Or a wife or a husband who watched their loved one be incinerated in the World Trade Center? I was asked to lead the first town hall meetings in New York after 9 11. I've worked with the families whose 5 and 6 and 7 year old children were murdered at Sandy Hook. Could I say this to them or would that not be something that would be respectful or true? You know, I have a dear and loved friend who was very involved in the law of attraction work, which is wonderful work. And he said something to me in a message, in a phone message as I was. I picked up the message as I was leaving the cemetery, having just helped a family whose daughter had been murdered, kidnapped and raped and murdered. And I helped them say goodbye to their daughter much the way I had to say goodbye to my daughter many years ago. And this person's message was, remember, it's your choice to have a nice day. And I said to myself, could I say that to this family? Tell them it's their choice to have a nice day? Are you friggin kidding me? So my litmus test has been learned from dealing with people who are dealing with the worst possible adversity. Understanding resilience is understanding what I call. And the formula for resilience is something I call the five honorings. Because these are the ways that we honor what we've lost. Whether it's a living loss, we've lost millions of dollars in the stock market, we've lost. We have an estranged family member, we're raising, a son or daughter who's become strung out on drugs. It could be we've gone through a terrible divorce, grief, it could be whatever it is, it's grief for a living loss or a life loss. And the five honorings are number one. The first honoring is our own survival. And by the way, all of these honorings are on my website and we can give them to people later. If they want to go on the website and download a copy of this. The first honoring has to do with self care. It's advanced level self care. It's not you pampering yourself by getting a mani or pedi or taking five minutes when you get home. It's true professional level self care. And most of us have not downloaded the new operating system or software for high level self care. The second thing is, once we've survived, is to do something good in the name of what we've lost. They sound crazy, but do something good for me. I started the Jenna drug Center and for 18 years I ran a nonprofit organization helping families who lost a child. That's how I got involved with so many of the tragedies that I've been involved with. And the other side of the Jenna drug center was carrying on the life and spirit of my daughter through a leadership program she created at age 16. We had 18,000 girls go through that. The third honoring is to embody some element of their essence to be more like they were when we grow up. It could be their kindness, their sense of humor, their audacity and irreverence. Could be their passion for something, or it could be something, some form of compassion and kindness that they showed in the world. The fourth honoring is to begin to develop, especially if it's been a living a life loss, to develop a spiritual relationship with them. Standing in the plant, the ashes of plan A, we realized we're never going to get a phone call. There's not going to be any visit. We don't get to go through the part of life we had so been excited about. Watching a child graduate, watching them have their first loser boyfriend, watching him find a great guy and falling in love with him as a son in law, which I've had the honor of doing with my earth daughter Steffi. And you know, we realize that. And what do we do? We develop a spiritual relationship because the love that never dies needs to be carried on. We need to feel it and receive it and we need to give it. Even if we don't know for certain what the true nature of life and death are. We can bet our faith and we can cultivate a spiritual relationship. And finally, for anyone who's gone through any kind of a loss, the fifth honoring takes the greatest amount of courage. We need to summon the courage to write new chapters of life, to put ourselves and our hearts on the line all over again. Even if we feel like we had our heart decimated and shattered and ripped out. Even if we've grieved. We need to somehow live forward and figure out what it means to live forward. And one breath at a time, one day at a time, we gather our strength, we gather our courage to live forward. And that's what resilience is. It's what we pull from within ourselves, and it's the love and encouragement that we absorb from outside. Now, some of us have more trouble doing that than others. I'm one of them because I realized years ago, we talked before about taking inventory. When I took inventory myself, I realized my receiver was broken. So, Adam, my receiver was broken. You could tell me, Ken, what a great interview. Thanks so much. You know, I really. It's touched my heart. I think you helped a lot of people and give me a standing ovation and I wouldn't have known how to receive it. And so many other times people tried to give me their love and their gratitude and their appreciation where I didn't know how to assimilate it, how to breathe it in, how to turn it into something good for myself.

Why was that?

Well, I think sometimes we get on a path of being the giver, go to guy. We get cast into a role that we're the figure out and fix it guy. We're the go to guy, and that's what our job is, all right? And in so doing, if that's the whole pattern we take, we're the patriarch or the matriarch of the family, the. We're the boss. We're the guy in charge. We've taken on our shoulders enormous responsibility. And what we haven't done is we've allowed those muscles inside of us that open the opening of our hearts to receive. We've allowed them to atrophy.

That too, is a box, right, Ken? Exactly the way you just described those roles, those responsibilities, that's also a box. And it's one that is even, even, again, self imposed. It could be that it's other people's, you know, way of seeing us. Right. But we also. We do own that.

Yes, we do.

At a certain point, we have to own that. Right.

Well, I had. I had an awakening. I'll tell you the story very quickly. I. A month before my mom passed, about a year and a half ago, we had a beautiful lunch. I used to go and take her to lunch. I take her to the symphony. We go on the beach. We go to moonlight beach in Encinitas and watch the sunset. I had very special moments with my mom. And I was her caregiver for many years. Sometimes we get into a Caregiver role. And my mother stopped me. I was about time where I had to leave because I had appointments that afternoon. We had a beautiful lunch. And she stopped me, and she looked me in the eye and she said, will you please just listen to me? And she said, do you have any idea how much it has meant to me for you to take such good care of me, to love me the way you have all these years since dad died? Do you have any idea how much that has meant to me and to my life? I love you, Ken. And she said this to me, and, you know, it's probably what most of us in a lifetime would wish to be told. And I breathed it in as best as I could. We spent a few more minutes, and I got in my car to drive home and to get back to work. And I turned on the radio, and I realized, what am I doing? I turned on the radio. What am I trying to obliterate and block out? What's overwhelming me? Why do we turn to a cigarette, a television show, or any diversion, escape a video game, our smartphone, at a moment of truth where we're being asked to breathe something in? And I turned off the radio, and I realized my receiver is broken. My mother just gave me this love. Am I going to breathe it in? Am I going to take it in and allow it to be a part of me, to receive her love, to make space inside of me? And I thought, how many other times have I disallowed people's love and affection and appreciation? After a keynote speech, I'll run off the stage. Come on, let's get on to the next thing. I've stopped. And over the last year and a half, I've taught myself that. To put my hand on my heart before I leave the stage, and to allow myself to receive and to make space inside. So all these things that we discover about ourselves are opportunities for us to become that resilient self. I don't have to live with the fact I'm not destined to have a broken receiver the rest of my life. Nobody's destined to live with insecurities or fears. You know, I wrote the courageous aging book because one of the greatest adversities we face in this life is the adversity we experience with fear and dread of getting older. Oh, my God, what time is it? You know, we watch the hourglass empty, and we get terrified, and we, you know, is there any Wonder we spend $1 trillion a year anti aging products? So what is the opportunity of becoming the more resilient self when it comes to turning 45 or 50 or 55 or 70 or 90, how do we become the more resilient side of ourselves as we go through this, on this journey through time, as we face into all the adversities?

So beautiful. Randy reminds me of that quite a bit. She'll. She points out a question that. Such a pivot question, pivotal question. And I love how you've. You've. You've reflected back, pivot point. She says, what's the creative opportunity? In every situation, there's creative opportunity. What. You know, women are so much wiser than men, right? Certainly our wives, we're both blessed to have amazing women in our lives. And so that's. That's an incredible question. Is that your greatest insecurity at this point? Is it. Is it age? Did you write the book to deal with your own insecurity about age?

I wrote the book as I was facing into and summoning the courage to deal with all the elements of getting older, to learn how to embrace the older version of Ken, to learn how to grieve the younger. The loss of the younger Ken and what he was able to do. That guy played the senior Olympics and soccer until he was 50, you know, ran like the wind, was able to do things physically, you know, but to embrace the older version of me and to say, my God, how is the older version of me? 10 times better in so many ways?

I love this guy. Yeah, I love this guy. And he's not the same guy.

Exactly.

And I love him, too, because I love him.

And I've written down affirmations, if anybody's interested. I have them on the website. I have all these positive affirmations because, you know, we have to move into this space. We don't just automatically flip a switch and suddenly we're looking in the mirror differently. We have to cultivate. We have to make room for ourselves, to reimagine the future and to also move into a new space in which I'm embracing. I look in the mirror and I go, you're beautiful. Look at you. You look beautiful today. You know, and. Yeah, you know. Yeah, let's. If you want to grieve the way your hairline used to be over here.

I resemble that remark.

Yeah, I can breathe that with you. I'm with you.

Thank you, brother.

But it's accepting myself exactly. And where I am and seeing the opportunity side of what's ahead of me. And not only that, because I wrote a blog post recently called Facing down the Biggest Fear of All. And that's the fear of dying, of withering and dying. You know, we get to not to move out of denial and avoidance of the fact that this is a lease. We're on a lease program, guys. You know, this doesn't go on forever. We may change forms. Who knows what happens after this, what this pivots into what eternity is. But facing down and dealing with our aging or the fact that we're getting older and dealing with our own impermanence is one of the most powerful and important things. Not that we have the whole thing figured out, I don't. But facing into it, I have diminished my fear of these things from up here where they were. I was a little bit underwater to all the way down here. They feel workable. They're not taking up space in my life. I am living in the gratitude that we started this conversation talking about. And here's the most powerful point about aging gracefully is that once we've come to terms with life's package deal, once we've made peace with life's terms, the natural thing that flows into us is the desire to pay the good in our lives forward out of gratitude, to make sure that our kids and our grandkids and their kids and future generations are sitting in the shade of a giving tree that we help plant or in the warm sunlight that comes through the branches of those trees. So we get to. Instead of kicking and screaming as we go and leaving a legacy of chaos and clutter and unfinished business, we get to leave a legacy of love that's born of our sensitivity, our compassion, our consideration, our love, our generosity of heart and our strength, our acceptance that this is the way of life. This is what happens. It's the cycle of life. I'm a part of it. I surrender to it. I'm blessed to have had this ride. And I go forward into the great beyond. It is.

A piece is that passeth all understanding, isn't it? It's a piece that creates a peace like no other. And I love so much how you gave that piece a purpose as well.

Doesn'T it?

And. And that is that when we feel that peace, we have that peace. We can actually use it to serve in a way that is fuller, that's more authentic. Because for the most part, so many people spend so much of their time, their precious, limited time. I believe in eternity. So I'm not too on that level. You know, I'll just say I. I don't think we have to worry too, too much on. At least from the standpoint. If you believe that this is not the only chapter in the book. Then we place so much importance on this chapter and therefore so much of our time is wasted in protecting ourselves, in protecting ourselves from pain, from the feeling of pain, from protecting ourselves, from the. Even from the. From death. I don't even know that it's. That it's fear of death so much for me that is the greatest fear. I'm just want to plus what you're saying because it came up when you were saying it. I'm thinking to myself, gosh, it's fear of disappearing. It's this annihilation that's the annihilation of ourselves.

Yes.

So what would. What is death? I mean, I'm not a poet. There's these beautiful poems that have been written. I, Wordsworth wrote a poem and Meredith wrote upon all these poems about death. But if you, if you take it, what is death if we are not, if there is no annihilation of us, if the soul is not annihilated, if we don't disappear in essence, why. Why fear death? So I want to, in the few moments we've got remaining, I'd love to ask you about your conscious practices, which I refer to as rituals. Not in a religious sense, definitely in a. Could be on a spiritual level, but I refer to rituals as a conscious practice, as something we do not habitually because we brush our teeth with our left hand, but something that we consciously choose to do, like a master habit of sorts. At this stage in your life, what's a ritual? What are the rituals that really add juice to the experience of living for you each day? Ken, what does that look like?

The blessings and the richness of my life is remarkable. Through the work that I've done and the people that I reach out to and that I have the privilege and opportunity to help and work with or speak to. You know, I had the honor of speaking to 1100 people in Balboa Theater yesterday, the entire District Attorney's office, every staff member of the District Attorney's office in our city about self care, about grief, literacy, and the honor and privilege of being able to speak and touch hearts and touch lives to give. What I've learned and what I'm going through, to share and be transparent about what I'm going through, to be able to walk with people who are going through unspeakable losses in our community or in other communities around the country, to be able to go on TV with Don Lemon on cnn, who I get to work with on a regular basis. Those are the blessings of My life. And I keep. And I think if I. If I take care of this moment, and if I show up in this moment with my heart, with compassion, with strength, the strength to say no, the strength to say yes, with giving myself the time I need to make good decisions about what's right for me, especially as I enter a season that I'm defining as ease, a new season of life, where there's going to be greater ease for me. So I think those are the practices. And while I do that, it so helps me support everything I want to do, that I jump into a swimming pool, I flop around, and I strengthen and lengthen the muscles in my body, and I move. And that I'm blessed that Lisette always has a healthy, nourishing meal, or that I make one for us. I'm blessed that I have a dog who rescued us eight years ago named Bean, who teaches me, you know, unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness on a daily basis, and that I get to walk and hike every day as well, every day that I can. Those are the practices and the blessings, and I try not to configure them in any form. For me, being on your show is a meditation in being present. It's a talking meditation. Walking up Torrey pines, the hiking trails, that's a walking meditation. Sitting around watching the world turn, flipping back and forth from MSNBC to Fox News to see how polarized or how much the world might be coming together on what's happening, whether we're achieving civility or savagery, all of those things are meditations. I try to hold them in a calm place. I try to. When I need to vent in a healthy and constructive way, I try to do that. I don't hesitate to make sounds that I need to make. Ah. When I need to scream, just as when I've suffered losses, I don't hesitate to wail and make the sounds of sorrow. And so I think giving myself constructive outlets, the expression of all those things, including joy, explosion of joy in my life and the blessings, is part of my daily practice. The rituals. I love rituals. I love to stop everything, to hold precious. What's happening in this very moment, it's not happening anywhere else. You said it so beautifully, the way you introduced our time together today. You said this moment is a blessing. You were able to feel and sense and experience and drink in the preciousness of this moment. And not that there isn't suffering in the world, there is, but there's also beauty and blessings. So.

Thank you, Ken.

Thank you.

Wow. I'M going to gather myself. I just drinking in, as you said, drinking in this moment. And I thank you so dearly for your sharing your heart with us and your thoughts and just your presence in this moment, which is spectacular. And I thank you for that.

Thank you. I thank you right back for being the kind of person and visionary leader who brings out the very best best in the people that you share with your audience. And I thank you for sharing your audience in your living room with me today.

Well, everyone, I will wrap things up in just a moment. Before I do that, just want to say this too. That information about the work that Ken is doing now, where he's his work is focused and refocused, the work he's done in the past, access to his website and books and other resources will be made available. So part of our show notes have all of that for you all I know Ken mentioned a number of things including the five honorings. So all of that will be available for all of you, which is just again, a treat and a blessing. And we'll wrap up as we began with gratitude. Before we do that, I'll quickly remind everybody that if this is a show that you've loved, please feel free to leave a review. We're getting so many beautiful comments, incredible feedback, and you can leave a review on itunes, you can leave a review for us in the blog because all of these shows get turned into some beautiful blogs as well. And you can go to AdamMarkel.com to do that. You can join our pivot community, which is just so incredibly rich with people who are vulnerable in their pivots, being authentic and sharing what they're learning and where it is. They're still seeking guidance. So they're incredible on the side of both the giving and on the receiving. And Ken, you said it so well earlier. It it's one of these wonderful discoveries for me in the latter 10 years or so that I started doing this work and pivoted out of being a full time practicing attorney that in working with people around the world, I found that there's something that we all have in common. We're all pretty shitty receivers. And you said your receiver was broken and you're not alone, sir. There's just a lot of, a lot of us that have had broken receivers from time to time. And there's a beautiful piece of writing that is contained in the Course in Miracles, which I absolutely adore. This section 30 that's called the New Beginning. And there's a place in that writing that talks about the Importance of receiving that which we want most to have, the day that we want to have, and that in the having of it, in the receiving of it, so shall we give. And this was a profound distinction for me, that as we receive, so shall we give. As we receive peace, peace becomes our offering. As we receive love, unconditional love for ourselves, self care, it becomes our offering that we can make to the world. We cannot make an offering of something we don't possess. We can't give what we don't have. So it is this really interesting and paradoxical and ironic interplay of these things. And certainly it's been taught for thousands of years that, and in the Bible too, that somehow it's better to give than to receive, that is more blessed. But they are two sides of the same coin. And so therefore, I don't know that we can make one more important than the other. It really is both. And I. So thank you, Ken, for bringing that up and pointing it out. And so as we do conclude, what I want to do is. And I get to do. And this is the privilege and the joy for me in having this microphone and knowing that there's a community of people who are really interested in the things that we're chatting about and the things we're exploring and the vulnerabilities that we're willing to share. What a joy it is for me to be able to express a wish of faith and a wish and a prayer for all of us, for all of us, that tomorrow we wake up, that we get to wake up again tomorrow as we got to today. Because that is such a blessing as we get to wake up our consciousness, wake up our minds, our bodies, our spirits too, that that itself is so profound because as we take that first deep breath, as we're waking up ourselves just a little more tomorrow than today, we are creating such a trajectory, such a moving forward, as you said, Ken, living forward. What could be more. A representation of living forward than our ability to just grow a little bit more tomorrow, to be a little more awake and alive and aware tomorrow than we were even today. So my wish, my prayer is that we wake up tomorrow. And then in that waking breath, as we take that breath, that we realize there are people in that moment who will be taking their very last breath. And they'll also be people being born who will be taking their very first breath in that moment. And that makes that moment holy, as we said, special. And so with that gratitude, if you're willing in your bed or when you put your feet on the floor to decide. Declare out loud these words. They've changed my life. I've really had such a great honor to share them with a lot of people. And if you're willing to say these words, when you wake tomorrow and you have that breath and you're in gratitude that you say, I love my life, I love my life, I love my life. I wish that for all of you and so much more. Ken, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody. We'll see you. We'll hear from you. We'll be engaged in this act of living together and I look forward to that. So until we have that opportunity again, bye bye. Ciao for now.

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