The Art Of Living: Happiness Is An Inside Job With Aaron McHugh

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm your host, Adam Markel. I am sitting here feeling very, very blessed, really lucky and grateful to be in this moment. I find lately I'm thinking about gratitude all the time, and there's so many reasons to be grateful when you start to search for them. When I start to search for them, I find There's just no limit. I could pretty much not even, uh, not stop for an hour just thinking about all the things that I'm grateful for. But in this moment, as many things as there are for me to be grateful for, I just, I'm in love with this one, this moment right now. I hope you feel that way wherever you are, whatever you're doing, that you can just fall in love with this moment. I don't know that we have much more than that, honestly. And I think that's enough. I really do believe that is enough. I have a great privilege to be introduced to and be introducing a new friend this morning. His name is Aaron McHugh, and he is a writer, a podcaster, adventurer, an author, bestselling author of a book, which I love the title of. And we're gonna talk about this today. It's called Fire Your Boss: Discover Work You Love Without Quitting Your Job. How cool is that? Yeah. I mean, almost like irreconcilable. Well, we will unpack that a bit more. He is mastering the art of living a sustainable work-life balance, which we're going to find out whether or not work-life balance is a myth or it's fact or fiction. And he's constantly working on interweaving the rhythms of play and adventure into his life. So, Aaron, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate you having me, Adam. It's stoked to be with you.

Way cool. So your bio, I love it because it's short and sweet and succinct. And I also want to ask you, what's not written in the bio that I just read, that brief introduction? What's one thing that you would love for people to know about you?

I'm a lifelong runner and I love French black French press coffee.

Oh, I don't know, anybody else out there going, oh, that's what I need right this second?

Yeah, a run and followed by a cup of coffee.

Yeah, I think we'll put this thing on pause right now. I'm just gonna hit pause and go get myself a nice Yeah. I know a place right around the corner here, actually, to get that. Thank you, Aaron. So you and I are, as my wife said, simpatico. We have a lot of things in common. I'd like to just get a sense of your history. I don't want to start right with the book. I want people to get a sense of the person you are, the road that you've traveled, then we'll dive into these other concepts as well.

Yeah. Great. Thanks. Maybe the way I've learned to answer those kinds of questions is starting with what I love, And some things that I love are I really love people and I always have. And I'm curious about people. My brother will give me a hard time and say, you can actually genuinely have a conversation with any stranger you ever meet and you mean it. And it's true. I just, I have a curiosity about people. So that's always been true about me. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, Bishop, California, not too far away from you when I was a little kid. And my grandfather worked at Disneyland. And so I had these like playland places I lived. Like my real world was in the Sierras and we didn't have a lot of resources. My dad was a pastor growing up. And so we didn't have a lot of money, but I found like the natural world and adventure and this creeks and rivers and streams and fish and things to climb to be really interesting. And then I would go to visit my grandfather at work and we'd go through the back alleys of Disneyland because he had this golden pass. He started working there the year after the park opened in 1956. So to me, work was a place you're supposed to really be stoked about and enjoy what you're doing in life. I think those are things that just really in early formative years formed who I've become. Then over the years, so I'm a dad, I have 3 kids. I've been married to the same woman that I still love and enjoy for 27 years. And that's not free and hasn't been easy. And there's been lots of highs and lows.

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And then in my work and career, what I've always loved is the pursuit of ideas of this. I found my way into sales early on in my career, and I was selling like 60-second radio commercials to liquor stores and bars in my first beginning. But hey, it was like a commission job, and it was like you could make more money And it came with health insurance. And so I was like, yeah, I'll give it a try. And so I think that what I've just found is that I was never, and I've never even yet today, knocking on the door of 49, I've never had like a linear path, a 5-year plan. Oh, this is what I'm going to do and achieve in 5 years. Or I never had like some wow pedigree. I didn't go to MIT. I wasn't valedictorian. I barely graduated high school because I was out in the parking lot with my buddies skipping class. But I found like there's a certain way to show up to your life, irregardless of circumstance. And in my beginnings, we had lots of bumps in the road and unfortunate events, and that's continued throughout a lot of my adult life. But I've just found that your word of resilience and pivot really stand out to me. So I've just discovered, like, there is an art of living. There's a way of living, irregardless of what our life circumstances are. And the people that I admire most are the ones that show up with some zeal and some gusto, some guts, an open heart, as you say.

Aaron, I'd love to dive into the art of living. I think there's a— I remember reading in an old metaphysical book by Emmet Fox, this term of the art of successful living. And I'd love to get your take on what that art is or what components, let's say, there are involved in artful living.

I was in Hawaii at a friend of mine's home, and for a living, he developed Lava rock real estate. And they turned lava rock flow into a billion dollars worth of real estate for guys with last names like Dell and Schwab. And in his bathroom— so I found him like a really cool cat anyway, but in his bathroom, etched in the sink, in the kind of whatever it was, marble or granite or whatever, was this little pattern. And then they had a quote above the sink that was about the art of living. And basically, the essence is— and I'll send you the quote, I won't do it justice verbatim— but effectively, it's like, you be the judge. When is the master of the art of living at work? When is he at play? When is he worshiping? When is he efforting? When is he loving? And it's like these kind of— I call them from-tos. And what I learned, and this is probably going on 15 years ago, is I learned that reflecting on my own life, having a couple of weeks in Hawaii to get away and extract myself from my normal routines, my normal ways of being, was I really lived in compartments. This compartment was work. This compartment was play. This compartment was call my wife. This part was friends. And so, I really had worked to a really well-organized IKEA closet. have a container and a label for everything. And when I was done with it, I would put it back on the shelf, seal it tight, and then move on to the next container. And what I found was it really was an attempt and a grasp at control. It turns out I wasn't very good at it.

Hmm.

But I had lived with the illusion that if I can get ahead, if I can just get the next thing done or achieve the next conquest or earn a certain amount of money or race this race, climb this mountain, achieve this relational 27-mile or year marker with my wife, like, well, then I'll equal happy, then I'll equal content, then I'll equal successful. And what I've learned is this art of living, this mastery of in the dailies, in the moment, like you mentioned, is like, what would it look like for me to show up open-hearted, wholehearted, and actually pursue an integrated life where I don't have any containers. It's just all one beautiful big mess concoction creation where it's just a light and easy way of living versus a tight gripping of control and insisting on outcomes.

This is such an interesting thing that we stumbled upon here. And of course, I never believe in any accident. So I, I think we've been led to it. We stumble, but we're led at the same time. Control's an interesting topic. I've known a few control freaks in my life. I see a recovering control freak in the morning when I look in the mirror.

Hmm.

So I've known a lot of successful people that I would also say are highly controlling people. And, and so I guess the question I wanna put out there to the folks that are, are listening to this, questioning perhaps whether they fall into that category themselves or whether Maybe they haven't been, as you said, successful, quote unquote, because they aren't as controlling as others around them have been.

Hmm.

I want to get a sense of that from you. And do you think that control is a feature that contributes to success? And perhaps maybe it's a compound question that even if it does, does it ultimately rob a person of feeling good about their success, even after they've achieved it?

Yeah. So like you, Adam, I don't know that I'd go as far as call myself a control freak, but I have had issues with control. And what I've learned is that part of the thing I've been— the journey I've been on the last decade or so is getting really curious about my internal world, my inner life, and looking at that as information about my external life. What I mean by that is there's the things I do in the world, and oftentimes with leadership teams who I work with, we talk about using the metaphor of an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg you can see because it sticks out of the water. That's where we can see the observables, the behavior, the house, the cars, the whatever LinkedIn says. Then below the waterline is the 90% you can't see. We call them the hidden depths. So I've really been spending a lot more time these last years really getting curious about the hidden depths and then trying to see a more whole picture of myself, of what are my motives? Why do I do what I do? So control as an example, why do I want to grip onto things? And what I really realized is it was an attempt to minimize pain. Hmm. For me, growing up as a kid, my parents had split when I was early on. And I was the oldest of 3, and I could live on food stamps like we did as a kid, or— and I could be in the free lunch line, or I could say, I'm going to avoid that pain by controlling an outcome, which is like, you know, it's kind of— my brother calls it the 1,000-yard stare, like someone on a racecourse. You can just see somebody has a look in their eye and they are headed somewhere. Well, that was me early in my career. Now, I wanted to do it in a way that didn't leave a lot of casualties in wake behind me because I care about people.

Yes.

But I was happily willing to make myself a casualty, like unknowingly, but just what I would push myself through. I refused to give myself a break and to rest. You talk about resilience. Well, a big part of that I've learned now is like, you can't I have limitations.

Yes.

I didn't know that. I didn't like it. I still wrestle with the fact that I have limitations. I like the old way of—

Yeah, doesn't that suck, by the way?

Yeah, right.

I don't want any limitations.

Right. I just want to be like a robot. I don't, because that's not wholehearted. But there was a time where I am an endurance athlete. So there in San Diego where you are, you see a lot of triathletes training along the coast. So I was one of them. And on a racecourse, I would tell myself over and over as I would pass someone, or even as I would get passed, that I suffer better than you. That was my internal mantra.

Right.

And it was like, that was my programming. My daily program is I'm really good at suffering. And so what that didn't ever equate for—

Or enduring suffering. Yeah.

Yeah. And enduring suffering. I can take it. Like, I can go further. But the part that was unkind to myself, my body, my mind, my soul, my relationships, was that it actually wasn't— yes, it's true about me, and at what cost? So below my iceberg, a lot of the reasons I would do those things was because I was afraid of being weak. Yeah. I was afraid of asking for help. I was afraid of no help ever coming. And so what I've learned is that each of us are just fascinating creatures, and we have really great reasons why we do what we do. And that above-the-waterline picture is just only a small bit. And so in order to be on this path of mastering the art of living, it means I have to be a lot more clear and conscious. in my view of what's really going on here and why am I doing these things and just making sure I'm clear about it. It still may be that I tell myself a story of suffering, but that it's clear. It's not like autopilot. My life's not happening to me. I'm actually creating, co-creating the life that I'm living intentionally.

It's a very different approach. And being That much more aware, as he said, of both what's above and below that waterline.

Yes.

Visible and invisible is such a finer distinction. It really is simpler, I suppose, to not be concerned with what's below the waterline, what's invisible. There are enough hours of the day or enough ways that we can spend focused on what's above the water that people can see, that others can see, that we never have to really spend a whole lot of time on what's going on below. Totally. I mean, I think people live their entire lives in that way and maybe only have sort of a glimpse of what that lost opportunity is at the point when they're making their transition. So I don't know that for certain. Obviously, I haven't been there myself, but I certainly know that what you said resonates with me. I, I've spent a good chunk of my adult life and my professional life mostly focused on how to build that structure and that presence above waterline that the world will validate and approve of and reward and pay and all those things. And what's below is so, is so much deeper. It's so much more—

Yeah, and I'd call it an honest life. Like, like, I have a deep faith and believe that God's life is real. And so for me, there's this great quote from this guy Parker Palmer that I love, and he talks about Being like grounded with and fierce in reality. Like, wow, fierce with reality. What does that mean?

Hmm.

That means it's truthful. That means above the waterline, below, like all of it is like truthful, integrated, whole, no compartments. And I think what's oftentimes just scary for me, for others, is that it feels like Wow, if I take a peek, if I open and crack that lid to see what's actually in there, how about I'll just spend time on the above? I'll just— so we have some really dear friends that come to mind, and yeah, they just moved from vacation to vacation, new home to new home, job to job. And I know that's the part you can see on LinkedIn, and the part that's below is just Almost tragic.

In what sense?

Yeah, I mean, like, just broken relationships. And they're lovely, beautiful people. But like, I'd say a new willingness— as I say that, a developing willingness to take a look at what else is going on down there that's actually driving why we do what we do. That is a courageous and brave act. Like Brené Brown calls it, So much of it is we engineer smallness above the waterline. Wow. I don't want to live in smallness. Like your new book, like how to live like in abundance and love, like a life you actually love. Like when you stare at the mirror and look back at yourself, you love in earnest, not just the one that gets up on some social media feed about how great it is. Well, I've been in some really wonderful exotic places. And, I had a buddy of mine tell me, again, that billionaire developer, and he was saying, there are some amazing people who come to this place that are soulfully dying. They're miserable. This is just another attempt at distraction from what's below. So, all that for me is just, again, back to the, what does it look like to approach our life with curiosity and to be integrated And what does it look like to do the hard work of prioritizing our inner work as well as our outer work so that— back to your question— so we can actually enjoy it? So the upside's freedom, joy, fun, intimacy, connection, like adventure. Like, that was what I was after in the first place. Now, I didn't mention I went through a burnout a number of years ago, and our middle child passed away and died. My other Our son was in a recovery center for drugs and alcohol. So none of this is theory for me.

I don't know why I want to ask you this question. I'm just going to ask it, though. What scares you today? What's something—

We're on the eve of our daughter's passing here at the end of this month. It'll be 10 years. And I think when I feel— I know when I feel afraid or something I feel afraid of at times. Is that I'm going to give up. Like, I mean, not like give up in life or like end my life or anything like that, but just like there's a zeal and a drive and a passion about me for really living life with gusto and meaning and purpose. And I think when I feel sad, when I feel the weight of grief, when I feel worried about the state of the world, I have moments of like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine spending 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years if I don't have that through line fire in my belly to keep going. I've not experienced long bouts of that happening, but I've had a couple. I burned out. And

do you have a way out? I mean, because I think what you're describing can be analogized in so many ways. I think a lot of people feel that way. I know in this moment that the reason I asked you that was because I truly feel that It's a hidden thing. It's below the waterline.

Absolutely.

So many of us that we feel we don't have the luxury to be that real with the world.

Yeah.

I'm not saying we don't ever share it with people that are close to us or in any circumstance. I think people sometimes do. And thanks in part to folks like Brené Brown who've made it more aware, we feel more permissible today.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like normalized and safe, right?

For sure. And yet, to my knowledge and experience, it's still something that people keep very much themselves.

Absolutely.

And, and is way below that waterline. So I so appreciate that you shared that. I think it's a great way to enter this conversation of what are we doing on a ritual basis, even.

Yeah, absolutely.

To pull ourselves out of the cave or that darker place or

I'm super passionate, and I noticed from your work that you are as well, about just practices, daily practices, rituals, habits. A couple of things that I've really found as a rescue for me is a buddy of mine I called at the beginning of pandemic, and he had been in prison for 13 months for white-collar IRS violation stuff. back in the day, and uber successful above the waterline, planes and houses, et cetera. Really amazing dude and a great friend and mentor. And so, I just asked him, I was like, what do you think about this? We were on house— what do you say— stay-at-home orders. And he said, actually, basically, I learned to build ritual into my day to give me some semblance of normalcy. So he said, when I was in prison— so I'm listening, like, when I'm in prison, okay, I'm listening, and this is someone I admire— we had game time every day. He goes, I read my Bible at the same time every day. I wrote letters to home every day. I went for a walk. And so he had this, like, ritual. And what I've learned since this work of pandemic is how few of us, me included, have what I would call an everyday muscle. Mm-hmm. 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 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. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

So my son now is in recovery, almost 6 years clean and sober. My wife did the math on his total number of days he's been sober. It was like over 2,000. And I stared at that along with my friend's advice, and I'm like, what have I ever done anything for 2,000 days? I don't even brush my teeth every single day. So, wow, can you imagine? Like, every single day. I'm a meditator. I pray. Even in that, I noticed giving myself free passes. Like, well, I won't do it today. So fast forward, I started running as a mini small experiment. I'm not sure if you know the work of James Clear on Atomic Habits.

I do. I've recommended his book on this show before.

Okay, great. So I'll echo your recommendation. I chose, as a runner, what if I ran every single day a minimum of a mile? He talks about making it so small you can't fail. Right. A mile for me is so small I can't fail. I'm 307 days today, I think, in a row, rain and shine, snow, sleet, whatever it may be. What I've learned, to answer your question, is I really believe that sometimes, It's important to just put action first and evaluation later. So just put something small into action, shut up, don't ask too many questions, just do it, and then think about it, evaluate it later. In the recovery world, one of the recommendations they make is go to 6— like a recovery community, I can't mention their name, but predominant one you would recognize, right? Right. Is go to 6 of them in a row and then evaluate if you like it or not.

Right.

Go to 30 meetings in a row for 30 days and then decide if it helped you or not.

Sure.

So I think that's something that we lack as a culture, is everything's under constant evaluation of how do I feel about it? How do I feel today? What do I want to do? And I think that actually what we've done is we've shortcutted some of the rebar that gives our life some structure. And just through lines that we just stop talking about and just do. As a result, back to your question, how do I get out of the cave? Sometimes when I just go run a mile, shut up, and don't think about it, I feel a lot better afterwards.

And for me, it's getting in the pool, or it's getting in the ocean. It's the same thing. The ritual is something substantial that can be counted on. Like, I know I can count on my rituals to be Totally. Part of when I speak with organizations and do keynote work for companies, I use this analogy of the rescue. In fact, I tell the first story I tell during my TED Talk, and then in many, many subsequent talks is this story of a rescue that went bad when I was a lifeguard at a beach when I was 19 years old. This idea that rituals are in fact A buoy, they are a rescue tool, is not a small thing in my world. It hasn't been. And so to hear you say that, it really, really drops in. And I do, I love a lot of what is conveyed in James Clear's book Atomic Habits because we have to make things— change can be either easy or difficult. I mean, just like almost anything, you can make anything as easy or as difficult As you like.

Yeah.

I don't care what it is. Part of that art of living successfully is that we look for ways, create ways to make things easy. And I don't mean easy in the shortcut. Like when I was 25, that would've meant taking shortcuts.

Yes.

It would've meant, you know, cutting corners or whatever it means, you know, cheating, lying, whatever. Today it means what we're talking about. Which is you make things— you make it easy on your soul. It's not easy on your soul to cheat, to lie, to hurt other people, to roll over, barrel over other people in the pursuit of your success. It's not easy on the soul. You may achieve something in the process. You may end up with that, the ring of, you know, the house, car, or whatever, but the price is your soul, and that's not making it easy. For yourself, the book. And you're launching that book right around the time that COVID hits. What great timing, right?

Yeah, right. Speaking of resilience,

it's like, what, are you kidding me? Our book, this new book, the I Love My Life Challenge, which you were referring to earlier, which is an interactive 28-day workbook for the purposes we're talking about— how you create rituals day by day, one day after another, one, you know, sort of one foot in front of the other And we had that idea shortly after COVID started. And we knew that we wanted to put this concept out into the world and make something tangible people could use. You had the idea for your book before COVID hit and then had to launch it in the midst of a pandemic. So I'd love to get a sense of what the book is about and what that journey has been like for you, because launching a book on a good day is as much of a pain in the ass as I think almost anything I've ever experienced in business. On a pandemic day, I'm not sure what that would be like.

Stories from the front line, I guess. So the book, like you mentioned, Fire Your Boss.

Great cover.

Great cover. Thank you.

If you want to see this on YouTube, you can check that out. Just look it up.

Yeah. Super fun. I think what I've learned about myself real quick is that I'm a marinator. And so for instance, I'll read the same book 2 times, 5 times, 8 times. I'll watch the same movie over and over. And what I realized it comes down to is I really love, like, getting it underneath my skin. Like, yes, exactly. Dog-eared. Yeah. The Untethered Soul. Right on.

I'm just— for people listening to this, I'm holding up a copy of an old book by Michael Singer called The Untethered Soul, which I've read. I've read this book 3 or 4 times and, you know.

Yeah. Dog-eared, marked up. See, that's my—

Written on, you name it.

Yeah. For me, it's like I view books like friends. that I really like, and not all of them are that way. So I'll know, you know, 2 or 3, 4 chapters in if this is a friend I want to hang with and spend some time with, or if maybe I'll put it in the come back to later, or no, this isn't for me for the season. So for me, this book is really about the integration of the inner and outer life and in the context of work, but The only reason it's in the context of work is that was the frontier in which I was exploring, and that was the classroom in which I was participating so that I could become more acquainted with who I am fully and how I want to show up in the world. So I find— so one of the things that to me is like just painful is repeatedly Gallup does an annual survey on employee engagement. Yeah.

Yes.

It's referred to a lot, but the bottom line is 1/3 of people who go to work every day in the US are engaged, 2/3 are not. And what that 2/3 that are not means that you just go and you punch a clock. And then 1/3 of those are actually actively disengaged. And to me, I view that as a crime of humanity. It's not okay. And on my watch, with my life, I am going to make— I'm going to take a swing. And whether that's like the Berlin Wall, and we're trying to get some cracks in the concrete, I don't care what I got to do. I am swinging at that wall because it's not okay. We as humans are made for more. And phoning it in before you even walk in the front door, sitting in the parking lot or rolled into Zoom, That apathy and resignation are not okay ways to spend our life. So for me, I've spent my career in business, sales, commercial innovation, software startups, as a senior executive, global software company, rang the opening day trading bell, London Stock Exchange. Like, I've gotten to experience a lot of that stuff. Well, I also got to experience what it was like in commercial sales to be— or in consulting— in different companies all over the planet. Well, you stare like you and I, eyeball to eyeball, and you see if the light's on and anybody's at home, or if it's a pretty dull flicker. I got curious, like, why? Back again, like, what is going on here? This is not okay. So my book is really about the journey of— if you've ever— do you know the hero's journey, Adam? Do you know that?

Absolutely.

Yeah. So this idea of, like, in order to— Luke Skywalker wants to defeat Darth Vader. Well, he has to go on an inner journey to become a Jedi before he can actually go up against Darth Vader. Well, this idea repeatedly over and over about stories about how do you become the kind of person who could move from fear to freedom.

Isn't that Thomas— it's not Thomas Malone.

Joseph Campbell.

Joseph Campbell.

Thank you. Joseph Campbell. So I use that arc and structure across my book of how do you become the person to from fear to freedom, from compartmentalized to wholehearted, from rule follower to heretic. And I really just kind of walk through a series of— I'd call them core ideas— and how do you become the person who can thrive in any and all situations you find yourself in your career. So that's why it's the important subtext. Subtitle is Discovering Work You Love Without Quitting Your Job.

Yes.

And I think so often with a title like Fire Your Boss, People assume that it's an entrepreneurial, oh sweet, I can finally be on my own.

Yes.

And the case I make in the book, Adam, is start where you are, wherever you are— entrepreneur, intrapreneur, employee— wherever you are, I want you, and I will show you how to start a revolution at an inner journey level that will then take shape externally. So, if you go off to be an entrepreneur, well, I can show you how to be greater impact in that. So, I kind of walk through these stories of my own career liberation.

Ultimately, it's to get the light to stop flickering and— Yeah.

So, in the end, it's about being free. So, to me, how do you be fully engaged? How do you live with joy and freedom? How do you have a life that I love? Yeah, happiness is an inside job.

If you could put the through line, because you use that word several times, and that's a big word for us in terms of part of our company's work today is in training people in their communications, including getting on TED stages and sharing messages in high-impact platforms. And that through line of the— or the through line of your book, can you summarize it in one sentence? I think people would love to hear that.

Yeah. Happiness is an inside job and agency of your life and your career starts with you. No one's going to give you permission.

Yeah. So anybody that's feeling disengaged at work, like people right now working in the way that we are working, some people are leaning into it, feeling great about they can be home, they can see their kids for dinner. Yes, they're on Zoom at all hours, but They don't have to wear pants.

Totally.

Drive to the office. Within reason, right? We've had some weird stories of things going on on Zoom calls. But right now, to the person who is not feeling great about their work situation, and I use my own kids as an example because we have 4, and 2 that are still in college and 2 that are out, but the 2 that are in college have had internships and the 2 that are out have been working in jobs as for startups and, and some more mature companies over the last couple years. And I've just seen that they've gotten— they've become disillusioned with the companies they've worked for after a period of time. You know, could be a year, could be 18 months. I think with millennials, they on average are switching jobs about every 18 months. For somebody whose light is flickering in terms of their passion, their commitment, their engagement with that employer. What's in this book for them?

I think the biggest aha for most people when they read my book and engage with these ideas is back to Tiny Atomic Habits and Tiny Steps with James Clear. There's a lot of on-ramps and handholds for small things that you can do. The thing I'll link that to is most of us cannot answer the question, what do I want? What do I desire? What do I need? What do I value? Most of us can say what I don't like. Most of us can say what bothers me. The reason I'm not engaged is because— and it's usually a statement of associated blame and responsibility of someone else.

Yes.

We very often deflect and defer any personal responsibility to ourselves on, are you serious? Is my engagement dependent on someone else's response, environment that you create for me, compensation, et cetera? Well, those are important things, but if engagement is that fragile that we've actually outsourced our happiness and contentment and engagement to other people, well, then that will go with you to your next job too. That was a pattern I found in my own career. But if I can put a stake in the ground wherever I am today, begin to take ownership over my engagement, my passion, my swing-for-the-fence-ness, then I can take that wherever I go. The irony is, so today, I work for one of the most premier global consulting firms on the planet. It didn't happen because I was sticking around waiting for someone. To engage me. Right. It turns out that once I decided, you know what, I'm swinging for the fence, I'm going to bring my A-game, irregardless and independent of others' response, because then all of a sudden, you're in an architecting and a creating mode. You're in a causation mode. You're in an influence mode. Well, when you're in a reactive mode, living in that pit of despair, that's where most people stay. The challenge with this disengagement dialogue is it's always centered around what our employers can do for us versus what must we do for ourselves first.

Trying to control what's above the waterline is probably a great definition for insanity.

Right. Because

you have almost no control. This is the great irony and why God has a great sense of humor, because everybody's trying to control their outer circumstances. Not realizing that that's the only thing we have any measure of control over is what is below the waterline.

Absolutely. And Adam, one link I'll add to that and close with you is that there is a distinction between control and influence. We may not be able to control our externals. Agreed. Like, I'm Exhibit A of that, poster child of that. And we can have tremendous influence We can influence. Well, influence doesn't equal control, but when we begin to own the distinction between influence and control, then I think that's another form of way we're liberated. We're like, hey, I'm going to show up and do this because it's good. I value it. It's important to me, and it may have influence over other people, which that's again back to how do you start a revolution is Everyday people like me and you decide we envision a world that's better than the one that we have.

And it doesn't matter what work you're doing or what job you're in, on some level you can choose to be unconditionally happy in that work or in that situation. And I know that sounds incredibly odd because there are some shitty situations and poor-paying jobs and awful bosses and You know, all of that is true. Yeah. And I'm not for one second, to be clear, suggesting anybody should tolerate anything that they don't wish to tolerate.

Agreed.

But what I think you pointed out earlier without saying these exact words is that the response is typically blame, justify, or complain. Yes. And so when that's how we're spending our time and our precious life energy, it's no wonder there's no energy to light the bulb. 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.

Absolutely. The

bulb is flickering.

Preach it, brother.

Well, there you go. So I've loved this conversation. I so loved it, Aaron. And I would highly recommend at this point that people go out and check out Fire Your Boss: Discover Work You Love Without Quitting Your Job. There'll be show notes. You can go to aaronmcq.com. You can find out more about his work as a speaker and as an author. thought leader. Aaron, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show today. I, I really thank you for that. As we depart, I will remind all of us, as it's written on my shirt here, and it is the, the topic that is, is so much on our hearts now and has been for a while, how it is that we can in fact just decide to love our lives. Love our lives. Our lives. Not love— be in love with someone else's life or with someone else's possessions or their success, but rather simply love ours in this very moment, regardless of it not being— it not being everything that we think we want it to be or that we expect it to be. It's just so possible, as you were pointing out, that we can be more unconditional. And that's something, ironically, or maybe just Paradoxically, that we have control over. We get to choose that right now. I am fully in love with this moment and with my life in this moment. I hope it's been a great conversation for you too, Aaron, and that— and everybody that's listening and watching this, that you've enjoyed it thoroughly. We, of course, would love to hear from you, get your comments. You can leave a comment at adamarkel.com/podcast. If you love the episode, subscribe, tell a friend. We love the fact that the community is growing as it has. And I look forward to connecting again soon. For now, I'll just say ciao everyone, and thank you again, Aaron.

Yeah, thanks, brother. Bless you.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.