Unleashing Your Greatness With Jonathan Mitchell

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 pivotal hey everybody.

Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell. Feel in this moment very, it's very good. I feel very much in my body today and I don't know about you, but I don't always feel like I'm in my body sometimes. I'm much more, much more in my head at times and not at all consciously, consciously aware of what's happening inside. And I also think that it's a very valuable practice for myself and for everyone to sense what they're feeling. We don't always have time in the day. I don't always have time in my, in my day to take a breath, create a little space in my mind and a bit of space even in my body to be, be able to feel what's going on, what that little ache and pain might be, where is it coming from? What's the origin of it? There's a lot of origin stories for everything that's happening and showing up in our lives for sure. And today I would say all green lights for me. And that feels good. So I hope that's where I'm meeting all of you. You've got green lights happening front of you and if not, if you're stuck or you feel maybe that, yeah, you're not quite in your body and you'd like to get there, well, take a deep breath now. I'm going to do that as well before I bring on a wonderful guest to talk about something that may bring up some emotions for a lot of you. In fact, it may yet bring up emotions for me, I expect, because it's a difficult topic, a part of a lots of pivots in our lives. And sometimes those pivots are the ones that we're designing. Could be that you're in a relationship that you don't really feel is the most positive and you want to create something new and you're pivoting out of that relationship where you're pivoting into something that feels better in the relationship area. Sometimes it has to do with our physical health, wellness Sometimes it has to do with our career, with our business, and sometimes it even has to do with a job. And we're going to talk about some of that today. I've got a great guest. His name is Jonathan Carfort. And by day, he trains sales teams across the world in process, system, scripting, work ethic. And by night, he is actually a singer, songwriter, producer, performer whose songs can be heard on Fox News, Pac12 Sports Network, various other commercials in retail nationwide. I can already tell that we're going to have a wonderful time discussing some really deep stuff together. He's got a lot of other hobbies, a lot of other things he's interested in, and I want to dig right in. So first of all, welcome to the show. Jonathan. Thanks for being with us today.

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

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

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

Wait a minute. How many sisters? Four.

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

Take him to the shop, man. He's just.

That's right.

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

Is he the oldest? Youngest?

No, no, He. He's the third of four, so.

Oh, that poor guy. Tell him I feel for him.

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

No, no, it wasn't.

So why don't you take us back? I'd like to get into the belly of the beast because there, there are a lot of people I think you're going to be able to relate to the thing that happened. And so any, any, you know, just be as open, honest, vulnerable as you feel like being about this. But any event, let's. Let's go back in time. Where are we? When is back in time? Yep.

Well, I neglected to tell you, this has actually happened twice. So the first time was 10 years ago. I was in a sales job and the company made some leadership mistakes that caused the sales team to get laid off. And I was one of them. At that time, I was kind of not embittered, but just kind of like, heck with this. I'm going to control my own destiny. And then I went into music and did music full time. I did that for four or five years. And then I got married and my wife was like, I love you. Do music. Super supportive of me doing music, but she needed to have a constant income because music was up and down and not very consistent. So I went into the business world again, went back into sales, and the time that I told you about was the first job I got. I was there for a year and a half and almost the exact same happened where they redesigned the sales team and I had a choice of either moving to Toronto or staying in Salt Lake and getting laid off and severance and all that other stuff. And so my option at the time was having to stay, which at the time was really hard because I was still in this place of trying to be. Not that my wife and I don't know each other, but I wanted to be that person who supported the family and take care of things and be the man. Because that's what I grew up with, wanting to. I wanted to be that. And after that happened, it really took a hit on my value as a guy, as a man, took a hit on what I felt like my wife was feeling and thinking about me that she wasn't willing to tell me because I know she didn't want to hurt my feelings and just my own value as far as my skill set. And if I had something to give to the world, because this is the second time it happened, you know, and so being that way, I was just like, okay, first off, this keeps happening in sales. I love sales, by the way. Like, I have a great time with it, but it's just parts that was just like, I need to do something more than this. And went into the. More of the training world, both of like leadership development and sales training. I still do sales training because I love it, but that shift happened because it really came down to saying what do I actually like and love that I feel like I'm good at and what I think is going to be around that I can not have this happen again and grow into. And so doing a lot of studying and stuff, the learning and development came up as something that I love. I've been a life coach for years and years and I thought, what is the life coach version? The corporate world and it's learning and development, it's training. So using that background, I went into a role where I was doing that full time and ever since then, and then now doing my mba, focusing on leadership development and training. I'm in a spot now currently where rewind to two years ago. I never thought I'd be in a place where I now have 10 direct reports, over 150 retail stores internationally reporting to me that I never saw coming two years ago. So, so I hope, I hope that's. I'm happy to get as vulnerable and raw as you want because I had a lot of feelings happen when it happened. So.

Well, it's interesting, right? Because you and I don't think we would have. Could have planned this. So this, this is a wonderful synchronicity, I'll call it. But you grew up with four sisters and your dad, was he the. Was he. I mean, obviously had a business, right? So he was running a business. Nobody, nobody gave him a pink slip, by the way. I've never seen a pink slip, so I don't know where that term once upon a time originated. Somewhere along the lines people got fired with a pink slip, I guess, but in a minute the ax didn't fall on him. He was an entrepreneur. He had his own challenges, like we all know business owners have. So that was your model. And he took care. He took care of things, right? Yeah. Financially, et cetera. So this was the sort of the way the bar was set for you. And I think as men, this is not a conversation we have a lot, but you know, we're sort of genetically programmed. I mean, and if not through our literal gene pool, it's certainly out there in the things we see when we're growing up that the role, one of the roles of a man is to provide and to protect the family. Protect and provide. Right. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, when, when. That's, when something like that happens, it. It's like an assault on your, on your, the gut. Right. I mean, call it, call it lots of things. Worthiness, your self esteem, your. Your confidence. What was, what was going on for you? I mean, again, I appreciate you going into this because it's not something we talk about all the time. And I think for the women and the men who are listening to this right now, it's important to know that this shit happens. I mean, I got fired. I got fired from a job. It was the only. I've had a couple of jobs. One, I remember my very first job out of college. I was working for a publishing house. Turned out ironically that this publishing house, big publishing house that I'm not going to name them out loud right now, but I just. I really just hated my boss. I mean, she was. Jesus was like all over me and I was probably terrible at my job. I mean, in hindsight, I probably wasn't really prepared for this to, to be the assistant to somebody in the role that she was in. But nonetheless, I ended up just. It was so awful and I quit. So I left. So that was the first sort of little attempt at being in the business world and that was failure. Didn't you know, I didn't plan on leaving six months into my first job out of college, and that was a good excuse for me to just go back to the beach and be a lifeguard and a waiter and a number of Number of other jobs along the way. But then, you know, after. After becoming a lawyer and starting my own law firm and having a lot of success for 18 years in that role, I pivoted out of practicing law because it was. It was just killing me in a different way and knew I had a bigger. Similar to you. I just like a larger calling, something more that I could be doing with myself. So I really take a chance at leaving a very steady career, business income, et cetera, and I go to lead another organization in a more traditional role in the personal development space. And then, I don't know, six years into that experience, my stakeholders in that business look at me and they say, no, not a good. No longer a fit. You know, you're out of here. I get the ax then. And one of the hardest things about those experiences and was for me was, you know, what does this say about me? What does it say about me personally? And. And what do I do with it? You know, like, what do we do with the feedback? Because that's what it is, right? We're getting a certain feedback from the universe that we don't plan on. Don't know. Don't necessarily want even. Yeah. And what do you do with that? So take us into that spot. What was going on for you, if you can recall?

Oh, well, it. It's.

Yeah, that's the first reaction, right?

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

Where somebody's sort of telling you that, yeah, yeah, right. You're not valuable enough to continue paying you. Yeah.

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

Right. Yes.

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

But, yeah, is that interesting also? So you know when the benefit of hindsight's always a great thing because it's easy to look back down the staircase and see that even though we were. We were sort of blind as we were walking or making. Groping our way to, to through things in our lives and to get to where we are currently, and then we look backwards. All those stairs were. Even in the midst of the dark, they were all just perfectly sequenced. Everything was aligned in the. In the perfect order to lead us exactly to where we're standing right now. But at any given point, maybe earlier on in the process and even midway through, and even sometimes right before something breaks in our favor, you know, if you're asked, you know, how are things going, or is it. Do you have. Do you feel like things have been in your favor that these things that have, you know, seemed as obstacles or seemed as like, have to have blindsided you, were these things actually working to your benefit? We probably have said no, no. Just been like, honestly go, yeah. That whole adage about, you know, everything happens for a reason, people go, that's total bullshit.

Right.

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

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

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

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

Right. We have a truth meter inside ourselves anyway.

Yeah, yeah. It's just that for me, I mean, being a musician, it's like that being in the in tune thing, like the pitchfork. Not pitchfork, the tuning fork, you know, bing. It's like when you hit a chord, you can go into any room and you can find the note of the room and it just resonates. You can feel. Just vibrate. Right. Look at that. You got one there. Ah, look at that.

It's cool to be able to pull out a tuning fork right there.

So it's like the I. This is getting into the energy musician, you know, physics world that I believe in. But I personally believe that I resonate on different frequencies and there's a frequency higher than where I am that's calling me to rise myself up. So my job is to rise to that frequency. My relationships, my money, my job, my me. And so I really was in that spot of saying, I want to lift myself to the next frequency. What is it? And so as I was going out asking people those questions, I know what that feels like inside of me to have that resonance. And as soon as I felt it, I was like, that's it. I don't know exactly that's gonna lead me, but that is the feeling I want to.

On, focus, follow.

Because I'm again, growing up with four girls. I'm very emotionally in tune, which is, I've found, not common with men. And like you said, I have nothing against sisters. I love them. I'm so glad I had them because they helped me date or otherwise. I would have been a mess. But that internal knowing of my soul and being in touch with that was what led me down the Path of training and even where I am, I love where I am. But eventually I'd like to do my own thing and launch my own company. Like that's the goal eventually. But, yeah, it's just, it's the step at a time of saying, where am I at? Where can I grow? And following that inner tuning fork.

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

Did you speak it the audio.

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

Well, that's awesome. Yes.

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

Yeah.

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

I love that analogy.

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

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

I love it. Yeah, so it's like if you can get, get that tuning just right and I'm old enough to remember when that's what a radio was. I mean, turn the dial and you know, if you're a little bit to the right, you missing the frequency a little bit to the left, you miss. But you get it right on 95.5, before it was even digital digitized, right. It was like this, this little bar that would, you know, move, move, move along. You know, I think that's 95. 5. But you didn't know for sure until you could hear with your ears the clarity of that signal. Right. And so we do have that internal signal, but we're so busy, we're so being assaulted, I think, all the time with everything from what's happening in these apps that we're constantly looking at to all the bings and the pings of our phone and the colors that light up for us to go down, these rabbit holes of this email and that email and that link that we click and just all this stuff that takes us out of a present moment where if we were tuned into ourselves, really dialed in, man, there are just nothing but answers in there. And that's what I found. And that's why this, this day I do and I'm doing exactly what I want and every other thing that I wanted when I first started to explore what a pivot was. Those things I'm living more clearly than even when I was running, let's say, a company that was teaching that stuff. So it's so interesting, right, how that just comes the way it does. Jonathan, I want to ask you two additional questions. One, about resilience. How do you define resilience and how important was resilience in the process of going from that really low moment and that inflection point in your life to where you are today?

How would I define resilience? I used to think it was being positive, and it does have some positive to it. But I would say now that resilience is more about being in alignment and staying in alignment as opposed to just being positive.

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

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

Oh, it makes so, so, so much sense, Jonathan, because oftentimes the things that are the proverbial straw that breaks our back are these things that are totally ridiculous are insignificant, right? They're just. They're just not important things. But it's that one more thing. It's that one last thing. We're already exhau. We're already depleted. Our patience is already worn thin. And then somebody cuts us off on the road or some other thing happens and you just. You can just flip out. You don't even know. But it wasn't about that thing. Or you come home and it's that one more thing that creates the. The explosive argument or the explosive risk reaction. Because it's not about response in that moment. It's a reaction. And it was never about that. But it's because that other stuff, what you just described is that alignment is off. And when the alignment is off, I mean, think about it just. I mean, this is kind of funny too. Your dad was in this business. If a car's alignment is off, the wheels are misaligned. What happens on the road, I mean, you take your hand, you're all over the place, right? You take your hand off the steering wheel and you drift to the right or you drift to the left. And that's very much the case with us, that when. When we are out of alignment, that's exactly what's happening. We're drifting. In fact, there was a great book, there are two books now that just coming into my awareness as I'm speaking to you. One was Outwitting the Devil, this wonderful Napoleon Hill book that he wrote sometime. Sometime after he wrote Think and grow rich, maybe 1937 or 38 or something. And the book wasn't published until, I mean, many, many years later, 2011, 2012, something like that. And the book is without Getting into the details really talks about the impact of drifting. So the drift, as he called it, could be very well related to what you just described as being this misalignment. So I see that as being such a key ingredient in becoming resilient. And this other thing you just mentioned makes me think of a book called Karmic Management. And, yeah, there's three authors to that. One, McNally Roach, and I always forget the third author, but amazing book. In fact, when I actually, at the beginning of my tenure as a CEO of this company, I gave out some books. One was this book Karmic Management, because it was all about how it is that we. We treat people, how it is that we see our vendors, our contractors, our employees, everybody, our competition, for that matter. Could you see them as your karmic business partners? And if so, how would you treat them? And the premise of that book is pretty interesting. At the very beginning, it says that the first rule in everything in life is stop doing what doesn't work. And so what you just described about checking in and feeling whether something's aligned, or to use your words, if something is bringing life into me, it's like I feel more enlivened by someone else's presence, by that relationship, by that routine, by that whatever it might be. And that could be in business or in personal things, and that's something that is actually creating more alignment for you. It's working. And whereas there are things, people, situations that are sucking life out of you and creating that lack of alignment in you, that's not working. And to wait. It's just ironic. And that's the reason why that business book was talking about this. Because so often we are continuing to do things or tolerate things in our lives that we know don't work, and we somehow expect that it's going to get better, it's going to change. It's like, hello, what are you talking about? It's never likely to change. It's not likely to be any different. The fact is, if it's not working, stop doing what's not working. They say that's the first rule in the book. And it's. Everything will always go back to that one rule. Stop doing what's not working. So I appreciate that wisdom from you, Jonathan. That's pretty, pretty cool. So what's one ritual that you have that has either created resilience or helped you to maintain that resilience in your life?

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

So.

And I didn't used to do that. I used to just focus on the gratitude and the good stuff. And I had all this stuff. I was like, now I'm feeling it, releasing it, and then letting it be healed and move forward. So I do that literally every night in bed before I go to sleep.

Holy smokes. I mean, you think about it, it would be as if is if you could continue to fill a container, endlessly fill a container and just not. Not leak, you know, not have it overflow. And so if you. If you don't, if you don't have any room, if there's no room left in the container for anything new, what are you going to do? So it's one of those things, you know, where you go, okay, so it makes so much sense. Like, people listening to you right now going, okay, that makes so much sense. It's scary how much sense that makes that you just. You'd want to dump things out, dump out the garbage. Like you take your garbage out at home. You know, when it fills up or before it fills to the top and is overflowing, you actually take it out so that you have room that you've cleared space to fill to allow things to fill in. And I don't mean necessarily Having, you know, dumped the garbage out so you can put more garbage in, more garbage in, right? But. But without the space, nothing new. You can't get anything new to fit in there because it's, it's already so up to the brim. So even that process, like you say, of filling your head with what you're grateful for, if there's all this other stuff that you're grateful for, there's all this resentment, there's all this anger, there's all this hurt, whatever it might be, there's not really a lot of room for gratitude, is there? Really, There just isn't just really cool that you shared that, that process. And I'm not sure if you've heard of this one, but when we've been in Hawaii and, and work with some people there, we were fortunate to hear of a ritual that's done and with kids primarily, they have this ritual involving these bowls like coconut, you know, coconut shell, you know, coconuts that are cut in half and they call them light bulls. And the object for the kids is to whatever's going on in the day, if there's something that they did wrong, they got, you know, they got reprimanded for something at school or they made a mistake or whatever, you know, they didn't follow the rules or something, that, that every place where they sort of feel bad about something that happened in their life that day, they put a little stone, little rock and put it in this bowl of light, right? And then at the end of the day, they, they empty the bowl. And the next day when they wake up, they have this clean, fresh, new container, this new bowl of light, and everything from the prior day is just gone. All that garbage like you described out of there. And they have a fresh beginning. So that's an incredible ritual, the one that you just described. And I know there's some people are going to think tonight, you know what, before I go to bed, I'm going to energetically dump. I'm going to take a dump. I'm going to take an energetic dump of all that yuck and get rid of it. And again, I'm a God guy too, so to me, let God take it. God can take it easy and just allow that to happen and forgive it and bless it and all the rest of it so that you've created space for the gratitude so that you can actually feel gratitude and know there's a place inside your body for feeling good and feeling appreciative of everything from your breath, your life, your health, your family, your Money, all of it. Yeah. Wonderful. Jonathan, I've so enjoyed having you on the show.

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

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

That's. I know, right?

We're not going to edit that out. All right, ciao for now, Adam.

Thank you, bro.

Okay. See ya.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own Pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.