The Smallest Change Matters - Interview With Michael Dauphinee

Hi guys. My name is Donny Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life. So today I have a special guest with me, Michael. Known as Mike D. For those who know him best, he is an author, speaker and organizational leadership consultant. For more than a decade, he has devoted his life to helping people around the world take the guesswork out of leadership. After founding the daf. Am I saying your last name? Thank you. Daphne.

Daphne. Yep, Daphne.

Good. The Daphne Group Inc. In 2006 in Cliftonstrength Discovery Retreats, Michael expanded his product message and reach to a worldwide portfolio of clients and high potential individuals. He's coached leaders in almost every vertical imaginable. He shared his love and strengths, potential and owning his self sabotage at places ranging from the Bills and Melinda's Gates foundation, the NFL Maserati, the UN Major League Baseball and Team USA to AIDS clinics in Nigeria, to the Afghanistan national assembly and to the U.S. state Department. A lover of travel, Mike takes clients on annual trekking expeditions to the Chilean Patagonia and loves the adventure and learning from people around the world. Though he officially lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Michael is most at home when he's on the road. Michael, say hello to the one lifers.

Hello everybody. How you guys doing today? I'm on the road today actually. I hope it sounds okay for you guys. I'm in, I'm in Park City, Utah at the Utah Olympic Park Here residence. So kind of working from working on the road.

Awesome. And I think like, so the reason, one of the reasons why I invited Michael onto the podcast was I had read his book and when I picked up the book, it was something that spoke to me. And the title of the book is called Extraordinary. And I think the backstory behind how I even came about the book was either really, really interesting when, if you want, if you want to tell that.

No, you tell it. You tell it. Because I was like, when I read, I got your message, I was like, what? Where did he find this book?

So I was. So how it happened was I was in, I was walking in downtown Stanford, Connecticut, where I live. And while that was one of the rituals my friend and I have is we would go through Burlington Coat Factory and we, you know, we'd get ice cream and then we'd like, we'd take a stroll through Burlington Coat Factory, literally, like mess around, like throw like teddy bears and stuff at one another and we would just browse the store and then walk out. On this particular occasion, we were walking through and we were walking in part of the store that I Had never walked before. And as we're walking through, like, this section that contained notebooks and books, one book stuck out and, like, in call to me, it said extraordinary and had a compass on it. So I, like, immediately I picked up the. And, like, my favorite colors. The black with the red stripe, the black gray. I picked it up, I was like, oh, my. Like, I have to get this. And so I brought it. I brought it home, and I started reading. And before even ever finishing the book, I was like, I haven't even finished. But I have to reach out to him and I have to invite him on the podcast because I thought your message and everything you have to say in that book would be so powerful to the people listening.

So if you want to share that, that's amazing. I'm like. I'm like, I'm even. Because you always dread that moment because it's a Burlington. Because clearly, at some point, somebody overbought and they end up having to, like, drop it to Burlington. And so I'm like, you know, even when it goes to Burlington, you know, and any outlet, I don't care how it gets to people. But it's. It's. Yeah, that's exciting to me, I think, because that's. There's almost an element to it that there is about kind of finding on the journey. I think I wrote. Somebody asked me, it's not. You know, again, it's not War and Peace. It's a pretty simple book. But I said, I want. I wanted to write something my father might read, which I'm sure he still didn't. I'm pretty sure my mother read it to him instead over coffee every day, because that's how they would have done that. But I wanted to write something that was accessible with this idea that I'm a Gen Xer. I was born in 74, so I just turned 47. I feel like at the front end, I'm kind of right in the area where we stopped going, Wait a minute. You guys all handed us a roadmap. It didn't work, but we were so ingrained in it that we couldn't really pull out. So I watch people in their late 40s right now who are trying desperately to ask themselves deep questions about their life, but it was too. It's almost too late for some of them if they don't make choices differently. And what I was really focused in on was, so wait a minute, if I'm 40 something. When I was writing the book, I was 45, I think 44. And the roadmap doesn't work, what happens then? We have entire, our systems of education, our life, our relationships. We have this progressive view of, well, we have a starting point and we are here and we are there and one must add to the other. And I was looking around the world and I AM like after 2008 and other things, it is like the world had run, this is before pandemic, the world had run off the map. So in a world where you can look around and see the landmarks and you can see the topography, but you don't have a map for it, how do you navigate it? And it was the idea, well, there's a few things that must be true. And the only way to navigate a world without a map is with a compass. And so that was this idea that what if instead of we all need maps at times, but at the core of us, what if we had a compass to navigate our life that was unique to us, that we always, while we didn't always know where we were, we would always know we weren't lost because we knew with the right direction. And so that's where the idea of identity, permission, courage and generosity came from.

And that's actually I wanted to, I mean that's a great point. Like as you're saying as you got to the 40s, because I think we have this very limited view to think that like when things are perfect, they're going to always remain perfect. When things are bad, they're always going to remain bad. And so we have this very short sightedness to think that we can't look out to say, well, if we continue on this road that we're currently going on, what are the potential pitfalls? What are the, the repercussions of going out? Because we tend to think, well, you know what, I could tolerate this. And by tolerating what I know, it's a lot less scary than going out into the unknown.

Yeah, yeah. In a very unsafe world, our brain will always, our brain will take predictable over what we want every time. And so you as a we, the world feels unsafe. And so the way our brains work is that even when it's bad things, our ability to say, well, this is going to go wrong, we will then act in such ways, not even realizing it, to produce the result we predicted. Because predictability, safe. So you will pick what you know over what you want. If it's, if it's truly uncomfortable, most of the time, you'll pick what you know over the thing you want. People say it over and over again to me and it's ultimately this idea of, again, it's the promise of a map, is that your destination is at the end of it, right? That's why you endure the pain. And so we're told, stick it out, be committed, do the thing. How dare you have more than two jobs in the course of two years. Why would you change that? Like all the rules that were Cardinals, oh, you moved too much. Oh, have you put in your time, all those things that were basically the basis of 1950 on? Because you're gonna get some payoff, a committed, safe job with the right thing to get you the right life. The system doesn't work anyway that way anymore. And so to stay committed for no reason, you have to be committed first of all to you and those that you want to pour love into in the world. And so are you putting in the best position for that and then asking bigger questions and then finding the courage to make those shifts? It's not about a vision of what works. It's about a vision of knowing that you have enough, even when it doesn't. One of the things I do a lot, I'm here in Park City, Utah right now. USA Triathlon has a junior camp. And so they're planning for the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028. And so they're running special camps for 16 and 17 year olds. And one of my clients is the USA Triathlon Podium Project, which is solely focused on focusing on getting an athlete to a podium in triathlon in LA in 28. So we're talking seven years from now, six and a half years from now. But one of the things we talk a lot about is that in sports, when people are being coached, they'll say, you need to visualize perfection, visualize the life you want. See it right. And there's the famous story of the POW in Vietnam who played golf in his head and practiced the strokes. And I'm big into visualization, but I'm often telling my athletes, I don't want you visualizing it going perfect because the majority of your life isn't lived in a perfect world. I want you to visualize it going bad and you knowing how to navigate it. Is it knowing that you have the resilience to choose? It's a visualizing that your life doesn't need to be perfect. We don't need to have all the answers knowing that in the end we have enough, whatever the answers end up being.

And that's, that's a very different approach. And even I've heard, and it kind of Goes back to the question I was going to or leads me into the next question that I was going to ask you, and it's kind of what you started the book with, is the definition of what is an extraordinary life.

Yeah. And so the definition, and so very simply, it is simply a life that is, you know, it's the thing which is outside the ordinary. It is extraordinary. And so if the rut, if the pattern is what everyone else is following, you will end up with what you get, you know, what they get. Ultimately, I said to a person yesterday, they're talking about they really want to have their own business potentially someday, or mostly they really want control of time and money, but they're just really committed to the person they're working for. I said, does your boss have the life you want? He's like, well, no. I said, but I mean, like, he's 10, 15 years older than you. I said, does he have all. Well, no. And I was like, well, in what reality do you think your life will be different? You will never be more rich or more flexible or more clear, educated or lit than the person who's leading you. So how do you own that? And so the idea of extraordinary people are like these crazy, outside the box lives. And yes, there are military, there are heroes around the world who live extraordinary lives, but what about those who don't fall into the rut? And so I opened the book, actually the story of my father. I had to get permission from him to really tell his story. Born to a single mother at 15 years old and just poverty on top of poverty on top of poverty surviving. And then we were poor as kids. And I tell this whole story of my dad's story and how for years I thought his life was boring and not extraordinary, that I was. I actually say he didn't have a life. And so I'm going to travel the world and have this extraordinary life. It wasn't until I turned 30 that I realized his life had been more extraordinary than mine had been. Yet in that he somehow did not become an alcoholic, he somehow did not abandon us, he somehow managed to not lose his mind, he somehow maintained his health. That seemingly small act was extraordinary because it's not ordinary. Ordinary is easy. Ordinary is the rut. And so finding people in your life, like, for me it was this idea of what could you give people, that they would say, my life may never be told in stories and in movies, but I don't have to follow the ordinary path. I don't need to follow generational curses. I don't need to follow the stories or I'm just going to live out all the brokenness of every generation of my family. I'm going to choose something different. And that requires a compass, not the map your family's giving you. And that's where the idea of being extraordinary, but you don't have to be something that you've never dreamed of. You could be something different, and that would be enough.

So I love what you just said about, like, seeing the person ahead of you, your boss, or wherever you will be in 15 years. If this is the person leading, this is the person you're following, what makes you think that you're going to be any different? So I had spoken to a consultant in the beverage industry, and we were talking about my path in coffee and how initially I'd wanted to do cafes. And I had the honor and the privilege of meeting with one of New York City's top cafe owners when the especially boom was just there. And seeing this look of like this frazzled look on her face after having so many cafes and asking her about the experience and her looking at me just like, why the hell would you ever want to get into this? And then speak with other cafe owners? And the consultant said, listen, he's a. You had a good insight. The fact that you know what you could potentially what the potential lifestyle was of this. And he's like, that's a gift. He's like, because you got the gift of knowing what you don't want. So the question, and I speak with a lot of people and they have a hard time figuring out what is it that they do want? Like, well, I say, well, you know, to guide people into creating a passionate life. They say, well, I don't know what I want. How do I. How do I start to determine? How do I start to create this, this. This end goal or this marker of where I'm, I'm driving towards if I'm not, if I don't know. What advice could you give for the person who's not really sure what they want? Maybe they're just in a very crappy state where it's not allowing those answers to come through.

Yeah, I do allow personality work. You know, I do. CliftonStrengths is a tool all my clients take, and I do a lot of work with that. But so in the midst of that, what I've realized is that, is that one size doesn't fit. All our program, we ask kids in high school, what do you want to be when you grow up? We ask people I mean, what a stupid question, right? Like, what do they know of the world at that point? Like, they're going to discover a whole big. A much bigger world to decide at that young age. It's pretty fascinating. But it's this idea of, for some people, you may have so many good options that you're like, it's difficult to narrow them down. If that is the case, then. And you have a lot of options, like, man, there's so many great things, I don't know what I want of them, then this is where you need to deconstruct this idea of identity is that I was talking about. Like the first, the true north of the compass in the book is this trust triangle of talent, purpose and passion. People will take an assessment like enneagram, Myers, Briggs, CliftonStrengths. And that's like the talent piece. It tells you your personality, your innate patterns of thought, feeling, behavior, and then they'll snap right to, what can I do with that? And we're very obsessed with what we can do with our lives, the job we can get, where we can work, what we can do. And that's why I get asked, in fact, people will ignore their talents often, what should I do with my life? But then they don't realize that the third piece of this is the passion. And passion is the thing that we're suffering for. A passion for something is that you were willing to suffer. And so figuring out what it is you want to do with your life starts with what makes me unique. Then there's a lot of ways that could be applied. But then who do I want to apply it to? And you've got to marry these things. And most people will just do one because we'll be relegated to passionate hobbies. The thing you care about, there's a population you care about, there's a story. I work with a woman. She's a brilliant woman. I won't go to where she's at, but she was in major roles in San Diego and nonprofits. And I remember going through her CliftonStrengths report with her and realizing that she had themes of idea, innovation, problem solving, quick navigation and spotting uniqueness. And she's like, I've been a marketer for Gillette, where legitimately she's solving problems of selling shaving cream. And she's like, moved off the food chain. She worked at foundations, but now she's like, actually, I want to solve problems innovatively and creatively for issues affecting women and children. Then her career took off as she navigated towards that. See, there's a lot of things you could do, but you made a comment a second ago. It's almost more powerful knowing what you shouldn't do. Don't confuse a lack of failure for success. Like, those things don't really go together. And so it's this idea of, if you want to figure out I don't know what I'm doing in my life, start with your talent, mix in your passion, and then see what you can. Put a piece to it. But then what about the reverse? A lot of people need to instead ask themselves, what do I not want to have happen in my life? What do I not want? The world's too open for you. Well, I know I don't want this. I know I don't want this. And you keep narrowing it down and to the point where you have three or four options, then you just pick one, because ultimately at the end, you know clearer usually what you don't want. And so people want to be positive. That's great, but you reverse engineer. I don't want to be unhealthy at 85. I don't want to have to worry about my children taking care of me. I don't want to have to wonder how much vacation I have when my kids are free and able to do around. I don't want to spend time with them what you don't want. Narrow it down and then dig deep. Tell somebody you're going to do it and take some action. All this thinking without action. You need to turn up the volume in your life of. I say courage, which is like taking action to have your time and money align with the thing you say you want.

So it brings me. One of the quotes I had pulled from your book was, if you don't understand your. You don't understand your passions, if you don't know what they cost. And it resonated with me because when I think about. If I think about passions for travel, passions for coffee, um, even going into an entrepreneurial space, I mean, I never, not once ever considered what. What the costs were, what the, like, the psychological. Psychological cost of being a. Being a business owner would have been. But I don't. Look, every time I look back, there's not one thing that I would have changed. But I. And I think the emphasis, what you were just saying about the action is probably one of the most important things that anyone could take. Because without any kind of action, like, action will tell you whether or not you're on the right course. Action will allow itself to be corrected And I would like to, I tell people, listen, any action is better than no action because at the very least you get feedback, something that's going to push you in a new direction or at least open your eyes to seeing something different. So you had mentioned, you just mentioned, like, all right, so someone, they're not really sure they want. Well, they know what they want now because they've aligned with their talents, their passion. How do they go about creating the compass to navigate them there?

Yeah, because it's this idea of that once you get a picture of, like, look, this is me fully alive, this person who gets to do these things, meaning the passion, I get to live on my. I get to serve this population I care about and use these talents and tools a certain way. After that, you then need to develop a vision for it. Like, you need, like, you have to have a vision from here to there. Like, so the true north is that it's the idealized reality. This is how my money would look, my relationships would look, my health would look, my community would look. You get an image of that in this identity piece. But you have to travel there, which means that you've got to test drive a plan. You've got to have people that will walk with you. And so I talk about permission as the second part of the book. And it's this idea of the presence, you know, that you're living a life of permission if you have a dream. But I meet people who remember dreaming a little bit of their future when they were in school, when they were like in high school, in junior high, but are actually having a real struggle at dreaming. And I think it's because we've stopped saying, what if? We've stopped injecting uncertainty into our lives. I can't do something instead of, I haven't yet figured out how to do it. I haven't yet figured out what the answer is. I wonder how I'm going to survive this craziness. And so it's the injection of possibility into permission, which gives us vision. So I set a vision for my life. As rough as it is, I think Anne Lamont says, shitty first draft. She talks about the genius of progress over perfection, of just, you're trying to write a book, you try to do something, you know, shitty first draft, like, get it out there, do something like craft some rough idea and then say, well, if I'm here, how do I get there? And we kind of lay out a rough vision. And then you have find the courage to take action, to start to test it out. Because they all kind of feed on each other. I know people who say, I want to be a. I want to be a multimillionaire unicorn startup CEO. But then they get into it. They're like, actually, I don't want to give that much time away. Great. They learned a valuable lesson. Awesome. And there's nothing will teach you what you don't want to do it again. Like, doing it. There's something about the power of that. Right?

Yeah.

And so. And so being able to do that after. So it's this beat of you want to test. So a compass is something that's not linear, right? So you're building out this idea of identity. Permission is vision. And injecting possibility into courage is taking the smallest steps. You start with small actions to test out if you really want that or not. And then once you're on the road, the last one is generosity. It's this idea of. It's the mother who, with her last breath, finds the energy to keep her child afloat.

Why?

Because she cares about something greater than herself. Right. You have a child in the ocean. The mother will keep that baby going, keep that child, like, because it's good. You will eventually run out of energy enough for your own dream. Like, something will get too hard. It'll get too difficult. You have a. You've got your identity there. You've crafted the vision. You fought with possibility and permission. You're taking action, and you're even maybe running and charging the hill. It will get hard enough that you're like, well, I'm only letting me down. It's okay, I'll stop. This idea of injecting and having your story be connected with the story of someone else's suddenly gives you another thread to hold you there. You're pulled along further. And I think that when those things, when you have a reason bigger than yourself, when you're constantly vetting your vision against your actions, and when you're injecting possibility, it functions like a compass, where you almost. A compass is something you ping, like you check against. Huh. And so ultimately, then I go. So I used to work at Hewlett Packard. I worked at HP for six years in intellectual property negotiation for them in Singapore. And that was a great job then for where I was now, given my life right now, that's the wrong move for me because it's not moving me towards where I want to go. At the time, it was great. It moved me from working in drug rehab with juvenile felons to working more in business. And then it Moved me to stepping out, starting my first business, my first attempt at business in 2004. Then it shifted. But today that wouldn't be the right call. Knowing either your choices are going to move you in the direction of you the true of this compass or away and you're looking at opportunities. Will it go that way or not?

So I love that and I think part of the reason why I was so drawn to your book is I love how you like the fact that you're using compass map, like all of these tools of travel because that much so. All right. So. All right, so we have an idea as to what we're. What we want. We are taking action to there. What are those, what are the big stones like the hurdles that are going to get in the way that prevent people from maybe that stall people out on that path. I'll leave it open without going any further.

Yeah. I mean ultimately, I think when it comes to, when it comes to getting in our way, one of the things that ends up being so just exhausting ultimately isn't that we don't have good vision. It's not we don't dream of more. A lot of us are hungry for other things. But between what we say we want and what we end up doing typically lies these invisible drivers, these invisible fears that are like. Have you ever been to a water park? Yeah, like when I worked in, when I worked in, I worked in drug rehab for juvenile felons in California, we would take the guys, it'd be really hot. In San Jose, California, we go to Raging Waters Water Park. And I'd always be so excited about taking my house full of. Literally they're all convicts 13 to 18. And so me, Mike D and the six of us, we'd go to Raging Waters Water Park. And I'm always excited to take them out to like go on the slides. And no matter how fun I thought the slides would be, invariably happen through the day. All of them would just want to be in inner tubes on the Lazy River. Remember the Lazy river, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It's just like the chill looping river. And the Lazy river is deceptive. It's chill, it's cool. But have you ever tried to like, you ever get off the tube and try to walk backwards in a lazy river? On the surface it looks gentle, but there are massive jets that are unseen. They're moving underneath and they're very deep and they blow very specifically so direction. And, and so as long as you're going in the direction of the Lazy river, you're all good, you're all good. But for you to get out and try to go around the other direction, suddenly everything, it'll nearly knock you over. It's nearly impossible to do. Those are like these unseen. Sure, you're fine. And as long as your dream and your vision, your compass is in the lazy river, everybody in their uncle is like, this is great. But the minute you turn around, they're like, wait a minute. Everybody's very aware. And so there's a great. Probably, I think probably the most brilliant. He was a black psychiatrist in the 70s. This man, Dr. Maxie Maltby. He is genius beyond his years. I will literally be an evangelist. My biggest regret is not meeting him before he passed. In 2016. He coined this idea. He was studying why alcoholics and people with substance addiction were struggling and weren't able to, like, take the cognitive part to mix it with the emotional part. And he's the one who came up with this idea of these unseen drivers. And now people refer to them as like the four fatal fears. And it's the fear of looking bad, feeling bad, being wrong, or being out of control. Feeling bad, looking bad, being wrong, or being out of control. Those drivers will cause you to break your eating plan. They will cause you to procrastinate. They will cause you to not listen. They will cause you to not try feeling bad, looking bad, being right, being in trouble. Because I will see people who make great plans. They will meet with me. We will go through their strengthsfire profiles. We'll draft out their life, even break it into steps. 6, 12 months, 6 months, 30 day sprints and make a plan, 10 day calls, and then I'll be like, okay, so did you do what you said this week? No. Why? This is brilliant. So you're all clear. Everybody thinks clarity is the issue. If I can get clear on my plan, and we've all got. Of the four, we've got two that typically aren't a problem and two that are for me, feeling bad, looking bad, I justify. I deserve comfort and gosh, I don't want to look bad. If you're somebody I care about, I don't want to look bad. I don't want to look bad to you. Being right, being in control, I'm like, the world's dangerous. Who cares? Dive in. I don't feel the need for control. But those things will cause me to procrastinate, to put things off anytime I don't make progress. I have lied to myself for decades that it's a lack of understanding, clarity. When in the end, it's the unseen jets that I don't know are there, and I've got to deal with those jets, which is usually about dealing with lies. I believe about myself that you won't like me if you. I felt the need to clarify how my book got to Burling to Coat Factory. Got to look good. See, didn't try that. Instantly came out of my mouth. I'm like diving in. I'm like spinning it so that the podcast audience will be like, well, he dies in a story about finding a book in brilliant Coat Factory. Could have been too good. Must have been a closeout book. Yeah, it did. It wasn't like it wasn't a big bestseller. But for me, how much does that show up? How many other opportunities where I'm too busy clarifying my own message because I don't look bad? Instead of being able to actually listen and be present, I miss what is being lost in my life because I'm like that invisible fear. Most people, they don't even know what they want. They're too scared to even start. And if they do, though, then you have to figure out the work of what it takes to silence those voices in your head and actually be okay, going, you know what? I'm going to be who I need to be and not be driven by the unseen fear of feeling bad, looking bad, being wrong, being out of control.

And the irony in that is that even for that thought to come up, to think that, to mask that. But if it weren't there, then I never would have encountered the book. I never would have had that experience. And I mentioned this on our first call together, the possibility of me going into a bookstore and picking up your book, second to none. Because I rarely even ever stepping in a bookstore. And then if I'm searching for something online, I mean, you're lost in like a myriad of other. Of other books. So the chances were second to none. So it was. It was fate, the fact that that would even happen, you know, so whenever. And I think that said, that's kind of like leans itself towards a bigger lesson, is that like you never one, you never know who you're going to touch. Like, you might look at it and judge an event or an incident, but you never know. There's always something that's not seen, that's beyond the control, but it's the action that you took. And then when I think of things again, stuck. I think of environment. And so what's the environment? The people, the standards of the people around you? How does that play into the. Into getting people to take that step forward. It is part of like that comfort when you're going against the jets, if you're going against what is known, everyone else is doing, what are the steps to overcome?

Yeah, because that's really in the permission section. It's really. Because that's really key. One of the things that I do a lot of work with students. Gallup does a lot of research. Gallup poll, they created cliftonstrength. So I'm tied into the research. A lot of it was fascinating. They do a thing called a wellbeing survey where they. For the average individual, it's these five factors of life and you're kind of baselining and then you basically watch your trend. But they do this dashboard for high school students where they will assess in their senior year, heading to college. And a kid can't log into their laptop without filling a survey every day. So it ends up being a pretty live tracker. And one of the key elements, the most powerful questions was, do I have an adult in my life who cares about my future? Okay. And so the more strongly they agreed with I have an adult in my life who cares about my future. Gallup found that positive trending wellbeing in the last six months of a high school student's career was a better predictor of gpa and SAT was a better predictor of collegiate performance than GPA and SAT scores. That positive trending wellbeing. And one of the key factors in that wellbeing question again is, do you have individuals in your life who care about your future? I used to have a mentor who always said to me, mike, show me. It's very common, right? Show me a person's friends in the books they read and I'll show you who they'll be in five years. Because we're kind of the sum you've heard the other. And again, I'd like to find out if it's really true. They talk about in finance that if you were to see the checkbook balance of your five closest friends, you would be shocked to discover that all of your checkbook balances are within 5,000 bucks. Like your net worth is. Because why? Because we don't hang out with people at different levels. So suddenly it's this idea of over time. If we are not intentional prior to 22 years old, proximity is required for relationship because the prefrontal cortex of our brain, which MIT calls the executive suite, isn't properly functioning until a highly myelinated sheath connects the prefrontal Cortex, the rest of your brain. And suddenly we get more logical and consequence focused. So before that, you're near me, you're my friend. Awesome. So I look like my proximity, the right environment is everything, but after that, I have to choose my relationships. Most people today, if they would simply change the circle of people they're around, they'll be shocked how their world changed. Go to a different gym, join a book club, do something you don't want to drink as much. Don't hang out with people who are drinking that way. Like, you want to spend money different. Hang out with people who are spending money differently. It is shocking. And so for that whole element of the invisible jets, I'll have clients who are getting stuck. And I'm like, let's audit your friends. Give me the 10 most valuable relationships in your life. You spend time with how many of them that right now, if you told them what you want to do and how you want your life different in five years, would be like, sign me up to be your cheering squad, because I'd be there. You cannot do this in a bubble. You can't live in extra. If you want your life to not be ordinary, the people you surround yourself with have to be on or have to be extraordinary too.

That actually brings me to another point. So you said, check your balance. You know, the people who believe in you, the things that have gone right that point you in the right direction and what your life should look like. You know, I want to go there because I think it's such a valuable. It's such a valuable exercise for people to go into one. Like, who are the people that believe in you? Because sometimes it's not necessarily the people who are close to you. Your immediate family. And I had a family member who was going through kind of like a health crisis. And when looking at the option of doing a certain procedure and not doing it, sometimes it's. It makes more sense or it's more logical to say, okay, you know what, maybe I shouldn't make a decision right away. I'm being very vague here, but maybe I shouldn't make a decision right away, but do some research to figure out, okay, well, what are the other options? But when we. When you love somebody, when you really care for someone, a lot of the time you're saying, listen, I don't care. I just want you to feel better. You push them towards the option, even though it might not be the best option. So I. That I, you know, so the people who you think are the closest, who may believe you might not necessarily be those people who you should share and disclose all those dreams, those deep desires, because out of the intention to protect you and to make sure you're safe, they might actually stifle those. Those dreams.

Yeah, I have a client right now whose work is to not tell people. Because one of the things that she came away with was she's like, I'll get ideas. And then I feel the need to tell everyone. And they don't. They may not agree and they have competing voices. And so then I quit. And so her homework, she very. And she did the work of saying specifically to her husband, hey, you know, I'm going to work on some things and not talk about them until I get to a decision point, because I want to be my call. It's this idea. When you write a book, it's a fascinating experience when you get a book contract, because the first thing the publisher wants to do is they make you sit down and make a list of everybody that you're willing to beg to buy books. Okay. They vet. I'll be like, where's your list? And so then you and I mean, following a good Gary Vee approach, you then legitimately send 30 to 50 personal emails going, hey, you want to buy my book? You know, it's 15.95 and do you want to buy a box? And you find out right away when you suddenly tell. For some people, you need not tell because they're going to tear it down. But for others, you're like, I've decided I'm doing this. You know the people in your life that you need around you when you're like, this is who I tell. If you can't think right now of somebody, you should tell your idea, your dream or vision to. You need to find somebody you can, that can help you because you need different relationships in your life. You need a new coach, a new therapist, priest, you know, the mom. Whatever it takes, you've got to figure that out because you're not going to survive telling stories to yourself. The vision of your life has got to be celebrated and interacted with by people who will give you permission to be extraordinary.

I love that. If you're in your head, you're dead. There's no way you could do it on your own. Reminds me when I had done physique and I was competing in physique, I made the decision based on a challenge. It was a challenge. One of my friends, I saw him at the gym and he was. His body looked insane. I was like, oh, my God, what have you been doing? He said, you know, I've been working out. I'm doing a contest. And I said, give me three months. I'll get there. And then he made like. He said, yeah, right. And there was. It was this critical point where I was like, he's telling me what I'm capable of. And, like, literally it switched. I used the F word in my head. And then the very next day, I signed up for the competition. Um, and then when I shared it with, like, my, like, my family, particularly like my parents. My father. And my father used to bodybuild when he was younger. And he was like, what do you. You know, what are you crazy? What do you.

You're gonna.

You have to eat this way. You're gonna eat this much. And I. It was after making the decision, it was that. That adverse.

The. Yeah.

Resistance with them that actually pushed me forward to say, you know what? I will show you. I will show you that I will. Not only do I think during the. I have six meals a day for six months, and I had to do prep everything three hours, almost three hours a day at the gym. I missed. I think I missed. Might have missed one meal. One meal out of the entire time, but every single thing was exactly like, to the t. I was so, so driven towards it. But I love that. I mean, I love that is like, they just. Who.

People matter.

People matter. And so courage and action. I mean, this is. Because I think this is, again, going back to that. This is what it all comes down to. What do you. Would you say, like, you know, in kind of closing, what would you say to the person who is. They're not happy. They know there's. There's more to life that, like the reason I named the podcast One Life is to wake people up to the idea that, like, this. This is all there is. So if you're spending all your time, you're not enjoying it, you know, or even if. Even if you're in a job, you, hey, at least make time for the experiences that, you know, we're going to bring you joy. The things that if they were left unsaid, undone that you know, that you would. You wouldn't regret not doing them. What are, like, some of the. If someone. Again, if we're starting from scratch, you meet someone they're not happy with and they want to change. If you can imagine you're telling your son, you know, like, you had. You had five minutes to tell your son or daughter how to make this change, how to give them that. That guidance that'll lead them to the place where they're happy and they're fulfilled and enjoying their life. For me, a lot to cram into one question.

But, yeah, it's a lot to cram into. Like, the last. The last beats, right? The smallest changes matter. Give yourself credit for every small change. Like, it is truly incremental. If you don't know what your vision is and you're like, what do I do next? I got an idea. Could you carve 30 minutes at a Starbucks to think about yourself? I don't care what you write about, but start with carving out the time to think about, making a plan to think about, like, how you spend your life, how you spend your time and your money ends up being everything in the smallest form. If I go back and tell myself anything, it all matters. And at the end of the day, always follow the relationship. Like, that's the thing for me is that at the. I talk about at the end of the book being asked to oversee the burial of a refugee who died of tuberculosis in Nigeria. I've never met this woman. We're burying her in a. Literally a mud clay field in a popper's field at 102 degrees. A couple local kids dug the hole. Rigor mortis had set in. We had to steal clothes from the neighbors to put something on her body. And I'm standing there as we're about to bury this woman and they're looking at me, and I'm like, nobody has said her name. And I'm thinking as I'm standing there, as we're putting her in, what's driving within my head is suddenly all the things I don't care about. I didn't care about her job. I didn't care about what religion she was. I didn't care about where she grew up. I didn't care about if she cheated on a test. I didn't care if she's moral. I didn't care. The only thing running through my head as we were burying this woman on this trip was, where's her people? How can I, a stranger, be the only person remembering this life? Like, somebody loved her. Somebody was there. Somebody breastfed her and held her and cared for her and changed her diapers and loved her. Somebody did. At some point. Where were they? And for me, it was the biggest takeaway in my life, was that when my life is done, I'm not going to ask questions about whether or not you knew that my book is a brilliant goat factory or whether or not it sold 4,000 copies or a million copies. I'm going to go. Were there people in my life that I showed love to that loved me, and I let my story be interacted with theirs, and did I spend my money and the only thing I can ever get more of my time to make that as real and flourishing as possible. It all matters how you spend your money, your time, at the end of the day, follow relationship. What do you think, man?

I mean, just from I read your book and just from hearing this, I pulled making tons of mental notes.

In.

It for my own life. But my gosh. Yeah.

When you hear from people. When you hear from people, do they like these. The type of. What's the wrestling of the average person? When you, when you hear from people, you know, on the podcast, what are they saying? It's one life. I mean, how do you make that matter to them?

So my, My whole thing is, like, I like to tell people to take the action, like, whatever it is, even if you don't know, start with something. Because what I find is that people are, They're. They're in a job and they're. They're not happy doing what they're doing. And there comes that threat. There's like a. There's a threshold or there's that point where they're at the cliff and they just say, you know what? I can't take it anymore. But then I said, all right, well, I want to travel. I want to do these things that I've been wanting to do for my entire life, but I'm afraid to do it. And so I like to tell people, listen, all you have to do is just commit to it. And I promise you, like, well, one, I'll give you a strategy, too, to meet people. A lot of time is for people who have fears around meeting people. Like, they're afraid to be alone. They're going to go somewhere it's not safe, and they're alone. So once subside, those. Those fears subside. But it's just a matter of taking the action and booking it.

Everything. Yeah, because I think what you're talking about there is like, in the book I talk about, one of my roommates was a Navy seal. We talk about jumping out of an airplane for fun is one thing. Jumping out of an airplane to save somebody's life is another. And I was like, what makes a difference? He's like, one of us knows what they're sacrificing. Like, one of us knows what the. And so these little actions, see, take a little action because you want to find Love more than you want to be afraid of being alone. It's like I talk in the book that it's common courage. It's little bite sized moments of action that you're like, but you've got to know, you know what you have the four fatal fears. Feeling good, looking good, being right, being in control or being wrong or being out of control. What are the smallest actions you could take today? It's like, you know what? In the face of being of being wrong, I'm still going to choose because I want love. I want to get rid of money stress, I want to feel satisfaction in my job. I want to feel safe in my community. You know, the smallest action becomes courageous when it's done to face and confront a fear. And so if you know your fears, if you're like, man, I got a vision now I got to the fear part. Just so you know, the joy of discovering your fears is every small action you take to confront it has to be. Sometimes then giving, going to your child's soccer game instead of staying late for your boss is an act of courage. Because even though they might, it's out of your control if they like the fact that you didn't stay late. You chose your child in that moment. The fact that you saved for to spend your money on a trip to Italy because you needed new inspiration for a book you might write 20 years from now. And everybody laughed at you and you saved and then you spent it and went crazy, but you saved. Why? Because every time you put money in that account was an act of common courage. This is why, like, you know, this is why I like what you're talking about. The idea of it is one day and it is action. Get in touch with the fact that, don't be afraid of the things that hold you back. Get excited about confronting them with. I wonder how. Because it makes your action courageous.

And to add to that, so I was talking, I was talking with one of my clients, we were talking about dating and I was saying how I had recently started going on to started doing more dating. And there's been times where I would kind of, I would go into my head and I'd be a little bit more critical of myself. But then the thing that always snaps, would always snap me out of it was I was like, you know what? This is a new, this is a new experience. It's something that I'm not comfortable in. Otherwise, you know, like that's what's causing all this agitation. I was like, at the very least, I know that every Time I've ever put myself in a new situation where, you know, like, things are unfamiliar. There's always something to be learned. At the very least, I'll learn it. Maybe this is the right person characteristics that I like about the person. Well, or maybe I'll continue the date. If I don't, then I'll maybe pick up some knowledge that'll bring me on that path forward. Once I. Once I reframe, then all of a sudden I go into. And it's just, there's. There's no the expectation or the expectations are kind of subside. Now I'm able to just kind of be there, be myself and say, listen, it's either works or it doesn't work. What could I learn from this?

Yeah, feeling uncomfortable. We take feeling uncomfortable as a sign that it's wrong when it actually has nothing to do with being wrong. Again, Dr. Max, one of his best analogies is he's like, you know how to drive a car? You can nearly do it unconsciously. We unconsciously drive cars all day long. You drive, drive, drive, drive. You don't even know how you got to work, but you drive. Unless, of course, you live in Manhattan or someplace in New York City. Right. But like, you drive all day long. Now I suddenly snap my fingers and transport you to London. I've changed two things out of the thousand things required to drive a car every day. I put you on the right side seat and on the left side of the road. That's it. Does it feel awkward? Feels terrible. Feels horrible. Feels. Does that mean you're sitting in the wrong seat? No. Does that mean you're in the wrong lane? Nope. Has nothing to do with it. You are actually driving right, but you're having to concentrate like mad and you feel comfortable. But guess what? All I have to do is not quit and you will be able to drive in London as well as you can in New York.

I learned that in Thailand. I was literally driving in the opposite lane and then seen oncoming traffic flipping out.

And you figure that out. I mean, it's a great analogy, but at the same time, because it's like so suddenly we don't expect to feel comfortable. There we go. Why would you expect to feel comfortable? You're meeting someone for the first time in a bar, a restaurant, a coffee shop. Why would you feel. Donor comfort has nothing to do with whether or not the thing you're doing with your one life is right. It is about whether or not you're willing to be open to investigating what it could mean for your life.

Awesome. Awesome.

Yeah.

I love that. Well, Mike, pleasure, man.

Thank you.

What's that?

Thanks for having me on.

My pleasure. I mean, we could talk for hours, I'm sure, but any last words of encouragement for the listeners?

You're not as lost as you think you are. And if you don't have voices in your life that are telling you that, go find some. You are not as lost as you think you are. And you actually are much closer to feeling progress. Find the smallest action. Find somebody to do it with. Go out there, try. Thanks for having me on, man.

Awesome. All right, guys. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, guys for tuning in. And I will see you again next week.