What Is Stopping You From Reaching Your Dreams

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gary Sanchez. At the why Institute, we've helped over 40,000 people discover, make decisions and connect using their why. This show will be much more powerful for you once you know your own why. So head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why. Today you're going to meet one of the leaders who've discovered their why with us and is going to share their story and the powerful lessons they've learned.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And today we're going to be talking about the why of better way. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator. You constantly seek better ways to do everything from the most mundane tasks of brushing your teeth to improving the rocket fuel that powers a space shuttle. You can't stop yourself. You take virtually anything when you want to improve it, make it better and share your improvement with the world. You invent things and take things that have already been invented and prove that too. You constantly ask yourself the question, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we improve it? You contribute to the world with better processes, better systems and operate under the motto often pleased, never satisfied. You were excellent at associating and taking from one industry or discipline and applying it to another, always with the aim of improving something. You generally operate with a high level of energy because that too is a better way. So I've got a fascinating guest for you today. I am going to struggle. I know already saying his name, but his name is Chris Struthopoulos and I think I got it. He is an international life coach and Leadership Trainer, TEDx Speaker, Himalayan Mountain guide and Ivy League educated award winning professor. His passion is helping people tear down the internal barriers that keep them stuck, enabling them to create next level professional success and personal fulfillment. Whether it's a CEO taking their company from $50 to $100 million, a student preparing for final exams, or a climber tackling their first Himalayan peak. He noticed that it's the exact same crap holding people self doubt, fear of failure, fear of judgment, perfectionism and a handful of other limiting beliefs. Obsessed with freeing himself and others from these self imposed limits. Chris spent 20 plus years discovering and developing a series of experiential activities that rapidly create profound personal breakthrough. He loves facilitating this transformational process through one to one coaching and workshops for corporate leadership teams. But we'll get into those later. Chris, welcome to the podcast.

I'm glad to be here.

Man, what a crazy bio you got there.

Yeah, well, you know, it's. I figured we only get one lap on this merry go round of life that we know about. So my goal has been to make the most of it.

So how did you get well? Take us through your life. Where did you grow up? Give us your education, kind of take us on your journey.

Oh God. Do you want the two minute version or the six hour version? Because for that one I think we need to get a little whiskey and settle in in front of a fire or something better at a campfire. But yeah. So the quick life arc is I grew up in the suburbs of Manhattan just over the border in Connecticut. And I had two immigrant parents. My mom is Swedish, my dad is Greek. They both are true American dreamers. Came here with nothing and totally succeeded. So grew up in this very kind of Manhattan oriented, very success driven world. And that was my world growing up. I thought I was going to be an investment banker. I thought I was going to work on Wall street and make millions. And everything shifted for me during college. I went to my undergraduates at Claremont McKenna. I studied economics order to pursue that. And I spent a summer kind of on a lark working for the National Park Service. I volunteered as a climbing ranger up in Olympic National Park. And then suddenly I'm thrust into this, a true Wilderness Area, 18 miles deep, living in a wall tent next to nine square miles of glacier. And I was stationed with this, just two of us up there. It's called the Glacier Meadows at the end of the, in the Hoh rainforest in Olympic National Park. And so it's just Stephan and I, and he was this amazing climbing ranger. He literally held the speed record on Rainier. And our job was to do search and rescue. And that just blew my mind the whole summer like smoke was shooting out of my ears because there we are living in this wall tent, you know, hearing the ice crack at night and you know, glaciers are like kind of living, breathing things and, you know, watching this family of goats get bigger every day. There's these two little babies at the beginning of the summer and as the plants grew, they grew just as fast. And the whole summer I was just pinching myself, just thinking, wait, wait, wait, Stefan, you're getting paid for this. Like this is your job. You know, it just blew my mind. And ultimately, again, our job was search and rescue. So we did several. We did, I want to say, eight or nine rescues that year, some involving helicopters, injured climbers and be able to serve people in that way. It was just kind of life altering experience for me. That kind of opened my eyes. That growing up in suburban Connecticut, which was in a very Wall street kind of oriented town, it just blew my mind. So that kind of altered the whole course of my life. So get on a lark. When I graduated from Claremont, I was like, okay, well I'll take a year or two off and then I'll go get my investment banking job. And so I was like, I'll take the summer. Actually, at the time it was just a summer. Let me back up and I'll go work for Outward Bound. Because I was fired up about the mountains. And so I talked my way into a job teaching leadership mountaineering courses in the Colorado Rockies. So liter I actually had to skip out at the right after graduation. And I'm the first in my family to graduate as well. So it was a big moment. A whole family's there and within like two hours of being handed the diploma, I'm on a plane because I was already two days late for the new staff training. And within 24 hours of being handed a diploma, I was at 12,000ft with an ice axe in my hands. And that just changed the whole course of my life. Working for Outward Bound that summer is when I discovered the power of personal transformation, that a lot of these people came into the mountains struggling. You know, it was difficult to climb a 14,000 foot peak. This is the hardest thing most of these people had ever done in their life. And I saw people break down, I saw people struggle, but I also saw people thrive. And I saw so many people come down from those mountains utterly transformed, like a totally different person. That there was a definite before and after. And that's what kind of lit me up to oh my God, that serving people is really what I want to do in my life. This was far more rewarding than anything I'd done in my. The other internships I'd done were actually were in banking all the other summers. And you know, so I put that whole idea in the rearview mirror and that kind of company launched on this whole better way thing. Because that really spoke to me what you talk about in that description, about taking one ideas from one discipline and applying them to another, because that's really been my Life arc. So I spent that time with Outward Bound doing this transformation, and I realized that I couldn't live my whole life in the mountains. And so the question began, how do I take all this transformational energy and.

The feeling I get by helping people and watching them be so transformed out of the mountains and down into the valleys? Because I saw that I didn't want to spend my whole life working frat rebound for 75 bucks a day and living in my car. Know, it was awesome. I loved it. But it was not a sustainable lifestyle for me for the long term. And so that's why I became a classroom teacher. And I first did that in Japan, teaching over there on a rural island, studying the Japanese educational system. Learned a whole bunch about teamwork there, which then ultimately I brought into my TED Talk a lot, which I'm skipping ahead the story, but I kind of then took the Japanese approach to education, combined that with Outward Bound, because they do a lot of team building. It's, you know, the Japan is this island of no natural resources yet. Why are they one of the top economies on the planet and have been for, if you, like, look back through history? And then I said, well, how do I then take this into a regular classroom? And so I got my master's degree, studied writing, became an English professor, then became a professor. Student success. Spent now 15 years creating transformation in the classroom while still working up in the mountains as a mountain guy, trying to bridge those two worlds. And then in the last few years, I got really obsessed with, well, who else can I help with these tools and what else can I bring in? And that's why I got involved with the corporate work, because several friends of mine who ran companies were like, chris, you know what you're doing with those students? Our people need that. Can you come in and, you know, help out my organization? So I was like, okay. It hadn't even occurred to me to step back into that world. And when I did, I found that the tools that I was had developed in the mountains and in the classrooms were just the same like you. Like, if it's a student, you know, studying for that exam. And they're dealing with that fear of failure. They're dealing with the, am I enough to graduate? They're dealing with all that insecurity and then that judgment that they will judge themselves and judge others is the same that that CEO feels, is the same as that climber feels, and that the tools to break through these are all the same tools. On the outside, these things look different, but on the Inside, there's amazing parallels. And so by combining these three worlds, I was able to develop a better way. And that's been my life's arc and my passion. And it's the most rewarding thing I've ever found is to see people transform in all these three arenas. And the more I continue to. And I'm still, you know, get. Still mountain guiding. I'm supposed to be in Nepal this past April leading a trip in the Everest region. I still love doing that because the stuff I learned in the corporate boardrooms translates back into that world just as much as the stuff I do in the classrooms or the one on one coaching that I do.

Wow. So you spent your life finding a better way and now you're sharing it.

Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. And so, you know, what crossed my mind as you were telling me your story real quickly was what did your parents think as you told them what you were going to do with your life?

You know, it's interesting you asked that. Overall, they've been super supportive.

It's a different passion and dream than theirs because of their background. It's quite different than mine. You know, my. They're both self educated, both, you know, bootstraps type people. I mean, my mom showed up in this country with $200 in a suitcase. And you know, my dad had even less. He was fleeing Greece at the time, which was Colonel Papadopoulos had taken over the country. They deposed the king, and through his military connections in NATO, he's able to get out, but that's really all he had. And so they both were able to meet. They met in New York City, actually working for the same company. And so they decided they wanted financial security. That's both what they craved. And so I'm so grateful that they were able to achieve that and give my life, my brother, opportunities that they never dreamed of. The fact I was able to go to college, my brother, both of I was a huge accomplishment. The fact that I got to be a college professor when I was the first in my family to graduate is pretty remarkable. So they've been thrilled. But again, it's not the life they would have chosen for themselves. But hey, that's what's so beauty. That's the beauty of this life that we get to live. Yeah.

I can imagine them thinking, you're gonna do what you're gonna. What is that? You're gonna live on an ice wall. How does that happen? You're a Manhattan kid.

Yeah. You know, my wife, my mom tries not to think about it. She just doesn't want to see the people pictures, you know, and I climb and I come in Yosemite and I'm sending her photos of El Cap. She just doesn't even want to see it. Out of sight, out of mind, you know, La, la, la, la. You know, pulling the ostrich.

So take us back to that first aha. Moment that you had. What was it? What was the first thing that you said? Wow, this is a lot different than what I expected, or this is transformational. What was that moment and what happened?

Well, as I said, for me, it was a series of events, because ultimately, I believe transformation occurs at the level of identity. That's where the deepest transformation occurs. It's not like I can just give you three tools or three life hacks that's going to take you to the next level. Ultimately, the work I love to do with the work I'm doing on myself or the work I share with others is what do you say to yourself when you look in the mirror? It begins with that foundational pieces of identity. And for me, there's been multiple shifts, even going to moving to Europe being the most recent one. You know, my wife and I and son just spent the last two years living in Luxembourg. And that was the most recent shift was super profound because we literally uprooted our entire life. You know, been living in Durango for Colorado for. Since 2005, so 13 years. And the metaphor I like to use is this was shared with me. It's actually in a TED Talk. But I'm going to steal it anyway because it's a brilliant idea. This idea of that life is a canvas, and we start on the left side of the canvas, and we're painting it. It's blank, right? And we start on the left side of our canvas, and we start painting, and we're painting and we make our way slowly to the right. And the left is the birth, the right is our death, right? We have this lifetime, this one canvas. And the thing is, as we paint and we move to the right, what we're doing is we're looking back to the left, and we're looking at what we painted yesterday. What did I do yesterday? And we're painting some variation of that, repeating it today. And there's psychological research that shows that foreign 40% of our choices are purely habit. They're just what we do, you know, it's what we did yesterday. And so I had these established habits of what did I do for work, where did I live, what did I do after work? Who did I associate with every piece of my life. And then we uprooted that into a foreign country, new place where I suddenly had other my wife and my son. I knew nobody. I had a totally different work experience. I had a totally different afterlife after work experience. I went from living in a small town of 14,000 in Colorado in the mountains, to living in a city. And that opportunity allowed me to kind of step back from the canvas and look at it and say, hey, here's what I've been painting for this, you know, the past 43 years of my life. But instead of painting the same thing again, imagine if you look down to the right and look through all that blank canvas and ask yourself, what do I want that to look like? And that was what that experience was for me to really step back and say, what is it that I really want to do with these next 10, 20, 30, hopefully 40 years of my life? And really step into kind of a different identity there. Because that's where I really looked in my soul, looked at my heart, looked and said, well, what kind of father do I want to be? What do I want this next phase of my work to be? And through that journey is how I stepped down from my tenured position at the college. That was a huge leap of faith for me because that's ultimate insecurity. You know, it's literally a job you can't get fired from. Because I realized that I'd been doing that for 13 years and it was glory. But I didn't see the personal growth that I wanted. I saw that I was in a beaut. I was in a rut. It was a beautiful rut, but it was. I was on a track and I could sit there and I could stay at the college till I retired and it would be glorious and I could help, you know, thousands more people doing it and continue to, you know, work on the sidelines and the summers and, you know, the limited time, free time I had for the professional work and the one on one stuff. But I realized that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to go all in on that and reinvigorate my whole life and re take it to the next level. So that's been the latest transformation that I've been working on these last two years is now I just teach, you know, one class a year really, just for the fun of it, because I genuinely love helping students. But all my energy now is in the one on one coaching and the corporate work, and that's been phenomenally rewarding to help other people. Take their lives and multiply the impact that I can have in that direction by helping them with their identities.

So how do you, you know, you mentioned something there. You've got this canvas, you see what you've been painting, and then you look over to the right and you say, okay, what. What do I want to paint? And how do you help? To me, that's the hardest question of all. What do I want to paint? And so how do you help people figure out what they really want? Because most people don't know what I want. It sounds like that's an overwhelming, overpowerful, overpowering question to be able to answer. At least I feel like it is.

Gary, I love that you ask that, because I think that's where so many people, especially when I start working with them, where they start, because it is super overwhelming. And I've wrestled with that myself in my own life, especially in my earlier years when I was like, do I really want to be working for Outward Bound? Do I really want it? Maybe I should go back and, you know, I tried out the corporate world again, working in tech and. But what I've discovered, and so a lot of people felt that. I felt that. But what I've discovered through all this work is it's not the question. It needs to be flipped around on its head. It's not as, what do I need to figure out what I want to do with my life? I've come to discover that most of us actually know on, internally, on some level, deep within us, what we want to do. The problem is, what are the barriers in the way that are preventing me from taking action on that or for believing that that thing, that dream I have within me is possible. And that's where that mind trash comes in. Because the reality is we in life are the thing holding us back the most. Sure, Covid's happening. Sure, you know, we can lose our job, sure, you know, medical illnesses happen. But in the end, it's what we say to ourselves. It's our mind that holds us back to the most. The things that we, when we look in that mirror and we say, what am I capable of? Of? And then we cringe. We often back away. Oh, that's scary. And I don't, you know, that fear of failure? Oh, I don't think that'll work. And who are that? Who am I voice? You know, oh, I'm not smart enough, fast enough, good enough, or nobody will want to hire me for that. Or, you know, that's for people from different backgrounds. I'm not the type of person who does that, I don't know anybody who does that. Or it becomes that. We try and you know, when we get that first setback, that first failure and we go, yep, that's proof. I knew it. I knew it wasn't going to work. Who? You know, all my friends, they told me. Or it's that fear of judgment where we think, well, what are my friends going to say if I suddenly tell them, nah, man, I'm leaving this job, I'm moving out. And our loved ones often are the ones we fear their rejection the most. Strangely, even though they're the people who love and accept us the most, we're afraid of disappointing them the most. So we have to do the work I do is about excavating through all that mind trash, all those barriers, and let's tear those down. And when we start that excavation, that's the weight. That's just layers of earth sitting on top of that true self within us. And once we excavate that and unburden all that weight, people then suddenly get free. They get unstuck, they're able to say, you know what? That is what I want to do. And I've never allowed myself to believe that it could happen. And once we shift that perspective, they start taking action. And that action then leads to a result that's positive. Like, hey, maybe you take those baby steps, right? And you're like, whoa, whoa, it kind of worked a little bit. Maybe not all of them. And then that reinforces that belief that, hey, maybe this might work. And once we have a little bit more belief that this might work, that we see more possibility, we say, well, if that worked, then maybe this next thing could work. And we step it up a little bit. So that same thing process I saw happen within me when I reached out to the corporate world, I saw in hindsight that I had this mental hang up that, well, this works in the classroom, this works in the mountains, but yeah, it's not going to work in the boardroom. That's a totally different world. And so I allowed myself to believe that. And it wasn't until I took those baby steps. And so let me back it up. So when I had that belief that lowered my potential, when I said to myself, that's not going to work, I didn't even try. I took zero effort on that. And so when I have a negative belief, that lowers my potential. And then when I had no potential, I took no action, I got no results. And that then reinforced my belief that, hey, it's not going to work. All it took was a little bit of belief. That friend who came to me who runs several ski areas and he said, you know, some of our ski area folks, they need this help. And so I was like, well, I saw a little potential now, a little crack in my belief. And so I kind of cracked that door a little bit, walked in there and was willing to do a one hour training. And it worked. People just sopped it up like a biscuit. And suddenly I saw, huh, that the action led to some results. So now I had a little bit more belief. So I came back and I did a one day workshop for them. And that again, I had now potential for more potential. Huge. I took more action, led to more results. This worked, led to more belief and then became this positive feedback loop. It's that flywheel effect, you know, that Jim Collins talks about. And so all it took though, for me to get to where I am now, where now I'm hopeful, you know, helping, you know, companies over 100 million people or 100 million a year revenue with, you know, 500 employees, was that crack in my belief of what I was capable of and to believe in myself that the tools I had would work in this other world again. The biggest thing standing in our way is us.

I love that. Have you discovered your why yet? You can join us for, for that essential first step in a live virtual event with myself and the other leaders from the Y Institute. Head over to yinstitute.com and register for the why Discovery Live webinar. Now let's get back into it.

So how do you, you know, what comes to mind for me and for I can imagine lots of people is the rut and the power of the rut.

Myself, let's say, you know, I'm also a dentist and for me that's been awesome. But it's not been awesome in that it's given me too much comfort. Yeah, right. It's created an environment where I could take it or leave it versus burning the ship. Right? And you've got to, you've got to move forward. So right now, burning the ship, I'm retiring in about five weeks.

Congratulations. Yeah, that's amazing, Gary.

Walking away from easy, what I know I've been doing it for 32 years. I had, you know, it's easy for me. And I just decided exactly what you're talking about is I got to get out of the. I got to like fully engage. And so that's. It's challenging. It's scary, right?

Super scary.

And so how do you help people that are in that rut to get out of it and move forward?

I love that question too. And I think what we're experiencing, I've experienced it, you've experienced it, and I think so many successful people have, because the more success you have, the more scared you are to leave. It becomes the golden cage. I mean, people looked at me when I was crazy when I said I was going to leave my 10 year job. That's the holy grail in academia. And those jobs are increasingly harder to get. There's less and less of them. And part of me said, chris, I'm at the top of this pinnacle. Why would I want to leave it? Are you crazy? And there's that little voice in your head that starts whispering to you, those doubts, those fears, the what if questions. And you can drive yourself crazy with that. And the double whammy then is it also gets wrapped up into that identity piece. It's like when you look in that mirror, you say, I'm Gary. I'm a dentist. I'm a good dentist. I've helped, you know, thousands of people with their teeth. And I'm good at this. I know this well, this podcast thing, ooh, is that going to work? Are people going to want to listen to my podcast? But look how many people now are listening to your podcast. That took that just like my friend had to, you know, crack that wall. You had to do the same and just kind of tiptoe into that little world and stick your toe into that water to start building that positive, see that potential, to take a little bit of action, to build that belief that, hey, this might work, then get that result that would build a little bit more belief and get that flywheel going again. And so I think step one is just recognizing this for what it is, is it's fear. Yeah. And for the most of us, it's fear of failure, it's fear of judgment. It's fear that, you know, that I'm gonna get my house will go away, I won't be able to support my kids, that I'll have to give up my car, that people are gonna look at, seeing. Well, Gary was a dentist and now he's driving that beat up old, you know, clunker and he's living in that ghetto apartment. And God, what a mistake he made. He screwed it all up. And so you have that little voice in you that's, you know, don't be that, don't do that. And so we have just recognized that what's the barrier is the fear. And once we identify it, then we can start wrestling with it. Because until we identify, you're start, it's like wrestling with a ghost, with a cloud. When it's just this shapeless kind of doubt and fear and insecurity. This is that you know you can't win against a cloud. When you wrestle with it, we got to pinpoint it down. What exactly are you afraid of? And for everybody, it's different. What is your shame? What is the story that you're playing out in your mind? That worst case scenario that's keeping you paralyzed? Because the reality, most of us are blowing it way out of proportion. Our fears and our insecurities get magnified. And that's what I first saw up in the mountains, that we'd be sitting there on a good weather day and we're looking up at some 14,000 foot peak or now in the Himalaya, obviously like larger ones. And people would just start envisioning some massive storm. I mean, they've read, you know, the Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer and visioning this death storm. And my body's gonna be frozen into the ice on the side of the mountain and my kids are never gonna see me again. And I'm like, do you see any clouds?

Here's the weather forecast. You know, let me show it to you. And I say this in a joking way because these fierce feel real, because we experience them so emotionally in our core. Because that's that, you know, that most primal part of our brain down in the brain stem is fight or flight. It wants to preserve life. And so just recognizing and naming our fears and getting pinpoint accurate on what is the fear that's holding me back, then we can attack that. But until you've named it and isolated it, you can't fix it.

I can tell you from my experience what a relief it is to actually make that decision. Right when you made the decision, I'm sure you wrestled with your decision to leave a tenured position. And then once you finally made it, how did that feel for you?

Still terrifying.

Still terrifying. But it changes what you do.

Oh, big time. Yes, it does. I mean, the fear doesn't go like, I think there's this misnomer that certain people don't feel fear or that the fear goes away. Difference is how we allow the fear to change our actions. You know, the great leaders, the great actors, they just say, hey, I feel the fear, but I do it anyway. So Gary, if I can flip this back on you and I'm sure You've told the story a few times, but I think it's relevant once again to this story of how did you push past your fears? You looked at, or maybe back this up. What was your exact fear? What was the story you had in your mind as you sat as the successful dentist with this kind of uncertain possibility of the podcast? What.

Held you back?

Is it a stupid decision? You know, I've got. I'm at the top of my game. I've got an awesome practice, patience that have been coming forever. I mean, everything is at the top of my game. And it's taken me a long time to get to the top. And now I'm going to walk away, really.

For something that I feel like I have to do. Right? So the podcast is a very small part of what I'm doing. And the podcast has already taken off. You know, we have millions of listeners, and so it's already taken off to quite a. I have so many signs. So for the people that are listening, I have so many signs of things that are going awesome with the Y Institute and so many things that are going great with it, but I still have easier, better for sure in my dental practice. Right. So I'm contrasting those two. Unknown versus known. My age, right? I'm 58. So at 58, am I going to walk away from something that could provide me with whatever I want for the rest of my life or for something that's unknown but has. But it's what I really want to do. So you get back to what do you really want to do? I can impact a few lives as a dentist. I can impact millions and billions of lives with the Y Institute. Which do I want? But it comes back to the fear of, can I do it? Fear of, is it a stupid decision?

Fear of, is it a better way for me to go? You know, my why being a better way as well? Yeah. Is it?

I love what you're saying, Everything you're saying. Can I unpack that idea of stupid?

Yes.

What do you mean when you say stupid? What was the stupid you were worried about? What flavor of stupid? Because there's so many out there, right?

Yeah, Great question. So I guess, does it make sense? Is it. Does it make sense for my family, does it make sense for my future to walk away from? Predictable, easy, for sure. Right off in the sunset, no problem. Play golf all I want. Do whatever. Do whatever I want. Never think about money to something that's maybe not so is sure. You know, maybe I'll fall flat on my face. Maybe everything That I see going in the right direction will suddenly go off the direction. Because there's a virus that takes over the world. World, Right. So much of what got canceled, what I had on my schedule for this year is gone, you know? Yes. You know, right. All the speaking engagements, all the big workshops, all the companies I was working with, all of that, gone. So is this the best time to walk away? I don't know. Should I wait six months or six months? Another six months of not doing what I really need to do. This is what I really feel called to do. This is what I have unlimited energy to do. This is what I've done for years before this for free. This is really where I want to spend my time. But is it smart?

And when you say smart, can I. I love what you're saying. Thank you for sharing. Can I ask another question?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm super curious for you, the security and the safety and the smartness. There's one level you mentioned, like your family, like you're obviously a huge part of the provider financially, those resources for your family. But there's also that sense of safe and smart for my own self esteem that we all have. We all have this image, especially once we've tasted that success. We don't want to fear, we don't want to feel like a failure. We feel feeling bad about ourselves. And obviously there's a cocktail of both of those. But which of the two would you say was stronger? The fear. Fear of the financial failure or the fear of the personal failure?

I would say personal.

How so?

Yeah. Yeah. Because I've never really been so much about money. I don't have or need a lot of things. So it's not like I have to have a gigantic house with all the. Every toy that you can come up with. That's never been my goal. But I don't want to fail at anything. So in my past, competitive sports has been my thing. You know, I was a world champion in racquetball and lots of different sports. That's kind of my thing is winning. So I don't want to fail. Man, failing just doesn't even compute to me. So I know if I just write it out, ah, I got it. No problem for myself, my family, my kids for the rest of my life. But it's not really what I have passion for. About a few months back, I was at speaking at this big dental conference in Scottsdale. And these were all the best dentists in the world. I wasn't speaking on dentistry, I was speaking on the Y Institute. But I got to see what all they do with the latest, greatest, coolest, neatest, best stuff. Right? And in the past, that has been exciting for me. I look at that and I watch it and I say, man, I can't wait to learn that. Well, this time when I'm sitting there, I'm watching them and I said, man, that is incredible stuff, but I don't have any interest in learning it.

Mm, you're right.

So I knew it was time for me to walk away. But there's still that fear of what if.

The what if? Yeah, exactly. And so I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Because I think that what that just triggered in me was a client I just took on last week, who's a doctor and over in the uk and he's that similar thing where he's, you know, like, I'm successful, it's going great. But in himself, he has a blog that he wants to create and a book he wants to write. And he'd been hemming and hawing and sitting on the fence for years. And the shift that he made on our first conversation that allowed, you know, that when he was on the fence about even, you know, taking on a life coach was realizing that the biggest fear wasn't the loss of his income or the law. The fear of the failure was to realize the biggest fear was going to my grave. Having wondered what if? And never having tried the book, tried the podcast. And you say, like, that rut for him that was the breakthrough is to realize it's not this immediate fear that's in front of me. We had to do this, you know, a thought experiment where we shift forward to your deathbed. You're sitting there in the old age home. What are you going to regret the most? Are you going to regret that you spent the last 20 years of your life just coasting as a dentist? Or in his case, he's a. He's a general practitioner. Are you going to regret the fact that you never even tried? And that once he saw that fear and we get through the thought experiment, I got him to feel the fear, not just intellectualize it, because that's what's so easy. Especially high performing people do. We live in our head, and our head is where paralysis analysis occurs. That's where we just sit and we spin and we spin and so we got to get people out of that head and into our heart, into that feeling place. And once we do that, the decision was so clear to him, and he is. In the week we've been Working together, literally. It's just a week. I took him on last week. Tomorrow's our second session. He's already emailing me, like, dude, I started the book. I made my outline. Like, he is just on fire. And it's so cool. In one session, just by having him realize his fear and realize it was the fear of not acting. Boom. And I see that same parallel with you as you sat there, if I'm hearing you right, is that what you were kind of realizing that if you never made this podcast, that was the. Not feeling energized is the bigger thing?

No, that's exactly what. What you just said is exactly the process I went through that made me make the decision. I remember who it was that took me that asked me those same questions, but it was basically, when you get to the end of your life, when you look back, are you going to regret that you didn't go 100% in when you could? And I said, yeah, I will regret that. And so that's when the decision was made. It was just like, I gotta go. I gotta. I gotta not have one foot in each thing. I gotta have all. Both feet in one thing.

And how did it feel once you made that choice?

That's what I was saying. So much relief. So much relief. Because for the longest time, I've had one foot in each. Holding both back.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Holding both back. And so it's great. I practice with my brother. He's now going to have a new partner that's younger, that's full of energy, and can't wait to learn everything he's got to share with them. And they're both excited about it. And then I'm excited to fully invest and engage in what I need to be doing.

That's so awesome, gary. Yeah. I'm 100% aligned with you. Like, it's. To me, it's the fountain of youth that we're talking about here.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it's. How do you keep that energy up? Because I looked down the barrel. I was halfway to retirement, and, you know, I worked for a state institution. It would have been a super cush retirement at age 53. I would have been cashed out. And I was like, I looked down. I was 12 years from that at the time I made that decision. And I was like, I don't want. I don't like the way those 12 years are going to feel. And once I, like you say, I had that same burst of energy, and now everything's exciting again, and it's Like, I'm fired up. I'm here, I'm with you on this podcast, and I'm grinning from ear to ear. I mean, folks can't see that, but you can probably hear to my voice. Every day I wake up and I leap out of bed and I see, you know, and I look at some of my other co workers who are like five years, three months, 27 days.

It feels like a prison sentence. No, thank you.

And, you know, you've got. You fired me up for kind of. The next thing that I'm considering is my wife and I rented a Airstream a couple weeks ago.

Oh, sweet.

We went and thought, you know, what. What would this be like to just, you know, do some RVing and whatnot? So we rented an Airstream, took it up to all the way from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, all 43 miles, and we're in an RV park there. And so on each side of us, though, was another Airstream. And in each. In each Airstream was a young couple, and they were living there and traveling around the world and working from their Airstream. And so I thought, huh, that might not be. That's something I've always wanted to do. This might just be the time to do it. So kind of researching that. There's your. No, there's your next fear. Can that be done? Can it work?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, all the. All the fear that goes with that. So.

So what is your fear with that? Like, do you mind if we dig into that?

No, no problem. I would say.

Can I be effective? Can I be focused?

Will it help me succeed or hinder me? Will it be a distraction? Will I lose touch with everybody here in my world here? You know, there's a lot of those questions versus will I get to experience something new? Will I be more effective? Will I be more focused? Will I have more fun? Will I be doing something I really have always wanted to do? Will I check that box of. You know, there's just so many. So many aspects of it that go back and forth. So the fear, if I could nail it to one fear. See, for people, from my perspective, from the why perspective.

What you and I are looking for is a better way. Yeah, we're in search of a better way. And we. At least I struggle with decision making because I'm not sure which one is better.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So you got that?

Yeah.

Yes, you big time. And until we know which one's better, it's. We're on the fence until somebody just comes up and says, hey, Chris, Just go do this one.

Okay.

And then you go do it. You're like, well, that's. That's fine. I mean, it worked great. Either one is good, but we're struggling with which is better.

You know what's interesting too, is when we have that and that you're. When I did the WHY Institute personality test, you totally nailed that about me. That, you know, I'm so prone to paralysis analysis. Yep. When I sit in my head and I realize is that when we sit there on that decision so often, we start telling ourselves stories and story back to identity. Our identity of ourself is the story we make of our life. And we sit there in those negative stories about how could this hurt my ability to impact people? How could this, you know, hurt this, hurt that? And when we sit in a negative story that then becomes like, back to like, it lowers our potential, which leads to less action, which leads to less result. So it's like Tony Robbins always says, where your focus goes, your energy flows. So when we focus on all the things that could go wrong, that's paralyzing. So if we flip that around though, and ask ourselves, you know, channel our focus, because all fear is, is imagination without direction. You know, we're just focusing on all that negative stuff. So one of the things I love to do is, in this practice has helped me, and perhaps it helps you too, is to actively imagine the positive future instead of what if bad, what if good? What if on the road, when you're in that RV and you're camping, you're watching sunsets and every night you're waking up with even more energy, But I'm. So, you know, what if you're even more able to tap into that essence, your. Your why and your power as a human being? What if through that, the people you meet on that journey, those young couple you just met, what if you meet even more interesting people by pollinating in this different world? You know, what else could go right? So let's, you know, can you indulge me on that? Like, let's play what if up here instead of what if down.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I've been. That's exactly what I. My. Where my head goes is back and forth and back and forth. Yeah, what if good? Well, heck, I'll meet more, more people that are doing the same thing. I'll meet a whole community of people that have Airstreams. That's what we liked about the Airstream. We'll have some amazing experiences and we'll be able to do something we've always wanted to do but never could because the kids were small. Both of our daughters are. Or now they're out of college, so they're on their own. So the timing is right. We could go to different cities and meet people in those cities and expand our reach. We could speak at events in all kinds of different places. You know, there's just who knows who we'll meet along the journey that knows the. You know, all of us are one connection away from really realizing our dreams. And you don't know when that connection is going to happen.

Yeah, exactly.

And so.

There'S an unlimited amount of positives and there's a few negatives. And sometimes those few negatives overtake all those positives. Right. The fear of will I fail? The fear of, you know, all those things I talked about earlier. So what advice do you give people for overcoming those? Because they're going to be there.

Yeah. So the first is. You got the more just to repeat again, number one is identify them. That's step one. And then step two is accurately assess them. How real is this fear? You know, is this really going to hurt your business? You know, I imagine everything you're doing is online now anyway, especially in this era of COVID so why not do it from, you know, so is that. How real is that fear? And then you got to really be intentional on practicing the positive side of really saying, well, what are the benefits? And then stepping into them and not just, you know, telling yourself, oh, it's going to be great, and I could have this freedom, but really feel it, because the biggest decisions in our life are meant made emotionally. Like. One of my favorite Researchers is Antonio DiMasio over at UCLA. He's a neuroscientist, one of the world's leading ones. And Damasio says that we are. Through his research on the brain, he's proven that we are not thinking machines that feel. We are feeling machines that think. So we got to get out of our heads because the head will just sit there and spin with all this negative stuff. We got into the feeling, and then we got to feel the positive stuff, really step into that future. And once you feel it, that is where that source of energy will come from. Because to take that first step requires faith. And faith is that opposite of fear. Well, how do you create faith in something that you haven't experienced? Because there's different types of belief. You know, we have the intellectual belief. Like, you know, I understand it. We have the experiential belief. Like, I've done it and then we have that emotional belief where, like, I believe it. And so often, like, you know, when I start a new endeavor, I might have that into thought belief. Like, oh, yeah, I see it. It makes sense. I might even have that emotional belief, like I'm stepping into it, I can visualize it, I can feel it. But until I have that, you know, without that experiential belief, it's like a stool without a leg. So how do you then step into something you've never done before? Well, you got to lean into that faith and just accept that I'm not going to have 100% certainty. I just need to trust and trust in myself in the same way. Like when you started this, right. Did you have any idea that you would be reaching millions of people?

No, that was just me and a buddy. I was trying to help him figure out his why.

Yeah, right.

And then it became all of this.

But you took that massive action. You reached out to Simon Sinek and you know, who's now become one of the world's leading experts, thought leaders. But you took that action and you stepped into your why. And look at that chain of events that spiraled. And so that's what we need to remind ourselves, that even though we can't, that's what faith, like religious faith. Right. We can't touch God, but we believe he's there anyway. And that same way you need to believe in your future with that same faith, I can't touch it. I don't know exactly what's going to happen. Like, when I moved to Europe, I had no idea what it was going to be like.

Yeah.

But I just had to believe in myself and stay in my heart and not let my thoughts derail me.

Yeah, that's. You know, what's interesting on my particular journey is that it feels like so many things are coming into place.

Naturally to make this happen at an alarming rate. I mean, just like the perfect person walks in to buy my practice from me. The perfect person steps up and wants to buy our house. We were not, weren't even going to sell our house. And somebody walk, you know, shows up to buy the house. We don't even know if we're going to sell it. I happen to buy a truck, which I've never had in my life. You know, just many things are, like, lining up to go do this. And so I think that's going to be our next step, which is just get on the road and go check it out, see what happens and do what Chris would do. Right.

Yeah. And that's what's so true though is once you take action, there's this whole set of unforeseeable events that will coalesce around that decision. But you gotta take that step. The same thing like in a marriage, right? You don't know where your marriage is gonna go. But you know, in that moment, you have that faith. When you say, as men, we get down on our knee and we say, hey, honey, you just have to believe that this is going to lead to something beautiful and that faith is what brings you forward.

Yes. So, Chris, this has been awesome, man. It's been a therapy session for me too now.

It's been really great.

So for people that are listening and they'd love to work with you, they'd love to have you come speak or just connect with you, follow you, how should they best get ahold of you?

Best one is just. You can go to my website.

My company is called Ascent, like Climbing Empowerment. And I have two different websites, one for personal coaching, one for the corporate work that I do for leaders doing, like managers doing workshops. Because all of it is about stepping into that bigger self, dealing with those root issues, the barriers that prevent us from being our best self, dealing with that root level identity. Piece of what do I say to myself when I look in the mirror and life isn't going your way? And so I handle it both ways. So One is Ascent Empowerment.com. another one is Ascent Coaching us. Or you just Google my name. I'm sure it'll be right here in the notes. Common spelling for Streetopoulos. And yeah, just, you know, watch my TED Talk. You can find all this information out there. But you know, Gary, I want to close just by thanking you. I think what you're doing is super cool. I really appreciate what you're doing in the world by creating the better way. Because I'm a better way person too. And I, you know, and as I see your description of me, it's just like at the bottom of it, it says for the better way person, any career where I can identify something that isn't performing at its best and have the freedom to improve it will be a great fit for you. And I was like, that's what I do, you know, as I help people who aren't performing at their best and, and now I've committed to a life where I have the freedom to help them. And that just gives me that more faith that I have made that right choice. And so I love the energy you're putting out to the world. I Love the help you're giving to the world, and I'm aligned on that same mission. And so I just want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to help us help other people.

Oh, that's awesome. And, you know, let me finish also with how I would describe what you've told me, what you do from the perspective of your why. I would say that you teach people a better way to talk to themselves so they can reach the peak of the mountain the fastest, let's just say. Right. You teach me a better way to talk to myself.

That's one way of putting it. Yeah. That's a big piece of it.

Yeah. Find out what it is. But anyways, hey, great to meet you and welcome back to the United States. And I know you're going to jump on the road and go to Durango, so thanks for spending the time with us. And I'm sure we're going to have a trip up to Durango. Maybe we can get together for a beer.

I love that. Seriously. If you like to hike, I know some great hikes up in Durango.

There we go.

Yeah, congratulations. Take that, Airstream. I can say some great places to park that up in the San Juan.

That's what we're thinking.

Some great mountains up there. And again, congratulations on your decision. Five more weeks. I think you're doing the right thing, Gary, and you're changing the world. And this is the fountain of youth, so let's keep drinking from it.

I agree. Thanks for being here. Have a great day.

Hey, you, too.

Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. Every listen, share and review helps others learn about their why, how, and what. Together, you and I can help 1 billion people find their why. If you haven't discovered your why yet, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover yours today. See you there, my friend.