Ep.100- Reverse Engineering Your Success

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

So I've been debating what to talk about in episode 100. In fact, I'm weeks behind in writing it up, recording it, and getting it edited. I even have a dozen or so already recorded interviews I could have easily put in its place while avoiding the discomfort of not having someone in front of me to engage in a conversation with. You may even notice that there are only 2 to 3 episodes out of the 100 that are just me talking in a monologue episode. Over and over, I hear some of my coaches and guides in my head, "Just put out content. Stop overthinking it." And I went in 200 different directions in my mind and even had a full other draft that I decided on of what I would talk about. Until On This Day posts showed up from 2 years ago this past Sunday morning. Some patterns are hard to change for me, like I'm sure it is for many of you. I'm absolutely not a morning person. And I know for certain, if I didn't schedule clients first thing in the morning, I would absolutely sleep in. This is probably one of the ways anxiety shows up in my life. And yes, even therapists have anxiety. I can blame genetics, I can blame some autoimmune thing, or I can just realize that at 43, I would rather focus on what excites me and motivates me in life. That my passion and desire to serve others powerfully and to help them make life easier and full of meaning is what I want to put my attention to. I found that my life pre-pandemic was full of FOMO, aka that fear of missing out, that I went to local events to stay relevant versus because I really wanted to be there. And I found myself giving away my free time to people who didn't meet my core values as friends for the sake of being seen as nice. I found that I used a lot of that as an excuse to not disappoint others. And the journey that I've had over the past 10 years to figure out some of these things has been pretty wild. So looking back on that, some of the positive events over these last 10 years convinced me to share some of those experiences with you to drive my point home for episode 100. So I realized if it wasn't for the panic attacks that I had post-divorce. I would have never gone to a neuro-emotional technique practitioner, even though I saw it being demoed at an integrative mental health training through the University of Miami. A friend a few months later mentioned a therapist that does this modality, and it turns out I went to an Offspring concert with her two sons my senior year of high school. So I made a session with her. And within 3 appointments, my panic attacks pretty much went away. And a short time later, I signed up for my first NET, NET, NeuroEmotional Technique, basic training. Less than a year later, that practitioner who did the demo at that integrative medicine program named Larry was at this Myrtle Beach conference. This conference was called Net Success, and it's a full weekend where we focus on healing the healer and spend hours working on our own stuff with the other participants while enjoying a resort experience. So if my memory serves me correct, it was that weekend that I actually signed up for the certification program, which eventually changed my entire perspective on healing and amplified my passion for helping others as a therapist. But let's jump ahead now to 2 years ago. I won tickets in a raffle to Evan Stewart's Obsessed Conference in Dallas. And I had to make a decision within hours to get a flight, to find a place to stay and reschedule clients to make that happen. And at that moment, I realized how far I've come in allowing myself to invest in my personal growth without having to get a certificate of completion or continuing education credits at the end of the weekend, and also not feel selfish about it. So it was Coach Michael Burt who introduced Evan and I to each other a few months before that, when I was needing some insight on some business development, along with Victor Maya, who were some of my first guests on my You Winning Life podcast. And at this conference, I also met Judge Graham, Rocky Garza, Pat Hilton, and a few others who also honored me with their time in later interviews. I reconnected with Matt Manero, who was also one of the speakers there that weekend. And a year before that, I flew to Grant Cardone's 10X Conference, where I had the honor of celebrating Matt Manero's book launch for You Need More Money, where I introduced myself to Coach Bert, who was speaking that weekend at the 10X Conference. I knew that I was going to miss Coach Bert's speech and was taking a red-eye to Dallas and rejoining Matt, who at that time was in my accountability group in a program called Business Finishing School, and connecting with 100 other entrepreneurs for the remainder of the BFS Summit that I also committed to that same weekend. And as you know, Matt was also a guest on my podcast and a huge inspiration to why I started mine after I saw all the amazing things he was doing with his. Before that, at a BFS weekend, which was give or take a year or so before that, he and I randomly sat next to each other. And we joined the program at the same time. And were assigned to the same accountability group together in this program co-created by a business entrepreneur named Rick Sapio. Rick has become one of my guides, and he also certified me in his program as a coach for entrepreneurs. In fact, on my first afternoon after his keynote speech on core values, I went over to Rick to ask him a question. The advice he gave me in less than 5 minutes changed a lifelong pattern for me. He helped me realize that I get stuck in stories and narratives, and that keeps me away from making a black and white all-in decision, especially on important things in my life. So remember Dr. Larry, the guy from the NET conference and the Integrative Medicine conference? That weekend when I saw him in Myrtle Beach would have been the first time he would tell me about that business conference I had to attend. And I waved him off. And here's what I said, "Larry, I'm not a business owner. Definitely not an entrepreneur. Just a therapist." It took from that time until a couple years later before I finally took the risk to step out of self-doubt, the fear of not being successful, and my desire to stop playing small. Especially for those of you who know me know that I'm only 5 foot 2. I jumped on a plane, head to Dallas to that Business Finishing School conference, and put myself in a totally uncomfortable place in order to make changes both in my professional and my personal life. Before that, I was seeing clients that weren't the right fit for me. I didn't have a clear doorman principle. My business and personal life did not have any set of clear core values, nor did I have a set of annual and quarterly goals. I actually remember sitting in that office one night and realizing that there was a day of my week that I just wasn't enjoying seeing my clients. And in fact, there was a client who canceled on me, and they told me that they were sick. So on my way to the office on my lunch break, I used to go home in between, uh, my morning sessions, my afternoon sessions, because I would have a nice little break and and I live nearby, I actually went over to a Barnes Noble. And I was standing outside because I bumped into a friend. And out of a store next door to that bookstore, my client came out with a bunch of bags, didn't see me talking to my friend. And I turned to my friend and I'm like, oh my gosh, I just saw someone that canceled on me pretending that they were sick. And here's the thing, I never discussed that with my client, because I was too afraid to hold them at that point to values and to accountability. That's the chaos that was showing up in my life at that time, trying to run a solo practice, making sure that I can hold on to a client versus really challenging them, really challenging myself. To take it to accountability and ownership over outcomes. One of my favorite quotes from Rick Sapio that he loves to share is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who says, I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my entire life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. In other words, stop making your life chaotic. There is a simple option you can choose, but you have to decide that you want it to be simple. And this sums it up for most of our lives. We all have chaos one way or the other. It could be business, it could be friends, it could be family, it could be spiritual stuff, it could be intergenerational stuff, whatever. But I want to remind you that it doesn't need to be this way. So I'm now in the process of recording episode 100, and I never thought I'd have the balls to reach out to wildly successful people and that they would want to share their time with me. And I learned a powerful lesson when I first reached out to Howard Behar, who is the former international president of Starbucks and author of It's Not About the Coffee. First, I didn't expect his assistant to respond within 20 minutes with the fact that they already got a yes from Howard that he wanted to be on my show. In fact, I was already expecting to never hear back. And even if they did, to get the no. But once I got that email back, I completely had to reorient myself. And then it hit me. The no wasn't the worst case scenario. Because when we expect or get a no, we don't have to do anything differently. We don't have to make changes. There's nothing differently expected from us. But when I got the yes, it's when I had to kick myself into high gear, order his book, read his book, write some questions out, watched a bunch of interviews that he had listen to a bunch of podcasts, because I wanted to make sure that I did something different with the time that he offered me in comparison to the same rote and routine questions that many other podcast guests, hosts, will ask their guests. I had to change my focus. I had to reorient my time. I had to step up and play at a different level. So here's where I want to challenge you. It's the yeses that we get in our life that we don't take advantage of that could be the worst-case scenario. So my friends, this is what I want to leave you with after 100 episodes. It takes one step. It takes one yes, one different decision. Looking back, like I shared with you some of those stories of starting off from 2 summers ago, how I showed up to that conference, how I won that ticket, how it got me in front of different people, how it reintroduced me to people I already knew, how those people brought me to other people to get me in front of other people who are unabashedly passionate about their purpose. To be around people who completely own their shit, who are committed to doing the work, who are willing to have healthy influences, and they're willing to be a healthy influence. Don't be afraid to ask for somebody's time. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to help somebody else. Please don't doubt the value you can bring to someone else's life. No matter what your own personal story has been. One change of belief is all it takes to change your life, especially when you can see how amazing the outcomes will be down the road. I want to thank each one of you, regardless of if this is your first episode you are listening to or you've been around since the beginning. I want to thank you for subscribing. For sharing it with your friends, for leaving positive reviews on iTunes. And if you haven't done that yet, take out your phone, go to your podcast audio app of choice, hit subscribe, and then if you're on your computer, go over to the iTunes program, go to the iTunes website and leave a review with some stars. Then when you're done with that, go to Instagram, type in You Winning Life, and follow us there as well. It would mean the world to me if you took 3 minutes and just did that. It also helps the podcast get found by more like-minded people who are interested in hearing these type of stories and interviews and insights when you do so. And I want to thank every guest that has been on the show and those that are yet to come. I want to thank you for being part of my journey. And I want to be part of yours as well. If there's anything I can do for you, your business, or for your loved ones, as a therapist or as a coach, send me a message. If you're looking for a speaker or facilitator for your event, workshop, or retreat, send me a message. If you want to sponsor one or all future episodes of this podcast, send me a message. If you want to ask for a resource, a book recommendation, a YouTube video suggestion, send me a message. I want to hear from you and can't wait to see you at episode 200.

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