Ep. 137-Rise Above Chaos with Erick Rheam

Jason Wasser. Today's guest is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, spent 5 years as a military police officer, 9 years working for 2 municipally owned utilities, 10 years in software efficiency sales, and then 2 years as the director of student success for a professional speaking development company. Now, as a professional speaker and author, Eric Riem is going to join us to talk about how he helps men and women cut through the whirlwind so they can rise above the chaos to discover their significance and live in peace. Alright, so Eric, I'm super, super excited to hang out with you. It's funny, as I was telling you before in our pre-conversation, that once I started doing some research on knowing who you are, I'm like, okay, yeah, Yeah, the speaking success, you know, all of the things that I've looked into in my own journey, not just being a therapist, not just now doing this podcast as a fun side activity, but I also have done some public speaking. So I'm really excited to have someone like you joining us today to share some of your expertise that I know will trickle down to everybody listening.

Yeah, yeah, that's great, man. It's funny because I remember the first time Jason when I told somebody I was a professional speaker and it sounded so weird coming out of my mouth, you know? And it's all I do now. Since 2019, I've been a full-time professional speaker. It's a fantastic lifestyle. It really is. It's really cool just to— in fact, you know, I just came out with my latest book and I was talking to my wife. We were driving down the road. I said, it's amazing because I'm going to probably get my first royalty check here in a few days. I don't even know how much it's going to be. I don't even track the numbers. But I told my wife, it's amazing. I'm about to get a check, Jason, of something that I had in my mind, you know, and I put it down in a kind of a reasonable way to consume it. And that people pay you for that. It's just sometimes it blows my mind. I just, I love the creative piece of just being a professional speaker. So it's a, I'm in a fun place right now.

Well, I think that kind of is the overview of everything that you and I want to talk about today is, you know, one, you like really having fun, really finding what you're passionate about, really finding your purpose. And is it possible? For people to string those things together. And I've wondered, right, going through my own personal journey, where before I was a therapist, I was, as I joke, a professional Jew. I was working for nonprofit institutions, youth groups, camp, college— excuse me, college campus work. So, right, I was paid to be Jewish, right? It was really—

that's awesome.

That's really cool.

I haven't heard that before.

Right, right. So I mean, it's like being a, you know, a minister or whatever, right? It's— they're paid to be in that religion professionally. So Um, but it was all like nonprofit and it was a lot of informal education. There was speaking engagements, there was, but I found that like the platforms that I was in, there was always some level of politics that always made the environment less favorable for me because number one, I didn't know how to navigate that earlier on in my career. I took everything way too personally and I didn't have the savvy. And then two, like I knew that the financial outcomes were never going to be controlled by me. And I always had this idea of, I have to convince them to want me, and they have to want me just as much as I want them, but I need them more because I'm the one applying for the job. They didn't reach out to me, right? So now, as my career has shifted, I'm doing therapy and coaching and, and other stuff like that, that I see this whole mindset has, has changed. And you've gone from right, military academy. And I mean, one, I would love to— like, let's start there because I know there's different stages of your evolution. But, you know, to go to the military academy, right, that's a big— like, how did that come about? Is that a family thing? Is that something that just showed up for you and you're like, yeah, I want to do this?

Yeah, that's a great question, man. Uh, actually, my dad and I were driving one day in Ohio. I think it's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And we were just driving by this Air Force base, and I was just looking at it, and I was like, My dad was in the Air Force back in the day. He didn't talk much about it, but not like he had a bad experience. We just didn't talk much about it. And I just started asking my dad questions about the military. And I was just a young kid and my dad was kind of explaining to me on different ways you get in the military. He talked to me about being enlisted, being an officer, all those things. And it was just kind of a seed that was planted at the time. And then, you know, in 1987, '80, I can't remember. And I'm bringing this up only because it's about to come out. But I watched Top Gun and it hit me at the right time, right? I was like 11 years old, 12 years old, like, that looks really cool, man, you know? And when you see something on the movies at a young age, you just think that's how it is, you know? And so this idea of just the military started kind of formulating. Then we had the Gulf War and it was, you know, back then and we didn't have social media or something. But so you just had, you know, basically news TV. We didn't really have CNN, really wasn't that big of a deal at the time. And so it was just on all the network news, this whole thing going on the Gulf War and some, it just kind of, It just hit me that this is what you do, right? I mean, you, as a young man, you probably should be a part of that to some degree. And I was lucky enough, Jason, I was just running pretty fast in high school where I started garnering some attention from some really good Division I running programs across the country. And at the time, United States Military Academy West Point was very serious with their distance program and they had one of the top running programs in the country and they reached out to me. Along with the Naval Academy, and they kind of started competing with one another to, to land, uh, getting myself. And I was honored that they were coming after me, and it kind of just scratched that itch that maybe I want to explore the military, and what better place to do it than at a military academy? So that was just something that just all came together and just made sense.

As you were talking about that, like the Gulf War, I remember I was at sleepaway camp and it was what they were playing it on the, the big old TVs that were in the dining room. Um, I don't know why playing it in the dining room at a You know, for middle school kids, like, that doesn't make sense looking back upon it now. But like, it's so interesting you're saying like, because this influence— my grandfather served in the Army and he was in the military band. And because he was a musician, he got asked to play. And to my knowledge, he escaped— or not escaped, but he was not sent out to the Battle of the Bulge because of that.

Right.

So playing music, amazing, having a passion, kind of in a way, right, possibly saved his life. And it was not— right, that was the last time I really, you know, I didn't even know any of this stuff. There wasn't like, you know, I know back in the day, multiple, you know, two generations ago, if you lived in America, you had an immediate family member in the military. Oh yeah, how much that's waned, you know, and there's politics around it and bipartisanship and like, you know, it's a political thing or it's a socioeconomic thing to go to the military versus you had something that was kind of imbued in you. And it's kind of an interesting thing. So do you feel like that, you know, there was some type of more of an honor, more of an obligation, more of a responsibility? Any of those? None of those?

I don't think it much of an honor or responsibility. It was just more of a, you know, I think this is a really cool thing that I'd love to be a part of. You know, when I was growing up, the way the military was presented to me was It was a great organization that was great to be a part of. If you were associated with the military, that was really good. I mean, it's a positive thing. I grew up in Indiana and so the military is just always portrayed as, you know, I remember seeing recruiters at the school. They were always really sharp, well-dressed. They were fit. Everything I saw about the military, every time I saw the military was in a good light, whether it be on the movies, you know, just maybe it was that point of period I was growing up, on the news, all that. That just seemed like a really cool thing and my dad served, you know, everybody in my family did. So I was surrounded around it. Nobody ever pressured me and said, you got to do do this. This is a part of being American. It was just everything. Every time I saw it, it was just a cool thing. And as an 18-year-old kid, if I had the opportunity to go somewhere, they were going to— it was full-ride scholarship. In fact, they pay you to go there. You actually get paid to go there on top of running with some of the fastest guys in the country. Why not? It just all made sense to me.

So walking onto campus, I mean, was there a sense of pride? Was there a sense of fitting in? Like, this is kind of like— because I know I remember I was at a treat a while ago and was much, much like a lot of spiritual seekers. And I remember calling one of my good friends. I'm like, I hope I fit in with all the other people who don't fit in because it was like, these are my people, but I hope I fit in with them and I hope I don't, right? So was, was there a sense of community? Was there a sense of something that you felt connected to once you got established on campus?

Yeah, once I got established. Yeah, once I got established. So when I first got there, I was overwhelmed, to be honest with you, Jason, because I didn't— I wasn't prepared for how hard it was going to be. And how sharp all the cadets were going to be. That's when I realized the power of being around people who are better than you because you ultimately will adapt and you will level up. You will become who you're around. And so I was around guys that were all valedictorians. They were all president of their class. They all had the best girlfriends or boyfriends. They all, I mean, they were all straight-A students. They did everything. They were the best at everything. And I thought I was hot stuff until I got there and realized, I am nothing. My world got so much bigger and I realized these guys are operating at a totally different level. They were really— I actually admired them and that they were so freaking sharp and like, man, I got to, I got to figure this out. So I really struggled that first semester with everything from the military life and the academic life, trying to compete at a high level at Division I. I struggle with all of it actually. And so it took me a bit to kind of find where I fit and where I ultimately fit was really not the military part of it. Where I fit was really the running part of it. I really connected with my teammates. In fact, we're we're all very close right now. There's a group of my teammates that 3 of them are in the Hall of Fame. Our coach is getting inducted this year. And all of them are multimillionaires. They make me look silly. They're so much better off than I am. And we get together every 90 days. In fact, next week, the 3 of us are getting together in Nashville, Tennessee. But we get together and we're like, we're closer than brothers. So I remember my mom telling me that. She said, if you stick it out there, you're going to make friendships that are going to last a lifetime. So there's something about hanging out with people that are serious about what they're doing, they're very good at what they do and they have just a mindset that's just different than the average mindset that you're used to. There's something about that when you all connect as human beings and you live through something like West Point that's hard and you make it on the other side but you couldn't do it on your own, you had to do it with other people. You connected, you sacrifice for one another and you build this bond that can never be broken and it's a beautiful thing. People that don't experience that, whether it be a military or maybe a high-level varsity sport where they really had to— I mean, you had to really sacrifice for someone else, man, you're missing out if you haven't experienced that level of human connection. It's a beautiful thing. And it was— I'm so glad I did it because you can't— it's hard to duplicate that other than in that environment. It's beautiful. It's awesome.

I love it. And it's so true because I'm having this conversation with one of my clients who probably in his sales department, we're going to tackle into what you're, you know, the next stage of your, of your life post-college. But he's in a sales-based position. And he's killing it. And I'm asking their company, you know, to ask his company, what's the, what's the next level of incentivization? Otherwise, like, you know, versus this like flat rate, like you just hit this number and we just give you this bonus as opposed to is there stages above that? And he's, you know, not getting anywhere with them. And he's like, I think I'm ready. I think I'm like, I outgrew this company. And it's so interesting because I pivoted back to a different part of your life. I'm like, well, so we're talking about this professionally and over here you're going through this struggle. That you haven't outgrew. And it's so interesting to see like, well, I'm so myopically focused on this part of success. Why can't we take that same approach over here for a part of you that you didn't outgrow and scale up the people that you need to be around over here as well? And I just had this dumbfound look on his face and it was just like, oh, I see why I'm stuck. Right? So, right. We know that that rising tide raises all ships. And I know in my own journey, whether it be from financials or being around people who are bigger at this than me, as a therapist, as a podcaster, it's always so exciting because I used to come from a place of insecurity about it. Why should I have a podcast? What do I— who the hell's gonna want to talk to me? And now 120+ episodes in, right? I'm continuously getting surprised and shocked by like, wow, this is so cool. So I do believe, like you said, that commitment to scaling up, as cliché as that phrase is, the scaling up phrase is, it's so vital for people out there. If you're listening to this, and there's a part of your life, so, and then that's kind of where I want to kind of maybe do a little bit of a deep dive just here before we go on to the other stuff, right? The scaling up component. What are some of the tactics, some of the tools, some of the tips that you would share as far as taking it right there? And really addressing that?

Well, I think part of it comes with self-awareness, number one, Jason Wasser. Understanding what you're good at and not good at, and that there's people that are in your life that are probably good in areas where you're weak, and understanding that part of it, and understanding that the way humans work with one another is it's got to be a win-win. So when I have guys in my life that really edify me where my weak areas, they can support me. I'm also edifying to them and some of their weak areas, I can support them. So when it's a win-win like that, that's when you can really elevate the relationship. And so once I started realizing that, that's just part of the experiences in, in managing expectations. So one of the things I've discovered— I used to be in law enforcement, uh, back when I was in the military. I was military police. I was a platoon leader and special investigator in Europe, in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And so whenever I would roll up on a scene and two individuals were in conflict, it was usually because of gap of expectations. That's all it was. And so what I realized is that if you manage expectations properly in relationships— number one, what are your own expectations going into a relationship, and then understanding what the other person's expectations are— there's always a gap in between the expectations. The problem with most folks is they never address the gap, right?

Yeah.

And so what I've gotten really good at is addressing the gap, especially my marriage. And having the courage to say what must be true for you and I to navigate this and hear what the other person says and find out what their truth is and then align that with mine. That's when I've realized that I was, as I leveled up, as you say, in my relationships is just understanding where I'm weak, where these folks are strong, where they're weak, where I'm strong, how we can bring those together, like puzzle pieces, and then close those puzzle pieces together by closing the gap in expectations. So that's how I've always approached it. And I addressed that in the book as element number 6 of the 7 Almost a Perfect Day, assembling a team. It's all about that expectation management.

And I see it so many times with my couples, right? Exactly what you're talking about. It's as if one has to convince the other that their approach is way more right. And that's what we spend a lot of time, right? Any type of conflict, but especially, you know, my relationship, the couples that I see, it's who has, who has the more right perspective, who has the more right way of doing things, who's, who's being burdened the most, and therefore the other person needs to realize it's like this all or nothing. Paradigm. And each of them, like exactly like you said, I think you explained it spot on, that we show up in relationship dynamics in any situation, personally, professionally, with beliefs, assumptions, and expectations from our entire life. So when you were talking about the timeframe where you watched the Gulf War, and it's something like activated in you, and I'm thinking about like, well, that's so interesting, because that didn't activate that in me, right? It was just like, wow, there's this thing all the way on the other side of the world. It's so far away. I am, you know, I didn't, you know, I happened to be in an environment where I was surrounded by people my own age in nature. And it was just the furthest thing. Like, it's— I just find it so psychologically fascinating about what activates someone to move closer to their purpose.

Yeah. You're also in middle school at the time, right?

I was in middle school at the time.

Yeah. So I was a junior in high school. So different, different perspectives too, as far as age, you know, and I was getting that age where I was making— starting to make life decisions beyond high school. And so maybe that was part of it too, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was just worried about like, you know, yeah, when I was in middle school, the Challenger happened. So I remember watching the Challenger explode in science class because they were—

they just broadcast it live.

I remember they broadcast it live. And so, yeah, it was a big American prideful thing to see a rocket go into space. It was during the Cold War, and that's how we showed the rest of the world that we were dominant, right? And so as kids, maybe it was part of the indoctrination of the greatness of America. I don't know why they did it, but we were all watching it. I remember watching it explode. That was my middle school experience. So yours is Gulf War. Mine was the Challenger.

Yeah. And I do remember the Challenger specifically because we had the open classroom, like the 5 classrooms with the open classroom in our elementary school in North Miami Beach. And I do remember that moment. And it was just like, so if we were 4th grade, 5th grade, whatever that was at that time that that happened. So yeah, it's such an interesting where certain experiences happen to us that lead us on the path. And once we're in a place of success, can you reverse engineer and be like, oh, well, this makes sense why this happened, this happened, and why I made those choices. So when you were saying when you came from the military, you went military police, and then, uh, after that you went into another part, right, which was more business side of things.

Yeah, well, I went to the utility world because of love. Have you ever done anything silly because of love? Uh, that's why I did it. So I actually, um, I was at home, I was in Anderson, Indiana at the time, and I met this girl that was just top shelf. I mean, I'm telling you, once you— you know, you know what it's like when you meet the person you want to be with.

5'2", so the top shelf is really, really difficult for me to hit.

So it's all right.

I know what it looks like up there.

I know what it looks like. Your top shelf would be my middle shelf, but it's still top shelf, right? So she was like— you just knew that this, this was a quality gal, right? This is the kind of gal you bring home to the family, that kind of thing. And of course, anybody that's halfway decent is going to have some guys scratching around. So she had a guy that she was dating, but he was in New York. I was in Colorado. She was in Anderson, Indiana. So I was getting out of the military at the time. I like, well, what better way to win her over than to move to that town and get a job? This happened to be with utility, utility. I could, I could care less about the local utility. I cared about her. So that was my plan. Proximity was going to win the day. And so I did. I won. I won her. So 5 months after taking the job, job, uh, we were engaged, and then 9 months later we were married. And then there you have it, that's how I started my career in the utility world. Had no rhyme or reason other than I had— I really wanted to win that girl. I wanted to get the girl. And so I ended up staying in utility world after that for 2 decades as a result of love.

So wait, wait, wait, because I, I really wanna— you know, tonight I'm going to, uh, a singles event, and, and I'm just— I always like the sociological studies of like what's going on. And I have a few friends reaching out, I'm like, don't worry, be your wingman, right? You know, type of thing. And like, you literally picked up your world and moved. And people, right, I'm in South Florida, and I know this is, you know, universal to probably any major big city where they don't even want to drive 20 minutes to go on a date. Like, oh, you live here? No, I'm not going to date. I'm not going to date anybody from that part of town, right? It's 20 minutes away. There's too much traffic. But you literally picked up your whole entire life, all in.

So like, you should see my wife. You would know why if you met her. You would know why. Yeah, you'd move heaven and earth.

So how do people get— I mean, I think this is really where the decisiveness of life choices and success and, you know, I don't even want to play at the level of happiness. I'm talking about like purely, truly content, meaningful contentness, not content that I've settled, but content like I know I've made the right choices that are going to continue by putting effort into that path will continue to lead me down the road that I truly want to go to. I mean, when you're saying, yes, she was this great, she was this awesome, but there had to be something in you that was so decisive that you were willing to do this because, right, that's an external motivation. And a lot of people, we do need external motivation. I can't work out consistently without hiring a personal trainer.

That's right.

But something inside of you. What was that thing inside of you that's like, I knew— whether it was values, whether it was, you know, what was the thing that really inside of you said, I'm willing to make this big?

Well, that's a good question, man. That's why you're a good therapist. This might turn into therapy for me, I don't know. But, uh, anyway, the thing is that, uh, it was— there's a little more to it, to the story. And the story more— what's deeper in the story is that the reason why I was back in Indiana and why I met her was because my sister passed away. And so my sister passed away unexpectedly. She was 34 years old. I was 27. And my sister was a big figure in my life. She's a wonderful lady. She was a friend, a mentor, someone I looked up to. I would probably say from a psychological level, she probably filled that part in my heart that is filled for a partner. Not in a creepy way, but in a way where she was just that— she filled that space. And so once she was taken away from me, it kind of took the foundation of my life out from under me. And up to that point, I was just kind of dating for fun. I really didn't care about relationships very much. In fact, my parents thought I'd never get married. And once that, that kind of shifted and I met Aaliyah, who's my wife, at my sister's funeral because her dad was the mayor. My dad was the chief of police. Aaliyah, 7 years younger than me. We'd never really met before. I didn't even know the mayor had a daughter. But when she— we met for the very first time, I think I was at a point in my life where I knew that, hey, it's time to kind of grow up a little bit, time to put the big boy pants on. It was one of those life-shifting moments that made me kind of shift into my paradigm that maybe I need to start thinking about what life is going to look like in a settled environment. And I just happened to meet her at the time. She was definitely someone I was very attracted to, on top of the fact that I was reevaluating how I was approaching life now that my sister was had passed away. And I just saw my sister a few months before that. She came out to visit me in Colorado Springs. She told me, you know, she's like, hey, Eric, you need to start buckling up a little bit, thinking about your future. Maybe get a dog. You need to name the dog Cheyenne because I lived in Cheyenne Mountain. She says, you need to find a church. So once my sister passed away, I got a church, I bought a dog, I named it Cheyenne, and I got married. So I think that was kind of the catalyst for me to start thinking about growing up.

Yeah, the space that we carry for others, right? It's interesting that yours came out of a loss and a tragedy, and my heart goes out to you and your family even this many years later. When you— me, anybody who's listening— to take this opportunity to kind of look at like the pain points in life, and, and right, I always kind of see it as a binary 1 and 0. That there's always a story we want to tell about that. And one story is how I got screwed over by it, and the other side of the story is how I chose to become empowered by it. And you— and, and I truly believe you can't carry both at the same time on a particular topic. And what I'm hearing, what I'm understanding, what I'm seeing from you and of you is, is that you chose the empowerment point out of a pain, difficult loss you chose to empower yourself. And I'm sure there was grief, and I'm sure there was sadness, and I'm sure to this moment you're missing her and thinking about her. But I also love that, you know, the space that was created was out of honoring, right? A really beautiful way of honoring.

Yeah. Yeah. I knew my sister would be very proud of me. I knew she would, she would have been very happy with the decisions I made.. And every time I can be a good father to my kids and be a good husband, it's kind of, I, it's, I honor her memory, honestly. And so that's very important to me because she was important to me. So, I mean, that, that's really the, I think probably this, because, you know, if that's what happens to you is your, your, your paradigm of life changes when things happen to you. You're, so your paradigm's always evolving based on your stress level, based on, you know, external things. It's just how you manage that paradigm shift is the key. And so I managed it in that way, in a very healthy way. Then I kind of got off kilter when we finally started getting settled in and just because I was very ambitious but had no way about me. So I had to kind of clean some things up, but that's what life is, right? It's just creating messes and cleaning up along the way, right? So, but the main thing is you make good decisions and then you have to manage those decisions. I had a mentor tell me that one time. He says, "Life's about making decisions and managing those decisions." I never understood what that meant. Now I do because I made a decision. To marry this woman, but then I had to manage that decision. And we're 20— we just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. 21 years later, I'm still managing that decision in a very healthy way. So you just— you don't make a decision and move on. You make it and then manage it for the rest of your life. And so that's what I've been doing.

Well, it's a set of proactive, uh, interactions and always staying proactive as much as possible versus being reactive to anything. And, and again, as I'm evolving, as I'm turning 44 this summer, that how much I see the difference between the reactive decisions I've made in my life and the proactive ones, and how much further in life the proactive ones have gotten me, and why they're— and, and the fear, the beliefs, the assumptions, the expectations, as I said before, right? Those are the things that only hold me back from going proactive to reactive, right? The beliefs that we might carry about money, the beliefs we might carry about safety, health, whatever, relationship dynamics. I think we all have that in our own unique ways, and and all as our listeners are listening to this conversation is to find those categories that you, you can differentiate between what have you been made in your life that are proactive decisions versus reactive decisions, and then take them to someone. And if you can't figure them out yourself of how to do different, bring them to, bring them to someone such as, you know, a good therapist and navigate that. Right. And work for it. Because I think that's really where, like, and you said you kind of like lost your way and, and some challenges came up. Like you said, and that allowed you to kind of do a deeper dive into some figuring some stuff out, right?

Yeah, of course. Yeah. I think coaching is important in any and in every facet of your life. You know, you call it therapy, I call it coaching, whether it be on how to navigate the dating life. You know, I know there's coaches out there for that, right? Yeah. To, you know, speaking. I had coaches to help my speaking business. And so I've got a coach right now helping with the podcast. I want to be like you someday. My goal is to be the Jason Wasser of podcasting someday. So I have a coach help me with that. So I think it's important to have people that can, with not much skin in the game, you know, can kind of look and evaluate where you're at and give you some, really some tweaks. And that's the biggest thing is, you know, it's not about drastic changes. It's just making tweaks along the way. Going back to the Challenger, I used to be really into NASA and stuff that was part of the military component. I thought maybe someday, maybe I'd be a pilot and then I can maybe then navigate that. And I remember studying that and I hear reading somewhere that as soon as a rocket is launched, it's immediately off course, and then you're just making millions of tweaks to keep it on course. And that's just really our life. As soon as we're born, we are launched into the world, and then we're immediately off course, and it's making tweaks along the way. And only way you can make the right tweaks is if you have people on your side that's helping you, uh, guide you on those, those tweaks you have to make. You can't do it alone, for sure.

For sure. And one of those tweaks was to eventually start speaking at conferences. So where did that come from? Because again, like you said, like, you know, I'm, I'm a professional speaker and, you know, not many people have that on their business card. And it's not like the main thing they do. Usually they might have some other hustle and this is something that they do for fun. But you did, you know, at that point, was that when you jumped fully into it or you were kind of— so walk us through that journey quickly.

Yeah, I never really jumped completely into it all right off the bat. It's a, it's a long story. I want to make it really short. Sure. The short story comes down to I started speaking just out of necessity because I was in sales at the time. Once I got out of the utility world, I still wanted to stay in the utility world but sell to utilities because what I discovered, Jason, is this: I'm not an office guy, right? I can't just go to the same office every day with the same people, mainly not because of them, because of me. I wear people out. I'm like a yellow Corvette that you may rent for the weekend, but you don't want it forever. After a while, it's a yellow Corvette and you're like, oh my gosh, what kind of decision I make there? And so I would wear people out. So I realized It's better if I can go into locations, add value, uplift, edify, that kind of thing, and move out. So sales made a good— made sense to me. And so what happened was I'd go to these conferences and all these salespeople, they would set up their booths and they would be in this one little room. And then all the people would attend these sessions and then maybe come back and see your booth and maybe talk to you. I'm like, man, how can I elevate myself above all these other salespeople? I'm like, I gotta get on those stages somehow. And so I just did out of necessity. I thought, well, if I can get on the stage, maybe do a breakout session or something like that, then people will be interested and maybe chat with me afterwards and I can maybe make a couple of sales. Well, I started doing that. And then one day I was doing something like similar to that at a breakout session. And a guy that I respect a lot, he was in one of my previous job colleagues at another job. He was sitting in the back of the room and he came up to me afterwards. He goes, Eric, you did a really good job with that. I said, thanks, man. He goes, you're really good at this. I said, I appreciate it. And he said, he asked me a question no one ever asked me before. And he said, when are you going to do this full time? I said, what are you talking about? And he's like, when are you going to be a full-time speaker? Because I think you can make a living doing this. At that point, I'll be honest with you, I'm not making this up. I didn't even know that was an option. I didn't even think about it. I thought you had to be like a Hall of Fame football player or you had to fall off Mount Everest and live to tell about it. I thought you had to do something extraordinary. I didn't know a regular dude could do it. So what happened was that planted a seed in my heart that maybe it's something I could do. And then just off chance, I started following a guy by by the name of Michael Hyatt. Michael Hyatt, he left his corporate job to be a professional speaker. And so I just kind of started following his journey, thought that was kind of interesting. And somehow I found out he was part of this conference where they actually teach people how to be speakers. I didn't know that was a thing. I'm like, I'm going to it. So I went to my wife and said, hey, I'd like to go to this in Florida. So I took some money that we didn't have, to be honest with you. She— but thank God, my wife, she believed in me. And so I went down there, just paid this money blindly, just figure out what's it take to be a speaker, because I have no idea. I sat next to a George Bush impersonator at my table, and there was a lady that was on The Doctors that was trying to figure out how to take that fame on The Doctors, the TV show, whatever, like that reality show where they get the— they just talk about ailments or something. And she was trying to figure out how to turn that into speaking. And there was me and there was all these other people. And I spent 2 days just learning about the craft of speaking. And it was during that time and I recorded every word that they said.. And then while I would mow the lawn, it'd take me 3.5 hours to mow the lawn, I would listen to it over and over and over again. And that just started the journey of me just figuring out how— that was 2014. And I didn't become a full-time professional speaker until 2019. So it took me 5 years to kind of get it up and running. And it was just really me just trying to— making a lot of bad decisions, going down dead ends, figuring things out. In fact, if I could go back to people hiring me back in 2015, I need to send them apology note because it was bad. I mean, I was bad. I didn't do a really good job. And luckily I was able to figure it out, and now I'm doing what I'm doing now, but not without a limp. I'm walking with a limp, let me tell you that.

Well, I'm laughing because like I can always imagine like my first therapy session in our, in our internship. So it was like second semester of graduate school. We don't know anything from anything. I am 23, 24 years old, 25 years— I don't even know how old I was then. And I remember that it was like the walk of shame down this long hallway because it was a student clinic with with the, the one, the one-way mirror. So the team was behind the mirror with the professor and they can call into the room. It was super cool. Um, the Reflecting Team is what that's called. And I remember walking down the aisle, I mean walking down the hallway literally, um, and it was literally like, what the hell am I bringing to the table for this person? And some of them were professors and some of them were from the, you know, at the university, that I can do. And now looking back, I remember we had to do a mock video of a therapy session, and it's still in the VHS. It's actually on the bookshelf right in front of me. I have yet— so this was 2003 to 2005, so this was probably January semester of 2004. So we're talking about 10, right? How many years ago at this point? 20 years ago almost, right? Or 18 years ago. And I still have yet to rewatch that VHS of the mock therapy session. Oh, oh, like I'm cringing just thinking about it. So I appreciate what you're saying. But, but I think that like when you're living something that's authentic, when you're doing something authentic, like your 50%, what you believe is only 50% of what you're capable of, is probably still going to be better than someone else's 90%.

When you're— yeah, I've never heard that before. That's a good statement though. I love that. That's right. I, I really— I think the biggest— one of the things when I was really struggling, and so you're— it was around the time you were making that, that awful VHS tape you were talking about, right? Around that time I was hitting my rock bottom, mainly because, uh, I was trying to do all these things I wasn't really strong in, right? I was weak in, and I just thought it was stuff had to do, mainly because part of that was the military. You know, you do stuff in the military because you just have to do it to survive. Well, I brought that with me in the civilian world, and I had to realize that I don't need to do all these things to survive. I need to do the things that I was meant to do. And so when I really got the permission, I read this book called Now Discover Your Strengths by, I think it's Donald O'Clifton and Marcus Buckingham, and it's about your strengths. It gave me permission for the first time to just focus on what I was good on. Good at and just forget about the rest. It was the first time anybody ever told me I was allowed to do that. And that was a game changer for me. It really started a lifelong journey of saying, what can I just shed out, get out of my life so I could really peel back the layers and only do the stuff that I'm really good at? And I'm still in the process of doing it, but I've slowly but surely gotten rid of all the junk out of my life. And when I say junk, by the way, it doesn't necessarily mean these are bad things. They were just weren't the right things for me. Like, look at this. The audience can't see this, but my finger, I almost cut my finger off this weekend working on landscaping because I suck at it. Why am I doing it? And I told my wife, every time I do stuff like this, why did— why am I focused on this? This is not what I am. I'm a speaker. I'm a writer. I'm not a landscape guy. It's not because it's demeaning or wrong. It's just I'm not good at it. And so I'm like, I'm constantly reminded that I got to just shed these things, even down to the littlest things like landscaping, and focus more on what I'm uniquely qualified to do. And for me, it's being a dad, being a husband, being a writer, and being a speaker. Those are the 3 major things I'm uniquely qualified to do, and that's where I focus my life on now.

And that's very much in alignment with what I guide my clients on, whether they're the therapy or the coaching, is, you know, again, looking at it as a 1 and 0 and leveraging out everything that you're not at. So like, I love seeing this, especially like in the therapy groups, like, oh, I'm redoing my website. Right? Sometimes they'll ask for a web designer. But a lot of times like, oh, like, do you have any— like, what is this best thing to use? What is the best thing from Google? And I'm like, why aren't we like— you're therapists, you have a master's degree, bare minimum, and you're good at clinical interactions and engagements.

Right?

There's a difference between doing something as a hobby versus doing something— or like, what's your self-care that you could be doing instead of going and designing a website? And, you know, one of the things I do want to compliment you on is leveraging out your website, because because it's gorgeous. And I always take a look. I always, when any guest I take a look at, I always kind of, people don't know this here, I'm kind of outing myself here. I'm like, oh, I can see where, how the conversation's gonna go by how much attention they put into the website. And that's my filter. And I know how my website is beyond outdated. So, right. So it really does smack me in the face of saying like, oh man, like I love, not from a place of like, mm, this guy, who does he think it is? I'm like, okay, this is the level that I wanna be playing at by seeing, like you said, someone else out there is doing an amazing job. Who I appreciate and respect, I need to be playing at that level too on my website. And that's why I've hired a web designer this last 2 weeks to go through this. So it's, you know, the glaring contrast between knowing what we can work on, knowing what I don't have the time to do that website, and it's certainly not going to look as sexy as yours is if I did it. So I really do want to find, you know, people to create a list. And I tell them this all the time, like, what are some of the things that you can immediately stop doing that, you know, that if you kind of figure out maybe a low-level budget or whatever it might be, or, you know, trade-off, do some bartering if you can do some bartering. But where can you find something where you can, like you said, focus only on one of those things? Because that's the whole thing of your book, right? Rise Above the Chaos. And it is chaos. It's simple. I use this phrase, it's simplicity on the far side of complexity versus complexity on this side of simplicity, which is an Oliver Wendell Holmes quote. And that's nice. And it's so true, because that's what we're like, we make our lives way more complex. So right, going through this, so you've come, you've kind of unpackaged some of these principles to discover significance and live in peace, which is really what we're all hoping for. And the purpose of our conversation. When did these things start happening? Was it once you started working in the speaking community? Because I know that was one of the next stages of your—

as far as what, what do you—

these new principles, right? These principles have come out, that's the basis of this book. Where do, where do those start coming from?

It started to come from when I was suspended, honestly. I got suspended at work because I was just ambitious. I was young, but I lacked awareness. I just got out of the military, Jason, and I was treating my colleagues like soldiers. I didn't— I hadn't made the shift and they were like, "We're not dealing with this guy!" And so they basically did an investigation and said, "Hey, you're abusing your power!" You know, but the HR manager and my general superintendent, I mean, they knew this guy is obviously— he knows what he's doing. He's just got to figure some things out. So they said, "Don't come back to work on Monday." take a week off and figure some things out and come back with a different attitude, basically. But as a young man, it was devastating, you know, rejection. Don't come back. Nobody wants to watch you around right now. And so that week, uh, I spent that week— I went to a coffee shop every day, got some coffee, spent 7 hours in that car. I did it before it's cool to go to coffee shop. Now you go to coffee shop, see all these working professionals. I mean, they didn't do that back then. I mean, I, I look like a weirdo. I went in there, you know, back then you got your coffee and you left. You didn't go your coffee and then almost have to pay rent because you're there so long. And so I stayed there like for 7 hours and I did that every day, just contemplating. And what happened was I started to figure out, you know, I had some things I had to change, or, you know, my marriage was not going well, not because of my wife, because I was, I was silly. I just was all over the place. I was crossways with my dad. I was messed up in my career. And so I knew if I wanted to have a good career, have a good relationship with my dad, have a good relationship with my wife, I was going to make some changes. So that's really what started this. It was a catalyst for me to figure out what's it going to take for me to get on the other side of this. And luckily for me, what I did is I just started capturing these ideas for my own edification. And then once I became a speaker, I actually had a professional speaker friend of mine. He's a New York Times bestselling author. In fact, what brought this all up was I got in trouble with him because I quoted something in his book on stage, but I spent too long on it. You know, there's an— there's some etiquette on that apparently, and I didn't know. And so somebody told him, took video of me or something and sent it to him. And he sent me this like lawyered-up letter, email, and said, hey, you need to stop doing that. And so I was like, I was a young man just now getting started. I didn't know what the heck. So I just— I called him up or left random— sent him an email and said, would you mind speaking with me? And he said he agreed. He was nice enough to do that. And to his credit, he was really good to me. And so we got on the phone and he said, listen, when you're just starting out as a speaker, you're basically doing book reports. What you're doing, you're talking about everybody else's stuff. But he goes, if you want to be a long-term and really good at this, you need to have something that's yours, a signature message, and you to write your own book. So I went back and started really thinking about what do I want, what impact do I want to have on others on stage? Because in the beginning I was just getting up to speak. But then I had to realize, well, what's the long term here? And then that's when I began to realize, hey, you know, I had this situation I went through. I know there's tons of other people that are going through it as well. So what I did is I started writing blogs about it. I started speaking about it and I was getting really good reviews from the marketplace. The marketplace was telling me they really liked it. And so then I thought, well, what if I put this in book form? And so I started this idea of doing that and that's what brought it up is I started to take this thing that helped me unpack it in a way that I can communicate to others so I can help them. So I developed a playbook for myself and there was enough people that said they liked it. Now I developed a playbook that everybody can use. So that's how I came up with it.

So I know some of the overall areas are discovering your passion, defining your purpose, taking action. So what would be, you know, just kind of a general overview? Because I don't want to give away people from not reading the book. And yeah, it's, it's, I mean, everything about it, just, you know, the graphics are great. It's beautiful, beautiful looking from the outside. Right. So what, Five Principles to Master Human Dynamics?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, uh, what I've— my goal is I want to help people redefine, rediscover their passion because that's what I lost. And I find that's what most people at that age, when you're in your 30s, uh, mid-30s going into your 40s, something happens that maybe you start realizing, man, this isn't really what I thought life was going to be. You know, because we have this ideal, you know, in our 20s where life's going to be, and it never works out the way in our mind that we thought. As you get to that crossroads, right? That you're like, man, is this what life is? And some people just go down the path and just get numb and just kind of live out their lives. And there's others that figure it out and actually live their lives to the fullest. And so what I wanted to do, help, is help people do what I did, and that was to rediscover your passion and then redefine your purpose. But here's the key though, is have the courage to do something about it. That's the main thing I find is most people just don't have the courage to actually do anything about it. They settle. So that's what the 5-part methodology is, is help people cut through the whirlwind so they can rise above chaos. The thing is, is you're always going to have chaos in your life. You can't avoid it. So this is not a book about avoiding chaos. This is a book about rising above the chaos and thriving in spite of it, right? So it's— chaos is always a part of you. It's a— it's life on planet Earth. So the 5 principles are pretty easy. Number 1 is what I call embrace your spiritual journey. And so this is not— it's not a religious thing. It's just an acknowledgement that there is a spirituality as being a human. We— there's a spiritual component. You can call whatever you want, but it's inside. You can feel it. You can— you, you, you, uh, You know that, like when I saw my sister when she passed away, when her spirit was no longer inside her, she looked like a different person and if you've ever seen that and I was in law enforcement, I've seen a lot of unfortunately people that are no longer alive. I've seen their bodies, it doesn't look the same. That's their spirit, right? And so that spirit is just the answer, answer the question why? So when you get out of bed, Jason, if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, then what's the point? Why even go out into a hostile world if you don't know why? That's number one and so I have a methodology that helps you identify that. Number 2 is tame the beast. When you go out into that hostile world, there's an unknown force. You can call it whatever you want. I call it the beast, but it always seems like there's an opposing force that's always against you. You know what I'm talking about? It's like you just get some things going and then you get in a big fight with your spouse, or just when you think things are going great, then you have a major health issue. It just always seems like there's something that's always waiting for you, whether it be that negative self-talk or whatever it is. That's the beast. And if you don't have a way to insulate yourself from it, then you're going to get chewed up and spit out every single time. And by the way, the beast has boundless energy. It has nothing personal against you. It's just a machine. And so what you have to do is insulate yourself from it. And so what I've done is I developed a 7-part, 7 elements that I insulate myself from the beast. These are habitual habits. In fact, I just had breakfast with my 2 boys today. They're 16 years old. And I told them because they've got a big track meet coming up, but they're out of school. So I told them, I said, listen, you're not going to sleep in today. So what are we doing, Dad? So we're going to get up the same time you normally get up. We're going to go out to breakfast. We're going to start your day. And at breakfast, I told him, I said, success lies in the mundane habits that you build every single day. Well, that's this, that's these 7 elements. And then number 3 is leveraging the power of encouragement. And the reason why this is important, Jason, is that you can't achieve any level of significance without the help of others, right? There's no example of any man or any woman achieving any level of significance by themselves. You are where you are right now, Jason, because someone in your life elevated you. They uplifted you. Could have been a coach, a mentor, a parent, whatever. And your whole life you got— you can't do it alone. So in order for you to build a life with others, you're going to have to learn the power of encouragement, because at the end of the day, people evaluate whether they like you or how great they want to be or how much they want to be around you based on how you make them feel. And so you got to be an encourager, but there's a science behind encouragement. And so it's all around sacrifice. And I talk about that in the book. And then the fourth one of the five elements is ignite your influence and manage change. So once you have the people you're going to do life with around you, depending on what phase of life you're in, well, like, you have to evolve in order to manage life. Like during the pandemic, we all had to evolve, right? So as you evolve as a human being, if the people you're doing life with is not changing with you and evolving with you, you're going to leave them behind. You're going to have a gap in expectation. So you have to be able to influence others in a very positive way so they're going to evolve with you. And then the fifth and last one is Mastering human communication and human dynamics. And that is— human dynamics is, for bad or worse or good or bad, however you want to look at it, it's just messy! Human interaction is messy. That's why you have a job. That's why you get paid the big bucks is because we are really bad at connecting with one another. And so my mentor told me, you know you mastered human dynamics to what people do no longer surprise you. And so when people go through my workshops, the one thing I tell them is once I'm done with you, you won't be offended anymore because once you understand what motivates people to do what they do, instead of being offended, you'll just evaluate, "Okay, why did they do that? What was it about this interaction that caused them to do that?" And so if you get to that point and you encompass those 5 principles and you do it in the way that I did it and the way that I recommend the principles I lay out, then it gives you a shot to discover your own level of significance And on the side of it, this is ultimately what you're going to get. And this is the serendipitous thing that I didn't know was coming, but I didn't seek this out, but I discovered it once I found my own level of significance. And that was peace in my life. And that's really, to me, the end game for any human being is that you never can take away things happening to you. You're going to— we never win at this at the end. At the end, we're all going to go 6 feet under at the end, right? Our heart's going to stop eventually. It's just the way it works. But you can have peace while you're navigating the whirlwinds and the things you have to deal with in life. And the way you navigate life with peace is knowing that every step you take has purpose behind it, has significance behind it. And because of that, you're willing to go through life and it gives you a peaceful state. When I— back in the day when I didn't have that, when something bad would happen, it would anger me. I would be upset about it because I wasn't equipped to navigate it. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the cool things on, as a, you know, as anybody who's going to go, who's listening to this and is going to go check out your, your website, there's even an assessment, right? There's a whole bunch of cool stuff on here, right? But it's take the free Discover Your Significance assessment and it'll help you within your journey to gain clarity on where you are. Well, you already know this. I'm just reading this for the website for those who have not yet checked it out. But it's going to give you clarity on help you figure out what, you know, you know, tell, tell us a little bit more about that because there's some really good stuff here.

I'm glad you brought that up, man. That's really cool. So yeah, if you're on a journey, most of us are lost. If we want to live a life of significance, if you decide, you know, I want to go to this destination, I want to get there. Well, the first step to know how to get there is to figure out where you are, right? You ever go— have you ever been to the Mall of America in Minnesota?

Massive.

Yeah, it's massive, dude. You can get lost. And so the first thing you do is you go to the map and you look for that big red dot. It says, you are here.

Here.

That's what that assessment is. It's the big red dot that says, you are here. And here's the thing, most of people, and you deal this probably with your therapy practice, most people get overwhelmed with all of life's decisions and the journey ahead of them. Well, the whole point of this assessment is don't get overwhelmed, find out where you are, and then here are 3 steps that you can take right now to get you moving in the right direction. You know, one of the things I realized is that you can— I used to be obsessed with Route 66. For whatever reason, I just really thought the romantic part of just Route 66 that back in the day, you know, you'd go to these motels and you just travel across America. That was just like, just the driving alone was the adventure. Well, you could drive on Route 66 from Chicago to Sacramento— to Santa Monica, California with no streetlights other than your— the lights from your car and only see 100 feet ahead of you. I could travel 2,000 miles with just knowing what's 20 feet ahead of me every time. That's what this whole assessment is about, is to help you figure out the next 100 meters of your life that's going to move you ultimately where you want to go. With not— without, without overwhelming you with the entire journey. Just figure out what I need to do next and let's do that and then move a little closer to that. That's the whole point of the assessment. It's totally free and they can check it out at yoursignificanceassessment.com. If you just type in yoursignificanceassessment.com, it'll take them to that page.

Absolutely love it. So I just want to kind of like go and rehash a little bit of everything we went through from the perspective of one, obviously having people in our life to uplift us and champion us, and also doing that reciprocity for other people, right? That's an important part of living, to taking some of the pain points that we thought were pain points and how we can go from a place of like maybe being, you know, snowballed by it or becoming a victim to it, to actually growing. And a lot of times some miraculous things can come out of that, some beautiful, powerful, life-transforming things can come out of it. And really just the biggest thing that I'm taking away is I'm— because I'm so all in on this and And, you know, I, you know, I kind of whittle down to what I do. It's like, well, you know, people like, well, what do you do? And I'm like, well, I'm a therapist. But like, yeah, like, we still think of that, like, old school, tell me about your mother, you know, type of, you know, Freudian, you know, you sit on the couch for 40 years, and I have family members who do that. And, you know, they've been practicing old school clinical psychiatry without the medication, but the talk there. And I'm like, like, I'm just here to minimize your stress and help you maximize your potential, right? And streamline all this stuff, right? And it really just distills it down. So now I joke like, oh, what type of therapist are you? I'm like, a good one. So like, I just kind of like, you know, okay. So, but I really do— everything that you're talking about and why I was so excited to have you is it's— everything is so spot-on with what I want the listeners to get out of every conversation I have and to give them an additional set of tools. Your book book, the assessment, hearing you speak, and, and, and, and, you know, I know there's some other ways that they can access you as well, and there's like, um, personal growth opportunities to, to do. So it really does speak to the alignment of these are the things that I figured out in my journey, these are the things that I know, that when I have my core values in the different categories of my life and what those core values are, and then I make decisions from there, dropping everything that I just know I'm not good at, like I said earlier, like, I know I'm not going to be consistent working out unless I have someone holding me accountable to that. I know I'm not a website designer, right? I mean, these things cost money, but it's always, you know, for me, it's always value over cost. I realize is one of my— was one of my unconscious rules or drivers. So now that I see that the value— I've decided the value of my health is there, the value of my business growing in my brain, right? Then it's like, well, I'm not going to sit there at a Starbucks on a Sunday for 8 hours and not pay rent, right? So, so I really want people like— right, this is so in alignment with all the themes that we've been, we've been building up to in all the shows. And, and it's so exciting to, uh, to meet another person who is also sharing this with the world, and it makes me incredibly happy.

Yeah, that's awesome. I love what you do. Uh, I think there's such a huge need for folks that are willing to lean into individuals and help them just unpack that— what is their journey— and figure out ways to close the gap. That's a huge, huge need out there. And anytime I've ever brought anybody in my life to help me do that, like what you're doing, I've always been better on the, on the other side of it. So just on behalf of all your clients and future clients, thank you, Jason, for what you do. That's a huge deal, man. And that's a, that's a gift. I don't have that gift. I think you have to have some level of empathy, and I struggle with that. And so for the fact that someone like you does have that. That's fantastic, man. So way to lean into it. That's awesome.

Appreciate it.

Appreciate it.

So, and then let's give a shout out to your website and where people can look you up.

Yeah, it's pretty easy. It's erickreem.com and you spell my name. I'm the only Erick Reem in the world, by the way. It's a— and that didn't mean anything until Google was invented. So if you Google me right now, I'm the only one. It's Erick, E-R-I-C-K, and Reem, R-H-E-A-M. If you just go to erickreem.com, Everything I have lives right there, so just go check it out.

That's awesome. Because I looked— yeah, I started doing a few years ago, I'm like, I'm gonna add all the Jason Wassers as friends on Facebook and see if any of them actually respond.

Are there a lot of them out there?

There is, and it's surprisingly— because it's also like, you know, and it was always Wasser, was never Wasserman. It was like, you know, um, but yeah. And there's one guy who has my domain name. Oh man, trying to reach out to him because it's, it's a, it's a pointer to another website. Oh He hasn't responded to any of my stuff, LinkedIn, and I've reached out to him on multiple things. I'm just gonna pick up the phone today and call him and like, I'm like, yeah, there you go.

I'm like, buy it off of him.

I want to buy it from you. So it's, uh, otherwise I have to come up with some other concoction of my name as a personal domain website. But it's awesome that you have the more individual.

Well, I can thank my mother and father for that, right?

So, right, that's awesome. So Eric, again, thank you so much. And, uh, everybody, again, Eric, check out his website, book, you know, is, is out, all right? Amazon, all the other good places. And, uh, looking forward to being in touch.

Yeah, thanks, Jason. It's a pleasure being with you.