353: Pain, Purpose, and Portals—Pivoting from Massage Therapist to Coach with John O'Connor

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So I find that people are trying to find purpose in their work when they have yet to connect to a deep, meaningful purpose in their life. Period.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivot. Pivotmethod.com podcast if change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Welcome back Pivoters. I am so delighted to be here with my friend John o' Connor today. John is a man of many talents, including leadership advisor to high performers looking to go deeper, find their calling and align with their higher purpose. He has over 10,000 hours under his belt coaching CEOs, social impact entrepreneurs, athletes and post exit founders. And he's really passionate about guiding people to uncover the things blocking them from creating a sense of freedom and fulfillment. John, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I'm glad that we opened the portal to this conversation at TED over coffee.

Yep, I think I just creeped up on you at breakfast. I forget maybe you were with Michael. So we met Ted2023. John was always a smiling face, the conference center shaped like a donut. If you've heard my previous episodes on ted, I'll put them in the show notes. And I always had fun bumping into John and then we would just end up skipping the session and talking for three hours and having these great portals which will be the topic of today's conversation. But first, not only do you have 10,000 hours in coaching, you have 17 years under your belt of massage. You went to massage school when you were 21 years old. And I would love to know after 17 years of working with people, working with their energy, hands on bodies, I don't know, at a macro level, like what did this period of your life teach you to go anywhere you want with that?

It's such a great thing to talk about. I don't usually talk about it that much. And as I evolve, when I look back, you know, more will be revealed, you know, in terms of what was actually happening, what was I going through? This is great. I'm excited to talk about this. I haven't talked about this in a long time. When I was 21, I think I was on my third college and I slowly flunked out of college because I didn't have a sense of direction, a desire to go anywhere. Nothing was really lighting me up. So I was not engaged. I'm an obsessive learner where if there's something that really lights me up, I go all in. But if it doesn't light me up or I'm not interested, I don't even engage it. It's probably adhd, right? That's. Isn't that like the classical definition of that? I left college, I got involved in a multi level marketing business selling air filters and water filters and this was in the mid-90s and then that for about a year tried to, I guess at the time I was trying to become wealthy. I was like I'm going to make money, you know, that was my drive, my desire and I was really good with people and I was decent at selling but that didn't go anywhere really actually that I lost a lot of money in that process. As most people do in these multi level marketing. There's a few people to the top and then everybody else kind of scrambles. But I was sitting on the beach, really kind of no direction, lost, not quite sure where I was going to go. And this idea of our massage therapy came into my consciousness as most things in my life do. It's kind of like a spark of insight and two weeks later I was in massage school. But parallel to massage I actually went to acting conservatory. I studied in New York City with Bill Esper and I acted for 10 years. So I was doing massage and acting simultaneously. I paused my acting career in my early 30s. But massage was one of those processes where when I look back at sure there was this deep insight to do. Massage came through as like wow, I'm great with my hands, I like people. But when I reflect back as to the deeper why there was a lot of trauma in my early days and I think that working with the body was in some way shape or form a healing for myself but also helping me to heal other people. There was just like a. You know they talk about the wounded healer going back. It's such an interesting thing cuz it feels like a past life in a way. I don't know if you've had that experience where you're so deep into something and then you transition out and it just feels like, wow, like that was me in a different lifetime.

Totally. And even your different selves, the actor, the massage therapist, and I could see those weaving together in a way because they're both flexible in nature as far as a job goes. But also, I wonder if you met interesting clients through being part of the acting world. I know you've had interesting musician clients too.

Yeah. And the massage world.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

The clients that I got to work on in the massage world was pretty, pretty spectacular.

Ken, can you, like, spill some tea for us? Like, is there one or two that you can share?

Totally. I mean, my favorites were like, Patti Smith, who is like the godmother of rock and roll. Working with her was amazing. Michael Stipe from rem I worked in him for several years. Liv Tyler. So many.

Would they talk? Would you talk with them at all? Or were most folks pretty quiet?

Yeah, totally.

Mostly. Wow.

Especially if you work on someone every week for five years, six years, seven years, you get a deep, intimate look into their lives. And then also you had to ask me about the transition. Right. Massage to coaching and in my coaching journey opened up around 2009, which was a very different landscape to coaching than it is today. Most people, when you said coaching, they thought sports. They had no idea what coaching was. I mean, obviously today everybody wants to be a coach. I didn't have this burning desire to be a coach. Actually, I didn't want to be a coach at that time. It was one of these things where, if you think about the work that I was doing at that time, towards the end of my career, there was a deeper component to was an interesting process where people would come in. Like, what drives people to get massage, right? Pain, anxiety, stress, needing to discharge, relax, unwind. But also, like, I know for me, I just need to drop in. I'm frazzled, I'm all over the place. I just need. I just need to get on the table and get back in my body. And that was what people were doing. They were coming in for all these different reasons, but ultimately they would slow down, drop in. And for some they just pass out, they go to sleep. For others, the ideal thing, which is like non sleep, deep rest, which is, can I be completely relaxed in my body and awake at this, like, alert at the same time, conscious. The people that were able to really drop in and get into this, like, liminal kind of trance like state typically would have deeper Insights Awakenings, Understandings, AHAs. Michael actually wrote one of, you know, was writing songs on the table sometimes. And he would want music that wasn't, had no lyrics in it because he didn't want it to inform the lyrics that were generating on the table. I would have a lot of music with no words to it. And this is a very specific type of music he liked. So there was a couple things happening towards the end of my massage career, which was I got involved in doing men's work and specifically doing like deep shadow work. So the David Data lineage stuff, but also Mankind project. I started to explore hypnosis and NLP and taking a look at like John Sarno's work, taking a look at how pain in the body, what is that? And when people come in with fibromyalgia or TMJ or chronic fatigue or all these kind of pathologies, illnesses, so to speak, what's really going on. And for the most part, I would say for a large amount of time. There was one woman who came in with fibromyalgia, which is basically like it's even painful to touch the skin. There's this heightened sensitivity to pain. And as I was going deeper into like what's happening in the body when people are suffering, and I started to realize that a lot of it was just on a communication from the unconscious or trauma, frozen moments in time, parts that were disintegrated in the body. And so this one woman, she had this like massive amount of chronic fatigue and she was always coming in. And I started to track back like when was the first time she had that experience. And it turned out that she was backpacking in the desert in Israel with a pack that was like 60 pounds. She was young. She remembers it being like 105 degrees and she was having like the most painful breakup of her entire life. And she was away from home for the first time. There was all these things stacking, deep heartbreak, heaviness on her back, overwhelming sense of pain from being in 105 degree desert, hiking through the desert. And that was when her quote unquote chronic fatigue began. And it was really interesting to take a look at that moment in time getting frozen in the body in some way, shape or form. And that becoming like a thing that got frozen in time in her body. I got really curious, like, how do I begin to unlock that stuff? If the body is downstream, what's happening upstream that's causing this quote unquote anxiety or overwhelm or depression or pain in the body? So from the Coaching component. When someone's on my table, typically they don't want to talk, right? They want to kind of drop in and get quiet and go deep and go in. And I found myself wanting to kind of explore what is happening upstream, really getting more into a conversational, facilitation type work. And it was very difficult to do that. Some people wanted it, some people didn't. There was a calling, a deeper calling to go into the upstream component, taking a look at their inner experience, how they're mapping reality. And in my work today, I've had people who have struggled deeply with anxiety and depression. And when we start to get into, like, what's happening underneath the surface, they take a look at that really stemming from them not listening to the deeper calling that wants to emerge. And when they begin to align and listen to the deeper calling and integrated, how those things begin to shift and change. And so that's the work that I really get lit up about, is helping people to slow down, drop in, and really understand how to get in relationship with themselves. The bodywork helped me, I think, develop rapport and create a container of safety and trust because, you know, you do massage work, have to have a clean container to do this at a high level. And so it just really helped me train to get into a space where when I'm working with someone, there is this, you know, permission, this space to be themselves. To quote, unquote, just, hey, here's all of me without judgment. It's a very important field to create. I call it the grounded field. And this is something I do with executives, too, and leaders, is when someone steps into your field, to the energy that's around you, and do they feel a sense of groundedness, openness, relaxed? They can be themselves. They feel connected, or do they feel protected? I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you're talking to someone and you're like, oh, my God, I feel so safe. I can tell you anything. Or you're with someone, you're like, I don't know. I feel like in my head, I don't want to talk. I feel like I'm stuttering. Have you had that experience?

Oh, yeah. I've had people say to me, probably because I do so much interviewing and coaching, where they say to me, why am I telling you all this? Sometimes they'll just get a little ways in. They're like, whoa, how'd we get here? You know, how am I just sharing all this? But I don't do very well with small talk. So I'm just, like, so much more interested in the deeper stuff. But you're right. It takes that grounded field. I love hearing your story, like these connections, too, of. You must have developed so much intuition about people because you're communicating without words for so long as a massage therapist and then moving into the coaching, where you're going upstream and digging, then employing kind of like the mind, body, spirit, all three. But it's just interesting because you probably just developed such a refined sense of intuition that is true.

We call it walking the field. And I do something called family constellations. And there is that sense of being able to kind of tune into what's here that's, you know, not physical. You know, the energies that are present. And when I'm talking to someone, a lot of times I'm listening to what's behind the words, what's not being said. Also, like the coherence between their body and their energy and their words. And most people are out of coherence, where they'll be saying one thing and their, you know, body, emotions, or going in the exact opposite direction or hear them, but I don't feel them. There's usually a disconnect between what they say they want to do and what's happening in their body. At the end of the day, your body's the vehicle that moves you from where you are to where you want to go. And most people, when they come into the coaching conversation, underneath it is, there's a disconnect, there's a misalignment between the unconscious and conscious mind. It's like, I really want this, but I can't get myself to do it. They don't have any agency on the inside in terms of being able to set new patterns, being able to create movement and alignment and remove internal obstacles and blocks to move towards the things that they want. I mean, you can look at, like, the Art of War, Steven Pressfield's book. No, the War of Art. I keep thinking Lao Tzu and, yeah, Stephen Pressfield.

Interesting.

The War of Art, not the Art of War. The Art of War is a completely different.

I know. I was like, I'm trying to apply.

That one to this totally, to the War of Art. And, you know, his whole thing around resistance thinking. I think Freud said that all successful therapy is the resolution of internal conflict. And most of us have a lot of internal conflict. And so people, when they come into a coaching conversation is they want to feel differently, they want to show up and behave differently, maybe they want to think differently. And there's something that they can't quite articulate. And so my job is with the body too, is the same thing. There's no words to it. So how do we begin to define it, frame it, work with it, create something that we can then begin to transform and alchemize? You're totally right in terms of the intuitive kind of space of feeling into what's here that's not being said. Great coaching is that ability to take the I don't know, that I don't know or what's unconscious and bring it conscious so it can be worked and can be alchemized and transformed.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You mentioned people who come to you with some sort of misalignment feeling, and you can see that maybe there's a new or deeper calling wanting to emerge. What are the steps that you help somebody take to connect to that? Because I know for myself and so many people I've worked with Unearthed from through Pivot over the years, it can be really intimidating. Sometimes it's just vague. We can sense that we're no longer in alignment and something new is emerging. And yet it can be so hard to really uncover what that is and what wants to be. So I'm just wondering, how do you start with somebody who's coming to you or where you notice that there's something bigger reaching out to them or for them. And yet it does sometimes manifest in the body first, because the body starts almost developing an allergic reaction to the current life like this just isn't working anymore.

It's so true. And they get into a place of constriction or tightening and it's difficult to create and be creative when there's tension in the body. This is what I learned through my acting journey, was if you take a look at real high performers, they're relaxed and open and fluid. So creativity emerges when there's a relaxed, open space. Your question around purpose. I love that because for me, when someone's like, what's your purpose? I immediately go to, like, there's an anxiety or an overwhelm. What do you mean? Like, my purpose? That's such a big thing. Like, that one thing we think purpose is. I've kind of taken a different approach to it and switched the word purpose out with what is meaningful and what's important. Because at the end of the day, I want my life to be a reflection of what is most meaningful and important. And then chunking that even further down into, okay, well, what are the most meaningful, important dimensions of my life? And so I call, like, the Core 5. And so we take a look at health and wellness. So when I think about mental, emotional, and physical health and what is meaningful and important to me, what wants to emerge? What wants to come through my life in that context, in that dimension? Right? So when I think about that, it's like, I really want to wake up energized. I want to feel like I have vitality and energy. At the end of the day, I want to feel like my body has flexibility and mobility, like there's this craving or calling. And a lot of times the calling emerges out of friction and frustration. So I have been having a lower back and hip issue. I do Brazilian jiu jitsu. So whenever I'm continually frustrated with something, when I slow down, I'm like, okay, well, what's under the frustration? What's the desire under the frustration? It's like I really want to feel like my body has complete freedom in my hips. So I go to what is meaningful. What's meaningful is having a healthy, flexible body so that I can go skiing with my son, mountain biking with my son. I can have the vitality to do all the things that light me up, which is go hike for six, seven hours with a backpack or do Brazilian jiu jitsu or sit in meditation. I sit for about 90 minutes every morning. And to sit without pain in the body, like, that's meaningful. It's important because I get to do the things that feel good. There's something in there that lights me up. So I look at chunking down into the dimensions of health and wellness. Money, finances, intimate relationships, business, your community of who you spend time with and around. So I look at those kind of core components. And then in each of those, there's a calling, there's something that wants to come through. There's a deep desire or a yearning. And sometimes it's like, okay, well, here's where you are financially. How would you like it to be different? Like, I just want to be able to, like, take my kids around the world and travel and show them the world. Like, I want to be able to take them to different countries. Great. There is something that's deeply meaningful. And when people think about purpose, I think sometimes purpose gets activated. When there's responsibility, Taking on responsibility activates a deeper sense of purpose. So I think I got spoiled. I get spoiled when I got sober, because 22 years ago, I stopped drinking and drugging and using marijuana at the time, which was a heavy user in my late teens, early 20s. And I remember in the beginning, I went to four or five years of AA. I've been. It's been 22 years, but four or five years, I went to meetings because I didn't know anybody who didn't drink. I thought they were aliens. They were weird. When I stopped, I needed to be around people who were like me, who had the same values and were committed to the same things. And I remember the. My sponsor at the time would say, listen, your purpose. You know what your purpose is? Your purpose is to not drink and stop thinking and go to a meeting. That's your purpose. That's it. That's your purpose in life right now, is to not pick up a drink. And I was like, that's easy. I can do that. When I hear people, the purpose is like this big, giant thing. Sometimes it could be very simple. My purpose is, again, responsibility, as with my son. Like, my deep sense of purpose is to make sure that I can show up and listen. Like, resourceful nervous system. That's my purpose, to provide for my family, to give my son a great education in my marriage. Like, what's my purpose in my marriage? Well, what's meaningful? Actually, what's really meaningful is having deep, intimate relationship or being vulnerable, or her feeling like I'm her rock and I can hold her in all of her feminine. That's really meaningful to me. When I think about purpose, they kind of interchange for me. So what's meaningful in my marriage is to go deeper with my wife. So what's my purpose is to go deeper with my wife. What are the things that I do that starts to get into ritual, that starts to get into intentional habits and behaviors that are connected to something deeper, more rooted in Value more rooted in meaning. So my wife and I sit for tea every morning. We have a cha dao practice. We have a tea room in our home, and we sit for an hour in total silence. And we do a side handle pu erh practice, which is deeply meaningful because I get to sit in relationship with my wife without words, in deep contemplation. That is deeply meaningful because then our marriage, our relationship has a foundation and a bedrock of safety and trust and connection and ease, and that is meaningful. To create purpose, to create ease in my marriage is a sense of purpose. So I find that people are trying to find purpose in their work when they have yet to connect to a deep, meaningful purpose in their life, period.

I love that. Just swapping out the word purpose. And I agree in pivot. I talk about project based purpose as well. I love how you've expanded it to these all five dimensions that you described. And also, you can have a purpose for a project, a time of your life, a next thing you're doing, doing in free time. I call it. What's your job today? So I love what your AA sponsor said to you, which is like, your job today is to go to a meeting. That's it.

That's it. That's your purpose.

The one thing. And it's true that we are going to have a hard time connecting to our purpose if we're not even connecting within our bodies. I'm not calling the kettle depot. I'm not trying to be that. Even I have this pain in my lower back. It's funny, my husband had sciatica, just intense, searing pain for years. So we're versed in Sarno and all the things. And I'm just thinking to myself, okay, body, I heard you. I haven't been doing enough yoga. Yoga's been a part of my life for 20 years. And I know I've been slacking. I know I've been cutting corners with my practice. And it's like, boom, there's that little pain. Just. I've never had it before either. But my body always tells me when I'm getting off track. It makes itself known. Do not pass go. You are now gonna be aware of me until, you know you fix it. And it can be psychosomatic as well. What you're describing of the client that you had, that had pressure. It's like, oh, yeah, I am carrying pressure. I know it. I know it. It's on my shoulders. It's on my back. It's no coincidence. It's showing up in my back just Going to class two days in a row has been amazing already.

Well, totally. If you think about the, oh, I gotta work out. I have to work out. I have to work, I should work out. Most people, that's not enough to activate behavior, but when you can slow down and drop in and you listen to your pain and it's like, huh? Like. And I have a whole process called the core blueprint that how do you slow down and open up a communication with the body in a way where when I slow down and drop into a pain and I listen and I listen to like, what the message is. It's like, dude, you really need to start focusing on this. You get that knowing versus telling. There's a deeper sense of knowing. And I always say feeling is knowing. So it's like you really start to feel into what's happening. And when you get the transmission from that level, the behavior is a lot easier to execute. On a new client that I was working with that runs a very large real estate company, and a lot of the focus was around the business. But when we slowed down and dropped in, I'm like, what's the first thing you notice in your body when you connect to it? He's like, oh, my back is killing me. It's like, really? Why don't we just welcome that into the conversation? Like, just as you. And it's like, you know, it's about 10 minutes, 15 minutes. What's that pain telling you? You need to get into the gym, dude.

This is your vehicle. You only got one. It would suck if you have all this money and you can't enjoy it. And it was just. It came through very clear. And I think he's been working out pretty much six, seven days a week. It just. There's a deeper knowing now of like, wow, okay, why do I need to move my body? And that's the other thing too, is if we think about all of our goals, why do we want those goals? I want to feel a certain way. I want to be a certain way. This idea around does your nervous system and can your body hold that state of being? Can it hold a deep feeling of freedom? And you have to condition your nervous system to feel free. I've seen people feel a flash of freedom and then they go back to feeling trapped or anxious or lack or less than or anxiety or worry. Their system, the nervous system, their state of being is they don't have the range, they don't have the capacity to hold a state. What's meaningful to me is, can I condition my Nervous system to access a state and hold that state, no matter what the context is. And I think Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a really beautiful training ground. Is can I remain relaxed and conscious and present when shit hits the fan? I had an interesting experience in Maui when the fires happened. This was in Lahaina. We had just gotten to Maui a day before and we were staying about 10 miles from Lahaina. And when the fires happened that day, we learned about it like everybody else through social media news, because it was on the other side of the island. But we were packing up to leave the next morning because we had to evacuate to go to another island. It was about 11 o' clock at night. And packing my bags and the fire alarm in the retreat center that we were staying in started blaring off, like really loud, flashing lights, fire. And I was like, oh, no, the fires are here. So I went up running around the building just to see what was going on. And it turned out that a tree had fallen on a power line from the winds because there was hurricane winds and it was sparking and it was about to go ablaze. And we were staying in the oldest wooden structure in Maui still standing, this big, giant wooden plantation home. And it was right outside of our door where this thing was sparking. And I remember it's amazing how things kick in, like slow as smooth, smooth as fast. And I ran back to the room. I was like, we have three minutes. We're packing up and we're out of here in three minutes. And I remember my son started panicking. He's like, what am I doing? What do I do? What am I doing? I'm like, hey, find something, put it in a bag. And I just remember being really relaxed, really calm, really focused. And it was almost like bending time. And we were up and out. You know, we had this whole suite. We were there for a week already. We packed up everything and we were in the car. And that idea around when shit hits the fan and there's only minutes to get out because a fire is about to hit your place, can you be resourceful enough to be relaxed and execute? And I think for leaders it's the same thing. You know, it's very easy to be a functioning, flowing, flow state leader when things are great. But when shit hits the fan, can you show up and be resourceful, make decisions, have your executive functioning online and available? Can you be creative? I find that you learn those things in the doing. And so you need experiences to cultivate something to train you to be in that State Brazilian Jiu jitsu was one of those. And there's a lot of different ways that you can do that. You can learn that in many different contexts. And I have clients who learn that through surfing or golfing. Sports a wonderful way to learn that. And running a business is also a wonderful way to train your nervous system to relax when shit hits the fan.

So true. Like the panic won't get you anywhere. You're still gonna have to deal with it at the end of the day, whatever comes your way.

Knowing that and then being able to embody that, there's a big gap. The level one knowledge of knowing. Wow. Like it doesn't help to be panicky to then being relaxed and open and flexible in a very high pressure situation. That takes training and mastery and skill and capability. And that doesn't come overnight. It's like any other journey in martial arts. It's a black belt journey and it takes years. Just knowing that that's not something that is innate. It's something that we learn and develop over time. It's a skill which is learnable, which is great.

We'll be right back just after this.

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When you and I met, you were talking to me about portals and I just thought it was the most interesting idea, especially being in a social setting. So before we wrap up, I would just love if you can share with listeners what you mean by a portal when you say that. And I don't know, how does it relate to when you're out and about in the world?

I like to use metaphors. I mean, obviously all language is metaphorical, but metaphors helping me to understand and contextualize Things. So when you look at a sci fi movie and there's shimmer in space, doesn't look like anything, but it looks like a wavy space time ripple. And you go through it and all of a sudden it's a portal to another galaxy. I use that metaphor in life, is that people, when you make real contact with another human being, it opens a portal. And in that portal, things can come into your life that are not in this universe. They're nowhere to be seen around you today. But through this portal, something new emerges and comes into your life or the other way, which is you bring something into that other person's life that they had no concept or sense of possibility that could happen. Or like you and I could be a portal for somebody else where we can bring something into their world. And so I use this concept a lot for reframing. When people look at, oh, I'm going to go network, it's like, well, no, networking to me is I'm going to be in relationship with you because there's something that I want from you and that I need. And so really my unconscious intention is taking. And to me, my nervous system feels that. And I think all of our nervous systems feel that when people connect because they just want to take to me. I like this generative approach with portals, which is, huh, I wonder what wants to emerge here as I connect or elegantly structure with another individual. What wants to emerge is that something coming out where we serve the world, people in some way, shape or form. Is there something that I can bring into their world that is not yet here that they really need or be valuable or generative for them or vice versa? When you have a calling and you move in the direction of a calling, what begins to happen is like, people will go, how do I get there? It's like, well, you begin to connect and create portals so that the resources and the people and the opportunities can come into your world. And so I find the first place is people in terms of a portal. And obviously portals can happen in moments, in time, you know, states of consciousness. My t practice is a portal stepping out into nature. There's a lot of different things that create an opening where something new can come in. You and I were talking about Ted as a portal of portals, right? Like everybody there, 1800 people, most of them are doing really interesting, cool things. That contact, that relationship. Michael was sitting there and talking. And so you and Michael knew each other, he and I, you know, that portal that opened up through our relationship. You came in and you and I We calling that word when you kind of keep bumping into people over and over and over again. We had a word for that and I can't remember what it was. Oh, I don't know, not orbiting or. Oh, oh, intercoming. Yes, intercoming, Right. Which is you have 1800 people. And there are some people that I met the last day that I didn't see the whole entire conference, or I met them on the first day and never saw them again. And there were other people like you, where I saw you six times a day. You and I were always running into each other, always over and over and over again. And to me, that's where the metaphor around gravity comes into play, which is who's orbiting you and who are you orbiting and just paying attention to that. There's a gravitational field, there's something meaningful and important in the field that wants to come through. And you and I were orbiting and we said, wow, there's a lot of things that want to come through in this relationship. There's a portal here of something. And here you and I are on a podcast. Like, that's one thing that emerges. But there's so many other things where I introduce you to my client who started Birch Coffee, and then he's going to be on your podcast. Right? So there's all these different things that come in. So I'm always paying attention to, like what's around me, what keeps showing up around me and what is here, what wants to communicate and I think that was from my early training with massage, is really listening to, like, what's the communication here? What is being spoken that's not verbal and really listening on a deeper level for, I guess you can call them synchronicities or coincidences or what's really happening and what wants to emerge and what's coming through this portal. So whenever I go out in the world and I meet someone, it's like, huh, I wonder what's coming through this portal. I'm very curious. And maybe there's nothing. Maybe it's a six year portal. Or if something comes through six years later. You and I have had that experience where you meet someone and something comes through many years later. Or there's a portal of portals where like someone comes in, another person gets introduced, another person gets introduced and oh my God, now I'm stepping into a new opportunity that got presented because of that. And so I'm always listening for the portal thing. Makes the world fun. I don't know if you remember the Matrix where they had the key master and he had the keys where he can, like, open a door, and he would be able to go in any different place in the Matrix. I kind of look at portals like that is. You know, most people think that what they can perceive with their senses is all that's there. And so when you think about, oh, my God, I don't know anybody, I don't have any opportunities, where am I going to find that? And there's nothing in my reality, it's because you're not thinking through the lens of portals. And things from other galaxies 20 billion light years away can come in through that portal instantly.

I love that inquiry who is orbiting you? And vice versa. And on the Birch Coffee specifically, I said to you before you hit record, it was very intuitive on your part. Talk about a portal. I remember going in to meet a friend for coffee. I remember the location. I remember going in when it was pouring rain outside. And it played an important role in my New York life. It's not like I spent every day there, but I have very vivid memories and connections to that place, time and place and space as a portal. And then the podcast is definitely a meta portal or portal of portals, because I cannot imagine that just because I have a show, all of a sudden I'm what now? Talking to the founder of Birch Coffee, Whereas I had been a patron. And it's a really wild thing. Sometimes I'll have authors reach out and their publicist or something is pitching them to be on the show. And I'll go, I read that book 15 years ago and it changed my life. You know, it's like, what are you doing emailing me? It's so fascinating how you don't know how these people, places, things are going to come back around. And that unifying thread that you just can't always see in the moment, but they really do unfold over time.

And this can come back to purpose, which is my purpose is to be open and curious and. And creating and opening portals. It's very purposeful. It's very meaningful. Because why do I want to open up portals? Well, like, I'm moving toward my calling, or I'm helping other people move to their calling. Or it becomes meaningful to open up portals because it's generative to me, it's the natural hardwiring of our system is growth and evolution. So if you're not growing and not evolving, that's not natural. And it's not necessarily. There's more that you need to do. It's actually removing the obstacles and the blocks, whether they're mental, emotional, trauma, physiological belief systems, identities. They're all these internal obstacles that keep us from flowing down the river naturally, like does. If I'm not growing, then there's something in me on some level. Could be environmental, we call in logical levels, right? It could be environment, could be behavioral, it could be skills, it could be beliefs, values, identity, or a deeper sense of why there's somewhere in that chain there's something that's inhibiting or blocking that natural evolving process. There's definitely like diagnostic ways when someone isn't moving in the direction that they want to begin to see where that root issue is and begin to remove it, alchemize it, transform it, eliminate it.

So if you could leave listeners with one tiny experiment, maybe toward removing a block that they do in the next week, what would it be?

Oh, well, my favorite. And I ask myself this question a lot of times. So whenever I find myself complaining about something or being annoyed or irritated at something, typically we are very problem focused. We kind of obsess around problems and focus on the problems. And if someone's talking to you, they're telling you about the problem and why they're all the problem stuff, right? So my favorite thing is to say, well, okay, well, that's how you've been. Great. Okay, honoring that. You don't want to like repress that or suppress that. I say, great. I feel really unfulfilled here or frustrated here or the way in which this is happening doesn't work for me. So I'm honoring that and acknowledging that. And then asking, okay, well, that's how it's been. How would you like it to be different? And when you ask yourself, like, how would you like it to be different? If you can wave a magic wand, how would you like this to be different? Your brain automatically begins to construct an image on what it is that you actually want. So when most people don't know what they want, really feeling into what you don't want or don't like, and then inverting it, saying, okay, how would I like it to be different? And then writing that down, because again, it's one of these things where you want to be able to get clarity on a vision or a calling and then capture it and then remind yourself, because usually your calling is in the unconscious and you'll get glimpses of it and then you forget it. And so I find this practice of like, how would I like things to be different? If I'm frustrated or irritated, writing it down and then saying, okay, great. Well, if this was my reality. Like, what were the things that I would need to do to make it happen? Like, what are the three to five steps? And this is another kind of analogous metaphor with jiu jitsu, which is, no matter what position you're in, you're only two or three simple moves away from being in a dominant position. And I find that in life, it's the same approach, which is, if there's something that I'm in that isn't aligned, it's not generative, it doesn't feel good. And look, not to say that all life feels good. There's a lot of things that are generative that don't feel good, that are important and purposeful. But if there's something that you're in conflict with in life and you say, okay, here's how I want it to be different, there's probably only two or three simple moves. They're not easy, but they're simple that you can make to be in that new reality. And when you're in the experience, it feels like a million miles away. There's no sense of how I can go from here to there. But, and this is kind of where we work with the nervous system is you have to kind of get out of that state into a more resourceful state to find the solution. So I just like that question of how would I like it to be different? Every time you find yourself complaining, really relaxing, owning that, how would I like to be different? And then taking one small step in the direction of how you want it to be different, you can't outrun your self image, your own kind of narrative about yourself, you can't outrun that. So if you have a low sense of self or self esteem, it's hard to outrun that. So how do you build esteemable things? I'm always looking at, how do I generate narratives about myself that are generative, that give me energy, that I feel good about myself when I tell myself the story? So when you ask yourself how you want it to be different, for example, it could be like, God, my office. I don't feel free. I feel overwhelmed. There's shit everywhere. It doesn't feel like a generative space. Great. How would you like it to be different? I'd love all the papers to be in drawers. And I'd love just a clean space with plants and good lighting. Great. So what's the first step you can do right now to make that happen? I can go to the store and buy some plants and put them in there. Great. So then you go you buy plants, you put them in your office, and then what happens is your unconscious mind now has a narrative like, wow, I'm actually transforming my office. I'm moving in the direction of what I want. And that's the narrative that we want to cultivate, which is, who am I? I'm someone who is moving toward the thing that they want. I'm creating in my life. I'm moving in the direction of my calling. And that calling could just be like to have an office that feels good and that will then generate and generalize out to bigger and bigger things as you think about my day, bigger calling in terms of the work that I want to do. But we start simple, we start close in. So that would be my recommendation. Do that in a written form, not just in a thinking form. You got to put that stuff down on paper. I like analog pen and paper just because that's how we were trained and that's how working memory happens, encoding information in the brain. So I would recommend doing that written.

Awesome. John, where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

Where could you find me? It's a great question. I mean, my website, johnoconnor.com, i have a book that I'm in the process of writing, so that should be coming out at the beginning of 2024. And a podcast that I'm going to be launching, which the name is still like forming right now. It's Essential Skills for Extraordinary Living is the operating title. So those where you can stay tuned to those creations.

All right, well, thank you so much, John, and congrats on everything you've got in motion, book, podcast, et cetera. We'll put it all in the show notes and big thanks for everybody being here listening.

Thanks, Jenny.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.

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