94: Second Chance at Life After Kidney Donation with Keith McArthur

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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 pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am really excited to be here Today with Keith McArthur, who is an author and contrepreneur who writes and podcasts about how to live better. Keith hosts the weekly My Instruction Manual podcast and I was fortunate to be his first guest this that he ran that episode when he launched his show. This is how we met and I'm just really excited to know Keith and to know his story and you're going to see why in a moment. A little background. He previously worked as an award winning business journalist at the Globe and Mail, Canada's most prestigious newspaper, and as a senior executive at one of Canada's largest companies. He lives in Toronto with his wife, two sons and a golden doodle named Quincy. Keith, that's not even fair. Goldendoodles are like the cutest dogs I've ever seen.

He is, he is super cute.

They're like such a showstopper when they walk down the street. I just want to hug every single one.

Well, he walks. He, he loves to pick up sticks and when he has a stick in his mouth, he just walks like he's so proud and is like. He's got such a little swagger about him. Yeah.

So cute. A little bit more on Keith and what we're going to dive into today. His youngest son, Bryson, has severe mental and physical disabilities due to an extremely rare genetic disorder. So we'll learn about Keith what you've learned on that journey. And in 2017, Keith's little sister gave him a second chance at life when she donated one of her kidneys. That experience and his learning since has inspired his new book, which is called 18 Steps to Own youn Life. Simple powers for a healthier, happier you. Keith, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Jenny. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah. You have such a rich story, and when I say rich, I know full well that that has come with some major roller coasters for you. I would love to start with that sunny spring day that you describe in 2016 when the doctors gave you the news that your kidneys were about to fail. What happened? What went through your mind in that moment?

Well, so, I mean, I guess in terms of the background, I had known that I had kidney disease for a long time, for about 16 years before that. I actually had started my first full time job and went to do just like for the health insurance plan or life insurance that came with the job. I had to do a kind of random urine screen. And I got a call back from the insurance company again, like this was around 2001, and they said that there was a problem with my tests. And I was young and I was busy and for a couple days I even put off even calling them back. I was like, oh, it can't be a big deal. And then I learned that, yeah, there was a problem with my kidneys, that they weren't at perfect function. So for the next 16 years, I was getting tested regularly and everything seemed to be fine. I knew that at some point I might hit a crisis point, but it just seemed so far in the future that I wasn't even all that worried about it. But then, yeah, one spring Day in 2016, went in disappointment and learned that all of a sudden my kidneys had taken a major plunge in their function and they were getting really close to failing. And so, you know, it was pretty scary because all of a sudden I realized that I was at this point where suddenly I was going to have to, in the very near future, either get dialysis or a kidney transplant if I was going to live.

You share that when kidneys are failing, it means that they can't filter toxins out of the blood. So these poisons were building up in your body and brain and you started to feel sick and tired and confused. Not to mention the fact that you now have on your mind that you could die if you don't have a solution.

Yeah, I mean, kidney transplants, if you live in somewhere like I'm in Canada, if you live in a country like Canada or the U.S. you know, you're probably not going to die because luckily there is a backup option. Right. If you have, like, if you need a lung transplant or a heart transplant, then that's or a liver transplant, There really isn't a backup option here. There's the backup, which is dialysis. So it's not a great option. Basically, you're connected to a machine for hours each week, and all your blood is taken out of your body and cleaned and put back in. And many people, before they have a transplant, have to go on dialysis. And, you know, people. A lot of people still feel really sick when they're on it. I was really lucky that I never had to go on dialysis because my sister came forward and offered to be a donor. And just in time, basically just before I was going to need dialysis, they were able to do that transplant. And it was an amazing thing for me because I really, as you say, I went from this point where I felt really, really old. Like, I remember sitting one day at a Starbucks and watching this guy who was probably in his 70s, and he was just walk. Walking along so fast. And it just. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't figure it out in my mind how, like, someone that age could have so much energy where I was.

30 years younger and just felt like I had none. So I really. I really felt like I was dying. And, you know, again, the toxins made my brain confused. What I could eat was really limited because so many healthy foods have actual nutrients that are also toxins. So things like potassium in bananas or tomatoes or potatoes or avocados or whole grains or legumes, a lot of the things that you want to eat, all of a sudden I couldn't eat because too much potassium could kill me. So, yeah, there was a lot going on.

And how old are you when you found out, or how old are you 2016. When you saw that guy walking down the street?

I was probably. I was probably 44.

It's so crazy that this news, the original news of your kidney health came from this random test that you weren't even planning. You weren't just asking for this information. It just kind of surprised you. And how did it come to be that your sister came forward? Did you ask her? Did you ask your family if they would donate, or did she proactively offer that? Cause that's a big decision for her as well.

She proactively offered. And I had another sister. I have two sisters. Both of them offered to get tested, and Stephanie, who was the eventual donor, was the better medical match. But I was actually. My first sister actually got tested. My other sister Fiona, got tested first. And when it was determined that she wasn't a good match, And Stephanie was starting to go through the testing. I really panicked. And I was worried, like, if it's not going to work out for Stephanie, is anybody else going to come forward? And so then that's when I started posting on social media and reaching out to people I knew, just hoping that other people would offer. And I think my insecurities came up because I was scared, like, what if nobody wants to donate a kidney to me and I'm just going to have to be on dialysis forever? But I was blown away at how many people did come forward, like relatives, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends. There was even one guy that I'd never met in real life. He was someone that I had worked with about 10 years earlier and had done some conference, like maybe two one hour conference calls with. And at the time we connected on Facebook and so we were still connected that way. And then he offered to get tested. So, yeah, I was kind of blown away by the generosity of people.

That is incredible. We know from having you have a book and a podcast how hard it is to ask someone to like tweet a link about something you've created, let alone have the vulnerability of asking for something like kidney donation. Wow. So that's incredible that your sister came forward and then how does life change? Like on the other side of this operation, you now have your sister's kidney in your body. So there's this probably some deep lessons in there. And even you say in the book that you had always been skeptical of self help books, thinking they were written by charlatans and mansplainers. That made me laugh out loud.

And you know what, so many of them are.

Yeah. But that afterward things really shifted for you. So can you take me to those first days and weeks after the procedure?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's a couple of different ways to look at it. So one is just in terms of the physical changes. So they do blood tests right after the transplant, the day after. And it's amazing how my kidney function. You could just see it plummeting and getting close to the failure line and being right on the border of the failure line. And then the very next day after the transplant, the function where basically I go from having no functioning kidneys to having one really healthy one. It goes right back to almost normal. So that's amazing to see in the tests. And for a little while, I still felt crappy, like I'd been sliced open and couldn't, you know, it took a while to get my strength back. There was lots of Pain. I was having trouble sleeping because of some of the drugs that I was on.

But yeah, things. I don't know if you could hear the. Sorry. If you could hear the golden doodle in the background.

There must be Quincy now. We no longer talked about him. He's just making his presence known.

That's right. Yeah. So it did take a while for me to feel good again. But I kind of went into this feeling, like even before the transplant, feeling like if this works, I have to make the most of this and I have to embrace this as a chance to not really start my life over, but live the way that I kind of wished I'd always been living. And not that there was really anything wrong before because I had a great job, great. Had a bunch of great jobs, have great family, great kids, and was for the most part was happy. But I was also just stressed out too much and preoccupied with the wrong things. And I almost felt like the day where they taught you how to be human in preschool, like I must have missed that class because I just felt like there were some fundamental things that I had just never really learned. And so that's when I really, as you say, started digging into self help, personal improvement, self improvement kinds of books. That's where I came across your book as I was starting to read all of these. And yeah, really, really just wanted to almost write an instruction manual for myself on how to live better with every aspect from health and organization and.

Relationships, like sort of all of the important things I was kind of trying to teach myself.

You make such a powerful point that it's not like you were unhappy before, but something was still missing. And I think you said even just low grade stress. You were married, you had kids, you had a family, you had had great jobs, but there's this low grade stress hovering. And even later in the book, you know, you say, well, we shouldn't have to wait until a life or death or near death kind of experience in order to make a change. Why is it that people who haven't had to go through something like this, why do we allow that low grade stressor even for you, the 16 years from when you just. The kidneys were not performing at their peak, but everything was so, so why is, why is it so hard to pin down that low grade stress or what's missing and actually do something about it before an event like this?

I mean, to be honest, I think it's still tough after an event like this. Like, I think that I do see things differently and I've learned More skills. But there are still times where I take a big step back. And you know, last night I was, I was at the computer and trying to do something and my, my teenage son kind of came up and put me in a bit of a bear hug and I'm like, connor, just leave me alone for a second. You know, that stressed me out. And then after I'm like, oh man, like, he's not going to want to give me bear hugs for much longer. And so, you know, I am far from perfect.

Let me state that it sounds, and thank you for saying that because I think you're also shedding light that it's not like, okay, you get a new kidney and all of a sudden you're enlightened. You know, you're therefore just like perfect at managing life every day thereafter. You're still human and still learning.

Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know why it is like what it is about a life changing event that makes it easier to want to make a change. I've kind of become interested in this and there's other people that I've interviewed on the podcast who have gone through similar kinds of things and have gone through post traumatic growth of one kind or another. And I think there is that, that common phenomenon that obviously we know about, post traumatic stress disorder. And sometimes people use these tragedies or big life changes as a catalyst to make their lives better and sometimes to make the lives of those around them better.

Yes. I remember learning about post traumatic growth for the first time. Actually. I interviewed Kelly McGonagall on the upside of stress. And it was so empowering because I think for many of us that is how we grow through the dips in life. And of course we reject them and we want to keep them from happening somehow, but when they do, that really is a time for a character. It can be a time for character building with the right supports.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, I think every kind of growth that we have involves failure of one kind or another. Like it's pretty hard to grow if we're not failing. And sometimes those really big failures, even if they're not something that you, you know, like, it's not, it's not a failure of mine that my kidney stopped working. But, but it is, you know, but, but my body failed me and, and that was a big catalyst for growth.

I think there's so many of us who learn from physical, physical signals. It's kind of like our body. I, I, I used to sit.

Subtly and subconsciously see my body as an enemy. Like, ugh, right? It's just, it's tired or it's stressed or it's gaining weight. It's like my body was this outside entity. And then for me, I had a thyroid hyperthyroidism and it's called Graves disease and it made my eyes bulge. This was like when I had first started working at Google and I was on medication, doing blood tests every month. Then no sooner had I left my job, moved to New York, set up a whole new business and lifestyle for myself. I stopped medication, never went back on it, and realized that was my aha. That okay, I can make changes and I can create a lifestyle and physical wellness that supports me. Because if that hadn't happened, and I'm not saying you can cure everything by changing lifestyle, but for me it was this big wake up call. And I think it's very easy. Someone could quit an intense job and still be their own tyrannical boss in their own business until they realize, oh wait, my body is not my enem me. It's giving us these ginormous clues about how to live. And in your case, the clue was just very, very loud.

Yeah. And I think that's actually if I had to just pick one thing that's changed the most with how I relate to the world since the transplant. It probably is being more in touch with my physical sensations. And I think that it was something that I pretty much discounted completely before. And if I felt fear or anger or jealousy or any kind of bad feeling, I just tried to turn it off. Like just as if I could just flick a switch and stop it. And so I'm starting to be more in tune with kind of the physical manifestations of those things and to acknowledge them.

And realize and accept them, I guess like accept that those feelings are those physical sensations that are connected to these. What we see of as negative feelings are okay. And, and sometimes that's. That can be really empowering in terms of freeing yourself from them.

Do you, with this new relationship to your body into these physical sensations, do you experience more intuition or more body intelligence as well, beyond the red flags, let's call them?

I don't know. I wouldn't say that I've really notice that. Is there, is there like an example? I'm curious what you, what you mean by that is an example.

Well, I think that sometimes for me, my path with my body has been okay, I listened to the red flags. It was like when, whenever it was unhealthy, I'd get a kick in the butt and wake up like there was. I did a pivot podcast entirely dedicated to telling the story of getting vertigo for two days, where if I stood up, I would throw up. That was my body just, like, yanking the chain back on some stressful patterns.

So I think that's one way we relate to our bodies is like, oh, no, things are in crisis. I need to fix it. And then the next level is more subtle. Okay, I don't have to be a slave to bad feelings. And then for me, I started to say, well, what if I tuned in proactively? What if I asked proactively what's going on? Or my mentor and friend, Penny Pierce, learning more about intuition and, like, taking it farther to actually be proactive in incorporating more intelligence than what my mind alone can provide.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I feel like I'm. I'm. I would like to get there. I feel like I'm trying to do some of that stuff when I meditate and that kind of thing. But even when I. Like when I have a feeling. So I feel like so often when I feel a physical sensation, what I'm feeling is some kind of fear or anxiety. And it's always, like, in my. In my abdomen. I feel like that's the one feeling that I. That the physical sensation that I always kind of in tune with. But I know that there's a lot more that I'm hoping to go deeper and feel more of that stuff.

I love it's. And I think that's where we hear it first. That's where we feel it first. Because those are the warnings that are usually the loudest, that the anxiety, fear, the gut. It's kind of the gut response. And how I started practicing this was through meditating. And Penny talks about in her book the intuitive way. Really, intuition is like a radio station. It's always there. We just need to tune into it. So I started keeping an intuition and coincidence log, which I thought was interesting. So if you start to just write down, huh, I had this hunch about something today, or, huh, this was a funny coincidence. And you write it down, you'll actually start to notice more of them. And your attunem to these signals within your body may become more refined. I'd be curious to see how that works, if at all.

Well, you know, when you say that, the one thing that I. That I think of is that lately there's been many times where my wife has been thinking something and then I've said it. Like, I've said something really. And she's like, how did you know I was thinking about that? So I don't know. That's a weird kind of coincidence. And maybe it's that somehow we're more in touch with. With each other than before, just because I'm paying more attention.

I love that that happens.

Yeah.

How has your relationship with your wife shifted as you've gone through this journey?

So it's. I mean, I think it probably got worse, and then I got better. So the worse was temporary. And it was when I was getting into the really bad phase of the kidney disease. And it wasn't so much the sickness, it was the drugs that I was on. So there's a steroid called prednisone that I was on a super high dose, and they thought that maybe that would help slow the harm that was being done to the kidneys. And it turned out it didn't work, but it was such a high dose that it made it almost impossible for me to sleep. So I was sleeping maybe three hours a night, maybe three or four hours a night. And so I would. I mean, when I was trying to get. I just started my own business and I was trying to get some. Some books published. And so it was good from that perspective that I would wake up at 3am and just couldn't sleep anymore. And I would just go straight to the computer and work. But it really took a toll on the people. My relationships with people around me. And I was angry with my wife and angry with my kids. So. So that was sort of the low. But after the transplant, things certainly got better. And I remember one day, shortly after, my wife and I were going on a rare date without the kids, and she turned to me and she said, you know, something's really changed. Like, you just seem different lately. And so that felt good to me that other people had, or, you know, the most important person to me had noticed the change.

Yeah. You said in the book that people around you said you were kinder and more patient. Big change.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think that was mostly. When I say that I'm talking mostly about my wife and my older son, Connor. Yeah.

That's so, so amazing. And I think. I can't even imagine when you're in so much physical pain and on medication and not sleeping. I mean, that's a completely different body chemistry than your normal kind of best self.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the. When I had the kidney disease, there wasn't really any physical pain per se. There was just the. But I couldn't sleep, as you said, and There was this kind of fogginess to my brain and then confusion. And I was doing things. Like one day I went to turn the kettle on, which I would have done every single day, but for some reason it's an electric one. Instead of flicking the switch, I took it and put it on the burner and turned the burner on. And it was not one of those kinds of kettles. And so I blamed that on the foggy mind from the kidney disease.

I would say.

Yeah.

I mentioned in the intro that you have. He's now 11 years old, your son with special needs.

Yeah.

What have you learned being on that journey of raising a child with such severe mental and physical disabilities? I mean, I've spoken to other parents and read. Even Martha Beck has done some really powerful writing about her son with down syndrome of the profound shifts that the parents experience going on that journey. So I would love, I know this is an open ended question, but would just love to hear what, what you've learned along that way.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting because it's been, it's been really a hard journey, but I also feel grateful for it. Like it's this, it's the craziest thing in the world because I know that it's. It's never something that I would have wanted myself. And in fact, years before I had kids, there was a colleague that I knew.

Who had a daughter with severe autism. And she was a teenager at the time, but the autism was so bad that she wasn't able to communicate. And I just remember thinking that that would be the worst thing in the world. And I don't know how. He just seemed like a normal person and a positive person when he had that to deal with.

But I really feel like going through something like this.

Can change you and make you a better person and really make you focus on what matters. Like all the little things that used to seem like such a big deal were no longer such a big deal when I had this one really big thing to focus on so I could explain. My son has a condition called GRIN1. And for about the first nine years of his life, we didn't know what it was. It was sort of basically an undiagnosed medical disorder that they suspected was genetic. And he went through all kinds of testing. He had a muscle biopsy, he had MRIs, he had dozens of blood tests and all kinds of terrible illnesses got ruled out one by one. But often we'd have to wait weeks or even months for the test results. And that would be obviously scary in the meantime. But then eventually it got diagnosed as GRIN1 and we started getting together with other families around the world. Now we've connected. We've got a face group with about 80 families, and a bunch of us get together once a year each summer. And it's. I mean, the biggest thing is just to be able to have that community. And part of it is being able to share knowledge of what works with our own kids. But part of it is also, you know, just being with. With a group of people. It's almost like finding our tribe of people that we can feel safe with and I guess feel like we're not alone anymore with. So that's been a huge blessing that's come out of getting the diagnosis.

That's so powerful. Like you said, just the feeling like you're not alone in the journey. And 80 families. Wow.

Yeah. So this year they're coming. Our meetup is in Toronto. So the last couple of years, the first one was in Toronto, Colorado, and then last year in Pittsburgh, and this year we're hosting it here in Toronto, Canada. So a little bit of work to do for that, but it's going to be fun to have the families here.

Was this a group you started or that you just stumbled upon?

No, we stumbled upon it. We were one of the first to join. I think There were maybe 10 other families in the group when we joined, but, yeah, someone who. Her daughter had been diagnosed, she started it and started up a Facebook group. And originally when we got this diagnosis, we searched online and found almost nothing. But one of the things we did find was this Facebook group. So we joined that. And then, interestingly, one of the ways that a lot of the families have found their way into the group was through blog posts that I wrote after we got the diagnosis. So they reached out to me and then I brought them into the group.

That's so cool to see how you adding your content and your zone of genius content creation has helped grow the community and added your piece of the puzzle that helps build it out.

Yeah, yeah. So it's. It's. I mean, every time a family reaches out to me, it's great to hear from them.

Yeah. Well, speaking of your great content, I would love to talk about some of the key principles in the book that jumped out. And of course, I smiled when I got to the section called Permit the pivot. I thought this was so great. Like the missing chapter from pivot of you describe. Tell me, say more about this idea of permitting the pivot and what you mean by that? Because, I don't know, people struggle with that, I think sometimes in the beginning, early stages of it.

Yeah. So, I mean, I define a pivot as differently from you the way you do in the book and the podcast. But basically, basically what I'm doing, what I'm talking about is I outline what I think are the three pieces of planning. And so the first one is prioritizing, so really recognizing what are the most important things that you want to get done. Because so often, if we're not thoughtful about it, we spend time doing things that aren't actually helping us achieve our biggest goals. The second one is programming, which is about taking those things that are the most important and making sure that they're on our calendar. So one of the things I talk about is to get rid of your to do list and instead put things actually in your calendar. So the things that you need to get done, make sure you've actually got them slotted out. Because I'm so guilty of having a to do list where I write it out every day and get done some of the things and then write all the things down again the next day. But if something's important enough to write down, it's important enough to schedule. But then the third piece of planning is the pivot. And that's really just about being able to be flexible in your planning when things change. And this is something that I've struggled with a ton. Like I can be really rigid in my thinking, and if I develop a plan and the environment, the circumstances change. I'm not always the best at adapting and moving in a different direction. I like to stick with this. So this is something that's really important for me. And I'll give you an example. The last books that I did were a series of anthologies that are based on, on fan based themes. So I run my own publishing company. And so I had a book on the Beatles, a book on the Toronto Blue Jays, and basically I was going to do, and this is the summer that I was getting sick, that I was working on these, but my plan was that I was going to edit two of them and then I had freelance editors do another two of them. And then at the last minute, one of the freelance editors pulled out. But in my mind, because I had this plan where I had to have four books come out at the same time so that we could coordinate marketing. When this person pulled out, what I should have just done is said, okay, the plan has to change and we have to go with three books. But instead and maybe this is partly because my brain was going a bit crazy with the prednisone, but I really felt like I had to stick to the four books. And so I decided I would take on another one, too, when I was already feeling sick and tired and really didn't have time to take on another title. And so.

Basically, what I talk about here is, when the environment changes just to be aware, momentum can be blinding. And so it's important to look up and look around and constantly adapt.

Momentum can be blinding? I've never heard that.

Well, it can to me.

That's a great point, Keith MacArthur. It's a great point that sometimes momentum, we think of it. I certainly have a private community called momentum, and I've only ever thought of it as the goal. You know, momentum, it's not about where you end up. It's just about having a sense of flow and forward movement. And yet you're right that if we have all this momentum, it can blind us to the need to pivot when plans don't go the way that we initially set out.

Mm, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. There's my aha. There's my Oprah aha moment of this conversation. I love that. And just being aware that when we have momentum, you know, I have a friend who maybe she'll listen to this, but she's launching a podcast soon, and she was getting stressed about it and overwhelmed, and she just said, you know what? I'm gonna postpone the launch. It's like, great. That's the easiest time to postpone when no one's listening, you know? So it's amazing how we do want to set these targets for ourselves and stretch and push ourselves, but then sometimes you just gotta notice, like, no one's even gonna be aware, really. Maybe the people she interviewed, but that ultimately, if it's gonna create so much more ease for her in her process and her workflow, then she's making such a great decision. But if she was just blinded by the momentum and the deadlines and the timelines, she wouldn't have made that choice.

Yeah, well, I can definitely relate to that, because I was going through the same thing when I was launching my podcast. And I think there's differences of opinion, but some people say you should launch with at least three episodes. And so I got it in my mind that I had to do that. I had to launch with three episodes.

And I was behind schedule, but I had announced that I was launching on a certain date with three episodes on my blog, and I'd put out A preview episode. And so I felt like I just couldn't deviate from it because I had announced it, but a very small number of people.

Would have heard it and almost nobody would have cared. Right. So I think it's another reminder for me. And I think your friend did the right thing.

Yes, me too.

Really, this book, I mean, it's called 18 Steps to Own youn Life. What does that mean to you? What is. If you could just kind of sum it up for us. How do you define owning your life?

So I think it means two different things. And one is the kind of literal meaning of own, which is possessing. So it's about being the one in charge of your own life. And I think that so often it's easy to just let life happen to us. And even if you think of things like the way most people treat their calendars, that they treat it as something belonging to someone else, where everyone else can put meetings in your calendar, but you're not necessarily blocking off the times to do the things that are most important to you. So it's looking at your life that way and being the one in charge. But the second meaning is the sort of more colloquial meaning which is about just basically kicking ass with your life. Right. So if you own a video game or you own an exam or something, then it means that you did really good at it. So I think it has both of those meanings.

I love it. You also. We should have a parallel philosophy of a million tiny steps. Say more about that as an approach to owning your life.

Well, I mean, I think that one of the things, and this maybe gets back to the question that you asked before about.

Why people don't. Why it takes so many people, a life changing event, to change their life. I think a lot of the time people think that changing your life or owning your life is about some really big monumental changes. And when you think of them as big, monumental changes, you want to get to them someday, but you don't want to get to them today. You know, they're important, so you keep thinking about them, but you don't actually do them. But if you think about it as a million tiny steps, then you recognize that it's just a little bit every day. Right. It's moving a little bit in the right direction each day and making some changes for the positive each day. And you know, there's a lot of them. You're never going to run out of them. I think it's also being aware that every day doesn't have to be Better than the last for you to have momentum. Right. There's some days where you're going to take a step back and you're going to do some unhealthy things or not do that. The healthy things. But if each week or each month you're getting better, then you're still moving in the right direction. So I think it's important to take that first tiny step, but then to just keep taking them as day after day.

I love what you said. I love debunking myths out there. You know, everyone on this podcast, you're probably sick of me saying that. I hate the phrase I'll sleep when I'm dead, but it's true. Hate it. And another one is, yeah, every day. Make every day better than the last. I mean, sure, but I love what you just said. And if we could acknowledge and even look forward to the days that we stumble or take a step back, I've come to start reframing them as, wow. Well, look how many days happened between that bad day and the one before. It's like whatever area I'm focusing on learning or growing or practicing, I can actually see progress marked by the very day that I take the step back.

Yeah.

It's actually an indicator of progress and of effort in so many ways, regardless of how down we might feel in the moment.

Right. Yeah. And perfection is. Can be such a terrible and a terrible thing. Right. It can get in the way of us continuing to make that progress. If we feel like we've failed, then because we've had a bad day, then it's easy to give up where it's so important, to just keep moving forward.

And I feel like I have so many voices in my head. The perfection one is there every day. Like, every day. I just have to tell it. No, no, don't worry. This doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't matter what area. So it's also like just acknowledging we all have these voices. And this is why I love your story of just setting out to learn and to figure out what's really needed and what. What has been most helpful for you on your journey to owning your life and to taking these million tiny steps without expecting perfection.

Well, thank you.

Yeah. Okay. So, as you know, I always love to leave listeners with one piece of homework when they're done listening to this episode. What would you have people do? What's their first million tiny step?

Well, I was gonna say, because I know you asked this question because I listened to the podcast, so I was gonna say that the homework is to take a tiny step, but not letting.

You off that easy.

Now you're asking no. So I would say that the first step is really to make a choice to own your life, to make your life better. And making a conscious choice is the first tiny step. And it's often one that we have to keep making that we're conscious and consciously making a choice to make our lives better.

So true and so well said. Keith McArthur. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch and check out your book and podcast?

So the book is available on Amazon. They can find me at my.

I don't know if you heard that. So my book is available on Amazon. They can find me@myinstructionmanual.com There's a chapter of my book available for Download@my instructionmanual.com FreeChapter, both an MP3 and a print version, and I'm on Twitter at eithmacarthur and other social channels as my instruction manual.

Awesome. Keith. You rock. Thank you so much for being here and for being so open and sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much Jenny. Great to talk to you as always.

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.

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