Dare to Be Average: Finding Meaning Beyond Success with Ken Wells and Joe Polish

Average is about how do we take what is every day of life that all of us deal with, you know, when it's all over and the lights shut down and I feel empty inside. How do I fill that emptiness with meaningfulness? That's an important piece to wrestle with. So that's the reason I wanted to write about it, because what I've discovered is this: dare to be average. Dare to embrace the everydayness. Dare to embrace the boredom. Dare to embrace emptiness, because I've discovered when you can find meaningfulness in those spaces, that's where you find your own personal brilliance.

If you'd like to join world-renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius Network, go to geniusnetworkevents.com. Over the years at Genius Network, we've had billionaires come to talk to us about business, life, success, and life's challenges. So often entrepreneurs think to be mega rich or super famous Eliminates a lot of life's challenges and difficulties. In reality, suffering and addiction are there in their lives as well. Yet, who do they turn to when they are in need of help as a famous human being? They turn to someone that can complete— they can completely trust and who is highly credentialed in this area. That's why Ken Wells has become one of the go-to addiction specialists for over 25 years. He has spent more time with billionaires and famous people facing addiction And a lot of just everyday normal people and challenges with all kinds of challenges than almost anyone I know. As a former minister, Ken brings a calming, caring, and clarity to the difficult subject of addiction and suffering. In my conversation with him, you're going to hear not only talk about, you know, super rich and famous individuals, but entire families that are in the throes of suffering and addiction. There are answers and solutions to these challenges, and Ken is going to share some of them with you.

Thank you, Joe.

As I ask him some questions. So you have a book, Dare to Be Average.

Dare to Be Average.

Why the hell would anyone want to dare to be average?

Well, that's a good question because I think it's a matter about how we use the word. We use all kinds of different words to mean different things. So average, who wants to be average if it means half-hearted, half-assed? That's certainly not me, for sure. But on the other side of the coin, how about all of the everyday experiences we all experience and share together? Things that we don't really want to look at. And so the guys I work with, they don't need to be told how to produce successful results. They're at the top of their game, have more money than they know what to do. Some guys have more money than countries do. And so they're not into that, and yet they struggle, Joe, with the same things that I or you or anyone else in the world struggles with. It's like as if there is a Pack of wolves chasing them through the woods, nipping at their heels. Fear, shame, anxiety, failure. You see, these are common threads that we all experience in life. And yet it seems to me that so many people run from those words like failure. I mean, in all this, all this whole room, we've all experienced failure in our life. I was thinking about Tom Brady. Now here he has, he's been in the league, just retired, 22 seasons, an amazing, unprecedented 7, what is it, 7 Super Bowl championships? And yet there are 15 times that he finished less than first. And so, you know, and then I think about, I read this deal about Mickey Mantle. He's my hero when I was a kid. Wasn't a Yankee fan, but I was a Mantle fan. He wrote this stuff. He said, you know, I was in the league for 18 years. And I was up to bat over 10,000 times. So he says, I struck out 1,700 times in my career and I walked 1,800 times. And he said, you know, if you figure it out, I get up to bat about 500 times a year. And he said, you know, that figures out to be 7 years I didn't even hit the ball.

Wow.

I laugh at that because, you know, at some point, someplace, we have to be able To connect and touch failure, fear, anger, hate, and work with it because it's a part of the human condition. Everybody has it. I tell clients, I say, you know, there are some people and there are some things in this world I hate. Really? Aren't you supposed to not hate? I said, you know, I don't know about supposed to not to, but I just do. There are people who've done things to me, they screwed me over, and I hate it, and I hate them. He said, well, don't you hate the acts, not the behavior? Now, the behavior, not the person. I say, well, if we didn't have the person, we wouldn't have the behavior. So I just go right to the source. I hate these guys. Well, what am I going to do with it? It can eat my lunch. Shame's the same way. Failure's the same way. Or can I shift it and make meaningfulness out of all of it?

Yeah.

And so I think about average. Average is about how do we take what is every day of life that all of us deal with, you know, when it's all over and the lights shut down and I feel empty inside, how do I fill that emptiness with meaningfulness. That's an important piece to wrestle with. So that's the reason I wanted to write about it, 'cause what I've discovered is this: dare to be average, dare to embrace the everydayness, dare to embrace boredom, dare to embrace emptiness, because I've discovered when you can find meaningfulness in those spaces, that's where you find your own personal brilliance.

Yeah.

Personal brilliance. See, that's what I think is so important. We all are brilliant. It's fun to go around looking at people's brilliance. Behind where I live, there's a whole row of people people who live on the canal here in Phoenix. And I go by those places often and just check in and listen to, how do you guys survive out here? You know? And inevitably, there's this personal brilliance that comes out. And I can connect with that because I know my own personal brilliance. And so I think it's really important for us to wrestle with the issue. It's just a word, dare to be average, dare to embrace the commonplace. It doesn't really matter what we call it. But I think so many addicts choose not to wrestle with that, and they'd rather just medicate, escape, avoid the most precious experience of life. That's what I call spirituality, is finding my own personal brilliance within me.

Bill W., the founder of AA, one of my favorite lines from him is, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And so you're either trying to drink your way to God, work your way to God, gamble your way to God. It's, it's, it's like trying to drink the pain away, screw it. Screw the pain away, work the pain away. Some of the world's highest achievers live with great pain and great angst, and the whole saying is, you're as sick as your secrets. Can you define 2 things? What is addiction? I want to hear your definition of it. And shame, what is shame? Because I know so many people here that have struggles deal with it, and they may not even recognize it.

Well, first, it's hell, addiction. But the real thing I wrestle with would be, in defining, would be it's a pathological relationship. It's an unhealthy relationship. to a mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences and you can't stop by yourself. You know? I mean, I've done a lot of things that had damaging consequences to me, but I could stop it myself. I too, as Joe was talking, I've been in recovery from sexual addiction for 32 years. And I'm a workaholic. You know, those 2 things. More of a workaholic than I am a sex addict. But the point is to me is how, you know, is there anything wrong with sex? Of course not. Actually, on the many relationships that people say, well, porn's awful. Only if you use it awful. In my case, I did. It hurt me. It didn't help me. How would you know? Well, you have to know your values. What are your values? And if I do something against my values and it's hurting me and people I care most about and I can't stop it by myself, For me, to you, I believe that's an addiction. So that's how I define that.

Yeah, I can also say too, because, you know, and I'd love— I mean, you— anything that I'm always wanting to understand and clarify my thinking and understanding to this. I look at all addictions as excess and deprivation. You know, when someone hears the term sex addict, you think, oh, that's a pervert. That's someone that wants to, you know, have sex with, you know, whoever, whatever, all the time. And there's a lot of sexual addiction manifests as deprivation where you're not able You're not able to feel any real connection sexually, and so there's a lot of sexual anorexia that exists. It's binging and purging. That's what addiction consists of.

Yes, for sure. So to talk a little bit about deprivation. See, most people like not to identify themselves as addict. I get it. I understand. And I understand why. I mean, I've been over to 3,500 SAA meetings and all kinds of meetings you can think about in my days and time. So when you walk in, you're basically saying, I'm a sex addict, I'm an alcoholic, I'm whatever I am. Okay, so who wants to do that? Well, it's helpful to be able to take that term and separate it from your personhood. Who am I really? I am an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. Have been, always will be. I won't get better on that. I'll become a better person in my behavior, and I won't get worse no matter what I do. If I walk out of here and act out forever until I'm dead, I don't improve on that. A diamond is a diamond. a diamond. That's what I've always been. So I'm saying that to say this, is that it's so helpful to recognize how deprivation in my life fueled the addictive components that I engage. So that goes all the way back as a kid. I grew up in a hellacious family. I grew up in a family of 12 children. To the best of my knowledge, all 12 of us were sexually abused in some form or another by, uh, through a church. They called it a church. It was a cult. So I had all kinds of craziness in the background. But the point is, to me, is how do I fill up those needs that I have developmentally? Some people say, well, I don't want to go back and look at that stuff. Well, I would entreat you to consider Søren Kierkegaard. He's an existentialist philosopher. He says, well, life's meant to be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards. So why do I want to look backwards? So I can understand. I don't want to live in that storyline. I want to give that up. And to do so, if I can understand and if I can clean out some woundedness, it helps me. But when I don't, I live deprived. And so I want to fill that deprivation up in my life. And so I use all kinds, not just one addiction. I'll use a cocktail of experience of life, work, sex, I use sports, gaming. I use bitching and complaining. I use all of these things I can do to fill up and escape that emptiness that's inside. So what I always help people understand is deprivation fuels entitlement. Entitlement to what? To feel good again. And one thing for sure, any addiction really delivers. It delivers what it promises, at least for a brief moment. There's a payoff. I mean, you're going to pay for it. But when you're in a lot of pain, when you're in a lot of, you know, just discomfort, then quickly, in a short-sighted way, I'll pick my addiction in that regard. Now, I think of it this way. I love what I heard Ned talking about. He talked about, I believe it was distractibility changing into curiosity. He talked about impulsivity being changed into creativity. And then it was hyperactivity into energy. Well, I think that about addiction. See, this whole lifestyle, it's a metaphor. It's a paradox. What do we do? Well, we just take like, we take opposites and make them different. So like, for instance, addiction. My goal is to take my curse of addiction and make it a blessing. How do I do that? Well, I don't do it from run— I don't do it by running from it. I embrace it. I listen to it. You know, actually, I make it my understanding of the voice of God. If God's anything, it's that voice talking to me what's out of balance. It's that voice telling me, What I need to address underneath. It's the legitimate need that must be met in a healthy way. And so I take a pause, I get out of the way of the addictive rush, you know, like sitting in the middle of an intersection in New York City. Here comes a bus. You don't sit around and think, well, how'd I get here? You best get the hell out of the way. So I try to get out of the way from my addictive rush, and then I sit and think, what's the legitimate need that must be met? That's called intimacy. To self, to people I care about. Intimacy is so important. And that's why we talk about addiction anyway, Joe. It's an intimacy-disabling experience of life. Yeah.

Well, you know, again, I've said this before. Most people in this audience have heard me talk about my favorite definition of intimacy, which was given to me by a guy named Wharton, who basically is now 80 years old, in his 80s, and he spends his— he volunteers his time to help people with sexual addictions. And he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place.

Yeah.

Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place, and addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. And I often think of, you know, not just intimacy romantically, but intimacy, the ability to connect with people. And the reason, you know, my— I always, you know, to use a Dan Sullivan term, front stage and backstage. You know, there's the front stage of what our clients see, who the world sees, and then there's the backstage, you know, In a business, it's like what's going on backstage, you know, and front stage. And it's like, you know, part of— I sit and observe people, and I observe my own behavior. And I often think, you know, you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape. You're either talking to someone, and, you know, as you guys meet each other and you talk, you know, you're either— you feel real connection with someone, and other people like, I need to kind of get away. And sometimes it's the other person. Sometimes it's me. You know, if I'm not connected, it's really hard for me to connect with someone else. But then you take that into how much of my life was I trying to escape? You know, and addiction is a solution. My viewpoint of it, it is a solution to pain. Now, we treat it like the war on drugs, but the war on drugs is the wrong war because the war on drugs is like a war on addicts. You know, the drugs are actually the solution. The problem is the fucking pain. And if you don't deal with the pain, it's an attempt to self-soothe. If you're depressed, if you're lonely, if you're suicidal, if you're— hyperactive, if you're losing your freaking mind, you're stressed out, you're lonely, there's nothing wrong with wanting that feeling to go away or to change. It's how you scratch the itch, you know, with what you're saying. And so addiction works. It works really well. The problem is it has consequences.

Right.

And those consequences could kill you. They could hurt other people. They could, they could damage and destroy your life. So part of it is getting people to feel real connection and real intimacy and to experience it. And that requires the shedding or the—

what—

how— the processing of the shame and the fear.

Process.

And so what I want to say, because up to this point in our conversation, a lot of people might be like, what the hell are you talking about? I don't identify as a sex addict. I'm not staying up till 3 in the morning every night, you know, looking at porn. I'm not snorting cocaine. There are a lot of people in here that are full-blown work addicts because workaholism is a respectable addiction. And it's a performance addiction. It's a, you know, there's all kinds of things to it. And so I would really like— what is workaholism?

How would you like—

how does someone know if they're excessive?

I think it's what takes me away from my soulfulness. Now, that's kind of a nice little statement to make. But, you know, when you really dig into it, I have to be more to keep from being less. In order to be good inside. And I can't ever stop. I remember once about 20 years— oh, it was longer than that. It was 25 years ago. I'm getting older here.

How old are you now?

I'm 70.

70?

Yeah. So I remember deciding I was going to cut back and only work a certain number of hours. And I remember going back in the backyard up next to our fence, and I sat and I went through withdrawals. Literally shakes. It was embarrassing. It was crazy. I don't know of a lot of people who do that about workaholism, but I sure did. But what I did is I found— I tried to find my sense of okayness in what I do, not who I am. And that's the great problem. Not everybody who struggles with finding meaningfulness in their being— I call it my am-ness— but all is out here doing stuff. They're not all workaholics. I get that.

Yeah.

But what I want to share is this. There's an interesting thing I've been reading and listening to this woman named Pema Chödrön. Many probably know who she is, this Buddhist female monk. And she talks about how she's learned unconditional confidence. And she said, okay, if you've, if you've listened to her Peace on Unconditional Confidence, she shares the metaphor walking alongside the Oregon coast, and she's lost in her thoughts. The tide's out, it comes in and knocks her sideways, rolls her into the sand. And she said, for a moment there, I thought I was going to drown. So I stand up, gather myself, and I get hit by another wave. And she said, well, you know, it lasted maybe 3 or 4 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. But I got the sense of knowing that I could go down and come back up, and I would not Die. Well, she says this, here's the deal. I can't control the results of my life totally. I do a lot of things to create success. I'm all about achievement personally. I want to achieve. I want to be the very best I possibly can be. It certainly has been a part of that, that goal has been a part of my workaholism. She says, I can't control the results, But my unconditional confidence is that I can control, I'm going to go down and come back up regardless of results. I can make meaningfulness no matter what I face or deal with. That's been a great sense of source for me. So I can't try to compete and compare and say I'm this. I can compete. I like to compete.

Mm-hmm.

I am that. Okay? But that's not who I am. Where I found great, great peace. And all these guys I work with who have women who are— have all this status and stardom and all this stuff. Ultimately, all that has not brought peace. See? And so what brings peace is knowing that I can find meaningfulness wherever I am. I can be present right here just with you, Joe. I'm not worried about what these guys think, or I'm challenged not to. I really just want to have a conversation, be present right here. Why? Because that's where meaningfulness is. You know, I was a minister way back there— heaven, hell, all that crap. Well, my thought was this. Is what is heaven and hell? It's my decision on how I engage you right now. And for me, heaven is just hanging out with you because I know this. I know— I don't know you in this environment. I know you, we have coffee, we talk, we talk about addiction, we talk about your life, your world, all that stuff. It's fun. I love you as a friend. I love your spirit, Joe, your soulfulness. I was telling my wife last night, I said, Joe, you know, I have all these marketer guys I work with and stuff. Joe is a different cat. He's a guy who's a real guy. real, genuine, authentic person. That's not easy to accomplish, being authentic. Goodness, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life is to be truly honest. Nobody accuses me, Joe, of being— walking around telling a bunch of lies, but looking at myself in the mirror and saying honest, real things down deep inside and sharing them with another person who I choose to trust, now that's tough.

Yeah.

But that brings a lot of peace. So, that's the opposite of what workaholism can can do. See, a lot of guys, I'm trying to do more to keep from being less. And what happens in all that deal, shame makes it so. What does it make it so? It makes it, I can never get enough of what I really don't want.

Yeah.

I really don't want to keep doing all this craziness. I do it anyway because it's the only way I know how to escape. What? Emptiness. You know, and it's an interesting thing to sit with discomfort. I mean, my God, who does that? And yet to do so, to lean into that, opens a whole avenue of genuine, authentic peace. And it's not about religion. It's not about that stuff. I mean, I tried that for more years than you'd care to know. It did not work for me. But this process we're talking about does. I love what Ned said about the default peace.

Mm-hmm.

Because, man, is that great. See, with shame, I get all these messages in my head. You think, well, if you're in recovery, then you got it all together, right? Oh, never. You just realize how much you don't have it together. And so what happens is I have these voices in my head that tell me all the stuff that Ned said so beautifully, all this craziness that I tell myself. What I've learned is how to bring myself back to center.

Yeah.

Shame is the— is that part. See, it's like this. Shame is like, uh, People say, well, it's bad. Shame is bad. It's just what we have. It's there. Call it whatever you want. It's like acid in a battery of a car. If you keep it in the battery, then it starts the car. If you take it out, put it on your skin, it'll burn you. If I put shame on my personhood, my sense of self, it'll hurt me. But if I take it and I put it on the behavior that I did, I mean, we've all done shitty behaviors. No one's excluded. But if I take that shame, I put it on my behavior, what happens to it? It transforms to compassion. When I think about the ways in which I hurt my wife— we've been together for 46 years now— when I think about the way I hurt her when I was unfaithful, when I acted out sexually, I'll never forget her eyes, the look in her face. What does that do for me? I could turn it on myself, say, you piece of shit, what's wrong with you? You know, or I say, you know what? I would never want to hurt someone who is that precious, that desirable in my life again. And it transforms that sense of shame into compassion. And let me read you something that, that Pema Chödrön says. She says this: compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when I know my own darkness well and can be present with Can I be present with the darkness of others? Compassion becomes real when I recognize our shared humanity. We're all in this together, baby. We really are. And there isn't that much difference in you and me. And I learned how to hang with people in a, in a most paradoxical way is by hanging out with my own brokenness, not wallowing in it, but recognizing. How that has been a link to my own brilliance. And I am a brilliant person. I'm happy to tell myself that. I answer my shame with positive affirmations. And like I heard Ned say yesterday, it doesn't happen with one and done. Seldom is this kind of transformation a one and done piece. It takes condition, just like I get up every morning and run at 5 in the morning. And do my thing. I don't want to do it. I usually wake up with a bad attitude every day that I have to address. Every stinking day, I know. So that's about me. But I'm saying to you that if I condition myself and I go back, just like— think of it this way, Joe. Let me leave you with this. It's this idea, some kid who's playing basketball. Okay, so he's playing for a college team. The time's run out. His team's behind by 1 point. And he's at the free throw line and he has a 1-and-1. He has to make the first to tie the game, the second to win. So what happens? What do you know? Well, the guys behind the goal are doing everything they possibly can legally or illegally to try to get him to miss that shot. Okay, what does he do? He just programs back to the summer where what did he do? He practiced 1,000 free throws. And then what he would do, he'd run wind sprints until he almost dropped dead. And then he'd go practice, and then he'd run up and down the bleachers, and then he'd have his friends beat on him and then yell at him while he's making those free practicing. And he draws all that in on that one critical moment. And if he misses, he goes back and does some more of it so he can improve. So the goal isn't to be before and after, like, I'm finally— now I'm all together. I just want to be a little bit better today. than it was yesterday. And man, has that made a big difference in my life. And I tell you, if you practice what— what I— I haven't read that second chapter of that book you told me. I'm going to go read it. But the point, if you practice what I'm hearing being said, that'll work. It'll help me anchor myself in what? My authentic sense of being an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. I never knew that. I mean, I knew that here because I'm a smart dude. But I never knew that in my guts until I practiced it every day. I practiced it this morning. I'll practice it tonight. I'll practice when I walk off this stage. It's just being that. So I really think we have hope in transforming shame. You know, all these energies that are negative for you, anger, you know, what do we do? Well, what we do, we have to redefine it. It's just an energy source. That's all these feelings are, you know. So mine, as a responsible adult, is to move that energy from what I don't want to what I want. So I'll take some time when I'm angry, is to throw it up. I just make sure I don't throw it up on people that I care for. If I had the flu, I wouldn't want to throw up in your lap. I'd go to the bathroom. So I don't want to throw up in somebody's lap. But once I throw that up to that person, I move it to the issue of injustice, the issue of oppression. And then I move it to what I want, you know? And what I want is respect, dignity. I want to treat myself that way and treat you that way. And the more I work with it, the better I get. I'm not perfect. I have to circle back and make amends all the time because I'll fuck it up. But still, what I've learned is how to be true to myself. And you know what's more important than never acting out again? It's knowing how to find your way back, isn't it? Isn't that really important? I mean, if you go out for a hike with somebody and the guy says, I've never been lost in all the times I've taken people out for a hike, or if you take somebody, take another guy and he says, well, I have a compass here and I know how to read the sucker. Well, who would I want to go with? I'll go with the guy who's got the compass. I just need to know how to, how to find myself if I lose myself. And you can learn that. That's what recovery is about.

Absolutely. No, this is great. Thank you. Was that valuable?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think life now is you're on track, you're doing a few things, things are working, you get thrown off track. I wanted to introduce Ken to all of you because I've been talking with him about— he writes a blog called Velvet Steel. Velvet Steel. And I would like him to start working with me and us with Genius Recovery. What I'm almost thinking, you know, say like, what would be the most useful for everyone in the group? Because conversations like this, you know, I smuggle in these addiction conversations. It always pisses off a few people. It's not a matter of if this relates to you, it's just a matter of when. If it's not you, it's going to be a family member, it's going to be an employee. And I personally can explain from my perspective the whole pandemic through the lens of addiction.

Yeah.

I think we have a bunch of addicted, crazy, power-hungry, twisted, crazy human pain that has caused so much of what we're experiencing right now.

Joe, even if we're not all addicts, and I know I don't believe, you know—

I don't either. Yeah, I don't believe everyone's an addict.

I don't believe everybody's an addict. And I think sometimes we're a little loose on how we use the term, but we all are challenged to figure out how to sit with discomfort and make meaningfulness out of it. That's where your brilliance can be found. In average, everyday, commonplace spaces of your life. So I hope we can do that if we just open, become vulnerable, be open with each other, talk about the places where we're uncomfortable, not with the whole world, but with people you choose to trust.

You know, I don't believe in even that thing of like, you gotta destroy your life in order to get help. I mean, you can bring the bottom up. I believe you can do that. And so part of having the awareness and the issues are in the tissues. I mean, this is more than just The hardest people to recover are the people that got all the damn money and have all the talent and capabilities because they think they can outmaneuver this shit. With addiction, it's more about surrender. It really is. It's not about muscling your way through this shit. And so there's so many incredible speakers, but when you bring in addiction, that shit will fuck you up. I've seen people that go to seminars to try to deal with something that requires surrender, that they're trying to, you know, power their way through it. Good luck, buddy. You just wasted another 2 decades of your life.

Just make sure people know, Joe, that recovery and balance and embrace of discomfort only improves results. It's about that. It's not about taking away from being results-focused and being excellent and fulfilling yourself. It's actually— it helps enhance destiny. That's what we're all about.

Yeah, totally. You know, last thing I'll say here, like, even as I sit and talk about it, I notice an anger that I have. Like, I cuss more, I'm a little more, you know, I mean, can you tell, like, the anger? Like, because I really just— to me, it's so— I, you know, part of me wants to speed up people's ability to kind of get it because I— God, I know the suffering of addiction.

It sucks.

It's insane. It just sucks. And I really wish I could remove it. And at the same time, you know, I know that people have to go through their own journeys and stuff. So even as I have these conversations, I became aware of my own perception of how I view this. And so it just makes me think how all of this can be integrated to just create the greatest connection network and brain trust that everyone here can tap into whenever they're having any particular area in their life that you want. I say any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. And I will tell you, I actually think my addiction has been greatly enhanced as a result of a genius network of people. And you have been a huge part of that genius network for my addiction. Ned has been a huge part of that. I mean, I literally have one of Ned's ADHD coaches who I talk to every 2 weeks. And I have access to, you know, some of the world's greatest experts, and I pay to do it because it separates me from that and it allows me to jump into it. So I'm a big believer in doing that. So thank you.

You bet. Thank you.

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