Celebrating One Year of The Meaningful Revolution: 5 Lessons Learned

Foreign. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution. I am your host, Sean Butner, and today is a little bit of a celebration episode. We have gone over one year of the Meaningful Revolution of releasing every week of interviewing people about the things they nerded out about episodes like this, where it's just me talking to the mic, feeling awkward, but getting a little bit more of a footing underneath my feet. And today, I wanted to first just thank you. I guess the revolutionaries here, the people committed to their personal development or to making an impact in their worlds and that have been listening along with this humble little show. It's you guys that. That help me feel motivated to do this. I hope the conversations have been as compelling and interesting to you as they have been for me. And all around that this episode, I want to talk about five things that I've learned from creating with this pod or creating this podcast and working with a lot of the guests. Yeah. And again, and to celebrate you, because it's you who makes this work, who, again, allows me, an introvert that really does not want to be in the spotlight, feel compelled to produce and show up every week to deliver something that might help you in your life as you work on those things that are meaningful, those things that you've designed for your life and your family. Again, thank you. Now, as I reflect on the last year, there's so many people in the community that have helped that I feel like I've had, like, over 40 guests. A lot of friends have started to branch out into people that are just on the Meaningful Revolution path with whatever they're working on, but we don't have a personal relationship with. And it's been really amazing to see the response, to see how people have really connected with the work that we're doing here. And I just want to acknowledge that first five things that I've learned through doing the podcast. Right. I have five specific things to talk about, but there's a general feeling where I think because of the audience here, because of you guys, that I share that this feeling of getting closer to the thing that you're passionate about. Right. I love coaching. I love doing interviews. I love having conversations with people. And this podcast was a idea that one trick, the introverted side of myself, to reach out to people, to have those meaningful conversations as a way to work on something. Say, hey, do you want to do this thing with me? Versus, hey, do you just want to hang out? Because it could be a little bit awkward, especially how I would feel about it. But then you're also doing it for this idea of serving people on finding their purposeful impact. And since I was young, I've always wanted to just help people be better out in the world. Just leave people better than how you met them is I guess it's strange motto to have as a kid, but it was something I aimed to do because I realized early on that we all have a choice with everything that we do. And that is can we make life around us better or can we put more burden on those around us? And that comes from my mom having breast cancer when I was in kindergarten. And she, my parents told me and my younger brother that, hey, I have this thing called cancer. It's like the late 80s. Cancer treatments have evolved quite a bit since then. But she's, I don't know, this could kill me. This could be fine. I could be out for a while. But as I'm healing, first off, I feel like we needed to let you know. And I'm like five, three trying to process this. But more importantly, my mom said so you and your brother are gonna have to help us out a bit around the house because I'm gonna be doing something called chemotherapy. It's probably gonna knock me out. So you guys are gonna need to help take the trash out, do some laundry, take care of the dishes, that kind of thing because I'm not gonna be able to help. And your dad's going to be working to try to help me help pay for all the treatment. And it was a pivotal moment in my life because that idea of we're going to need you to contribute. Right? You're young, you shouldn't have to do this, but this is the situation and we have to pull together because we're all in it together. And so growing up and how I showed up in my tech career, how I showed up in this coaching business has always been this genual feeling of we're all in it together. Which is also why I wanted to celebrate the one year, over one year anniversary of the Meaningful Revolution podcast. So I'll thank you guys probably a million more times this episode just because that's how I feel right now. And I want to articulate it if you haven't heard it enough or if you're new listener. Yeah, it's not normally how it goes. But thank you, thank you for listening, thank you for being here, thank you for what you do. Because we're all in it together. But so that's basically. So that's how I got the feeling of we're all in this together. And that's also another, I think, essential feeling for community and for treating people as humans is to realize we have this shared experience, the shared reality, the shared circumstance and situations that all humans experience. We all have parents, we all have suffering, we all have excitement and achievement. We all have basic needs to survive every day through eating and sleeping and all these types of things, our health. And it's important to realize that our communities are bigger than we think, and your community is bigger than you think. It's not just you in front of your desk working on your business, doing what you have to do for your careers. It's your kids and your friends and your family seeing you do the work. It's those people seeing you step into uncomfortable situations. To have a sense of impact in the world, a positive impact in the world, and to how you show up and treat other people was a huge part of that. And there are more people watching than you think. And there are people that absolutely need you to be a role model. So I didn't mean to turn this into, like a speech, a soapbox speech, but I do want to leave with this idea that people are watching and we all could step up a bit more and I could step up a bit more. And how I show up in my business and the podcast and I'm always striving and struggling. So it's not an easy thing. It's not that everything goes perfectly. It's not that everything is happy and perfect because it's a mess. If you guys knew how things operated behind the camera, off camera for the podcast and this, like you would. It would be laughable, right? But it's also fun. That's part of life is going through the mess for the things that are worth it. Reflecting on the last year of the Meaningful Revolution podcast, there are five things that I've learned that I think are really important. Right. I think first point and the secret question, if you've been listening for a while, that tends to unlock people's excitement. Since I record this on video. If you watch this on YouTube, you can see people's faces light up when I ask questions around community. Right? We're all, we're social animals, human beings. And so figuring out how the thing that you're passionate about, the thing that you would nerd out about forever, is connected to people is key. Right? And there's always a story of somebody who was an influence of somebody of the person who's excited about the thing, how they got introduced to that topic, or the community space that helped people feel accepted for who they were because they loved trains or because they loved guitar, because they loved whatever they love. And so that asking questions about community from an interviewer, part of the point of view has been essential in shifting and weaving that in to. I know I can ask that question if I need to raise the energy of the podcast or just engage the interviewee a little bit more. I want to pose this question to you and who are the people around you that influenced your decision to have your personal, meaningful revolution be whatever it is, whether that is focusing on family, if it's contributing to solving a big problem in society or work or whatnot, who were the people that influenced you in and feeling really passionate about the things that you love and find meaning in. And what did those people have in common? Right. I know I paused a little bit, but that follow up question of if you think of all your influences, your mentors, the people that really helped you nerd out about the thing that you nerd out, who are the people involved and what were their common characteristics? And that's usually in a coaching standpoint, that's a really big insight into how people work. A lot of people learn a lot of things about themselves, learn about the type of people they're trying to attract with the thing that they're doing. And so that's a very fun and important thing to recognize. And if you want to really connect more with your personal, meaningful revolution in a more meaningful way, go and thank those people. Show gratitude. Hey, when you introduced me into playing guitar years and years ago, or this band or whatever it is, I always think of you when I do this thing that I love and it's because of you, and it's because of these reasons, like that point of connection can be really crazy. So I again, the first point is that your personal, meaningful revolution is about people, but the thing to do about it is to go and let them know and make a habit of appreciating people. So many people aren't thanked for the things that we should thank them for and it's essential for building that relationship and connection. So I think could really like it. The second thing in Meaningful Revolutions that I've noticed in guests in particular is a sense of clarity of what you're trying to accomplish. Right. And as a high performance coach, I talk a lot about clarity of who you are authentically and getting crystal clear on the things you want to accomplish in life and then helping people figure out the plan to get there. But in order to make a significant impact, a purposeful impact on authentic Movement out in the world. You have to be clear on what you're trying to accomplish so you can communicate it or so you can build the things that will support that mission. Right. You cannot write a book and not be crystal clear on your thinking on the topic. And that was interesting, looking back at guests that I felt were more able to talk about the thing that they loved super passionately about that. Those things. If they wrote a book, it was a lot easier to have that conversation than somebody who hadn't written a book. Because I think the clarity of thinking about the topic just is different. When you have to create a. A book or people that had courses or people that had created and thought through frameworks and systems, which is saying this out loud, you're like, no, dasha. And it's totally common sense, but it's also leads to the next point. But the people that are clear on the mission, clear on the change they want in the world, clear on the impact they want to have in their communities and with those around them, are then able to do this third point and take action to do something right. Whether that's writing a book or creating a course or going on a bunch of interviews to talk about a topic that you absolutely love. They're out there in the world doing stuff. Right. One of my favorite songs, when I think of action is Into Action from Tim Armstrong and the chorus is let's get going into action. If you hesitate now, that's a subtraction. But it's getting dirty, getting messy. Getting into the world and trying stuff and getting the feedback and learning from it. But it's one thing to love something. It's another thing to love something and do something to help it persist in the world. And so many times it can be really tough because of self doubt, because of fears that we have, because of our perceived impact in the world to mitigate that. And so I really do appreciate and honor all the guests and all the listeners and people that are out there making their dreams happen, are out there making their ambitions hit walls sometimes super hard and trying to figure out, okay, that did not work. What do we got to do to move the football forward? Yeah, taking action is super important. I think this next point too is you take action. But there's also this intentional impact that people want that's positive and positive. I put in air quotes, it's helping people live better lives. Going back to that story that I shared of we're all in this together. Like, it's. You're not gonna be listening to a Podcast called the Meaningful Revolution. If your whole business is screwing other people out of money so that you could buy a big mansion, right? That's not the kind of people that I want to attract. Like, not to say there's nothing, anything wrong with having money or anything like that, but if your intention is to hurt people to get ahead in life, it's hard to sustain that mission for a long time, in my personal belief. But the people, the guests, again, the people that have been on, that I've been fortunate enough to talk with have always had some type of intentional impact that they want to change. How we teach people to change, how burnout happens with moms, or burnout happens in the medical profession, or how people feel in community around the things that they create. So that intentional impact is very important. And so the question I have for you, if can you answer this question very clearly and very quickly? What is your intention through your personal meaning for revolution out in the world? How does it help people and can you be very concise about it? And if you need help? Again, as a coach, I help people with this a lot. I have a free strategy session. You can sign up with the link below here. Answering that question is like, what is my intentional impact in the world? Like, how do I want people to feel? How do I want to have people behave differently out in the world? Right? If you could lead an army of people, your personal meaningful revolution, what would they be doing every day or every week or every month on a habits basis? Is it meditating? Is it yoga? Is it writing a song? Is it creating a blog chapter, whatever, Right? Again, it could be anything. But knowing why it's important and how it improves people's lives will help you in your meaningful revolution. And knowing that from interviewing people has helped me define what that is for this show. And then the fifth thing that I've learned by doing this show, showing up every week, not missing a week this past year, is that you're always evolving and learning, right? You get different cameras, you get different bits of technology, you try different things and some of it works, some of it doesn't work. Part of the fun of life is that process of learning, of figuring it out and realizing that. So maybe sometimes it's easier than you think, maybe sometimes it's more fun than you think. But everyone that I've interviewed has also said they never did one thing and nailed it on the first time. And that's all they did, right? People are always thinking about the next book, they're always thinking about the next course. They're always thinking about how they can reach more people in a different way. And in order to do that, you have to be flexible, you have to be adaptable, you have to evolve and you have to learn from everything that you're doing. And the highest performers, the highest and most successful people that I know are really great at figuring out how things are, figuring out how to try a couple of new things to shift it in your personal, meaningful revolution, whatever that is. What are three new things you're gonna try for this next year? But I'll tell you, for this show, right, I'm going to be experimenting with having a little bit more help with editing. It's something that I can do. I'm very basic at it. I have very little patience for. And to make the show more successful, I think getting some help and trying a couple of different things this next year is going to be high on the list. So looking forward to that. I think something different I'm going to do for this show too is actually taking all the lessons learned from this last year more in detail and creating a framework for the meaningful revolution. I've had a couple of tries and attempts. There's been some episodes where I talk about it and I think I have some of it right, I think I have some of it that needs some refinement. But there will be a meaningful revolution process or formula or something of that nature in this next year as we go forward with the podcast. And then the third thing that I'm going to try to do this next year, that's on the goals and we'll see what happens guest wise. But I'd like to shift it almost completely into interviews and also would love to do two shows a week, so Tuesdays and Thursdays or something like that. So that's what I'm trying to evolve this show from everything that I've learned this past year. What are three things that you're going to do different in your life or with your meaningful revolution? And please let me know, right? You can always post a comment on Apple Apple podcasts on the YouTube channel. You can take a look at the show notes or email me. I'd love to know how we can support you going forward. I also would love to shout out more comments, like if there's a fourth thing I'd love to try, right, Because I'm an overachiever. I said three. I'm gonna give you fours. I'd love to hear from you guys more. And you gals, you folks. And I'd love to have answer your questions or I'd love to cheer you on with what's ever going on in your life. So coming up with maybe a more formal process versus just hit me up on YouTube or email me or comment on Apple Podcasts is going to be important in that. That said, again, thank you so much for a year of listening of podcasts bearing with me, learning and being a hot mess. And I know I say that, and a lot of times because I've had other people that I follow that say this. You never see how crazy it is behind the scenes again. But yeah, it's been fun. I love doing this. Love to hear from you. And with that, we'll see you guys next week on the Meaningful Revolution podcast.