213. breaking through struggle & self-doubt feat. john r. miles
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Today's guest is John R. Miles— a former U.S. Navy officer, Fortune 50 senior executive, entrepreneur, author, and award-winning podcast host. He is a recognized expert on intentional behavior change, leadership, personal mastery, and the transformative power of "mattering."
John's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles/
John and I dive into the following topics…
+ The theory that explains many people's career struggles
+ How to start discovering your authentic self & purpose in life
+ Finding your "stuck points" & healing them
+ Positive psychology findings on self-control & agency
+ Why you should start being more intentional
+ Steps to take to increase your mastery in life
+ Avoiding negative self talk when trying to achieve your goals
+ Signs that you're getting in your own way
+ What Gen Z should be doing to build their dream futures
+ so much more!
Mentioned In The Episode…
+ Ep. on Angela Duckworth's class
SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC
About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)
After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.
a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!
Sadie: [00:00:00] Welcome to She Persisted, the Gen Z Mental Health Podcast. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton. Let's get into it.
John: I think we're best positioned to help the person who we once were.
And for me, that's someone who is stuck living in what I describe as quiet desperation because you're living this inauthentic
being almost as if you show up every day wearing what I describe as a mask of pretense hiding really who you are because you're afraid to show your real self because you're trying to conform to what everyone else wants you to be.
Sadie: Hello, hello, you guys, and welcome back to She Persisted. We have a good conversation today that will leave you inspired and motivated and ready to take action in your life. We have John R. Miles on the podcast.
He is a former U. S. Navy officer, Fortune 500 senior executive, entrepreneur, author, and award winning podcast host. He's a recognized expert on intentional behavior change, leadership, personal mastery, and the transformative power of mattering. We talk about so much in this episode, a theory that [00:01:00] explains why so many people struggle with their career, we talk about how to start discovering your authentic self and your purpose in life, what your stuck points are and how you can work on healing them.
positive psychology, which you guys know I'm a huge fan of, and findings that are applicable to self control and agency, why you should start being more intentional, steps to take to increase your sense of mastery, how to avoid negative self talk when trying to achieve your goals, signs that you're getting in your own way, And what Gen Z should be doing to build their dream futures.
Like I said, we go all over the place in this episode, but a lot of really meaningful, tangible takeaways on how you can build your dream life and increase that sense of mastery and agency, which are really, really important to feeling like you matter and have a sense of purpose. So I hope you guys love this episode as much as I did.
And with that, let's dive in.
John: Well, Sadie, it's an honor to be here. Thank you so much for letting me join your incredible podcast.
Sadie: Of
course. So to get started, for people who haven't heard your podcast, which is incredibly popular, and I'm sure most people have at [00:02:00] least seen it on the podcast app before, can you give us a little bit of a background into your journey, how you ended up in the mental health self improvement space, , and specializing in passion and self development in all of these areas.
John: So, looking back, when I was your age, I don't think I would have ever thought I'd be doing what I'm doing today. I kind of always imagined myself as being a professional athlete, or I went in the military because I always saw myself doing outdoor type of activities, things where I wasn't constrained to a desk.
And for me, that whole life shift kind of happened when I was coming out of the military and I had an appointment to go to the FBI Academy where I was totally psyched to become an an FBI agent. And I had been working very closely with the F-B-I-C-I-A-D-E-A during my last duty station where I was doing [00:03:00] counter-drug interdiction operations.
But as fate has it, sometimes, , life doesn't go the way we expect and. I'm about three, four days away from going to Quantico when Congress can't pass the budget. It was one of the first times this had ever happened and my class got recycled. And naively, I thought at first that when it got recycled, that meant a few weeks or a couple months.
And I quickly found out that it meant somewhere between 24 months to 48 months. And I had no plan B at the time, because who thinks your Quantico class is going to get canceled, so it ended up forcing me to kind of go into a career trajectory I never expected. So, the transition from the military to the civilian world is never easy.
But it's more difficult when you have no plan B and you weren't expecting this to happen. And so, I [00:04:00] quickly did the only thing I knew that might work. And that is, I went to the Naval Academy, and at that point in time, we didn't really have the internet. So, we had this big book that was about four 400 pages long that had every living graduate who went to one of the service academies, and I just randomly started going down the list And calling people and writing them letters and I ended up getting a job as a result at Booz Allen doing management consulting.
And that kind of took me on the next 20 year period of my life where I went from working there to becoming a practice leader at Arthur Anderson. Then I hit my next unexpected event because in a matter of five, six weeks, Arthur Anderson disintegrated because of the Enron. , debacle that we were in the epicenter of and so I was yet left again to pivot and this time I went [00:05:00] into industry and I spent, , after this point in time, that remaining, , probably 14 years that I was doing this career working for Fortune 50 companies like Lowe's, Dell, and others, and I think as I was on this journey, I found myself at a place that I often talk about in the book where I really felt like I was stuck.
There's this theory called self discrepancy theory where you have your actual self, which is who you are at the given moment, and then you have your ought self, which is who you think you should be, which is really driven by our childhood, societal expectations, etc. And then you have Your ideal self, which is who you could be.
And I definitely, at that point, as I was in a period of soul searching, recognize that I had reached this state where I was living my ought self and I was really unfulfilled, didn't feel like anything [00:06:00] that I was doing was really mattering. And so at this point in time, I went to a guidance counselor, you could say for those.
I know you've got a younger audience, but, , it was a career coach. But as I was talking to this person, he asked me to imagine my life as if I was sitting on a kitchen stool. However, the stool had multiple supports, but one was completely out of alignment with the others. And that was the constant grind that I had.
Found my life to be at that time and then he had me do an exercise where he pictured my life Differently and I could put any pillar that I wanted or any post underneath that stool And so when I started to rethink my life I thought of the things that would make me whole and that was my physical health, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health Relationship health, financial health.
And so as I looked at how do you close that chasm, [00:07:00] that's what really led me on the journey to where I am today, because it sent me on this profound search of how do I become my authentic self? And how do I improve my health, my mental health, all these alternative health practices that I now talk about on the Passion Struck Podcast.
Sadie: I think this idea of, An authentic self is something that a lot of young adults can relate to.
It's something that's really, really common to struggle with in your 20s especially. as you're talking about, you're on this path of what you should be doing. You're kind of going through the motions and trying to get to this person that you want to be. And you find out that sometimes the goals that you've had maybe aren't aligned with who you want to be.
Or you get to the graduation, or the job that you want to be in, or the school that you thought you wanted to go to. And it's not how you thought it would be. It's different from how you expected it to feel and what the day to day would look like and how that would impact your mental health and, and [00:08:00] wellness as a whole.
In your experience, how did you really conceptualize and understand that authentic self and Know how to find that in your life, because like you're saying, it can be really challenging to get that mixed up with who you think you should be or the goals you have for yourself versus what really is aligned with, with your, yourself as a person.
John: Yeah. So I can think about this from two different perspectives. One, my own perspective, but two, I'm the father of two kids. My son is 25 and my daughter, like you, is 20. And is a sophomore, well now a junior in college, also at school right now,
so I've seen it from both perspectives, especially my son as he's himself is trying to formulate things in his life that are meaningful, , because he doesn't want to regret the life he creates, which I know for him had over the past couple of years. It has been a pretty dynamic [00:09:00] time of self reflection, figuring out what really, , provides impassion and purpose.
And it's interesting, , I interviewed someone named Andreas Widmer, and Andreas, , founded the business school that's at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C. But long ago, when Andreas was your age, he was really listless. He had no idea what he wanted to do. And his parents encouraged him because he's from Switzerland to put his name in the hat to become a Swiss guard.
He never thought in a million years he'd be selected, and then about 18 months later he finds himself being one of the core guards of Pope John Paul II. And he tells me that the Pope, even though he had these immense responsibilities, when you were in his presence, he made you feel as if you were the only thing on earth that mattered.
And he could sense that Andreas was really struggling. With this identity crisis and finding who he authentically was. And so [00:10:00] we started to coach him that that's really the journey in life. Is to figure out what are those unique skills that you can exploit in the service of helping someone else. And so for me, what this really translated into at this point was I think we're best positioned to help the person who we once were.
And for me, that's someone who is stuck living in what I describe as quiet desperation because you're living this inauthentic being almost as if you show up every day wearing what I describe as a mask of pretense hiding really who you are because you're afraid to show your real self because you're trying to conform to what everyone else wants you to be.
So I think the, you know, as I tried to wrangle myself out of this and obviously over time it takes much Longer to break this cycle than it [00:11:00] does when you're young because you become more conditioned. I, I think of it or liken it to depression. Typically you don't go from not having depression to depression overnight.
It typically, at least from my experience, is this thing that builds up gradually over time to a point that it has a hockey stick moment. And all of a sudden it goes from mild or moderate to severe. And I think the same thing with our identity crisis is in life. And so the way you've got to. Get yourself out of it is also going to take much longer than you expect it to take so I encourage people to find a center Foundational point that you can start working on for me It revolved around healing past trauma because I had a lot of stuck points that I hadn't dealt with earlier in life That were now really becoming huge boulders That were holding me back, but it could be different things for perhaps for someone.
It's their body image, [00:12:00] or perhaps it's a self confidence issue. Whatever it is, I encourage you to define what that is and double down on it. Because what I found through really working through that trauma was that when you start working on one area of your life and taking incremental steps there, it also starts to impacting other areas of your life in the most unexpected ways until you're really rebuilding all components of who you are.
And I find it, we overcomplicate what it takes to take that initial action. And we think it has to be this large thing. When really, it all boils down to small actions that we start taking over a prolonged period of time.
Sadie: Yeah. how you identify these stuck points, obviously, maybe in the day to day, we're not feeling fulfilled, or you don't feel like you're aligned with your authentic self, or you're struggling to show up in the way that you, you know you're capable of.
But how can [00:13:00] you determine, like, where, which boulder to start with, which stuck point is the first one that you should identify and start chipping away at because I think that's something that a lot of young adults struggle with. It feels there's like a lot of areas of their life that aren't where they want them to be or they're not aligned.
Everything kind of needs work at that point. So how do you identify what is ineffective and where it's best to put your energy?
John: Well, in my case, it might be a little bit differently because I went out and I sought professional help. So I went through something that's called Cognitive Processing Therapy, which is a form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy where you do these intense sessions over a period of three months, basically, where you're going through the different incidences of trauma that you've had.
, and then through that, you're trying to identify the core issue that has caused you the most pain, which in times can be [00:14:00] difficult because oftentimes people have gone through Unfortunately, multiple issues dealing with trauma, but I think regardless it's what is the biggest fear or self doubt that seems to be holding you back?
That would be, to me, the starting point that you have to gravitate towards solving.
Sadie: Yeah.
John: You know, for me, one of the biggest things was I had been so disappointed time and time again by authority figures in my life that I began to think that, , All authority figures were out to get me and were in it for themselves and not for my betterment.
Which, when you start really analyzing that and you look at 96 percent of your interactions, that's absolutely not true. So you have to go through this process of really understanding what is reality and what does this make believe. Image that you keep presenting to yourself that you need to just tackle.[00:15:00]
Sadie: Yeah, you mentioned two things in your response to the first question that I absolutely loved one was the concept that you're best equipped to help someone that is in a situation you've been in previously. And I think that's exactly what I found with the podcast. And then going down the, the educational path of psychology.
I think it's, it's really true and I think it takes a lot of work to be able to articulate what was helpful for you and how best to support someone in that situation. But I think, like you're saying, the level of fulfillment and authenticity you feel when you're, you're in that position is unparalleled and similarly.
Finding a way that you can be of service to others and I took, , a science of well being class this semester with Dr. Seligman, which was so incredible and so much fun. And one of the things he really shared early on was that the fastest and most sustainable way to boost your mood and increase feelings of happiness is to do an act of service for someone else.
It has the biggest impact on your mood and it also lasts longer than other [00:16:00] acts of similar nature. I think when you're feeling lost and struggling with maybe not feeling aligned with your authenticity or not sure how to begin this journey of personal development or building your life worth living, I think those are two really concrete ways to start that have a really immediate and strong ROI, which I think is very encouraging in building hope and building up that momentum because it is a really long journey like you mentioned.
John: Yeah, well Marty is quoting The work from Dacher Keltner from the University of California, Berkeley, out of his book called awe, where that's where his 25 years of studying awe came to that really grand conclusion that it's not, only in moments of splendor, seeing a newborn or Witnessing people do amazing feats that we find on the most common way.
We we actually find it is by either doing acts of service Ourself or watching others perform acts of kindness to one another.
Sadie: Yeah, [00:17:00] I'm
John: interested in the classes that you've had with Marty has he talked about at all the concept of mattering and the importance of Significance in life.
Sadie: Yeah. So this was actually the first time he's taught undergrads in eight years, and I unfortunately don't think he's going to do it again very soon and he structured it as like a 180 degree overview of all of his work and all the research he's done and kind of the roots of positive psychology and learned helplessness and then all the research that has been done and then where he sees it going in the future and how AI ties into everything because that's such a hot topic.
, but feelings of mattering and and belonging were definitely touched on. And one thing that we learned about, , is the resilience training work that they did with the military and how such an important element of that was those feelings of belonging and mattering. And another thing that he touched on that was related as well, but also I think very similar as agency and that belief that that you can make changes and that those changes [00:18:00] will have a positive impact on your life and that you can in some way change, the world to a degree and having that belief that you have that ability, , and I think that goes really hand in hand with feeling like you belong and matter and have some role in this larger world that we live in.
, but we talked a lot about relationships and how those interactions and relationships have to look how many positive. correspondences you have to have for it to be an enjoyable relationship to be in. , and what types of relationships the happiest people have. And a big element was that mattering and feeling significant in your larger world.
And then obviously with PERMA, accomplishment is a huge part of that. , and so he definitely did touch on that.
John: Yeah, no, I, my understanding talking to Angela Duckworth, , a friend of mine is that Marty is kind of dedicating this last chapter of his life to the science of mattering, which is really important because, and what he's talking about with personal agency is similar to what Angela [00:19:00] studies with the concept of self control or the science of self control.
And it's overlaps, both of them overlap with what I describe in my work as. intentionality or intentional living, meaning I think Angela got a lot right with grit in describing passion and perseverance. , as I look at her study of cadets at West Point, I had a firsthand experience with this going to the Naval Academy.
And although I agree with her, the passion and perseverance were two absolutely critical things that helped me get through it. To me, one of the important aspects of it was having that personal agency, that self control. Or what I describe as intentionality in my daily actions. Because regardless of what you're doing, you really have to understand that are the actions that you're taking, are they really aligned to your values?
And then, more importantly, [00:20:00] There's an interdependency then between the actions we take in the pursuit of our ambitions and aspirations. And that's what a lot of people don't get right, is that intentionality of aligning all four of those things. And oftentimes we think that they're not tied together, they're not related.
And that's just not the way, from my research, it works. They're actually very interrelated. And dependent on one another.
Sadie: Yeah, I'm taking Angela's class this fall, and I'm so excited. It's like I wrote about it in my pen essay. I was like, I can't wait to take a class with Angela Duckworth, and it'll be, it'll be incredible.
I've heard amazing things with how she structures it, and , there's lots of group projects and involvement, whereas the Dr. Seligman's class was like a very large class, understandably. , there was like at least 300 people, and so I, I think it'll be really, really fun to, learn from her, and obviously, Read so much of her research, but I think being in the classroom and really putting those things into practice will be really [00:21:00] cool
John: Well, if you're taking those two, you got to take a katie milkman class as well.
Sadie: Yes 100 circling back to what you said about intentionality, I think this is something that kind of closes that gap like you're saying between where you're currently at and where you think you should be. And especially on a day to day basis, how we feel, going through the motions isn't the right word, but how we feel waking up in the morning and going to work or going to school or showing up in our relationships.
How we feel in those day to day interactions has a really big impact on our mental health, regardless of what these commitments are. And I think our intentionality has a really big role in that, I think it's also something that young adults really haven't mastered because there are so many things in their life that are kind of by design forcing them to do these things, especially in high school.
You have to get up and go to school. Your parents are structuring a lot of your relationships. You have this built in community, which is really important. really positively impacting your mental health. You have all [00:22:00] these extracurriculars, you have your physical health aspect of your wellness taken care of, and then as we become more independent and are living on our own and are kind of in this in between stage in college, we are the ones that are actually being intentional rather than going through the motions because these constructs have been put in place.
So. I know there's so many schools of thought here, whether it's habit loops or different ways that we reinforce things or tying these different actions to our values. So many different ways that people try to approach this, but what is your school of thought here of how we can increase that intentionality and close that gap between where we are and where we want to be?
John: I wrote a whole book on it.
Sadie: Yes.
John: So I boiled it down to what I call the passion struck framework and the passion struck framework is part of an overarching larger model that I call the passion struck model and in this model for a person who's listening I want you to imagine that you're looking at Mickey Mouse or it could be Minnie Mouse But in [00:23:00] this model think of the two ears on Mickey Mouse for me one of those represents mindset shifts and to me the mindset shifts are our starting point because They really influence our why, our purpose for why we go about our lives and they influence how we take action.
And then the other ear are our behavior shifts and our behavior shifts is really the what we do and how we do it. And it really builds upon those mindset shifts. And when you bring those two together, it then comes into Mickey Mouse's nose, which I call. The psychology of progress, which has two components, if you think of the nose and the mouth, one is the process of deliberate action, taking action in your life.
And the other element is intrinsic motivation, where so many of us today really use [00:24:00] extrinsic motivators to fuel our fires. I argue that it's the intrinsic motivators. Those things that really bring you fulfillment that are really this fuel that powers the mindset shifts, the behavior shifts, and the willingness to take deliberate action.
And then I couple this with passion and perseverance. Passion lines up with igniting that mindset shift area or finding our why. The perseverance really gets into the behavior shifts because we need to persevere beyond challenges and And then intentionality is really connected to the deliberate action that we need to take.
So, that's how I've kind of organized the book, and then in each of the mindset shifts and behavior shifts, there are six core steps that I suggest people take, on building each one out.
Sadie: I want to shift gears a little bit, but it really does build off of this model and [00:25:00] this framework, which is talking about mastery, because another Dr.
Seligman perspective is that the opposite of helplessness is mastery, and a lot of what we've described here with feeling like you're not aligned with your true self, or you don't know how to get to where you want to be, or you're struggling to find that passion and perseverance, In a lot of ways, like you're saying, it feels like you're helpless.
Sometimes it shows up as feelings of depression. It's really that inability to take action and feel like you aren't capable of doing that. And mastery is the inverse of that. And a lot of your work is It's really related to that concept. And I think this is another thing that young adults want to improve and they want to increase in their life.
They want to have more mastery, but they're not sure how to do it. Is there a certain part of the framework or certain tasks that you give people that can help them increase their mastery in their lives, especially when they're new to this process and they haven't gone through the whole framework or the whole model yet?
John: Yeah, I mean to me Mastery is something That we tend to look at the end [00:26:00] goal Let's say that the end goal Is, I wanna learn how to play guitar, or I wanna learn a foreign language. And it seems so daunting that we don't even start to go down the path of performing it. And I think that there are a couple things here that we need to think about.
One is this whole concept of activation energy, which I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it, but activation energy, if you think of two axises, one axis would have. energy on it, the other axis would have intentionality on it. And just think of yourself as starting a task. , and this task, if you want to picture this, could be a person who is trying to roll a boulder up a hill.
And at first, when you're starting that activity, that activation energy is extremely high, because you're going against a lot of gravity, a lot of friction. And so when you start pushing it, it [00:27:00] takes a ton of effort, but the more you start putting positive energy behind it, the more it becomes easier and you're lowering the activation energy.
So one of the key things to doing this and becoming a master is to find ways to lower that activation energy to undertake more tasks. The other thing, and you brought up habit loops, is Again, it doesn't mean huge heroic, you know, Hercules type activities. It's really taking incremental steps by forming small habits, meaning Saving 8 a day equates to 3, 000 a year. Reading 20 pages a day equals 30 books a year. Walking 10, 000 steps a day equals 70 marathons so if you can start lowering that activation energy and you can start taking more incremental actions, those are two extremely important steps.
And then the third Another important step is something I write about [00:28:00] in a chapter called the bee and the turtle effect, where we need to be like the bees where we're taking the action and lowering that activation energy like they do because they're very much caught up in the day to day work that they need to do to support hive and the queen bee, but we need to be like the tortoise in that we need to have that longer term vision of where we're trying to go and ensure that there's an alignment like I talked about earlier Between these incremental things that you're doing, this mastery you're forming, and what you want to accomplish down the line.
So, in order to do that, I think as you're taking these steps, it's very important to give yourself residual rewards along the way. And to not get caught up at trying to pair yourself to others. And this goes into the work of Benjamin Hardy. We're so oftentimes, as we're trying to master something, we become our own worst enemies [00:29:00] because we're living in the gap.
We're trying to compare ourselves to someone else as opposed to living in the gain where we're looking at our incremental progress and comparing it to who we were a month ago, six months ago, a year ago. So those are some, some tips that, that I would initially give out that people really need to think about.
Sadie: You mentioned this a little bit at the end with not comparing yourself and focusing on the small steps rather than getting so caught up in the outcome or what it is that you're trying to master. But having done so much research and talking to so many people and doing so much self work as well, I would love to get your perspective on Kind of the self talk element of this.
There's again lots of schools of thoughts on this, whether it's more of like a tough love approach, or it's you don't think about it, you just do it, and then there's more of like the give yourself grace, and there's more validation, and kind of talking yourself through it. How do you explain and recommend that people navigate the mental part of this?
Because I think a lot of people [00:30:00] get caught up in that. That's kind of why they aren't able to take these steps. It's how they're speaking to themselves, or they are talking themselves out of it at some point. So, What are your thoughts on the mental component of that, which I'm sure ties into the CBT that you mentioned initially?
John: Yeah, so since you mentioned, , Angela Duckworth, one of her best friends is a friend of mine named Ethan Cross, who teaches psychology at the University of Michigan. Ethan's a New York Times best selling author also, and he's got a great book called Chatter that I would encourage listeners to pick up a copy specifically on this point, because it's really all about negative thought loops.
And something that I like to share with people is, especially when you're young, it is so important, we were talking about authenticity, to understand that the most incredible person that you are ever going to meet in your entire life is the person who stares back at you in the mirror when you wake up every morning.
The biggest critic you're ever going to find in your life is that same person. [00:31:00] And so, we all face our biggest competitor. I mean, Novak Djokovic had to face his biggest competitor to become the number one tennis player in the world. Angela Duckworth, earlier on in her career, had to face her own inner critic when she started out teaching in inner city schools and wasn't living up to her own potential of what she was setting herself out to do.
And I refer to this whole thing as we often become Our own visionary arsonist, and I love this metaphor because we arson the very things in life that we want to accomplish, meaning we have the best intentions for personal growth and achievement, but we do things that inadvertently undermine our own progress in a great example of this is it's akin to GPS, but then repeatedly taking detours that take you farther and farther away from it.
And [00:32:00] this isn't due to a lack of desire or ability, rather it's due to the subconscious behaviors that are misaligned with our intended objectives. And so, one of the most important things that, people need to realize today is we are living in an age where distraction is permeating our complete we spend so much time, especially People in your age group on our devices. I take Toastmasters with a, with a woman who's 22 or 23 years old, who, , did a whole Toastmaster speech on the fact that she was using her social media four and a half to five hours a day. And I don't think that that's an isolated thing.
And if you keep spending so much time on those apps, You end up comparing yourself to others like I was talking about and you find yourself living in this [00:33:00] gap that I talked about so Signs for you to understand whether this is something that you're facing are are you setting unrealistic goals?
Do you face a lot of procrastination? Do you do a lot of negative self talk? Do you have avoidant behaviors? And then to me, the starting point really becomes working on not getting sidetracked by the distractions as I was just talking about, but a gradual shift into of setting goals that are hard enough that it's making you extend yourself, but are easy enough for you to complete.
And the more you start doing that, the more confidence you're going to gain. And the more you're going to start moving away from these visionary arsonist behaviors that are holding you back.
Sadie: Yeah. My last question that I want to ask you, it's a bit of a loaded one, but I'm excited to get your thoughts, which is if you were in your teens and twenties right now, what would [00:34:00] you do?
What books would you be reading? What podcasts would you be listening to? What goals would you be setting? Would you be prioritizing self talk or relationships or? career, how would you approach building your life worth living and building your future, and especially prioritizing your mental health and, yourself?
Because I think that's something that sometimes we forget to prioritize, but it really is everything when it comes to, to building our life worth living. So how would you navigate this, now having all of this perspective and insight and research, in your arsenal?
John: Well, mean the first thing I would do is exactly what I did to my two kids is I handed them a copy of my book because I dedicated the whole book to them and their generation because that is what I'm trying to help people see.
We typically go into life like I did and we, we think that we have to follow the structured approach that we've seen our parents and grandparents do, which is we're born, We'll kind of go through the typical schooling system. We go to college, [00:35:00] we get a job, we get married, we have kids, we continue our career, retire, go on some trips and eventually die.
And there's a complete different way that you can navigate your life. And it's really. Positioning yourself to move out of the matrix that we're so taught to confine ourselves in and to do life differently, which is what I tried to talk about in the book and what I'm doing now with my life and what I wished I would have done earlier.
And one of the most important things that people need to understand is that we as humans are different from any other species on this earth because we were built to be the ultimate learning and adaptability machine. And something that I find people don't practice enough is that constant learning and thinking about the future that your generation is walking into.
I mean, as I look back at this point, 30 years ago from when I graduated [00:36:00] college and the pace of change, then that I thought was high. And I look at what it is now. In just 30 short years, things have changed so rapidly that this constant need to reinvent yourself and to relearn things and to stay ahead of the trends that are going to be coming is going to be extremely crucial.
To your career. So those would be some of the things I would recommend now as far as books Some of the core books that I love. I mean, we've already Mentioned a couple of the authors grit by Angela Duckworth is a great book how you change by Katie Milkman is a great book All of Jonah burgers books. love his book on invisible influence is a great one because toxic People and habits enter our lives and we often don't see them.
I think Hidden Potential by Adam Grant is a great book. Jim Quick's book [00:37:00] about, , teach limitless and teaching yourself how to speed read and how to use your mind differently is a fantastic book. I think Will Guedara's influences on using. What he calls unreasonable hospitality or going above and beyond and how you're serving other people is an extremely good book.
Bob Waldinger, who is a Harvard professor, leads the Harvard Adult Study of Aging currently. His book, Good Life, is an extremely fantastic book. Dr. Mark Hyman wrote a great book this past year around future Self and how you become the healthiest that you possibly can be. I mean, those are just a few off the top of my mind.
I mentioned Ethan Cross's book. Emma Sapella has a great book called Sovereign, which tells you the importance of sovereignty. And then I think one of the most important books that's been written in recent years was Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman, which really gives An updated view of [00:38:00] Maslow's hierarchy, but I think he does it through a better metaphor of using a sailboat So as far as podcasts that people can listen to I will give some of the smaller ones that I have found or Maybe not the mega shows, but some of the other shows that I think are really good I think Scott Miller does an excellent show on leadership and He does that with the Franklin Covey Institute.
So it's there on leadership. He's got fantastic guests. He's a great interviewer I think Scott Barry Kaufman's if you want to learn more about positive psychology Is a fantastic one. obviously Angela and Katie's podcasts are great. And, , they're, any of the podcasts that come out of Freakonomics are great podcasts.
So I'd highly encourage those. James, Dr. James Doty has a great podcast out on the West Coast. , and there are a lot of, , podcasts that , come out of, , Stanford. And, , Berkeley that I have found, , very transformational as well. [00:39:00] As far as guess the, the bigger podcasts, I always like, , Rob Deal's, , podcast.
I have always loved Lewis Howe's School of Greatness. It's one that I studied, , earnestly. Mel Robbins has a great podcast. If you're into manifestation, Gabby Bernstein has a great podcast. So I mean, those are just some off the top of my head.
Sadie: I love it. I'll be putting together a guide and putting it on Instagram so everyone can check it out and I will definitely be working my way through your reading list.
So many of those. Some I've read, some I haven't, so I can't wait to check all of those out. And I know everyone's going to be running to grab your book after this, but where can they get your book, listen to your podcast, and follow along on social media?
John: Yeah, thank you so much for that. I mean, the best two places to find me are either John rmymiddleinitialmiles.
com or passionstruck. com and you can find the book anywhere, , online. So Amazon, Barnes Noble, Target, Walmart, wherever.
Sadie: Amazing. Well, all of that will be in the show notes. Thank you so [00:40:00] much. This was absolutely incredible.
John: Thank you so much for having me.
Sadie: If you enjoyed this episode of She Persisted, make sure to leave a review, subscribe, and share with a friend or family member. Follow along at at She Persisted podcast on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and more for bonus content. Thanks for listening and keep persisting.
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