One of my favorite tools for gaining self-awareness and growth is asking yourself this simple little question. I ask myself this multiple times a day, every day, "Who do I want to be? In any situation you're in and any decision that you have to make, just ask yourself the question, "Who do I want to be?" When you answer it, you learned a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about who you are and you learn a lot about who you could be if you made a decision just slightly differently than before.
Hello, everybody, whether you've been listening for a while or whether this is your first time here, we are happy to have you. Before we jump into the episode, it would be awesome if you could write a review for this show, especially on apple podcasts. So it takes less than a minute or two. It's pretty straightforward. So you click on the show, you scroll all the way down to the bottom. And there's a little button that says, write a review.
And as always, if there's an episode you really like, send it over to your friends. They'll probably like it too. Thank you so much. And let's get back to the show. So welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. I have the pleasure of having Cory Chadwick on. He's a super proud dad, a husband, he's a mental fitness and mindset coach, which is something that obviously I love and the founder of The Mental Gym.
So his philosophy is just like we work out our bodies, just like we train our bodies, what about we actually train our mind. Maybe that's even more important than just training our bodies. And he's an unwavering optimist which is crazy considering the story we're going to get into that passionate about helping people, helping organizations to be the best versions of themselves through optimal mental fitness, optimal mental health, consistent personal growth, really excited for this conversation.
Welcome to the show here, Cory.
Thanks. Michael, I'm excited.
Absolutely. And so we're really gonna dive into the deep end here and it really gives 'em a contrast to what you do right now, and the optimism that you holds in your heart based on where you came from. So I want to actually start off and talk about fear and safety and how that plays such a role in our formation as a kid, and then later on into adulthood. So basically when you were growing up, you had out of the blue kind of like a freak brain virus thing.
And for seven months, the doctors didn't know what was going on that didn't know how to diagnose it. You didn't even know whether you're going to live or die. Can you start there and start with how that affected you personally? Just that fear, that insecurity, that lack of safety in that regard and how that affected you at that time growing up.
Yeah, you don't expect that sort of thing to happen. I was just a normal 16 year old kid living my life. And I started getting really dizzy. didn't know why, I was having trouble walking a straight line, and they decided they, get them to the hospital. It's like something might be wrong. And doctors just started running a whole bunch of tests. I started getting these really intense headaches that didn't go away. So it was in the hospital for awhile just running every test.
I felt like a Guinea pig, and they're trying to find out like what's wrong with this guy. And it's scary because when they don't have an answer for you, you don't know what's happening. You don't know if you're going to live or if you're going to die. And then if you do live, what's your life going to look like, is this my life going to be entirely like this? Just, I can't walk a straight line and I'm in pain all the time. So it was a scary time. I will say that there was a small part of that.
Maybe being a little naive that helped me out a little too, that, there's part of me that I'm worried about it, but I'm also thinking like, oh, I'm going to be fine. And also just being the optimist, I was an optimist for me, a young age. And so I tend to think and believe that things are going to work out. Even when I don't have all the evidence that it will. But yeah, it was scary. It was scary waiting seven months. It's nerve wracking.
I can only imagine what that was like on my parents that whole time. And fortunately in about seven months, there was one doctor who If anybody's ever seen the show house, this guy really reminded me of Dr. House. He just really thought differently and you could see the wheels turning and he just started testing for things like freak, rare things that obviously no one had tested for in seven months.
And he found this virus that at the time, I think was only diagnosed about twice a year in north America. So no one was looking for it. I think now it's a little more commonly diagnosed. It's called Jamestown canyon virus, California Sarah group. Yeah, I mean, right. Like a tongue twister. And it affects different parts of the body in different things too. But again, I think now it's a little more commonly diagnosed, but at the time it just wasn't.
So, yeah, it was an interesting way to spend a chunk of your teen years for sure.
Yeah. What did that look like? Just out of the curiosity side of things, did they end up having to do surgery or what was the treatment for that?
No. So interestingly, once they found it, they they said that it was this virus had run its course, I guess they can tell by the antibodies or something like that. They could see that the virus had actually run its course. And that a lot of the symptoms I was experiencing the at the time would start naturally fading in the near future. And so they decided to not go into any like invasive treatment or anything like that.
I was on pain medication for a long time pretty much throughout the entire process through the entire seven months because it was rough. It was rough. And then, yeah, just a little bit at a time symptoms started easing up just a little bit. And then eventually I was able to resume life. I went back to school kind of part-time. Just trying to manage it as it was in that later stage of it.
And then eventually I felt normal again, the pain was gone, the dizziness was gone and that I was able to get back to life.
was there ever that thought in your...
So,
head, like, is this going to reoccur, kind of thing, just taking up mental space in the back or...
no, not really only because the way they explained it, like it's just a thing that happens. It doesn't reoccur. It was so rare. I guess I thought something else might happen, but there was no worry that this might reoccur and then I'm just thinking, okay, the odds were long in it, like long enough that this would happen in the first place. Am I really going to sweat something else? that's like lightning striking twice. So it actually didn't bother me. And I was just happy
Um,
to get on to, going back to school and hanging out with my friends and playing hockey and things like that. Yeah, I was happy to leave it behind me.
For sure. And unfortunately, like that's not the only, only thing that happened growing up for you. So, during that time and probably before that and stuff as well, your parents are on and off as far as their relationship and stuff
Yeah.
and your mom actually struggle with pretty significant bipolar and then ended up taking her life. Really unfortunately after a couple unsuccessful attempts of that. Can you dive into that? I know it's a really heavy topic, but it's important to talk about and it's a real aspect life. Can you talk about how that affected you, how that affected your family and just your overall outlook on life.
Sure. Like you mentioned, and my parents were together and apart a bunch of times. And I was fortunate they were really great parents. Like they never put us in the middle of their stuff. So, my brother and I were really fortunate. We had great parents growing up and I think when they split up the first time and I was quite young, but it taught me that life isn't all sunshine and roses and it forced me to grow up pretty quickly.
So by the time I dealing with this brain virus, I just felt like I was a little more understanding of life and how life might happen. And that helped me get through that. So when my mom was dealing with her bipolar disorder, when it was around that time in my life, I didn't know what was going on for one, nobody talked about mental illness. This wasn't a part of normal conversation. And especially when it's your mom, at least my mom tried to hide it from everybody.
There was a real stigma about it. Right. And I can only imagine what it's like to suffer with something like that and have such a stigma about it that you feel like you can't be open and talk about it with people that must be so isolating. And there were only a handful of people who really knew she did a great job of hiding it from people. And that includes for me and my brother, I didn't know what was going on. I just knew that sometimes mom would act differently.
But over time as getting a little later into my teen years, it became more obvious that something's really going on and she was really struggling with something. One of the really hardest things, especially when things started getting really bad and then she'd go through like really long bouts of depression.
I would say this is with anybody who's dealing with any sort of illness or sickness to, to see somebody that you love so much be in so much pain and like there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do to help them that's when you learn to feel powerless, I think that's when you, when that can creep in and I experienced that earlier again, like when your parents split up, you realize like this isn't in my control. That's not my decision.
then you get a brain virus and you're like, well, I didn't ask for this and this isn't in my control either. But when you do start to realize is that there are certain things that you can control. So you can't control your circumstances necessarily. You can't control the situation. I couldn't control what was going on with my mom, but I was learning by that point that I could control how I approached things and how I dealt with them in my attitude about.
Make it any less painful to to see this going on. And then again, I didn't even know how bad it was until the first time I got a phone call saying that mum tried to take her life. That, that rocked me like that freak me out. I just didn't know that we were there. I didn't know things were that that severe. So that really rocked me. And then the second time I got a call that she tried again. I it's just scary.
I would say that every time my phone rang for a good year, as soon as the phone would ring, I wouldn't see who's calling or anything. I would just hear a ring and like my, I would just freeze up. Like I would feel this feeling in the pit of my stomach. Just knowing that one day I'm going to get the call that she went through with it. And I would think, I mean, the only thing I could do to help.
Is to sit by her side 24 7, and like literally hold her hand to make sure she didn't do this thing that she wanted to do. And I could get up to go to the bathroom and she could do it. So I wasn't putting that kind of pressure on myself. But it's just so heartbreaking. And then when she actually went through with it and she did it, and I remember getting that call it was devastating. It was it's heartbreaking. I don't really know how else to describe it. I wasn't, it wasn't shocking.
I wasn't like how did this happen? Because I had seen it coming for so long. But it's, it just breaks your heart. Nobody's supposed to lose your mom like that. Like. How, when you think of how life's supposed to work, you're not supposed to lose your mom like that, and nobody's supposed to lose anybody like that or to any sort of illness. That just isn't like the natural progression of life and dying peacefully in bed when you're a hundred years old, that's, that's the way to go.
So yeah, it was tough. I learned a lot about life in a very short period of time I just learned a lot of life lessons really quickly. And I will say that one thing that did help me, I had great support from my father, my brother and family. One thing that really helped me was feeling like I was like a sense of peace that she wasn't in the suffering anymore. You see somebody being so much pain for so long and then for that pain to be over, there is a sense of relief in that.
And I took, I felt a real sense of relief in that. But yeah, it's. Yeah, I don't wish that on anybody. That's for sure.
Yeah. And this is this is something too that I haven't talked about on the podcast really at all, but my sister-in-law's husband actually similar kind of thing had severe bipolar and ended up taking his life as well and left my sister-in-law pregnant their first kid right before we moved to China. And like you talk about it's very difficult to. To talk about the level of pain that we almost didn't move here to, to China.
And I was writing a, just trying to process my feelings and writing a poem or my thoughts and stuff on that. And the picture that I got, it's almost like, has a ball of yarn and they throw it to somebody else and they make this connection with that person. And then that person throws the ball of yarn to somebody else. And there's just this intertwined web of connections that we have with other people.
And when my sister-in-law's husband took his life, it was almost like all of that yarn was like burned It just like all of those connections burned and there's just so much pain. And I called it strings of life and strings of pain. Like we have these strings that connect us with people and they bring us life. But there is also that bi-directional pain as well, especially when you go through something like that, you have somebody that's close to you that. Is taken away in whatever way that is.
And after that period of time, maybe you mentioned during my research your dad started to struggle with addiction and stuff. And on, on one hand, you're also talking about things that you learned through that time. can you get into some of the things that you were starting to learn, how you're processing that, what did that like for you at that period?
Sure. I learned a lot. I mean, that, that experience was really kinda like the jumping off point for a lot of everything that came next in my life a huge influence on my life and how I've chosen to live my life and the work that I do and everything that's so important to me. And you are in a low spot in your life. And for me, that was the lowest spot I'd ever been in. And that didn't even compare to how low a spot my mom was in.
I think when you're going through your normal life, you just take a lot for granted. You can be like, I'm pretty happy and I'm not the happiest person, but I'm not miserable. And you just going through life. And I would say on a scale from one to 10, most people are just getting by at a five or a six. If you think of like a bell curve there that that big meaty part of the bell curve is just, normal life and. I wasn't in that five, six range, then I was much lower on that scale.
And this was the first time in my life. I even considered that life does exist on this scale or the spectrum from one to 10 that it's not just like, I'm fine or I'm not fine, or I'm great. Or I'm not started looking at that. And I was like, I feel like I'm really low on this scale right now, but being low on that scale, let me see the rest of it. Like my perspective changed entirely on this from getting out of what I've known and what I was used to, to gaining a different perspective.
And I thought to myself, this is the worst it can get. And really referring more to my mom's situation. Like the worst it can get is to feel like this is your only answer is to end your life or something like that. And I just said, well, that's that can't be for me. And I thought, well, if there's a worst, there has to be best. And so if this is the worst it can get with the best it can get. And so I'm thinking about where I am on this scale.
And the opposite side of that would be, a scale from one to 10, then it's a 10. And I remember saying to myself, I'm going to live my 10 And I didn't really know what that was, that meant or what I was going to need to do. I just made this promise to myself that I said, I'm going to live my 10 and what I knew about it at the time. And it's still really holds true to, to living your 10 is that it's at its core. It's about living the happiest, most fulfilled life you possibly can.
That's how my mother be miserable. I saw my mother be severely depressed and thought I, I want the opposite of that. And so seeing my mom end up the way that she did, and also seeing my dad now going down a road. I didn't want to go down myself.
I'm realizing that the two people in my life who I've loved the most, who have had the biggest influence on me, who I've modeled myself after, in so many ways have both ended up in places that terrify me and the idea that I might end up, like either one of them scared the crap out of me. And so I realized I had two choices, one I could just cross my fingers and hope everything worked out. Okay. And I didn't end up like that. And I thought that's a bad bet to make.
And not really my style and the other choice was to be proactive. And so what I did was with the intention of, thinking could it, if mental illness could come for me, could I get out ahead of it? Could I somehow beat it? I didn't know that I could. But I just thought you got to try. And so a little bit at a time I started rewiring how I. And how I made decisions and how I behaved and just tweak, little adjustment at a time, I kept taking more and more control of my mind.
And I learned so many life lessons in the process in this early stage to, from things like not taking it personally. Like I didn't take it personally that this happened to mom. This didn't happen to me. It wasn't like life was out to get me. This is kind of thing that unfortunately does happen sometimes in life. So it wasn't personal. I learned that.
I learned that if you want to the kind of life you want to live, if you want to be who you want to be, if you want to be happy, if you want to be fulfilled, if you want to realize your potential, if you want to live with purpose, if you want amazing relationships, you name it. You've got to take responsibility for that. You've got to take control of your life and take ownership of your life. the opposite of that would be. Being a victim, poor me. This is the hand I was dealt.
This is what life at me. These are my circumstances. These are, when I say this is my situation. I caught myself shortly after mom passed thinking. Nobody would blame me. If my life fell apart, nobody would blame me if I turned to drinking or drugs or anything to just, it was too much to deal with. And I'm hearing myself it in my head and saying, yeah, but so what, like, who cares if nobody would blame you, your life was would turn to crap. No, poor me. No, the world is out to get me.
None of that, like get that out of your head, decide who you want to be say, despite what happened, regardless of what happened, going to live my 10 anyway. So these were kind of foundational lessons for me, foundational law principles that really started shaping my life after that. And really set me on a trajectory in life that quite honestly wouldn't have happened. Well, I can't say it wouldn't have happened. I don't know if it would've happened otherwise.
Yeah, that's I mean, just extraordinary first off, I really appreciate you sharing because it is important and people need to hear it. Secondly, it's just extraordinary to have that perspective coming through that. And, when you share things and share about, not being a victim, it's not, some fluffy thing. It's like, no, I went through it,
Hmm.
one of the most difficult things you could go through. I still chose not to do that. And there's incredible book man's search for meaning you might've
Yeah. Great Great book.
about that. Like the fundamental freedom of man is our ability to choose, regardless of what's, other situations what's going through. And he went through the Holocaust in camps, and he still is like, you can choose the meaning that you attribute to life and.
Yeah.
From your story just asking that question, like, who do I want to be? What kind of life do I want to live? And similar along those lines, I ask that question almost every day. I ask it in terms of what do I really want and why do I really want it?
Y yeah.
Because you have to actually look at that. Why like, why do I want this certain amount of money? Why do I want to live this certain amount of life or have these responsibilities or do this for work or whatever. So very similar thing. So you mentioned you started just tweaking things in terms of your mind, where did that start? Was that through reading? Was that through other people, was that, meditation, what did that look like, where you started to change those things in your mind?
Yeah. Great question. So from a pretty young age, really young age I really enjoyed thinking I loved being challenged to think it was one of my favorite things. My father was a lawyer. My mom was a therapist. I got this great combination of influences in my life. And my dad would come home for dinner and every night at dinner would challenge me with a new scenario, give me like a legal scenario or a world issue or something like that. And you would say like, tell me what you think about this.
And I think about it and think about it. And I present my argument or my case or something. And he'd always have a very similar answer. He'd say something like, Cory like really well thought out that makes a lot of sense. It's a really good point, but what about this? And he would just play devil's advocate and no matter what I said, he would play devil's advocate and as frustrating and maddening as it was that I could never kind of win the argument, I loved it so much.
Hm.
how much it stretched me to think outside of the box and see different perspectives to look at one situation and see two very different perspectives of the same situation. Because most of us, we go through life. We see things one way, right? Just, this is the way I see it. This is my experience. This is my perspective. But to be examining multiple perspectives at the same time, really gives you a different understanding of how things work. And I always love knowing how things work.
I always ask the question why always challenging things? I'm sure it was very frustrating and annoying for some people, but I needed to know. I couldn't just accept answers. Like, I don't know. That's just the way we do it or that's the way it's always been done. So I was always a very logical thinker. I was an analytical thinker. And again, I really enjoyed that. And so when I started this process I feel like I had been very well equipped from my parents.
Almost like trained in a way of figuring out life. I think had a lot of this happened a lot earlier in my life. It would have been a very different story, but getting up into my later teen years and then into my early twenties, I was already very well equipped to handle a lot of this and to be figuring it out. So one of the things that I started to do was I felt like I had this great case study. So close to home in that I saw, for example, with my dad, I saw the absolute best of my dad.
Like my dad was the guy that I looked up to my whole life. He was my everything. I really admired my dad and then to see him make a real left turn and just go down a very different path and act differently and make decisions differently and think differently and behave differently. There was a real obvious contrast to me and I could, I had this case study of dad one way and dad another way.
And when you know somebody so well, and it was similar with my mom when you know somebody so well, and you can see them acting differently in different situations, certain things really stand out. Certain attributes, certain qualities really start to stand out because you're not taking them for granted anymore. You're like, whoa, you know what? You're acting like this, but you used to be like this, or you used to think like this, and now you think like this. And so I started studying them.
That was like my first. My first really most of my growth started there studying them and learning these principles. Okay. Really happy people take control of their lives. Fulfilled people, take control of their lives. People who are unhappy or depressed are victims. They're blaming, they're making excuses, like things like that. And so I thought these are this exists on the same spectrum. It's just like, again, scale of one to 10, how much responsibility of your life you're going to take?
Well, if I want to be the happiest, most fulfilled person I can be, then I better take the most responsibility that I can, because that just makes sense to me. And a little bit of the time I just started noticing. Other principals or other ideas that fit with that. So I mentioned like not taking things personally, it fits with that. It's part of the same puzzle.
Being honest, being trustworthy, it's building those trusting relationships and again, just little bit at a time acting with integrity, you start noticing all of these pieces that kind of fit to the same puzzle. And over time, I wasn't a big reader at the time. I really liked figuring things out and testing things and experimenting in my life and just seeing how things work. I learned better that way. We all learn better through experience, right?
You can read all the books in the world, but you're going to learn just by doing it is how you're going to learn. I'll tell people like you, I can tell you what it's like to eat a pizza. If you want to know what it's like, eat a pizza, you got to eat a pizza. And that's our life too. So I learned so much about resilience and grit about optimism that it's such a choice. That it doesn't matter what happens in life. You can choose optimism, you can choose to see the glass half full.
You can choose to see what's possible, or you can not. But when people say to me, things like, oh, I'm not a pessimist, I'm just a realist. say you're a realist based on what a realist based on whose perspective, you're saying that you're not a pessimist when you are a pessimist. It's okay to admit that you're a pessimist, but it's a choice. So if you can choose it. And the results that you get in life.
And when I say life, I'm covering a lot of territory here, your relationships work and your, you name it. When you choose to be an optimist, you, it almost forces you to work harder to achieve what's possible. And to create what's possible. If you don't think it's possible, why would you work for it? So, I'll always choose optimism more it's a way of life, but it's also, to me, just a logical choice. It's logical to be optimistic.
And and a lot of these principles to me are just like, they're logical, they fit. And a little bit at a time, I just kept working on it. The more that I got into it, then I started reading more, more expert perspectives, and it was really I would say validating really because it wasn't that I was reading these new things that made me think like, holy crap, I've never even considered this before. What it was is, Hey, I've been thinking on this or I've been working on this in myself.
Now I get to read about an expert. Who's actually been researching this for years and has data about this. And that was really exciting to me against the validation, but then and deepening my understanding of certain topics and certain principles. So in that process and just naturally evolved and kept evolving from there.
Yeah. I mean, that, that goes along with a lot of work, but you'd probably read it at this point. Like the Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman the father of positive psychology, and as opposed to learned helplessness helplessness when you can choose to take both options. And, even when we look at what you're talking about with optimism, you can say I'm a realist and this is, and we'll get into this, right. It takes actual like training.
And so this is what we're going to get into, but you can look at any part of the world and you can see a ton of awful, terrible things that just break your heart that are going on, but you can also look at any part of the world and just see incredible life. Incredible, beautiful beauty, have tons of curiosity about it. Tons of wonder and where, wherever you go. And so. When you're talking about, are you a realist?
Well, both of those are real, but your perception of it creates the reality of what you experience in terms of your feelings in terms of your life. Like you talked about in terms of your infamous fulfillment, but you know, we're going to get there, it takes training. So, that's your whole thing. You started The Mental Gym, so it's actually training our mind. Like we had train our body. So I want to start just with the, not the basics, but you talk about living your 10.
So how do you go about first off even figuring out what that looks like for you as an individual? Where do you start?
That's a great question. I get people ask me that a lot. Like how do I know what my 10 looks like? And I want to change the way that we think about this? I think so, commonly we think things to ourselves, like, okay, I got to figure out what kind of career I want and what it looks like and what kind of house I'm living in and get very specific with our goals and our dreams. And there's absolutely a place for that. And there's science about this too.
If you really know what you want and you can get laser-focused on it all the power to you. For most of us, including myself. We don't know what that looks like. So for me to say, here's exactly what I want my life to look like in 10 years. And this is me. Like, my life is committed to this kind of work, and I'm all about this. And I don't know what my life's going to look like in 10 years.
And I feel like I'd be doing myself a disservice by making that choice now, because I don't know who I'm going to be in 10 years. I forget 10 years. I don't know how I'm going to be. In two years, I'm going to hopefully be a better version of myself, but I don't know who I'm going to be.
And so when we talk about this scale from one to 10, if you want to live your 10 to be making those decisions about your 10, when you might be at a six or a seven, it means a six or seven version of yourself is the one deciding what your 10 is. So you're choosing your 10 through the lens or through the perspective of someone who's living there six or seven. It doesn't really make sense. It's rather than having a very specific destiny.
What about having a direction, point yourself in a direction, move in that direction by all means adjust course, as you need to, as you learn and grow and figure things out and try new things. But we're all about making consistent, incremental improvements. So consistent growth, always growing and making a little improvement here. A little adjustment there, a little tweak here in how we think and how we make decisions and how we behave.
And what happens is all of those little changes add up and snowball and compound into really life-changing results. So by becoming who we want to be and who we're capable of being, which I believe is a much, I don't want to say easier thing to figure.
But if I asked you to explain to me who you want to be explained to me what the best version of yourself is like, I think most people could do that if they gave it some thought, because I can certainly speak from my experience, but also just so many people that I've met in years and years is every one of us has this version of ourselves that deep down we believe we could be. We might not know how to get there. In fact, most of us don't know how to get there.
I didn't know how to get there, but that doesn't mean that version doesn't exist. So if we can help you start to think and make decisions and act, and behave and feel like this version of yourself, can you just start showing up? Well, now you're on that path to living the life that person would live. go the other way again, I just feel like we're limiting our options too much. And I'm not saying don't have any decisions made about your future, have as many as you want, but just don't force them.
There's no need to force them. Your 10 naturally evolves it. It plays out in your life. As you become really intentional about how you show up in the world and how you show up day to day and how you make your decisions in which direction you're moving in. So I encourage people to not put so much pressure on themselves in that like, wow, do I know what my 10 looks like you don't and you might not for awhile.
And that's great because by not needing to know, by just enjoying the journey, instead of worrying so much about the destination, you're setting yourself up for just a greater life than I think you could ever possibly create for yourself. If you were just so super specific working with, I would say without enough information.
Yeah, a ton of stuff to pack there. I love how you brought that up. Goes right along with the research Sonja Lyubomirsky which was like one of the foremost researchers on happiness and she talks about, 50% of our happiness is genetically pre-determined it's just baked into your genes. But then you have the 10% of our happiness actually comes from our jobs, our career, the money we make. And that's where we spend 80% of our time focusing on that.
Yeah.
10%, other 40%. Is those daily intentional activities that you can do everything from, goal setting is on there, your relationships, which is a huge thing for you, your awareness, your mindfulness all of those things, intentional daily activities, giving being generous, those are all scientifically proven to help us actually be happier. And that's inside of our control. can focus on the 10%, that doesn't make a lot of difference.
And, a lot of times outside of our control, you can focus on that intentional activities that are inside of your control. So let's
Yeah.
some of these things like you have the essentials, like the essential things that you would need to live your 10. And you've touched on some of these already. Can you lay out? What are these essential things and how do we go about putting space and creating habits around them in our life?
Great. Awesome. So let's think of the essential, it's not as absolutes. These are things that we continue working on and continue growing into in our lives. The first essential is self-awareness. You got to know who you are. You got to know what matters to you. You got to know what makes you tick. It's really hard to make life decisions without knowing these things. Now you don't go from not self-aware to self-aware again, it's not like a switch on and off.
It's a consistent process of growing and growing into it and becoming more self-aware. But the more self-aware you can become the better your life's going to be. You're just so much better equipped to make better decisions for yourself. That includes your emotional awareness and your emotional control. It becomes just becoming to about becoming who you want to be. So self-awareness is the first essential.
Jump into how you work to develop that.
So we do it. Everything we do and we can get into in a little bit is in the mental gym, we are challenging. We're stretching you to think we're challenging you differently and explore different perspectives. And you're not just exploring perspectives outside of yourself. You're exploring them inside of yourself. So you're understanding why you make the decisions that you do. You're understanding what makes you tick. You're being intentional about your life.
Thank you to be present in making decisions in your life. So much of our lives are spent worrying about the past or worrying about the future. If you want to know where anxiety comes from, that's where it comes from. If we can be present, being present about just deciding and choosing and understanding, like, how am I showing up being intentional about how we think about our lives and what we want our lives to be like and who we want to be.
It creates a ton of self-awareness and it's this process of just gaining a little bit more and a little bit more. One of my favorite tools for gaining self-awareness and growth is asking yourself this simple little question. I ask myself this multiple times a day, every day, who do I want to be? Who do I want to be in any situation you're in and any decision that you have to make? Just ask yourself the question, who do I want to be?
And when you ask yourself that question, and then you got to answer it, and when you answer it, you learned a lot about yourself.. You learn a lot about who you are and you learn a lot about who you could be if you made a decision just slightly differently than before. So I think there are a lot of great tools for self-awareness. Not to mention things like meditation and journaling, which I love both part of my daily routine, my morning routine every day.
There's lots of ways that you can work on it. But the important part is to, I think, to recognize that we only know so much about ourselves and the more we can learn about ourselves, the better off we're going to be.
Yeah. And we'll get into some of the other ones too. There's so much information I would love, you mentioned the morning routine. So I mean, you have these things that are incredibly important for you and you have a routine that supports that. I'm just curious. What is your morning routine look like? What do you do to support that intentional living your 10?
Yeah. So the reason I'm so big on it being in the morning by the way is because if I don't do it first thing in the morning, I might not do it. I got two young boys. They take up a lot of my life and my energy and I love that they do. And then I work hard. I love my work. I love my wife. Life's, there's a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of things that I am trying to create the space for. So I'll do it first thing in the morning, there's a decent chance it doesn't get done.
So very first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is meditate very well, sorry, big drink, water, then meditate. And it sets the tone for. It's just a way of calming your mind and being peaceful in your mind. Everybody's got their own version of meditating for anybody who's thinking, oh, I want to meditate, but I'm no good at it. There's no wrong way to meditate. Somebody told you that there was, and there's not.
The important thing is just, you find that space for yourself that you try to keep a calm mind. the idea is to try to just block out a lot of the noise. It doesn't mean you're not going to think about things. I think about things all the time when I meditate. But having that calm, peaceful mind is huge for me.
Do you use a specific tool for that? Or just do it yourself?
No, I, when I started meditating, when I learned how to meditate, I use the app Headspace. The guided meditations really helped me to stay on track and stay accountable, like making sure it's a daily practice and it really is important to make it a daily practice. Even if you're only doing it like three to five minutes a day, it's better than spacing it out and doing it sporadically.
So if you can commit yourself to three minutes, a day, five minutes a day, you're going to some serious benefits from that. My meditation practice has increased over time. We're now I just love that like 25, 30 minute meditation in the morning really is just a great way to start my day. Then I put on my dad hat I'm full in dad mode right out. Getting the and best and off to school and things like that.
This, the moment I get home from dropping them off at school, I'm right into exercise and I go right into an exercise routine. out again just such a great way to start your day after I exercise. I now go into my second breakfast, so I have a, I've a first breakfast with my kids. And then my post-workout kind of second
You're like a Hobbit. What about second breakfast?
Right. Yeah. I I'm starving. I, I eat to start the day and, we dinner early because we've got young kids, so we might be done dinner at like five 30, which I love because it's so great to have that much space between when you eat and when you go to sleep. But when I wake up in the morning, I'm hungry, I'm ready. So he eat very early in the morning. And then and then eat again after I exercise.
And when I, after I do that I'll just sit there with my second breakfast and my pen and my notebook, and I'll just write whatever comes out of me. And it's, I really love it as a practice to just, again, clear your head. There's something really impactful about. Taking things that are out of your head that you're thinking of all the time and putting them out there somewhere else, be it on paper or just talking them.
Sometimes I just talk things out to myself, just like talk out an idea to, to, when you hear it out loud, it's very different from just keeping it in your head. So that's the cornerstone of my morning routine.
Those parts meditation every day, every single day exercise for me I commit more to a Monday to Friday exercise weekends with the families that were out of that routine sometimes, but as long as I get my Monday to Friday and I feel good and journaling sometimes is hit and miss on the weekend as well. But again, Monday to Friday am I'm able to stick in that routine. So, but meditation every single day.
We have a very similar very similar approach. I do almost exactly the same thing. I'll start the day and I'll do for me, it's a little bit more like mobility or like a
Hmm.
foam rolling. But you can use the breath in combination with that. And then same thing I
Yeah.
dad mode, I'm getting breakfast. I take my kids to school. I come back then I do my exercise stuff as well at that period of time. similar. And one of the things that you mentioned with journaling in with meditation, like you're talking about there's no really right or wrong way to do it.
Hm.
A simple kind of framework to think about it, especially with meditation there's single-point meditation and then there's contemplated or contemplative. However you say that word. I never really know. single point you're focusing on a certain thing, right? So whether it's your breath, whether it's, an object or whatever a passage writing, whatever it is, right. You're focusing on a certain thing.
Contemplative is you're just sitting there and you're letting your thoughts, like the daydream sort of thing. Similar with journaling, you can do a very similar thing. You're focused. like focused journaling where you're writing on a specific idea, a specific topic, or the contemplative thing where you're just, stream of consciousness, getting it out, whatever's going on.
Yeah.
wanted to put that in there, but yeah, I found it very interesting and same thing I do Monday through Friday, and then weekends are all just like
Yeah.
and recover and that kind of thing. So it's interesting.
Yeah. It's tough to stay in the same routine Monday at like on the weekend with young kids and then you're doing your family thing and you're in full family mode. It's kinda, it's geared to to check all the boxes, but yeah. Do what works for you. I think that's the answer for everybody. As long as you're being intentional about it, you do what works for you.
Yeah. And then on the weekends for me it's also a bit about like, I used to, I'm a very good at beating myself up a lot of the times, it's all, I'm like, oh, you missed it or whatever...
Hm.
it's like, it's a different thing for me on the weekend. So if I'm intentional about not doing it on the weekends, it's like part of the, part of my plan where I'm not like, oh shoot, I didn't, didn't do my meditation or I didn't do exercise on the weekends. It's a breed of cat, so to speak.
Absolutely. Yeah, no guilt, no, no guilt. Guilt has no place in decision-making no guilt. Just I chose this. Yeah,
Exactly. I love that.
yeah,
here we are, we've talked about one of the essentials, let's get back to a of the other essentials.
sure. Accountability. So we talked about responsibility taking control of your life. So that's what accountability is. You are the one who's accountable for your life. You're accountable for how you think and how you make your decisions and how you show up. You're accountable for your you're accountable for your life. Nobody else's it's you. I know that idea scares some people they're like, oh man, that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of weight. And I think about it as the complete opposite.
I think of that as it's such an opportunity, you have the opportunity to take. And you can't control everything in your life. We've discussed a lot of things here that are out of our control already. But you can control a lot more than you think. And when you do take control of those things and you recognize that you have this opportunity to take control of it it's probably the most empowering feeling that I've experienced. And that I know so many other people have, so that's accountability.
The next one is vulnerability. Vulnerability. It can be a little a little frightening, especially to I'm generalizing here, but to a lot of guys it's like ughh being vulnerable. And I think of being vulnerable as just being honest. If I'm honest, then I'm honest. I don't need to be selectively honest. This is who I am. This is what I'm experiencing. This is what happens in life. This is how I'm dealing with it. This is how it's challenging for me.
Here's the thing that we don't recognize because we tend to talk about things very surface level. Right? All of us are dealing with real life and that we just talk about surface level stuff. And then we try to act like we got it all figured out and the next person's got it all figured out. And then we end up living the Instagram life. Right. It looks great out there, but what's really going on. Nobody knows. And just by being honest and real with each other, get to see that all just people.
all going through life. We're experiencing a lot of the same challenges, a lot of the same ups and downs that not only are you not the only one, but you are one of like 7 billion people trying to figure it out too. And by doing that, you w what I found is when I learned to start being vulnerable and really started leaning into it, what it did was it gives other people into as well. So people are just aching to be real and honest with each other. But we don't know how to do.
So when you do it, when you lead the way you give somebody else permit, the other thing is it's just, once you start doing it, you realize it's so much easier to be vulnerable, to be authentic about who you are instead of trying to be somebody that you're not, so much easier, it takes so much less energy and bandwidth just be who you are. And to be real about who you are and not try to hide it, or pretend that you're something different. So vulnerability is a huge one,
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to jump in new here on the vulnerability because I feel like it's one of the biggest, most powerful tools you can have to live a fulfilled life. Like you talked about. People can only love you and accept you up to the point that you're known. And so if you say like, I'm only known up to this point, you're always in the back of your head going, would they love me if they knew this about me and the deeper you can go into that.
And then you specifically use the word, like leaning into it. And I love that, leaning into discomfort. That's another pillar, if you can learn to slightly lean into discomfort in any area of your life physically in your workouts, relationally, if you're leaning into that discomfort, And you get better at doing that. goes so far. And you talked about it's so freeing to just be like,
yeah,
this is me, and I'm just showing up and I'm sharing a part of myself with you on a level, like you mentioned that, unfortunately it doesn't happen very often. So
yeah.
especially highlight vulnerability. I think it's so, so important. It's difficult to do. like anything else that has value. have to train But it's so important. So important.
Well, I think to your point, there are actually two things you're making me think about: one people in any sort of leadership position, if you want your team, if you want your people to trust you. Be vulnerable. It is hard to trust somebody who is a closed book, who pretends like they've got it all figured out and they've got all the answers and they're never wrong.
People are just looking for real and you can connect with people on such a deeper level and earn trust by being open and real with people. And I promise you, they will still love you for who you are. Unless you're sharing some really awful, terrible things, but assuming you're just a decent person. I think you're going to, you're going to really build up those relationships rather than knocking them down. You said that it's hard. And I think with everything, it can be hard.
Getting started, isn't that hard. And that's where we freak ourselves out and get intimidated with trying new things like vulnerability. You can start by very simply sharing something with somebody close to you, who you trust and who, loves you unconditionally. Just share something with them that maybe you haven't shared before.
Hey, you know what, here's this thing I've been dealing with or here's this thing that I find challenging, or maybe it's something like, I've never shared this with you, but here's this thing that's really important to me. And here's what I want to be. And here's how much potential I think I have. I remember the first time I did that with somebody over coffee and I was just like holding onto this. I was like, can I just share this with you?
I feel like I'll all this potential and I don't know what to do with it. And I'm looking for my purpose and there's somebody I want to be. And I don't know how to be that person. And they gave me this blank stare and I fully expected them to be like, holy crap, dude. Like, I don't understand you at all. And instead, what they said to me is, wow, holy crap. That's me. Like, what do you mean that's you? And they're like, that's my internal narrative. Like I'm thinking the exact same thing.
Now we would have both gone our entire lives thinking we were the only ones who ever thought that way. Nobody would understand us, but more people have that conversation with the more people said, wow, that's me too. Like, I think that exact same way. I'd say, do you ever talk about it? They're like, no, never. Why not? I don't know what people are going to think. I don't want to be judged. Right. And none of us want to be judged. That's why we're afraid to be real.
But it's really just the opposite. We're creating that honest connection. So I do think it can be hard if I'm going to use exercise as an example, people think oh, exercise is hard, but you know, it's not hard. It's not hard to do five pushups a day. It's not hard to do 10 air squats. Like it's just not, if you're telling me it's hard, then you're just, you're not trying. If you five pushups a day, that means that in a few weeks you can do 10 pushups a day and then.
Down the road, you can do 20, 30, whatever. And then you can add more and more your exercise, routine. And eventually you've got a whole workout routine. If you tried to go from no exercise to go into the gym two hours a day, six days a week. Well, that's why so many people flop with their exercise.
Yeah.
So we're all about building habits and building them the right way so that they stick and they're sustainable. And we've seen amazing things with people's like exercise, routines and habits all over the place. But yeah, so I, yes, it can be hard, but I just feel like it doesn't need to be as hard as we make it. And as much as we psyched selves in that process,
Yeah, and I love any of Brene Brown's work, Daring Greatly is phenomenal on that. And she has a quote about vulnerability and it's really interesting to paradox, we perceive vulnerability as weakness in ourselves. So we're like, oh, I'm weak. And I have this weakness and I'm scared to share. But what's crazy is when we experienced somebody else sharing authentic vulnerability with us, we actually perceive that person as strong, as courageous, as brave. And it actually strengthens the connection.
So in our mind, we're like,
Yes.
it as weakness, but in other people's we perceive it as strength. So just keeping
Yes.
in your head. Think about those times that somebody has shared with you on a vulnerable level think about how the relationship is actually most of the time, if like you talked about, if you're a decent person, like it's stronger because of it. And you actually have more respect for them, the relationship stronger, you have more connection than before, and you actually have more respect that person. You need to view them as strong and brave and courageous.
So think about that before you share yourself as well, because going like this actually has a potential to take this relationship to a lot deeper level. And probably what I'm scared about what it would in terms of them thinking me being weak. It's the opposite. They'll probably perceive me as stronger and brave. And it was a thing to do.
Absolutely. We think of it as weakness. It's the complete opposite of that. It's such a sign of strength. And like anything the scary thing, or the worry is the unknown. It's like, I haven't done this yet, so I don't know how it's going to work out, but once you do it and you realize that exactly what you just said is what happens. And now, you know that, oh wait, this vulnerability thing that's actually might be for me. And I love seeing people grow in their vulnerability.
The world will be a much better place. If we could all just be honest and real with each other. Optimism. We talked about already, just, just so, so very important to, to be optimistic. And one thing I'll add to that is it's not about like naive, delusional optimism, I'm not a fan of that. We talked about, being a realist.
I think if this is objective optimism, you see all sides of the situation, you see things for what they are, and then you make a choice to choose the positive outcome you make a choice to choose what's possible. So it was very objective optimist. It's almost more of a neutrality. If you will, neutral objective thinking and when you're being neutral and you're being objective, then to me, it makes sense to choose optimism. It doesn't make sense to choose pessimism.
Now just because you're choosing optimism. Doesn't mean every situation is all sunshine and roses all the time. Right. Life happens. But being optimistic in that it will work out. We'll be fine. It might take some time, but we'll be okay. Or we can actually do this thing and accomplish this thing and become who we want to be like, this is possible. Let's make it happen. That's a choice and I just say, make that choice. Next essential is purpose. So we talked a lot about being intentional.
I know a lot of the time when we think about purpose, we think about like, people are struggling thinking, I need to find my life's purpose. I need to find my singular life's purpose. And if you can, and there's lots of great tools for that amazing, By all means, living life of, with a life's purpose is incredibly fulfilling, but there is a difference between living a life with a singular purpose and living a purposeful life. And living a purposeful life again goes back to intention.
It goes back to choosing who you want to be and how you show up. It goes to making a contribution to the people around you, to society, to your community. However you do that. If you think of all of us being able to either make a contribution or not.
And what I mean by that is, was the world a better place because you were here, doesn't need to be fantastically better, but could you say that the world was a better place, even just teeny tiny fraction originally because you were here or did it not matter? Did you have a positive impact on people or not? If we can all just, if we think of it as like a plus or a minus, if we can all just choose to be a plus again and get a tiniest little plus.
But if we know that our lives meant something that we mattered, because we had a positive impact on people, our community on society this is a purposeful life and that matters. We all want to matter. Well, that's how you matter. So that's definitely part of our essentials. Um,
One little thing on there... On there. I would say be a plus to like the one person that you're in front of today. So even like, you're talking about like those little
yeah.
to a big plus over the course of your life,
Yep. For sure.
if you're worrying about can I. a little plus to somebody today or show up and help their life be a little bit better.
Yeah. Right. And we're all going to see that a little bit differently. Some people are going to be, I would say more ambitious with their plus, right. I want to have this huge impact. I hear people talk a lot about the impact that they want to make and I think that's amazing, but not everybody is here to change the world, but every one of us can the world in our own teeny, tiny little way. And when you impact somebody's life, it changes the world
Yeah.
a little bit at a time. It changes the world. So, again, let's take some of the pressure off ourselves and just show up and be purposeful. And the sixth essential is grit. We talked a little bit about grit before. So grit is the way that grit is defined by the founder of grit. If you will. The originator of grit, Duckworth it's passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. So it can be a very specific goal. When we're talking about living your 10, it's not a super specific goal.
Again, it's more of a direction, but that. And again, I sharing my story. Life's going to throw things at you that you didn't sign up for and you didn't ask for, you got to make a decision. Is this going to stop me or is it not? And it really is just a decision that you make. Am I going to let this stop me from being who I want to be and living the life I want to live? Or is it not going to be my instead, am I going to learn every setback? Am I going to grow from every setback?
I've gotten to a point in my life for whenever I'm faced with any sort of difficulty or any sort of adversity, just because I've experienced so much of it. I now almost get excited about it
Um,
because I know what's going to come out of this. I know with the right attitude and the right approach, I'm going to come out of this. I'm going to be stronger. I'm going to learn things about myself. I'm going to be more equipped to, to grow and be more of who I want to be. And I'm not saying I want to completely surrounded my life with adversity, but things do happen. And so how you choose to deal with them is so important. So grit and with grit, a growth mindset and those are our essentials.
Yeah there you have it for phenomenal. Phenomenal. Can you talk about, I mean, this is we've been talking about this entire time, but so you have The Mental Gym, which is, training for these types of things. Can you talk about what you do and where people can go to get ahold of you? If they're interested.
Sure. So like you mentioned, just like we have gyms for our bodies. This is a gym for our minds. And if we think about the importance of physical exercise, I mean, it's no secret how important physical exercises, there's just tons and tons of research and information about this. We exercise because it's important.
We don't exercise because somebody told us we should we exercise because it makes our lives better because we feel better because it's good for our brains because we live longer we have more energy because it's cool to be healthy and fit and feel strong. So we think about our bodies that way, and we take care of our bodies and what we're not thinking of the same way as our. We need to be exercising our minds.
We need to be working out our minds and just like you wouldn't lift weights or do cardio for two weeks and then say like, okay, I'm all done. I'm healthy now. I'm good for the rest of my life. It requires consistency and working out your mind is the same thing. It requires consistency. So that consistent learning that consistent thinking differently and exploring different perspectives and being intentional about your life is really important.
So what we do is our framework is about group classes. We do one-on-one as well, but the focus of what we do is in group classes. So it's, like-minded people who show up for one hour once a week. And when I say they can be different people from different walks of life and different experiences and different careers and parents and not parents and you name it. But we all have this one thing in common is that we don't want to live a six or seven.
We want to live our tens and we want to be around other people who want the same thing. And so we come to this environment where we just, again, we talked about being honest and real. It's an honest and real place. There's no judgment. There it's a place where we can work on ourselves. So we have this great curriculum that's been changing lives for years and continues to develop. We've got 125 classes, more than 125 classes in the library and growing.
And every week we're going to, we're going to work on a new concept. So another piece of our essentials, we talked about the essentials at a very high level, but there's a lot of, breaking it down into smaller pieces. And each week we explore a new concept. So we teach a new concept and we discuss it. So it's very interactive, very much discussion-based and you get to hear different perspectives from different people and you get to hear this concept.
And the idea is we're not here to tell you who to be or what to do, or how to think we're going to provide us. We're going to give you choices and you choose what makes the most sense for you. Now, I will say that the more time you spend in the gym, the more you see that it just makes sense. And so you choose things that make sense, but you're doing it a tiny little bit at a time. So it's not like you come to a class and be like, Hey Michael, you know what you gotta do.
You gotta like sell your house and leave your family and go move to some deserted island. Cause that's where you're gonna find fulfillment. It is completely the opposite of that. What it might be is here's why it makes sense to in this situation, make this type of decision. And then you connect the dots to how much, how that might impact me living my 10 or may not live in my 10. Very simply. Like, how does this connect to that? How does this connect to that?
And when weekend in and week out, we just keep doing this for one hour, once a week. The workout's great. Like as much as we're really changing lives here in an incredible way, which is really exciting. The workout is also fun. You come, you enjoy yourself. For people who enjoy being pushed to think and stretch differently and grow for people like to learn and grow.
If you don't like any of these things, the gym is not for you, but if you do if you do the gym is definitely going to be for you and just a little bit at a time, you just make another tweak and other. And week to week, we just continue this process, each class connects with the previous class and with the next class, I remember to have a little bit of kind of self work or homework that they do between classes. It's not a lot.
It's not like bogging down your week, but it's just a little bit to make sure that we're taking what we work on in class, integrating it into your life and making sure that you're not just growing for one hour once a week, but you're actually growing every single day. And by doing that, by combining these things, and we combine a lot of learning science and psychology and things like that into what we're doing.
But by doing that, we were really able to give people a place to just show up and work on themselves to take great care of their minds. So we're all about mental fitness, where people talk about mental health. This is a different approach, a different take on mental health. It's about being very proactive with it. We're not the right option for people who might be really struggling with their mental health or people who might be depressed or burnt out or things like that.
But for people who are like doing pretty well in their lives that they're getting by, they're doing fine. Most people are doing well in their careers. A lot of good family people like we're talking about people who were like, they could not come to the mental gym and their life would be fine, but they don't want fine. They want so much more than that.
So we're very proactive with our approach to mental fitness, very proactive wellness, and for people who are growth minded who want to move from good to great. We're really proud of the work that we're doing. I think there's a huge need for it out here in the world. And we're just we're excited to get to share this with.
Yeah, absolutely. And if you're interested in checking that out, you can go to mentalgymlife.com and you can see all the different things they offer, what would it be benefit to you? Really appreciate your time. And we could go on forever, a lot of similarities and then our approach to, or approach to things. So I just appreciate it. I appreciate your insight. Again, we talked about vulnerability being vulnerable for where you came from and the impact that you're making to change people's lives.
I really appreciate it
Oh, was my pleasure. And you're right. We could probably talk for hours about this. But yeah, I really enjoyed this thank you.
Absolutely. Before you go, I would love it if you actually just shared this episode with a friend. I'm sure while you were listening, someone just popped into your head and you're like, oh, they would probably like this as well. So it's really easy you just click the share button on either the website or whatever podcast platform you're on and send it over to them. And chances are, they'll probably like it too! Until next time, keep Engineering your Success!