Not everyone is driven to be an entrepreneur, but sometimes we may need to go down this path in order to have freedom to do what we think is best. My best friend, Randy James, is a medical doctor. When he started he made a pact with God that he’d be a doctor, but he never wanted to be a businessman. Following is a story of why he reluctantly went into business for himself, and now testifies that having to learn the business side of his vocation has helped him be a better doctor and serve his pat...
Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 6 min
I continue to concern myself with the concept of retirement, and the concern isn’t just for those who are older in age. It’s completely relevant for my kids just leaving home and entering into their adult lives. I find so very few people retiring who are leading fulfilling lives. At the end of the day, we just want purpose, the subject of my last episode. People generally retire because they were mainly working for a paycheck and they just want to be done. The motives that provide fulfillment in...
Aug 09, 2024•1 hr 11 min
In this episode I’m looking at the connection between lack of purpose and increased negativity. Is there a correlation between idle time and negativity bias? Obviously I think there is or I wouldn’t pose the question. I have an admitted positivity bias. But when I step back and look at the big picture of our culture, I can’t help but see connections, and it gives me cause to consider how my own drive for purpose helps curb my propensity to not only think negatively, but even feel negatively. The...
Aug 08, 2024•14 min
I’m going from our values to today’s cultural issues. Considering your values which we covered in the previous episode will help you better understand your own position on the issues. Or if you even want one. I argue that it’s near impossible to have a concrete stance or even in-depth knowledge of every issue. Why? There are too many and if anything, I question someone who has a stance on every issue and I’d argue that while they may have some knowledge and have developed a position, they aren’t...
Aug 07, 2024•13 min
In this episode Social Credit Report: The Qualities Everyone Wants To Know About Each Other. With anyone you care about or are interested in caring about or relying on, you want to know what they are about. What they value. Which is ultimately, what you can count on. Think about it like a social credit report. A credit report tries to measure if you can be counted on financially. People try to seek out our values as a social credit report. They want to know what they can trust. We generally want...
Aug 06, 2024•12 min
We look at how our values fuel our drive and how they often come into friction with today’s sociopolitical issues that I feel we are pressured to all have a solid stance on. I see and have felt the tension it can cause. What we grapple with as individuals affects our work and where we work and the corporations that influence and employ much of the population. Patrick Lencioni is someone corporations look to as a guide. He is a highly in demand speaker and the author of thirteen best-selling book...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Nothing drives us like a purpose. We love stories of epic circumstances that led to heroic acts. Whether it’s Martin Luther King or your favorite fictional superhero who saves the world. Yet most of us lead lives that don’t feel so epic and the idea of having a purpose can sound far fetched and yes, even fictional. I feel the topic has gotten so diluted. But I feel it’s direly needed. Rabbi Daniel Lapin stated the opposite of depression is purpose. I again find it as the ultimate driver of all w...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr 35 min
We watch the Olympics because it inspires us. Watching people give it their all just touches us at a soul level. Being brought to the very limit of our ability and pulling through is a deep, human experience. Some of us have experienced this from a voluntary activity like sports. Some of you have experienced it from trauma and being victimized. Now, not everyone dreams of being on the podium. Of aspiring to repeat an exercise routine a billion times so you can perform it live in front of thousan...
Aug 01, 2024•12 min
I’m taking aim at Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow first introduced the concept of a hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper, titled "A Theory of Human Motivation.” The point was to showcase that people are motivated to fulfill basic needs before moving on to other, more advanced needs. What I want you to pay attention to and consider is that Maslow showed us what we tend to do. Not what is best. He was just reporting. Yet as a culture we seem to have taken his reporting of what we tend ...
Jul 31, 2024•14 min
I’ve long been curious about the difference in our immediate drive and our future drive. I often refer to it as our appetites. We have the appetite of what I want right now, and what I want in the future, and they don’t often align. Right now I want to eat that donut. In the future I want to lose weight. And the conflict. We think it takes self discipline and drive to cater to the future need and we frustrate ourselves with succumbing to the right now appetite and we think we lack self-disciplin...
Jul 30, 2024•11 min
I’m more focused than ever on how our personal stories are what drives us. Part of my own story is care and concern for our planet. Not because I’m so altruistic, but I adore the outdoors. It’s my playground and I selfishly want it conserved and protected so I can keep enjoying it…and my grandkids can as well. So I’m driven to help conserve and protect it. But I also realize how frustrating it is. I have a full life and taking time to recycle or limit my own use of resources feels like a drop in...
Jul 29, 2024•1 hr 52 min
We are driven to our work for many reasons. Those reasons we go into the job, the career, or the business are what dictate our overall happiness and success, yet most of us go after it for the wrong reasons, and suffer for it. This is a show anyone working will want to listen to, but I’ll tell you, I feel it should be a requirement for today’s youth. I published this show a few years ago on another podcast, and I bring it to you posthumously, as my guest is Dan Miller. Dan was one of our foremos...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 17 min
I’ve spent a lifetime labeled as a high achiever. High performer. I bet you have as well. We have become experts in doing things. Going after things. Getting things done. And there are benefits to this. And yet the consummate mid life crisis is often a result of using ourselves as a tool and not knowing ourselves at all. In my recent conversation with Dr Richard Schwartz, he wrote in his book that our childhood is generally geared around learning to direct ourselves. Not to understand ourselves....
Jul 25, 2024•11 min
Something happens in your life. A stimulus if you will. Something happens, somebody says or does something, and you have an immediate and uncontrollable reaction. Boom. This is natural and it is the human experience. Here is what happens though. Your brain does what it’s made to do. It attaches meaning to what happened. It creates a story based upon the entirety of your life experience and exposure thus far. But here is the kicker. Your brain immediately makes up a story with one motive; to prot...
Jul 24, 2024•10 min
There is a common belief and drive that we have good and bad in us. That we are at war with our flesh. We mean well but we fall to this darkness inside of us. I’m a spiritual guy who has placed faith in Jesus. Just my personal decision. I have decided to put faith in the existence of good and evil. But here I’m going to step outside and look at this more scientifically. In the previous episode I talked with Dr Richard Schwartz about the message in his new book, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and R...
Jul 23, 2024•12 min
In this episode I have a paradigm shift that will alter your drive. We are all raised in the mono-mind belief system, the idea that we have one mind, and from this one mind we have an infinite amount of differing thoughts and emotions and impulses and urges. That we often feel are competing against each other. We think of our good selves and our bad selves. Our healthy and unhealthy aspects. And we get frustrated and feel guilty that our one mind seems so schizophrenic. My guest today has a very...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 52 min
I’m looking at what drives someone who is on some of the biggest stages in the world, and the examples we can apply to our own lives. I’m curious about celebrities, and it seems we all are. My curiosity is around why we generally think they have something we don’t. How they got something we don’t have. And we often think of them as more driven than the norm. Chad Jeffers is a celebrated musician. His guitar is featured in the Country Music Hall of Fame. And he’s been Carrie Underwood’s guitarist...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 5 min
I’m looking at who you are when you’re uninhibited, because it’s a tell-tale sign of what is really driving you. And so often we are blind. I’m not making light of being drunk, drugged, having dementia or dying, but these are methods or altered states that generally bring down people’s shields and we see what is underneath the persona. I’ve witnessed people in all these states and I’ve experienced two myself. I find it very enlightening, and I honestly am concerned about how I do and would fare....
Jul 18, 2024•11 min
In this episode I’m looking at a concept that may be far more effective for motivating us than goal setting. There was a study that showed 80% of people are more motivated by problem solving than goals. What is a problem to consider? Dying. Imagine if you knew you had one year to live? What would you want to do? What would you stop doing? What would matter and what would not? After my recent conversation with celebrated death doula, Alua Arthur, I’m looking at replacing my annual goal setting wi...
Jul 16, 2024•11 min
The point of this podcast is to better fuel your drive so you achieve more fulfillment. I’ve met few people who want to talk about death. We avoid it like…death. It’s black and dark and to be feared. At least in our culture. But seven months ago my Dad got a surprise cancer diagnosis, and he died six weeks later. I was fortunate to walk with him daily until his last breath. I went from zero exposure to death, to full exposure. And it’s altered my life. My brother Jared Angaza was there as well, ...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 51 min
Guilt is a primary hidden driver that we’ve accepted as a norm. How much of your lives and actions are being driven by this life draining motive? Probably more than you are aware of. But why, is the question. And how can you stop it? I’m with Valorie Burton. Valorie is founder of the Coaching and Positive Psychology (CaPP) Institute and has written more than a dozen books on personal development. She has a unique combination of research, faith, and personal transparency that inspires people to a...
Jul 12, 2024•1 hr 11 min
I don’t know many people who are sitting around bored. Who have ample free time and lots of margin. Between work, self-care, parenting, home and car maintenance and even socializing and entertainment, we generally have more we want to do and get done than time allows. So we stay at status quo and can feel fairly stuck. What’s interesting is we love to watch people at the top of their game. Athletes and celebrities and people of influence who spend far more time on average, working at their chose...
Jul 12, 2024•12 min
This is a warning for our culture as we are falling into a mode of far more consuming and far less creating. Two episodes ago I had business strategist and purpose expert, Mike Zeller, author of The Genius Within. A profound statement he wrote in his book, that I find to be a great challenge to us all, is this, “You don’t become great by reading other people’s great thoughts, shouting mantras and even surrounding yourself with great people. You have to think your own great thoughts and believe y...
Jul 10, 2024•13 min
We frequently hurt our pursuit of purpose with two, polarized myths. One is that our purpose will be nothing but fun and play and passion. Or two, that our great purpose, our mission in life, will be great toil and sacrifice. After having over 250 of our world’s most influential people on this show, I haven’t found any who felt what they did was all play or all toil. And I haven’t found this in my own journey through well over 20 different endeavors I’ve devoted myself to. In our previous episod...
Jul 09, 2024•16 min
We’d all like to know the one assignment, the mission, the purpose that was just for us. That we were made for. We’d like a stone tablet to fall out of the sky that said, “This is what you are here to do. Go do it.” What confidence we’d have! We love to watch movies where life and death is on the line and it’s clear what everyone needs to do. But life is not like that. You wake up today to way too many possibilities, all the while thinking you’re supposed to find that one thing that is just for ...
Jul 08, 2024•2 hr
Clinically we hear about gut health and the microbiome. I’m not a doctor. So in layman's terms, the idea is, we eat food. We chew it up and swallow and it goes down into our system. The processing plant. How is the processing plant doing? Is it able to break things down? Get out nutrients? Turn things into energy and vitality? I’m with Randy James, medical doctor and Functional Medicine practitioner to talk about what happens, what we want to happen, and how to make it happen so that we are gett...
Jul 05, 2024•1 hr 9 min
We often find ourselves at the end of our rope, burnt out in our work or a relationship, usually citing some game ending event or circumstance. When in reality, this was building up for a long time. I’m still pondering insights from my conversation with Mark Groves, Human Connection Specialist and founder of Create the Love. He’s host of the Mark Groves Podcast and co-author of a new book, Liberated Love: Release Codependent Patterns and Create the Love You Desire. He spoke to relational failure...
Jul 04, 2024•13 min
We all desire to be our authentic selves. To be our fullest selves. You hear these messages and promises from the personal growth industry because it's such a desire of aspiring people like you and me. Many message talk about coming back to yourself and finding yourself again. In my experience however, we have never been close to being our true selves, as our true selves have never existed. No, not even as a child. In understanding this, it relieves us of some perception baggage and frees us for...
Jul 03, 2024•14 min
All of us have things we dislike. Things we seem to hold some fear of. And as someone who is seeking self awareness, you will likely get stumped as to why you have some of these feelings. We have all the phobias. Literal fears. But then we have a list of things we just dislike. Things that make us uncomfortable. Things that frustrate us. Things that cause us negative reactions and feelings and it just makes no sense to us. I find a lot of guilt in men and women for struggling with issues that ju...
Jul 02, 2024•13 min
You are in a variety of relationships. How liberated do you feel? How free to be yourself and think and speak freely do you feel? Especially in your closest relationships. My experience in my own life and in walking closely with so many others is we come together and morph to fit and please each other, and continue a cycle of morphing for the length of the relationship. If we can handle it. And often we can’t, which is why we see so many relationships end, or die and linger together for decades....
Jul 01, 2024•2 hr 29 min
