In looking at our interests, another way of considering our purpose and calling, a key resource is connecting with other people. So we look at conferences, seminars and many types of networking events. Which are geared towards…extroverts. That’s who often hosts them and I find that’s who they tend to benefit most. Which leaves us introverts out in the wind. So what do you do? I feel it’s best to suck it up and you’ll need to make some social efforts, but you can do some things to lessen the chal...
Sep 25, 2024•13 min
I think at the end of the day we’d all give up anything, happiness, acclaim, status, just about anything, just to have purpose. Something we cared to wake up to and pursue that had any meaning to us. And I’m going to take that beyond family, which I’ll speak to in a moment. But I find we often handicap our thoughts towards purpose and calling by feeling it must be huge. It must be super altruistic. It must be saving the world. In the last episode I talked with Scott Harrison, celebrity humanitar...
Sep 24, 2024•13 min
I bring you a great story of…drive. And the fruition I find most people experience, where we start off in life driven by our base desires and find the shallowness and meaninglessness of it and wonder if this is all life has to offer. I’ve known of Scott Harrison for many years, but never got the chance to dig into his story and drive myself. Scott is founder of charity:Water and has literally put a dent in the global clean water crisis. He’s been so successful, not only do celebrities want to ha...
Sep 23, 2024•1 hr 19 min
We live in a world led by personas. It’s interesting as the public outcry is for authenticity while we feast on the curated and highly edited images and videos on social media. At the core I feel we fear being authentic as we think we’ll be exposed and lose all credibility as we have relationship challenges, health challenges, mental challenges, financial challenges and more. So in this episode I have a story of someone with the perfect picture, who finally let it go and found not only freedom f...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min
My muse this week has been celebrity sports coach George Mumford who worked with the likes of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant. A key concept he worked with Kobe on was to “do the activity for the activity itself, not the result.” Friends, this has not been the guiding light of my life. I’ve historically looked at all I do as a means to an end. As a pro cyclist I often felt I was enduring 99 miles of racing just to get to the last mile where we went full tilt for the finish line. I unfortunately did a ...
Sep 19, 2024•12 min
Vacation is generally about pleasure and fun and feeding your senses with whatever flavor of happiness you like. So let me begin by stating I’m not giving a Pollyanna look at everyday life and making it equal the happiness of vacation. But the joy underneath vacation time is something different. It’s not the waves or rides or food or drink but the expectation of good things. This is what I see in the most successful. Truly successful. People. In my recent show with celebrity sports coach George ...
Sep 18, 2024•13 min
In the last show I had on celebrity athletic coach George Mumford who worked with the literal legends of the NBA, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal. His message in his book, Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success, is much about finding your true greatness. But are we all destined for greatness? Is it possible for all of us? Do we even want that? And then, what exactly is greatness? How do we define it? I’m not looking for a message that just makes you feel ...
Sep 17, 2024•14 min
I grew up focused on performing. I’m an introvert who doesn’t care for the stage. The performing I’m talking about is being able and capable and winning and achieving and being limitless with no weaknesses. I found a lot of achievement, and heartache, by treating myself as a tool to achieve things. And I missed my potential. Being the fullness of me. In my quest, I’ve found George Mumford. George has worked with basketball legends Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and countless othe...
Sep 16, 2024•1 hr 33 min
I keep finding people wrapped up in feeling they must find this elusive, one-thing, holy grail calling on their life. I wanted to relieve the tension and pressure and showcase that our ultimate calling or purpose is not so confined. It’s something everyone has and it’s something you fuflil in all the roles of your life. This frees you up from thinking you have one, special application to apply this calling to. And what is a true calling anyway? I bring you on one of the world’s premier experts o...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 3 min
What is driving many people. Most of us. Is a lack of resolving. It’s politically correct to validate everyone’s pain and call it trauma. So on one hand you have an adult who suffered from severe abuse as a child, and on the other hand an adult who is still suffering from not making the football team. One was life threatening and the other was ego threatening. Making that statement will sound minimizing and likely gain me some criticism, but my point is to elevate the issue of resolution. The di...
Sep 12, 2024•12 min
“Don’t be controlled by your emotions.” Think about that statement. It says to not be controlled by your emotions. As a culture and specifically with men over the span of history, I believe we misinterpreted it in two ways; 1) don’t show your emotions, and 2) let’s go further and label it manly and masculine and strong to just not have emotions. So we disdain showing and being emotional. And women we’ve deemed are more emotional and we’ve used their propensity to express emotions as weakness. An...
Sep 11, 2024•12 min
I spent most of my life ignorant of my emotions. Only to find that they were there, and in abundance. And I wasn’t ignoring them, I had just become a pro athlete in avoiding them. And I contorted and distorted my life and psyche around them as a result. As I found more emotional intelligence however, I just became aware of how terrified I was of my emotions.. It made no sense, but I couldn’t escape my irrational fear of emotions that, while they were not life threatening to me physiologically, t...
Sep 10, 2024•13 min
It seems everyone these days is anxious. On edge. Stressed. Even the seemingly chill guy is simmering under his skin with an overworked nervous system. That would be me. We medicate the symptoms and have just culturally accepted an anxious life. I’m not ok with it. Being at peace to me is power. It’s wisdom. And those at peace are who I want to be around. I don’t want to numb my nervous system, I want to master it. So I’ve brought you two masters. Karden Rabin is a nervous system medicine practi...
Sep 09, 2024•1 hr 53 min
Following is a story that is far more common than we realize. A childhood trauma that directs our lives, for better and/or worse. When I first started focusing on drive and researching for my book, this is one of the earlier conversations I had with an influential person, digging into their personal story of drive. Ashley got a Master’s degree from King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, as well as a Master’s in Psychology from University of Santa Monica. She started her career in cou...
Sep 06, 2024•1 hr 3 min
A popular topic when I’m being interviewed is my stance on drive. I believe every human has as much drive in them as anyone else. And further, that we are all driven. We are driven to be where we are and who we are. I’ve become known for stating that drug addicts are some of the most driven people on earth. But they are not driving forward, toward something positive and productive and fulfilling. All of us have all the drive we need and we are driven. But at any time, or in certain areas of your...
Sep 05, 2024•11 min
In my continual research into human potential it’s ever more revealed to me that we are inherently most driven to protect ourselves. So when we look to our general behavior, this is what we find. Efforts to feel secure. I feel this is the root to our cynical nature, which was the focus of the previous episode featuring Stanford professor of psychology, Dr Jamil Zaki. His new book is Hope For Cynics and as I ponder our discussion I’m looking at our core beliefs and and making an effort to shift t...
Sep 03, 2024•13 min
If you look at social media influencers, news headlines and commentary, late night TV hosts and a high percentage of the so called informed public, you find a consistent thread of cynicism. Cynicism is a general distrust and lack of faith or hope in humanity and it’s gotten to be viewed as clever and intelligent to take a cynical view of life, and naive to be hopeful and optimistic. My guest today has found opposing data. Dr. Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the...
Sep 03, 2024•1 hr 41 min
I really appreciate taking a topic where we think we know what drives us, and discovering the motives are actually coming from somewhere else. It allows us to come into better alignment and realize more benefit. In this case, the concept is kindness. We think we should be kind because it’s the right thing to do. And if we’re kind, then others will reciprocate and be kind to us in return. It’s usually under the “should” category of life. We “should” be kind. Especially to those we perceive as not...
Aug 30, 2024•1 hr 3 min
We spend our childhood being labeled as to who we are. Then we continue into adulthood thinking of ourselves as who we are, like we are a fixed object. And yet when we look back to ourselves five or ten or 15 years ago, we often hardly recognize or remember that person. We have this concept of finding and figuring ourselves out. Anything that is growing, changes. While there may be some continuity in how you look and how you tend to think, who you are today will be incredibly different in the ye...
Aug 29, 2024•12 min
This show is called What Drives You. My book is called What Drives You. Because what drives you becomes your life. If we’re not getting what we want out of life, we are unaware of what is really driving us. Happiness, for instance. As a podcast host I am inundated with self-improvement books and personalities. There have been more books with “happiness” in the title than I can count in recent years. Why? It sells. We all think we just want to be happy. But I don’t see our cultural decisions supp...
Aug 28, 2024•11 min
Have you ever struggled with feeling a twinge of guilt for your desire to continually grow and change? Wondering if you should just feel content and grateful for where you are and it’s selfish to desire and want more? Especially if you are mainly surrounded by others who seem to just be ok with things as they are? I’m actually not going to justify and make a case to help you feel better. But I will ask some questions and give you some reframing to think about. Such as, do you grow because you ar...
Aug 27, 2024•12 min
I hear from more and more people who just enjoy the journey of personal growth. They almost feel guilty about it, especially if they are mostly around others who seem content to just maintain life. They wonder why they have this insatiable appetite for more insight about themselves and life. Of course, I resonate with them. Over the past years I’ve realized that what I value most is not going after any specific goals, but just always having a goal to go after. My experience is most goals we achi...
Aug 26, 2024•1 hr 15 min
The focus of this episode is twofold. One is to look at how you are driven to show appreciation to people. How you show love and your motives behind your efforts. The other is some ideas for helping drive people to you. My muse is gift giving. The very concept has a lot of baggage around it. A lot of shoulds and expectations. Our focus here is using gift giving as a tool in your work, but we hit on the personal side as well. This is a message that forever changed my ideas on gift giving, and thi...
Aug 23, 2024•58 min
I’ve admittedly put my focus on the work we do on the actual product and service we help deliver. No matter what you do, at the end of the rope is a product or service that is sold. To find fulfillment in your work, my experience is that it’s of utmost importance that you resonate with and support that end product or service. Or…is it? I find it hard to justify not having respect for what you help provide. But I also see how important your work environment is and your actual role. Which is more ...
Aug 22, 2024•13 min
Yes, I’m talking about the TV series. With my family life I don’t get to see a lot of TV, but I really like a good story that moves me. And I like Kevin Costner as an actor. So I watched the original Yellowstone series. It was hard at first, I didn’t like any characters. But then it drew me in. So now I’ve watched the prequels, 1883 and 1923, and really appreciate them. 1883 has some beautiful character stories in my opinion. The last episode of this podcast was with Dr. Tessa West, who is a Pro...
Aug 21, 2024•14 min
We are all going to work. For most of our lives. We applaud people for their anniversaries. “Oh, you’ve been married for 10 years, congratulations.” Or the big celebration you have for a couple who has been married for 50 years! Well, most of us will work for nearly 50 years. I had my first consistent job at about 13, started my first business at 15, and my intent is to live till I’m 90 and work till then. That would put me at 75 years of working. You will also spend more time with your work tha...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 25 min
This is at the heart of what drives you. Many of you. Most of you. And I’ve been there too. You are driving along every day after things you haven’t really agreed with. And then you wonder why you don’t feel motivated and you’d rather just scroll social media, eat, drink, numb or entertain. You want to tune into stories that make you feel cause you aren’t getting many good feels from your current life. You are in good company. And much of it isn’t because anything is specifically wrong or agains...
Aug 16, 2024•58 min
I’m looking at how true friendships can be vital for your drive. I’m sensitive to this topic, as we know culturally, very few people have close and consistent friendships today. We are more isolated than ever and more and more people have never experienced a real, true friendship. As an introvert, I want to offer a few thoughts on the value of friendships, and some ideas on where to find and how to foster them for your benefit. Again. I’m not the socialite. I’m happy to enjoy my own company. And...
Aug 15, 2024•18 min
To talk about what drives you…your body transports you. All of you. It is your vehicle. And what you eat fuels it. I was at someone’s home recently and looked around their kitchen. What I saw motivated me to peek in their fridge and freezer. Yeah, I’m that guy. And what I found was hardly any real food. It was all FDA approved edible substances. But nothing with any nutritional value. I’ve come to label myself as a sensualist. I am highly motivated to please my senses. I’m no prude in any way an...
Aug 14, 2024•13 min
I have an admission to make. I’ve been a lifetime advocate of making a difference in and with your work. Making an impact in the world. I viewed work like it’s a ministry to save the world. And I didn’t connect with people who primarily worked just to make money. I negatively judged it, to be honest. And yet today I’m friends with plenty of people who work to provide a basic product or service, and find joy in making money. What I now realize is important, is your spirit behind it, either way. G...
Aug 13, 2024•12 min
