The Kevin Miller Podcast

My guest here talks about creating systems in our lives in order to get better results. When I hear this I immediately think about calendars and habits and check lists and a lot of things I don’t inspire myself with. Concepts that take time and confine me and I end up being a slave to some daily factory of myself. But. But what he helps me understand is that my life always has been, and already is, a system. There is a system in place. If you videoed my life for a week, even a couple days I think, you would see “Kevin’s System.” It exists. It’s already in place. I do it day in and day out and it produces what you would see as predictable results. So the idea is not to implement all these new, complex systems, but to recognize a system is already in place, and look to alter it for results I’d like to experience, better than what I have now. Ben Meer is a writer, speaker, and coach who Forbes refers to as “The Systems Guy”. He believes most people don’t need more inspiration; they need better life infrastructure. His weekly newsletter, System Sunday, reaches more than 250,000 subscribers, and his ideas on productivity and systems thinking have built a social media following of over two million. Ben got his MBA from Cornell University while advising Fortune 500 companies at Ernst & Young, he realized that the same systems driving business growth could make everyday life easier. I invited Ben on because I felt he was pretty down to earth and grounded in his approach. He wasn’t promoting some militant, super disciplined charge for us to again, just be slaves to a some overall factory setting of systems. The point is to be ourselves. To be human. To enjoy life. And to let some overall system settings help us find what we want. HIs new book that you’ll hear me referencing is How to Be Good at Life: Simple Systems to Achieve More and Stress Less. To connect more with Ben go to benmeer.com/newsletter

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Four days ago we published my conversation with RamDev Dale Borglum who leads the Living/Dying Project, and we discussed how dealing better with fear of death, frees us up to live more fully, now. I’m taking the opportunity to bring back a podcast from nearly three years ago. I recorded the following monologue from my Dad’s office, while he lay in a hospice bed on the other side of the wall, dying. This was my first and so far only experience with death of a loved one. My brother Jared and I had joined my father in Las Vegas to see U2 in the Sphere. He was feeling a bit off and on returning home, went for a checkup. And they found advanced pancreatic cancer. He chose not to fight it and six weeks later, I was by his bedside when he took his last, shuddering breath. So this was a 30 minute talk through some of my thoughts and feelings as my Dad, Dan Miller, of 48 Days To The Work & Life You Love fame, ended his mortal time here on earth. I hope you find value. You can still connect with Dan’s work at 48days.com.

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This is not an episode, focused on death. As my guest will say, the point is right here and right now and our life in this moment. But he is showing how much we limit right now with the fear of death. If that sounds basic, I implore you to stay tuned in. I don't go around feeling that I fear death. I'm someone who I perceive considers the concept more than most, and yet after this conversation, I have a different understanding of how I can have more hope and freedom in the now by having a better concept of death. My guest is RamDev Dale Borglum. Dale's new book has been in the works for a long time, How to Live So You Can Die Without Fear. Dale is the executive director of the Living/Dying Project and a pioneering figure in the conscious dying movement. He spent decades helping individuals face death — and life — with greater awareness and has collaborated with leaders in the field including Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. He says he draws on his background as a mathematician, meditation teacher, lover of God, and devoted practitioner of both Eastern and Western healing traditions. I experienced Dale as down to earth with a practical and accessible map to the healing. I really like this line from him, which you’ll soon hear, "What you want is not Hope for the future but fullness in this moment". Visit him online at livingdying.org

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Thomas Hübl is an Austrian teacher and author known for his work in the field of collective trauma. He’s known for integrating the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. He wrote a book, Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World. I’d heard of Thomas and really wanted to get into his perspective on attunement. He told me something that I’ll never forget, and that I’ve helped myself continually with. You’ll hear it in this episode. He said, “Kevin, when you walk into nature, you are not just seeing nature. You are then, nature yourself. You are there and you are part of nature.” The concept was around how we tend to see ourselves as separate from…everything. Even my title of this episode is actually a misnomer. I labeled it, “How Attuned Our We To The People & World Around Us.” Thomas makes the case that the people and world isn’t around me. We are all together. In a sense, one. My interest is in the concept of attunement. Am I walking around feeling separate from all around me? Or am I tuning in to the energy of everyone and everything around me, that I’m integrated with? This is much of our discussion. You can connect with Thomas at thomashuebl.com

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Most people I think have had the experience of no electricity for a while. I remember it back before cell phones, so when the electricity was out, everything was literally out. You were all of the sudden transported back to 1900 before most homes had electricity. Everything was just…quiet. Quiet. Like everything just slowed down to a…stop. I hope you had that experience so you can relate. Think about your daily life today and how long it may have been since that feeling. But what if you could have it? Every day? This is the opportunity I feel we have with meditation. Or if that word doesn’t thrill you, just a full-stop from everything. Just you and you alone with no input. No sound. No stimulation or input. Just you. Even if just for a minute. My guest to talk about this is renowned consciousness teacher Peter Russell. He has 11 books, but his recent, short book is called, How to Meditate Without Even Trying. Peter has been teacher of meditation for more than fifty years and believes the critical challenge of today is freeing human thinking from the limited beliefs and attitudes that lie behind many of our problems — personal, social, and global. He has inspired thousands through his talks, teachings, retreats, and popular online courses. I took the opportunity to talk about more than even meditation, but our cultural distance from just being able to be with ourselves. With no input. Just sitting and being. What are we missing? What could we benefit from? That’s our talk. Find Peter at www.peterrussell.com.

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