The Kevin Miller Podcast

I experience our culture growing more and more fearful of unexpected and undesired change. If you were to look back on your life and make a list of all the unexpected and undesired changes you have experienced in your life, I bet it’s fairly long. I would ask you to consider why you think many more unexpected and undesired changes aren’t ahead of you. But what I see is that when you have anxiety about the possible, and I’d say probable changes ahead of you, you are taking away from your ability to have joy and fulfillment today. I find myself looking at two perspectives. One, none of the unexpected and undesired changes in my past have killed me. They haven’t ruined me. And two, I amaze myself to think of how many of those unexpected and undesired changes actually turned out to be great, great gifts to my life. To unpack the psychology around change, in this episode I have Maya Shankar back on the podcast. I first had Maya on for the launch of her podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, which Apple awarded as the Best Show of the Year 2021. After four years of the podcast, Maya has now culminated her findings and experience in a book, The Other Side Of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans. Maya says, "I’ve written this for anyone who is currently in the choppy waters of  a change, is trying to make sense of a past change, or is anxious about  a future change." Maya is a cognitive scientist and was a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science Team. She also served as the first Behavioral Science Advisor to the United Nations. Maya has a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford, a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.A. from Yale. She's been profiled by The New Yorker and been the featured guest on NPR's All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain. All that to say, she knows the psychology behind change and is here to help us, help ourselves. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let’s say we are going to build a house. Think of all the roles and activities there are to fulfill. Designing the home. Clearing the land and building a foundation. Building the home, which includes framing, plumbing, electricity, roofing, and more. Putting the finishing touches on it, such as trim. Then buying furniture and interior design. Landscaping. Each role and activity embodies a different set of interests and skills. Which role and activity would you find most fulfilling? Think of the workplace. Everyone is working to ultimately deliver a product or service. In the business there are many roles and activities. No matter where I’m working and what the product or service is, I absolutely know the role and activity that fits me. And one of the best tools to help me clarify this is called The 6 Types Of Working Genius. You can find it at workinggenius.com. It’s $25 and I don’t make a dime. I’ve had all my kids and most of my friends take this, my clients as well. The profile helps me understand them and helps me guide them. Patrick Lencioni is one of the foremost influencers in business management and teams. He’s author of 11 best selling books and most anyone in business in America has read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I’ve had Patrick on the podcast three times and I experience him as one of the more insightful people I know regarding human behavior and performance. He has a book titled, The 6 Types of Working Genius, and the online assessment takes about 10 minutes, and again is at workinggenius.com. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On my own journey of connecting with myself and everything else, I find everything to seem richer and clearer and just more fulfilling. The base level pleasures of life don't satisfy as much. So when this book came across my desk, I was immediately interested. The book is, Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses For Freedom from Unwanted Habits. The author is mother, investor, advocate, and founder, Cecily Mak. Cecily says she is devoted to helping people live dimmer-free, with clarity, courage, and the freedom to change without stigma or shame. Her story started with realizing she was using alcohol to dim her life, but our focus is no alcohol. It's any number of things we engage with that dim our lives. Think of what you turn to when you have a moment of freedom. Instead of being fully present in the moment and taking in the beauties and glories and realness of life, you fill it with what? Social media? A book or podcast, whether entertainment or self-help. Just being productive and getting something done? Buying things? Food, entertainment, and even exercise can be the fillers. Anything and everything other than being fully present and clear. In this episode I dig in with Cecily on the topic. We don't even get into the specifics of her "Eight Awarenesses For Freedom from Unwanted Habits," so before we start, I want to give them to you: 1 My Life Is Better Clear 2 I Choose What I Consume 3 My Intuition Defines My Priorities 4 My Trauma Isn’t My Identity  5 Forgiveness and Letting Go Are on the Path to Liberation   6 I Do Not Judge or Impose My Orientations Upon Others 7 Time Is Our Most Precious Currency 8 I Seek Ways to Support Others The book is Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses For Freedom from Unwanted Habits and you can connect with Cecily on Instagram @clearlifejourney Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I seem to be a natural optimist. And as the former host of The Ziglar Show podcast, greatly appreciate Zig Ziglar’s famous quote, “Positive thinking won't let you do anything, but it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” That said, I now realize I spent a lot of my life as a father, husband, and friend, not always connecting with people when they were hurting or struggling. Today I strive to just be with people. Witness them. And be curious. When they are struggling, I don’t try to lift them up with positivity, or pull them further down by fanning the flames of their struggle. Someone who helped me with this is Whitney Goodman. Whitney is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist who has taken on our concept of positivity and has an instagram following of well over half a million followers who are finding great help from her guidance and encouragement that life is well worth living, but treating it as a continual self-improvement project and bypassing our true feelings doesn’t leave room for a full, quality life. I understand now, that jumping from a negative experience right to positivity can rob us from the growth, learning, and peace we find in between. Whitney took her years of work as a therapist studying cultural positivity and wrote the book, “TOXIC POSITIVITY: KEEPING IT REAL IN A WORLD OBSESSED WITH BEING HAPPY.” The book is a dive into how we’ve distorted the concept of positivity, and how we can better handle the hard things in life and ultimately acknowledge them, but not be overwhelmed and controlled by them. Find Whitney Goodman at www.sitwithwhit.com. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In my experience, you can accomplish a lot of production by just working like a slave. Day in and day out. The world and most people will applaud you for it. But as I’ve stepped back from being a professional “doer” and given my attention to much more “being,” I’m realizing my fulfillment in life at large just increases. And my connection to myself, the world, and everyone keeps getting deeper. Further, I’m realizing that the lifestyles of the greatest minds I have been looking to for guidance, do not work like slaves. They do far less quantity of life, but in what I now value, have much more quality. So recently a book came across my desk about taking mini-retirements. At first glance I saw it as a tool to help you do literally that, take mini-retirements, or sabbaticals, from your work. But as I dug in, what I was drawn to most is how you must face your own identity and life values if you are not just working day in and day out. I found it all very, very revealing to help us ask, what are we doing, and why?! My guest and expert here is Jillian Johnsrud. Jillian is…not defined by her work. But inspired by the idea of sabbatical years, she set out to sprinkle retirements throughout her life. At 40, she has taken over a dozen mini-retirements. These allowed her to pursue dreams like living abroad, traveling to 27 countries, adopting four kids (plus two biological kids), investing in real estate, and touring the U.S. in a camper. She did this with her husband and kids and usually on less than $100k per year. Jillian has taught, coached, and wrote about mini-retirements for almost a decade. She has now written about her experience and insight in a new book, Retire Often: How anyone can take multiple career breaks to unlock adventure, advance their career, and find financial freedom. She hosts the Retire Often podcast and is a popular speaker and consultant for mini retirements. She lives in Montana, where she spends time in the garden drinking tea. Jillian’s book, Retire Often, is literally a manual for stepping away from work, no matter what you do, but as you’re about to hear, also addresses the philosophical questions that come into play. Find her at retireoften.com Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices