The Kevin Miller Podcast

I once argued with the leader of a soul care institute who said you can’t live in the white water all the time, and that you must have some time of calm waters in order to live sustainably. I told him I was strengthening and equipping myself to endure the white water all the time. And I believed it. And I did it! Until…I couldn’t. And then it took multiple episodes of acute burnout to finally let go of the pace I was trying to sustain. A pace that I now recognize was more about feeding my insecure identity than anything else. That and realizing I was not actually God and the world and everyone in it didn’t actually rely on me for their existence. I feel there are many angles and levels of burnout, and my guest today is an expert in some of them. Dr Neha Sangwan had her epic story of burnout as a doctor juggling 18 critically ill patients per day and barely surviving 36-hour shifts fueled by sugar and caffeine in her early 30s. She did it…till she couldn’t. And she realized something had to give. She used her scientific background to jumpstart her journey of renewal and started a mission to help people avoid burnout. But it’s not simply to slow down. She is a fan of high production. But, sustainably. Neha’s book is titled, Powered by Me: From Burned out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life. This was one of the early messages I had on my own path. I didn’t avoid burnout, but I’ve recovered. You can find Neha at intuitiveintelligenceinc.com

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I’m going to assume you are aware that we are at a time when, even though we are often in communication with more people than ever, quantity wise, we are statistically connecting with fewer people than ever. The stats on loneliness and isolation are at equal or all time highs. I have been giving focus to how we connect, but a key issue is what we are connecting with. Meaning, what are we sharing with other people? My guest in this episode is Leslie John, the James E. Burke Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her award-winning research appears in top academic journals and media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. She has taken her research direct from her teaching at Harvard and is giving it to us in her new book, REVEALING: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. So right there, oversharing. It’s easy to look at social media and feel everyone is literally, oversharing. But set that aside, here we are talking about your personal relationships. In your home, at work, with friends and family. In these instances, Leslie is finding that we are for the most part, undersharing. We aren’t being open and honest with people. Authentic is a popular word these days. So of course her call is for us to share more deeply and honestly. Now are we to do this with everyone, everywhere, all the time? Of course not. But where we care and where it counts, I’ll ask you, do you want to connect more deeply? Do you want to feel more resonance with people you care about? This is the show.

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I appreciate personality profiles that help us better clarify some of the what and why we tend towards certain propensities and predispositions. However, I don’t like that people sometimes use them as an excuse for how they are. And, I don’t like that they are self-reporting. We can easily grapple with answers that vacillate between how we believe ourselves to be and how we want to see ourselves, and still miss how we actually are. So when I was introduced to the concept of human design, I intrigued myself. After I repelled myself. I was at an event with former broadway star and now communications expert, Renée Marino, and she said I just had to try something called the Human Design Blueprint. It’s based on your date of birth, time of birth, and birth location. That’s it. If it were not for Renée’s insistence, I would have never done it. But I did. I did a free version at humandesignblueprint.com. I impressed myself enough that I paid for the upgraded version. And…wow. Then, two weeks later I was contacted by an agency to see if I wanted the founder, Erin Claire Jones, on this podcast. Coincidence? I was still leery enough I did a pre-call with Erin. And I found her…lovely. I resonated immediately. So following is the deep dive conversation with Erin on Human Design. For those of you who struggle, as I did, with something being able to give insight into who and how you are, simply from your date of birth, time, and location, for me as someone who believes in a higher power, I considered if God could have created me to be born at a specific time and place and location and giving meaning to those specifics. I am ok accepting that. But as Erin says in our upcoming conversation, if I found benefit from the report, does it have to matter how it was derived? I decided, no. I’ve now had many of my friends and family get their own Human Design Blueprint, and continue to find great, great value. If you find yourself interested, you can go get a free version at humandesignblueprint.com. And not that it matters, but I don’t get a dime of any sales if you upgrade. Since this initial conversation, Erin has written a book and I had her back on the show. I’ll share that episode again at some point as well.

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When I first laid eyes on a book with the title, SELF-HELP FROM THE MIDDLE AGES: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living, I interested myself. Even more when I found out the author is an expert in medieval times. Peter Jones is a writer and academic specializing in the history of the human heart. Over his career he has taught at New York University, the University of Toronto, University College London, Complutense University of Madrid, and School of Advanced Studies in Tyumen, Siberia, where he helped put History at the centre of the liberal arts curriculum. But this book is about something that started in the 1300s when I’ve now learned that the ultimate level of high education was theology with a focus to “create self-aware citizens” and the most prized roles had job descriptions that involved analyzing the triggers of temptation and desire, giving lectures on fear and doubt, and healing the anxieties of people in crisis. Sounds like what we need, now. Thus why I did this show. I thoroughly enjoyed and benefited from this conversation with Pete and learned how I can have a better relationship with these 7 Deadly Sins, which the originator described as, “generic thoughts,” or in essence, human impulses, which include: 1) Pride - vanity, 2) Envy, 3) Anger, 4) Sloth, 5) Avarice - Greed, 6) Gluttony, 7) Lust. Which you are about to find out are seen as aspects of being a human, and the point is not whether we engage with them. We do. It’s what our relationship is with each. Or rather, how our relationship is with each.

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I really appreciate finding commonplace practices that are leading us astray…that we can alter immediately. Imagine an olympic athlete that performed year round. They are always either prepping or recovering for the next event. Their performance would stall. Elite athletes count on having a season of performance, then a season of training. Training. Where they learn new techniques and try new things to raise them up another level. In the workplace and often in our lives, we get stuck in the rut of performing, day after day. In our roles as a spouse or parent, in our work, and even in our hobbies and interests. When do we stop and…engage in training to help us actually get better? I really helped myself with this concept as I realized how stuck I was in some roles of my life, just churning out the same performance day in and day out and plateaued. So I’m revisiting this episode with my expert on this concept, Stanford-trained mindset expert Eduardo Briceño. Eduardo is the author of The Performance Paradox: Turning The Power of Mindset Into Action. He is co-founder of Mindset Works with renowned Stanford psychologist and known as a founder of growth mindset work, Carol Dweck. You can find Eduardo at briceno.com

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