Get ready for an extremely powerful and emotional episode of The Bold Life Movement. Today’s guest is Geoff Woods, host of The Mentee podcast, General Manager of the Publishing Division at Keller Williams Realty, Inc., and currently building a business with Jay Papasan at The1Thing.com.
Geoff worked in medical device sales for five years. He made a good living selling a device that actually saved lives, but he knew he was meant for more. He knew he wanted to own a business that made a massive impact and provided financial security for his family, but he didn’t have a compelling reason to make a change.
“I didn’t have a compelling reason to make change. There wasn’t enough pain in my life that forced me to make change.”
In one week, things changed dramatically. One of his colleagues suffered a stroke at 35, and then his income was slashed by 40 percent. Geoff was compelled to move forward, and that’s when he heard the Jim Rohn quote, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
None of Geoff’s five closest people were doing what he wanted to do – owning a business that made an impact in the world and provided financial security – and he realized that he could either take the easy road or the hard road to level up his five.
“I can take the easy road or the hard road. Most people are offered this choice everyday, and they don’t realize they’re choosing the hard road.”
How did Geoff connect with the mentors that inspired him along the way? He started by gaining clarity on what it was that he wanted and identifying the people who inspired him. Then, when given the opportunity to speak with his ideal mentors, he dropped his ego and made himself vulnerable. There’s two ways to make the initial connection with your ideal mentors:
“Extraordinary results are not hard.”
Every time I talk to Geoff he blows my mind. I really wanted to share his powerful story because it demonstrates that we can choose to make our lives more Bold, and we can all have a massive impact on the world. Learn more about Geoff and his businesses by listening to The Mentee podcast or heading over to The1Thing.com.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
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Production & Development for The Bold Life Movement Podcast by Podcast Masters
I’m excited to have Lori Darley back on the show today. She is a leadership coach, trainer and CEO Founder of Conscious Leaders, LLC, which aims to train and develop leaders to practice conscious capitalism. Lori published her first book, Dancing Naked: Claiming Your Power as a Conscious Leader, in September.
If you didn’t hear my first interview with Lori, she’s great and I highly recommend listening to it. We discussed the concept of a Conscious Leader, which is being clear in the way we think, creating a space for ourselves where we give ourselves permission to wake up to our own biases and assumptions, and how that actually impacts the decisions that we make so that we’re actually freer and more intentional about the way in which we lead.
“We don’t necessarily have a choice about how our brains are thinking, so we have to understand that there is an automatic nature to the brain.”
Dancing Naked contains empowering messages that people can use to take back control of their lives and realize that we have the ability to reprogram ourselves, and reprogram our reality, whether or not you are in a leadership or management role.
The first half of the book is titled, “Claiming My Power,” and it’s made up of stories that illustrate the automatic nature of how we are programmed as a child, as well as some of Lori’s experiences as a dancer.
“I know there are not that many dancers in the world, and yet the way in which I experience life is much like everybody else’s. I call it the human condition.”
Lori believes the term “dancing naked” encapsulates the experience of tapping into our own wisdom and expressing it in the world in a way that gives our gifts to the people we impact. People often approach self-improvement through a series of prescribed steps, but Dancing Naked suggests that the human condition is not linear.
“Dancing Naked is a metaphor that really points to a willingness to be fully self-expressed and vulnerable to giving the world your gift.”
Dancing Naked approaches self-improvement through The Clearing Process, which includes the Four C’s of Clearing. These aren’t steps, they’re conversational spaces.
Lori is afraid of the consequences of people not working to create a sense of self-awareness and intentional action, because then we aren’t living our purpose in life – we’re living our life based on what other people’s expectations are. Never learning to “dance naked” is like living a life with your ego on autopilot.
“Achievement is an extraordinary thing to experience, but sometimes we lose ourselves as we step onto that path.”
Thanks for coming back on the show, Lori. I was really excited to talk about Dancing Naked, and I’m proud that you made it through this incredible journey. Head to consciousleaders.us and sign up for their email list to receive a bunch of free resources, including a series of worksheets that will help people expereice The Clearing on their own, and to pick up your own copy of Dancing Naked: Claiming Your Power as a Conscious Leader.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Production & Development for The Bold Life Movement Podcast by Podcast Masters
Today’s guest, Mark Manson, is a bestselling author, blogger, and internet entrepreneur who writes about “personal development that doesn’t suck.” He recently published his second book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, and he regularly writes articles on a blog with over two million monthly readers.
“The first book was actually extremely easy … this one was a total bitch.”
When Mark started writing his first book, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, he had already been blogging about relationships for years. It was just a matter of sitting down and getting it all out. When he started writing his second book the pages didn’t pour out of him. He started and threw away two drafts.
“When you talk about failures in past-tense it never really feels like a failure, because everybody knows you turned out alright.”
“I realized that maybe I need some help with this.”
Mark hit a turning point with his book when he published an article, also titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, that received over seven million page views. He signed on with book publisher HarperOne and they helped him pick the title and focus his writing. They told him some of what he wrote was good and some of it sucked.
“It hurt to hear that, but it’s what I needed to hear.”
Mark writes about self-improvement and advice, but he does it in a very contrarian manner. For example, Mark touches on the subject of affirmation in the book, which is a popular autosuggestion technique intended to guide one’s own thoughts, feelings and behavior. He sees benefits to the technique, but he believes the benefits are blown out of proportion. His philosophy doesn’t prescribe specific techniques, because different processes work for different people. His self-help philosophy is to provide principles that can be applied to anyone’s life, in nearly any situation.
“The book is principle-driven, it’s about discovering new ways of looking at things in life. The way to implement that into your life isn’t doing specific things, it’s simply applying these principles to things you’re already doing.”
It was awesome talking to Mark and exploring his unique perspective on the self-improvement and advice industry. He’s hilarious and insightful, and you owe it to yourself to check out some of his writing if you haven’t already. Mark’s new book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is available now – even in the Barnes & Noble on 5th Avenue!
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
SOME OF YOUR QUESTIONS:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Production & Development for The Bold Life Movement Podcast by Podcast Masters
“Being bold is having the courage to listen to your inner voice and live in a way that makes you light up despite what other people think.”
Jake Heilbrunn is an author, blogger and speaker who, at the age of 20, is already living a pretty bold life. He dropped out of college after his first semester, backpacked around South America alone (without a phone!) and then wrote a memoir about what he learned. Off the Beaten Trail is a coming-of-age pilgrimage that led Jake to realize there are unlimited ways to live and that people can create their own destinies when they trust their intuition and take action.
“When we take a leap of faith based on our gut, based on our intuition, things tend to work out and we find the happiness in the pursuit of what we’re doing.”
By the end of his first semester of college, Jake was unhappy and unhealthy. He had a passion for traveling, but he was afraid of the unknown. Then a career counselor asked Jake two questions that changed his life:
“I realized that I was living a life based on the expectations of others. The life I was living and the life I wanted to be living were not in alignment.”
Two months later, Jake was on a plane to Guatemala with a backpack, no cellphone and very little Spanish. He spent four months backpacking through Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica so he could explore other ways of life and disconnect from a society dominated by social media.
As Jake learned to find happiness in the journey, he became a more process-oriented person. He adopted an intense morning routine, inspired by Tony Robbins, that helped him write 100,000 words in three months:
“With or without writing a book, writing is a very powerful way to process what you experience.”
Jake demonstrates the power of visualization to manifest a better (and bolder) life. By visualizing the future he wanted and taking bold action to achieve it, he manifested book endorsements from two awesome influencers that he really looks up to – Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Success Principles, and Chris Guillebeau, NYT Bestselling Author of The $100 Startup and The Happiness of Pursuit. Like a GPS system, visualization can keep you in route when you are heading towards a goal.
“Because I’ve been visualizing it, it’s like I set this GPS in my head … If you take conscious action that’s guided by vision there’s less re-routing.”
You can pick up a FREE Kindle version of Jake’s book on Nov. 2nd & Nov. 3rd by going to Amazon and searching for “Off the Beaten Trail: A Young Man's Soul-Searching Journey Through Central America”
It’s really awesome to see someone as young as Jake setting such a good example for people of all ages. He shows that life experience isn’t necessarily tied to how many years you’ve been here, but how intentional you’ve been with the time you have had. Pick up a copy of Off the Beaten Trail (Kindle version is free Nov. 2-3, 2016) and get inspired.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Production & Development for The Bold Life Movement Podcast by Podcast Masters