The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

The Power of Self Compassion with Mike Robbins

Mike Robbins was on the path to build a lifelong career as a professional baseball player. He was drafted by the Yankees out of high school, declined the offer to attended Stanford, and eventually played for the Kansas City Royals. At the age of 23, a career-ending injury lead to major changes in his life and career.

Getting drafted by the Yankees, right out of high school
Developing the mindset to tackle really big goals
The dangers of the brass ring and achievement
Insights revealed amidst a major car accident
Navigating a childhood with a severely depressed parent
Dealing with a career-ending injury at the age of 23
Turning our tragedies into a catalysts for positive change
Why pain and difficulty force us to look at our lives in different ways
The internal conversations we have with and about ourselves
Why dealing with ourselves is one of the hardest things we do
The difference between self compassion and self esteem
Learning to be kind to ourselves when we fail
Changing the frame from which we start our self improvement efforts
Using the process of self forgiveness as a catalyst for big change
Why we must be willing to ask others for help
Distinguishing between what happens to us and what happens to our ego

Mike Robbins is a speaker, consultant, and the author of three books. He has been featured on ABC News, the Oprah radio network, in Forbes, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. Since 2008, he has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

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Duration:: 1h 7m
Broadcast on:: 14 Jul 2014
Audio Format:: other

As you probably noticed this month, we're bringing you our "Life of Purpose" series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free "Life of Purpose" ebook. What you have to do is go to unmistakablecreative.com/lifepurpose. I'm Sreeny Rao, and this is the Unmistakable Creative Podcast, where I speak with creative entrepreneurs, artists, and other insanely interesting people to hear their stories, learn about their molding moments, tipping points, and spectacular takeoffs. Let's talk about something that's not always top of mind, but still really important. Life Insurance. Why? 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Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's We Call Home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. It's all to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado.chefron.com. Mike, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Hey, I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. So, you know, I came across you by way of one of our listeners and I absolutely was totally intrigued by your story. So tell us a bit about yourself, your background and sort of the journey before the journey that people know you for today. Yeah. Well, you know, like most people, especially a lot of the wonderful people you have here on your show, I've had quite an interesting sort of twists and turn and windy road, if you will. But my journey really started with baseball. So I played baseball all growing up from the time I started tee ball when I was seven years old and decided very early on I wanted to play in the major leagues. That was my passion. That was my thing and I was actually pretty good and, you know, played through high school and actually got drafted right out of high school by the New York Yankees. I didn't end up signing a contract with the Yankees at that time because I got an opportunity to play baseball at Stanford. And if I'd signed with the Yankees right out of high school, then I could have still gone to Stanford and, you know, to go to school, but I couldn't have played there. So I go to Stanford, play baseball there and get drafted out of Stanford by the Kansas City Royals and sign my pro contract and the way it works in baseball, you get drafted by a major league team. You still have to go into the minor leagues. There's a bunch of different levels and you kind of got to work your way up. And I was left handed pitcher doing pretty well in the minor leagues, working my way up and unfortunately my third season in the minors, I went out to pitch one night and I threw one pitch and I tore ligaments in my elbow and I blew my arm out. So at 23 years old after starting baseball at seven, my career ended. You know, I didn't know that my career was over when I got hurt. I was playing on the East Coast at that time. I knew the season was over because I hurt myself pretty bad and they sent me back to California where I grew up and still live now and I ended up having an operation on my arm that summer. I had actually three operations over the next two years and unfortunately when all the surgeries were done and everything, I was almost 25 years old at that point. I wasn't able to come back and keep playing so baseball ended and I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, which, you know, I mean, I'd gone to Stanford and I'd gotten a degree and all that and I'd always thought I got to have a plan B but I really had no plan B so I didn't know what the hell I was going to do quite frankly and you know, I was pretty devastated by the experience because it had been, you know, big huge piece of my life obviously but it actually ended up being as often as the case when something really difficult and tragic happens, it actually was a huge catalyst for me. I didn't know it at the time. You know, I went into the .com world, it was the late '90s and I got a job working first started up in San Francisco and spaced in New York but the office I was working for was in San Francisco and did some online ad sales for about a year and a half and then went to another startup and was going to, you know, get rich like everybody else because the company I went to work for was supposed to go public but then the .com bubble burst and I lost my job and so I was, you know, in the middle of 2000 I was 26 I guess going on 27 and someone asked me a mentor of mine asked me what do you really want to do and you know, if money weren't an issue what would you do and I said well what I'd do if I could do anything really as I would write and I would speak and I would try to inspire people and I don't, you know, and he's like well that's, you seem really, and I was passionate but I was excited. One of my secret fantasies really had been if I had made it to the big leagues and, you know, the baseball thing was fun to me and I was excited about it but I hoped that by being an athlete maybe I could use that platform to make a difference and to inspire, you know, kids and I don't know who I just wanted to, I wanted to be out there in the world trying to help people if you will and so I told this mentor of mine that and he said well great why don't you go do that now? And I said well because you know I'm 26 years old and I don't know how you start doing that and how do you get anyone to pay you to do that it seems crazy right and he said well yeah you could wait till you think you figured it out or think you have some experience to talk about or whatever you could just do it now and so that's what actually got me, you know it wasn't like that instant but over the next six months I ended up meeting my now wife around that same time that fall and she really encouraged me and I started my business as a speaker and a coach and hoping to one day be able to write and you know publish a book or maybe more than one book but that's at the beginning of 2001 I decided I was going to start this business and see if I could actually get it off the ground and you know 13 and a half years later as I seriously but jokingly say to people I figured I'd give myself a year and if I couldn't make it work I'd go get a job and I haven't had to go get a job over the last thirteen and a half years because I've been able to write a few books and travel around the country and speak about you know some things that I think are important so that's kind of how I ended up here if you will and having this conversation with you. So you know I want to take a few steps back actually to the very beginning of this. You played baseball from the time you were seven and you got drafted by the Yankees out of high school. One of the things I want to talk about is sort of really really big goals because I mean that's that's not a small accomplishment that's a big accomplishment the kinds of things that I think are out of the sort of realm of reality for most people like I would never think okay I've got the potential inside of me to one day get drafted by the Yankees I mean I'm Indian I'm not genetically predisposed for anything athletic but what I'm really curious about is sort of two things around this sort of the mindset that you approach something like that with and how you cultivated it at such an early age to think okay I've got it in me to play for the Yankees someday or become a professional baseball player and then of course you know lessons from the field that you've brought with you into life and into the world. Well I mean those were two great questions I think you know I don't really know where that came from quite frankly I mean I grew up my parents split up when I was three and my dad you know so I was raised by a single mom I have an older sister and you know we definitely we had some challenges I mean from the age of three to seven you know we did I did the kind of every other weekend with my dad and my dad was in radio and television actually really creative very charismatic talented guy but he had bipolar disorder so he struggled significantly with his own demons I didn't know what that meant as a kid but by the time I turned seven he actually ended up in a serious depression lost his job and that went on for like five or six years he was in and out of halfway houses and and right around that time so around seven years old my dad gets really sick you know baseball was this thing I liked and was starting to play but I was really good at and I kind of knew that right away and I got a lot of feedback so I think that part of it on a psychological level for me was this is something that I could be good at this is something that I could get attention for and in a lot of ways it saved me from some of the pain that I didn't know how to deal with as a kid and what was going on in my family and and once I you know kind of got into it so I was good my personality is such that I just kind of like to you know as my home my wife often says you don't do things halfway you know it's like so I remember literally being like seven almost eight years old and asking my mother mom what's the best college in the country I don't know why I asked her but she said well Harvard would be for the best school my mom's from the east coast and she's right Harvard's Ivy League school and I said great I'm going to go to Harvard and I'm going to play baseball and that was kind of this I made up this goal at you know seven almost eight years old and I remember then being on the school yard telling kids I'm going to go to Harvard and play baseball and some kid says to me well Harvard doesn't have a very good baseball team really what and I'm upset so I go back home and I say to my mom mom some kid told me Harvard's baseball team isn't that good and she said well yeah that's probably true I don't know the Ivy League is not really known for its sports and I said well what's the best school in the country that has a good baseball team and she said well probably Stanford it's not that far it's about an hour from here where we live I grew up in Oakland and I said okay now I'm going to go to Stanford I'm going to play baseball and again I mean I remember vividly having that thought I'm not sure exactly where that came from but it just became this thing that like that's what I want to do and it was this like if I'm going to do it I might as well try to do it as big and as successful as possible now the thing is I would say about that though I think that there's some potentially dangerous aspects of that if you will because I've seen it in my own life and I also see it in our culture as a whole now especially that this idea that it's all about you know the sort of brass ring and the cream of the crop and we have to you know and look you've probably experienced this I know I have almost everyone listening we have a big goal whatever it is we go for it even if we achieve it sometimes it's disappointing because it never fulfills us in the way that we think and oftentimes we don't and then we feel like losers because we weren't able to make it to whatever we think we're supposed to so I mean there's a lot of psychology I think for me personally underneath that and some of it I think can be really positive in our desire to think big but I also think there's some really dark sides to it as well that we got to be careful about well you know I do actually want to spend some time talking about the dark sides of it and I think that's what we'll spend the rest of our conversation talking about given the subject matter of your book you know there's another thing that I think is really interesting here when you tell me your story is this idea of injury and how it basically you know put an end to your career at a fairly early age and you know one of the things that I you know I see with people here often is that some sort of loss seems to be a pretty common part of the story of almost anybody who's been on the show or some sort of really just traumatic event and I think that you know for somebody like you I can't imagine that didn't create this huge sort of loss of identity because it's something that's just I mean it's kind of defined who you are for such a long time so I'm curious in those situations I mean first let's talk about how you overcome that sort of a loss of identity when something has been such a significant part of your life I mean from age seven to 23 that's that's substantial yeah well and you know and by the time I finally retired and was done I mean I was almost 25 so you know for the first for 18 of the first 25 years of my life that was a huge piece or not only what I did but I was like I got good and I was good kind of right away so I was like Mike the baseball player and you know it's interesting on the one hand on the sort of superficial level not even so superficial it was devastating it was devastating to my identity it was devastating to my ego it was like oh my gosh who am I without this but there was a piece of it underneath that I don't know that I fully appreciated at the time and now you know 15 years later at the age of 40 I can look back and say oh it was actually kind of liberating too because I had been so defined by that but I think I think what happens to us and look and this is emblematic all throughout our culture is that we get defined by the things that we do and if we're really good at something it can sort of be a blessing and occurs because then it becomes oh he's really good at this she's really good at that and something like sports or something like you know in certain aspects of the arts and you know this as a creative person and all the different creative people that you talk to if it's something that's glorified by our culture like are you kidding there's nothing more American than baseball right I mean I was going to go be a baseball star right and go play for the Yankees or whatever it was like a lot of projection that came on to me again I wasn't fully aware of it but as a kid who was insecure and sensitive and going through a lot of what I had gone through you know growing up with my family situation I mean this was for me it was more than just about baseball it was like I wanted to be somebody and I wanted people to like me and approve of me which I think you know most of us do to some degree so it wasn't simply just the loss of my identity it was like oh no this is the one thing that made me special and made people pay attention to me you know but I think though there's a story that I share in the book you know and that actually happened when I was in college before I ended up with my career over and it was enlightening for me at that time because my freshman year at Stanford I actually didn't play I had a minor injury to my arm before the major one happened a few years later and I missed the whole season and at the end of the year so that and it was very difficult for me and I wasn't sure if I was going to get to play again and so I was having a big identity crisis at that time because my future was uncertain as it related to baseball but I got in a really serious accident at the end of that year that I ended up in the hospital I broke my back I broke my pelvis I broke my wrist and it was pretty scary but as I was in the hospital a bunch of my classmates you know kids from my dorm and other kids from school were coming to visit me and there was this outpouring of love and appreciation and concern for me and I was really touched by it even in the midst of feeling really scared about the accident and everything that happened as well as you know what was going to happen how would I recover from the accident would I be able to play baseball again with my arm in the whole bit but I remember thinking at 19 I was like wow you know most of these kids that I knew from Stanford had never seen me play baseball because I hadn't played that whole freshman year but they seemed to like me anyway and that was like an inkling of what I was then able to get more in spades if you will when my career finally ended that you know what I don't want to live my life with all this pressure that I put on myself and I have to perform in order for people to like me and approve of me and that's quite frankly Shrinney that's a journey that I continue to be on at this stage in my life but it continues to get better but I think part of that yes it was hard to lose that piece of my identity but ultimately in back I think even to the preface of your question I think it forced me to look more deeply within myself when a lot of very successful and creative and interesting people in the world have gone through some serious pain and difficulty because I think it forces us to look at ourselves and look at life in a different way. So let me ask you this I'm going to ask you a question that I've asked a lot of people about pain and difficulty and you know it's something that I always I've asked this probably a dozen times in interviews only because I'm so curious about it yeah for you this became a catalyst right yes and Sean Acre talks about this he said some people experienced post-traumatic growth and other people experienced post-traumatic stress I'm curious you know as somebody who has experienced post-traumatic growth what is it that differentiates those two people? That's a great question I think I think it's really intention and I also think it's you know there's a part of it that's for me at least self-preservation I mean here's what I saw or what I sensed even as young as I was I saw myself at like 55 or 60 years old sitting at the end of a bar drunk miserable talking about how I could have been somebody I used to be so great you know I mean I saw that and it scared me I thought about my father who although wasn't an athlete spent a lot of his life my dad died at the age of 68 when I was 27 years old and my dad was this really creative really talented charismatic guy who just couldn't get out of his own way and I remember thinking to myself I was upset I was disappointed I was heartbroken in many ways but I'm like you know what I'm not given my life away to this this sucks this isn't what I wanted this doesn't seem fair I don't understand it but I just it was it was kind of like a choice on my part and it wasn't that it wasn't hard and painful at times it was and look it's not like even in my life right now at 40 years old I will every now and again not that often anymore I'll have a dream that I'm still playing baseball and it'll be so vivid and so intense and I'll wake up in the morning with this mixed of emotion kind of like oh that was a trip or like I'll get so excited in the dream like oh I got a chance to go play again like it's still in there somewhere that's still right so you know it's not a black and white thing and I think it's like dealing with the loss of any kind I don't know that it's either all bad or all good I think we choose what we're going to take from it and I think my orientation in the world has always been to some degree I'm not exactly sure where I even got this is that I can not only handle what comes my way but I can figure out how to turn it into something more positive and it's now become more of a practice and something that I try to teach other people but I think the difference has a lot to do with again our own internal conversation about ourselves and how we ultimately relate to ourselves and the things that happen so it's not that I don't didn't have any PTSD from having that experience or from some other things that have happened in my life that have been traumatic but I think that if we make a commitment to I'm going to choose to have this be something that ultimately benefits me I think that's the biggest differentiator okay awesome so I think this makes a perfect setup to really get into the meat of what I want to spend the rest of our time talking about you mentioned a couple of things you talked about sort of having the intention to get something good from this and you know my friend Meg Warden even talks about this when she said you know at her time in prison she said the intention that something good would come from it and now she is just this incredible person who really just brings a light to the world and so you've talked about intention you talked about cultivating a practice and then of course you know sort of our own internal stories so there's a lot of stuff here to really dig apart let's let's start with sort of changing the internal narratives so that we can set an intention and then develop a practice and then we'll kind of tie that into the whole concept of self-compassion well I yeah I mean that gives a lot in what you just said and what what you're alluding to but I think look I mean my belief is this and this is why I wrote this new book nothing changes until you do is that I think most of the things that we do in live streaming are relatively easy it's dealing with ourselves that's the hard part and this was true for me as an athlete all those years I'd go out to the pitchers mound look baseball is a hard enough game there's a lot of skill involved there's a lot of failure involved but the hardest part of that game was not just standing on the mound dealing with myself when I was pitching it was in between innings it was after the game it was all of the mental gymnastics and all of the beating up upon myself that I would do when I would fail I think the same is true you know I just got done writing this book this is my third book I had a huge breakthrough in the middle right in this book because the first two times I wrote books first book focus on the good stuff was all about appreciation second book be yourself everyone else has already taken all about authenticity those were really really hard for me to write and quite miserable experiences quite frankly I love the books I did not like writing the books because I'm more of a speaker than I am a writer that was kind of my story and I kept saying I and I took five years in between book two and book three a lot of life things happened a lot of stuff going on but the main thing was like I was scared to go write another book because I'd had such a traumatic experience quite frankly with the first two times but in the middle of writing this third book I realized this is really easy what's hard is dealing with myself and all of my own fear and insecurity and self judgment and constantly being in my head about is this good is that good should I write this should I not write this what are people going to think all that nonsense look the creative process as you know and talk to all kinds of fascinating people about so back to your question about intention and creating a practice I think one of the most important things for us to do in our creative endeavors and our relationships anything that we do is figure out how do we cultivate for ourselves a practice that's not perfect that's not about getting us to some destination but really does allow us to be kinder and gentler towards ourselves in an authentic way so that whatever we engage in doing whatever we're trying to create we can do it from that perspective because it makes us more open more conducive to creativity and it just makes whatever we're trying to accomplish that much easier and then regardless of whatever practice regardless of whatever skill or talent that we may have look if we come at it from a really self-critical perspective not only is it not fun it's damn near impossible to really do with any sense of fulfillment so let's talk about this in a bit more depth as you can imagine I'm about done you've probably figured that out by now yes yes so you know I'd like to hear more about these ideas through the lens of some of your own stories in the last 13 years post-baseball yeah because you're right I mean I think we're all incredibly self-critical when something bad happens when we we tend to blame ourselves you know when something good happens we're like oh that was just dumb luck yeah and I think that making that shift to to getting to this place of you know self-compassion it's it's almost easier said than done because you know as we were talking about earlier we live in sort of a brass ring accomplishment driven culture in which everybody's you know highlights are on display in a way that they've never been before yes and so I'm really curious kind of one through the lens of some of your own stories where you've had to bring this practice of self-compassion and really how do we put it into use in our lives on a day-to-day basis I mean that's really the gist of I mean how do we get how do we make that shift from self-blame to self-compassion well I think part of it is is understanding a little bit as simple of a concept as it is I think understanding self-compassion at a deeper level because self-compassion by the way isn't self-esteem and they're similar but different self-esteem is about sort of a global assessment of our relative worth and value and the tricky part about self-esteem while it's important and look to hire our self-esteem the better we're going to feel about ourselves the more confidence that we have however in in today's world where it can get dangerous is that we're constantly comparing and we're constantly focused on external feedback we're constantly focused on accomplishment how do I stack up to someone else and that's why self-esteem can be tricky if we just go down that path self-compassion is about how do we relate to ourselves in the moment can we actually give ourselves that sense of kindness that sense of compassion towards ourselves which for many of us as simple of a concept as it is it's not easy to do it all as my friend Robert Holden likes to say there's no amount of self-improvement that can make up for a lack of self-acceptance so we often even go at our own personal growth our own self-improvement which it can be a really positive thing from the perspective of like something's wrong with us uh-huh right and I think you know I remember a few years ago a lot of times the way my own process works and a lot of what I blog about or a lot of what I write about my books or a lot of what I try to share when I'm speaking to groups of people is kind of the places where I bump you know my head into the wall if you will or realize something even something subtle but I was I was at an event with Louise Hay who happens to be the founder of Hay House who's the publisher of my new book and she's been in you know sort of the new thought sort of personal growth world for many many years written a bunch of books her most famous is probably called You Can Heal Your Life which is all about sort of kind of metaphysical connections between our bodies and you know what shows up in our belief systems fascinating stuff but I was at this event Louise was there first time I ever got a chance to meet her and she said this thing to me the event was in San Francisco it was ending on a Sunday it had been a weekend event and I'm talking to her and I said Louise are you flying home tonight and she lives in San Diego and she says oh no no Mike and I said why not she said well I would never do that to myself and I said and it was just the simple comment but I took a step back now San Francisco San Diego it's about an hour 20 minute flight it's not that long right the event was ending at like six o'clock but and then she went on to talk about how important self-care is and granted Louise is now in her late 80s and very different place in life but it actually had me stop and I realized I've been priding myself on how much I can get done how fast I can do things how quick a turnaround you know I can jump on an airplane and fly here and speak and then fly home and and it had me actually stop and pause and go wait a minute just because I can doesn't necessarily mean that I should and this was a few years back and it actually has been a real shift in perspective for me over these last number of years especially in the last couple and I've got my wife and I have two girls who are eight and five I got a really busy life and a lot going on I'm on the road speaking quite a bit I got all this stuff going on but really coming back to how do I genuinely take care of myself and do it from a place of compassion even and especially when I find myself pushing too hard or doing things that I say I don't want to do anymore and I think one of the biggest dangers that we run into these days with all the technology and everything that we've got at our disposal is that you know how do we actually create some boundary if you will or some you know break from it all if you will and do it in a way that actually serves us not from a place of guilt and shame I mean we often do this with eating and with exercise and with whoa I should I should I should and that we should all over ourselves and then we end up stressed out whether we do or we don't so a lot of my own self-compassion practice has been coming up with practices that I think are going to serve me in my life and in my work and at the same time holding myself accountable to them yes but then also having compassion for myself when I fail and that I think is one of the hardest ones for many of us who are committed to the work that we do are committed to excellence how do we treat ourselves when we fail when we mess up when we don't live up to the standard we've set for ourselves? 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yourself during their biggest sales of the entire year hurry to bowl and branch dot com to shop their best offers limited time only exclusions apply see site for details Ryan Reynolds here for mid mobile with the price of just about everything going up during inflation we thought we'd bring our prices down so to help us we brought in a reverse auctioneer which is apparently a thing mid mobile unlimited premium wireless have it to get 30 30 30 30 but you get 20 20 20 20 20 you get 15 15 15 just 15 bucks a month so give it a try at mid mobile dot com slash switch 45 dollars up from payment equivalent to 15 dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees extra speed slower about 40 gigabyte cd tail when it comes to weight loss no two people are the same that's why newm builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology take britney after years of unsustainable diets newm helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off i was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight gaining weight and it was exhausting and Stephanie she's a former d1 athlete who knew she couldn't out train her diet and she lost 38 pounds my relationship to food before newm was never consistent and even he can't stand salads but he still lost 50 pounds with newm i never really was a salad guy that's just not who i am even through the pickiness newm taught me that building better habits builds a healthier lifestyle i'm not doing this to get to a number i'm doing this to feel better get your personalized plan today at newm.com real newm users compensated to provide their story in four weeks the typical newm user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week individual results may vary forging ahead together drives colorado's pioneering spirit at chevron we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the communities we call home we also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer all to help improve lives in our shared backyard that's energy and progress visit colorado dot chevron dot com so i want to talk about that in a bit more detail but i want to go back to to something else that you said you said that you know most of us start this journey of self-help with this frame that something is wrong with us yes openly admit that that has definitely been the default way in which all my self-improvement efforts have started yeah um and i don't think that's i don't think i'm alone in that i think that's the overwhelming majority of people yep and i'm curious how we shift that so that these you know improvements don't turn into trying to affirm our way or you know psycho new age bullshit of like burning candles to try and make changes that are never going to happen through this mindset of something is wrong with us well i think look you're not alone because that's what motivated me and at times still does motivate me to make changes that i want to but i think the distinction look we whether it's self-improvement self-help of any kind there's a distinction between fixing and changing so fixing right when we come at ourselves or life or anything from the perspective of i got to fix it that means it's inherently broken there's something wrong now look if something actually breaks like you break your leg go to the doctor get it fixed right the window breaks in your house get it fixed there are times in life when and even things with ourselves like this is broken my computer is broken i got to get it fixed when we're dealing with ourselves and it's not just semantics but there's a whole different paradigm of fixing versus changing changing is really about wanting something new wanting something different wanting to enhance something wanting to expand or deepen something within ourselves and so if we start to think about well why am i reading this book why am i trying to learn this why am i trying to improve this thing even like think about couples we go to therapy we go to sit down with someone there's something wrong with the relationship if that's the context it's going to be difficult to find real healthy ways to change so we got to shift the paradigm more from a place of change you know my counselor who i write quite a bit about and nothing changes until you do is named Eleanor and Eleanor and i've been working together for about two and a half years and she has been just like a godsend for me and i've had a lot of therapy over the years i've worked with lots of coaches and counselors and all kinds of therapists you name it i mean i'm a big advocate in getting people outside of ourselves to give us feedback and guide us and teach us and even though we may know a lot it's always helpful to have someone or you know multiple people outside of ourselves that we trust but Eleanor said this great thing to me recently that i wrote about in the book because she says it all the time but the first time she said it it just like kind of blew my mind she said look here's how the change process works with anything there's four steps to it recognize acknowledge forgive and change said recognize what you're doing recognize whatever it is that's not working that's not filling you that you're not happy with right recognize it take ownership for it then acknowledge so recognize right acknowledge the impact what's the impact don't blame other people right that's the recognize piece take ownership recognize acknowledge what's the impact how is it negatively impacting you really feel that really take you know take that and take responsibility for that then forgive forgive yourself for whatever it is that has continued to have right bring some sense of compassion bring that sense of forgiveness and then she actually said if you do those three things if you genuinely and authentically recognize acknowledge and then forgive the change will actually happen very organically very naturally you don't have to force it she said but what you do mike and she said lots of people do this as well as you recognize acknowledge punish and repeat and then the cycle continues you right and that's what happens as we start on our growth path we're aware enough to oh i'm doing this oh i don't want to do that okay yeah there's a negative impact on me or other people are telling me this is really irritating them they don't like it and then we get really hard on ourselves you idiot you stupid what's wrong you did all that negative self-talk and then okay i'm going to punish myself somehow thinking that's actually taking responsibility which it's not then we end up repeating the cycle and then we have more fodder for the ego to say see you're an idiot you're a loser you did it again right this is why we keep repeating patterns in business or we keep repeating patterns in relationships and we can't quite figure out what the deal is but part of it is we got to be able to bring that sense of forgiveness that sense of compassion you know i went up to calistoga which is a town up in nappa about an hour from where i live in the bay area this was at the end of 2011 and the year had been a very very intense year we'd gone through we lost our house we ended up doing a short sale on our house because we got so far underwater on the house that that was the way we what we needed to do to get out and we felt good about the process of doing it but it'd been very very difficult and stressful in addition to that and way more stressful and painful than that my mother had passed away so 2011 had been a really really painful year but even with the pain of it it felt like this huge shift had happened in my life i could feel it internally and i felt like myself and my wife michelle we were starting to move in a more healthy more positive direction with a lot of things that were important to us even though i was still grieving the loss of my mother and still dealing with some of the ego and other stuff related to the house situation i go up to calistoga and i spent the whole three days while i was up there writing in my journal and being in meditation and just being silent i went up by myself as i do sometimes and it was all around forgiveness could i forgive myself for mistakes that i'd made for things that i wish they'd have gone differently and i just and i didn't even know exactly how to do it i had this audio that it was literally set tapes that i'd gotten in the 90s that i'd never listened to that i still had my old walkman and for some reason intuitively i picked those up as i was leaving i brought my little walkman my local set tapes and i was listening to this audio program on forgiveness self forgiveness in particular and i literally wrote down everything that i was upset with myself about and it was holding against myself and kept asking myself the question over the course of these three days in calistoga can i forgive myself can i forgive myself can i forgive myself and what was amazing it wasn't like some moment where all of a sudden everything changed but just that process of doing that i came home and i felt different and the beginning of 2012 some really significant things in my life and my business started to shift and as i looked back over the course of that year of 2012 i actually think that a big catalyst for some of those big changes that occurred was actually that process of self forgiveness so a couple of things around this i mean you mentioned 2011 like losing the house losing a mother yep you know i think it takes us back to this whole idea you know that's that's a lot of pain all at once it is and i mean just speaking through personal experience of having you know more pain than i could handle all at once and letting it kind of demolish me yep you said that you could recognize that it was the start of a shift and i realized that often it really is the start of a shift for for most people even though we can't see it and i am wondering how we navigate that time uh without letting it sort of destroy us well i think you know as michael beckwith likes to say and i totally agree with him don't waste a good crisis like when you're in when you're in the midst of something really painful trust that at some level it was like what you mentioned your friend who was in prison said trust that there's something good it's going to come from this even if you can't see it even if you don't know what it is so what you got to have a certain amount of faith and trust and trust this is something else elaners taught me that i think is really important trust is honestly expecting a positive outcome not the positive outcome not i'm going to control it and it better go this way or i'm going to be pissed but like honestly expecting a positive outcome and in the face of pain in the face of uncertainty in the face of difficulty we can't see that we don't know what that positive outcome may be and if anyone listening is anything like me my natural orientation even though it may sound like i'm this optimist and right my natural orientation right in the moment is to assume something terrible is going to happen it's to right like it's like in my dna part of how i was raised part of how i'm wired up is that i naturally will go to the catastrophic worst case scenario i've had to literally train myself not to do that because i know that that's not going to serve me and so i think another thing that's really important is we got to have support outside of ourselves i mean without my friends that i really trust i mean like my inner circle friends like the men in my men's group like my wife like the people that i can call the proverbial three three o'clock in the morning phone call those people on the short list of who we can bear our souls to as well as professionals you know again be them therapists or coaches or whatever like i'm constantly and have been throughout the course of my life which is part of what's helped me get through a lot of these difficult things reaching out for support and that's one of the pieces look there's a chapter in nothing changes until you do or like it's just called ask for help you know one of my favorite questions for you to ask a group of people as i travel around the country and speak to different groups at conferences or inside of organizations or all the different places that i speak i love asking this question i say how many of you like helping other people right who likes to help other people almost every room i mean it doesn't matter where i am in the world everyone raises their hand right because who doesn't like to help people now some of us are busier than others and some of us are more selfless than others clearly but like it's a natural human inclination to want to help people then i ask a second question i say how many of you love asking other people for help on average at most about 10 percent of the hands will go up and i often say i say for those of you just who just raised your hand be very proud of yourself and help teach the rest of us how to do that more genuinely more generously because the thing is when we're unwilling to ask for help which many of us are because we feel funny it feels vulnerable it feels weak what if they say no all the reasons that we don't ask for help not only do we not get the help that we need but it's actually in a weird way quite selfish not to ask for help because there's a whole world of people around you that would love to help you if you would just ask them and this could be whether we're working on a creative project whether we're in the midst of a breakup whether we're really scared about something whatever it is maybe we're doing really well and we just need some help how to take it to the next level but we need help all of us need help and so if we can get over our ego and our resistance that's one of the most important things like i would not have made it through some of the things i've made it through in my life without the support of the people around me and i'm incredibly grateful to those people and to the people i know the ones who are in my life currently and the ones i assume will show up in the future of my life when i really need help and and as a way and it's never going to be a tit for tat thing like we can't always pay people back directly for the help and there if if they give us authentic help they're not really even looking for that but what we can do is also open ourselves up to being available to help and support the people around us when they need it and then it becomes a virtuous cycle so you know one of the things other things you've brought up a handful of times is ego which i think honestly to me is is the often our downfall in many of these situations yeah and one of the things that really i think ego may be one of the greatest sources of our pain because when you experience pain i am realizing more and more as i've thought about it is that what what really is causing it is that the ego is getting just destroyed yes yes you know i go ahead sorry you know i'm saying another great quote from michael Beckwith who's the founder of the agape international spiritual center down in l.a. who i just adore he said remember that a bad day for the ego is a good day for the soul and you know that's actually one of the other chapters and nothing changes until you do and i think that that's exactly what's happening is our ego is taking a hit you know when we when painful things happen it's so often the ego that's the problem it's not really us you know and if we can distinguish between our ego and who we really are and realize that again when something happens that is painful when some rejection happens look and this is so true again and you would know this as well or better than i do given all the creative people that you talk to look the hardest part of the creative process in anything we're attempting to create and put out there in the world is the fear of the rejection and what's really at risk when we get rejected it's our ego you know one of the one of my favorite TED talks is by lisabeth gilbert right who wrote e-pray love on creativity i i don't know if you've seen it or you know yes and and i watched that TED talk i'm not kidding like at least a dozen times when i was writing this most recent book because she talks a lot about the creative process and she talks a lot about you know that differentiation between sort of our gift our talent our genius and that we get so attached to it but really what i took from her TED talk was that it is about something it's like this energy that lives outside of us that we have access to and we can let it flow through us that's what a lot of what creativity is we get so attached to it like our identity and and the thing about it is that once we create something whatever it is however big or small it is once we give birth to it our job i think is to actually let it go put it out there in the world yes we're passionate about it but trust that like it's got a life of its own you know i've been playing around with this with this new book for me because i got my ego so attached to my first two books in a way that i could see now especially looking back wasn't healthy and i love this new book that i love all three of my books i'm really proud of them i'm grateful that i had the courage to do what i needed to do to put them out there in the world and get into something i mean if you told me ten years ago i'd write three books and they'd be out in the world i would say you're nuts like i don't even know how i don't even know where that would come from i had that as a goal but but one of the things i've been practicing is just really trying to let go and not have this book be about me even though ironically this book i wrote more about myself than than anything you know my friend Melanie who actually was the one who listens to your podcast religiously and loves it and was the one who recommended that she actually helped me and edited a lot of this book and i kept asking her Melanie am i like is this too self-absorbed am i talking about myself too i just feels like so you know because it was a lot of stories that are just all about me but i was trying to make more universal points and she kept coming back and saying no the more personal you get the more universal it is the more relevant it is and she was so right but i'm sharing all this because i realized that look this book as an example in anything that we put out in the world yes it's a representation of us but it's not who we are and so if people like it and say nice things about it wonderful if it resonates with them fantastic you know just today literally i was looking online and there was a couple of negative reviews about my book and i had a moment when i first started reading when i was like oh and i had that familiar feeling and like oh and i and like instinctively here's what i wanted to do i literally wanted to email like five or six people that i know really went and say could you go on to amazon and write something really positive because someone just wrote something really negative like i had that instinct right and then i took a breath and i actually said to myself literally like thank these people for saying what they say and allow this to be a practice for you not to get attached like they can say whatever they want to say it's they're entitled to that right and i don't have to take that on they get to have their opinion they get to speak their opinion any way they want and if they think that about my book more power to put that out on the internet right it's a free world people can say what they want you know this right you're in this world that people get to say whatever they want to say oh yeah what if we don't have to make that mean anything about ourselves or the positive one as well right because that one we go and then our ego can take that and go look i'm the greatest person in the world because people think this or you know that's one of the dangers i think of our social media world that we get so obsessed with how many likes do i have how many shares do i have how many downloads do i have and that's all well and good to like track your business and to see how things are going if you happen to have a business that's focused on the internet to some degree but that can be really dangerous territory when it comes to our ego oh yeah no doubt uh it's interesting because you know the one of the things rather brought up is sort of learning to separate ourselves from our ego easier said than done sometimes absolutely absolutely i mean are there practices that we can cultivate to to keep doing that i mean on a day-to-day sort of practical basis i mean i've experienced the amazon review you're talking about i mean i remember the first time i got a two-star review i mean for me i was like okay you know what i'm not going to put my energy into reading the one-star and two-star reviews i'm like what's the point um they're entitled to opinion but it doesn't do anything for me it just pisses me off and you know i was like okay this is a waste of time yeah you don't know you know it's funny you could have a hundred and ninety five-star reviews and what do you notice the two two-star reviews of course i'd love to talk uh you know a bit more about separating ego from ourselves and and maybe what we do you know how we can take self-compassion uh to really make that happen yeah well in terms of practices i would say i mean the the ones for me and and some of them the look they're simple but they're not always easy it's like you know my meditation practice is one of the most important things in my life and one of the big breakthroughs i had a few years ago for myself around meditating this is actually when i first started working with Eleanor she was teaching me some meditations in our sessions and she would say you know i'd write these notes and she's like here's some sort of guided visualization practices you can do and i and i said to her and i have a hard time with these i've been trying off and on for years i meditate then i don't and then sometimes i'm not and and she said this thing to me she said what's the most comfortable way easiest way for you to meditate i said well it's actually laying down in bed like in the morning right when i wake up i go the bathroom come back i'd love to meditate that way but that always feels like cheating that doesn't feel like real meditation right and she said where'd you make that up and i see me and i can just meditate like laying in my bed in the morning so if you want to it's up to you it's your life right do it how you want to do it for the last two and a half going on three years that's how i've been meditating and it's i love it now and it was that little simple shift for me personally because i'd wasted a lot of time and energy for literally like 15 years judging myself for not meditating the right way not knowing what i was doing it didn't feel you know i mean i would go in and out of it so just again make it work for you but so meditation practice for me helps me get more in touch with me not me like the ego me but like something much bigger something much deeper something more universal about myself i don't feel is attached to my physical reality when i meditate for me writing in my journal actually helps me process through things but get more in touch with something it's important i have a separate journal that's just a gratitude journal so as a practice i write in my gratitude journal on a daily basis now there are days i miss i try not to be militant about it or get too hard on myself if i miss a day or two when i'm busy or i'm traveling but those things as well as we live somewhere in marine county a little north of san francisco where there's beautiful places to hike and and i've never been a real outdoorsy person but just in the last year or two i'm finding myself when i get out in nature when i walk and just take a little hike and there's a couple little trails near where i live something changes inside of me and so all of those things as practices for me help me get more in touch with what i think is more important than the little monkey mind ego that's constantly running all the time and again each of us are different but i'm always encouraging people that i coach and people that i talk to and people that i work with like come up with a couple of core practices for yourself and they may change over time but what gets you more in touch with like what's real as opposed to a lot of the ego obsessions that a lot of us have let's talk about something that's not always top of mind but still really important life insurance why because it offers financial protection for your loved ones and can help them pay for things like a mortgage credit card debt it can even help fund an education and guess what life insurance is probably a lot more 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great staff for thanksgiving whole foods offers pry and turkeys as well as a spiral cut bone and ham the whole foods market bakery has a large assortment of pies even a vegan pumpkin pie or grab some brioche and butter flake rolls for the table as well or you can ask the whole foods team decatur your meal for you including the bird the sides and desserts get your holiday party started at whole foods market hey i'm ryan riddles recently i asked mint mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation they said yes and then when i asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous to your contracts they said what the f*ck are you talking about you insane hollywood f*ck so to recap we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from 30 dollars a month to just 15 dollars a month give it a try at mintmobile dot com slash switch 45 dollars up from payment equivalent to 15 dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes of details when it comes to weight loss no two people are the same that's why newm builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology take britney after years of unsustainable diets newm helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off i was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight gaining weight and it was exhausting and stephanie she's a former d1 athlete who knew she couldn't out train her diet and she lost 38 pounds my relationship to food before newm was never consistent and evan he can't stand salads but he's still lost 50 pounds with newm i never really was a salad guy that's just not who i am even through the pickiness newm taught me that building better habits builds a healthier lifestyle i'm not doing this to get to a number i'm doing this to feel better get your personalized plan today at noom.com real newm users compensated to provide their story in four weeks the typical newm user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week individual results may vary forging ahead together drives colorado's pioneering spirit at chevron we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's we call home we also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer all to help improve lives in our shared backyard that's energy in progress visit colorado dot chevron dot com so you know i want to start wrapping things up here because i know we're getting close to about an hour there's one last piece of this that that really sort of intrigues me you know we're talking a little bit earlier about our failures and our setbacks and the things that are really troubling for us especially when things don't go the way we want them to as people who are achievement oriented as people who just you know i think most most of us have a very empowered view of our lives that we can control certain things which there are a lot of things we don't control right um i mean how do you bring compassion to the things in your past that have troubled you well i mean i think the first piece is you know it's that recognize acknowledge forgive and change piece but the forgiveness piece i think is really important and i think you know look having a sense of compassion and and forgiveness and they're different but they're but they're sort of overlap and touch on one another is is think of it sometimes it's easier i think initially to think of someone or something outside of yourself most of us have the experience of being able to be compassionate and forgiving towards children or towards animals or towards you know just think of someone imagine seeing someone in an airport or someone having a hard time there are times when it's just very natural for us to show up in a very compassionate empathetic and forgiving way now we don't often have that experience or have as much experience of doing that towards ourselves but one of the things that i actually really like to do myself and one of the sort of practices in my own meditation practice specifically is i will go back meditatively if you will and have conversations with younger versions of myself because i believe that look that child that lives inside of us isn't like in the past like back in you know i was born in 1974 it's not like oh i was five in 1979 and i was but i actually think that five-year-old he's still alive in me sometimes and there are times i can feel it oh man i feel like i'm five or i feel like i'm fifteen or i feel like i'm twenty five and in those moments i actually believe that five-year-old or that fifteen-year-old that twenty-five-year-old is sort of taking the keys to the bus of my life and he's driving and it's dangerous for all of us so at some level as corny as it may sound for some people this may really resonate for others this might seem kind of odd but can you go back and if you're holding on to something from the past that you're having a hard time letting go of a regret that you have a mistake that you made something you wish you would have done differently imagine again being sort of the wisest most aware enlightened version of yourself talking to that younger version of yourself even if it's only six months or a year ago and with compassion because usually the intention of the motivation behind the mistake that we made or the thing that we you know wish we would have done differently or whatever we've made you know and there's real impact to some of the stuff that we've done but can we can we release that can we forgive ourselves for that and even if we're not willing to a lot of times when i do forgiveness processes and workshops that i leave lead i will say can you declare a certain amount of forgiveness for this and if not can you at least declare a willingness i'm willing to forgive myself for this even if it's hard to let go of because that's the first step is just the willingness even if you don't know how am i going to let this go how am i going to release the anger and the judgment and the frustration i have towards myself about this thing will at least just start with a willingness but if you're willing to go all the way there just say it write it down ask for whatever you believe in whatever your spiritual orientation is even if you don't have one at all ask for some some power outside of yourself to help you forgive yourself i often do that before i go to bed at night i will i will make sort of requests or in you know have intentions i want to let go of this i want to work through that and allow that whatever happens marad magically and miraculously during the sleeping time that something will get worked out that i can't understand with my conscious mind awesome well hey mike this has been really really insightful and uh you know like i said once i heard your story i knew i wanted to have you here because i think this was a really important subject uh that really does impact our our work and our lives in so many ways is creative people yeah absolutely well thanks for having me on it's an yeah so i want to close with one final question and uh this is something we close all our interviews with you know having been through the world and it's sort of navigated the way you have and having your life experiences what is it that you think makes somebody or something unmistakable oh i think um i think what makes someone unmistakable is authenticity is just there's a sense and it's not authenticity like the word it's not authenticity like the concept it's like authenticity like the real McCoy like you can tell you can feel it it's visceral i don't even have to understand someone could speak a different language have a different skill be interested in stuff that doesn't even make sense to me but there's an unmistakable quality that's visceral that's palpable when you're around someone or something that has that real sense of authenticity and it's it's a visceral experience it's a in-the-moment experience and it can't be replicated it can't be um copied because it there there's something unique about it that that just you can feel it awesome well Mike i can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share some of your insights with our listeners here at the unmistakable creative this has been really phenomenal thanks man and for those of you guys listening we'll wrap the show with that you've been listening to the unmistakable creative podcast visit our website at unmistakablecreative.com and get access to over 400 interviews in our archives let's talk about something that's not always top of mind but still really important life insurance why because it offers financial protection for your loved ones and can help them pay for things like a mortgage credit card debt it can even help fund an education and guess what life insurance is probably a lot more affordable than you think in fact most people think life insurance is three times more expensive than 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Have you ever felt a twinge of worry about AI taking over your job or diluting your creativity well what if you could turn that fear into creative fuel we've just published an amazing new ebook called the four keys to success in an AI world and this is more than just a guide it's a deep exploration into the human skills that AI can't touch the skills that are essential for standing out and thriving no matter how much technology evolved we're talking about real differentiators here like creativity emotional intelligence critical thinking and much more inside you'll find actionable insights and strategies to develop these skills whether you're a creative person a business person or just simply someone who loves personal development this isn't a story about tech taking over it's a story of human creativity thriving alongside AI picture this AI as your creative co-pilot not just as a tool but a collaborator that enhances your unique human skills the four keys ebook will show you exactly how to do that and view AI in a new way that empowers you instead of overshadows you transform your creative potential today head over to unmistakable creative calm slash four keys use the number four k-e-y-s that's unmistakable creative calm slash four keys and download your free copy you You [BLANK_AUDIO]

Getting drafted by the Yankees, right out of high school
Developing the mindset to tackle really big goals
The dangers of the brass ring and achievement
Insights revealed amidst a major car accident
Navigating a childhood with a severely depressed parent
Dealing with a career-ending injury at the age of 23
Turning our tragedies into a catalysts for positive change
Why pain and difficulty force us to look at our lives in different ways
The internal conversations we have with and about ourselves
Why dealing with ourselves is one of the hardest things we do
The difference between self compassion and self esteem
Learning to be kind to ourselves when we fail
Changing the frame from which we start our self improvement efforts
Using the process of self forgiveness as a catalyst for big change
Why we must be willing to ask others for help
Distinguishing between what happens to us and what happens to our ego

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