Welcome to sheep persisted. The Gen.
Z mental health podcast. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton.
Let's get into it. I think we're best positioned to
help the person who we once were.
And for me, that's someone who is stuck living in what I
describe as quiet desperation. Because you're living this
inauthentic being. Almost as if you show up every
day wearing what I describe as a mask of pretense, hiding really
who you are because you're afraid to show your real self,
because you're trying to conform to what everyone else wants you
to be. Hello, Hello you guys, and
welcome back to, she persisted. We have a good conversation
today that will leave you inspired and motivated and ready
to take action in your life. We have John R Miles on the
podcast. He is a former U.S.
Navy officer, Fortune 500 senior executive, entrepreneur, author,
and award-winning podcast host. He's a recognized expert on
intentional behavior. Change leadership, personal
mastery, and the transformative. Power of mattering We talk about
so much in this episode, a theory that explains why so many
people struggle with their career.
We talked about how to. Start discovering your authentic
self. And your purpose in life, what
your stuck points are, and how you.
Can work on healing them, positive psychology which you
guys know I'm a huge fan of, and findings that are applicable to
self-control and agency. Why you should start being more
intentional, steps to take to increase your sense of mastery.
How to avoid negative self talk when trying to achieve your
goals. Signs that you're getting in
your own way, and what Gen. Z.
Should be doing to. Build their dream features like
I said. We go all over the place in this
episode. But a lot of really meaningful,
tangible takeaways on how you can build your dream life and
increase that sense of mastery and agency, which are really,
really important to feeling like you matter and have a sense of
purpose. So I hope you guys.
Love this episode as much as I did.
And with that, let's dive in. Well, Sadie, it's an honor to be
here. Thank you so much for letting me
join your incredible podcast. Of course, of course.
So to get started for you, we'll haven't heard your podcast,
which is incredibly popular and I'm sure most people have at
least seen it on the podcast app before.
Can you give us a little bit of a background into your journey,
how you ended up in the mental health self improvement space
and specializing in passion and self development and all of
these areas? So looking back when I was your
age, I don't think I would have ever thought I'd be doing what
I'm doing today. I kind of always imagined myself
as being a professional athlete or I went in the military
because I always saw myself doing outdoor type of
activities, things where I wasn't constrained to a desk.
And for me, that whole life shift kind of happened when I
was coming out of the military and I had an appointment to go
to the FBI Academy where I was totally psyched to become an FBI
agent. And I had been working very
closely with the FBICIADEA during my last duty station
where I was doing counter drug interdiction operations.
But as fate has it, sometimes life doesn't go the way we
expect. And I'm about 3-4 days away from
going to Quantico when Congress can't pass the budget.
Was one of the first times this had ever happened in my class.
Got recycled. And naively I thought at first
that when it got recycled that meant a few weeks or a couple
months. And I quickly found out that it
meant somewhere between 24 months to 48 months.
And I had no Plan B at the time, because who thinks your Quantico
class is going to get canceled? So it ended up forcing me to
kind of go into a career trajectory I never expected.
So the transition from the military to the civilian world
is never easy, but it's more difficult when you have no Plan
B and you weren't expecting this to happen.
And so I quickly did the only thing I knew that might work,
and that is I went to the Naval Academy at that.
And that at that point in time, we didn't really have the
Internet. So we had this big book that was
about 400 pages long that had every living graduate who went
to one of the service academies. And I just randomly started
going down the list and calling people and writing them letters.
And I ended up getting a job as a result at Booz Allen doing
management consulting. And that kind of took me on the
next 20 year period of my life where I went from working there
to becoming a practice leader at Arthur Andersen.
Then I hit my next unexpected event because in a matter of 5-6
weeks, Arthur Andersen disintegrated because of the
Enron debacle that we were in the epicenter of.
And so I was yet left again to pivot.
And this time I went into industry and I spent after this
point in time that remaining probably 14 years that I was
doing this career working for Fortune 50 companies like
Lowe's, Dell and others. And I think as I was on this
journey, I found myself at a place that I often talk about in
the book where I really felt like I was stuck.
There's this theory called self discrepancy theory, where you
have your actual self, which is who you are at the given moment.
And then you have your aught self, which is who you think you
should be, which is really driven by our childhood societal
expectations, etcetera. And then you have your ideal
self, which is who you could be. And I definitely at that point,
as I was in a period of soul searching, recognize that I had
reached the state where I was living my aught self and I was
really unfulfilled, didn't feel like anything that I was doing
was really mattering. And so at this point in time, I
went to a guidance counselor. You could say for those I know
you've got a younger audience, but it was a career coach.
But as I was talking to this person, he asked me to imagine
my life as if I was sitting on a kitchen stool.
Whoever the stool had multiple supports, but one was completely
out of alignment with the others.
And that was the constant grind that I had found my life to be
at that time. And then he had me do an
exercise where he pictured my life differently and I could put
any pillar that I wanted or any post underneath that stool.
And so when I started to rethink my life, I thought of the things
that would make me whole, and that was my physical health,
mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, relationship
health, financial health. And so as I looked at how do you
close that chasm? That's what really led me on the
journey to where I am today, because it sent me on this
profound search of how do I become my authentic self and how
do I improve my health, my mental health, All these
alternative health practices that I now talk about on the
Passion Struck podcast. I think this idea of an
authentic self is something that a lot of young adults can relate
to. It's something that's really,
really common to struggle with. And your 20s, especially as
you're talking about, you're on this path of what you should be
doing. You're kind of going through the
motions and trying to get this person that you want to be.
And you find out that sometimes the goals that you've had maybe
aren't aligned with who you want to be.
Or you get to the graduation or the job that you want to be in
or the school that you thought you wanted to go to and it's not
how you thought it would be. It's different from how you
expected it to feel and what the day-to-day would look like and
how that would impact your mental health and and Wellness
as a whole. In your experience, how did you
really conceptualize and understand that authentic self
and know how to find that in your life?
Because like you're saying, it can be really challenging to get
that mixed up with who you think you should be or the goals you
have for yourself versus what really is aligned with with your
yourself as a person. Yeah.
So I can think about this from two different perspectives.
One, my own perspective, but two, I'm the father of two kids.
My son is 25 and my daughter, like you, is 20 and is a
sophomore now, a junior in college, also at school right
now. So I've seen it from both
perspectives. Especially my son as he's
himself is trying to formulate things in his life that are
meaningful because he doesn't want to regret the life he
creates. Which I know for him over the
past couple of years has been a pretty dynamic time of self
reflection, figuring out what really provides him passion and
purpose. And it's interesting, I
interviewed someone named Andreas Widmer, and Andreas
founded the Business School that's at the Catholic
University of America in Washington, DC.
But long ago, when Andreas was your age, he was really
listless. He had no idea what he wanted to
do. And his parents encouraged him,
because he's from Switzerland, to put his name in the hat to
become a Swiss Guard. He never thought in a million
years he'd be selected. And then about 18 months later,
he finds himself being one of the core guards of Pope John
Paul the 2nd. And he tells me that the Pope,
even though he had these immense responsibilities, when you were
in his presence, he made you feel as if you were the only
thing on earth that mattered. And he could sense that Andreas
was really struggling with this identity crisis and finding who
he authentically was. And so we started to coach him
that that's really the journey in life is to figure out what
are those unique skills that you can exploit in the service of
helping someone else. And so for me, what this really
translated into at this point was I think we're best
positioned to help the person who we once were.
And for me, that someone who is stuck living in what I described
as quiet desperation because you're living this inauthentic
being almost as if you show up every day wearing what I
describe as a mask of pretense, hiding really who you are
because you're afraid to show your real self because you're
trying to conform to what everyone else wants you to be.
So I think the, you know, as I tried to wrangle myself out of
this and obviously over time it takes much longer to break this
cycle and it does when you're young because you become more
conditioned. I think of it or liken it to
depression. Typically you don't go from not
having depression to depression overnight.
It typically, at least from my experience, is this thing that
builds up gradually over time to a point that it has a hockey
stick moment and all of a sudden it goes from mild or moderate to
severe. And I think the same thing with
our identity crisis is in life. And so the way you've got to get
yourself out of it is also going to take much longer than you
expect it to take. So I encourage people to find a
center foundational point that you can start working on.
For me, it revolved around healing past trauma because I
had a lot of stuck points that I hadn't dealt with earlier in
life that we're now really becoming huge boulders that were
holding me back. But it could be different
things. Perhaps for someone it's their
body image or perhaps it's a self-confidence issue.
Whatever it is, I encourage you to define what that is and
double down on it. Because what I found through
really working through that trauma was that when you start
working on one area of your life and taking incremental steps
there, it also starts impacting other areas of your life in the
most unexpected ways until you're really rebuilding all
components of who you are. And I find it we overcomplicate
what it takes to take that initial action.
And we think it has to be this large thing when really it all
boils down to small actions that we start taking over a prolonged
period of time. Yeah.
How you identify these stuck points?
Obviously, maybe in the day today we're not feeling
fulfilled or you don't feel like you're aligned with your
authentic self or you're struggling to show up in the way
that you, you know, you're capable of.
But how can you determine like where, which boulder to start
with, which stuck point is the first one that you should
identify and start chipping away at?
Because I think that's something that a lot of young adults
struggle with. It feels there's like a lot of
areas of their life that aren't where they want them to be or
they're not aligned. Everything kind of needs work at
that point. So how do you identify what is
ineffective and where it's best to put?
Your energy well in my. Case it might be a little bit
differently because I went out and I sought professional help.
So I went through something that's called cognitive
processing therapy, which is a form of cognitive behavior
therapy where you do these intense sessions over a period
of three months. Basically where you're going
through the different incidences of trauma that you've had.
And then through that, you're trying to identify the core
issue that has caused you the most pain, which in times can be
difficult because often times people have gone through,
unfortunately, multiple issues dealing with trauma.
But I think regardless, it's what is the biggest fear or self
doubt that seems to be holding you back?
That would be, to me, the starting point that you have to
gravitate towards solving. You know, for me, one of the
biggest things was I had been so disappointed time and time again
by authority figures in my life that I began to think that all
authority figures were out to get me and were in it for
themselves and not for my betterment.
Which when you start really analyzing that and you look at
96% of your interactions, that's absolutely not true.
So you have to go through this process of really understanding
what is reality and what is this make believe image that you keep
presenting to yourself that you need to just tackle.
Yeah, you mentioned two things in your response to the first
question that I absolutely loved one was the concept that you're
best equipped to help someone that is in a situation you've
been in previously. And I think that's exactly what
I found with the podcast. And then going down the
educational path of psychology, I think it's it's really true.
And I think it takes a lot of work to be able to articulate
what was helpful for you and how best to support someone in that
situation. But I think like you're saying,
the level of fulfillment and authenticity you feel when
you're you're in that position is unparalleled.
And similarly, finding a way that you can be of service to
others. And I took a science of
well-being class this semester with Doctor Seligman, which was
so incredible and so much fun. And one of the things he really
shared early on was that the fastest and most sustainable way
to boost your mood and increase feelings of happiness is to do
an active service for someone else.
It has the biggest impact on your mood and also last longer
than other acts of similar nature.
And so I think when you're feeling lost and struggling with
maybe not feeling aligned with your authenticity or not sure
how to begin this journey of personal development or building
your life worth living. I think those are two really
concrete ways to start that have a really immediate and strong
ROI, which I think is very encouraging, and building hope
and building up that momentum because it is a really long
journey like you meant. Yeah.
Well, Marty is quoting the work from Dacker Keltner from the
University of California, Berkeley, out of his book called
Awe. Where?
I mean, that's where his 25 years of studying came to that
really grand conclusion that it's not only in moments of
splendor, seeing a newborn or witnessing people do amazing
feats that we find on the most common way we we actually find
it is by either doing acts of service ourself or watching
others perform acts of kindness to one another.
Yeah. I'm interested in the classes
that you've had with Marty. Has he talked about at all the
concept of mattering and the importance of significance in
life? Yeah.
So this was actually the first time he's taught undergrads in
eight years. And I unfortunately don't think
he's going to do it again very soon.
And he structured it as like a 180° overview of all of his work
and all the research he's done and kind of the roots of
positive psychology and learned helplessness, and then all the
research that has been done. And then where he sees it going
in the future and how AI ties into everything because that's
such a hot topic. But feelings of mattering and
and belonging we definitely touched on.
And one thing that we learned about is the resilience training
work that they did with the military and how such an
important element of that was those feelings of belonging and
mattering. And another thing that he
touched on that was related as well, but also I think very
similar as agency and that belief that you can make changes
and that those changes will have a positive impact on your life
and that you can in some way change the world to a degree.
And having that belief that you have that ability.
And I think that goes really hand in hand with feeling like
you belong and matter and have some role in this larger world
that we live in. But we talked a lot about
relationships and how those interactions in relationships
have to look, how many positive correspondences you have to have
for it to be an enjoyable relationship to be in, and what
types of relationships the happiest people have.
And a big element was that mattering and feeling
significant in your larger world.
And then obviously with perma accomplishment is a huge part of
that. And so he definitely did touch
on that. Yeah, I know.
I my understanding talking to Angela Duckworth, friend of mine
is that Marty is kind of dedicating this last chapter of
his life to the science of matter and which is really
important because and what he's talking about with personal
agency is similar to what Angela studies with the concept of
self-control or the science of self-control.
And it's overlaps, both of them overlap with what I describe in
my work as intentionality or intentional living.
Meaning I think Angela got a lot right with grit in describing
passion and perseverance. As I look at her study of cadets
at West Point, I had a first hand experience with this going
to the Naval Academy. And although I agree with her,
the passion of perseverance were two absolutely critical things
that helped me get through it. To me, one of the most important
aspects of it was having that personal agency, that
self-control, or what I describe as intentionality in my daily
actions. Because regardless of what
you're doing, you really have to understand that are the actions
that you're taking, are they really aligned to your values?
And then, more importantly, there's an interdependency then
between the actions we take in the pursuit of our ambitions and
aspirations. And that's what a lot of people
don't get right, is that intentionality of aligning all
four of those things. And often times we think that
they're not tied together, they're not related.
And that's just not the way from my research, it works.
They're actually very interrelated and dependent on
one another. Yeah, I'm taking Angela's class
this fall and I'm so excited. It's like I wrote about it in my
pen essay. I was like, I can't wait to take
a class with Angela Duckworth and it'll be, it'll be
incredible. I've heard amazing things with
how she structures it and there's lots of group projects
and involvement where it's the doctor Selkman's class was like
a very large class. Understandably, there was like
at least 300 people. And so I, I think it'll be
really, really fun to learn from her and obviously read so much
of her research. But I think being in the
classroom and really putting those things into practice will
be really cool. Well, if you're taking those
two, you got to take a Katie Milkman class as well.
Yes, 100%. So going back to what you said
about intentionality, I think this is something that kind of
closes that gap like you're saying between where you're
currently at and where you think you should be.
And especially on a day-to-day basis, how we feel going through
the motions in the right word, but how we feel waking up in the
morning and going to work or going to school or showing up in
our relationships, how we feel in those day-to-day interactions
has a really big impact on our mental health, regardless of
what these commitments are. And I think our intentionality
has a really big role in that piece of that puzzle.
I think it's also something that young adults really haven't
mastered because there are so many things in their life that
are kind of by design forcing them to do these things.
Especially in high school, you have to get up and go to school.
Your parents are structuring a lot of your relationships.
You have this built in community, which is really
positively impacting your mental health.
You have all these extracurriculars, You have your
physical health, aspects of your Wellness taken care of.
And then as we become more independent and are living on
our own and are kind of in this in between stage and college, we
are the ones that are actually being intentional rather than
going through the motions because these constructs have
been put in place. So I know there's so many
schools of thought here, whether it's habit loops or different
ways that we reinforce things or tying these different actions to
our values, so many different ways that people try to approach
this. But what is your school of
thought here of how we can increase that intentionality and
close that gap between where we are and where we want to be?
I wrote a whole book on it, yes. So I boiled it down to what I
call the Passion struck framework.
And the passion struck framework is part of an overarching larger
model that I call the Passion struck model.
And in this model, for a person who's listening, I want you to
imagine that you're looking at Mickey Mouse, or it could be
Minnie Mouse. But in this model, think of the
two ears on Mickey Mouse. For me, one of those represents
mindset shifts. And to me the mindset shifts are
our starting point because they really influence our why, our
purpose for why we go about our lives and they influence how we
take action. And then the other ear are our
behavior shifts. And our behavior shifts is
really the what we do and how we do it.
And it really builds upon those mindset shifts.
And when you bring those two together, it then comes into
Mickey Mouse's nose, which I call the psychology of progress,
which has two components. If you think of the nose and the
mouth, one is the process of deliberate action, taking action
in your life. And the other element is
intrinsic motivation, where so many of us today really use
extrinsic motivators to fuel our fires.
I argue that it's the intrinsic motivators, those things that
really bring you fulfillment that are really this fuel that
powers the mindset shifts, the behavior shifts, and the
willingness to take deliberate action.
And then I couple this with passion and perseverance.
Passion lines up with igniting that mindset shift area or
finding our why. The perseverance really gets
into the behavior shifts because we need to persevere beyond
challenges, and then intentionality is really
connected to the deliberate action that we need to take.
So that's how I've kind of organized the book.
And then in each of the mindset shifts and behavior shifts,
there are 6 core steps that I'd suggest people take on building
each one out. I want to shift gears a little
bit, but it really does build off of this model and this
framework, which is talking about mastery.
Because another Doctor Seligman perspective is that the opposite
of helplessness is mastery. And a lot of what we've
described here with feeling like you're not aligned with your
true self or you don't know how to get to where you want to be,
or you're struggling to find that passion and perseverance in
a lot of ways, like you're saying, it feels like you're
helpless. Sometimes it shows up as
feelings of depression. It's really that inability to
take action and feel like you are capable of doing that.
And mastery is the the inverse of that.
And a lot of your work is really related to that concept.
And I think this is another thing that young adults want to
improve and they want to increase in their life.
They want to have more mastery, but they're not sure how to do
it. Is there a certain part of the
framework or certain tasks that you give people that can help
them increase their mastery in their lives, especially when
they're new to this process and they haven't gone through the
whole framework or the whole model yet?
Yeah. I mean, to me, mastery is
something that we tend to look at the end goal.
Let's say that the end goal is I want to learn how to play guitar
or I want to learn a foreign language.
And it seems so daunting that we don't even start to go down the
path of performing it. And I think that they're couple
things here that we need to think about. 1 is this whole
concept of activation energy, which I'm not sure if you've
ever heard of it, but activation energy, if you think of two
accesses, 1 access would have energy on it.
The other access would have intentionality on it.
And just think of yourself as starting a task.
And this task, if you want to picture this, could be a person
who is trying to roll a boulder up a hill.
And at first, when you're starting that activity, that
activation energy is extremely high because you're going
against a lot of gravity, a lot of friction.
And so when you start pushing it, it takes a ton of effort,
but the more you start putting positive energy behind it, the
more it becomes easier and you're lowering the activation
energy. One of the key things to doing
this and becoming a master is to find ways to lower that
activation energy to undertake more tasks.
The other thing, and you brought up habit loops is taking action
again, doesn't mean huge heroic, you know, Hercules type
activities. It's really taking incremental
steps by forming small habits, meaning saving $8 a day equates
to $3000 a year. Reading 20 pages a day equals 30
books a year. Walking 10,000 steps a day
equals 70 marathons. So if you can start lowering
that activation energy and you can start taking more
incremental actions, those are two extremely important steps.
And then the third important step is something I write about
in a chapter called the bee in the Turtle Effect, where we need
to be like the bees where we're taking the action and lowering
that activation energy like they do because they're very much
caught up in the day-to-day work that they need to do to support
the hive and the queen bee. But we need to be like the
tortoise in that we need to have that longer term vision of where
we're trying to go and ensure that there's an alignment, like
I talked about earlier, between these incremental things that
you're doing, this master you're forming and what you want it to
accomplish down the line. So in order to do that, I think
as you're taking these steps, it's very important to give
yourself residual rewards along the way and to not get caught up
at trying to compare yourself to others.
And this goes into the work of Benjamin Hardy.
We're so often times as we're trying to master something, we
become our own worst enemies because we're living in the gap.
We're trying to compare ourselves to someone else as
opposed to living in the gain where we're looking at our
incremental progress and comparing it to who we were a
month ago, six months ago, a year ago.
So those are some some tips that that I would initially give out
that people really need to think about.
You mentioned this a little bit at the end with not comparing
yourself and focusing on the small steps rather than getting
so caught up in the outcome or what it is that you're trying to
master. But having done so much research
and talking to so many people and doing so much self work as
well, I would love to get your perspective on kind of the self
talk elements of this. There's again, lots of schools
of thoughts on this, whether it's more of like a tough love
approach or it's you don't think about it, you just do it.
And then there's more of like they give yourself grace and
there's more validation and kind of talking yourself through it.
How do you explain and recommend that people navigate the mental
part of this? Because I think a lot of people
get caught up in that. That's kind of why they aren't
able to take these steps. It's how they're speaking to
themselves or they are talking themselves out of it at some
point. So what are your thoughts on the
mental component of that, which I'm sure ties into the CBT that
you mentioned initially? Yeah.
So since you mentioned Angela Duckworth, one of her best
friends is a friend of mine named Ethan Cross, who teaches
psychology at the University of Michigan.
Ethan's a New York Times bestselling author also, and
he's got a great book called Chatter that I would encourage
listeners to pick up a copy specifically on this point
because it's really all about negative thought loops.
And something that I like to share with people is, especially
when you're young, it is so important.
We were talking about authenticity to understand that
the most incredible person that you were ever going to meet in
your entire life is the person who stares back at you in the
mirror when you wake up every morning.
But the biggest critic you're ever going to find in your life
is that same person. And so we all face our biggest
competitor. I mean, Novak Yokovic had to
face his biggest competitor to become the number one tennis
player in the world. Angela Duckworth earlier on in
her career had to face her own inner critic when she started
out teaching in inner City Schools and wasn't living up to
her own potential of what she was setting herself out to do.
And I refer to this whole thing is we often become our own
visionary arsonist. And I love this metaphor because
we arson the very things in life that we want to accomplish,
meaning we have the best intentions for personal growth
and achievement, but we do things that inadvertently
undermine our own progress. In a great example of this is
it's a kin to programming a destination into your GPS, but
then repeatedly taking detours that take you farther and
farther away from it. And this isn't due to a lack of
desire or ability, rather it's due to the subconscious
behaviors that are misaligned with our intended objectives.
And so one of the most important things that people need to
realize today is we are living in an age where distraction is
permeating our complete lives. And we spend so much time,
especially people in your age group, on our devices.
I take Toastmasters with a with a woman who's 22 or 23 years old
who did a whole Toastmaster speech on the fact that she was
using her social media 4 1/2 to five hours a day.
And I don't think that that's an isolated thing.
And if you keep spending so much time on those apps, you end up
comparing yourself to others like I was talking about.
And you find yourself living in this gap that I talked about
South signs for you to understand whether this is
something that you're facing are are you setting unrealistic
goals? Do you face a lot of
procrastination? Do you do a lot of negative self
talk? Do you have avoidant behaviors?
And then to me, the starting point really becomes working on
not getting sidetracked by the distractions, as I was just
talking about, but a gradual shift into a cycle of setting
goals that are hard enough that it's making you extend yourself,
but are easy enough for you to complete.
And the more you start doing that, the more confidence you're
going to gain and the more you're going to start moving
away from these visionary arsonist behaviors that are
holding you back. Yeah.
My last question that I want to ask you, it's a bit of a loaded
one, but I'm excited to get your thoughts, which is, if you were
in your teens and 20s right now, what would you do?
What books would you be reading? What podcast would you be
listening to? What goals would you be setting?
Would you be prioritizing self talk or relationships or career?
How would you approach building your life worth living and
building your future and especially prioritizing your
mental health and yourself? Because I think that's something
that sometimes we forget to prioritize, but it really is
everything when it comes to to building our life worth living.
So how would you navigate this now having all of this
perspective and insight and research in your arsenal?
Well, I mean, the first thing I would do is exactly what I did
to my two kids is I handed them a copy of my book because I
dedicated the whole book to them and their generation because
that is what I'm trying to help people see.
We typically go into life like I did and we we think that we have
to follow the structured approach that we've seen our
parents and grandparents do, which is we're born, we kind of
go through the typical schooling system.
We go to college, we get a job, we get married, we have kids, we
continue our career, retire, go on some trips and eventually
die. And there's a complete different
way that you can navigate your life.
And it's really positioning yourself to move out of the
matrix that we are so taught to confine ourselves in and to do
life differently, which is what I try to talk about in the book
and what I'm doing now with my life and what I wished I would
have done earlier. And one of the most important
things that people need to understand is that we as humans
are different from any other species on this earth because we
were built to be the ultimate learning and adaptability
machine. And something that I find people
don't practice enough is that constant learning and thinking
about the future that your generation is walking into.
I mean, as I look back at this point 30 years ago from when I
graduated college and the pace of change then that I thought
was high, and I look at what it is now.
In just 30 short years, things have changed so rapidly that
this constant need to reinvent yourself and to relearn things
and to stay ahead of the trends that are going to be coming is
going to be extremely crucial to your career.
So those would be some of the things I would recommend.
Now, as far as books, some of the core books that I love, I
mean, we've already mentioned a couple of the authors.
Grit by Angela Duckworth is a great book.
How You Change by Katie Milkman is a great book.
All of Jonah Berger's books, I love his book on invisible
influence is a great one because toxic people and habits enter
our lives and we often don't see them.
I think Hidden Potential by Adam Grant is a great book.
Jim Quicks book about teach limitless and teaching yourself
how to speed read and how to use your mind differently is a
fantastic book. I think Will Cadera's influences
on using what he calls unreasonable hospitality or
going above and beyond and how you're serving other people is
an extremely good book. Bob Waldinger, who is a Harvard
professor, leads the Harvard Adult Study of aging currently.
His book Good Life is an extremely fantastic book.
Doctor Mark Hyman wrote a great book this past year around
future self and how you become the healthiest that you possibly
can be. I mean, those are just a few off
the top of my mind. I mentioned Ethan Cross's book.
Emma Capella has a great book called Sovereign, which tells
you the importance of sovereignty.
And then I think one of the most important books that's been
written in recent years was Transcend by Scott Barry
Kaufman, which really gives an updated view of Maslow's
hierarchy. But I think he does it through a
better metaphor of using a sailboat.
So as far as podcasts of people can listen to, I will give some
of the smaller ones that I have found, or maybe not the mega
shows, but some of the other shows that I think are really
good. I think Scott Miller does an
excellent show on leadership and he does that with the Franklin
Covey Institute. So it's there on leadership.
He's got fantastic guests. He's a great interviewer.
I think Scott Barry Kaufman's podcast if you want to learn
more about positive psychology is a fantastic one.
Obviously, Angela and Katie's podcasts are great and there any
of the podcasts that come out of Freakonomics are great podcasts.
So I'd highly encourage those. James Doctor, James Doty has a
great podcast out on the West Coast and there are a lot of
podcasts that come out of Stanford and Berkeley that I
have found very transformational as well.
As far as I guess the the bigger podcast, I always like Rob Deals
podcast. I have always loved Lewis Howe's
School of Greatness. It's one that I studied
earnestly. Mel Robbins has a great podcast.
If you're in the manifestation, Gabby Bernstein has a great
podcast. So I mean, those are just some
off the top of my head. I love it.
I'll be putting together a guide and putting it on Instagram so
everyone can check it out. And I will definitely be working
my way through your reading list.
So many of those, some I've read, some I haven't.
So I can't wait to check all of those out.
And I know everyone's going to be running to grab your book
after this, but where can they get your book, listen to your
podcast and follow along on social media?
Yeah, thank you so much for that.
I mean, the best few places to find me are either John or my
middle initial miles.com or passionstruck.com.
And you can find the book anywhere online.
So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, wherever.
Amazing. Well, all of that will be in the
show notes. Thank you so much.
This was absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for having me.