How to feel happy and fulfilled with Jeff Harry

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] : Welcome to Thrive. Radio expert, visionary and innovative business Life and relationship advice to live a life of doing the impossible with your host. Amy Montgomery. The Radio. I’m your host. Danny Montgomery, entrepreneur and digital marketing agency owner. Today, my guest is Jeff Harry. He’s a coach And consultant. Top 100 HR influencer featured in the New York Times mashable wired and up worthy. He shows individuals and companies how to tap into their true selves to feel their happiest and most fulfilled all by plane. Welcome, Jeff.

 What’s up, Amy? Let’s go. I’m excited for our podcast today. 

How did you become a coach? And how did you get to where you are today? Oh, that’s a good question. Okay, I’ll do the short Batman Origin story. So do you remember the movie big with Tom Hanks? Yes. So I saw that when I was in third grade and he was playing with toys for a living, and I was like, You can do that for a living, like you can play and then get paid. So I was like, Oh, my goodness. So I started writing toy companies in third grade, and I just didn’t stop like I wrote them all throughout junior high, all throughout high school, And then I eventually got into the toy industry. And I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten exactly what you’ve always wanted and then been so disappointed when you get it right. It was like there were no toys. There was no fun. There was no play. It was a cubicle walls, and they might as well have been selling pillows or socks like it really didn’t matter what they were selling. So I was, like, so sad. So I left that industry and I left New York and I came to the Bay Area and I bumped into an organization on Craigslist teaching kids engineering with Lego, and basically we’re just playing for a living, and I was like, Oh, dude, this is what I want to do This is what I’ve been wanting to do. I want to play for a living And it was like a joke of a job was like seven people paid $150 a week, but it was fun and I was like, I’m going to make this a thing and we, as a collective, were able to figure it out and start growing it. And we grew it into the largest Lego inspired stem organization, like in the US And we did all by playing like no business plan, no idea what we’re doing. Pick cities we thought were fun. Pick people we thought were fun, made a ton of mistakes, a lot of failures. But we enjoyed doing it. And I think what happened eventually was we got so big that, like Silicon Valley started noticing us like Facebook, Google, Adobe, all those companies, they were like, Hey, do you do team building events? And we’re like, Of course we do. Of course we do special events. No, we didn’t do any of those things, But we just said yes to everything because that was the play mindset, right? And then I ended up doing like team building and special events for the top tech companies for the next decade after that. But what I realized while I was at all these companies is that at the same time that they talked about innovation and creativity and risk taking and all those buzzwords. In many ways, I didn’t think they were fully doing it, you know, and I don’t know if they had created the psychologically safe space to take risks. So I created my organization now two years ago. Rediscover your play as a way to address psychological safety in the workplace, address toxicity at work address, having difficult conversations, address how to deal with inner critic and how to tap into your inner genius and get the most out of your staff. Because I realized that that was the problem that was missing. So that’s what I do now. 

So in walking through that journey, what are you grateful for now? The mistakes, the failures. I don’t even call them mistakes or failures. I felt like all of it. All of the ebb and flow, the roller coaster, the ups and downs like I think a lot of times we want all the successes, but we don’t want all the failures. But you don’t experience the successes at a high high. If you don’t allow yourself to feel the sadness of the low lows and experience, the failure and also the thing that’s really magical about failure, there’s some beauty and failure because when you do it, then you’re like, Oh, I haven’t died I think a lot of times when we fail, we think we’re gonna die. I can’t do that. I mean, I remember once talking to a niece of mine, and she was like, If I talk to that guy, I’m gonna die. And I was like, she was like, in high school right at the time. And I was like, Oh, wait a minute. I understand what she’s saying. A part of her is going to die, right? That identity, that she can’t talk up, It’s random people. That part of her is going to die if she actually goes and does this. So there’s something also magical about allowing yourself to fail, because then you realize, Oh, that story about myself is not true, right? And then you start telling then you’ll be like, what? Other stories are not true? And what is the story I actually want to be telling? And you’re like, Whoo! Then we get into some adventure right there. So what is positive psychology and how do you use it in your coaching? Positive psychology is the study of what is good about people. It was founded by Marty Seligman back in the 19 eighties. because up until that point, psychology had only studied what was wrong with people, right? Like And here’s another thing that’s wrong with you. Here’s another thing, and positive psychology is like, Can we double down on the things that are good, right? Like gratitude, savoring actually, how you positively prime your day. So it was this interesting study that he started, like just researching and realized over the next 40 years of like, Oh, there’s so many practices we can do of things that we have strengthened right that actually would make us better Rather than always focusing on the negative. It’s not that we shouldn’t. It’s not that we shouldn’t address some of the traumas that we deal with. That’s really important as well. But let’s double down on the things that we actually do well. So, for example, if I’m working with a team and we’re talking about difficult conversations, we first explore what they’re comfortable. What are the conversations they are comfortable having, right? If I’m working with someone one on one as a coach, I’m focused more on like let’s figure out what you love to do, what makes you come alive and let’s explore that instead of being like, Oh, what’s another thing that you’re bad at? Let’s actually figure out your strengths and appreciate and have gratitude towards those strengths, especially when you do certain gratitude practices or certain savoring practices. It gives you energy to get through the rest of your day. 

What does it mean to rediscover yourself through play? 

I think what that means is this idea that you have all the answers that you need, and you simply need to play enough in order to figure them out. You know, when I’m coaching, a lot of people like you already have the answers, like you could figure it out, probably on your own. You know, I’m just kind of expediting the process because we’re going to play in order to do it. And it’s so noisy out here. So I heard this stat recently. I used to share the stat that we get more information in a day than most people in the 1950s get in an entire year, right? But then I heard this recently that we get more information in a day than people heard in their entire life during Shakespearean types. So, like just this idea that was so noisy. So many people are telling us what to do. Amazon is telling us to buy stuff. Netflix tell us the binge watch, like everyone is trying to get our attention. Not to mention all of posting stuff on social media that you rarely can hear yourself. You rarely can hear your own inner child and what she or he or they are speaking to you. And when you allow yourself to actually do that, that’s where all the answers are. So when you allow yourself, I challenge people all the time through. This is like allow yourself to get bored, which means, like, stop binge watching Netflix. Stop looking at YouTube. Stop looking at all of your social media are constantly emailing people all the time. Just not be busy for five minutes, right 5 to 30 minutes a day and allow yourself to get bored. That’s where all the answers start to show up, and the answer is usually show up as like a whisper from your inner child or your intuition, and it whispers something to you that makes you like nervous and excited or nerve cited as I referenced right and when you feel it being like What? Is that you? Should I start a podcast? You should. I reached out to that person. I’ve been wanting to reach out to fix it. Six months. Who should I like, Take a risk and make this video and say something controversial at work? Because I disagree with this when you actually jump into that uncertainty, right? When you jump into that fear, you realize what fear is, right? False evidence appearing real. And you also realize it’s not that bad. It’s just not that bad. And when you constantly are taking risks like that, then you realize like, Oh, not only I’m not going to die from taking this risk, but also I’m beginning to expand what’s possible for me. So regardless of whether you email that person and they don’t email you back, it doesn’t matter. The fact that you took the risk now all of a sudden gives you two bravery to start doing all these other things that you never thought possible before. That’s really interesting. I want to dive into this a little bit more later in the podcast. But when you go in and you start to work with teams. What does the play actually look like? So the play can look like a variety of things. If we’re talking about difficult conversations, it’s a lot of role play. It’s a lot of like How does that actually feel to say this to somebody, right? Because I think a lot of times we are so scared to say something. If you think of a football team, for example, they practice all week for a three hour game all week. We never get to practice at work. We never get to practice having difficult conversations. We never get to practice how to communicate. We are just constantly having to produce all the time, so you never really know. So a lot of the stuff that we do, usually we’re talking about office politics, are talking about, like dealing with toxicity. It’s a lot of game practice, right where a lot of like so what would it be like to have this conversation? Okay, let’s play it out. What if this person said this back to you? What would you say? Okay, let’s do it again and we do it again and again. So you start to realize, Oh, it’s not that scary. Oh, okay. I can have this conversation. Oh, I can figure out how to disagree with someone without offending them. Right? How do I have a conversation where I’m addressing the problem and not attacking the character of the person, right? Like when you start to do a lot of those certain practices, then you realize, Okay, this is not that difficult. And you start to embody because I think that’s the really important part is you have to actually embody what you are doing. A lot of times we talk a lot about like, we need better communication. What are you actually doing? That’s what I say. Two teams all the time. What are you actually doing to address that? Oh, we need to create a more team oriented work environment. Okay, well, the culture is defined by the worst behavior tolerated. What is the behavior currently tolerating? Okay, you know, Are you addressing this? Are you having this? How many difficult conversations do you have with your team? A month? Like I’m constantly asking those types of questions because that’s what you really need to do if you want to make progress. And I heard this recently from a friend of mine, Brittany, who talked about being nice and how being nice sometimes takes away, especially at meetings. And what she meant by being nice is like it’s the acronym of Nothing Interesting can emerge and when you’re being too nice, not kind. We’re not talking about kind when you’re talking about being like too nice or too polite and being like, Well, I don’t want to say that thing that might offend that person by not saying anything. This is why meeting suck. This is why people feel they’re they’ve wasted time because there’s a lot of roundabout conversations happening and people talking over each other. But everyone is being way too nice, and no one’s addressing what the problem is in the room. Such as, like, why are we even having this meeting? This is meeting been purposeful? We used to have this meeting because of this. We don’t achieve that anymore. Do we even need to have this meeting anymore? Like conversations like that need to happen so you’re just not wasting your staff’s time. So let’s talk about success and toxic masculinity. How do you define it and what do you think it’s an issue. I think for the longest time we have praised the Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos model of management or heck, even like Bill Gates. Right? And all these people exploit staff like they work them until they kicked them out. And that’s a model. I mean, if you want to do that model, hey, go ahead, you do you? It’s just not sustainable. And what’s happening through the great resignation is people are pushing back on that. Is that that whole idea that it’s constantly hostile? But it’s constantly 24/7, and if you’re not hustling that you don’t matter if you’re not posting, you don’t matter like so manic and not sustainable and unhealthy that you ignore the other aspect of it for any person, right? Every person has both masculine and feminine qualities, right? But I think we’ve veered so far to the masculine of, like, decision making hustle. You know, you got to be top of the game competition that you ignore a lot of the feminine qualities in the feminine leadership traits that are actually really important, like collaboration, like pursuing your curiosity, like having empathy for others like play like I do a ton of stuff in play. So I’m in many ways geared more towards my feminine leadership side than my mask in leadership side. But you need that balance, and right now it’s way too skewed to one side and it’s not healthy for anyone. It’s not even healthy for men because the men can’t even keep up this constant hustle. Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins like type energy and it’s just like it’s irrational and it’s hurting all of us. So then what’s happening now is people are after a year of being at home For the people that we had the luxury to be at home right? They realized that like, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to work 50 hours, 50 weeks out of the year for the next 50 years, and then what do I get out of it? 10 to 15 years of retirement like that’s it, and I made someone else rich like that doesn’t make sense to me at all. Like I want to do a job where I can actually spend more time with my family or I can go be a digital nomad and travel the world while I work like people are starting to look at other ways of doing work and even challenging what we’ve been doing so far. Right? Like, why do we work five days a week? Studies have found, If you work four days a week, you can be as productive, if not more productive, right? So we need to start exploring these different ways of working because the American hustle culture that we have been praising for so long is now backfiring. And now so many people are like that. It’s just not human, and we need to stop doing that. And a lot of the hustle kind of culture is a direct relation to, you know, trauma and pain in a trauma response, right? And so then you ever work. And you know, you and I were talking about this a little bit about Napoleon Hill. Think and grow rich, which is put on a pedestal in so many ways, and I’m not saying that black or white like there’s not good things in it. There are good things that he teaches. However, a lot of the examples that he uses that he really elevates, like Henry Ford very much of a narcissist and very abusive, and then you were not. And we’re talking about Dr Rahman E. In that video that she says that if she were to, you know, she’s an expert in narcissism. And if she were to write a book on how to succeed in the New World Order, it would be the same if she wrote a book on narcissism. Yeah, and you blew my mind with the whole Napoleon Hill article about how, like his whole book, the whole think and grow rich, Not real like that. He’s like making up stuff about interviewing Carnegie. You know, you know, melon and, you know, and how he interviewed presidents. And I was just reading this article and it was blew my mind because you went down the rabbit hole. I went down the rabbit hole, right? Like I went down it afterwards. And I was like finding out that this guy that wrote the book think and grow rich, that so many people have based their leadership on right from the Tony Robbins to you know, all of the pastors that preach the prosperity gospel. All these people that reference this book and the books, not even real. That blows my mind. And it kind of like it ties in with, like, what other truths have we like when you actually dig deep, you find out, aren’t real, like another example of that is, I recently found out about the term alpha male. Alpha male was coined by professor back in the seventies when he was studying animals in captivity. He then in the late nineties started studying these same wolves outside of captivity and realized Alpha male is not a thing. It doesn’t actually exist out in the wilderness. If wolves are running the pack, it’s usually both the mother and the father that run it together equally right? Feminine, divine, masculine, right? Like it’s ballots. The alpha male thing only exists in captivity. So if you were to look at, you know what are alpha males? The only time you would notice that is it’s people that are insecure that are in a captive space. Yet think about how many men now claim alpha like I’m an alpha male. And you’re like, Do you really know what you’re claiming there because you’re a man that can only do well in captivity amongst all these other people, right? Like it’s just fascinating how we’ve built a whole identities of the things that are not real, you know? And this is why going back to the whole idea of rediscover your play is rediscovering. You write like display during what you feel is right, what you connect with, as opposed to buying into some story, you know? So I’m like, I’m gonna do with the Gary Vaynerchuk way. I’m gonna do it the Tony Robbins way or whatever guru you subscribe to because you think if I do it that way, then I’ll be rich. And then if I’m rich, then I matter. And if I matter that I’m loved, why do you need to do all that? And I mean, you really do have to test what people are saying out there. I mean, some of the things that bother me I mean, like, I enjoy Gary Vaynerchuk from an inspirational point of view. Like I think that he motivated me to take my own business knowledge and build businesses online and got me interested in digital marketing. He’s always telling these young people you’ve got to have patience to building your following and all this kind of stuff. But then you actually go into look at his stats of what his followers are, and they’re all in Third World countries. And he’s got a very small amount of people that follow him in the U. S. And that’s not just him. That’s everybody. And there’s a book about it. It’s called one million followers in 30 days. That’s one thing that I deal with a lot with a lot of people that come to me for digital marketing. And, you know, they feel like, Oh my gosh, I’m not super popular on social media and I’m like, Well, most people aren’t And, uh, there, you know, the popular in Bangladesh. I know certain influences that huge followings, but you talk to them really insecure. You think the more followers you get, the more you actually secure You would be because you were like, Oh my gosh, all these people are listening to me. But it actually has the opposite effect and you start looking more and more at followership and I’ve even realized like, you know, because I’ve had some videos that have gone quote unquote like viral or many viral, it actually doesn’t help. If it’s not your message and you go viral for something, then you just attract new people that really don’t even know who you are, right, so they don’t care. High school popularity contest and I forgot who the name of this was, but there’s like this pretty, you know, successful investor from Silicon Valley. And he was being interviewed and he talks about how you know when he looks at all these other people that scored it big in Silicon Valley, right? Like they invested in Uber earlier and they invested in Google and they invested in this. He’s like so much of it is about luck. So much of it is not like talent or skill, but just they just happen to be there at the right time, and then afterwards, then they claim how smart they are that they discovered this. And then they sell this lie that, like you should buy my stuff. You should buy my course. You shouldn’t do this thing. And it’s just like, dude, come on, like we need to stop perpetuating a lie to make ourselves look better and look more successful and just own up to where we’re at in everyone’s process. I wish more leaders during the pandemic would have just been like I don’t know what I’m doing. Do you know what you’re doing? Because I don’t know what I’m doing like, but instead some people started coming up with, like, this is what you need during the pandemic. You’re gonna pivot during the pandemic. It’s all about pivoting, and you’re just like, Were you here in 1920? Because if you’re not, then shut up. Just shut up. Just shut up because you don’t know what you’re talking about either. Or go ahead and give advice, but give it with the caveat of like, I’m figuring it out just like you were all in it together. And I really wish we should have showed up more humbly like that. Yeah, definitely. And to your point as well of having different viral videos, I’ve had quite a few as well, one YouTube channel. I shut down because I decided it was a niche that I didn’t want to go after, like 18,000 followers there and, like one of my videos had 2.5 million views and I was just like, it’s not an alignment. I’m getting rid of it. And then I’ve gotten somewhat popular on Tiktok, and that was, you know, around some of the same content. And now because I’m not posting that content, people are following me, you know? And then, like I have a YouTube I used to focus on e commerce. I’m now posting these podcasts on that YouTube channel. And, you know, just a lot of people leave because they were interested in Amazon and so many people were out there teaching get rich on Amazon. That’s why I stopped teaching it, because it’s no different than any other business. And there’s a lot of risk involved in a lot of liability involved in Yeah, so it’s interesting. So once you switch, then people no longer care about you, and so you really have to stay true to who you are and forget about the numbers and forget that people aren’t following. You’re following you because it’s better to have the 100 committed thousands upon thousands or millions that you know, I know people that have 2.5 million followers, three million followers, eight million followers, and they want to have a business or even half a million. They want to have a business, but nobody’s buying their stuff. So you know, like having a business and running a business is completely different than tons of followers and even successes different. Exactly. And I think we think if we get enough likes, if we get enough followers, we get enough love right, and it’s just like it’s never enough, right? It’s like, insatiable and don’t get me wrong. I go through the same experiences where I’ll make something and I’ll be like, Oh, this is going to be a really good video. People are going to love it and then no one watches it and then I’ll post something else, and then a bunch of people watch it. And I realized when I’m in a better space, right when I’m really focused on, like reminding myself why I’m doing this in the first place, you know, talk about positive psychology. I start my day by making a tiktok video. Why? Just for me just because, like when I prime my day by starting off with play, it primes my day to see everything else is play. So then I see this conversation is playing. I’m having a meeting right after this, and that’s going to be playing like so we have to be thinking about and this ties back into like, the whole idea of rediscovering your play is like rediscovering, like what I want, right? It’s easy. It’s the most basic question to ask and the hardest question to answer, which is like, What do I want? What do I want at this very moment in time and when we’re dead scrolling? You know, when we’re squeezing, trying to get that next viral video or whatever it is, we can’t hear ourselves because we’re listening to way too many other people telling us what we want instead of just asking ourselves. Yeah, and the Turk on Tiktok that I’ve noticed is that if you post-20 videos in one day, one of them will go viral. Oh, that’s interesting. I mean, yeah, and I used to do that. I used to just, you know, and it didn’t take me that long. Just a whole bunch of random ones. And then out of all of that, it kicks the algorithm, so they’re posting tons of videos. I’m going to push one of them out right and then it will suppress you for a while. And I think it’s kind of a psychology thing they do on purpose because it’s designed by casino engineers, the engineers that worked on also it’s designed to be addictive. So you go from like if something hasn’t hit in awhile, all of a sudden you have one thing that goes slightly viral, right, and you don’t understand why that gets you to continue to be on the app, and then they suppress your videos, right? And then you get angry and you make a video about them suppressing your videos and you’re still on there. And then all of a sudden it picks up again. So again, with any of these platforms, I don’t see any of them, like are evil, right? But we have to understand what is the purpose of the platform? Is the platform using you, or are you using the platform? Are you using it as an opportunity to figure out how to express yourself right and tapping into your own voice? Or are you finding yourself more so just on their consuming, consuming and then just simply making videos that, like everyone else, is making just for the sake of it. So I recently went to Portugal like I traveled to Portugal for like, two weeks. And there’s so many beautiful places there, right? Like sunset places, castles. And it was fascinating because I saw so many instagram influence there like met so many and they all took the same photos. So it didn’t make sense to me because it was like, Wait a minute, you’re an influencer. You’re trying to influence your population or your followers. But why is everyone taking the exact same photo that, like, how is this unique being that you’re going to the same window in the same castle and taking that same shot of you looking pensive out into the distance? And I was like, Dude, like, what’s happening here like this makes no sense because I school all over again. It’s high school all over again. We’re just recreating high school and most of us hated high school. So why are we doing it again? So yeah, exactly how can we start to define success in a healthier way? What brings you fulfillment? How do you measure your day? Do you measure it based off of how many connections you make that day How much play you had that day? How much rest you got? I think especially in America, because I was not seeing this. Especially when I was in Portugal. Like when I was in Porto, right? For example, people leave work early to go watch the sunset. Wait, What? People will have dinner at eight PM because they prioritize the sunset literally. People will gather in large groups like we’re talking like 2, 300 people to watch the sunset while someone is like playing music or whatever it is. And it’s just like this. Just a normal thing, like, how are you prioritizing what’s important to you? And only you, when you listen to yourself, can find out what’s actually important, because I think we think that Oh, what’s important to me is money like I need to make money. Okay, well, I understand you need to survive and you need to. But also, studies show that once you make over 75 k a year, happiness levels don’t go up regardless of whether you’re making a million or 75,000. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. No, just if I made a little bit more. Oh, if I just lost £20 all of a sudden, I’d be much happier like there’s always once I do this, then I’ll get that right. And what we need to be exploring is what makes me happy right now. Like what brings me fulfillment right now? What brings me connection right now? Like before someone told me this. I think it was Chris. Bent told me like before he goes and Binge watches a show, he asks himself. Okay, well, why don’t I want to binge watch that show? Well, you know, I want experience and I want a connection. Before I binge watched the show, Why don’t I reach out to somebody just like via text or via email or whatever it is, or I just dm them write an idea. Maybe five different people gets the same level of connection of binge watching six hours of a show. So again we just have to look at what are we chasing and what are we running towards right? And is that like dead scrolling or binge? Netflix sing or emailing? Because I want to be super busy as a worker or working 10 hour days is that actually bringing me the fulfillment that I want or am I just playing a role that someone told me is supposed to bring me happiness, you know? And why am I buying into that? Because what is? Elizabeth Gilbert says she goes. Personal transformation doesn’t happen until you get tired of your own Bs. What’s the B s story you’ve been telling yourself, right, that I need to work all this time in order to get ahead in order to make money in order to be happy? Or could I just be happy right now? Yeah, definitely. And feeling those emotions because we always go after things for the reason of the emotion it’s going to bring us. So if you can even be grateful as if it already exists Yes, exactly, then you can feel happy now. The other thing is really the power of gratefulness and thinking about all the things you’re grateful for, Even if it’s in the past and feeling those emotions, it doesn’t really matter what your circumstances are. You can still feel grateful, and on top of that and this kind of ties in again to positive psychology is the words that come after I am are the most important words that you will ever say to yourself. Right? So you really have to be asking yourself a lot. Am I allowing my inner critic to say a lot of mean thoughts to myself? Or am I saying things that I want to hear? Like I am loved? I am abundant. I am worthy of being paid really well for the work that I do. I am making an impact when you say that to yourself even again What you said earlier your prime in your brain to then actually look for Oh, wait a minute. How am I abundant? Oh, wait a minute. How am I like doing things that actually bring, you know, more revenue to my business. Oh, wait a minute. How are the ways? And I am loved? How are the ways in which I’m already loved by people that I don’t need to seek out more love or be like I need to be fulfilled by one single person, you know, in order to feel whole I’m saying this to all of your listeners is like watch and be very aware of the words you say after I AM. And if you don’t like the words that are coming after I am like I am horrible or I am ugly or I am never going to be successful and you don’t like those, then start switching that up and start saying that to yourself throughout today, and you literally will be creating more new neural pathways in your brain to look for patterns that are close to positivity. Yeah, I love that. You know, when it comes to organizational development, you hold workshops and you approach things with your method of positive psychology. What does it look like to bring one of your workshops into a business? What can they expect? Yeah, so depending on what it looks like. So if we’re talking about, like dealing with toxicity at work, then it’s just like then it’s this whole discussion and a workshop around. How do we have hard conversations, especially with that person that is toxic, right? How are we starting to set boundaries in our meetings, right? As well as addressing the behavior not just of that toxic person, because a lot of times were like, Well, if we just get rid of that toxic person, then we’ll be fine. We’ll know the culture has supported this type of person. So even if you got rid of that person, another person might show up. That’s just as toxic. So we need to actually explore like, Alright, what are the conversations we’re having? What are the strategies we’re using? What are the boundaries that we’re actually setting? If I’m working with a team around, like finding their inner genius or like tapping back into their flow because their staff has been, like, you know, working from home so long, and now all of a sudden they’re coming back to the office or they’re just simply like trying to reengage again? Then it’s about me exploring with the staff of like, What is it about this job that you love? Why do you keep coming back to this company? What is your Why, as to why you started this with this company and is your wife is still the same. And if it’s not, what is your why now? And when we start to explore that as well as like and I do this a lot with nonprofits, what type of impact have you and your staff had over the last, like five years or heck over just the last year. I think a lot of times, especially with non profits, we never celebrate wins. So even the idea of exploring with them all the things that they actually have done and then how does that make them feel? And then also exploring how that, like, who are the people they’ve actually impacted, like one on one people that they’ve impacted? And when you start there and then go Okay, now that we have this energy from savoring and gratitude now what is it that we want to do? What challenges or adventures do we want to tackle next? And how do we do it from a new perspective, right? Because we are going into a world of uncertainty where frankly, play is going to be extremely important because plays the opposite of perfection. Plays rooted in curiosity, experimentation and awe. If you’re leaning towards the perfectionist route that’s driven by ego, shame and scared of making failures, and the companies that are going to be most successful are the ones that are going to allow their staff to fail and take risks and experiment and try new things out that they never thought they could before. So what are some of your clients? Success stories? I was running this workshop with a colleague of mine, Gary, where in Australia the workshop was called How to Deal with a holes that worked through play like that was the name of the workshop, right? So we’re running this at a conference in Australia, and there’s a lot of people in the room and people are having a good time because, you know, we do improv and stuff like that. So we do a lot of games to, like, start off and loosen people up. And then we started talking about, like, the real serious issue of like Have you left a job because of toxicity? And then people started not only raising their hands but start sharing their stories. And all of a sudden the laughter’s went to, like, all of a sudden tears and people started being like, Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one. Oh, my goodness. I thought I was the only one. And in a room that was predominantly women, there was this one guy, a white guy, of all things that also said I left a job because someone was like a bully of a bully to me, and all of a sudden they were like, Oh, my gosh, you’ve experienced this too. And there was this connection that all of a sudden you’re seeing and you’re like, Oh, my goodness, I’m not the only one. Oh oh gosh. And that happens a lot at many of the workshops. I know it’s working because you can feel it in the room when people start to see each other as more than just colleagues. Right when I’m tapping into their like inner child and running that with a certain team, all of a sudden, you’re like, Oh my goodness, that’s what you were like when you were a kid. Oh my God, this is what I was like, what is a kid? And then all of a sudden there’s a connection there that they didn’t have before, right? And then there’s a certain level of trust that is built at that very moment in time. When I see that, that’s when I know things are working out. So what do you think your truth has been that has gotten you this far in your journey. I think it’s two things. One is that no one knows what they’re doing. We’re all making it up as we go along. I think that’s a crucial one, because that is the one of, like, let me not take myself too seriously. That’s why I wear this ridiculous Lego bow tied Reminds me it’s not that serious, right? But also, when you realize that that you realize everyone else is scared, that even the person that has like a million followers is still scared, right? And they’re taking risks just like anyone else. Then you realize, Oh, I can do this as well that they’re not like on some pedestal and I’m not there right? And when we realize, like we’re all figuring it out and especially now where like no one knows what’s happening next, especially people that are able to just be like I’m just figuring it out just like you. That is probably the way in which you build the most connection. That’s how you make things that are actually viral because you are speaking truth. You’re speaking your own truth and really, when you speak your own truth and I’m sure people have seen this when they watch a really powerful video, they know it’s coming from that place like you can feel it right, and that’s the part that I think is really important. And then also the other part of like, I’ll share this. This is interesting. So do you know Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? So he stole that. He stole that from the Blackfoot Nation tribe. Yeah, exactly like a Native American tribe. And he misinterpreted it. Or if anything, he rewrote it in a way that makes it incomplete, right? So, like his Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is like physiological needs and then, you know, taking care of yourself, making enough money and then eventually becoming, you know, self actualized right. But in the Blackfoot Nations triangle, it’s not a triangle, it’s actually a teepee, and self actualization is at the bottom. The idea that you need to figure out who you are, how you want to show up the world and how you want to contribute to the world is the most basic part of the pyramid, right or their teepee after that is community actualization, which is how do I want to show up in the community. How do we show up to look out for one another? For example, I give the example of like, let’s say, someone that was living in the village way back when goes through depression instead of being like, All right, let’s give this person medicine and then they’re fine. It’s like, Okay, well, why there is that person going through depression? Oh, they’re out of work. Okay, Can someone help them find work? Oh, they want to farm, but they don’t have a plow. Alright, let’s fundraise to get them a plow. Oh, they have kids, but no one’s watching their kids, All right? The community’s gonna help watch their kids when the community looks out for that person. All of a sudden, they’re addressing this issue that you think was just your own, right? So, community actualization is this idea of, like everyone looking out for one another, And how do we show up together? How do we look out for each other and then at the very top of the Blackfoot TP is cultural perpetuity. And it’s this idea that by yourself you’re insignificant. Just your life alone. It’s just like, yeah, you’re gonna do stuff you may not do stuff. It’s not actually that important, right? And this is part of the reason why people have mental breakdowns because they’re like, Oh, I want to leave a legacy and no one’s going to remember me and because they’re putting so much pressure on just one life, right? But when you look at it from this idea of cultural perpetuity, which means breath of life, you are both insignificant. And also you are the connection between your ancestors and your descendants. So you are the most important link between them, which means you get to take all of their successes, failures, historical trauma and you decide what you pass on to the next generation right? That’s going to affect people for, like, 1000 years on. And when you see it like that, regardless of whatever you do, you just simply being is important. You simply existing, you know, and taking risk and learning. You know how to live. This life is so important in the greater scheme of things, and you realize like it’s just not about me. When I’m taking risks or creating stuff, I’m not only taking risks just for myself, I’m taking risks for anyone that’s ever going to be connected to me, whether it’s family or whether that’s my friends, but like, that’s the ripple effect that I’m contributing to. I’m that small pebble in the pond that has the ripple, right? But I still matter, right? I’m just not the most important Pearson ever, right? But I still really matter. And whatever I do, regardless of whether I create something amazing or I don’t I still matter. And I think we need to be exploring that more. And that’s the other thing that roots me. Yeah, it reminds me of not to get religious or anything, but it reminds me I can remember the Scripture. But I remember this old lady saying, You know, I just know she was retiring. She’s like, and I just know that all my needs are going to be met because I gave to the church and you look at, like, the scripture she was referencing. It didn’t say give to the church building or pastors. It was all about community if you the law was because they were all about community back then, like you were saying so it’s a different culture, so if you took care of everyone around you and you’re always giving to the people that are around you. When you’re in a tough situation, those same people are going to take care of you. So you’ll be taken care of in your old age because you’ve been gifting. That was the point. It wasn’t like this mystical rule. It was. You actually cared about people around you and they’re going to take care of you now. What’s interesting is when we talked about this before about the prosperity Gospel people now think it’s more transactional. Oh, if I give money, then I get money and they’re not realizing the connection. This is about connection. This is about how you show up every day. You don’t know how long you’re going to live like this might be your last day on Earth. So if it was, how do you want to show up? I love quoting Elizabeth Gilbert and she would talk about it when she shows up in a room. She wants to be loved in the room. She wants to show up his love in the room. So I’m like, Ooh, I love that I want to show up his play in the room. I want to be the embodiment of play in the room. That’s for me. And I would ask that to your listeners. How do you want to show up like, what is your thing that you want to show up for? And then what does that even look like? Right, you know. And when you do that, then you start to realize, Oh, this is such a better day. I had such a better day because I was actually showing up as myself and not showing up as, like a caricature of myself. Yes, definitely. So if you’re able to give yourself one piece of advice when you first started out in your journey, what would it be doubled down on your weirdness, like right? Like again, it ties back into the idea of like, no one knows what they’re doing. So, like, you might as well listen to yourself because you are the expert of yourself, right? The more weird I am, the more I’m allowing myself to just be like, Well, I’m just gonna follow this curiosity, right? Not even my passion. Just this curiosity and see where this takes me. You’d be amazed where that’s taking you, like, look at your life. Everyone, like, look at your life. None of it is linear, right? You could have never planned how it played out. And a lot of times you made a decision that you thought was insignificant at the time. That changed your entire trajectory of your life. So the more you’re willing to explore that, explore the weird parts of you, the more you’re gonna be like, Oh, that is me. And I want more of that weirdness. So allow your weirdness to come out more. And that’s the advice I would have told myself like, Hey, you are super weird, Jeff. And that is a good thing. And you should keep showing that weirdness. Yeah, well, I mean, you’re definitely funny on the content, You great. And you have a talent, a definite talent for all of that. When I’ve tried to have humor or show up in my weird self, it’s not funny. The whole thing is like I think it’s funny. Show up is your weird self. It’s not sure if you’re weird, self, so you can entertain, right, because when I say weird, what I mean is like what you think is normal, but everyone else thinks is weird, right? Because you’re weird. Is your superpower right? You’re weird is what makes you who you are. You know, not everything else that everyone else is doing. Like that’s why you were like, Oh, gross. Everyone’s doing drop shipping and be like, you gotta do you gotta be a drop. I don’t even know what that means. But, like, everyone was talking about it forever. You gotta drop. What am I dropping and dropping a ship like I don’t gathering stuff like is this you know, Is it a Ponzi scheme like, what is this like? Am I selling? You know, so like everyone, just like the instagram influencers from taking their beautiful photo, everyone’s doing the same thing. This makes no sense to me. And I’m saying, if you really want to influence the world, right, if you really want to impact the world, it’s in the weirdness. It’s in, like, rediscovering and tapping back into that nerdy inner child that has all these crazy ideas and pursuing those ideas. Because that is where all of your magic is. And that’s frankly what the world needs, right and Howard Thurman always says, And you would say, Don’t ask what the world needs Ask what makes you come alive because what the world needs is more people to come alive. We want more people to come alive. How do we do that? Pursue your weirdness. That is true. I mean, I think even on tiktok, I created the account that I have. It wasn’t my first one, but I decided to start to share my story. And I realized that at the time that I was started on the platform, there was no serious content. Everything was entertainment, silly, that sort of thing. Dancers, whatever. And so when I did my serious stuff and brought in that emotion and, you know, added music to it and I was just pointing to words on the screen at the time the videos went viral and because I was bringing something brand new. Exactly what’s most important is you were trusting your own intuition. Yeah, this is what I want to put it produces Weird. Weird is not like just funny. Weird is like whatever is your own voice? Yeah, I was very passionate and, like I just want to speak. What I wish I had known. Yeah, people now are trying to model that right. Like they’re trying to recreate that because again, they are like, Oh, is that what makes me successful? Or I’m going to do what Amy is doing instead of being like So, what do you want to do? What do you want to say? This is this exciting part about tiktok or any of these platforms. If you could say anything to the world, what would you say? Yeah, fascinating question. To constantly be asking yourself, Yeah, it makes me think a lot because I love to solve people’s problems. I love to solve problems in general. Kind of who I would say if I were to define myself in one sentence. It would be a problem solver. And so anytime I find a solution to something that’s really helpful, I’ve got to share it and those videos go viral. Or if I have anxiety about something and I haven’t cannot find a solution, and I share a video that goes viral so it’s usually around the problem solving, you know, whether it’s something that I solved in my health or whatever it is. Yeah, I think that’s interesting because now you’ve got me thinking about the fact that the things that go viral have always gone viral in my world and on my social media is when I’m solving a problem, I’m bringing truth to light. And that’s the part that I think is powerful is bringing truth to light. And I think something else that I really resonate with that I heard, is that no one is a genius, right? A lot of times attribute, like Albert Einstein is a genius, or this person is a genius. But I heard this. I think, like Irish folklore that talked about how genius actually visits you. It visits all of us, right? You have this epiphany, especially when you get quiet and you allow yourself to get bored, right? Genius visits you, and it’s like, Hey, I have this idea. Are you willing to create this idea to birth this idea and you either decide? Okay, I’m gonna make it. I’m going to put it out in the world as a video as a book as whatever, or it’s going to leave, and then it’s gonna show up with somebody else, and then you’re like, Hey, someone stole my idea. No genius visited you and wanted you to make this idea. You didn’t make it. So then you have to be okay with letting that idea go. And Elizabeth Gilbert spoke about this. How she wrote, eat, pray, love. And then people would come up to her afterwards who were like you wrote my book. That was my book to write. And she was just like, I don’t know what to say. I was just channeling my genius, channeling what was visiting me. And I think we have to be allowing ourselves to get quiet enough to allow that genius to visit us. And then when it shows up, then deciding what do we want to do with it? And how do we want to share it with the world? That’s really good, Jeff. If there are people that are listening that would like to get a hold of you to work with you, what’s the best way to contact you? Best way is go to rediscover your play dot com and click on the Let’s Play button and we can hop on a call and figure out how you can kick more ass right and just, like, become the thing that you want to really be and do the thing that makes you come most alive. Rediscover your play dot com. I hope to see you there, and I’ll put all of your links down below as well as your social media. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your expertise. Thank you so much for having me and making this a reality. Yeah, it has been fun. And if you’re listening and you want more information about our podcast and upcoming shows, you can visit a call with dr dot com. Thank you, everyone. Didn’t have a wonderful take care. Mm.