6 Experts Share Important Lessons on Being Grateful | Impact Theory

This episode is sponsored by Skillshare. And the first 1,000 people to click the link in the description will get a free trial of Skillshare's premium membership. Enjoy the episode. Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. In celebration of Thanksgiving, today we are going to look back on some of the stellar past guests and the many different ways that they give thanks. From practicing gratitude to honoring their relationships, these are all great ways to be thankful for all the positive things in your life. So, let's get ready to hear from our first guest, the one and only John Maxwell. What's interesting is reading your books and hearing you talk about your strategies, but then seeing you come in today. So, you say that you're in the people business. You tell a really great story about how one of your leaders had walked by a group of people and not said anything. Um and you taught him, you know, that that was a a real missed opportunity. And then when you came in today, you literally went to each person and introduced yourself. What is that power of connection? Well, I think, first of all, it's valuing people. Uh you know, you have a incredible incredible work here. And every person here in this studio makes it happen. And um one is too small of a number to achieve greatness. And and the moment that you understand that the people that you have around you, they're you know, they're either the your number one asset or to be honest with you, they could be your number one liability. But the moment that you understand that and begin to value people, I think that is what creates the connection. Because the moment that um I think we all know. Don't you, Tom? Think Don't you think you know when a person values you and and when a person doesn't value you. And and so I think that giving value to people and expressing that to them is the common ground that builds relationships. And so, yeah, when I came in the studio I wanted to meet everybody because you've got an incredible successful program and I want to meet the people who help you be who you are. I love that. Uh it begins there. Because if I don't truly value people, I won't add value to them. You you don't add value to people that you don't value. You don't add value to anything you don't value. So, every day I value people. That's where it starts. But then every day I I think of ways to add value to people. So, I mean, I'll look at my calendar and I look at my agenda today and I realize I was going to be with you and and I think, "Well, okay, how can I add value to you? Uh what can I do for Impact Theory that'll, you know, just help?" Because again, if you're constantly adding value to people, you're going to be of great value to people. So, okay, I value people, think of ways to add value to people, then I look for ways to add value to people. When I'm in the setting, I'm looking for, okay, what can I do? What can I say? And but we we we what we see is what we look for. And so, if I'm looking to add value, guess what? I'll see ways to add value to it. Somebody else might be beside you not add value at all to you. But but but I look for ways and then number four, I I I do things that add value to people. And then number number five, I encourage others add value to people. And I've just lived that simple formula. I do that every day of my life. It's very simple. And I try to help other people do that understanding that if they do that, wherever they are, leadership culture, not a leadership culture, doesn't really matter, they'll begin to influence and begin to lead people and they'll begin to make a difference in people's lives. And I think that's essential. But I think you have to to intentional and I think you have to be consistent. Consistency compounds. You know, it's really fascinating to me that if we do sit and contemplate a problem, we will come to some truth that many other people come to in similar situations, whether they're in a concentration camp or in a lab. It fascinates me. I call it going into the river of yourself to find the ocean of everything else. Um I realized about the habit loops, I didn't have that word for it. Uh again, when I was homeless, I was addicted to stealing. And I was addicted to negativity, and I was addicted to anxiety. I could tell that. And I just stopped suddenly one day, and I was struck by the thought that if our brains are addictive, if we are capable of being addicted, if it's such a natural thing to us, there must be a biological evolutionary reason. I mean, it can't be that this was all a mistake, and oops, sorry about that addictive part of your brain, you know. It just didn't make sense. And so, I wondered if I could get addicted to negative things, could I get get addicted to anything? To positive things? And so, I noticed this I called it a triad. I noticed I had a problem, and it was triggering me. I knew that word. I don't probably didn't know that word then. A stimulus. I knew being homeless was really bad for me, my my anxiety and my panic attacks. Then I had a response, and it was stealing. And then I had a reward. And so, I realized I couldn't change this first one, but I could change my reaction to it. And so, I decided to insert writing. And so, every time I wanted to steal, I forced myself to write. And I did it enough, and it was hard. It wasn't fun. It didn't feel good. Um stealing would have felt way better. But I stuck with it enough um to where I started to get a reward. Um and then I realized once I could do that, I could start to tackle really specific problems and get highly specific um I look at I look at meditation. I was taught to meditate by an aunt when I was about 12, maybe. Whoa. Um it was transcendental meditation. I didn't really stick with it, but I knew of the concept. Um and then I think also writing, being creative. I sang my whole life and I wrote my whole life. Forces you to be present. So it turns out if you're being observant or curious, you're in a mindful state. That easy. So if you're anxious, all you have to do is get really observant and really curious. It can be about the light in the room. It could be the smell of something. Um but you're forced instantly into a mindful state. You don't even actually have to meditate to do that per se. And then I realized I have to start taking the skill of meditation How How do I describe it? It's like going to the gym and building up a muscle. And if you build up that muscle in the gym, it's important and it's great and it changes you. But unless you can put that muscle to work in your day, your life may not be fully changed. Meditation is like boot doing a bicep curl. But I needed to find a way how to take that bicep curl and that muscle I was building and change habits. And that's where I started developing very specific exercises to attack or change very specific problems I was struggling with. And I continue to do that my whole life, my whole career. And then I met Dr. Brewer maybe 2 years ago. And when he saw the exercises I developed, he was like, "Those actually work. Those actually rewire your brain." And so on my website, he he goes on and actually explains why they work, which was a total trip and really amazing. So I'd love to hear what some of those exercises are. What are some of the specific things that that you did then? Have they morphed and changed? What are you doing now? When I was homeless, I realized um I had two basic states. I felt like this or I felt like this. It was open and dilated or it was tight and contracted. And I realized every thought, feeling, and action led to one of those two states. And so, a really simple hack was when I noticed a panic attack coming on or huge anxiety attack, I would just force myself to have a thought, feeling, or action that dilated me. It sounds really simple, but I just used gratitude. So, I remember my first time I tried it is on the street corner. I liked to live near this little flowering bush. It was like my home. And I was miserable and anxious and heading into a panic attack, and I forced myself to notice the light coming through this palm tree and the way it filtered down and it looked like a lace dress on me and I just forced myself to feel the sun, to smell the air, to be profoundly grateful that I was feeling the sun on me. I had a lot of memories of Alaska sitting in the sun. And it forced my entire system to dilate, and I didn't know at the time what I know now. You know, now there's a lot of science. Your vascular system does dilate. Your blood pressure does, you know, drop. Your blood flow patterns change in your brain. Um, and you get a different biochemical release, which is amazing. I felt it at that time. I didn't know the the science, but I knew that it worked. So, that was a That's one that I teach on the website. And they're all just 3-minute exercises that are very specifically designed to attack very specific and certain things as we try to change. You retired at 29, not just because you were thinking. You retired at 29 cuz you ran businesses. You got very thoughtful about how to generate money and save it. Um, how should people be acting with their money? So, we get now how they should be thinking, but how should they be acting with their money? Thank you, Tom. I think it's a beautiful question, and I I I think that's exactly what we need to learn. Um, but because uh, once you start appreciating, your life shifts, too. For example, one of the readers of my book, she was a single mom with a low-paying job. She was working as a secretary. And then she came to me, and she used to complain about her low-paying job. But after reading my book, she changed her attitude, and she started appreciating about life and boss. And and she realized that she didn't have a college degree, but she got she was hired as a secretary. So, that's a big reason to appreciate her boss. Before, she was always complaining about him. And I think that feeling really probably came across to her boss, and she got a big raise in a few weeks. So, once you start appreciating, I I've heard so many stories. I can even write few books on this. Once you start appreciating your boss, your clients, they appreciate you back. So, in my 20s, the reason why I I was successful was I was little unique in so many different things. For example, when I was doing accounting consulting, I divided my clients to two groups. One, I do regular job. The other, I always bring something whenever I I got to meet them. Just a cheap Japanese tea, like a book, or just not super expensive. So, in 6 months, I got so many referrals from the the gift-giving groups. You know, I didn't ask for any clients, right? But they gave me so many referrals. And the second you know group, not so much. So, I recommend everybody to start giving more. Something little extra, not like 30% more, but something to to show your appreciation. And it it doesn't really matter if you're a florist, or cleaners, or business lawyers or a dentist. If you start giving something, you get more. So, this is the law, I think. If you give more, you receive more. And then there is one more extra reason to appreciate about. So, you you your life would shift. So, your whole energy would be so different and fall so content. And I think people want to do business with happier people. You know, people don't want to go with people who are very depressed. So, the people with radiance of appreciation often attracts more people and more opportunities. So, this is not a new age or spiritual thing. It's a practice to to appreciate more. So, what you appreciate appreciates. And I think that's it's so simple. So, start appreciating about money is the first step and then start second step is start appreciating what you have. And if you start sharing what you have, I call it gift. All of us have gifts. I've written probably like half of my books, 20 books on how to discover your gifts and monetize them. Because we're born each of us is born with a special gift and something to be shared with this planet. And if you can find it and if you can improve it and you can you can polish it and just share with our society, I think that translates into money. So, I wrote a national bestseller, "Do What You Love and Make Sure Money Follows You." So, it's very important. You have to have both. So, my my personal faith, a member of the Baha'i faith, has definitely inspired this idea that we rise to our maximum potential when we're of service to others. And not only our maximum potential, but our our greatest usefulness. And living in that potential and usefulness uh gives us the most kind of rich human satisfaction. And I know for me, cuz I spent a long time when I first started getting famous, various points in time just trying to satisfy myself and my ego. And I was miserable. In fact, they do studies on happiness, and this is part of mental health, is you can um I'm sure you've had some happiness experts on, but they're, you know, there's so many books about it. And And the whole field of positive psychology is really exciting uh field that just started in the '90s. And when I was going to college there was no such field as positive psychology. Now there's thousands of books about it. And um and they're they're really exciting, but one of the things that is um 100% true in positive psychology is irrefutable, that one of the worst ways to achieve happiness, or contentment, or whatever you want to call it, is through materialism. And yet we live in a culture that tells you over and over and over again if you get this car, if you get this amount of money, if you have this amount of of success, this amount of fame, this amount of um a promotion, uh then you will be happy. You will achieve happiness once you get to that certain level. And yet the pursuit of that, the pursuit of like I need to make 165,000 a year to be happy, or I need to own the new Tesla to be happy, or once I get this kind of girlfriend or spouse, or whatever, then I'll be happy. The pursuit of kind of a materialistic uh view of happiness is um it has an inverse effect. It decreases your happiness, it makes you less healthy. You can do Again, I don't have the exact specifics on the tip of my tongue. It's a simple Google search. Um and conversely, happiness, contentment, self-enrichment, I always talk about eudaimonia. Eudaimonia, you know, you've probably heard about that and talked about that before. I think we spoke about it before. The idea that the ancient Greeks had a word for happiness called eudaimonia, which is human flourishing. You know, and I love that umbrella concept. Like, what creates the the the largest human flourishing? Let's Let's focus on that. Um forget happiness, human flourishing. But, from the Baha'i faith, from the study of positive psychology, helping others, being of service, maximizing how much you matter actually is the number one uh uh cause of human flourishing. So, um I just when I kind of get into my of like, "Oh, I'm not acting as much as I should be." Or "People only know me as Dwight." Or "I'll never have a career again." Or you know, I need X show to make X amount of money so that I can go on X vacation or or something. When I get into that whole stuff, which, you know, that comes and goes every week. Um it's kind of like, "How can I be of service? How can I How can I help people? How can I take the skills that God has given me, that nature has given me, and put those to their best possible use?" So, I let that be um I try uh and let that be a guiding light in my life. So, I've worked in the inner cities a lot and one thing I've noticed is that the inner city breaks almost everyone that it touches. Mhm. But, there are a few people that manage to be so transformed by it. Whether it's out of I never want to go back, whether it's it just hardened them and they had to be smart to survive, whatever it is, there's there's a certain set of lessons that some people learn that then propel them so hard, so far, so fast out of the inner cities that they go on to accomplish just truly extraordinary things. Needless to say, put your name among those people. So, walk us through like what were some of the key moments that you experienced as a kid and how did you end up interpreting it in a way that pushed you forward even if it was just I have to get the hell away from this? Yeah. I feel like there are a lot of moments where it was just like light bulb clicked. But, I feel like one thing that I had that a lot of people don't have is even though I had a lot of experience seeing the stuff that happens in our communities, I also had access to the other side, you know, I got to see what was possible, you know? My father My My father and my mother, they divorced and when they divorced, my father was living in a separate place than my mother and my mother was the one that was living in a you know, my dad was living in a I guess middle class kind of we were still poor, but he was still living in a middle class community and I would go back and forth, you know, and you know, I had friend up the street who had everything. He had, you know, the almost like the Legos with the big house and the the the train going through the you know, the Christmas tree and like all that stuff. And I used to look like, man, I remember one time I went and I was eating at their house and I sat down and then, you know, after eating I was going to get up and then his mother's like, "Wait, where are you going? Like, time for dessert." And I was just like, "What? Dessert? Like, I never ate dessert with my parents, ever, you know? So, I was just like, "What? Y'all eat dessert?" Like, cookies and brownies came out. I was just looking like, "Man, this is crazy. I want this, you know?" So, going back and then now seeing your mother eating, you know, cereal for dinner, you're like, "Nah, we're not doing this, you know?" But then, other moments happened where, you know, the moment that you reference earlier where um neighbor got killed, I was actually um doing some promoting, passing flyers out of the club or something. And, you know, we used to get paid like $100 or something to do that. I was coming home and, you know, we used to live in this uh efficiency condominium on the third floor. And I see the door open, somebody sticks his head out, he's got a hoodie on. And he closes the door and I already know what that means. So, I like tuck in my chain, take off my watch, put my watch in, and I walk through the door real quick and there's three guys with a hoodie on. And then I like see them and I'm like, I nod my head like, "What's up?" And none of them say, "What's up?" back to me. So, then I knew, I was like, "All right, you know?" And I ran all the way up the stairs real quick and ran into the into the apartment. But I'm like the king of running silently with like I'm the king of that. Like, so I did it really fast, I got in there, I closed the door, and I'm looking out the peephole, I see And I'm just sitting there, my heart's beating beating really hard and I'm like, "All right." And I just wait, wait, and I don't hear anything. So, then I'm just like, "All right, I just go, you know, go to sleep." And then like in the morning, boom, boom, boom, boom, police officers knocking on the door and they open up, "Open up." Halfway sleeping, they're like, you know, "Did you Did you hear the gunshots?" And I was just like, "What? What gunshots?" And I look next door and you know, they got like tape all over and on the walls like blood. And and you know, you're looking like, "What?" Like, was that supposed to be me? You know? What what happened? And and after they leave, we're still there. Whoever came and did this is like still knows And I was just like, you know what this is, you know? And my mother, she's like the one of these people, she's like the nicest person in the world. Like, one time I gave my mother money and she like went and gave it out to like kids in the street for for like she she's like that. You know, she doesn't need it. She doesn't want it. She like tries to take her money and go to Africa and build wells, all kind of stuff like that. So, she looks at uh humanity in a positive way and always sees the the bright side of it, you know? In the book, one of them you touched on a little bit here I'd like to go deeper on is the notion of relationships. And you talk about how important relationships are and how especially in the military in such high-pressure situations, how do you build those relationships so that they're really meaningful so that in the dichotomy of leadership you talk a lot about you can be too friendly, but you can also be too distant. So, in a field manual sense, how do I like and I ask myself this as the CEO, right? There are days that I want to come and and play with my teammates, right? Like I care about them and and I want them to know that like I really do care like as a human being. And so you want to sort of be in it some days and play and and just be, you know, one of the the guys as it were. Um but I do worry about going too far and then you don't have the distance to get the things done that need to be done. So, how do you build those kind of lasting and useful relationships? Yeah, this is when when I say that relationships are the most important thing in getting things done, when I look back at my career in the Navy and the SEAL Teams, just about every single thing that I ever did was through relationships. So, the amount of times that I looked at one of my subordinates and said, "No, you will do what I'm saying because I'm in charge." I don't think I actually honestly ever said that one single time. I think it was always, "Hey, this is what we got to get done. How do you think we should do it? Do you think this is smart? And it was all based on relationships and up the chain of command, too. There was never a time that one of my bosses said, "Hey, Jocko, shut up and you do what I told you to do." There was never a time that one of my bosses said that to me. There was You know, if I had a question, if I pushed back, they gave me legitimate answers. If they didn't have good answers, then they would modulate or change what it is that they were telling me to do. So, this idea of having relationships up and down the chain of command and and there's a word that people bring up a lot and I think they're pretty interchangeable and it's relationships and trust, right? It's rela- Trust is built on relationships, relationships are built on trust. If you don't trust me, we don't really have a relationship. The more deeply you trust me, the better relationship we have. So, how do I build trust with you? So, if you're above me in the chain of command, well, this is and this is one of those uh answers that's so obvious, it's it's crazy, but people actually fail to do this, which is if if you ask me to do something as my boss, I do it. And I do it well. And I do it consistently. And I go above and beyond what you ask. And if you want me to deliver this project by this date, I deliver it earlier and I deliver it to the best of my ability above and beyond what you expected. And you say, "Oh, wow. When I ask Jocko to do something, he actually does it." And that's where it starts. It starts with that right there. With me performing, me offering advice, me me taking what you asked me to do and doing it. That's the number one thing. If we flip those roles and now I'm in charge of you, how do I build trust with you? Well, what I do is I give you a project. And instead of me giving you a project and then saying, "Hey, here's how I want you to do this and here's how I want you to do the next part." Instead, I say, "Hey, here's a project. Let me know how you want to do it." And then you go figure out how you want to get done. And I don't micromanage you, and I don't ask you a million questions about and and and tell you no, don't do it like that, do it like this. I let you do it. And what does that tell you? That tells you that I trust you. I trust you. And when I trust you, you start to trust me. And by the way, if something goes wrong, instead of me jumping down your throat and hanging you out to dry and making you an example in front of everyone, I say, "Hey, let's figure out what went wrong. Did I not support you well enough? Did I not give you what you needed?" And so you realize, "Oh, he's not going to hang me out to dry. He's going to give me the support. He's going to try and teach me if something goes wrong, instead of try and drop the hammer on me." And in order to do this properly, of course, let's say you just started working for me. The first thing I would hand you wouldn't be a massively strategic important project and say, "Hey, here's the Here's the Here's a multi-million dollar project. You take and run with it. I'll be over here." I trust you. You You make it happen. Cuz I don't know you. How can I trust you if I don't know you? So, I'm going to give you a smaller project. I'm going to give you something little to start on. And then you do that You do that well, boom. Now, I'm going to give you something bigger, and we continue to go in that direction until pretty much we get to a point where all I really have to tell you is, "Hey, this is the vision. This is what we're trying to make happen. Run with it. If you go If you If you need to pass this barrier of whatever kind, let me know so I can let everyone else know. But, it's on you. Run with it." All right, guys. I hope you got a ton of value from hearing all of the different ways that people are finding to give thanks in their life, and I hope that you take this day to reflect on that and remember that if you're filling yourself with gratitude, you're not filling yourself with anxiety and depression and all the other things that can come and tear away your peace of mind. So, I hope this added a lot of value to you guys. 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