Most of us think of ourselves as adults. But how often are we reacting and functioning with a lesser level of maturity and wisdom than we’d like? Than what is productive? My guest in this show is licensed therapist and holistic life coach, Michelle Chalfant. She has developed a psychological model called, The Adult Chair. She hosts a very popular podcast called, The Michelle Chalfant Show - Life from The Adult Chair. And she’s just published a book titled, The Adult Chair: Get Unstuck, Claim Your Power, and Transform Your Life. Michelle has defined three levels of our life, child, adolescent, and adult. And helps us understand how, even as an adult who responds to many things as an adult, we are often stuck in reacting as an adolescent and as a child. She maps out five steps we can take to get more of ourselves, responding from our adult chair. We get candid in talking about emotions and validation and get a more clear understanding of how we can, evolve. If you get Michelle’s new book, then go to adultchair.com/book and you can get access to her masterclass. But I encourage you to check out her podcast The Michelle Chalfant Show - Life from The Adult Chair.

There is a lot of content out these days about attention, attention spans, and distraction. What is with the seemingly dramatic deficit we have with attention? I know for myself, I seem to look for distraction and struggle to focus, even when I’m greatly interested in what I’m working on. I make it harder for myself when I have access to all my internet connected devices. I’m bringing back a conversation I had with an expert on the matter. Dr Amishi Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami where she serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative. Amishi’s work has been featured at NATO, the World Economic Forum, The Dalai Lama's Vision Summit, and The Pentagon. She has received coverage in The New York Times, NPR, TIME, Forbes and more. She is the author of the book, Peak Mind, which we discuss in this show. Amish has spent nearly 30 years researching the science of attention through extensive work with the US Military, medical professionals, elite sports teams, and more to address the issue. Her TED Talk on "How to Tame Your Wandering Mind" has nearly 6 million views. We spend every day tuned in to screens whose sole purpose is to get our attention, to the degree we now must make a focus on, “How do I get my own attention?” Our attention is in many ways, the only power we have. The only thing we have an influence and impact on, the only thing we can help or find success in or enjoy, is what we give out attention to. We all know the concept of budgeting our money, and our time. Now we’re faced with budgeting our attention, and if we can’t control our attention, all hope seems lost toward much progress in our lives. That’s why we have Amishi with us now. Find her at amishi.com

I find there are few things as intoxicating as someone who is really interested in you. You feel they care about you, they value you, and they are curious to hear about you. This is something you can define and do, if you understand the key components. So I have an expert on listening with us. But before I introduce them, one issue that stuck out to me was, the idea of becoming and being an expert listener, is to connect. But, I don’t want to connect with everyone. My goal is not to have everyone think I’m a great listener, because I don’t want to connect with everyone. I don’t think anyone does. I realize when I am trying to listen with endurance and tolerance when I don’t really want to, I’m actually hurting the relationship. You can hear more on this in the show. My expert guest is Emily Kasriel Emily is an award-winning journalist, editor, and media executive who worked for over 20 years at the BBC. She developed the Deep Listening approach during her time as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London’s Policy Institute, building on her expertise as an accredited executive coach and workplace mediator. Emily connected with me from her home in London and I feel we had a very real and sober discussion not only about how to be an expert listener, but to be authentic about when we want to listen, or not. The 8 steps we walk through on listening come from her new book, Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes

Monty Moran is the former Co-CEO of Chipotle. He joined them when they had 8 stores and left after they had over 2,500 and their valuation grew from a few million to $23 billion over his decade with the company. This isn’t a podcast about business though. I had Monty on the show because he cites his main key to the success from having one-on-one conversations with Chipotle employees, connecting the company mission to theirs. He did this 20,000 times. It sounds altruistic, but look at Chipotle’s ridiculous success. I’m looking at this personally. You may work at something that you feel is your direct mission. Your purpose. Or you may work at something that is primarily for the purpose of making money so you can exist. If it is the latter, can you attach it to what you really care about? This is what Monty is an expert at and it’s the focus of his book, “Love Is Free, Guac Is Extra.” Monty and I have spent time together out here in Colorado and I just appreciate his differing perspectives on life, and the connections we can have. You can also find his PBS show, Connected, or connect with him, at montymoran.com.

When you read messages on spirituality, you will find many references on the dangers of what we are attached to. I grew up on the Bible which I feel taught attachment to nothing but God. In recent years I’ve followed the works of Anthony de Mello and Dr David R Hawkins on the dangers of attachment, from a spiritual standpoint. Now however, someone came to focus on attachments from a clinical psychology perspective. Dr. Bob Rosen holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and serves as faculty in George Washington University's School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Bob is Founder and CEO of Healthy Companies and has advised over 500 CEOs across sixty countries. He previously authored the New York Times bestseller "Grounded" and Washington Post bestseller "Conscious." His new book is, Detach: Ditch Your Baggage to Live a More Fulfilling Life, and in it his research led to 10 categories of attachments that most hinder us. My interest in this is acute and personal, as I’ve come to realize how much I imprisoned myself with all the duties, roles, and achievements in my life that I directly attached to my identity. And in this, I was more and more at threat. If I couldn’t retain control over all the attachments, the very root of my identity was at threat. And it nearly wrecked me. Someone once asked me who I was if you took away all I’d done and all the titles and labels in my life. And, I had no answer. As you will hear Bob state, it’s not that all attachments are bad, the question is how severe is the attachment? He says, “The more we identify with our attachments, the more we suffer.” But Bob’s focus on detachment is not about disconnecting from the world, but connecting to ourselves. Which I now feel is the root of our security. If you go to bobrosen.com you can take an attachment assessment and other resources.

I’m bringing back a conversation on the power of reading. Now, this isn’t something you haven’t heard of, but I think we forget the gravity of it, and I want to give quick focus to some new research I’ve done recently. My conversation here is with Jeff Brown, host of the Read To Lead podcast and author of the book, Read To Lead. As you’ll hear, we don’t want to simply read and expose ourselves to messages, we want to actually digest the messages and take new actions in our lives. Jeff is an expert on the topic and I was really eager for this conversation. And I want to add something I’ve realized and given focus to. We spend much of our day reading social media and news snippets and an unrelenting amount of information all around us. But you aren’t digesting it. Your brain is in entertainment mode. Think about your mindset when you sit down for entertainment vs your mindset when you sit down to participate in a class. Completely different psychological mindset. With entertainment, your mind is turned on for a dopamine hit. In a class your mind is turned on to learn. This is the difference I see when we spend all day reading from all the different sources around us, vs when we are still and we read a non-fiction book, even if we are listening to it. The concept has further elevated the importance of reading books to me. I think you’ll be further inspired by this conversation with Jeff Brown.

Our focus is, intuition. When is the last time you even heard that word, much less gave it any attention. When a book on intuition came across my desk, I was hooked. As I studied it, my focus turned toward trust, and faith. What do you put your trust and faith in? For all those who immediately say God, I’m going to ask you to stop, and really consider. God may be one of the things you put trust in, but everyday you are putting trust in other people, other ideas and opinions, other institutions, and you argue and defend them, and spend time online looking for information to trust. The question of this show, from my perspective, is how much do you trust yourself? And if you do believe in God, do you believe that God made you with no value or skill and just wants you trusting everything outside of yourself? Or is there anything in yourself worth listening to? My guest and expert on the topic is Elizabeth Greenwood. She is the author of EVERYDAY INTUITION: What Psychology, Science, and Psychics Can Teach Us About Finding and Trusting Our Inner Voice. She is a prolific researcher and writer and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, The Atlantic and more. We had an in depth and candid conversation about what intuition is and how it is utilized by everyone from scientists and pastors to yes, psychics.

I would like to be measured by what the people who learned from me taught other people.” This is what my guest said, and I’ve never forgotten it. Seth Godin is one of the premier voices of business in our generation, and he was one of my first guests when I was host of The Ziglar Show, and this was the second time I had him on a show. Seth is well known for his innovative thinking and insight into what I’d cite as business and vocational reform. He’s a true leader in that he’s attracted a massive following of the business world who look to him daily for commentary on what’s most relevant for successful business practices and ethics we can all benefit most from in our professional and personal lives. In this conversation, Seth talks about why the core tenants of morals, values and personal relationships that Zig Ziglar upheld are still what is most important for our success in today’s marketplace. A marketplace that changes daily, but principles that do not. So coming up I bring this talk with Seth Godin and Tom Ziglar, Zig’s son and CEO of Ziglar, from the archives because it’s worth it. He sees his legacy as...you.

Would you like to be better at getting yourself to move? When you have an overall desire, but find yourself struggling to take the first step and just get going? I think we all do in certain areas of our lives and from what I experience it is getting worse. So I’ve brought on an expert and we’re going to exaggerate the point to help us better conceptualize what is happening when we don’t move and progress, and some different ways to go about it. Michele Rigby Assad was a normal person like everyone else. But through some circumstances you’re about to hear of, she became a CIA operative and spent a decade working in the Middle East. She took part in the high-stakes missions you would expect from working in the CIA, where your life or other’s lives are literally on the line. The place of danger they referred to as the X, and their training was that no matter what, they had to be able to get off the X. Michele has outlined the concepts with some intriguing stories, in a new book titled, Get Off The X: C.I.A. Secrets For Conquering Obstacles And Achieving Your Life’s Mission. In this conversation, we don’t spend time talking about the CIA, if you want to view that, she says go watch Homeland or The Agency. We talk about how the concepts of getting off the X relate to all of us. We live lives that feel high-stakes for us, and we need to…move. Progress. Get off the X’s we are stuck in. I found Michele’s guidance helping me not feel I needed more motivation or inspiration, I just needed to have some pragmatic tools and perspectives to employ.