Failure is a popular topic in the self-improvement world, but I feel it's generally addressed like a motivational talk. Don't let failure get you down. It's part of life. It's not failing, it's trying. Which is why I was interested when I heard about Manu Kapur (Man-oo kapoor) work on failure, who is a professor at the same university where Einstein attended and then taught. Manu studies learning and growth from a scientific standpoint and actually developed the Theory of Productive Failure, which is the name of his new book. He approaches failure completely differently. Not as something to cope with as if it happens, but something to make sure happens. And without it we have less understanding. The point isn't really even failing, but understanding. Example. I have two kids with permits right now. These are the 6th and 7th kids I've taught to drive. We have the benefit of living out on forest roads, so they can start driving with a little more freedom. I don't tell them how to do everything. I give them the basics to get started, then they get going and...I try to stay silent. Let them look around and figure things out. I take them into a wet or snowy parking lot and have them turn till they slide. It's amazing how much better they drive when they figure out for themselves. Even them asking me instead of me telling them. This is some of the essence of Manu's research and findings. You're about to hear some paradigm shifting perspective on using and leveraging failure to help your mastery, and like me, I think it will make perfect sense to you.

I don’t normally gravitate towards people with the huge followings and big brand personalities. But I also like a good, down to earth story of personal evolution, and this is one I’m bringing back. A few years ago I got to have a long conversation with Chalene Johnson. We recorded a couple of shows and talked for hours longer about our sordid fitness and athletic journeys. Chalene literally holds a Guinness World Record for having starred in the most fitness videos. An odd title to me, and one she questions as well. It’s part of her story. She’s a billboard ad for being fit, trim, and sexy. And yet along the way to achieving this, she hurt herself, physically and mentally. She was selling an image and killing herself to maintain it. Today she is still leading women to looking good, but feeling good as well. And one of the reasons so many people connect to her is her openness about her journey. If she realizes she’s been wrong about something, she admits it. When she tries something that doesn’t work, she shares it. We talk through her story some and lead up to to her having a big health decline that included debilitating brain fog, mood swings, and chronic pain and injuries. This is what started her questioning of the diet and fitness industry she was helping promote. She taught herself to read scientific studies and wisely evaluate the research.

We all think we know what self-talk is. But I think we miss the gravity of it. I’m reminded of the joke where one fish asks another fish "how's the water?" The other fish replies, "what the heck is water?" We were never introduced to our own self-talk, it was there since the day we were conceived to varying degrees. We are not necessarily conscious of it. In this episode we expand on self-talk to help you conceptualize how it is your very perception of life. My guest is Marianne Renner. I’ve gotten to know Marianne well over the last year and she has a real story of not only changing her self-talk, but transforming herself in a way that she can’t really even recognize the person she used to be. She lost her mom at an early age and was left with a broken hearted father. She fell into addiction. She considered ending her life. Even tried. And then had one of those divine moments of clarity. To me it is akin to the fish all of the sudden realizing it was in water. Marianne has not just changed her life, she has changed the very essence of the person she is, and she’s thriving. She has a new book coming out, Self-Talk: 10 Stories You Tell Yourself That Hold You Back…And How to Overcome Them. On a personal side, one of Marianne’s mentors in her journey to remake herself and her life, was my father. Dan Miller. He encouraged her to write a book. She did, completing it right around the time my Dad died. She had him in mind to write the forward to her book. But in his absence, she asked me to carry on the legacy. I am incredibly honored to have written a heartfelt forward for Marianne’s book. I’m honored for multiple reasons, the top one being, I feel this is a message we all desperately need. If you’ll go to mariannerenner.com/selftalk, you can get the first three chapters of her book absolutely free.

Mentors. Chances are slim you have someone who really fills the role. These days people will tend to cite their favorite authors and philosophers and influences as their mentors. And to that degree, I’d say that almost everyone in my life “mentors” me, as I learn from everyone. But I really define a mentor as someone who literally knows you and is invested in helping guide you. We used to have this in families where we lived in a village and closely amongst family and friends. We had grandparents, aunts and uncles and even neighbors who were truly involved in our lives. Today, we are isolated. A few years ago I sat down with Ken Blanchard, famous business and personal leader. Ken authored The One Minute Manager which is a business classic and has sold more than 15 million copies. But this conversation wasn’t about management. It was about mentoring. Ken became the mentor for Claire Diaz-Ortiz, who is an author, speaker and innovation advisor who was an early employee at Twitter. She was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company and called “The Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter.” Clair is an award-winning author of eight books that have been published in more than a dozen countries. But the story here is Ken became a mentor to Claire, and together they co-authored a book titled, One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work With a Mentor - and Why You’ll Benefit from Being One. Ken asked Claire to do this book with him because he not only personally mentors her, but she in turn mentors him in regards to the younger generation. It makes an incredibly valuable perspective on the need, value and opportunity of mentoring. I bring this back because at the age of 53, I found a true mentor in my life, and it has been transformational.

I grew up in the Christian church amongst celebrated Bible verses, such as, “Ask and ye shall receive,” “Knock and the door will be open to you,” and “Seek, and ye shall find.” These concepts and requests were to be aimed at God. Today we hear a lot about manifesting. This often gets friction from the religious crowd as it feels like credit is given to the individual and not God. In this episode today I have a conversation with Cathy Heller about it. We are not discussing, dissecting, or debating religion or doctrine, but really honing in on our expectations, a concept I’ve been researching again as of late. Can I have faith in God but suffer from not expecting good things to come my way? Can I not have faith in God but benefit because I do expect good things to come my way? And thus my title for this episode of asking, “Can Anything Overcome Our Expectations For Ourselves?” Cathy Heller is a renowned teacher, podcaster and author. She hosts a top spiritual podcast, Abundant Ever After. She is a practitioner of what she cites as the law of reception, and has a large following that includes a lot of the top psychologists I respect and have had here on the podcast. Her recent book is called, Abundant Ever After: Tools For Creating A Life Of Prosperity And Ease, and as I read it I just resonated with Cathy’s spirit and intrigued myself with her perspectives, so following is our discussion together. If you decide to buy her book, go to cathyheller.com/book and she has some of her courses she’ll give you for free.

Dr. Adam Dorsay is a licensed psychologist and an executive coach in Silicon Valley where he serves people who have achieved all the big trophies of the world; money, status, possessions, power, and some of them, fame. And yet they are coming to him for help. Why? After all these years, he’s written a book to culminate the primary problem he sees. Lack of true connection. We are all out there trying to win the world, and in the process, we neglect our soul. We neglect the primary thing that gives us true joy, happiness, and fulfillment. Connection. This may seem elementary but so are most of the great truths of life. Adam finds there are four key areas of connection that we are missing and it’s taking the joy out of everything else; connection with yourself, others, the world, and something greater. But you can’t just hear that list and fix things. You need to understand what connection really is and how to go about achieving it, because we are all lacking connection to varying degrees and we don’t understand why. Which is why I had Dr Adam Dorsay come onto the show. I wanted to know more for myself, and as you’re about to hear, discussing connect with Adam opened my eyes more, especially in regards to my connection with myself, which is the most common thread of all my research on the human condition. Adam’s book is called Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the 4 Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love. He also has a podcast of the same name, Super Psyched, that you can check out. I invite you to join me as I talk with Dr Adam Dorsay about how we can better understand and achieve the greatest asset for our lives, connection.

That statement I would have not uttered in my past. I don’t align with blaming, accusing, making excuses, and giving any power to anyone but myself. But, I’m changing my tune, thanks to my guest today. If someone runs a red light and smashes into my car, breaking my leg, I am ok to blame them for my broken leg. And admitting I now have a broken leg and can’t go run the next day. It would be dumb to blame myself or to deny the car wreck and sit around perplexed as to why my leg is broken, or blame myself for what…driving through a green light? Recognizing what happened helps me keep myself sane. Then of course, the event is over. I have a broken leg. I was in a car crash. It’s solely up to me to deal with it. To try and heal the leg. To work through the wreck so I don’t have PTSD with driving. My expert guest on this issue is Mariel Buqué. Mariel is a PhD and a Columbia University–trained trauma-informed psychologist, and professor. She has appeared as an expert on Good Morning America and Today and many other outlets, and has offered wellness talks to corporations such as Google, Capital One, and Meta. She is originally from the Dominican Republic and currently lives in New Jersey. I caught up with her recently while she was in Trinidad, to talk about the message in her new book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. I feel this message is important and very useful for us all, because we all have things that happened to our ancestors that affect us.

As a culture, especially amongst aspiring people, we look at willpower like it’s a tool. Like a hammer. It’s late in the evening, you have a hankering for a snack, so just go get your hammer. Willpower. And smack that desire down. But how often can we not seem to find the hammer when we need it most? There is a reason. Your willpower is not a hammer. It’s more like your phone and all day the battery is draining. So often when you go to use it, you’ve fully depleted it. So what do you do? That’s why I’m bringing back one of the shows I refer to so, so often. Ben Hardy wrote his first book, Why Willpower Doesn’t Work, and it became a classic. I’ve had him on my show 4 or 5 times and he’s the lead story in my book, What Drives You. Ben has a PhD in organizational psychology and has written many bestselling books at this point. I’m a fan, as I feel he gets to root issues of problems we all experience. The following conversation will forever change how you view your willpower, and it will equip you to better save your willpower, and construct your environment so you don’t even have to rely on it. Find Ben anywhere at BenjaminHardy.

Randy Blythe is the lead singer and songwriter for the heavy metal band, Lamb of God. He writes and sings, you might call it yelling...even growling, very angry, aggressive, and dark music. He has the sordid past you would expect. Severe alcoholism. Jail time for manslaughter charges. You might be surprised, or not, that he's the son of a Southern Baptist pastor. And Randy has just written his second book, called Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head. I was sent an advanced copy of the book and I found Randy to be an incredibly introspective, insightful and intellectually sober individual who I resonated with significantly. His music career started in punk rock and was very political and rebelling against society. Today however, Randy readily admits the one-sided judgement of it all. He says, “If something is worth believing in…a political, religious or humanitarian position…surely it should withstand rigorous examination from a rational, educated observer with critical thinking.” He goes on to say, “If you are unwilling to question your own beliefs and just accept them at face value…you are driven by fear." He shares that he finally realized, "his own head was lying to him" and the war inside his head and the incessant conflict was just his daily, constantly shifting perception of reality. I feel this is the war in all of our heads, and it’s where my primary interest as of late is. Following is my conversation with Randy to dig into his experience and discuss our shared views on perception and reality. I found Randy incredibly thoughtful and humble, and am going to join him in Denver in a couple weeks during his national Spoken Word tour to get to know each other more. You can check out his book, Just Beyond the Light, and find him by searching for Randy Blythe.