Calm the Chaos with Rich Christiansen

FREE VALUES BLUEPRINT COURSE
Before you can rebuild a bridge, you need to stabilize your family’s values. The Values Blueprint course is free and it’s where I’d start.
https://richchristiansen.com/values-guide/

—

I was at an event in Montana when a grandmother and grandfather came up to me with a very tender question. “Tragically, we kind of blew it. Several of our kids are estranged from us. How do we repair this?”

Families are complicated, and plenty of us carry regrets from the years we spent raising our kids. A lot of the advice out there today tells you to cut the cord and walk away. I don’t believe that. I’ve seen these relationships heal too many times.

In this episode I share the three pieces of advice I gave that couple. These are simple things you can start today, even if your adult son or daughter isn’t speaking to you right now. The third one is the cheat code. I got a lot of things wrong as a father, but I got this one right.

The ultimate human need is not to be right. It’s simply to be seen and heard.

Join My weekly letter: https://richchristiansen.com/inspire/

CHAPTERS
0:00 “We blew it. How do we repair this?”
1:02 1. Say positive things behind their back
2:04 2. Celebrate them and raise the first toast
3:47 3. The cheat code: go into their world
5:05 What every person really needs

A few weeks ago my wife and I went to Argentina to support a dear friend and client, Garnet Morris, and ended up learning something I wasn’t expecting.

Two things happened on that trip. Our son took us down to the docks to watch the Argentine tango, which is built entirely on tension and is a good deal spicier than I’m going to describe here. And I went through the Moviglia Method, one of the more remarkable regenerative medicine programs out there.

I had assumed stem cells work like little builders you drop in that get straight to work. That isn’t how it goes at all. What actually happens is closer to a fight, and for a few days afterward I could barely lift my arms.

Which got me thinking. The tango and the stem cells are doing the same thing. Nothing grows without tension. Not your body, not your health, not your spiritual life, and certainly not your marriage.

The waltz is lovely. It’s also a circle.

More free tools, frameworks, and resources: https://richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/

My weekly letter: https://richchristiansen.com/inspire/

Chapters
0:00 Stem cells that tango
2:15 How stem cells actually work
5:17 Tension in relationships, health, and faith
6:41 Don’t back away from the strain

Gaye and I sailed into the Arctic this summer, and somewhere off Iceland the cruise director announced that anyone who wanted to become a blue nose should come to the deck. Neither of us had any idea what that meant, so of course we went.

The tradition goes back to the Nordic sailors. The first time you cross into the Arctic Ocean, they dump ice cold water over your head and paint your nose blue. I watched a deck full of grown adults line up for it like giddy children, and half those men would have punched anyone who tried it under any other circumstance.

It got me thinking about something I see people confuse constantly.

More free tools, frameworks, and resources: https://richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/

My weekly letter: https://richchristiansen.com/inspire/

Chapters
0:00 Ice water and a blue nose
2:04 Traditions versus rites of passage
3:39 Adults need this too
6:38 Where this fits in the Legado framework
7:14 What I'm going to start doing

On a bus ride into Bruges this summer, I sat near a family I couldn't stop watching. A father telling the worst dad jokes you can imagine, a mother giving him grief about it, a grandfather one row up, and a teenage granddaughter sitting beside her grandmother who was clearly carrying something heavy.

I spent the whole ride trying to make sense of it, the way we all do when we need a tidy answer we can put a bow on. Everything I could gather told me this was a loving family. I never learned the rest of the story, and I never will.

What stayed with me was a question I couldn't put down. What would I say to my own grandchild if I found them in that place?

I came to three things that I discuss in this episode.

More free tools, frameworks, and resources: https://richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/

My weekly letter: https://richchristiansen.com/inspire/

Chapters
0:00 Deeply seen and deeply hurting
1:10 The bus ride into Bruges
3:05 What I'd tell my grandchild
4:19 Why we hold on to what hurts us
5:47 Prioritizing your health

If you or someone you love is struggling, you don't have to handle it alone. In the US you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, 24 hours a day.

I spend most of my day believing I'm a high-functioning, analytical human being. The truth is that a good portion of it, I'm running on my limbic brain, where there are really only three questions. Do I eat it, kill it, or mate with it?

I learned the fix for this mindset from a professional athlete's setup routine.

I was backstage at Gathering of Titans talking with Bo Eason, a former safety who later did a one-man show on Broadway. Mid-conversation, he sprinted backwards, walked up to me, and did it again. I thought it was the world's most awkward nervous tic. He looked at me and said, "Don't you have a setup routine, Rich?"

That led me to build my own setup routine framework.

I still use it. In board meetings, in tense church meetings, and once this week before dealing with a customer service agent who was testing me.

Here's the whole thing.

Download the free Two Minute Surrender sequence: https://richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/

Start the free Values Blueprint course: https://richchristiansen.com/values-course/

Join my weekly letter: https://richchristiansen.com/inspire/

Chapters
0:00 Eat it, kill it, or mate with it
1:33 Bo Eason and the setup routine
4:36 The Two Minute Surrender
6:08 The five steps: move, breathe, mantra, ask, visualize
11:17 Using it in the middle of a tense meeting

Rich grew up a nerd in a small rural town, and by his own account, he spent more time hanging from coat racks and stuffed in garbage cans than walking the halls. Then a rough-and-tumble scoutmaster named Ray Allen Yardley took an interest in him, and one afternoon in the back of a tire shop, Rich overheard him tell a group of older boys something that redirected his entire life.

This episode is about what happened next, and about the ten habits Rich has since identified in the mentors who shaped him. He teaches the full list, from believing in someone before they believe in themselves, through solving the real problem instead of the presenting one, to leaving every person stronger than you found them.

If you have ever wondered how to find a mentor, or whether you are ready to be one, Rich answers both at the end. His shortest advice: start by giving something to the person you want to learn from.

Get the free companion guide, The 10 Habits of Extraordinary Mentors: [LINK COMING SOON]

More free tools, frameworks, and resources: https://richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/

Start the free Values Blueprint course: https://richchristiansen.com/values-course/

Rich's weekly letter: https://richchristiansen.com/inspire/

Chapters:

0:00 The scoutmaster who changed my life
6:14 Habits 1 through 3: believe, listen, find the real problem
8:22 Habits 4 through 6: ask, extend grace, teach principles
11:19 Habits 7 through 9: failures, the whole person, progress
16:03 Habit 10: leave people stronger than you found them

Jennifer Hill grew up feeling like everyone else had been handed a book
on how to be a human. When she opened hers, the pages were blank.

In one three month stretch she sold her first company, got diagnosed as
autistic, and went through a divorce. What followed was a decade she
describes as about as far from connection as a person can get. Twenty
years later she has a two hour morning practice, a global community of
entrepreneurs, and a body of work built on one idea: most of us cannot
see ourselves or each other clearly, because there's something on the
glass in between.

CLARIFY YOUR VALUES
Start with the free Values Blueprint course.
https://richchristiansen.com/values-course/

MORE TOOLS AND RESOURCES
https://richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/

FIND JENNIFER
Jennifer's list of 180 tools is on her LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferkhill/

Her global community of entrepreneurs is the JENHILL Tribe. 
https://jenhilltribe.com/

CHAPTERS
0:00 The book on how to be human was blank inside
3:41 Three months: a company sold, a diagnosis, a divorce
9:12 Heart-focused breathing you can do anywhere
16:23 Inner child work, and the 30 second hug
24:36 "There is nothing and no one to save"

This episode includes discussion of suicide, disordered eating, and
addiction. If you're struggling, you can reach the 988 Suicide and
Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 in the US.

#CalmTheChaos #InnerChildWork #Breathwork #Entrepreneurship #Meditation

CLARIFY YOUR VALUES
You cannot stay in flow if your money is out of alignment with your ethos.
The Values Blueprint course is free and it's where I'd start.
https://richchristiansen.com/values-course/

FIND JUSTIN DONALD
https://lifestyleinvestor.com

—

Most people define wealth as money. Some of the least wealthy people I know
have the most financial assets.

The word wealth comes from being well. Emotionally, mentally, spiritually,
physically. And what I see over and over is people building a life entirely
around money, only to discover they have accidentally built themselves a
tower to hell.

Justin Donald has done it differently, which is why I wanted him here.

Justin is the founder of Lifestyle Investor, and in my experience he has the
most congruent, well-rounded investment community I have encountered. The
first time I visited, I found a room full of investors doing breathwork.

In this conversation, Justin says plainly that he is not optimizing for
maximum return. He is optimizing for the highest quality of life today.


CHAPTERS
0:00 A tower to hell
3:24 Optimizing for quality of life, not maximum return
10:43 Who gets your best energy, and who gets the leftovers
18:13 "She felt like second fiddle"
32:19 Rich people have money, wealthy people have time

#Wealth #TimeFreedom #Values #Entrepreneurship #CalmTheChaos

Build your family legacy
https://legadofamily.com/life-defining-events-course/

Clarify your family values
https://richchristiansen.com/values-course/

-----------------------

My wife and I were terrified of what money would do to our family.

So we moved to a poor neighborhood and decided our children would never know
we had resources. Two years in, my financial advisor told me exactly what it
would cost my kids and my grandchildren if I pulled it off. He was right.

That conversation sent me looking for a framework that could stabilize a
family rather than just its finances. I couldn't find one, so I spent the
next thirty years building it, and we raised our five sons inside it.

This is the whole thing. Values as the platform. The anti-values you throw
away on purpose. The symbols, doctrine, and traditions that every enduring
institution is built on. And the lost art of rites of passage, including the
five ages that shape a child more than any others.

If we do not give our children something to belong to, they will find it
somewhere else. Be deliberate.

With clarity,
Rich

#FamilyLegacy #Parenting #RitesOfPassage #FamilyValues #calmthechaos 

CHAPTERS
0:00 Why we hid our money from our own kids
6:16 Values, and naming what you refuse to pass on
9:04 Symbols, doctrine, and traditions
15:35 Rites of passage, and the five ages that matter
20:31 Letting them chart their own course

In this episode, Kate Mulholland tells the whole story: growing up believing that people always leave, chasing relief through every religion, substance, and relationship she could find, and hitting a rock bottom she describes as having a basement beneath it.

What finally worked was not more insight. Kate had been in therapy for years and had all the head knowledge she needed. What changed her life was learning that trauma lives in the body, and that we do not rise to the level of our ideals in a hard moment. We fall to the level of our nervous system, and how she leveraged that to heal.

Rich and Kate also walk through the three steps behind their work together: regulate the nervous system, rewire the pattern at its childhood root, and realign your life with your values. If you have ever wondered why you keep returning to the same painful patterns even when you can clearly see them, this conversation is for you.

Kate Mulholland is a world-class breathwork practitioner based in South Africa and the co-creator of Pattern Breaker.

Start the free Pattern Breaker course, three guided meditations and three short videos, at richchristiansen.com/patternbreaker-course/

Free tools and frameworks: richchristiansen.com/tools-and-resources/
Weekly Wisdom newsletter: richchristiansen.com/sign-up/

CHAPTERS
0:00 The search that ended on her knees
6:00 Rock bottom, and the basement beneath it
11:12 Faith, getting clean, and why shame dies on exposure
15:57 Heal it or repeat it
19:37 Inside Pattern Breaker: regulate, rewire, realign