How about your ability to change? Not just a little, but a lot. We all desire to grow as individuals. To increase our capacity and ability, our resilience and wisdom, our character and peace. To be people who deal expertly with the waves of the world and have plenty of depth to draw on for the service of other people. But as you’ll hear in this show, I’ve often looked at incremental changes and sometimes question just how much someone can truly change. So I bring you the incredible story of Tommy Breedlove who joins me in this episode. Tommy is a high end executive life coach who has influenced the lives of many of the leaders I’ve had on my podcasts. His story is one of an abused kid in poverty who was mercilessly bullied, and grew up to be a bully. At 18 he beat someone up so badly he was charged with felony accounts and imprisoned. Later he put his anger toward business and made a lot of money until he came to his end. Ultimately his story is someone who went from a heart of darkness, to a heart so many now turn to for light. It’s a dramatic shift and we discuss it in depth in this episode. If you want more of the story, get his book on Amazon, “Legendary: A simple playbook for building and living a legendary life, and being remembered as a legend,” and visit his website at https://tommybreedlove.com/

We face a stark reality. The world influencers we all follow and revere speak staunchly to the power in their lives derived from people who have personally inspired them. In this show we hear a two minute clip from Zig Ziglar and a story of someone who changed the trajectory of their life by changing who they associated with. However, I did a survey and from it what we discern is most of us aren’t associating with...anyone. Most have nobody in their lives who is inspiring them. I’m not talking about a mentor or personal yoda even, just anyone they are around at all who raises the bar and gives them inspiration. You’ll hear me lay it on Tom and render him nearly speechless. So what you many find is some compassion for yourself not having someone, which is good. But then we try to do justice to ideas for finding a way to have someone or ones in your life consistently who are calling you up and raising the bar and inspiring you to see more than you can from just between your own two ears.

I’m back with comedic thought leader, Michael Jr, and we walk through his daily habits for success. We hit on his eating, exercising, praying and more which is always just so fascinating to hear what high achieving people are really doing. And not doing. But in the talk you’ll hear Michael share his primary relational habit of asking, ““What can I do for this person?”. Of course I revere the sentiment, but with Michael I feel it just has more gravity. If you hear our main talk in episode 887 you hear me dig into the unique attributes of comedians and how the role requires them to be uber aware of other people, as ultimately the job is appealing to people and getting an emotional response. Or in Michael’s case, not getting a laugh but giving a laugh. Join us for a joyful talk through how Michael gets the best out of himself and you’ll invariably find ideas on how to get the best out of yourself as well. Go check out Michael’s podcast, Funny How Life Works.

Zig Ziglar cites a study done by the Thomas Jefferson Center where they compiled the top 15 values common in all the world’s great civilizations and religions. The values were: Wisdom, integrity, love, freedom, justice, courage, humility, patience, industriousness, thriftiness, generosity, objectivity, cooperation, moderation, optimism. I wanted to hear from people first hand so I asked our audience, “If you are hiring someone to do a job for you, which 3-5 of these values would you have as priority?” What came out were eight values people put at the top of the list. Which tells us which values we are best served to emulate in the workplace. I’ll play the 1.5 minute clip from Zig then Tom Ziglar joins me to talk through the survey.

We think of comedians as people who are funny, however I feel the laugh is just a symptom of a deeper reality. They connected with our emotions. It’s one of the most impressive skills I’ve seen and in this episode I am joined by Michael Jr for the second time. He has a new book titled, “Funny How Life Works” but as we talked the headline that came to mind for me was, “Life Lessons From A Very Observant Person.” Michael has shared the stage with the world’s greatest comedians, such as Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock. He’s been on all the late night tv show. He is a member of the comedic royalty. But unlike them he keeps getting billed as a “comedic thought leader” because that is his agenda. He is not there to get a laugh but to give a laugh. He is looking to open up your emotions with comedy so he can speak into and inspire your soul towards your purpose. What you’ll hear in this episode is a skill set of observation and connection I think anyone desiring to influence others will want to hear and benefit from. You might laugh a little here, but more so I think you’ll feel some revelation and equipping to be a better influencer and connector. I encourage you to find Michael’s podcast to laugh, be entertained, and learn, search for Funny How Life Works.

During this time of pandemic I wanted to know where people were literally spending their hard earned dollars toward business growth. I asked the audience, “What have you spent money on to learn about business or grow your business in the last 24 months? Books, Courses, Seminars/Conferences, Coaching/Consulting, or anything else. There were many testimonies to coaching and courses, but books ranked #1. What Tom Ziglar and I got into was a discussion around taking in knowledge, and actually learning it. Making positive change as a result. It’s a convicting message for all of us, as I too am so eager just to jump to the next inspiration message and miss out on actually benefiting from the great knowledge I was just exposed to.

A working mom with two kids and writing a book. She hit burnout and needed a breakthrough. I'm back with Erica Dhawan who was with me in episode 883 to talk about digital body language, the title of her new book. She decided she wanted to be someone who woke up excited, so she made a new plan for her life. She changed her daily habits to allow for peace, clarity, and health. She gave up some shallow pleasures to enable herself to enjoy deeper pleasures she now cherishes. This is yet another story of a normal person like you and me, who made some small changes that produced abnormally great results. Connect with Erica at https://ericadhawan.com/ and find her new book, Digital Body Language wherever you buy books.

“When you sit down in the morning to your work and feel a bit lacking, what do you do? Do you just push forward and slog it out or do you work on motivating yourself?” This is the question I posed to the Ziglar audience. Zig Ziglar was the Grandfather of motivation and in this show I play a three minute clip which includes his classic quote, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing, that’s why we recommend it daily.” This episode is a real world look at what people do when they are facing a lack of motivation in a moment, as most of us do. Tom Ziglar and I cover what I feel are the tenants of motivation in the nitty gritty of real life.

I have a wake up call for you. It sure woke me up. We all have a digital personality and we don’t realize it. We look at text, email, and even video such as zoom as communication tools. But as Erica Dhawan tells us in this episode, over 70% of our business communication is electronic instead of face to face. So 70% of our relationships are formed digitally. Erica says our digital body language is either helping or hurting every relationship we have. If you look at the next text or email as simply a method to deliver a message and not as a human interaction, you are missing it. If you think your all caps or exclamation points or brevity or emojis are sufficient, you’re about to be schooled. Ultimately it comes down to this, continue doing it as you have, or realize there is a far greater opportunity for your work and life success if you listen in and hear how you can make some key adjustments and use every text, email, or zoom to solidify and enhance your relationships and significantly increase your success. Connect with Erica at https://ericadhawan.com/ and find her new book, Digital Body Language wherever you buy books.

Have you ever heard this? “The hard work of positive thinking.” Zig Ziglar was the royal king of positive thinking and I play a clip where he shares its power in our lives, but also the reality that it won’t enable you to do anything. To take it further, I asked our audience, this question, “Do you feel someone is either inherently positive and hopeful, or they choose to be?” Tom Ziglar and I read through some of the comments and of course, most feel that thinking positive is a choice. But what came out is... due to our upbringing and past and other predispositions, even genetic to a degree, our brains are more or less hardwired to think positively and be able to readily accept our efforts to choose positivity and hope. These are real issues and I believe the episode will enable you to better engage with and benefit your own striving to increase positive thinking and hope in your life.