Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Cory Allen on how you create a brave new you EP 508

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

In this episode of Passion Struck, I had the distinct pleasure of welcoming my friend Cory Allen, an acclaimed author, influencer, and the host of the popular podcast "And Then It Hit Me." Our conversation centered around Cory's transformative new book, "Brave New You," which serves as a powerful guide designed to help individuals unlock their full potential, break free from negative thinking, and infuse their lives with meaning and purpose.Cory and I will be holding a moderated talk about my book Passion Struck at Book People in Austin, TX on November 3rd, 2024 at 430pm. We would love to see you there.Full show notes and resources:  https://passionstruck.com/cory-allen-on-how-you-create-a-brave-new-youSponsorsBabbel: Unlock the power of learning a new language with Babbel's innovative system. Passion Struck listeners can get 60% off their subscription at Babbel.com/PASSION.Hims: Regrow your hair before it's too late! Start your free online visit today at Hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK.Quince: Experience luxury for less with Quince's premium products at radically low prices. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at Quince.com/PASSION.For more information about our sponsors and promo codes, visit: passionstruck.com/dealsIn this episode, you will learn:The importance of recognizing how our present decisions and feelings shape our identity and impact those around us.Insights into the power of intentionality and how it can help you become the best version of yourself.The significance of being open-minded as a starting point for transformation and personal growth.Strategies for reframing your perspective to engage curiosity and turn experiences into opportunities for growth.The role of mindfulness and self-awareness in breaking free from negative thinking and limiting assumptions that hold us back.The concept of "turning poison into medicine" by recognizing and transforming negative impulses into positive actions.The idea that many barriers to personal growth are imaginary, rooted in our own narratives and assumptions.The value of self-trust and how taking intentional actions can build confidence and lead to significant breakthroughs.Connect with Cory Allen: https://www.cory-allen.com/Order Passion StruckUnlock the principles that will transform your life! Order my book, Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life. Recognized as a 2024 must-read by the Next Big Idea Club, this book has earned accolades such as the Business Minds Best Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Award, and the Non-Fiction Book Awards Gold Medal. Order your copy today and ignite your journey toward intentional living!Catch More Passion StruckMy interview with Amy Leigh Mercree on Master Your Aura, Master Your LifeCan’t miss my episode withSharon Salzberg on Building Equanimity in a Chaotic WorldWatch my episode with Dandapani on How to Harness the Incredible Power of Your MindDiscover my interview with Gabby Bernstein on finding profound freedom and inner peaceIf you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review! Even one sentence helps. Be sure to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can personally thank you!

Coming up next on Passion Strike. The more that we recognize that each of those decisions that we make in the present, what we say, what we do, how we're being in the world, like how are we showing up even, what is the feeling that we're bringing into the space that we're in? Those things have a huge impact on us, on who we are, on the people around us. And the more that we're in tune and conscious of those things, the more that we can craft who we are and who we're becoming.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become Passion Struck. Hey, Passion Struck family. Welcome to episode 508 of the Passion Struck podcast. Before we dive into today's transformative conversation, I want to start by saying a

huge thank you to all of you who tune in week after week, eager to learn. You are the driving force behind this movement and I am beyond grateful for your energy, passion and commitment to personal growth. If you're new here, welcome to the Passionstruck family. You have just stepped into a community that's all about igniting purpose and living intentionally. We're thrilled to have you on this journey with us. For those of you thinking about sharing the show with friends and family, which we absolutely love, we've made it super easy with our episode starter packs.

With over 500 episodes, I know it can be hard to know where to dive in. So we've curated playlists just for you. Whether you're passionate about behavior science, mental health, living life fully, leadership, or hearing from powerhouse women, we've got a pack that's perfect for you. Check them out at Spotify or head to passionstruck.com slash starter packs. Last week we had three powerhouse episodes that you need to catch if you haven't already. Lieutenant Commander Dan Knosson shared his awe-inspiring journey from Navy SEAL to Paralympic Champion offering profound lessons in resilience and determination.

We also had the brilliant Alison Frugal on the show, who completely shifted our understanding of power, status, and influence, providing actionable strategies to elevate both your career and personal life. And we also had Dr. Marty McCary, world-renowned surgeon, public health expert, and best-selling author of Blind Spots, When Medicine Gets It Wrong.

Dr. McCary pulled back the curtain on modern medicine exposing hidden blind spots that are affecting patient outcomes and sparking a conversation about how we can all reclaim control over our health. If you haven't caught these episodes yet, I highly recommend going back to listen. They're packed with insights that can make a real difference. Now let's get into today's episode where I have an incredibly special guest. Someone whose work has been a guiding light for countless individuals. Joining us today is my friend Cory Allen, acclaimed author, influencer, and host of the popular podcast, and then it hit me where I was recently a guest. Cory's latest book, Brave New You, is a transformative guide designed to help you unlock your full

potential, break free from negative thinking, and infuse your life with meaning and purpose. If you've ever felt like you're drifting through life or that you're not living up to your true potential, this conversation is for you. And before we dive into the conversation, I'm thrilled to share that Corey will also be moderating an upcoming talk with me at Book People in Austin, Texas on Sunday, November 3rd at 430 p.m. If you're in the Austin area, we'd love to see you there for an incredible discussion about living intentionally and creating real change in your

life. In today's episode, we'll explore the power of mindset, smart strategies to achieve your goals, and the radical yet simple shifts that can redefine what's possible for you. Corey's teachings will help you develop deep trust in your intuition, unshakable confidence, and the realization of just how extraordinary your life and you can be. Before we get started, if this episode resonates with you, please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review. Your feedback helps us bring these impactful conversations to you, and the best compliment you can give us is sharing the show with others. Now, let's dive into this amazing conversation with Corey Allen. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me.

Be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled today to have my friend, Corey Allen join me on Passion Struck. What an honor, man, it is to finally have you on the show. Thank you so much for having me in here. I'm really excited to talk to you. So, of course, since I know you,

I'm not going to give out the typical easy question to you to start off with. So I'm going to throw this one at you. We all have moments that define who we become. What was the defining moment that has made you? Yeah, I think that I'll try and make this as short as possible answer wise. I think that probably about 25 years ago, I randomly found a book on Eastern thought. It was a book by DT Suzuki called essays in Zen Buddhism. And the what drew me to find that book is another story. But I found that book and it was a moment

that it connected a lot of different things for me. This is in the 90s, it was whenever there was not Google, there wasn't YouTube, there wasn't any of these things where you could find the resources. And so finding information on Eastern wisdom tradition, on meditation, on mindfulness, it was a bit more difficult. It was like record shopping for used records. You go into a bookstore, you find a dusty old book

that has an interesting looking cover and has some kind of magical squiggle lines emanating from it. And you go, oh, well, I'll give that one a try. And that's what happened with this book. And reading it put me in a position where I could begin experimenting with my mind and it began experimenting, meditating. And of course, these, what I was reading were long translations of original Eastern texts that are not super digestible. They're not

really broken out into bullet points or anything like that. So what I'm saying is, and they're not very direct, so it's a lot of searching, but it put me in this path of searching and figuring it out, putting myself in the laboratory, trying to understand how to become self-aware and to release the tension and kind of the suffering I was feeling. And so by reading that book and starting moving into this world of Eastern thought, what happened was I became aware of my own mind. I became aware of my consciousness and I started being able to teach myself to meditate. I would do that by laying down and just closing my eyes and breathing slowly.

Every time I exhaled, I would relax the muscles in my body as much as I could. And I would just repeatedly do that over and over. And what's amazing is that what that did for me, and I didn't realize until a lot later, and this is why this was a really life-defining moment for me. What it did for me was it made the texture of my mind shift in such a way that I was conscious of the fact that it happened. And by that I mean that my natural, the frustration, the anxiety, the suffering, the fear I felt as a teenager because of my environment had put me into fight or flight mode. Doing those practices created space in my mind and in my body.

It allowed me to respond to my life instead of reacting. And by doing that, I began to be able to have some intentionality in who I was in each moment instead of just working against all of those negative emotions, negative thoughts that I was experiencing. And that opened this whole path for me because as I saw the change in my mind, I thought I'm not saying things reactively to people out of fear or defensiveness. I'm not doing certain things because I'm in pain and because I'm suffering. I'm able to think clearly in the present moment and make choices. Notice the impulses that are rising inside of me and choose if I want to turn those into actions or not.

And the more I did that, the more that my mind started to change and the more that my mind changed, the more the way that the world looked to me changed. And I realized that was a process. And at that moment, I just chose to take that as far as I possibly could. And it's pretty much responsible for everything I've done

personally and professionally since then. at as far as I possibly could. And it's pretty much responsible for everything I've done personally and professionally since then. And thank you for going through that. What an incredible story. And speaking of all the things you've done professionally, it's like reading a laundry list, uh, composer, musician, podcaster, author. The list goes on and on. What was the starting point out of all those ventures

that really lit a fire underneath you? Yeah, it was definitely music. Whenever I was a teenager, ultimately what I was doing is I have, well, first off, I'd say I have this relentless curiosity that's just still, fortunately to this day, it drives a lot where I'm just fascinated by things, the details of things, the details of things,

the essence of things. And I like to go way into them and really understand them on that kind of the atomic level. A lot of those things have to do with creativity. And so musically, I was obsessed with music whenever I was a teenager. I still am. But I think that in retrospect, looking back at it, one of the reasons I was so obsessed with it was because I was using it as a tool for avoidance and protection. I thought if I live in my mind, if I disappear into this world of art, creativity and art, that it will block out my environment, it'll block out what I'm feeling, it'll block out the worries and the things that I'm moving through.

And I can have this, what I, at a very young age thought of as a sanctuary. So the world outside of my skin isn't really in control, but the world inside of my skin, in my mind, that is my sanctuary. And I can create that space, have that be however I want and live in there. And that's what I did with music. And so I just really was obsessed with music of all kinds. And I was playing guitar, I would play for eight hours a day for years. And ultimately what happened is I realized that I wasn't going to be able to make a living as a guitar player. And so I got bored with it. And so I started composing. And that turned into me being a record producer because I like really eccentric sounds and things like that. That's not a great way to make money is liking weird music.

But fortunately, one of the things that happened to me was, I suppose for me, was moving over to producing other people's records. And this is something I point out in the book that I think this is worth pulling over and lingering on this for a moment. We have these ideas of what we want to do in life, and we have these ideas of who we're going to be and what our desires are personally and professionally. Those things are great. But I think it's really important to understand that those things need to be flexible. Because just because we have an original idea

of how we want our journey to look, it doesn't mean that's basically what's in the cards or it's even actually the thing that we truly want. We simply don't know the deeper layer yet because we haven't experienced it. And for me thinking like I'm going to be a composer was everything I was putting my energy into and how this unfolded for me was basically friends of mine would go, yeah, your music sounds really good.

Can you do that to mine? And I'd go, yeah, sure. And I was just self-taught as far as music production goes. And then eventually their friends started, cause of course, who knows musicians, know other musicians, their friends go, hey, I heard what you did to whoever's record. Could you do that to mine? I'll give you 100 bucks.

And at the time I was like, wow, 100 bucks to do this. That's amazing. And in that moment, I thought, hold on a second. This is what I call in Brave New You like a portal. It's this opening where it is two aspects of my personality that I didn't anticipate putting together where I have expertise, but by putting them together, they created a third thing that redefined my path and my journey and gave me this type of personal leverage

that I didn't know I even had. And so I was fortunate to be present enough in those moments to recognize, hold on, people are paying me to do this thing that I do anyway, that I never considered was something I could make a living at. And so at that moment, that's whenever I started saying, let me see if I could be a record producer.

And I started doing that professionally and the business, the company really took off and I, it all unfolded from there. And I'm going to have to at some point introduce you to my son. He got his initial degree in business, but passion passionately. He's always wanted to do music as a career. He's now going back to get another bachelor's degree in music production as an entry point to get him more involved in the business and also has a business degree so we can combine both.

But I think he's struggling right now. He knows he wants to do this, but he's trying to figure out how do you break through in this very diverse business landscape that music holds. So I would love to talk to him, John. And also, I think another this is another good point for anyone in their career that's trying to break through anywhere is be undeniable. This is one of the things that I did whenever I went to start that business is this music production business, is I thought, all right, here's what I want to do. I want to be this music producer, but how can I, and this is another goal, one of my other goals outside of just business is freedom. That's why I've always, I've been self-employed for most of my life is because I want to do

what I want when I want. And I sat down and I thought, all right, so music production is the area that I wanna be in, but how can I make that where I make the most amount of money in the least amount of time and have the most say in what I'm doing? And I thought, okay, I need to make it specialized because if I get specialized, there'll be fewer people to compete with for business.

Now that I've got looked at it and since that needs to be specialized, now what are my natural advantages in this area? They're an ability to hear extreme detail in sound and nuance in music. And also I have like a autographic memory as well, in the same way that someone can look at a page of a book and then just remember all the text. I can hear sounds or music and remember it in the same way. It's like I could see them all. I'll watch a movie in 20 years later.

I'll remember all the dialogue as I'm like, I could say along with the movie with a lot of different movies. So I thought I need to use that skill because that again, is going to give me a natural advantage. And so I narrowed it down to being a mastering engineer. That's someone that puts the final touches on a record that are really it's people in the audio world look at them as wizards because it's such a particular skill. And yes, I started doing that.

I think it's a really viable way to find, create your own way to break through is look at your natural advantages, get clear on what is it you want to do and how you can succeed and stand out, but then also the undeniable thing was like, I sat down and just had this little quick talk with myself, which is like everything that leaves my studio has to be impactable, has to exceed my expectations. Because, and this kind of gets into some marketing things as well, but it works very much in creativity,

is that if I'm blown away, then the customer is gonna be blown away. And in any business situation like this, we wanna put our mind in the mind of the prospect. How is our customer, how is the person that's hearing our music or reading our book or whatever it is, how are they going to experience this in their life? Like from their perception, how's it going to land on them

knowing anything about it before you give it over to them? And I thought this music project that I returned to this person, this artist, it has to blow them away because if it's their whole life is revolving around this product, it's what they're telling everyone about, it's what they've invested all this time in, they're using it to identify who they are

and what the meaning is in their life right now. So if I can give that back to them and it exceeds what they thought was possible, then that will be a transformative experience for them. And what will they do? They'll want to tell everyone they know about it. And who do they know? Other musicians who have other projects. So that was one of these things that I started thinking. And I've really carried that philosophy forward is make everything just a stick of dynamite. And anytime you notice yourself looking

for the path of least resistance, anytime you notice yourself going, that's good enough, I recognize that moment and take a break, pause and reconsider, all right, how can we push this forward and make this even better? Man, I find that so interesting. And we often hear that 80 20 rule and it sounds like what you're talking about is

you were the person who they gave it to you in the 80% state and you filled in that special 20% that took it to the next level. So that's a good way to think about it. It's amazing that you, man, John, I love that you use that descriptor because here's what I would tell people. They would go, can you make this sound, X sound like Y? And I would say, it's the law of threes. If you bring me a six out of 10, I can give you a nine out of 10.

If you bring me a two out of 10, I can give you a five out of 10. If you bring me a nine out of 10, then we're going to the moon. Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about your podcast and I really want to get into why you started it, but I want to tell you an interesting story about me as I was starting my journey to start mine. I, before I started it, I had no idea whether it was going to be a viable medium for me. And so I went about for a good six to nine months listening to as many podcasters as I could, including you. And I was trying to find out what styles that I like, what differentiated the

different podcasts. And I came across Jordan Harmbers and I reached out to Jordan to give me advice on it, I will never forget what he told me. So we're on this call and I said, Jordan, what would be your advice to someone like me? Cause my advice would be don't do a podcast. He goes, you have no idea what you're walking into and how much effort this is going to be. And he goes, if you are going to do it, you got to make that long-term commitment

to do it because I can guarantee you when it starts, your results are going to be far underperforming where in your mind you think they're going to be and you'll get discouraged and a lot of people stop. So he goes, that's why I tell most people don't even start because it's such a long and arduous process. Given that as a backdrop, what made you want to get into this podcasting space? I like that, that answer because it's like having a podcast. It's like a train that never reaches the station.

I just, you always just creating new content and more episodes, more recordings. It just never stops. And I like his answer in a sense. I think that it's one of those things where if someone tells you, if Jordan tells you don't start a podcast and you do it anyway, then you're one of the people

who should have started a podcast. Because I look at this creativity, life, business, all these things. With do the thing, if you can't not do it, then that's what you should be doing. Don't try and force yourself to do a thing because you think you need to, or you have to. It's the thing that you can't resist doing is what you need to put all of your energy into. So that's, I think that's all pretty good advice.

As far as how mine started, probably 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more. I had a friend who he had a podcast and a good size audience. And he invited me on his podcast and a good size audience. And he invited me on his podcast as a guest just pretty regularly. And we would, you know, this is back in the wild west. This is back before there was a million dollar podcast studios and all of the advertisement, just the whole economy of podcasting that's arisen over the last decade, none of this stuff was existed at that time. And yeah, it was just like fun.

And then his audience started hitting me up. I wasn't even doing anything as a public figure at that point. I was still just producing records and writing music and stuff. And he, his audience would go find my music website and email me and say, Hey, you should start a podcast. They say you have a great voice, you're entertaining you all the so on and so on. And they're like, you got a real face for radio. No, they would say all the, all these things.

And I thought, yeah, that would be fun. And again, this is one of those portals I talk about in brave new you is you find the two things inside of you that are two areas of expertise or enjoyment that you never consider putting together before an opportunity opens, which is all these people telling me, Hey, you should start a podcast. And if you listen to it and put those two things together, a new thing emerges into the world that becomes successful. That thing was like my whole life, I started reading Western Eastern philosophy whenever I was a teenager obsessed with it. I love the idea of consciousness change and messing with your mind

and just the the weirdness of reality and existence and the wonder of the universe. And so with all my friends we just hang out and talk about that stuff all the time anyway. And so all these people are saying hey Hey, you need to start a podcast. I'm like, well, that's cool. I mean, that's why I have a lot of interesting friends and a lot of artists and a lot of creative people. And we just talk about this stuff anyway. And the other thing that we put together, I have a recording studio.

So I, and I know how to produce things. So my, my audio will sound really nice. And that's a definitely a great boon for a podcast. It has to be easy to listen to. So I put those two things together and boom, I started creating it. And I was making it almost as a joke, just for fun. And I gave it a ridiculous name on purpose. It was like a quadruple entendre.

In the early days, again, this is like 10 years ago, but I call it the Astro Hustle. Ultimately what that means, the Astro H hustles, we're talking about Astros and like the universe and hustle as them. It's just the grinding repetition of being of the, like the universe is just in this tree. It's this churning mass of atomic energy. And that's just, it's what life is to me. Right.

And so I thought I'd name it that. And the reason I named it also is because I want to be funny, because I thought that I'm going to be talking about rather sincere and deep things. And I don't want anyone to mistake that I'm taking myself seriously at any point. And actually, this is something I forgot about until now, is in the early days, I actually, whenever I set the category for my podcast, actually put it in the comedy section. And listeners started emailing me and they were like, I never knew that man comedy. I love it. And they were like, you're talking about original commentaries on the poly canon and like Theravada

Buddhism at a very detailed level. And like spiritual enlightenment, why is this in the comedy section? And so I used to jokingly say, so I put it into the philosophy and spirituality section. So now it's just awkward to me instead of all of the listeners, what category it's in. Um, yes, so to fast forward a little bit, I started doing it for fun.

It grew really fast. And then the New York Times hit me up and said, hey, we want to feature you on the front page of the Sunday review of the New York Times hit me up and said, Hey, we want to feature you on the front page of the Sunday review of the New York Times and an article about podcasting. Because this was back whenever podcasting was still a new thing. They're like, it's you, Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Lewis Howes. And they put Sebastian Junger in there as well. It's brilliant.

But I was just like, okay, that's cool. And so after that came out, it jumped in popularity again. And then it just evolved from there. And I've been really just just fortunate and grateful of the incredible people like yourself have been able to meet over the years. And then I changed the name to and then it hit me about a year ago, which is a whole nother long reason of why I did that. But yeah, it's been a weird journey and really fun and just figuring it out as we go has been fun and interesting. Well, as a recent guest on your podcast, and thank you for having me, I found that you were refreshing because you actually do

a lot of research and reading about your guest. And you asked me some of the most thought provoking questions I had on my podcast tour that no one else was asking me. So for the fans who are out there, if you're looking for that, his podcast, and then it hit me is a great one. So please go and check it out and maybe start with the episode he did with me. Yeah, absolutely. That was great having you on there.

And that was, that's, I really appreciate you saying that. That's one of the things that I want to have an actual conversation with someone. And I respect, there's that saying, respect your opponent. Don't just go, oh, I'm going to, I'll wing this and this will be fine. It's like, you know, let's have some respect for what we're talking to in their time and their work and like everything they've done in their life. And let's really meet in the meaningful place as opposed to just like saying, I've got these 10 questions. I said, we'll just throw them on you. The primary purpose of us talking today is you have a brand new book. You've alluded to it a couple of times named brave new you.

However, this is your second book. Your first book is now is the way, However, this is your second book your first book is now is the way which had a forward from another one of my favorite podcasters Aubrey who that must have been such a an amazing thing to have him discuss that Discuss what that book meant to him but in that you were really describing applying mindfulness to modern times. I was hoping just in case people want to also dive into that book, you could tell us a little bit more about it before we go into Brave New You. Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. And Aubrey was the podcaster that I had synced with over a decade

ago whose podcast I kept going on, where his fans eventually reached out and asked me to start my own podcast, just as a side note. This is Aubrey Marcus for those of you who aren't following. Yeah. And what's wild is that there's, I was talking about that on a, just a Patreon like Q and a session. And I was like, yeah, it's, it's crazy to think about these people that reach out to me. It was what a generation, like they generate

so much direction and goodness in my life by suggesting that to me. And one of the people on the call was like, I was one of those people that emailed you 12 years ago and told you to talk about customer retention. Now, I mean, but joking aside, I really appreciate the fact that someone is still following along after all that time. But yes, and that was the way it was what to me, and this came out in 2019. So I wrote

it a year prior to that. If we go back six years ago, at this point, thinking about where we were in society, where the ideas of presence and mindfulness and meditation and things of that nature were. There wasn't a great resource for this current generation to understand these things in a way that not only can they really hear it, but also deals with the modern issues that we're dealing with today. There's a lot of great books,

people like who actually never read Eckhart Tolle until about a year ago, two years ago. But a lot of books, there's Ram Dass and Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield and the list goes on not John Cobb at Zen, all these important people who brought that, this type of stuff to the mainstream in America. But the thing is these people are amazing, but they're also all in their 70s and 80s right now. The language in their work and stuff like that might not be connecting with some of the current issues

and some of the current people who are in their 20s and 30s. And so I wrote, and again, I love all those people. I was just trying just to say, trying to bring a modern view on that stuff, um, to a younger generation. And so that was what now is the way was really was talking about introducing mindfulness and some things like CBT,

cognitive behavioral therapy, just giving a person the ability to zoom out and to observe their mind and to be more present and intentional in their life. Introducing that to a younger audience. And then talking about things like, how do we deal with technology? How do we deal with smartphones, social media, the compression of time that we're all trying to fight against now. Yeah, that was my first attempt. And I'm very grateful to have that out in the world and all the people it's reached and just all the incredible messages I've gotten from people over the years that have read it.

Yeah, and I wanted to use this to just read something to you. My sister has recently passed away and she was a Buddhist, very much involved in mindfulness and during her ceremony, Buddhist priest loving-kindness scripture and I just wanted to read the last paragraph And it says standing or walking sitting or lying down during all one's waking hours Let one cherish the thought that this way of living is the best in the world meaning loving-kindness Abandoning vain discussion having a vision, freed from sense appetites. One who realizes the way will never again know rebirth in the cycle of creation of suffering for ourselves or for others. What does that passage mean to you?

And what is the importance of love and kindness right now in the world that we live in? Yeah, that's a beautiful. I mean, they, whoever read or wrote that really knocked it out of the park. Yeah. So ultimately what it means is it's talking about for anyone that's not familiar, a term called loving kindness, which is hyphenated loving kindness. So it becomes one, one word. And that is referring to meta, which is M E T a meta is a term in Buddhism,

which means essentially it's, it's like a kind of love. It's compassionate, it's sending goodwill and positivity and what would be called skillful wholesomeness. And by skillfulness, that means the decisions you're making in life, like that passage alluded to, if you feel the impulse, and this is whenever that passage he described the sense appetite, which I love that was in there because it's a huge part of it and it's generally a little bit too esoteric or technical for people to hear. The sense appetite is talking about the arising of your desire to say something negative, to say something judgmental, to do something that's going to make your mind less clear. And in that regard, it could be overeating,

over drinking, distraction, believing in falling into delusion, which those are the three poisons in Buddhism is anger, desire and delusion and by delusion they mean Making assumptions about reality so that you're getting further away from the essence of what's real Living in the story in your mind and acting as if that's true would be another way to say that So in that passage, she's saying You'll find you mentioned the freedom from suffering and non-rebirth. So he's saying basically, if you are present and clear-minded, you're intentional about not spreading harm to yourself, to others, and that's the skillfulness.

And then what will happen is that through doing that, you will, in his words would be, you will stop accumulating negative karma, which is how you're reborn in Buddhism. And then you'll be free from suffering for eternity, which means basically, by doing that consistently, you would work off the inherited karma that you had on your current rebirth, and then be able to be liberated in what's called deliverance, which is like freedom from the human realm of suffering. It's a beautiful passage and things like that.

Like I've studied Buddhism pretty much my entire life now at this point. And I would say I'm like a lazy academic. And one of the things, but also I'm not a Buddhist, but one of the things that I would say I'm like a lazy academic. And one of the things, but also I'm not a Buddhist, but one of the things that I would say is, and I always try to do in my work, but also I would do with stuff like this. This is a beautiful idea. What can we do with that?

What do we do with that? How can we take this beautiful passage and these ideas and the idea of loving kindness? Of course, again, to make it even more clear, the root of what he was talking about was focusing on this loving kindness, on this matter of intentionally in your daily life, trying to be as compassionate

and to give as much warmth and slowness and peacefulness to everyone you encounter in yourself consistently as much as you can. Another move that burns off karma. And yeah, so we've I look at all that and I said, what can we do with that? What do we actually do? How can we after we forget that sentence, and we forget the emotion that arose inside of us, whenever we heard that sentence and the poetry of it becomes not as enamoring and bedazzling as it was at first and we're back in the office again and we're back on MOPAC again. John says I know you're, or I should say 35, I know you've lived in Austin.

They're both bad. It's all bad. So what do we do with this, right? What do we do with this? After this passage, focus on that essence of paying attention to your body, paying attention to your mind. Whenever you see yourself getting wrapped up in tense, acting on autopilot, acting compulsively, when you feel the urge to be aggressive towards someone or yourself, when you feel the urge to go into a negative way of talking, just notice that material arising. Notice that discord, the dissonance feeling arising in your body and your mind. And use your awareness of that arising feeling to do something also called Buddhism, turn poison into medicine. Notice that feeling and then use your presence to release it into choose a different action, choose

an action of kindness and compassion that moment instead of the action of aggression and destructfulness. That's what we can take with that from away from that lesson and really move it into our lives of just having an eye out for those dissonant harmful Feelings and impulses that arise in us and then using our awareness to change in the present to create more of that love and kindness more peacefulness and more harmony and equanimity in the world Well, man, what a beautiful answer that was to that question.

I just came up with based on the flow of this interview and something you brought up. There's something. Is a key aspect of brave new you and something we're going to be discussing throughout the rest of the episode, which is the whole lens that I do the podcast through, which is the power of living intentionally. I think it's important as people. Get to know you better. I always like to get different people's definitions of intentionality. What does that word mean to you?

Hmm. Love that. Yeah. To me, it means. I think I've talked about a good deal so far. Ultimately, it means being present and the choices that you're making are rooted in awareness and mental clarity. It's not living in a reactive way in life, not drifting in your life on autopilot, but taking the time to slow things down

and to be very clear on what you're doing and saying and who you are becoming in each moment. Well, I love that because I think what we end up doing is we are so concerned at times about the output that we're not into the moment as we should be on the inputs that are ultimately going to result in whatever goal or vision that we have for our future life. So to me, being intentional is really working on those inputs that end up culminating in the life that you want to have so that passion that

I talk about it is Really reminds me of what you were just talking about in that passage of love and kindness where you're talking about this rebirth and when I read Brave New You, that idea of having the opportunity to have a rebirth, of creating whatever version of ourselves we want really came through the entire book. But you started out in the opening chapter about talking about the importance of being open-minded as a starting point for transfer transformation. Can you share an instance maybe either from your own life or someone who you've had on the podcast or mentored where being open-minded led to a significant breakthrough?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned someone I've mentored. Yeah, there was this person that was looking to start this just professionally looking to start a jewelry company, like a fine jewelry company. And they were had the idea of a distributor that would have been very high level and really helped their business grow 10X, not only just in cash, but also in terms of visibility and having some social proof. And they were hesitant and just had this story in their mind of, well, they won't want to talk to me.

It's like I met some representative of this company at the trade show, but they won't want to talk to me because I don't have enough history or sales or whatever to, or connections to back it up. And I remember saying, where are the, where's the proof of that? You don't know how this person is going to receive or think about the work that you're creating, the jewelry that you're creating. So you've got this story in your mind where you're telling yourself and making this assumption about what's going to happen that's completely based on nothing. So let's try and reset this moment. Let's look at what's actually happening right now is that you have a person that you know

at a company that is an end to a person that you know at a company that is an end to the goal that you're looking for. This is a good situation, not a bad situation where you're just, you've got this end, you're like, oh, well, she, I know her, but she hates me. It's, I know. Let's look at this clearly. And now let's approach this from a different perspective. What if instead of you suggesting that you have a meeting with her in the company, what if her saying, no, this isn't going to work because I don't like what you're doing.

What if you did that? And they said, I would love that because I've seen some of your stuff. It's incredible, let's talk further. So what if that was the story that was going to unfold? And this person I was mentoring said, okay, hmm. I said, look at it and lower the stakes. It's just look at this as an experiment.

Just go try this, go talk to them. Just relax about it. It's all just give it a shot, see what happens. So she did. Of course they loved her because she's an amazing person. And now she's on the site. Her business has grown 10 times. And it's all thanks to being open-minded to recognizing the story that she was telling

herself, noticing that it was just an assumption. It was purely imaginary. Being able to reset that and approach her goal with another perspective. And then through, this is a thread that goes to the book too, is it through that simple process of recognizing the story that was in your mind, how you're allowing your negative thinking habits to limit you, breaking that up, disrupting that process,

and then choosing a new action in itself builds the self-trust that allows you to then move into those opportunities with this level of confidence and Bravery or belief that you might not have had before And what a fantastic answer as you were crafting this book and I was reading it you absolutely used a ton of insights from your podcast, from your community to shape the book. Was there anything as you were doing your research that you found most surprising or unexpected about why people struggle to make positive change in their lives? Yeah, the most surprising thing that I found was that

everyone has this same, they have this emotional feeling and they have this vision of how things could be better. And these don't have to be big things, they can be, they can also be small things. But they go, if I could just do this, I'd feel like I was thriving. And they have the emotion, the drive, the inspiration to want to make that happen. But they feel they can't quite find the road that will take them from where they are now to where they want to be.

And ultimately, that's that issue, that barrier, that conflict is what we were just talking about with this personalized mentoring. It's a system of behavioral thoughts that is preventing someone from taking action. And that's the resistance to me that so many people seems those almost everyone is being held back by something that's completely imaginary, something that just exists in their mind, the way that they positioned reality in their mind is the only barrier that's keeping them from thriving. And so that was why one of the big things in this book is I thought you

Know what let's break that apart. Let's break that barrier Let's create a highway to get a person from where they are to where they want to be Yeah, I love it and if you have read my book passion-struck there is so much that overlaps between the wisdom and Corey is sharing and what I was trying to convey in the book so that the two complement each other extremely well. And in Chapter two of his book, Corey does a real big deep dive into what he was just talking about. And that is how our assumptions trap us in our past. So I think you've given a good teaser for it. I don't want to go more into it, but you got a whole chapter that covers it.

So one thing I do, and I'm sure you have to do it as well, is I'm on the socials, I shouldn't say I, a person from my team is on the socials every day posting content, and occasionally I'm doing it as well, depending on what message I want to get out there. But one ordinary day, just like any other, you happen to be creating an Instagram post and it read, reframing your perspective is a powerful move. When you feel stuck or resistant, pause and look for the upside. Shifting your thinking from, I have to do this to I get to do this, shifting your thinking from I have to do this to I get to do this engages curiosity. This turns every experience into a chance for growth, wisdom and understanding.

Core that post received an unexpected and overwhelming reception. And I think it's one of those things like you hear from recording artists like you are that sometimes the least expected song that you put out there is the one that hits. I remember for a third eye blind semi charm life was something the band never thought would have ever become a hit because of the subject matter it covers. However, your post really hit a core with so many people. Why do you think its core message on the importance of looking at life with fresh eyes was so impactful for so many people?

Yeah. I mean, first of all, I love that example you gave music. One of them that hits me, I always think about is a paranoid by black Sabbath. That was one where they, they literally, the, the label said, you have to turn over eight songs or something like that. And, or how many of it was for the album. And they had five minutes, 10 minutes in the studio, and they wrote it in literally five minutes

and recorded it in one take and like, all right, that's good. And then they became one of the best selling songs ever in history. Yeah, I love that. That's a good, that's a whole other thing I'd love for us to talk about because it's so interesting. But yeah, I know that the reason why that quote, I think hit people so hard is because it opened the door to this perspective shift that we've been covering

throughout this podcast. We have this narrative in our minds about how things are going, what things mean, like what's possible. The framing of things that we experience in our perspective in which we engage with them, it changes our experience of everything. For example, if you're going, oh man, I have to go unload the dishwasher. This is, I don't like this. It's annoying. I don't want to do it right now. You're just putting so much onto the experience before actually experiencing it whatsoever. putting so much onto the experience before actually experiencing it whatsoever. And so it's going to be unpleasant. It's going to be a chore.

You're going to suffer during it. But if you were to take a moment and pause and go, I'm applying this story and all of this yuck to the idea of doing this. And so I'm definitely going to be miserable while I'm doing it. What if I approach this moment with a bit more

of a broad perspective, if I open my mind and I engage with this from a more present place and just have fun with the experience and look at it with curiosity. And then all of a sudden you're in there and you're peacefully, mindfully unloading the dishwasher, thinking about things like, oh, this is so weird. I'll find myself just laughing in the kitchen and there's something like this, holding a fork being like, we are so, this life is so weird that they're like these animals that

we thought, well, we do a lot of eating. And so let's forge something like a stick with a bunch of points on it. And it's like just weird stuff like that. And then all of a sudden you're laughing and having a good time and thinking your mind is going into creative places and you're enjoying this experience instead of creating more tension

and taking your overall perspective into this more tight place, which the important, not of just moment to moment experience like this, but the more that you keep your mind in this present, original, open state, dealing with things for what they are, as opposed to your idea of how they're going to be, the more that you then stay in that state of mind consistently throughout the

day. So that now, whenever you're having an important conversation with your partner, where perhaps it could have been a conflict because you're going into that with the same energy of the dishwasher. You're going, oh, I don't want to have this conversation right now. It's going to be uncomfortable. I'm irritated. If you approach that conversation with, well, let's see what's here. Let's have this conversation and maybe I'll gain a new perspective.

Maybe this will make us connect more. Maybe I'll hear a blind spot about myself that will be valuable or I'll be able to evolve and be a better partner. This thing just will evolve in every area of our life. And so I think that quote was really powerful for people who are really connected because it gave this concrete example, this thing of, here's one thing that's happening in life.

Look at it through window number one and window number two and look how different life looks. And the lesson there is that the thing happening in life, look at it through window number one and window number two and look how different life looks. And the lesson there is that the thing happening in life is still the same, but the way in which you look at it totally changes how you think and you feel about it and therefore changes how you experience your entire life. And thank you for sharing that. And it makes me think of the discussion that we had on your podcast where I was bringing up astronauts that I'd interviewed and the overview effect and things like that. And it makes me think of the discussion that we had on your podcast, where I was bringing up astronauts that I'd interviewed and the

overview effect and things like that. And I couldn't help but chuckle as I was hearing you talk about that, thinking about the two astronauts who have been stuck on the space station now for 60 days and are now finding they're probably going to be up there for another six months. And it turns out I was at Naval Academy Alumni Association meeting last night. And one of the gentlemen who was in the audience is a classmate of Sunny Williams. Who's one of the two astronauts and was saying that they got to have a talk with her during the first or second week that she was up there, about 50 members of her class. And one of the things that she brought up to them was that as they were getting ready

for this mission, they were worried about having too much weight. So they were taking things off storage. And one of the things that they removed since it was going to be a short duration mission was all their personal belongings and change of clothes. And so I'm thinking about these two people who are trapped up there. They don't even have any of the pictures of their family, change of clothes, everything else. I can't even imagine how you do laundry up there. Probably can't. And it got me thinking about what you were talking about with this perspective, because they could be thinking about this as I was only supposed to be up here a week and view the rest of it as a torture chamber,

or they can look at it as I have the opportunity to spend eight months in space that I would have never in a million years thought I was going to get the opportunity to do. And it changes their complete viewpoint that they have on their situation. Anyway, I digress. Yeah, no, it's absolutely, that's a great example. And so true. I hope that they're experiencing it in that way. Well, knowing Sunny, I believe she couldn't wait to get back up there.

So I'm sure she's just loving every single moment she gets up there. Corey, one of the areas I really wanted to dive into with you is something you cover in the book around impulsive behavior, which whether we realize it or not ends up driving big and small parts of our lives. And something you write about in the book is you say, taking power over our thoughts creates a spaciousness inside our minds that lets us be more intentional about our actions which I completely agree with. This is good because how we

act is who we are. How we act is who we are. We certainly don't want to let our impulses dictate who our future selves turn out to be because that would result in a rather animalistic chaos. Man, I love that. Can you unpack that a little bit? Sure. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Ultimately, if we are in this unexamined state of mind and we're allowing our impulses to dictate everything that we're doing in life, so that looks like you are in traffic, you're, you get irritated, so you yell at someone and you try and cut them off and fight. Then you're hungry and you instead of, well, this cheeseburger was good, I'll have three of them. And then you see someone else that has something, you go pick a fight with somebody, whatever it is, just these animalistic impulses that everyone has. If we tamp those down like 20%, that's the frequency which most people are living at.

They're just living this impulsive behavior, not considering what they're doing, what they're saying, how they're acting, what the long-term repercussions are gonna be of their actions. And I love thinking about this stuff. This is probably, I play at least like a dozen games of chess a day because I like thinking about

that type of long-term theory like that. But if we look at our own actions in that way, it's incredible. And the more that we recognize that each of those decisions that we make in the present, what we say, what we do, how we're being in the world, like how are we showing up, even what is the feeling that we're bringing into the space that we're in?

Those things have a huge impact on us, on who we are, on the people around us. And the more that we're in tune and conscious of those things, the more that we can craft who we are and who we're becoming. Because if we're living in this impulsive way, it's just chaos. And we will continue to just move as this chaos vector

into the future, and we won't have any say or control in who we're becoming. So we'll look up at our lives and we'll go, oh yeah, I'm still unhealthy and irritated and frustrated and things aren't going my way. And generally a person will then blame chance or the universe or other people on that instead of themselves because they don't have the self-awareness to take responsibility. And the lack of self-awareness is why they're being impulsive to begin with.

And so if we can be more conscious of who we are and what we're doing, then each of those decisions that we'll make will have this knock-on effect. It's like these dominoes falling. And by having that intentionality of being more thoughtful, more peaceful, more kind, more generous, more clear in what you're doing in life, the more that's going to create this momentum of that moving into your future. So by being present, we can really craft who we're becoming. And that's one of the things that I said in my first book,

Now Is The Way, is that you are not your thoughts. You are the thoughts you turn into action. And so if we think about that as a mantra, we can really get clarity on what I'm talking about here is that each thing that we do, it doesn't matter. We're all going to think and feel and have certain things arise in our minds that would be, to take it back to Buddhist language, unwholesome. But if we choose to not indulge those things and focus on this intentional way of living, it will just continue to evolve what we're becoming through our actions more and more.

Well, I'm going to keep going down this theme because you're really talking about the way that our actions manifest themselves, determine the outcomes we ultimately achieve. But that also leads us to this topic of self-fulfilling prophecies. And everywhere I turn today, I hear manifesting this manifesting that. And when we do that, we're really talking about the ability to visualize our goal, think our way through it, work hard, bring the vision to life, which is all great and good. But what people don't really talk about

and what you cover in the book is the opposing truth. And that is, we also have the power to create the reality that we do not desire in our minds. And when we go down this path of creating this alternate reality, we create this massive tension in our lives that create such a limit on us achieving what we want to achieve.

How do you break away from that manifestation? Yeah, that's a great question. It's a matter of recognizing the story as a story. I think so, for example, if you are, let's say you're going to go to a social event and you're anxious and you feel awkward at home beforehand, then you start getting a little uncomfortable, a little weird. You think, oh, what if people aren't going to like me? I'm going to, it's going to be uncomfortable.

What if I'm alone at some point? It's going to be super awkward and don't know what I'm wearing is going to look good, whatever I'm there and so on. You start believing that narrative and the more of you go and you arrive at this place, you have that story in your mind. And so therefore, what's actually happening is you are acting more awkward, you are being weird.

Your energy that you're bringing is tight and closed off and you're not being yourself. And so the people that you engage with won't want to talk to you. They won't find it pleasurable to engage with you because you're signaling all that stuff that you're fearing. So you created that story in your mind. So that's the negative manifestation of generating this self-fulfilling prophecy. But if we're in those moments where, let's say,

we're back at the house now and we're about to go to the social event, we've got the anxiety, we're thinking, I don't know, people aren't gonna talk to me, it's gonna be weird. Noticing that chatter happening in the mind, recognizing the arising negative thinking habits, the story that you're starting to spin up and believe in, and taking a moment to pause and again, let's look at what's here.

What are the facts? Well, you probably know a couple of those people. You're going there because you want to go there in most cases. Let's go there with an open mind and let's go there with curiosity. Let's explore. Let's see who's there. Let's see what interesting things we can learn, what perspectives on life we can learn, what experiences, what stories we can hear.

Let's just go in there with the truth is that we don't know what it's going to feel like. We don't know what everyone's energy is going to be. We don't know this and that. And let's just move into it one step at a time and experience it as opposed to going into it with all of this preconceived notion, all of the story of how it's going to be. And by doing that and approaching the moment with curiosity and disrupting that story

in your mind of negativity, then you're able to step into these things. And let's be honest, you might still feel a little, a little anxious because social anxiety is certainly a real thing, but you're doing, it's calm, it's quiet, it's just in there, and you'll get comfortable and you'll warm up in just a matter of five minutes

or something like that. But moving into those spaces with curiosity, then it allows you to be yourself, and then people will wanna talk to you. They will wanna hang around you, and you avoid creating that negative story that you had imagined. Thank you so much for sharing that.

And I wanna jump way forward in the book to chapter 14. And this is a chapter where you're talking about inner trauma or painful events that have happened to us in life. And that if we're going to heal others, we have to heal ourselves first. I have been through a lot of this, as you and I discussed, and I'm a person who had a lot of trauma early on in childhood

and then my life, and I ended up suppressing it because I thought that was the macho thing to do. And when I was in the military, the last thing you wanted to do was to go see a shrink or something, we were told, because it could impact your deployments, your security clearances, et cetera. And what I found over time was that by not dealing with these things earlier on in my life, it caused me in many ways to be unable to be empathetic

to others because I wasn't being empathetic to myself. And I think that's what you're really trying to talk about in this chapter. able to be empathetic to others because I wasn't being empathetic to myself. And I think that's what you're really trying to talk about in this chapter. Is that a good way to think about it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's one half of it is certainly, yeah, the way generally, if you don't have the, in this case, which we're talking about here with repressing things and not addressing

and you're the suffering that you're feeling. If you don't have the connective tissue because you've shut off your own connection to your emotional intelligence and your sense of a felt sense of the world, then you're not going to be able to connect to that inside whenever you're speaking to others. So therefore if you're shut down be able to connect to that inside whenever you're speaking to others So therefore if you're shut down and someone else is going through something Even if you look for that connection inside to go, let's give them some empathy You can't find it because you've intentionally severed the wires in the circuitry to have that connection so it's very important for not only for yourself for the people in your life to be able to do that type of inner work and restore the emotional connection to oneself,

to work through whatever traumas or negative experiences that you've had. So therefore you're not incapable of connecting and understanding that and seeing that in other people. Of course, it's very important to do that so that you feel well as well. And then also another side note to that is that generally what happens is this reenactments will happen too.

If you're not addressing these aspects of self, you will find the patterns that created the initial suffering in you and you'll reenact them again and again until you essentially shine the light into those patterns of behaving and speaking to people and treating yourself, where you see the clarity of what's actually going on, and then you're able to work through

and purge those things. Another beautiful reason to do this work on oneself is that then you can actually influence people in a positive way. People, whenever they start doing some of their work, they generally get really excited about it because they go, because they feel better. It's like they've been having this, they've been carrying this 50 pound anvil their entire life in their stomach and now they feel the weight of it removing a little bit so they're springing up and they're going,

oh, wow, I feel good, I feel light. And they wanna tell everyone about it. And they say, hey, you should do this. Have you read this? Have you listened to this podcast? Have you tried this practice? Hey, you need to go to the therapist because you're just wanting to share the joy

of how you feel, which is great. But people aren't extrinsically motivated. They're intrinsically motivated. They need to have a reason for themselves to pursue these things to make them feel better or well or whatever the thing might be. And so in that chapter, I also talk about something that healing yourself is an important way to heal others

because whenever someone that you saw in your life system over time sees the change in you, and they see, oh, for example, I'll just make this up. But to say John was always very kind and steady and clear-minded, but not very emotive in life and they've noticed, oh, over the last year, he's become a lot, he seems a lot more just relaxed and open in a lot more, just a lot warmer in a different way than he was before. They start to wonder about that. And then that's the inspiration that they go, I see this change is possible.

He just seems comfortable in his skin and happier and more at ease now. Like I want some of that in my life. And so then that will, is what will drive a person to go seek that for themselves. And in a lot of cases, they may ask you, Hey, what have you been doing? You look good, you feel good, what's going on? And then you can tell them, I started going to a therapist, and they go, really, okay, well, maybe it's not so taboo. After all, maybe I should try that.

Now, I love that answer, because I think I went through a period of my life where I was chasing all the wrong extrinsic things. And one of those was trying to constantly compare myself to others. And so I was constantly living my life in the gap. And now that I've tried to shift my entire life's focus, I really am trying to live more in the gains in life and realizing that the only person I can compare myself to is a past version of myself. And it makes your life so much better.

I can tell you when you're doing that because you're authentically being you and you're not, you're not trying to compare yourself to anyone else or be someone else. And this kind of brings me to the last section that I wanted to talk to you about. And this is the fifth component of your book, which you titled An Appetite for Possible Things. And the first chapter of this section

is all about redefining yourself often. And this is something that in my own book I wrote pretty heavily on. I called it brand reinvention. But I think we're talking about the same thing. And it's interesting because as I was researching my chapter, I ran across the work of Dan Schwabel, not sure if you know who he is, but he's a New York Times bestselling author.

He's a partner and a researcher at a place called Future Workplace. And similar to you and I, he's interviewed a lot of people in his case, 1200, what he calls remarkable people. And what he found was observing all of them. There was a prevailing characteristic shared amongst them all. And that's the consistent pursuit of reinvention. And I was hoping in your own words, you could describe why this is so important.

Oh, of course, yeah. We get stuck in these ways of thinking about who we are or who we have to be. We think that generally because of the patterns of our life take shape in a certain way, that we just fall into kind of the general motion of what's going on, what our behavior will be like, the type of people that we talk to, the things that we do. And all of those things are how we identify ourselves of who we are.

But the issue is that we generally have this sense of who we are and who we are allowed to be that develops because of the comfort and the familiarity that's created with how we think of ourselves and how other people think about us. The reality is that life is always evolving. Nature is always evolving. Society and culture are always evolving. We're always evolving, right?

Internally anyway. And if we stay stuck in this fixed image of who we have to be, this representative that is playing the role of me for the world, as opposed to what you really are feeling inside or what's driving you, then you're going to lose your enthusiasm for life. You're going to lose that power, that energy that comes from you do things that make you feel alive, or if you do the things that you're passionate about, that you're excited about. So revisiting who you are and what you're doing, and taking stock and just doing some,

even if you like, a bit of self-clarification of what am I actually interested in right now, as opposed to what I was interested in. How can I do more of that? What are the things that give me that energy that make me get that boost and feel like I'm levitating? I get fooled with kind of this zest of life. I want to do more of that. Maybe I want to present myself differently, like in social situations. I don't have to be this the way that I was.

I can redefine and be this person because this is how I feel now. But so many of us stay locked because there's this fear that if we go off script, if we challenge the familiarity that others have with us or who they expect us to be or who we expect that we have to be in these situations, then just the more shut down and the more calcified and the more bored that we're gonna feel. So being able to see who we wanna be, let go of the old behaviors in the way

that we've thought about, we have to be in the past, and allow ourselves to evolve and continue to emerge in the future and the present, every moment will keep us in the state of evolution, of growth, of change, of inspiration. And most importantly, it will keep us in this sense of energized meaning building for ourselves as we continue to move through our journey of experience. Well, thank you so much for sharing that.

And your book is such a deep and thought provoking essay into how you can better your life. If there was one thing you would want to leave listeners with about the book or one key takeaway, what would it be, Corey? I think it would be that you are capable of a lot more than you give yourself credit for. And I would like a reader to just experiment with that and lower the stakes. Don't make it this big test of self. Don't make it this moment where you're going to feel fear that you're going to judge who you are,

what you're capable of. But try exceeding your own expectations about what you can do in any area of your life. It doesn't have to be big, it can be small. But just do that and notice how it's possible. Once you approach these moments in your life with a bit of playfulness, a little bit of curiosity, a lack of assumption, You can see that you are so much more powerful,

so much more able to create change, to grow, to reach the goals that you have in your life than you allow yourself to believe right now. And by experimenting with that, what will happen is that you'll discover that's true. Well, I love ending on that. And Corey, thank you so much for being here. And I'm going to just put out a teaser there.

If you want to hear more from Corey and I am actually going to be in Austin. After this episode comes out in November to do a book signing and talk. And Corey has actually been kind enough to agree to moderate the events. You'll get to hear both of us talk and learn more about both of us. And that happens, I think it's Sunday, November the 13th, if I have the date correct. But well, Corey, thank you so much for being here today and what an incredible book. I highly encourage my audience to buy a copy. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun. I loved being here, your questions, your insights, your perspectives. They were awesome. And just say it was a real joy. So thank you so much, John. Wow. What an insightful conversation that was with Corey Allen. His work, especially his brand new book, Brave New You, is a game changer for anyone seeking to unlock their potential and to infuse their life with deeper meaning. Corey's wisdom on mindset, intentional living, and breaking free from limiting beliefs is something that we can all use to make our lives better.

If today's episode resonated with you, then please take a moment to give it a five-star rating and review. It helps us to continue bringing impactful conversations like the one with Corey to you every single week. For those of you who are wishing to dive deeper into Corey's work, including his book, Brave New You, links can be found in the show notes at passionstruck.com. If you're purchasing any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show, I'd appreciate it if you use the links on our site.

It helps us to support the podcast and keep it free for all our listeners. Don't forget, you can find videos of our episodes on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our clips channel at PassionStruck Clips. And you can check out our advertiser deals and discount codes at one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. And if you're not already following me, you can find me at John R. Miles on all the social platforms.

And don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter titled Live Intentionally, where we dive into a new courage exercise every single week to help you strengthen your courage muscles and live a more intentional life. Now, before we wrap up, let me tell you about our next amazing episode. It's one you absolutely don't wanna miss. I'll be joined by Nassim Rochette,

a woman whose life was changed forever on May 21st, a woman whose life was changed forever on May 21st, 2018, when she survived a traumatic accident. Through that life altering experience, Nassim found resilience and purpose and now celebrates Unbreakable Day, a symbol of thriving in the face of adversity. We'll learn how she turned that moment into a powerful mission to inspire, and you'll walk away with lessons on how you can change your life and approach your own challenges. I had seen myself in the mirror and I knew I was unrecognizable.

I couldn't walk. I couldn't see. My eye had been cut open. Pay it forward. I could barely open my eyes. I couldn't hold a coffee cup. Like how could I pay it forward? And it really added a lot of micro recovery. But also,

at the same time, hearing that it was a miracle, it did two things. One, it added the stress of, well, I miraculously survived. I don't deserve help. I don't deserve to be off from work. And all of the kindness that people wanted to impart on me, all of that kindness was like a debt in my ledger. But at the same time, that little idea that I had to pay it forward just seeped into my brain. And every day I thought, I only paid forward. What do I do? What does that mean? What does that look like?

Remember, we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those that you love and care about. And if you found Corey's episode inspirational, then definitely share it with someone who could use the advice that he gave here today. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share this show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion struck. you