"Everyday Is a New Day to Be a Better Version of Yourself"

"Believe The Dream"

About Today's Guest

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, Duct Tape Selling, The Commitment Engine, and SEO for Growth.

His newest work, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business taps into the wisdom of 19th-century transcendentalist literature and the author’s own 30-year entrepreneurial journey to challenge today’s entrepreneur to remain fiercely self-reliant while chasing their own version of success.

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The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur Book

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The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur is a collection of 366 meditations designed to both inspire and challenge the reader through a practice of daily soulful reflection. The book is anchored with readings and quotes from some of the original and most impactful entrepreneurial writing ever created. Authors and essayists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and Walt Whitman encouraged individuals to trust and develop the gifts that only they could bring to the world.

Best-selling author of Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch curated this rich vein of literature and used his thirty-year entrepreneurial journey to create a work that is inspirational, timely, and relevant for today’s entrepreneur or anyone who seeks to live a more fulfilling and joyful life.

The book challenges you to think deeply about why you are doing the work you are doing and living the life you are living.

"What Is The Whisper That Will Not Leave You Alone?"

Today's episode is a solo show for this moment in time. While the word is still on a global pause, I invite you today to start moving ahead as you plant the seeds for tomorrow.

There are many moments when we look back and see how our seemingly small choices move us either closer to a life we love to life or shift us away from what we hoped - we and our life - would be.

Here is the reflection sheet for today's episode. ReflectionSheet_108

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Success Is Generous

Today’s Guest

Susie Moore is a former Silicon Valley Sales Director turned Life Coach and Advice Columnist.

Her work has been featured on the Today show, Oprah, Business Insider, The Huffington Post, Forbes, Time Inc, Marie Claire and she’s the resident Life Coach Columnist for Greatist. Susie’s work and insights have been shared by celebrities and thought leaders including Arianna Huffington, Paulo Coelho, Kris Jenner, and Sara Blakely.

Her first book What If It Does Work Out? was named by Entrepreneur as one of the 8 Business Books Entrepreneurs Must Read to Dominate Their Industry.

Susie lives in Miami with her husband Heath and Yorkshire

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Staying Centered, Creating Community and Moving Forward

So the show notes today are the resources that are helping me get through these unprecedented and challenging times and I hope they help you too.

How To Stay Updated Without The Overwhelm

The New York Times is offering free updates on the virus and you can find them here:

Books on Creating More Revenue Streams and How To Make A Change

Entrepreneurial You by Dorie Clark

Pivot by Jenny Blake

Free books by Matt Church 

Meditation

Insight Timer 

Petra’s Favorite TV Show

Schitt’s Creek

Petra’s Positivity Playlist

Get Up And Dance

Community Building

Jon Giswold 

Trina Gray 

Finding People To Help You With Your Business

Fiverr 

Upwork

Jenny Blake and Podcasting

10 Lessons In Three Years of Podcasting – The Pivot Podcast Episode 100 

Connect with my awesome podcast editor: James Ede of Be Heard Now who offers a free trial episode for new clients.

 Previous Podcast Episodes That May Be Helpful

 Chantal Broderick 

Shannon Fable

Fantastic Podcast by Chalene Johnson on Creating Revenue Today

Be well, be safe and I will be here as long as need be to share strategies and ideas to help you not only recover but come out on the other side stronger than before. 

A short meditation to help you find the calm in the chaos.

“Stop the Swirl, Access the Quiet, Tap into the Whispers, Share with the World”

Show Notes

This week’s show is inspired by my recent experience at the Oprah Winfrey 2020 Vision Tour. Below are a few questions and insights from the day. I encourage you to print out these questions and take some time after this episode to get quiet, turn inward and listen to the whispers.

1. What do you have to do to get closer to a place to doing what you want to do?
2. What is it you really want to do with the rest of your life?
3. What allows you to expand versus fit in?
4. What is it that you can do to live out the truest, highest, expression of you?
5. What is it you are afraid of?
6. What is the thought under your fear?
7. What do you want more of in this life?
8. What do you want less of in this life?
9. Where do you let yourself down?
10. What lights you up?
11. What would your life look like if you removed the word “When” from your life?
12. What thought is standing between you and your dreams?
13. What thoughts empower you to live into your best life?
14. How would your life change if I looked at my life through the lens of intention?

Download your FREE Confidence Catalyst Reflection Book Here

Confidence is Trusting That You Will Show Up for Yourself

Show Notes

In this solo episode I walk you through a few of the steps that I take my clients through when working with them around the feelings of confidence. A few of the highlight takeaways are:

1. Know your strengths and write them down on a post it note or index card. Place the cards and notes where you can see them throughout the day. These reminders will help you remember all the gifts that you already have inside of you
2. Stop looking outside of yourself for answers
3. When talking to yourself always treat yourself as you would treat those you love
4. Begin your day with anticipation and end the day with gratitude

The challenging thing is that we have to act confidently before we feel and believe in our own confidence. And to act more confidently we need to focus on our strengths versus our gaps.

The Five Reasons That People Often Lack Confidence Are:

1. Setting expectations too high
2. Self judgement
3. The Fear of failure
4. Lack of experience
5. Lack of a skill

The Circle of Confidence happens when:

1. We assess the areas we need to strengthen
2. We do the work and begin to practice
3. We stop after a few days or week to assess
4. We modify our actions – keeping what is working and tweaking what could be done differently to get us closer to our goals
5. We repeat

The difference between those that so and those that don’t has very little to do with talent and a lot to do with the belief that we will show up for ourselves, without judging ourselves and simply doing the best we can each and everyday.

Mentioned in This Show

TED Talk Embrace The Remix

Character Strength Survey 

Downloadable Handout on Confidence 

Movement Can Be a Life Preserver

About Today’s Guest

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University who specializes in understanding the mind-body connection. As a pioneer in the field of "science-help," her mission is to translate insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support personal well-being and strengthen communities.

She is the best-selling author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress.

Through the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism, she helped create Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training, a program now taught around the world that helps individuals strengthen their empathy, compassion, and self-compassion.

You might know her from her TED talk, "How to Make Stress Your Friend," which is one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, with over 20 million views.

Her new book, The Joy of Movement, explores why physical exercise is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

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The Joy of Movement

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TED Talk

Show Notes

Kelly McGonigal is the author of a game-changing book called The Joy of Movement and if you are in the fitness industry this is a must-read. We dive in by talking how movement has helped both and Kelly and myself with anxiety, and the importance of embracing movement as a gift that can help us in so many ways, including depression, anxiety, loneliness and finding community.

Kelly discovered very early on that exercise made her feel good but it wasn't until she was in college and graduate school that she really understood how important movement would be to her life. It was moving her body that gave her an embodied sense of hope and courage and it was movement that allowed her to start a workout feeling anxious, stressed out, and judging herself and by the end of the workout, she would feel as though she could take on the world.

In this episode, we discuss how exercise can help us deal with feelings such as anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief. We also look at the research that is showing how exercise goes much deeper than just the endorphin rush that we get when we're working out. Kelly also shares how exercise changes our brain in ways that make us more resilient to stress which in turn makes us braver.

I ask Kelly what her dreams are for this book and she hopes that this book will change the conversation around movement, to move it away from the myopic conversations around calories and tracking steps. She is hoping that we all get to understand that our bodies are our best vehicles for experiencing so many human joys and it is the vessel that will take us forward into our dream life.

We move on to talk about music. Kelly shares that music is a universal human joy. We are reminded how people love listening to music, love making music and how people love moving to music. The research also reveals that when people move together, they form friendships and it strengthens relationships. She goes on to reveal that research is demonstrating that music has a much more powerful effect on mood and on strengthening social relationships when we move our body to the music rather than when we just listen to it.

Kelly and I talk about the panic attacks I used to have and how exercise helps us create a new relationship with the physical symptoms of stress or anxiety. When we exercise, our heart rate increases, we breathe faster, we sweat and we blush, which feels a lot like a panic attack. The research shows that one of the reasons that exercise helps with panic attacks is that it starts to color the meaning of those symptoms differently. This is a great piece of information for anyone out there struggling with anxiety and panic.

Kelly’s book is full of heartwarming stories about people whose lives have been changed by movement. No matter whether she was talking to rowers or runners, dancers or weightlifters or Cross Fitters or Gardeners, the common them that came through was the feeling of interdependence and how much we rely on one another to survive. This is important for fitness professionals who need to know their value in the world, along with the opportunities that they are creating for people to experience themselves and create communities in new ways.

Kelly hopes that the heartwarming stories found within her book will help people see the possibilities that are present in movement. It's not about finding a workout that you like enough that you can stand it so that you will lose weight. This is a completely different thing. This is about embracing our full potential as human beings and enjoying life and participating in life as we also find community.

Kelly shares that any form of movement tends to make people feel better. It's called the feel-better effect. One of the things that exercise seems to produce what is called an achievement sensation. This is a physical sensation of having done something good or worthwhile or meaningful or difficult that then transcends into whatever you face next. So as in your workouts, you feel as though you have achieved something challenging it has a ripple effect into your life.

I share my journey to healing a broken heart of five years ago and how it was being on a yoga mat, and taking walks in Central Park that allowed me to slowly and steadily heal from grief. The stories in Kelly’s book reminds us that no matter what your age or what you are dealing with, movement can be a life raft.

Kelly and I share our own workout stories and the importance of instructors and coaches making us feel seen. One of the side effects of movement is we become socially vulnerable because we enter that physiological and neurochemical state of being open to connection. So if you are an instructor or a coach it is important to remember that you to have an extremely powerful impact on the people in front of you for good or for bad, hopefully for good.

Kelly goes on to share that writing this book has given her the complete freedom to share that this is the most important thing in her life. She believes, as do I that movement has the power to change lives and build communities. I hope you get to experience this too.

"Let It Be Easy, Let It Be Fun"

About Today's Guest

Jenny Blake is the founder of Pivot Method, a growth strategy company that helps forward-thinking individuals and organizations map what’s next.

She is an international keynote speaker, and the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One, which won the Axiom Best Business Books Award in the careers category. Jenny also hosts the popular Pivot Podcast, which CNBC listed among 6 podcasts to make you smarter about your career, and Entrepreneur selected as one of the top 20 female-hosted business podcasts.

After two years at a technology start-up in Silicon Valley, followed by five years at Google in Training and Career Development, Jenny moved to New York City in 2011 where she has been running her own consulting business in the years since, helping innovative organizations like Google, Microsoft, and CHANEL incorporate the Pivot Method into their global career development and manager training programs.

Her motto: if change is the only constant, let's get better at it. Today you can find Jenny at PivotMethod.com and on her Pivot Podcast.

Stay In Touch With Jenny

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Jenny’s Podcast

FREE Founder Time Course by Jenny 

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Show Notes

For my first interview on Your Yes Life Now Podcast, I had to invite my dear friend Jenny Blake back onto the show. As the author of Pivot, she was the perfect guest for this episode.

We begin the conversation with the question “what are we saying yes to?” Jenny shares that saying yes for her is also saying I she is her first priority and that means that her health, her wellness, her rest, her space, her sanity is her first priority – a lesson we can all learn to be better at. The yes for Jenny and her yes life is about honoring who she is and giving herself permission to say no so that she’s really clear and joyful when she does say yes.

We talk about burnout and how quickly it can loom upon us if we are not careful. Jenny shares that having awareness of our own tendencies is so crucial. And then what she offers for us when we do find ourselves in a state of burnout, is to flood ourselves with self-compassion. So instead of the self-talk that burnout is a problem, flip the conversation to be able to say to yourself -  I can see that you've been working so hard and I see how much you've done. She goes on to share that If she is worried about someone else's wellness more than her own and she hasn't yet done her basics of movement, hydration, eating well, sleep, then she reminds herself to rewind so that she can stay full to help and love those around her.

Jenny’s life mantra is “Let it be easy, let it be fun.” And for her, this is a lens she uses when making decisions about her life and work.

As this show was recorded at the end of 2019 we talk about our words for the upcoming year. Mine is Financial Freedom, which moved us into a conversation about money, worth and income. We speak about money being energy and that if we allow ourselves to take the restrictions and the fears and the worries away and we allow full abundance to flow through us, we can serve others, we can serve the world, we can create more, we can reach more, we can donate to charities and we can earn more and share more.

We move onto the topic of time and Jenny invites us to question what we have been told about traditional working hours and what it takes to be successful. Jenny wants 2020 to be a year where she can simplify. She shares that she has just blocked off her calendar in 2020. She has blocked out the fourth week of every month along with I blocking off Mondays and Fridays. She is going to experiment with compressing her time and elevating her focus with an estimated total of 1000 working hours in 2020.

Jenny’s word is luxurious and we both share that our words for 2020 feel a little uncomfortable and we invite you to pick a word for 2020 that is a stretch word – one that makes you feel a little pushed and challenged.

Jenny is both spontaneous and also a genius as systems. She also has a mantra that comes from the agile development word and that is - each time you repeat a task, take one step toward automating it. What that means is saving yourself the time. Being kind to your future self. If you find yourself writing an email, giving directions to your home, or any task that you can anticipate you're going to do move it into a system that can be replicated.

Jenny and I both believe that you can be successful on your own terms and that it takes courage and perseverance to figure out what works for you and your life and on your terms. With that as we move into 2020, both Jenny and I wish you a journey that is easy and fun -and has systems in place to help you out along the way.

Mentioned In This Show

The Seat of The Soul by Gary Zukav

It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver

Creating Money by Sanaya Roman

"Your Dreams Were Given To You"

So here we are, a new year, a new decade, the 100^th episode and a new podcast name “Your Yes Life Now!” So I thought if there was anything I could share with you, that I have experienced recently about what it takes to live your yes life now, your best life now, not your perfect life now – it would be my DJ Journey.

The journey began on August 18^th, 2018, the day of my book launch for The Perfection Detox in NYC. During the event, I had a Q and A, and was asked, “What’s next?” My answer was that I would love to explore DJ’ing, and right then and there, three people came up to me with the sole goal to help me make that dream become a reality.

The journey was long, humbling, frustrating and exhilarating. It is one of the most challenging adventures I've undertaken and during the year where I was practicing and mentoring under the eyes and ears of Mike Babbitt, from Yes Fitness Music, I had many ah-ha! Moments and many more moments when I wanted to quit.

In this episode, I share some of the lessons I learned that can be applied to both work and life and what it took for me to keep going when all I wanted to do was give up.

Life Lessons From The DJ Booth:

1. Bad habits set in early. So review often and fine-tune and Up-level as needed.
2. Number two, liking music and knowing your music are two very different animals.
3. Three to pursue a big audacious goal, you need two things outside of you:
   • A mentor, time-trusted and someone who believes in you.
   • An advocate who sees your vision and opens a door to an opportunity that holds you accountable.
4. The time you are most likely to give up is right before you have earned the wisdom to know that with effort you are capable of doing the work and making your dream a reality.
5. Music in your headphones sounds very different on a big speaker, because sometimes the headphones just lie.
6. Dreams, curiosity, and learning keep you young.
7. Technology is your gateway drug to creativity if you use it correctly.

Then a week before I was about to DJ the V.I.P party in Toronto for over 500 people, my second and greatest lesson appeared. I'd gone down to Washington for a tune-up mentorship session. For the past six or so months, I'd been practicing for hundreds of hours, but now looking back – I hadn't been practicing, I had been perfecting a set. Note for note, transition to transition, but that wasn't DJ’ing, that was curating a playlist.

During my session, I realized I was no longer spontaneous. I had lost all my curiosity and I had lost all my intuitive skills for trying to be perfect. I had forgotten that nothing worth doing is easy and that perfection will kill your creativity. Life just as a DJ set is best lived and created when being in the moment, and reacting to what is versus what do you have planned for.

It was a disaster and I only had 5 days before the big event. I have never been so scared, and have never wanted to quit more – ever. And so what I spent the rest of that week doing, in the five days left before the event, was being in the moment, mixing songs in different ways, trying different intros, outros, fades, beat matching, not beat matching, fading out, fading in, echoes, reverbs. Not being perfect but working with the music in the moment.

And then the evening arrived, and it was magical. It was messy and spontaneous and the dance floor guided me the entire evening. It was a conversation,  and a relationship between me, the music and the dancefloor.

The dance floor was packed until midnight, and what it taught me is that it's about being in the moment, not being in your head. Leadership, your voice, your course, your new podcast, your new keynote, your new class, your new romance, it doesn't happen in your head, it happens in your heart. It happens through curiosity, it through connection. It happens through doing the work. It happens from your failures. It happens from feeling that fear and recognizing that this is a sign that you need to lean in, not back away.

And that's why I have changed the name of this podcast from The Perfection Detox to Your Yes Life Now! Not your perfect life now, not your flawless life – your YES life. I’m excited to hear what you will say “YES!” to this year.