Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
we as people
have in some ways convinced ourselves
that we are willing to stay inside of
suffering that we know
rather than facing the possibility of
something new because the knowns of that
existing suffering feel predictable
and life wasn't meant for suffering i
mean like
it doesn't mean that you're not going to
have to go through hard times or bad
times but you can decide to push away
from it the challenge in pushing away
though is that that safe harbor is
surrounded on all sides by fear
you are not going to eliminate fear just
because you decide to be courageous
you're going to become prepared to face
your fear
which is the thing that's necessary in
that journey that has to go through it
in order to become
so we have to face our fear or we will
stay stuck we will stay inside of this
familiar place the comfort zone the
suffering we know at the expense of who
we could become
dave hollis welcome back to the show man
thank you for having me back tom so good
to be here so good to have you i read
the new book built through courage
absolutely fantastic
in it is a really powerful idea which is
basically the word built like that we
can create something of ourselves but
what i liked about the context of the
book is it's really
in fact i'll sum it up with a quote that
you put in the book which i think is
fantastic from tyler durden yeah which
is
it is not until we've lost everything
that we can do anything yeah
what does that mean and how does that
become the foundation of the book
well i think there's a
through line of change as a thing that's
a constant in our lives there's change
that we choose we've
become fed up with the status quo or
normal being okay with being okay we
decide that we're going to finally
create the courageous first steps in
making that change a thing that gets us
closer to who we're meant to be or the
version of what becoming looks like for
us and then there's the change that
chooses us
in that
we think we have some control that
illusion
is a thing that we can connect to until
we wake up one day and there's a
diagnosis there's a job that no longer
exists a relationship that ends
and in a world where
i had as the pillar one of the biggest
pillars of my identity husband to rachel
the change choosing me in this the end
of our marriage was something that
i now didn't know who i was in the
absence of not being who i'd been
and in a world where we were also
working together
that identity of what i did
and what i thought i'd do for the rest
of my life was something that in a
single swoop was pulled out and now
required that i
in having been handed this blank piece
of paper
go through the work of trying to fill
out what next looked like
and
i say in the book and i've said it
plenty of times it's both parts
exhilarating
and terrifying at the beginning it's way
more terrifying than it is exhilarating
but that's part of what courage ends up
being a required ingredient for turning
the terrifying into the exhilarating
because
when you realize other there is no
control
there's only the way that we respond to
the circumstances that life presents or
the way that we in choosing change
manufacture
new
events or a new new road a new map that
we ultimately end up sailing off of
that still because it ends up being
different than something we've
previously been familiar with or gotten
the hang of or have comfort with
requires courage to step into it
it's the whole idea of having to lose
things first i find really interesting
and i don't know if i remember when
fight club came out and the way that it
felt and the the sort of i don't know it
made me feel more attached to it but i
lived in the building
that he in the beginning he showcases
and he describes the building that's i
don't know if he intentionally took it
from the brochure but it's so specific
to how they marketed that building yeah
my guess is that he did yeah
and so he's describing a building i
actually lived in in like all the you
know ways about how modernity has sort
of trapped us in this thing and then he
blows it up and so there was a sense of
i don't know it was a real cultural
moment
and
you going through a divorce so publicly
has that same kind of interesting ring
of like and now let me show you the
process of building up so if fight club
takes a far darker look at you know that
the process of creative destruction
your life and the book specifically is
this really interesting take on the
beautiful side of creative or the the
creative opportunities that come from
destruction yeah
walk me through like as things are
falling down around you i'm sure your
first instinct is to try to hold it
together when did you first get the
sense of maybe actually letting this
fall down
is the right place to start
it took a while to be honest because i
initially was very much in this
well let's do the work to fix it can we
is there some way that we can keep this
thing that has been put on the table
from happening
and it was evident very early on that oh
this is a decision that has been made
there is no negotiating as it were
and
acceptance was a thing that took time
for me uh and and the reality was in
part one of the first casualties
in my life was my imagination
because i
in this thing that i didn't think could
happen having happened
the vision that i'd had for so long of
what the rest of my life would look like
and who i'd be with and where we'd live
and the way that we do work
it being gone
made my ability to see what is not even
five years from now what is a year from
now i just i had a compromised
imagination it was gone
and so then you had a sense of that loss
oh yeah no i was acutely aware of this
inability for me to forecast anything
beyond what was now a survival survival
mode of sorts of i just got to get
through tomorrow like i was in
deep grief just deep grief and in
that sadness of now letting go of what
i'd previously thought things might look
like
i was trying to find something that i
might connect to that would allow me to
re-cultivate or re-spark that
imagination and the place i had to start
to be honest was
really getting intimate with my fear
because most of why my imagination had
been
lost was because there were so much fear
around
trying to figure out something that i'd
never contemplated so that becomes like
a screaming voice in your head that
stops you from seeing things yeah well i
mean i ended up having this conversation
with fear where i was trying to
understand what
is it what are the things that are
inside the reason you feel the need to
have this conversation is it's ever
present and you don't like it it's ever
present and it is 100 inhibitor from me
being able to see anything hope-filled
it's it's hard for me to see the
exhilarating part of the choose your own
adventure narrative that i am suggesting
i believe exists but i can't connect to
right so sit me down in that moment so
you so i've known you before divorce
through divorce after divorce
and there's no doubt that we all sort of
present things to the world but you from
the outside
you handled it extraordinarily well and
that doesn't mean that you didn't
process grief and cry and all that but
it's really interesting i think having
read the book
i'm going to step back
you are intriguing to me
because you don't see yourself the way
that i see you
and while there's no doubt that you
know yourself better than i know you
the thing that you've had to like fight
and claw to earn your own respect around
is from the outside so self-evidently
impressive about you
so in the book you're like
i mean built through courage like you
know you got to step outside your
comfort zone but i'm the guy that always
gets trapped by my comfort zone no
you're not
you're the guy that for whatever reason
is constantly able to reinvent reinvent
reinvent like when i hear you describe
what you did in the corporate world how
many times you took different jobs and
just said yes before you knew what was
going on
but every time it's hard for you which
makes you in my opinion the right person
to write the user's manual on how to get
through this
so now as we sit down with you in that
fear i want to know how because most
people they're lost in that forever okay
i've known plenty of people they get
divorced and 25 years later they're
still stewing in that same space they
were
two months after the divorce
you've already made some pretty
extraordinary leaps begun to put things
back together but if you sit me down in
that moment of fear
where you can't see anything hope filled
what's the first thing that you grab a
hold of
that allows you to begin to construct
a context for how to move forward right
like i was in denial that this was even
happening it felt like i was in the
upside down that like the matrix is a
thing now like is this the simulation
i've in some ways at the beginning
convinced myself that there was the
possibility that this wasn't even real
really oh yeah because it just it didn't
make
sense
and then i got to a place of no no this
is real
you have the responsibility to parent
these for kids
you have the responsibility to show up
for your life
how are you going to do it
and
the thing the question i started asking
was
what did i need to just become the
version of who i'd hoped to be 90 days
from now
right like the first thing i had to do
was really shrink the window of my
forward-looking vision casting where i'd
been a person doing five and ten years
here's where i'm gonna be and i could
just like a movie playing in my head
describe what it was going to look like
i needed to understand what did i need
to do today to get myself just 90 days
into the future and for me it ended up
going through the question of health how
might i
in the five dimensions that i've
identified as being important for me in
health mental emotional spiritual
relational and physical health
how might i have two or three things for
each of those dimensions of health
every day that might become part of my
routine and part of what ends up being
my set of habits that will allow me to
create just enough inertia from this now
standing still
i describe a sailboat in the book that
is waiting for wind right like okay i
got to at least build the sail i got to
put it up so that when the wind starts
to come i'm actually prepared to move
forward and so for me it was all right
what do i need in my mental health
well i needed to see professional
freaking help on the regular i mean i
was talking to a therapist a couple
times a week because i didn't understand
why i was thinking what i was thinking
why i was feeling what i was feeling and
that interaction
created a little bit didn't understand
it or it was erratic
one minute i can make it the next minute
no i'm never going to both
both i didn't understand
the way that the voice in my head was
being so critical of not having had this
thing that was so important work out
i'm just an achiever by nature i've had
success in career i've had success in a
whole host of things and yet i couldn't
at the time see that
my marriage not working out wasn't a
success my marriage was a success
it just
was the end of my marriage in what had
been or the end of our relationship and
what had been is we've now transitioned
into something new but at the beginning
i saw it as a failure
that i somehow had failed
and i i was really as i'm sitting with
my therapist or having a conversation
through podcasts or books with myself
trying to understand what what could you
have done differently or what are you
meant to learn from this
and some of that work yep would allow me
just a little breadcrumb now i'm taking
one step closer to an answer that over
what now is almost two years worth of
time had me really come to appreciate
i
am who i have become
not in spite of what happened but
because of what happened and that as
much as
i had this bold declaration at the end
of 2019 2020 is going to be my best year
ever i have like publicly declared that
45 was the year of my life that i was
waiting for this best year to happen and
what i couldn't appreciate then that i
see so clearly now is that i was not
ever going to be the person who could
dictate the conditions that would bring
my best forward
right and so yeah if in some ways i
brought on some of what ends up
happening in 2020 i apologize for the
pandemic and anything else i may have
been responsible for i don't think that
for real
but i also right like i i prayed that
certain things that happened would never
have happened and i was doing so at the
expense of how
that cause and effect relationship
produced
the best
i wouldn't have been brought to my knees
in a way that brought me closer to my
spiritual walk i wouldn't have had the
way that this divorce created closeness
with my kids the kind of relationship
that comes out of it i wouldn't have
spent the kind of time in physical
transformation really but your physical
transformation is
crazy no thank you but like it is
you know moving my body and pushing
myself to do things physically
has been an exercise in showing myself
that i can do things that go beyond what
i believed myself to be capable of
so that i could take that experience in
the physical realm
and believe it in the mental and
emotional realm oh you can also handle
things mentally you can handle things
emotionally that go wildly beyond what
you believed yourself to be capable of
because you now have proof you have
evidence in this other part of your life
body transformation is the most
underutilized mental transformation tool
ever
and the number of people that i've seen
whether it's in business whether it's
you know in something like a divorce or
your career or whatever
where
when you show yourself that you can set
an intention go and lift a progressively
heavier weight and your body actually
changes you look different you feel
different
and you can actually pick up heavier
things like that there's something that
goes on of like oh what if the same
thing is happening in my mind you can't
see it in such a tangible way but when
you go through a physical transformation
like that it really does leave you with
something truly profound yeah there is
something too i've described myself as a
recovering fixed mindset person
and yet the attribution of growth in a
gym or inside of the physical realm was
never anything that i would have
indicted myself for not being good
because i was not already someone who
could lift a certain amount of weight
but the ability to connect dots and see
oh yeah you can continue to grow in the
space you can grow whether it's muscle
or endurance or stamina recovery all
these things have been things that have
changed the way that i think about
growth in every aspect of my life not
just the physical realm which is part of
why it's so powerful
right so you
things are crumbling down around you
we're in grief we can no longer attach
to hope and we realize okay i have these
five pillars in my life
and in the book you have a really great
quote that i think is what all this is
hanging on which is the antidote to fear
is a plan
and i thought that was brilliant it's
absolutely true the same idea i sum up
by saying that action cures all if i'm
super anxious about something all i need
to do is start dealing with the problem
head on like just go start actually
executing against it because it's that
it does that same thing it puts your
brain in a problem-solving mode instead
of just looping over that it is a
problem all right so we're there we
recognize that the antidote to all of
this is going to be getting a plan we
chunk our life life up into pieces and
we start putting goals in each of those
areas
the the cool thing about the tyler
durden quote that you have in the book
is that it it has this open-ended
question of if you can now do anything
what's the anything you want to do
so how did you begin to like put that
together the whole vision that you'd had
for you know 45 years
is gone
what do you start to
piece together and how do you do it so
for me there were two very very big
things that were somewhat of a departure
from who i'd been as a more
pragmatic
practical person
i
began
even though your introduction of me
having been someone who's taken more
chances or put myself out of my comfort
zone is the greatest compliment in
something i probably don't see enough in
myself
i have been
in a season of yes like just radical yes
so that if opportunity presents itself
for me to do something that i have not
previously done that might
publicly embarrass me that i will fail
wildly and spectacularly at for the
opportunity to fail wildly and
spectacularly at i have just said yes
and why when did that become a strategy
in part because of what was the
byproduct of the learning of
you know now that i can do anything
i
in being somewhat lost from who i am now
that i'm not who i was
i had to go on something of a
fact-finding mission to rediscover
who i'm going to be and so i mean one of
the questions that was a provocateur of
the conversation around divorce was a
simple what do you like to do in your
spare time
which i should be able to answer
and yet there were some
codependent things that existed in our
relationship there was some there was
some
stuff that kept me
from being as connected to myself
and so the discovery of
where passion might exist in my life or
where curiosity might exist in my life
beca became well there's only one way
that i'm actually going to get to the
bottom of it and that's by just saying
yes to a bunch of stuff i'm going to
probably eliminate or disqualify a bunch
of things that i am
definitely not curious about or
definitely don't have passion for
but i have to start by saying yes
so that was the first that was the first
big thing
the really fast i want to tie that to
something you say in the book that i
thought was really profound so
um
you talk about you you have to be very
careful about how you frame something
and i forget the exact example you use
in the book but you're like
let me describe the same thing two
different ways both are true but one is
like
you know you failed at this thing and
you know that set you back at work or
whatever but also this is also true from
that thing you learned this and that's
what ended up giving you the promotion
and it's like
which one of those you want to focus on
and tell yourself is really going to
determine your future tony robbins is a
really great quote where he says the
quality of your questions will determine
the quality of your life
and was there a conscious thing around
that like i need to
ask a different question around okay i
can look at this as
everything has fallen apart or i can
look at this as this is now my
opportunity to change who i am in a way
that i find exciting
it's interesting because it actually
ties to what my second thing was going
to be which was this conceit
this belief
that good would come from it
which is hard to manufacture at the
beginning when you're sitting at the
bottom of a ditch of were you leaning on
faith on that or was there something
else that
faith yes but not
just like religious faith but this was
like belief that
the things that i would need in the
journey would present themselves along
the way
because that's just how life works no
because i believe that if you look for
things you find them
and i was at a place where i was
desperate to find the evidence that good
could still come from this and so i went
on the hunt for it
and
when i
even as i'm you know cal ripken's streak
of crying on consecutive days in like uh
you know like it was hard only old
people get that reference i don't know
but a great reference you know like i i
did have plenty of days where just
getting out of bed felt like the win
and yet
i'd still start my day with gratitude
like finding the good that was already
present despite the conditions that i
was in
was a way to just hack a little bit of
how i might
because of that gratitude practice go on
the hunt for things to be grateful for
and so some of it was just this conceit
of think good things are going to come
out of this you will become
something because of
the post traumatic growth that can come
out of the hardest thing that you've
ever experienced
and it's of course way easier to say
that and see that today than it was in
real time
but i just had a little thing here a
little thing there a text from a pastor
that came every day for the first two
months of the experience 11
really profound words what small piece
of sadness can i hold for you today
right he wasn't trying to diminish the
pain of grief he wasn't trying to even
do
anything more than just offer solidarity
and some empathy for the fact that this
is a shared experience kind of thing
i'll walk alongside you while you do it
but the fact that that showed up every
day
was just a reminder some evidence of the
things you need are going to show up
when you need them along this journey
i'm out running
and a new neighbor has
happened to move in down the street
i had my head down i was very emotional
that day i was not interested like i got
on a plane kind of thing i don't want to
talk to you in the seat next to me
and yet
i ran past him i end up turning around
to come back and introduce myself and
they ended up becoming
part therapist part comedy buddy part
guy who was showing up to barbecue every
day when i was struggling to remind
myself to eat and
they showed up right when i needed them
and so like what made you turn around
i to be honest i don't know i mean like
i felt it now it feels more like a
miracle like oh wow i had no concept of
what i was turning around for
i'm not like close necessarily to my
neighbors generally i live in the middle
of nowhere texas on a you know parcel of
land where i can't see who's on either
side of my house
and yet
on that day for whatever reason that was
like that was the instinct that was the
tug there's a lot a lot of what i end up
writing in the book is about
trusting
the voice trusting you know whether it's
glennon doyle's definition of knowing or
voice of god or intuition or gut but
like
there have been plenty of times in these
last two years where
there was something that was tugging
and that was an intuition that had a
sense of what was necessary for me to do
that i didn't consciously have an
appreciation for
and now that that voice was presenting
itself it was like okay i'm gonna try
this i'm gonna say yes to this even
though i don't know why you've got one
voice so telling you you're a loser
everything is gone and lost and another
voice telling you to do something that
ends up being good for you how do you
differentiate
well i mean i first have to
give credit to a therapist that does
work in
self right i in having lost identity
attempt to find someone who might help
me find who i am
and i did this work inside of something
called internal family systems where i
himself my voice of inside of my head or
my emotions are parts
and the way that i am able to then
develop a relationship between self and
these parts
allows me to not be them so the first
part with the voice is all right you got
a voice in your head some of it's true
some of it's [ __ ] okay how do you
differentiate well first you have to say
i'm not the voice
that voice that's speaking is not me i
am the witness to the voice in a very
untethered soul michael singer kind of
way i am not the voice i'm i'm i'm
watching the voice i'm listening to the
voice
it's my job then as the listener
to do the investigative work of
understanding which of the things that
are being represented
are real like how many of them are
fact-based evidence-based is there any
reason to
question the voice
and
a lot of the things inside of like why
we believe what we believe or why we do
the things we do come back to
programming that the voice is echoing
and so if we were raised in a
patriarchal society or we were raised
inside of a certain religious belief or
we have parents or family of origin that
believe a certain way
that voice often is the echo of
something that existed from when we're
five years old and the question that i
have to go back and ask is well did the
people who were the originators of that
story have credibility
like do they have credibility generally
and oftentimes they do you believe
things usually because they've come from
someone of authority that's important in
your life that you'll ever crave love
from and that you for whatever reason
have put on a pedestal or respect
but just because someone at some point
in your life had credibility doesn't
mean that they have credibility on that
topic or that there's even relevance
necessarily
for their opinion that maybe right i was
born in 75 my parents were good people
they meant well
a thing that they were programming into
me when i was five in 1980
may not have practical relative to when
it was you know good then application in
2021 likely doesn't
and going back and questioning if that
story that was told then is still a
credible story today is part of how when
you hear the voice
and that [ __ ] side of the voice is
chirping
you get to go and asks
where did this voice come from i'm not
the voice i'm the witness to it and
doesn't actually have a credible
connection to anything that has
practical application in my life today
and so utility becomes the guide as
you're
assessing all these different voices
basically yeah utility but also and this
will sound crazy because when it was
described to me as a thing to do i
thought it crazy and then i just started
doing it
i actually
will name
these feelings that i have and invite
them to sit at an imaginary table inside
of my psyche
and have a conversation with them and it
works because you make them the other
and not yourself yeah and so as a for
example i have
anxiety as a thing that has
clark
clark who is you know the opposite of
superman i was gonna say i have to ask
of course no but yeah clark who is the
opposite of superman is uh a thing and
i'm talking like situational anxiety not
clinical anxiety like when i get anxious
i used to try and mute the anxiety i
used to try and push it away i would
become addicted to people whatever it
was i was not great with anxiety
and now clark shows up
i get to sit clark at this table have
this conversation clark for what reason
do you believe yourself to be here and
clark right as a part inside of me
believes himself to be serving a helpful
role
right so clark doesn't realize he's a
negative emotion clark thinks ah i'm
here for a reason and then my job as the
observer of clark having shown up is to
sit him down at the table and ask why
why are you here and most often clark
shows up in my life because there is
something in my life that has enough
ambiguity around it that
a simple plan or even in some instances
a more complex plan but a plan being
applied in that ambiguous part of my
life
would give clark permission
to leave because his job and having
drawn my focus to the area is done he's
here as a helper and so in a crazy way
not that like i celebrate
anxious moments or clark's arrival
i've changed the way i see clark or
anxiety as a negative thing and more as
a clue oh
this is intel information is being
presented to me and if i can sit down
and have a conversation with it i might
get to the bottom of why he's here as we
are
getting ourselves back together we're
starting to get a grip on things we've
got our pillars we're making progress at
what point does it become
i'm going to start now putting a new
vision in place
and
how do you make sure that you don't end
up falling for the same traps that got
you to the point where you needed the
creative destruction in the beginning
yeah
so
the question that i really spent a ton
of time with was who did i want to be
before i became who i'd become
who did i want to be
back in the day right i believe that
each of us were created with very
intentional design
whether you are a faith person or not
i just believe that there is something
of a higher power that had a just to
conceit in having created you the way
that you were created you're wiring tom
different than mine your experiences
different than mine the way that you
love or feel all different
and in that difference it makes you this
limited edition one of one and in that
limited edition one of one that you are
you have an opportunity to
honor the intention of your creator
and the work that i'm now on this planet
to do and that i would argue anyone is
on this planet to do
is find a way every day to honor the
intention of a creator who had very
intentional design in the way that you
were put together and the way that
you've experienced the things that you
have
so my question was
why was i created like what was the
intention and what are the clues you
used to suss out the answer
well the things that i think have been
like in the instances where i felt
closest to purpose or closest to
fulfillment
which feels like which feels like i am
going to end my life proud of myself or
um
i mean like man i've heard you say it so
many times and i just believe this so
much the most important question you can
ask is how do i feel about myself when
i'm by myself
and the answer to that question
is when you feel like you are in
integrity with having done everything
you possibly could have on that day
to
honor the measure of your creation that
you feel connected to wow i have been
given these unique skills so part of it
is skills right are there things that
you can develop mastery around that you
have uniquely been blessed with or
gifted with that in the exploitation of
those things you might generate a
feeling of pride for yourself have
legacy at the end of life feel like you
mattered when everything is said and
done and the utilization of those skills
or not is the difference between
integrity and feeling great about
yourself when you're by yourself the
second is passion right you have to be
connected to something that you have
passion for you can develop skill in
almost anything i can argue that with 10
000 hours or whatever it ends up being
you can develop mastery over time
i don't think you can develop passion
though
oh no i think you either have passion or
you don't and our job is to play in a
ton of pools to find out where curiosity
might lead to passion and so
still has to be discovered still has to
be discovered which again was part of
like the all right the world's just
blown up a lot of really really
important things in your life had to die
so that you might be brought back to
life
who are you
going to be
is in some ways connected to what you
have passion for you couldn't answer a
simple question about what you like to
do in your spare time
you better start trying a bunch of
things to find out what you like to do
in your spare time there's likely a
connection to honoring the intention of
your creator
and what you like to do
in your spare time or what you would
wake up and not even feel like it's work
because you just love doing it so much
hence the season of yes hence the season
of yes and the third thing is you've got
to be able to take that passion and that
opportunity for mastery and apply that
to impacting other people
why
because it's hard to feel like you
matter if you don't
i really feel like there is something in
the goals that i had in
my career at disney relative to the
goals that i have in the career and
legacy that i will create for the rest
of my life that are disconnected by a
single feature and i'm super proud of my
career inside of entertainment 20 plus
years assistant to president it was a
good run
almost every single one of my goals was
connected to individual achievement
right i want to be this title i want to
make this money i want to have this
influence i want to be invited to these
tables and roll with this
crew
and as much as man in that run i was
able to sit at some of those tables and
enjoy some of that salary and have some
of the title and whatever else
it felt empty
because it was not connecting to
impacting other people in the way that
having now left my career for my calling
i feel like i am actually doing work on
an everyday basis to serve
now guess what i can still provide for
my family
but i'm definitely playing inside of the
passion pool and using gifts that were
uniquely given to me and now life
experience that is super unique to
me and not any other person on the
planet
to hopefully have someone see themselves
in my stories
understand some of the things that have
worked in my own journey of
transformation and becoming so they
might have their own journey themselves
so amazing so all right that i think
does a really good job of explaining the
built part like the process of how you
put yourself back together
talk to me about courage and this idea
of being willing to lose sight of the
shore yeah
there's something the book has a lot of
analogies around the sea i am not one
that even likes the sea which is
hilarious but uh cover of your book is
the ocean the cover of the book is the
ocean i'm seasick thinking about it but
the the there's this interesting
relationship that all of us have
to
familiarity to comfort to the status quo
things we know
that
has us in some ways deities or putting
up on a pedestal
the
conceit that what has been will be
in a way that doesn't allow us to even
consider
leaving what we've known and if
you know like the the suggestion the
book is you can't actually make it to
the other side of the ocean unless you
lose sight of the shore that other side
of the ocean being
the fulfillment of your fullest
potential or connecting to that idea of
honoring your the measure of your
creation right you have been created for
purpose but that purpose requires that
you get outside of your safe harbor
become unmoored and ultimately
enduring the choppy waters believing
though that you were built for those
choppy waters and then having the
courage to continue sailing once you've
now lost sight of what was familiar and
the the idea of that safe harbor even if
it's connected to suffering right like
we as people
have in some ways convinced ourselves
that we are willing to stay inside of
suffering that we know
rather than facing the possibility of
something new because the knowns of that
existing suffering feel predictable
and life wasn't meant for suffering i
mean like
it doesn't mean that you're not going to
have to go through hard times or bad
times but you can decide to push away
from it the challenge in pushing away
though is that that safe harbor is
surrounded on all sides by fear
and the only way to get to learning the
only way to get to growth and my
argument is that you have to be growing
in order to feel a sense of fulfillment
if you're not growing you're dying and
in that death state
you will not feel the things that you
are hoping to feel when you're by
yourself
but there's no drawbridge around the
moat there is emote of fear
and so the courage piece just suggests
that
you are not going to eliminate fear just
because you decide to be courageous
you're going to become prepared to face
your fear which is the thing that's
necessary in that journey that has to go
through it in order to become so we have
to face our fear or we will stay stuck
we will stay inside of this familiar
place the comfort zone the suffering we
know at the expense of who we could
become
it's a really interesting idea that
hides in plain sight in your title that
you are built through courage so it it
isn't you didn't title it built through
pain or built through trials
built through courage so what is it one
it'd be great like define courage what
is that
and then why is that thing so
self-shaping
yeah i mean
we all have a choice in our response to
change
right we can
meditate through
coping mechanisms that aren't good for
us when times get tough we fail on a
frequency that we're unfamiliar with
where we are exposed as not having every
single thing together at the beginning
of doing something new or
we can again it's like storytelling you
referred to it a minute ago like see
those opportunities as the reason why
we're going to acquire new skills why we
in the challenge or the breaking down of
muscle will have it built back up even
stronger
and
the the decision to
put yourself in those situations even
though you know you will be triggered
but deciding to do it with a set of
skills or resources or habits or
positive coping mechanisms that engineer
the possibility of that evolution is the
opportunity
but it still takes courage it still
requires that you face that fear
so putting it in your context in the way
that you think about things that we have
a purpose that we were born with
life isn't meant to be suffering but yet
you have to go through it
why does it all have to be so hard
and why does the heart seem
like it's unavoidable there is no
fulfilling life without difficulty
yeah
i you know i this is a like
why do
bad things happen to good people you
know this isn't about fairness i think
that fairness is a construct that the
universe does not play by and or even
care about
but there is something in
the
way that you build tenacity in actually
having to be tenacious or the way that
you build strength in actually getting
knocked down and having to get back up
that makes the two connected in a way
that can't be disconnected
i wish it wasn't the way right like i
don't want to relive 2020 in the way
that most people don't want to really
relive 2020 and yet
i can see so clearly that again i am who
i've become and will look back at the
end of my life acknowledging that 2020
is among the most important years of my
life
at the end of my life because of not in
spite of those things that i went
through
now
what i'm hopeful for is that the
experience of those hard things now has
given me a new set of evidence of one my
ability to handle the hard
but also
when not if but when my next
bad hand is dealt that i might in
receiving it in real time appreciate oh
just like last time
this is gonna suck as i crawl through
the tunnel to get out of shawshank
but there is still that rain sequence at
the end once i get through it i've
experienced it in a way that when i was
starting the crawl out of the tunnel two
years ago
i didn't know that the sun could come up
ever again
because all i smelled was the [ __ ] in
the tunnel and the darkness that sat in
front of me
but one step after the next
cultivating the courage to keep going
even though i didn't necessarily know
how it was going to come out sometimes
playing into some almost delusional
optimism for the way that i again had
that faith that
there was another side that there was
the promise of what might exist inside
of that body of water
keep going and and the reality is yep
i'm now prepared and i'm not going to
enjoy going through a hard thing next
time but i have the evidence that
suggests i have become so many things
that i would never have become
if i didn't have to go through the
hardest thing i've ever been through why
do most people get stuck
because divorce is the perfect example
the number of people i've seen that just
get obliterated by divorce and they end
up in a loop that they can't shake out
of
and i'm just curious if you when you
think back what was the thing that
was the most dangerous that you found
yourself like whoa that reaction or the
way that
i thought about it or whatever i could
see how people could end up in a
never-ending loop on that one
i mean i think a lot of it ends up just
coming back to the stories that we
believe
right we have
had a bad experience
and then believe that that's just our
lot in life right
i'm just a person who
doesn't ever have things go my way or
every time i've tried something new it
ends up failing so i'm probably going to
fail again
in a way that ends up being something of
a self-fulfilling prophecy because again
when you have that as a belief
and it frames the foundation for how
your day starts how your month is going
to look you're out there scanning the
horizon for the evidence to help support
that belief
that it's just going to be a tough time
for you and that evidence will present
itself and the thing is i'm not i'm not
an advocate of of toxic positivity or
rose-colored glasses necessarily but i
do believe that
you get to choose the thing that you're
going to go looking for
and if you can get up and say i'm gonna
go out and find some evidence of a good
day the likelihood of you having one is
just higher it doesn't guarantee that
you're gonna have one
i had this opportunity i talked about at
my book i got to see her on this trip my
99 year old grandma lee
has
been through everything i mean at like
99 you've been through everything right
she's been through a couple of wars
she's had to bury two husbands she's a
single mother of five kids that
has lost a son to cancer a grandson by
suicide like she's seen things and now
at 99
almost every one of her friends is gone
right like she is she's experienced a
lot
and i talked to her at the very
beginning of this journey
and she said well
i can tell you this i have been through
a lot of hard things i didn't like going
through them
but i have been through a lot of hard
things and you know what i know about
all of those hard things
i got to the other side
and that's why i know that you will get
to the other side too
and you're not going to like it while
you're doing it but when you get to the
other side of this you have an
appreciation
for yourself for your strength the way
that you can do hard things because of
the way that you did hard things
and i
know this because of what ends up being
99 years of experience on this earth and
so i think sometimes as you find
yourself at the beginnings of whatever
your tunnel ends up being the crawling
through it kind of thing that sits in
front of you
the experience that someone else has
that's gone through or been
a witness to the power of how that hard
thing created that post-traumatic growth
in their life
can be something that you can borrow a
little bit of hope from
so that in that borrowed hope
you can become hopeful there's a less
brown quote that i used in both of my
books now but hope in the future is
power in the present
and i just believe so much that if you
mean
it basically if you can't cast a hopeful
vision
for what is possible next
you will be left powerless in the
present to even get there or
or make any kind of momentum that might
allow you to get them being hopeful
about your future makes you powerful now
yeah i mean back to your question of why
do people get stuck i think people get
stuck because
they let
the circumstances of what's happening in
real time
cast a probability future a likely to
happen next future that is clouded by
the
subjectivity of what they're currently
experiencing so they don't have like a
long frame objectivity lens that they're
looking at they're like
things are hard now which means they're
going to be hard in the future and that
absence of hope
leaves them without a lot of motor to
actually get out of the mud that they're
stuck inside of but if you can cast a
hopeful future because of believing that
it's going to be there or having someone
in this instance that has been through a
bunch of hard things giving me that
guarantee that i will get through this
that i will become something because of
it and that i will be better prepared to
handle it when i get to the other side
all right that gives me some hope and in
that hope i now have an engine that can
help me get out of the rut
you mentioned a phrase that i've heard
before but i've never talked to anybody
about it toxic positivity
so
when does positivity become toxic
well i think that there's the risk
anytime that we are talking about
anything positive that doesn't also
appreciate privilege as a for example
like we have to stop and just appreciate
that oh
if you have access or in my instance i'm
a man and not a woman i'm a straight
person and not someone who lives inside
of a community that sometimes is
you know being prejudiced against
uh i might i happen to be caucasian
right there are things that in me
suggesting
that
anything is possible or you can if you
work hard enough you're going to get
there that might underestimate some of
the headwinds that just systemically
exist inside of the world so i hear that
but would it ever benefit somebody to
take a pessimistic view of that
no i i mean i think that you're always
going to be in a better position if
you're able to cast positive hope-filled
vision for what ends up being possible
for you next
but also
it can be dangerous if you're not
acknowledging that hey there are some
people that are going to have
a better chance at winning the lottery
because they've got 10 million tickets
purchased
in
currency for some of the things that are
already happening inside of their life
relative to the person
who's just getting a single ticket
it's interesting i can see how quickly
we could derail this whole conversation
but i will say that
to me everything should be judged to the
lens of usability so you have a goal and
a belief is either going to move you
towards that goal or it's going to move
you away from that goal
and
negativity actually does have a purpose
it can be quite useful but i would say
in very limited quantities and two les
browns point about
if you don't have hope for the future
you have no power in the present
so somebody spending any amount of
energy saying hey stop
spreading this optimistic view because
it's really really hard for some other
people it's like those are the people
that need hope the most and the energy
should go into finding a way to help
them see a path to something positive
and yeah i mean i think that les brown
has it right that the extraordinary
answer is yo put all of your energy into
finding a way to dial the positivity up
for them help them create a view of
their future that is positive
and the people for whom it will be the
most difficult are the people who need
it the most i don't disagree with i
don't i don't disagree with that you did
say something though that triggered a
reminder of the last time i was here
which is i am someone that taps into
negative visualization
right and so like there were times
inside of this experience in the last
couple of years where
when faced with am i going to turn back
to these negative coping mechanisms i'm
going to be someone who stays on the mat
after getting knocked down
the
answer sometimes revealed itself in that
how do i want that room of people to
toast me at the 60th or 70th birthday
party do i want that room to be filled
or not and the the negative side of that
oh people aren't coming or don't have
something to say
that's a motivator that like connecting
to that what could happen if i don't get
up what could happen if i feel sorry for
myself or just lay down and stop trying
super motivating for me
now i think that's really powerful so to
me and obviously you and i look at
things for a slightly different lens but
i think we end up in a really similar
place
for me nature has given us two things
pleasure and pain and that's it and so
to wipe out half of that yeah because it
doesn't feel
i mean it's a negative energy so it's
like but it's that
through again my lens through millions
of years of evolution you end up with
this brain that
rewards you for doing things that lead
you towards from an evolutionary
perspective survival and procreation and
then it gives you pain when you're doing
things that aren't moving you in that
right direction and so one question that
i had asked you earlier about why is
this hard like why does it need to be
hard and it's interesting to hear a more
faith-based take on that yeah but for me
the answer is because you had to go face
a saber-toothed tiger you had to face
insane weather either extreme heat
extreme cold whatever every day of your
life was dangerous you didn't uh you
were talking that you know there's a
snake on your property and your neighbor
warned you and you thought yeah i really
do need to think about the fact that
this is tall grass and texas like there
could be snakes there now imagine a
world in which everywhere you turn there
is something trying to kill you and so
you have to have this
massive push to do hard things and i
think that we have just it is embedded
in the human brain
if you do not do hard things
you will feel the sense of unease there
is something wrong and i think this is
one of the issues with modernity is
we end up making so many things easy i
mean
people in
that are at or below the poverty line
still often have a refrigerator and ac
and it's like i mean these are not to in
any way downplay the devastation that is
poverty let me be really [ __ ] clear
about that
but
there is
a world that we came up through that was
far more terrifying and there was death
at every
turn and so from that
needing to wire the brain in a certain
way it's like if things get too
comfortable you don't know why things
feel off
but they feel off yeah and this is why i
think rich kids end up imploding they
didn't have to work and not every rich
kid obviously but they end up struggling
with the fact that so many things came
easily and they don't necessarily
understand that that's why they feel
this deep sense of discomfort yeah
what's interesting i i know
i've been a person of faith my life
growing up and even you know like
throughout my life today
but it's easy to say that like oh i'm a
believer or i have faith
when it hadn't been tested to the depths
that it was tested and this make you
wonder if there was a god i had many
well
yet no but i expressed anger to god in a
way that i had never been angry and the
good guys are making
why are you making me go through this
really really upset really angry and
i one came out with came out of this
with an appreciation that god can very
easily handle my anger thank you all is
fine but also
this appreciation that
the way that i feel about my faith is
fundamentally different because of
having to have my faith tested
i was forced to my knees and so let me
ask if the challenge isn't that god
exists
the challenge to your faith is that god
has your best interest at heart
my
prayers
so this is this is like the crazy thing
that you get to see as time goes by but
there's also privilege in this answer
because things end up working out well
for me in the circumstances that have
come to pass having created something
that was good
but
i was asking for
fulfillment and i was asking to feel a
certain way about myself like i wanted
to love myself and a lot of things that
end up becoming the byproduct of the
work that was only possible in the
hardest thing i've ever experienced
so god's like yeah
you were praying for these things and
good news you got the things that you
prayed for
you thought you had a say in the way
that those things would
be created in your life you don't have a
say
and not by the way like i this is a
you know is god you know pulling every
single string kind of a question i do
believe in the free will of man and like
yep i'm making a lot of my own choices i
don't think that everything happens for
a reason i think that there's an
opportunity for us to figure out how to
make the things that happen
matter for us in whatever way we decide
to use them for our good or the good of
other people
but
i i find myself the recipient of the
things that i was praying for because of
the circumstances the hard circumstances
that were thrown my way
but i also i will say there's a verse i
use in the book james 4 8 draw near to
god he will draw nearer to you
like i was also as i was put to my knees
by this thing that was just holy cow
harder than i'd ever expected i'd have
to endure
begging for proximity to god and
wouldn't you know it in that prayer
after i was done yelling at him right i
found myself unbelievably close
there's another bible verse that you
mention in the book
and i find it very interesting to me and
you were talking about there was this
woman she had
children and then had a stroke and she
had to like relearn to walk and like
everything and
she said there was a verse about
though there
are no sheep or
fruit on the tree i forget the exact
quote i shall love god or something
and
you said oh everybody should take that
verse and like put your own pain points
in there do you remember the exact
verbiage since i'm butchering it it is
the idea of what you speak of which is
like though all of these things have
happened they didn't happen the way that
i would have hoped i'm still going to
give glory to god i'm still gonna be
thankful for grateful for
and again i think it ends up being this
like call to
can you
still
go on the hunt for the good that can
still exist inside of the heart
and so for me
in
the way that i was able to
in
having like my kid came to me wanting to
have me teach him how to shave
very small thing but oldest son hey can
you show me how to shave a small thing
that seems huge to me well here's the
thing i didn't appreciate it was going
to become a huge thing that would
provoke a very emotional reaction from
me but what it was was this reminder
of how many more beautiful moments with
my children were still
going to come as
i got tied a bow tie for a big dance or
walked someone down an aisle or whatever
it was because in the moment when it
feels like life is ending
you forget
that there's so many
firsts and so many nexts and so many
beautiful moments and so you know took
the kids down to fish at the local pond
and we catch a fish like the reminder
that fish still bite was a surprisingly
emotional thing in the midst of
like not being able to totally connect
to all the good
and so
whether it's that verse or just like
being observant of the 400 mini miracles
that are happening around us any day
it's i mean i've said it now three times
in the show but you find what you're
looking for so powerful and so as i was
now being reminded of that good in that
moment with my kid and the razor
whatever it was it was just this prompt
to
be a detective and be on that hunt for
the other good things that were already
and still present even in the midst of
hard things
we both know and love mel robbins and in
her most recent book the high five habit
she talks about looking for hearts
and because you're looking for them you
end up seeing things that really like
the shape of it isn't quite a heart but
you suddenly begin interpreting it as a
heart um
which is a really cool idea i'm a huge
believer in you get what you look for
you see what you look for yeah that's a
really
powerful idea i can see a heart now
behind you and these diamonds on the
wall it's very bizarre
it's funny how that works like yeah the
idea of priming
is so
powerful yeah yeah so
getting people to do these mental tricks
i think is really
useful
you have a lot of them in your book as
you think about moving forward now
and you talk in a book about roles and
how we can sort of become something that
we didn't necessarily intend to become
because of the way that other people
think of us
how are you
protecting yourself against
sliding into old habits or old patterns
or letting society begin to dictate who
you become yeah i mean
i've really tried to ask myself how do i
want to experience the week how do i
want to experience a day in the week
i
i i know i want to wake up and click
that button of
being in my passion and using things
that i have mastery for to serve other
people that's like the thing i want to
do but how i experience it is a big part
of
like the thing i'm trying to solve
and that question of like who did i want
to be before i became who i'd become
i mean i tell the story in the book of
this insane god moment chance encounter
with dan rather who i end up getting sat
next to on an airplane in the midst of
trying to answer this question of who am
i now that i am
not who i thought i was going to be
and it was this reminder you were a kid
when i was a kid just as a sign of how
dorky i was and how long it took for me
to kiss a girl uh dan rather was my
childhood idol i mean between he
tom brokaw peter jennings like i wanted
to be the nightly news person
and when i was sitting with him he was
so generous with this time a couple
hours on a plane like totally violating
that
can we have a conversation rule
i got off of the plane and there was
this like giddiness for having been
reconnected to the 19 year old version
of me while in college anchoring a news
desk
the 2 am dj time slot coveted that i was
you know spinning records
i was reminded that i wanted to be a
reporter as i was trying to
believe in myself to become one
so i had been working inside of a
business i was making this decision in
real time to figure out what next was
going to look like in my life my career
and i was going to have my first book
coming out i was going to coach for the
first time i was going to have a podcast
and as much as my 99 year old grandma
still asks me do you have a career
should
should we be worried about you
you know when i try to explain to her
what i do
it's hard with what ends up being an
unconventional kind of job but the
easiest way to explain it is that i'm a
reporter i take my experiences i take
the
amazing insights that come from people
like yourself or others that i admire i
try to consolidate them into a way that
might be
understood in part because of hopefully
people seeing themselves in my story and
storytelling but that also maybe is a
byproduct of me being someone who's got
a skill in connecting to them with
something of an empathy bridge that
allows them to have a breakthrough that
they wouldn't have otherwise had
that's why i'm here and so when i think
about like my legacy or what i want to
be known for how i'd hope to be
eulogized at the end of my life i had a
great career for 20 years in
entertainment and i hope that nobody
brings it up
i i mean and not because i have anything
but pride for it but because i know now
having been so connected to why i'm here
getting back to that person i wanted to
be before i became who i'd become that
this is the legacy of my life this is my
life's work and i'm just getting started
the book isn't your first
but dude it's really good and in terms
of brick by brick building that legacy
man your written work is phenomenal
certainly what you're doing on the
podcasting and youtube and all that
stuff it's really fantastic i think you
are well on your way
thanks man where can people follow along
on this journey uh mr dave hollis is uh
both the name of my website the handle i
use on instagram so mr davehollis.com
and
i hang out on social here and there but
instagram's probably the place i spend
most of my time so come hang i love it
there it is
all right guys trust me you will not
regret reading the book hanging out with
him on social and if you can do it hang
out with him in real life that one i can
really vouch for speaking of things that
i can vouch for if you haven't already
be sure to subscribe and until next time
my friends be legendary take care peace