Living Life On Your Own Terms W/Michael Herold (Real Play)

Michael Herold is a confidence coach, public speaker, and ACT specialist. He also has a neuromuscular condition that may necessitate him leaving his beloved life in Vienna soon. In this real play, Dr. Diana Hill and Michael explore what it would look like to live life on their own terms.

Can Michael turn his life from his feared 2-star review to his fearless 5-star one? Listen to find out!

Transcript

This podcast is about energy,

Yours,

Mine,

And ours,

Because we're already exchanging it.

You've chosen to put your energy here to listen to this episode of the Wise Effort Show.

There's many other things that you could be doing.

I've chosen to share mine with you.

And I know that your energy is precious,

But it's also abundant and renewable,

Especially if you use it wisely.

Today on the show,

We have a real play with Michael Harreld,

Who is a confidence coach and he has some questions about how he wants to use his energy in the wisest way possible.

He is a specialist in acceptance and commitment therapy.

He's the co-host of Psychologists Off The Clock,

And he's taught me a lot about confidence.

He's also one of the people that has energized me when I've watched him present,

But really also just being in his presence is energizing.

You emailed me this morning,

A brief,

Or at least I saw it this morning.

You're in Vienna.

So it was this evening.

I wrote it.

I wrote it this,

This,

Uh,

My morning.

Yes.

Yeah.

However many hours ago you emailed me something that was a,

Um,

Just a paragraph description of,

I said,

What do you want to work on?

And part of me didn't want to ask you that because I'd love for it to be spontaneous.

But then another part of me wanted to help myself out.

And this is very much the experience of the therapist,

Right?

You get,

You get this there,

You get a,

An email that comes in through your psychology today account,

Or maybe through your email or a voicemail on your phone,

Or a really long text that is sort of a dumping of all the things that I want to work on.

And oftentimes my,

My experience as a therapist is,

Oh my gosh,

This is a huge,

You know,

This could be a huge undertaking.

But also there's,

There's pieces that are important to,

To,

Um,

Pull out in that paragraph.

And that's what I would be doing in a session with someone.

And at the same time,

We only have 50 minutes together and this is not therapy.

I kind of wish I renamed these episodes to be,

This is not therapy,

Just to have that disclaimer.

This is the therapy.

Com.

Actually,

I thought it'd be fun.

It'd be a fun group to lead at some point called the,

This is not therapy group and have people come in and basically do therapy,

But not call it,

Say,

This is not therapy.

So this is not therapy.

This is,

That's funny because that's what my mom says when I'm cooking dinner.

She's like,

That's not cooking.

So yeah,

There seems to be a theme here.

This could be a lineup of books.

Yeah,

Exactly.

It's not therapy,

It's not cooking.

So would you mind reading us that,

That paragraph that is way more than we can do in 50 minutes,

But that has some really important nuggets in it that I hope we tease out in terms of wise use of our energy?

Yeah,

Gladly.

And I purposefully kept this short because I wanted to leave some spontaneity in there,

But we might actually be doing ourselves and our listeners a favor by keeping it to that short paragraph because I am a public speaker.

And if someone gives me a mic,

I might go on forever.

So here's the short paragraph I sent you this morning.

I've built a beautiful life here in Vienna over the past 10 years.

And I'm also at a place where with a hard and a dedicated push,

I can make my business take off.

However,

With my neuromuscular condition steadily progressing,

I am at the verge of losing my independent in the not too distant future,

Maybe the end of this year.

That means that I have to move back to Germany to get the support that I'm going to need.

What I struggle with is deciding how to spend the remainder of my time here to make it meaningful.

Spending half the day taking care of my health and the other half day working on my business may hardly be the best use of my time left here.

Going into leisure mode and burning through my savings might lack the purpose that I need though.

And doing a tiny bit of each,

Health,

Work,

Leisure,

Would probably mean that I'm half-assing all of it.

Wow.

So after you,

After I read that,

There were sort of three things that stood out to me that really struck me.

One was the line,

I'm on the verge of losing my independence.

And just curiosity about what that means to you.

And the next line that really stood out to me was deciding how I want to spend the remainder of my time.

And then the last line,

Which to me points to values.

So the first one pointed to a feeling state and I'm curious about that feeling state.

The second one pointed to values.

And then the third one that I highlighted was half-assing it all.

And that to me was pointing to something about maybe some kind of,

Or expectation about what it means to half-ass something.

What do you want to add to,

If you were to add to those pieces?

I think one thing,

I could go on forever and ever for how much I love my life here.

Even when I'm traveling to beautiful locations,

I come back.

The moment I'm back in Vienna,

My heart just opens up and I have a smile.

I'm like,

Yeah,

I'm home.

I love my apartment.

I love my friends here.

I love the entire life that I've built.

And I feel really,

Really happy here.

And I think I'm in a very fortunate situation to just be happy with everything that I've built in my life.

The thing though,

That I think I need to highlight a little bit,

Because it might not be clear from that short email,

Is that losing my independence,

And what I mean by that is right now,

I am using an electric wheelchair,

But I function,

I don't know,

That's not the right word.

But there will come a day where I'm no longer able to get up from my bed or up from the toilet or out of the bathtub,

Whatever that day will come.

And I don't mind it,

Because this has always been my life.

Like I'm losing things.

When I was a teenager,

I lost being able to ride a bicycle.

Before I moved to Vienna,

I took an hour-long walk just for fun.

And now I can barely do two or three steps.

This has been something that has been with me for 45 years,

And it's just normal.

There's no judgment.

This is not good.

This is not bad.

This is just what it's always been.

And so I'm not mourning that.

This is not an area of pain for me.

The worry that I have,

And the reason we're talking,

Is that I don't want to,

One year from now,

Look back to maybe my last summer in the city that I love and say,

Hey,

It's a really good thing that you've been working so much.

Just today,

Before our talk,

It's 6,

7 p.

M.

Here for me.

I was out two hours ago.

I was just going out real quick to get something,

And the sun was shining this first day of summer.

This is the time to go into the park,

Have a cool beer,

And read a book or meet some friends.

This is the time.

And then my brain was like,

No,

You have one meeting,

And then you're going to talk with Diana,

So you're going to be at your computer until 8 p.

M.

And it's that this is a really good use of my time.

Is it what I want to look back to when I'm like,

Why did I never go to that museum?

Why did I never see those friends as much as I wanted?

Why did I never do this and this and this while I still had the time,

While I was still there?

Yeah.

Well,

Thank you for clarifying.

The loss of independence isn't necessarily the sad spot.

The sad spot is the loss of Vienna and your life in Vienna and the potential of,

Am I going to work my way through this next year and miss out on the things that I love that are here?

Actually,

There's an exercise someone that's helping me with my book gave me,

Which was write your worst nightmare review of the book,

Like if someone were to read your book and what they would say would be the worst nightmare review for it.

And I kind of was thinking about that when you said,

Looking back on that last year,

I'm thinking about you on the train to Germany.

And if you were to write like sort of your worst nightmare review of what that year would be,

What would it be?

Oh,

This is a good one.

Michael spent his time working on projects he didn't like and that didn't pay off.

He spent too much time procrastinating on what needed to be done instead of getting through with it as quickly as possible and then enjoy the rest of the time because the amount of procrastination this dude can pull off at times is Olympic grade.

It would also say that Michael wasn't in the last month's practice enough in facilitating time to spend with friends.

So maybe,

Yeah,

The title being like Olympic procrastinator misses out on it all.

Okay.

Okay.

A dream review.

If you were writing that dream review of this year and yeah,

Giving it a title,

What would it be?

I really don't see it.

I really don't see what I would put in there.

I think this would also be probably just a three-star review saying,

You know what?

For the last months,

He really let it rip.

He enjoyed life.

He was out in the sun.

He was living life to the fullest.

And I'm only giving this three stars because I don't think it would necessarily fulfill me because it would lack that purpose that I need in my life.

I'm not good with just enjoying life,

Just the vitality,

The having fun part.

This is not really something that sustains me for long.

Yeah.

So it's not all about drinking beers in the sunshine or being- Beer.

I said beer.

I didn't say beer.

I didn't use plural.

It's not just about drinking beers with friends in the beautiful spring of Vienna.

There's something else there that you're wanting.

And you said health,

Work,

Leisure,

Half-assing it all.

So this is actually a good nugget that we can work on,

Which is how do we get it from a three-star to five-star?

What is a five-star for Michael?

And why are you stuck at three-star?

What's keeping you stuck at three-star?

I'm curious about those two.

Actually,

There's a constriction and there's a bound-up energy of,

I could only get from a two-star to a three-star,

And I want to see if we can open that up.

And I want to see if we can open it up in a way,

Because I wrote a two-star review for our podcast before we started our episode.

Did it say,

Should have gotten a better guest?

No.

But it said,

Self-compassion and values again.

How Michael Harreld heard the same thing that he already knows,

And he felt like he wasn't really seen.

That's my two-star review for this.

So I don't really want to do that with you.

I want it to be something different and actually see you and see the potential in,

I don't know,

Something shifting.

I feel like what gets the barrier that my brain throws up when I am thinking of the five-star review is that I would need to know the outcome of it afterwards.

I would say five-star review is because I invested time into that and that and that project,

And it cost me a good chunk of time and a lot of energy and maybe even some money.

But dude,

Did this pay off?

This was really good.

I invested in this and this and this friendship,

And you know what?

These turned into best friends forever that I will still have even when I'm moving away.

I spent a lot of time working on my health,

Changing this and this and this,

And it really paid off.

I don't know that until the time is out and I look back and I say,

Yeah,

Those projects actually were the right ones to pick.

Those friendships were the right ones to water.

Or did I pick the duds in both domains where I was like,

Yeah,

I put a lot of time into this that I could have spent enjoying doing other things,

And I picked the wrong ones.

So there's something about outcome there,

About product,

About spending your time to get a product at the end of it is something that catches you a little bit.

Product might be a good way of putting it.

I feel it's a little bit too harsh.

I look at it not as the outcome,

But I look at it from the other side,

The limited amount of resources that I still have to invest into certain things.

Where does that investment go?

Yeah.

Can we rewind and just talk a little bit about the limited amount of resources?

Because listeners are probably wanting to know what is this neuromuscular disease that you have and what does that look like?

And then also the little that I know about you,

The amount of time that you spend on taking care of your body is phenomenal.

The amount of physical exercises that you do,

I mean,

You're spending a large amount of time in health,

A large amount of time in work as well,

The amount of time,

The high bar that you set for yourself in terms of your work.

And then you also care about leisure,

But help us get a sense of what your day looks like and what it's like for you.

Okay.

So let me start by just briefly giving an overview over the neuromuscular condition.

So this is called spinal muscular atrophy,

Which means that while my muscles are healthy,

The nerves that control them die off.

So I might only be able to control 20% of my biceps.

The rest of the muscle just doesn't get the command.

So that makes my muscles just run at 20%.

Now I can build up those 20% that I can still control,

But next month,

It's only 19% of the muscles and then it's 18% and then it's 17.

So no matter how much I train,

I'm still fighting windmills,

So to speak.

And you were born with this or when were you diagnosed?

Yeah,

That's a genetic condition.

And yeah,

I mean,

I always used to be active.

I still consider myself to be active.

And at the same time,

Because I am fighting windmills,

I just see the entire thing go down,

Where now even holding a cup of coffee in the morning is like,

Whoa,

This is heavy.

I'm going to need both arms to lift that cup.

Where getting out of bed,

To talk about the time domain of this,

Getting out of bed takes eight minutes.

And I'm talking about from lying down to sitting in my wheelchair,

Eight minutes isn't much.

But it also takes 15 minutes to get into bed.

It takes 10 minutes to take a bathroom break.

It takes 25 minutes to put on pants and nice shoes to go out.

So there's a lot of.

.

.

And this is why it's half of my day that is invested into health,

Because part of that is workout.

But also 30 minutes on the cardio bike means that I need 10 minutes to get on the bike and 15 minutes to get off.

So now we're looking at an hour and it's just a time drain.

And to add just one piece,

And this is maybe jumping a little bit ahead,

But this is also important in terms of half-assing.

I often ask myself,

Is it worth it by spending two,

Three hours of my day working out with breaks and dressing and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Let it be three hours.

There's a reason I usually start working by 2 p.

M.

,

Because that's how much time I need to take care of myself before I get there.

Is this time investment buying me enough time to make it worth it?

Or could those three hours be spent sitting in the park?

Because all I'm getting from it is maybe one more month.

The time investment in working on the health,

The physical activity aspect of it.

And I don't mean drop the workout and start black tar heroin and whiskey.

But it's like,

Yeah,

This 45 minutes,

30 minutes,

60 minutes on the cardio bike.

Does this buy me enough time to justify the cost that it's creating?

That's the half-assing that I mentioned at the end of the email.

The half-assing is if you did what?

What does half-assing mean to you?

That I am throwing my limited resources at a problem,

But it's not enough to alleviate the problem.

It's like trying to fix a crumbling wall,

But not being able to put enough resources in there.

So it would just be like,

You know what,

This is not going to go anywhere.

Give me six hours of health time.

Give me an entire day where I'm only focusing on my health.

And we would be making not progress.

I wouldn't be reversing the condition,

But I would make an impact.

I would probably be able to really buy a lot of time if eight hours of my day are spent cardio,

Swimming,

Massages,

Physiotherapy,

Gym,

Sleep,

Repeat.

And again,

That would not be half-assing my health,

But what kind of life would that buy me?

Yeah,

What cost?

What cost to the other things that bring you vitality in your work and your social connections?

You actually brewed beer.

I read this about you.

You did brew beer.

Oh,

The funny thing here is that I brewed beer when I was living in your sea land,

But that is a while ago.

Yeah.

My husband brewed beer when we were in graduate school,

When we were in our PhD programs together.

And there was like beer in my bathtub,

You know,

This is how you survive stressful events or brewing beer.

So it sounds like there's this real divide for you and this,

Where's the point of diminishing returns really?

Where's the point where I'm putting so much into this and I'm not getting out what I am hoping to get out of and maybe I'm forcing something,

But if I don't force it,

If I don't keep doing it,

There's a real acceleration of loss,

Physical loss for you,

Which is,

You know,

Yeah,

Yeah.

There's a T.

S.

Eliot poem,

Which I think it says,

Teach me to care and to not care,

Right?

And like,

Teach me to care.

Like this feels like a question of where are you going to place that care of yours and what are some things that maybe sort of letting a little bit go of?

Yes,

Yes.

And this is the big picture.

And then there is the small picture,

Just like two hours ago out in the sun,

Being like,

Why am I going back to my office?

That's like the small little needle pricks,

Which are insignificant because there's always a tomorrow.

And if I don't have this evening to spend in the sun,

I'm going to have tomorrow in the sun.

But that's kind of the problem,

Because we're looking at just a couple of weeks of where this way of thinking would still be able to go.

What was driving you to come back inside?

Commitment.

I had this appointment with you.

I had this commitment with my team for the meeting.

And that is very important to me.

If I say I am doing something with someone and people rely on me,

That is happening.

There's no,

Unless I'm down on the street and then I come back and the elevator is broken,

Then I would have called you and said,

Hey,

Actually,

I can't get back in.

Yeah.

Okay,

Let's take that a little bit further.

Commitment's important to you because what would happen if you didn't follow through on that commitment?

I would disappoint people that I care about and I would cause loss for them.

Does your commitment and your,

Your commitment to commitment,

Does your commitment to commitment ever result in you disappointing yourself and causing loss for yourself?

Oh,

Yeah.

When?

When I realized that what I just did wasn't appreciated,

Let me show up at 8pm to a meeting and then 15 minutes before I get an email that says,

Oh,

By the way,

My dog just threw up over the carpet.

We're going to postpone this for two days.

That's like really,

That's why I kept my evening open.

Those things I am,

However,

Learning to be very harsh with.

You might do this once with me,

Maybe twice,

But then our meetings are happening with different understandings.

You set some limits.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

So you've been practicing holding other people to the commitments to you that you've committed to them.

Yeah.

Holding that same standard.

Yeah.

For others.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm in the dark here,

Michael.

Yeah.

As am I.

I'm kind of like,

We're in one of those escape rooms where we're like,

Okay,

Let's go down this hallway and see if I find anything and let's go down this hallway and see what we can find.

Yeah,

Of course.

So as an ACT therapist,

I'm like,

Where's the vulnerability?

Where's the attachment?

Where's the avoidance?

Where's the values?

Or why can't you conjure up that five star?

So there's something there around commitment and there's,

I was actually just listening to a Dharma talk by Jill Franzdahl this morning and the topic was self-importance and it was around like how to practice self-importance and how to not practice self-importance.

Like to hold both.

Like I am both important.

You deserve to be respected,

Your time,

People to show up for you.

There's a self-importance.

There's a respect and a dignity that you're asking from others in the way that you give to others,

Self-importance.

And then the flip side of that is it's important to not have so much self-importance,

Like that it would be okay if Michael Herald,

If you contacted me and you said,

I really can't do it today,

Given the paragraph you just wrote me and you said,

I chose to go spend some time in the sun with my friends,

I would actually say that's probably a better use of your time,

Michael.

You're going to get more out of your friends for an hour than you may get out of an hour with me.

And sometimes I'll send clients out like,

Don't come to therapy.

I'd rather you go do that thing that's actually a deeper therapy for you.

So there's also that non-self-importance,

Like that you aren't so,

You know,

Like there's a,

It's a gift to not feel like it's such a self-importance.

There's something in here around commitments to others or commitments to yourself that just feels,

To me,

It's,

It's,

There's some inflexibility processes happening with yourself of giving yourself the gift of a five-star day.

See,

I think,

I think you,

You brought us in a really good,

Um,

Track here because say I would have gone with being selfish,

Which by the way,

I made one of my values this year,

Selfishness.

Awesome.

And I would have decided,

You know what,

Screw it.

I'm going to email them all.

I'm sending them a picture of me sitting in the park.

Like I'm,

I'm not,

I'll explain it to them and I'll not show up to the meetings.

What about Tuesday,

Wednesday,

Thursday and Friday then?

How many commitments do I cancel versus how many do I still hold up for reasons that are tied to,

You know,

Work that are tied to leisure,

Social,

Social commitments?

How many of them do I now cancel and how many of them do I still keep?

And we're back on that.

Where do I put my resources?

Right.

We're back on the either or and that there has to be some template for how many do you cancel?

How many are productive?

And the invitation is actually to respond to the moment at hand and trust your own selfishness that part of your selfishness is also selfish in the way,

In a good way.

We're talking about self-importance,

Good side of things,

Is also selfishness that you actually really,

Really do want to be successful in your career.

When I saw you present,

We were doing a summit or you were,

I don't remember if we were part of our summit or I was watching a summit of you before you were part of my summit.

I watched something of you the first time I saw you present and you just knocked it out of the park.

You were the star of the show.

You're phenomenal at what you do and you have a drive that I actually think won't let you always choose to go sit in the park on a beautiful day.

But because you've gotten so into the commitment,

I keep my commitment or an inflexibility around it,

You haven't experimented.

You haven't had that.

It's more like if you were to write a fearless review of yourself,

That was completely fearless,

What that might be.

This is okay.

This is good.

A fearless review would mean that I wouldn't be scared of consequences when I spontaneously decide to cancel things because life offers me something that in a good selfish way,

It's just better than what's on the table here.

A fearless review would also mean that I'm going for work projects that are,

As the entrepreneurial world calls it,

The fuck yeses and not anything else.

I'm not excited about this.

I'm not going to spend my time on this,

But this one here,

That sounds brilliant.

And then chase those.

The fearless review for Michael would also be that he would no longer avoid pissing people off and that might either be canceling things with good reason,

Or it might be following up with someone for the second,

The third,

The fourth,

The fifth time,

Because this is a really cool project and I want to be a part of this and you haven't replied to me in a week.

So let me just,

Again,

Be the pain in the butt,

Be the pain in your inbox and ask about this again.

I think Michael would,

In a fearless review,

Also health-wise,

Go more on,

For the lack of a better word,

The extremes.

There could be a really hard workout day,

One day,

Binge watching the new Fallout series,

And then tomorrow I'm not doing anything.

And that's it.

Get a protein shake,

Get some healthy food,

But no workout.

And then get back on the track the next day.

Michael,

What would open up for you if you were to live that way?

I would definitely be able to say,

First coming to the one-year projection,

The pain point,

And then breaking this down a little bit,

I would be able to say that I lived life on my own terms.

No matter the outcome,

Whether I got what I intended to get,

But I could say that this was completely on my terms.

I cannot blame my lack of leisure time on business meetings that were canceled last minute.

I cannot blame it on projects that I didn't want to do.

I did only the things that I wanted to do,

And if it goes well,

Well done.

If it goes wrong,

Air quotes wrong,

Then I can still say,

Yeah,

But this was me.

This was Michael living to the fullest,

Going down.

I think it would also add more honesty to my day-to-day interactions,

Because I'm not showing up for something because I made the commitment two weeks prior,

But I'm showing up because I want to show up.

And I'm working on this project,

Not because it's just something that needs to get done,

And someone asked me to give a talk,

And I just said yes,

And now I need to stand by my word and actually do the talk,

But I would limit this to fuck yes projects.

I hope I can swear on your podcast,

Otherwise you can beat me out.

I would only say yes to those projects that really light my heart on fire.

When in your life have you said,

Fuck yes,

Chased that thing,

And something unexpected happened for you that actually did not require a ton of effort,

Or has that ever happened for you?

It could be with a relationship.

It doesn't have to be work-related.

It could be.

.

.

I can't recall any event where that happened,

And something really significant.

A lot of projects I said yes to,

Because they were amazing projects,

Then also required the work to be put in.

I can say this about some leisure projects of my own.

I just started a new hobby two weeks ago,

And it was like,

Oh,

I'm not sure about this,

But yeah,

Let's jump in.

This is exactly the kind of thing I want to do in my leisure time.

Let's jump in,

And it necessitated no effort whatsoever.

I was so welcomed by the community.

Everyone welcomed me in.

Everyone was helping me out.

I was like,

Wow,

This is 10 times easier than I thought it would ever be.

Can't find that,

Though,

For work or health-related issues.

What's the hobby?

Just out of curiosity.

Ever since I was a teenager,

I loved remote control cars,

Like the really professional ones.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

I always wanted to be on a professional racetrack,

And there is one in Jena.

And so I went there,

And of course,

It's not wheelchair accessible,

Because just of the nature of how these things are built.

You have to get up on the stage so you can see the track,

And the stage has stairs.

But they immediately said,

Look,

If you want to be a part of this,

We'll build you your own tower.

We'll build you your own Baywatch-like tower on the track.

And they did that in a week.

They sent me pictures like,

It's ready.

When are you showing up?

And I went there on Saturday and checked it off my bucket list.

I did my very first,

Not race yet,

Because I drive like a dummy,

But I was on the track doing this thing that I wanted to do since I was 13,

14 years old.

And you bet that I'll be there every weekend,

Unless it's raining or snowing or worse.

Yeah.

So,

It's really central in that story,

Sort of two parts that are kind of really central.

One is just the vitality of like,

This is,

It's just exciting,

It's something you've always wanted to do.

It's a place where you're going into that yes mode.

There's an opening up and expansiveness of your energy in it.

But the other part of it and the other part of it is the support of others.

Is that,

No,

Actually you wouldn't be able to make that happen unless this tower was built.

And that people wanted,

Like,

They were eager to,

They wanted to.

There's an audio book that I'm reading right now,

Reading,

By Amanda Palmer,

Which is called The Art of Asking.

And she was one of those statues that painted herself all white and looked like a statue and held herself in a position for hours on end.

And people would come and give her money and she'd give them a flower.

And in this position of asking for people's money,

And she goes into like how everything in her life has opened up because she's asked.

And a lot of times when we're in that spot of commitment or inflexibility or sort of that,

The spiral down or the contracted state,

It's because we aren't giving ourselves,

We are not,

The Art of Asking ourselves,

What is it would be a fearless life?

But also that other people are here and want to,

Just as you help others,

Actually want you to be successful at all the things that you want to be successful at,

The Art of Asking.

The RC people want you to be successful.

The podcasting people want you to be,

You know,

Everyone wants you to be successful just as you want them to be.

But let me just,

I want to read you what you said about the fearless review of Michael on that train to Germany.

And this is what you said,

You wouldn't be afraid to cancel things when life gave you something you wanted to do.

You'd say yes to work opportunities that are fuck yes,

And you would chase them.

You would no longer avoid pissing people off and you would cancel things for good reasons.

You'd follow up the third,

The fourth time willing to be a pain in somebody's inbox to make it happen.

And with your help,

You'd go to more extremes.

You'd really do a hard workout day and then you'd binge watch the new fallout series on another day.

And then if you did this,

That what would open up for you is that you'd live your life on your own terms,

No matter the outcome,

You wouldn't blame your lack of leisure time.

You'd be more honest in your day to day and in your actions,

You wouldn't work on a project because it's something needed to get done.

When I read that for you,

What happens?

Sounds really empowering.

It sounds like this is a person I want to step into.

And oh boy,

Is it going to bring up a lot of thoughts and emotions that I go,

Oh,

You can't do this.

But it does sound definitely.

And I don't say it does sound,

I mean like this,

It absolutely,

This is not a,

Maybe this is like,

This is the person that I'd really like to be.

And the cool thing is there's really just a thin veil of smoke between me now and that five star,

Five star review.

This is nothing I need to learn.

I need to practice things a little bit,

But this is nothing where I need a five year master's program before I can step into that person that can start with me saying,

Okay,

Diana,

This was nice,

Bye.

I'm going to have to grab a cold beer.

I'll email you the rest of the interview,

Right?

It could be that.

I'm not doing that.

But it would be that.

It would be that.

Not simple.

Elegant.

Elegant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you could do it in 10 minutes a day and you could do it 10 times a day.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

And you could do it today.

It requires some boldness on your part.

That should be easy because look at what's at stake.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's what your paragraph read to me.

It was like,

There's pretty much everything's at stake.

That's when you go all in.

When you're in Vegas,

Like you're down to the end,

You just say all of it,

Put it in the middle.

Let's do it.

Okay.

I'm not sure.

I've never been to Vegas.

At least that's how I play.

I don't go home with $5.

I put the last $5 in.

Bet the last $5.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Because what if you could come back with $10?

I'm all in.

To stay a little longer.

The Lamborghini that's in front of the entrance on the disabled parking spot,

I'm putting that in as well.

So we got somewhere.

We got from a three-star to a five-star,

And I don't want to assume that it's easy to do the next piece,

But I can assume that you have the toolbox full of tools.

This is all you.

.

.

You build toolboxes all day for people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No,

I have the tools.

I have the tools.

The only thing that I lacked was the clarity of what that process-based outcome would be because we're not talking about a definite product-based outcome.

I'm not sure what I will get at the end of this,

But I know that the process of getting there is going to be exactly what I want and what I need.

Yeah.

And no one could tell on the outside if you're living a five-star or two-star day or a five-star or two-star minute because sometimes that may look like you binge watching a show.

Sometimes that may look like you canceling,

Right?

It's an internal awareness of.

.

.

This was the line that you said because I want to use yours.

Living your life on your own terms,

No matter the outcome.

I feel like you've been showing up in that way in this time together,

The boldness.

You kind of pushed me a little bit.

You didn't let me just take the path of least resistance and be the perfect interviewee.

You're like,

I don't really get what you're saying.

I skipped a beer for this one.

Oh,

You did?

Yeah.

Of course,

I'm pushing back.

Yeah.

I owe you a beer.

But that's good.

That's the side of you that I actually really appreciate.

There's an honesty to that.

And that was actually one of the qualities that you described in your five-star review about just being honest.

What's your review of this 50 minutes together?

What do you say?

I certainly was expecting a conversation that would necessitate 20 sessions to find some footing.

And at the same time,

I really feel like the vector is set.

I know the direction to go in and I know I have the tools to pull it off.

What I was missing was that direction to apply those tools to.

And I have a couple of friends that are going through therapy and it often sounds to me like they're talking about insights instead of change.

It's more like,

Oh,

I learned this and it's so amazing.

I've heard this metaphor and it opened my eyes.

Yeah,

But your behavior is still the same.

So what's actually coming out of this?

And that's something that I will have to put pushing forward on that because like I said,

I have the tools.

I don't need any training in this and I know where to go.

So I'm very confident that this is not just an insight that will be churned on and end up in a couple of text documents where I write the big plans down.

But because it is so small and granular,

This is something that can start this evening.

This is something that can start next morning.

Or right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right,

Michael.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'm feeling empowered.

I'm feeling great.

Thank you so much for giving me those insights and taking the time to talk with me.

Thank you.

I look forward to hearing this one.

It's good.

Five stars.

Five stars.

Rate and review.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Wise Effort Podcast.

Wise Effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in the places that matter most to you.

And when you do so,

You'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatments.

Reviews

This was nice and helpful. I enjoyed listening. I want to give five stars. Thank you so much

some excellent nuggets in this episode not just for insight but for living into. Thank you 🙏🏼