Personal Alignment: What’s Possible When You Tear Away the Masks

[00:00:00] What do you mean by taking away masks? So masks. If anyone is a Carl Young fan, masks are the things that we project or pretend to be, to satisfy what we believe to be an external need or desire. So, so in other words, you know, when you’re being your authentic self, you’re typically in a more relaxed state.

You’re, you’re calm, you are in a, in a position where you’re responding naturally. When you start to put on masks is when you want to put up some type of defense or put on some type of. External view so that people see you in a way that isn’t truly about you. Welcome to Onward Live, a live stream focused on encouraging you to create a life you love living.

Now, let’s go beyond success to significance. Being clear on our why is crucial. It requires doing the inner [00:01:00] work, finding ourselves, getting to know ourselves, embracing our inner child. Shedding social conditioning and letting go of perfect. We know obstacles make us stronger. We can dream big and take action.

Believe you can, and you’re halfway there. I invite you to tune in every week and engage with me and my inspiring guests. Invite your friends. Let’s make time for what matters most in our lives. Let’s move onward together. Hi everybody. Thanks for joining tonight. I’m excited to be here. I hope that you are too.

And I’m Emily. I’m the host of this live show. And I can see we’ve already got some people here. I’ve got senior Pasada, I think that’s how you pronounce it. And I remember you from last night. You put hashtag teen, 90 year old child. And I, that’s an inside joke, but I [00:02:00] know exactly what you mean. When I, uh, said last night on the, on the show where I was being interviewed, I said, you know, when we’re talking about forgiveness, uh, you know, one of the things that we can do is.

Take a journey to visit our 90 year old self and, uh, see what they would say about this situation in our lives and how we should handle it. And so you remembered that and you posted it. So I’m excited to have, uh, Brian Clay here. He’s, uh, a coach and can you believe that I, I never really say what episode number this is.

This is the 186. Interview that I’ve done 186, so I’m going to celebrate when we hit 200. Brian, welcome. Hi, Emily. How are you doing? Yeah, I’m, I’m doing great. We were just talking earlier that, you know, you’re a coach. You went to, you’ve had a lot more training than I have, but we both went to ipec Institute for Professional [00:03:00] Excellence in Coaching, and, you know, it’s fun to have a, a fellow coach on here to, to talk to tonight.

Oh, I’m glad to be here. Thank you. Yeah, so we’re gonna be talking about personal alignment and what’s possible when you tear away the masks. And this is definitely, you signed up to be on this, on this show back when I had a little bit of a different theme, which was facing adversity moving forward and discovering ourselves along the way.

However, you know, with creating a life you love, living personal alignment and tearing away the masks is, is a key aspect of that, right? Absolutely. It’s, it, it, it’s part of what allows you to, to identify and what it is that you really want to be doing, and then determine how to start doing it. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah.

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself. Share your story with us. I want to hear it. And while you do that, I’m going to feature you right here. Okay. So, so a little bit about [00:04:00] myself. I’m, you know, I’m a, I’m a person who, who. Who was born and raised, you know, in the, in the seventies and eighties.

So I’m a, I’m an eighties child, which, which sets a lot up for, for how it is that, that I entered the work world. I’m a, I’m, I’m a former corporate executive. I, you know, from the time I graduated college to before I became a coach, I, I rose through the corporate ranks, you know, and became, you know, what I thought was my dream, what I thought was success, what I was striving for from the minute I graduated high school and then moved on to, to, to leaving that, that world because the world.

That, that, that, that really stopped becoming what it is that, that I wanted to do it, it was actually causing me to become somebody I didn’t want to be. And it was limiting me from being able to actually go out and make the difference that, that I was supposed to be making, you know, here. So, so little bit about me.

I like heavy metal. I have three kids and still married to the same, you know, wonderful person that I, that I met when I was in college. I lived in multiple [00:05:00] states and right now I’m on in, in New England and on in Connecticut. Oh wow. Aren’t you getting ready for a big snowstorm this weekend? Yeah, that’s the great part about living in New England is we’re gonna get either an inch or 24 inches.

They have no clue. It depends on where it comes off the, off the, the coast. But yeah, the, the, you know, we’ll prepare for 24 inches and we’ll probably get rain. Oh, well that would be disappointing. Uh, I don’t know. Do you like snow? Love it. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re there. So what was it about the corporate world that caused you to not be yourself or to start not liking who you were becoming?

Yeah, so, So the, the, I, I don’t even know if I wanna blame the corporate world, but what I found was that when I was, when I was in the corporate world and, and working for an organization, I had a drive to try to exceed expectations. So whatever the expectations [00:06:00] were of the corporation, of me, of the role, I was finding myself driven to, to exceed them.

And, and in doing so, what I wound up doing, you know, probably midway through my career is I really started hurting other people. It wasn’t intentional. I, I wasn’t out there plotting against them. But just by nature, you know, if, if anyone’s done a, you know, a, a profile, personality profile assessment, you know, one of those types of things I, I’m typically gonna show up in that director driver.

You know, quadrant, which means I can be very blind to things like, like, like emotions, you know, hurting people’s feelings and, and actually pushing people to the side, not giving people respect. It’s just, it was a natural thing. And, and because I was, I was good at what I did and was rewarded for what I did, I did more of it.

And I did it to the point to where it became, while I was, while I was still very successful as an individual. And if you took any, you know, objective measure. [00:07:00] It was, they were always, you know, higher than, than what the, what the organization was expecting. The, the personal toll was, was too big. And, you know, the biggest moment for me, what, what really made me, made it click for me was I had been, I.

Living away from my family for, for four years, I had taken a job that was two states away. And you know, in New England that’s really only a two and a half hour drive, but it was still two states away. And because I was two states away, I was spending the week away from them. And, you know, I’d come back on the weekends and I thought it was fine.

And I thought it was working up until the day that my four-year-old daughter walked into the room on Monday morning knowing that I was leaving. And, you know, she broke down, started crying, telling me, you know, asking me not to leave. And, you know, she’d only known me doing this for her whole life, from the time she was born to the time of that day, I had always been traveling.

And I realized at that moment that, you know, e not only was it something that, that needed a change [00:08:00] from within the work, it needed to change within the family. And so I made the decision at that point that it was, it, it was no longer forming. Yeah, I would just say that I can definitely relate to that because I, I, I think, and I’ve learned a little bit about myself in this, that, you know, I tend to be hyper achiever, have a hyper achiever, you know, mindset.

And the more I’ve learned about that tendency, we also tend to feel that feelings are kind of get in the way of us achieving. That’s, that’s what I’ve learned about me. And so that’s very interesting that you noticed that and that you decided to make a change. Yeah. The, the change was slow, I will admit, because the first change I made was not that I was gonna leave the corporate world, but that I was going to leave the corporate world that I was in.

You know, I decided that that being apart from the family [00:09:00] was no longer something that, That was going to serve me. It wasn’t going to serve the family and it wasn’t gonna serve the companies that I worked for. What, where I had gotten a bit of a benefit was three years before leaving that organization, I had come into contact with a very, very good coach.

He was an an executive coach. He came in and he brought a program in that I went through along with 30 other executives at that company. And it was during this process where I actually started to become very fascinated. With the concept of coaching, what it means to align yourself, what I learned with him, how to align myself, how to start stripping away those masks and start to be able to see the, you know, What I would call the false life that I was living, even though it looked successful, it was really a false life and started moving more towards, you know, where it is that I am today.

So, so I did get a benefit from it, but it was, and it was slow to take myself out of it. It wasn’t like I just woke up and said, I’m done. Yeah. [00:10:00] Right. I, it’s not an easy thing. What do you mean by taking away masks? So masks, you know, if, if anyone is a Carl Young fan, masks are the things that we project or pretend to be, to satisfy an ex what we believe to be an external need or desire.

So, so in other words, you know, when you’re being your authentic self, you’re, you’re, you’re typically in a more relaxed state. You’re, you’re calm, you are in a, in a position where you’re responding naturally. When you start to put on masks is when you want to put up some type of defense or put on some type of external view so that people see you in a way that isn’t truly about you.

And, and, and more times than not, I think you mentioned at the beginning, it’s, it’s. It’s the idea of starting to kind of protect yourself from insecurity so people don’t see what’s truly underneath or, or hear what’s truly underneath because [00:11:00] you don’t think it’s appropriate. You don’t think it’s proper.

So you’re being what you think other people want you to be as opposed to who you are. And, and do you feel, do you, what, in your experience, do people, are people doing that kind of unconsciously sometimes, like not really aware that they’re doing that? So there’s, there’s definitely a mix. And so when, when I talk with folks about, about removing masks, it’s the unconscious masks, those who are just, I’m sorry.

You helped them discover those. Yeah. So, so we, we, you know, typically we start developing them at a very early age, very early age. You know, we, we learn very quickly how we should behave. When we’re outside or when we’re in a public place, or, you know, when we’re, you know, when we’re at school, we, we learn very quickly what’s an acceptable behavior, what’s not a behavior.

You know, for me growing up it was, I learned very quickly you didn’t cry unless something was broken. [00:12:00] Right. You know, and, and, and again, if there’s, there’s children of the, of the eighties, you’ve probably heard the phrase, you know, from a, from a parent, you know. You know, stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

It’s one of those types of things where you right, you, you start to learn. That there’s certain ways to act and certain ways not to act. And so you start to put on masks, you start to create this persona. And it isn’t intentional. It, it is, it is the subconscious that is putting these up in front. But the more you have on and the longer you keep them on, the harder it is to break away from it.

And the more it becomes your, your natural reaction to things. Yeah. You know, I’ve got a grandson who’s like five and a half, and I, and I spent the, some time over the summer with him when he had just turned five. And it’s so awesome to see him because he doesn’t have those masks, you know, he’s just, yep.

Innocent, sweet, natural, and it’s like, that’s how we all were at one point. Well, it, it’s, so what I [00:13:00] do is, is, is it’s not, at one point it’s, we still are. Yeah, so, so, so my concept, yeah, so, so the concept is, and it’s, and it was something that, again, you know, the coach that I worked with helped me start to uncover was, it’s still there.

It’s not, it’s not gone. The dreams you had, the enthusiasm you had, the caring that you had. It’s all still there and it’s available to you. You just have to be willing to start removing the things that you thought was making you be successful and, and get back to that, that raw, that raw state, and then letting that be what you put out there, not just for yourself, but for, for others to engage with and interact.

And then very quickly find, find your paths. So, you know, I’m a coach. You’re a coach. So full disclaimer, but let me just ask you, do you feel like that’s something that people can do without the help of. Somebody else that can, they just do it on their own by like reading books, learning about themselves that way.

It’s, it’s hard. I mean, can [00:14:00] you Absolutely. You never, never underestimate, you know, in, in a person’s ability. I know, I read, I read the books, right? So I, I read all those books. I, I went to those seminars. I actually, like I said, I had a couple of coaches that tried to work on stuff with me because when you’re becoming aggressive in a.

And in a corporate environment, again, it doesn’t happen over, over time. And when people are looking to promote you to higher levels and they can see the things that would prevent it, they want to help you. But it, you know, a lot of times it takes a very specific interaction to be able to, to, for, to help you be able to see and experience something.

And when you remove the masks, it’s not something you, you cognitively know. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s something you experience. Mm-hmm. And you know, so, so, you know, can you do it? Absolutely. Lots of people have done it, but it, it’s one of those things where, where if you, you know, again, as you were growing up with you, were learning any type of sport.

If you’re learning any type of skill, you’re going to school, there’s someone [00:15:00] there helping you along the way, who’s got experience with it. And that’s, that’s where I see the benefit of, and that’s why I went into coaching is, is, is to help those people that that need just that little help of how do I get there?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Let’s check out some of the, the chat here. Cause I think that there’s, uh, a question or two. So Maria Thorpe, thank you for joining us. I appreciate you. Maria’s an engineer where I used to work with the Navy. Don 10 is saying, whoops. Okay, that’s not showing up that great on here. So let me just read it.

She’s saying the 10, um, She’s in Atlanta and she’s taken the disk D I s D to and to be familiar corporate or not corporate. That’s the question. Like, so do you have any recommendation for somebody who’s trying to decide that? So you have to, to be corporate or not to be corporate you, you always have to ask yourself either way, what is it you really want to do?

And I’ll, and I’ll give you an example. I know it’s a very cliche statement, [00:16:00] right? That’s it’s very easy to say. And you know, when, when I was in corporate, the reason I stayed in corporate is I thought it was gonna produce a certain income for me and my family. And I thought it was going to give me a certain lifestyle that I had set as a goal for myself when I was very, you know, very young when I was in my teens.

And I thought corporate was the path. And so I was very happy early on in corporate. You know, I was very happy to, to learn how to operate and navigate within a, within a corporate environment. But when I realized that those were no longer the things that were satisfying me, I realized that you had to make a choice because corporate, there’s a purpose to corporate, corporate.

I mean, a corporation exists in and of itself for itself, and its shareholders. And if you can’t align to that corporate purpose anymore, if you can’t be part of that corporate mission, it just, it nos away at you. You go home miserable or, or even just feeling unfulfilled. It’s, that’s when you start to look and say, well, maybe corporate isn’t, [00:17:00] isn’t for me anymore because.

Because I’m, no, I no longer have that feeling of, of fulfillment and satisfaction. Yeah. And we all change and you know, I think I, I’ve interviewed a guy Roy Cook on this um, show, and he talked about how a lot of us don’t know what our values are. So when something’s rubbing at you the wrong way, That’s a good time to make sure you know what your values are cuz you could be doing something that’s against your values.

Like you were working two states away. I mean, maybe it was two and a half hours, but you were leaving your daughter, you know, your, your daughter was starting to, you know, get upset about that. So that probably is something that made you think, what are my values towards my family? Family. So, Yeah, so, so I do, I do do value work and I, and I, and I did listen to, to, to Roy before I, before I come on, like earlier in the week and you know, his target of 10 to 20.

Um, yeah, that’s a lot. It’s a lot. That’s a lot of values. And you know what, what I tend to work with folks on is that [00:18:00] 99% of the time when you have a reaction that, you know, whether it’s anger or frustration or something along those lines, it is that one of your, val, you just broke. One of your values, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not that someone else made you mad, it’s that you have now gotten angry with yourself because one of your values have been broken.

But, but more than having 10 to 20 values, I’m, I’m, I’m a person that, that tries to find the purpose. You know? And, and usually when I, when I talk with folks or or engage with folks, it’s really around, do you know what your purpose is? Okay. Cuz that’s, to me, that’s much bigger than a personal value. That is, that’s why you’re here and, and why you.

It is, and it’s why you believe you’re here, right? Mm-hmm. And it’s from that purpose that you, you start putting on or taking off all these masks, and it’s how you interact with people. So a lot of times with the corporate world, you ask people, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things is, you know, you ask people to introduce themselves and usually they go straight from their name to their [00:19:00] job because they believe their purpose is tied to what they do.

Right, right. You know, my purpose is, is what I do here or, you know, and, and, and you know, some people will call them, you know, their, their. You know, they’re, they’re a mother or they’re a father cuz they believe that’s part of why they’re here. But when you start to strip it away and understand big picture wise, why are you here, you can now start to, to connect to people not just directly in front of you, but well outside what you believe to be your normal, your normal range of influence.

Yeah, definitely. Dante says, mask used to cover up the real you. Yeah. And who else do we have here? Oh, we’ve got, uh, Elizabeth. Yeah, from Santiago, Chile, thank you for joining us. Yeah. Everybo and Russ Hedge is here. So yeah, Russ Hedge talks about it’s important to know what your values are, and he also talks about your purpose and what’s your why.

So he’s like Stan strong in [00:20:00] your values and your purpose. Yeah, and I think a lot of times, I mean, I know when I used to work for the Navy, we would do the strategic planning for. You know, the Navy or you might do it for your company. And it’s like, how often do we look at our own lives that way? Like strategically and what’s my purpose?

What’s my value? We look at that with the companies. Do you know what’s the company’s purpose? Why are we here as a Navy? But what about us? Yep. So, so that’s the concept of alignment and, and when you align why you’re he, why you’re here and you can align that to the organization, it’s much easier to stay corporate.

Yes, because, because you’re aligned and it’s working and, and you do know who you are and you are aligned to it, and it, and it fits and it, and it can fit for, for, for lots of people. But when you, when you when it’s not, and you’ll know when it’s not because as I mentioned you, you start to be somebody. You start to get feedback typically from an external group, viewing you in a way that you don’t view [00:21:00] yourself.

And, and a lot of times, you know, if you, if you’re in a corporate world and you’re wondering if you’ve got masks on, um, You’ll start to, you’ll start to hear people saying that you’re making them feel certain ways, and that wasn’t your true intention. Mm-hmm. So that’s one of the great cues when you’re, when you’re in an environment, whether it be work or, or outside, is, you know, you’re, you’re not living your, your, you know, to your purpose, to your values when your intentions are being misconstrued and misunderstood.

That’s exactly, that’s a lot of what, you know, I started to find in my last job. And, you know, I stayed, I, I retired at 56, which is my minimum retirement age from leaving the Navy. And cuz I was starting to feel that I was starting to feel frustrated. I was starting to, you know, the hyper achiever me was, you know, I knew that I wasn’t probably, uh, focusing enough on like feelings and, and things like that.

And I wanted to feel my feelings. I, you know what though, I’m gonna share that. [00:22:00] When I retired, I thought that I would, all of a sudden, everything would fall into place, right? I’m retired, I have all this free time, everything’s gonna be great. But it wasn’t because I still kept achieving like, now I’m gonna be a coach, now I’m gonna be a podcast host.

And, and I created more and more work for myself. So, you know, sometimes we think that it’s the outside circumstances that have to change and then will change. And it’s actually the other way around, at least. In many ways from what I’ve learned. So that’s definitely a, a focus is that if you, if you change yourself, you’ll change those things that are around you.

And, and you know, the best example I can give and, and I, and I typically like to use myself as examples is in 2017 is when I started to get an idea around trying to develop communities. Within, within the US and, and you know, at, at that point in time, you know, I had started reading about, about things around these [00:23:00] concepts of agricultural communities, communities that are, that are built, the homes are purpose-built, the communities are purpose-built to grow their own food, to, you know, not in like a mm-hmm 1960s commune style.

I mean, you’re still part of the real world, but you start to bring it, you know, it’s, it’s, you’re bringing that stuff local. You’re, you’re, you’re doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for your community, and then you’re doing it for your expanded community. And it was an idea that I had, you know, not mine alone.

I’d seen about it and I, I was really interested in it. Tried to work with it, tried to, you know, I ran for, for public office cuz I figured if I got elected as a selectman, I could help the town do this, blah, blah, blah. What a great thing. And it never worked and I couldn’t figure out why. Because I thought it was a wonderful idea, but I rather than, rather than sit on it and, and chase it like I used to.

Right. I’ll just, I’ll, I’ll just keep changing my external stuff. I changed, I started to change, you know, myself and trying to figure out why is this important to me? What, what is, why do I feel so tied to this? And, and what is this really about? [00:24:00] Flash forward to 2021. Last middle of the year last year, June of last year, I was out in Las Vegas for a, for a, for an award ceremony.

And there was a woman that came the last day and you know, this was a medic. There was a lot of doctors and, and, and medical professionals and you know, She stood out like a sore thumb. Cause a, as I’ve always joked with her, she looked like a bag lady had walked into this building and, you know, you hadn’t seen her up until this point.

I mean, she, you know, and, and they asked if anybody had any questions and she started grilling these, these medical professionals. And everyone’s looking at her cuz she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t give up the mic. And I realized I gotta go talk to her. I gotta find out who this person is. And so I walk over and I talk to the person.

And we introduce ourselves and she tour takes me to, you know, she born and raised in Vegas. She’s taking me all over the place within Vegas. We’re talking about what her visions are, and I find out that lo and behold, her vision of creating these types of [00:25:00] communities is the same thing as my vision was in 2017.

And now we’re working together, you know, raising funds, working with local governments to make these things happen primarily for, for, for military and, and vets to start with. But we’re already in conversations with, you know, groups in, in, in seven states to, to start bringing this. And so the reason why I give it as an example is I had to figure out why I wanted to bring.

This into existence within WI within the us. Was it for selfish, egotistical needs? Was it because I wanted to be able to say, it’s my idea and it’ll work? Or was it for something bigger? And when I acknowledged that it was for something bigger than that, it wasn’t about me, it was about something. More than that is when the opportunity came and I was able to step into the opportunity.

Um, even though it didn’t look like the opportunity, I didn’t know what it was, I stepped into it and. Now it’s, now it’s coming to fruition. [00:26:00] That is an awesome story because basically what you’re saying is you, you stopped pushing for the thing to happen and you ki another thing is, and you kind of let it happen, and probably in between that time you did some work on yourself to, like you said, to understand why you really wanted it, and then the opportunity came.

Yeah. If I’m being completely transparent here, I almost died from the time I met her to when it started. And uh, is that when you woke up and you couldn’t use your left arm? No, that was long before, no, that was All right. Wait, that was, tell us about the almost dying part and then we’ll go back to this other story.

Okay. All right. So, so like a lot of people, I contracted Covid when I was in Las Vegas and I came back like a lot of people and I was, I. Mildly sick and the mildly sick turned into something that was beyond mildly sick. You know, if, if you listen to folks who have [00:27:00] covid, you know, they can be, it can be very much like a cold, or you can go into full on, you know, hallucinations, you know, high fevers, a hundred, 400, five degree temperatures.

And so I had all of that, and then in the middle of the night, it, my breathing decided it no longer wanted to function. Oh my gosh. So, so I had gone from being stable, but sick to within three hours, you know, basically three to four hours away from, from no longer being able to function. You know, my, luckily we were monitoring my blood oxygen level at home.

Anyone who’s, you know, familiar with it, I had dropped from a 98 to a 79 in less than two hours. Whoa. And it was not coming back. Because I was measuring it every 15 minutes and I was watching it draw five points as we were going along, so got to the hospital. And when you’re in the hospital, you get a lot of cell, you know, you know, to yourself time.

There, there weren’t a lot of people, you know, no one’s allowed to come visit you when, when you have this disease, when you’re [00:28:00] in the hospital, the doctors can’t even come in and visit you. Those that do come in to visit you, they look like they’re from, you know, the movie outbreak where they’re fully head to cover many times and, and you know, tho those plastic space suits.

Um, so you’re really by yourself. Probably 23 hours of the day. And it was during that time where I had to start getting real with myself about why am I here? Because you have to ask yourself, is it worth going on anymore? And once you make the decision that it’s worth going on, when, when you’re given the choice, when it’s sitting in front of you and you have that choice, it becomes, it becomes more meaningful.

And so yes, there was definitely some personal work that had been going on throughout, you know, from, from 2017 until that point. But it still wasn’t satisfactory for me to be able to take that very next trusting last step that said, you know, trust what you’re doing. Trust that it’s that, it’s that, it’s that it’s real.

And step into who you’re supposed to be and make this happen. [00:29:00] Wow. What a story. Okay, so how can we get to that point without contracting covid and without like coming close to dying? How can we get to that? So a lot of times it really depends. And so I’ve, I I will admit it’s, you know, for me it’s been more like a rollercoaster.

I get close to it and then I come back down and I get close to it and I come back down. And, and I, and I will say that it’s, it’s like that, you know, for a lot of the people that I, that either I, that, that I work with or work for, that I know personally, it’s never a straight line. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s never like a straight line.

Once you get on it, you know, you, you, you’re, you’re consistently moving in, in that same direction. It’s an up and a down, you know, the, the way to do it without, you know, the best ways to do it. And, and usually it does involve some type of, you know, I, I’m gonna call it a board in the face. Mm-hmm. You know, it, it doesn’t matter what is, you know, for me it was my daughter had to tell me, you know, in tears.

Please don’t go. You [00:30:00] know, there were, there were a number of those types of situations, but what I would say is don’t ignore them. We usually ignore those things, you know, it, you know, from, from my perspective, I, I like to think that the reason I, I went through, what I went through with Covid was cuz I had ignored all the opportunities beforehand to make it happen.

I had talked myself out of it. I was, I was focused on something else and there was, when I looked back, there was a lot of things I was focused on that weren’t, that was pulling me away from, from my alignment and. You know, if, if you keep doing that, something’s gonna come and hit you hard. So the best way that I would say to, to, to do it without contracting covid and coming to a near, near state of death is be more aware.

Right? A lot of times in coaching when we talk with people, we talk about awareness. It’s not necessarily self-awareness, it’s awareness of what’s around you and the opportunities that are presenting. And perpetually ask yourself, why, why not this opportunity? Because the more you resist something, The more likely it is.

That’s what you’re supposed to be stepping to. Hmm. Yeah. Get [00:31:00] curious. It it, what you just said reminds me too of a, of an episode I did a long time ago with a woman named Lisa Specter and Lisa’s a jewel trained pianist, and she had little things that were happening that she was ignoring. Right. Little things telling her.

And finally one day something. Terrible happened. She fell and she broke her right hand, and she plays the piano for a living. So she broke her right hand in seven places. It was bad and. For like four years. She played left hand and she wrote is even, I don’t know if she’s published her book now, but it’s, it was called Left Hand Lemonade.

And she, she’s an awesome player and she really, she had a physical therapist that she fired because her physical therapist told her she’d never play again with the right hand. But she really worked a lot on her right hand. She plays with both, but she feels that, that, I mean, that’s what made her realize that she doesn’t play music with her hand.

She plays with her heart. [00:32:00] And that, and she started to find more opportunities for her to be able to help people play piano and stuff. You know, even over the internet and things. So it’s just another story of something like that happened. And you can find a gift in it and it also wakes you up. She said it woke her up to realize she was ignoring some things in her about that.

So yeah, it’s the awareness. So I love that story. Brian. Thanks for sharing and I’m so glad that you’re here and Me too. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna hear about your, your left arm, but let’s look, let’s check out the chat and see what we have here. Yes. Ligia from Costa Rica says, our values are the basis where we build life, the guide we follow during this journey.

And let’s see. I’m just looking. Uh oh. Yeah, what your brain is, all of us. I don’t know what that means, Kara, but I enjoyed being on your show last night. Um, Oh, someone’s being silly. He said he was hit by a teletubby. It’s [00:33:00] true. Well, maybe you were. Maybe you were. Maybe it is true. I don’t know. Sinor Cara says living in the present and seeing everything as it is in that moment is such a crucial skill to develop.

Yes, and I have really only. Developed that over the past couple years and it really changed my life because like before, I was just like Chief, chief, chief check things off my list, you know? And I wasn’t as aware. I knew it. And I, that’s what I was saying, Brian. I thought that it would just all of a sudden come when I retired, I’d have all this time, but it didn’t come.

I had to work on myself. It wasn’t the change of the external circumstances, like the free time. It was, that was what made me realize, well, maybe it wasn’t the job. Maybe it was me. You didn’t, you, you weren’t ready for free time yet. No. And so it’s just so interesting. And Cara says, my goodness, thank you for sharing.

And I wanted to make a couple of, uh, other [00:34:00] comments here. You know how you said that it’s not a straight line and that’s why the onward, you know, that e over the onward in my logo is like moving forward. And my son said, too bad life doesn’t, just doesn’t throw you for one loop like that. And it’s kind of representing it’s loom gold for Navy and it’s representing.

Moving onward and like going from kind of blue to golden is, it represents a lot of things. I, I love that, that logo. And then the other thing Brian, I wanted to share is having that time to think that’s what I saw when I retired. I saw my former husband, my kid’s dad sick with cancer and he had a lot of time to think and he was paralyzed in both of his arms.

And I, he didn’t say a lot. And he passed away five months after his diagnosis. But I could tell he was thinking about how he had lived his life and I could tell that he had [00:35:00] regrets. And that changed me too. It was like I want to live life fully and not have regrets, or at least know that I did my best to not have any regrets.

And that’s one of the reasons why this is create a life you love living now. Because it’s not like, not when circumstances change, but now what can you do? That’s a little bit about, about my story and why I’ve done this, and so I wanna hear about how you woke up or how you, you know, were not able to use your arm, and then how something all of a sudden happened where you were.

So, so this goes back into my corporate world, my corporate life. And so this goes back to 2009. Where I was actually at the peak of my, you know, corporate progress is what I would call it, success. And so, so in 2009 I was, I was, I was recently promoted, given a lot more responsibility, received, you know, you know, [00:36:00] significant compensation and I thought I was on top of the world and I was working out.

And I woke up the next morning and my left arm decided it didn’t wanna work anymore. Like it wouldn’t move. It felt locked. Now, I, I chalked it up to, I injured it while I was exercising because I, you know, I, I had been an athlete as a child and, you know, growing up in high school and all that stuff, and I figured it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’ll, it’ll, it didn’t go away within three months.

Are you waiting three months before to go? It didn’t go. Did you go to the doctor? Oh, we’ll get there. So, so it didn’t get better, but it didn’t get worse within three months. And, and I am part of why I was always successful at work. Was, I was stubborn. Right? It was one of those ideas of, you know, I was, I was very, very, I don’t wanna say, said in my ways, but if, if I could see a way that would be successful, that was the way that it was going to go.

Mm-hmm. And again, you know, back in, back in, you know, the, the, the early two [00:37:00] thousands, the late nineties, that was, that was rewarded, that that’s what success looked like. But by the end of two thousands, that wasn’t the case anymore. It wasn’t just that anymore. You, you had to be able to do that plus be what, you know, at that time was being coined as a team player.

Yeah. You and and I and I always thought that, you know, I knew what it meant to be a team player cuz I was an athlete and, you know, being a team player meant know your role and do your role and, and do it as, as well as you can. But, but that aside, let’s fast forward to 2014 and my arm still doesn’t work from 2009 until 2014.

Yep. From 2009 to 2014, I’m at the point now where to get dressed, I have to grab my wrist with my right hand, lift my arm up. It would not move. I could, I could wing it a little bit, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t lift it, it wouldn’t move. And corporately, and, and in my career, while I was still receiving, you know, accolades, still getting raises, I, I shifted, I shifted to two different companies with, with, you [00:38:00] know, nice titles.

My arm was getting worse as we were going along. And the answer to your question, I ever see a doctor. No. Cuz I’m stubborn. Did it hurt? I, I, no, it never hurt. It just wouldn’t move. Like if I tried to force it to move, I could feel some pain, but I just said, well then don’t force it to move. Don’t do that. Um, and you’re still married to your wife, so she put up with this too.

Well, yeah, I mean, she put up with it, but it wasn’t like I was complaining about it. It just, I just accepted it as part of what was now happening. So I didn’t say I was smart about it, but that is what it was. And, and so what wound up happening was, as I mentioned earlier, I went through that program, the, the, the program with the coach and halfway through.

So, so what happened was, at the very beginning of the program, I got elected to, to be the, the, the, the team lead that was moving the organiza this, this group of folks through this program. And I didn’t know it at the time. But what that meant was I had to become the, the guy who developed the program. My job was to [00:39:00] coach these 30 executives and I had to learn how to do it, and I had to learn how to do it his way.

I could no longer do it my way. I. Ooh, which mean I had, which meant I had to give up everything that I knew, and it also meant that I had to give up and I had to start ripping apart and ripping down those, those masks that I had on myself. And what wound up happening is we were, we went through an exercise and it was, you know, it was a limiting belief exercise.

What beliefs are you holding onto? Which ones will you gain if you, if you, if you, you know, if you wanna move forward, what, what benefit comes of it? A pain, pleasure exercise, and I faked it. Because I was not gonna be honest about it. I, I, I would be somewhat honest about it. But what happened was, is, is after I did it, my job was to coach others the next day and become part of the, and, and help others through it.

So I did that and it was a very different experience. And so I went home that night and I was living away from my family, and I started to take a walk. And as I was taking the walk, [00:40:00] The, in the ability to hide those things, the how I viewed myself, my, those, those three limiting, you know, limiting beliefs that were holding me back were, was no longer capable.

I was no longer capable of doing it. You know, I, I went through the whole experience. I came back to the house, I wrote ’em down, I looked at ’em, you know, I got angry at them. I was mad, I was all kinds of things. They were so, yeah. So I, you know, they were, They were, I am alone. They were, I’m not worthy, and they are, I’m unloved now even though I had a wife and a family and kids, it didn’t matter.

These were the things that I was holding onto to motivate me to do well in life. Like these. These were the three things that I was using to motivate myself to move forward because I could use those as things to, to, to well up, you know? Passion and energy and all that stuff and, and get things out, but that’s what [00:41:00] was coming out when I was doing my things right?

Mm-hmm. This is how I was seeing myself and it, the more things I tried to do, the more that was trying to come out, but the more I tried to keep it down and left shoulder over time, worked less and less and less and less. And so I did the exercise for real. I went to bed. I woke up the next morning. And my left arm was fully functional.

Wow. And so I went in and talked to the coach and I said, and, and I, and again, you have to remember, I wasn’t a believer then. Like, I was like, I, like I said, I faked the first thing and, and I wasn’t really buying into to the whole thing cuz I thought there’s no way this is, this is how success looks. Um, did you think it was related?

Did you, like, did you put the two and two together like. Immediately. Immediately in the morning. And so I went in and I looked at him and he was sitting in a room and he looked at me and I asked him, you know, straight out, you know, the, the exact words were, what the hell did you [00:42:00] do to me? And he started laughing and he said, have a seat.

And we talked about it, and we talked about this concept of, you know, that, you know, the masks that you have, the, the beliefs that you hold onto, the longer you hold onto them, the more the, the more negative they are, the more they manifest themselves physically. And once you start to release those things, you’re able to actually start to release, um, some of those physical manifestations and from that point forward, I learned how to tell when I was putting on masks, um, because more times than not I was suffering some type of minor illness, some type of minor injury.

And when I would come clean with myself about what was going on very quickly, those minor illnesses, minor injuries, would immediately go away. And so that was really interesting. And so that’s, so that’s why I bought in. I mean, it, I was, I, I was converted, not because. Yeah, I, I, I, I had to become a believer because it happened, and, and, and it, and, and so once, once it happens to you and you understand it, [00:43:00] you want to share it.

So that’s, that’s the story of, of of, of the arm and, and how, you know, how I started to change and, and, and to the point earlier, throughout the entire life of up and downs. Up and downs, you’re always trying to figure out where you are on there so that you don’t end up with another locked arm. Yeah. Wow. It just makes me, you know, when, when I was working my last job, my, my right, my left hip started to hurt so bad, I could hardly walk and I chalk it up to I was traveling a lot, sitting, sitting on airplanes.

But I think also it had to do with, you know, some of the things that you just talked about with me. You know, I was getting to that point where, I wanna be a different person. Like people are saying that, you know, I mean, the stress was just getting to me and I wasn’t who I really wanted to be. And yeah, I had masks [00:44:00] on trying to please people, trying to just, and I was pushing a lot, a lot of push energy, not in flow.

And yeah, my, my hip hasn’t bothered me since I’ve, you know, so, So what happens? And, and, and the other thing, the other thing, the only thing I would share about, I also had to change my relationship with money. Yeah. During this process. And, and the biggest change that I, that I made with money and is that, I, I used to view money as something that I would go out and seek, right?

So I was, I was chasing money. And I very, I don’t wanna say quickly, but what I was going through this process, one of the immediate flips that I, that I realized that I needed to make was, I needed to flip that relationship and accept that money was going to chase me. So, in other words, if I, if I was who I was, If, if I was who I was and I was doing what I was supposed to do, money would find me.

I didn’t have to keep finding it. I [00:45:00] didn’t have to keep trying to prove myself to earn it. You know, I, I didn’t have to go to go out and, and, and leave three states away. I didn’t have to do that. I didn’t have to keep chasing it. I could just be who I was and money would find its way to me and did it work?

I will tell you that not only does it work for me, not only did it work for me, it’s one of the things that I do with most of my clients, cuz a lot of my, a lot of the folks I work with are executives and they many times are in the same situation. And the, the pursuit of more, the pursuit of more the constant pursuit of more thinking.

That that’s the, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. When they step back and they start allowing it to find them, the amount of money that finds them is, is incredible. And I’ll, I’ll use the same example. So I talked about the woman I met in Vegas. Mm-hmm. What she was struggling with was getting funding for these projects.

So she had all the people lined up, she had technologies lined up, she had people willing to do the work lined up, but she couldn’t get funding and we talked about it. And [00:46:00] so when, when we were, I was working with her, you know, she had to view it of how to get money. When we, when, when she was able to flip it, she went from getting her chasing down, trying to get people interested, to now where she’s receiving six to 10 calls a day with, with, with someone coming into her life now indicating that he has up to $300 million worth of funds available to her if she can bring forward everything and, and start to put it forward.

So she went from six months ago having an idea and people lined up, but she was chasing it. To flipping how she, what her relationship was, what is with money to where now millions and hundreds of millions of dollars of coming to her saying, this money needs you. Wow. And so it absolutely works. It absolutely works.

Are there any tips for how to do that that you wanna share with the listeners before we wrap up? So, so I mean, I, I, the, the biggest, the biggest tip I would give and, and it’s, and it’s, and it’s one of those [00:47:00] situations where it really does come down to letting go of a belief. It money, we all realize money is part of how this world goes round, right?

It, it’s, it’s how we, it, it’s, it’s a, it’s a fact of life. It’s here. But when, when you realize that it’s only, and this is a belief, That you, you wind up taking on. So it, it’s, it’s, you either will accept it or you won’t, and you’ve gotta work through. Are you willing to accept it and, and take little steps to do this, but recognize that money has no value if we don’t exist?

Dollars sitting on the floor has no in value in and of itself, it doesn’t have value until I pick it up and use it to do something with it. And so the biggest thing that, the biggest thing that I could, that, that I always work when I’m working with folks, the very first thing when it comes to this is to, number one, be very honest about how you view money and what your relationship is with it.

Because if you are a seeker of it, you, and you continue to seek it, it will be scarce. You’ll be the one looking for it, and it’s gonna be on you to find it. So, so [00:48:00] the first step is understand your purp. Uh, understand what your purpose is aligned to that. Look to change your relationship with, with, with how money works and it’s, and its purpose.

And then consider adopting the idea that if you’re, if you have, if you’re living your purpose and you’re doing this with, and, and you’ve changed your relationship with money, be aware of the opportunities that come and be open for them because they come. They come very fast and sometimes they’re very subtle.

And, and I’ll use as an example, if there’s, if there’s anybody who’s watching this podcast right now, who in, on January 1st of last year had a hundred dollars of disposable income in their pocket in August of last year, that a hundred dollars could have been worth 88. Million dollars if we saw an opportu, this opportunity that you’re gonna say, okay, if you, if you saw, if you were willing.

So this is, this is where it comes down to [00:49:00] is, you know, number one, do you see the opportunity? And if there’s anyone who, who knows what I’m talking about, please go ahead and put it in chat. Because, because most people would’ve stayed away from this opportunity, they completely abord this opportunity. And if you follow the idea of, wait a minute.

This is an opportunity for me to take, and I’m going to step into something that maybe I’m not normally going to step into close. I apologize. You told me not to look over there, but Bitcoin? It’s close. Bitcoin? Bitcoin, yeah. Bitcoin’s close. Cryptocurrency. It’s close. Yep. It’s, it was. It was the Shibu, inu, Crypton.

Cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency. If you would’ve had a hundred dollars in that, If you would’ve bought a hundred dollars of Shibu INU cryptocurrency in January of 2021, by August of 2021, that a hundred dollars would’ve turned into, I believe it was like 88 million. But Shibu inu, if, if there was anybody out there, it was, it was a joke.

Cryptocurrency is scary. How do you know? [00:50:00] So, so how do you know? So, so for me, and it’s an opportunity to take, so, so for me, so again, for me, I, I’ll admit I didn’t take that. Even though there was Oh, don’t have, no, I don’t. But, but I, I didn’t take the opportunity even though it was put in front of me at least 15 times.

Hmm. And so here’s what I wound up doing, is every time the opportunity was put in front of me, I consciously rejected it for what I believed to be rational reasons. Instead of saying, wait a minute, this has shown up at least twice as an opportunity. And accepting and asking myself, well, what risk am I really willing to take?

What risk am I comfortable willing to take to take this chance? It was a hundred dollars, right? It was a hundred dollars. It, let’s put it this way, if you had $2, it would’ve been worth a million. All you had to do was put like $2 in, you would’ve had a million dollars. [00:51:00] I think it was like 2 25 or something like that.

So, so, so the, so the, the point is, is too many times when we look at things, we view it as an all or nothing sum. Like it’s an all or nothing game. We don’t ask ourselves how much of my, of, of what I have, am I willing to put in that I am, that I’m comfortable putting in to take this opportunity to take this chance.

And, and so as you go through life, you will have these opportunities put in front of you that you remain naturally, immediately say no. Right? There’s a, there you have a visceral reaction. When you have that, stop and step back and ask yourself, why are you saying no? And more times than not, if it is out of fear, ask yourself, what level of risk are you willing to take?

What level of chance are you willing to take? Maybe it’s not way up here. Maybe you’re not comfortable buying, you know Bitcoin at a hundred thousand dollars. But maybe you are willing to put in $5 into something brand new and take that chance. Yeah. So that would be so, so, so ask yourself that and then take a measured risk.

Take [00:52:00] a measured step forward, especially if you keep telling yourself hard no to something and the no is out of fear. Well, what if you think that it’s a dog Like Karara said she thought she, we knew was a dog. It’s, so, that’s it. It’s a dog and then, and it, it’s, it is a dog. But if any, I mean, again, I, I go back to, you know, it was, when it came out, it was viewed as a joke.

The, the creator actually said, this is a joke. Don’t invest in this. Don’t put your money in me, don’t do it. But it seemed like every other day, if you do listen, watched any news streaming service on the internet, this coin was always being talked about. At least it was in mine for some reason. Yeah. Well, and I ignored it.

I, I ignored it. And then, you know, I, I sit where I sit today without all that money. But, but, but I also have to tell myself, the other thing to tell yourself is it’s okay. There’s a reason I didn’t do it, you [00:53:00] know, and, and I’m here where I am now, so, so what do I take from it? What opportunity do I take? And maybe if I would’ve taken that money, I would not be doing what I’m doing now to bring these communities forward.

I would’ve gotten fat and lazy and mm-hmm. And, and, and, and, and done, you know, the things that I, I wasn’t supposed to do. So really this is what I’m supposed to be doing. So, you know, don’t dwell on it, but be aware of those opportunities. Be aware. Kara says here too, she says, oh, wow. Yes. Your relationship with money was like your core belief of I’m not worthy, so I’m gonna make sure I chase it so I can get it because I’m not worth it coming to me or making it happen organically.

How does that resonate? Yeah. So it’s all, it’s all tied, right? Yeah. So if you know, if you have that, if you have that core belief, um, that you’re undeserving, yes, you are going to go out and do the things and bring the things to you that you get to hold up as, as an external thing that says, see, I’m worthy.

And you tell yourself, look, look, I’m worthy. I’ve got, I’ve [00:54:00] got two cars. I’ve got a house, I’ve got this, I’ve got that. I’ve got, you know, the, the latest and greatest, you know, watch whatever it is. You try to kid yourself that that’s what made, you know, look, I have worth now cause I have this thing. And you know, once you realize that it’s you and you go, no, wait a minute.

I just as an individual am worthy. All of a sudden those things start to find their way to you. What a way to end that. That’s awesome. Oh, let, let me put up, I’ve got here some how to reach you. So tell us who your target audience is to your target client. So, so I, I. I’m not one of those coaches that have like that little niche or niche that says, you know, I, I try to find this specific person.

Right. What I’m really trying, the people that I work with are, are those folks who are looking, who know that their current situation is, isn’t their end, isn’t their end purpose. So I try to find, I try to work with people who are trying to f to find [00:55:00] themselves and align that. Self to a bigger purpose so that they can go ahead and move themselves to the next level of, of success and fulfillment within themselves.

So it can be students and, and I work with students for free. I do, I do quite a bit of volunteer work with, with, with kids, you know, 20 and under. Because, because they, they, they need this just as much as anybody else. But it can be anyone. It can be, it can, you know, right now it’s a lot of executives because, Covid i’s made them step back and say, there’s gotta be more to this than what I’m doing.

But I’ve worked with, you know, I’ve, I’ve worked with teachers, I’ve worked with, you know, housewives. It, it, it doesn’t matter. It’s really just about people who want to elevate where they are and, and connect and, and do more with their time here. Got it so people can reach you at your email, which I’ll put in the show notes for people who are listening to this as a podcast.

I’ve got it up here. And then they can also visit your website, awakened explorations.com. And then you have a [00:56:00] Facebook page. Is that it? Yeah, Facebook page. Yep, that’ll work. Yep. Yeah, awakened explorations. And we talked about this before you said, yeah, put my cell phone number up there so you can either, you can also call or text Brian and so lots of ways to reach him.

Well, you shared so much I learned from every one of my guests and I really appreciate you being on the show tonight. Brian. Thank you. Thank you, Emily. I enjoyed being here. Thank you. Yeah, and thanks to everybody who joined in the chat and, uh, commented on this. I really appreciate you guys showing up for this show and showing up every night.

E every night I go live. So I’m going live again next Wednesday night, seven 30. I hope to see you here and I’ll be scheduling that episode tomorrow and so you’ll be able to see who the guest is and everything. So thank you guys. I’m gonna put Brian, I’ll put you in the green room and just play my. Outro video, so thank you so much.

I appreciate you guys. I really do. [00:57:00] Onward Live is sponsored by Emily Harmon Coaching and Consulting. Visit my website emily harmon.com to learn more about me and my coaching programs. I’d love to help you create a life you love living. Remember, every adversity is our own personal university. Sometimes the lessons are difficult and we must learn from our experiences.

Vulnerability is your superpower. You are lovable and worthy, and we discuss these topics and more because professional is personal. Thank you for joining us and engaging with me and my guest. I look forward to seeing you next time.