15 Days to a Better You: Redefining Productivity and Personal Growth with Mike O’Connor

Stephen Box: 00:00:00

Hey guys.

Stephen Box: 00:00:00

Welcome to the Unshakable Habits podcast, where we help men to prioritize

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your physical and mental wellbeing.

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I'm your host, national Board Certified Health and Wellness coach, Stephen

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Box, and this week I have with me Mike O'Connor from the Actualized

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Self, a company that specializes in career and personal performance.

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And Mike is someone who has a background working at a university, recruiting

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some of the top talent in the world, and he has this really unique approach.

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Something that I don't think I talk enough about on the podcast, and that's why I

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wanted to have Mike on where he has a program called 15 Days to A Better You.

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Now, for those of you who've been listening for a while,

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15 days to a better, you may sound completely contradictory

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to what I normally talk about.

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Because you guys here, we talk a lot about small steps, small habits,

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sustainability, all that kind of stuff.

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And the thing is, Mike talks about that too.

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And what my conversation with Mike highlighted for me was the need to talk

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more about this because I think a lot of people, when they hear small habits,

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when they hear small steps, when they hear those kind of things, what they

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think automatically is, slow results.

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Couldn't even think there for a second.

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but they think slow results.

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And that's not necessarily true because the reality is you can sometimes get

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faster results by taking smaller steps.

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But it's about taking the right steps.

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And that's really where the conversation between me and Mike goes this week

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is on how to take the right steps.

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And we're not just gonna talk about this at a high level.

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We get really practical with giving you a lot of tips for how to track things, how

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to implement these things into your life.

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And Mike, as a bonus, even throws in some conversation, for those of you might

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be out there in the job market on how to stand out in the interview process.

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So for those of you looking for new employment, you might find

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that part particularly exciting.

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But even if you're not looking for a job right now, there is going

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to be a ton of value for you.

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In this episode, I hope you guys enjoy it and we'll see you back in 60 seconds.

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:19

Are you ready to break free from your old habits

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and create a better life for yourself and those around you?

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:25

If so, welcome to Unshakable Habits, the podcast dedicated to helping

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:31

men be better husbands, fathers, and leaders by prioritizing their

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:35

physical and mental wellbeing.

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:38

Each week we'll look at health from a 360 degree perspective with

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:43

inspiring stories and practical strategies for building Unshakable

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:47

habits that'll transform your life.

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:50

Join Stephen Box, a board certified health and wellness coach, and

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:54

let's change the world together.

Podcast Into/Outro: 00:02:56

One habit at a time.

Stephen Box: 00:03:06

Allow me to introduce you to Mike O'Connor, who is the founder of the

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Actualized Self, or self Ala is Self ala.

Stephen Box: 00:03:16

Yeah.

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You you got it.

Stephen Box: 00:03:18

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:03:18

I I will, should look at my notes, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:23

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:23

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:23

Thanks for having me, Stephen.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:24

It's great to be with you.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:26

Yeah,

Stephen Box: 00:03:27

man.

Stephen Box: 00:03:27

I appreciate you being here today, so, so talk to me a little bit, Mike, about

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this idea, of the 15 Days to A Better You.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:37

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:37

Well thanks, thanks again and it's great.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:39

It's great to be with you today.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:40

what, what one of the things I noticed when I was working at, I was the

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:44

director of Career Discovery at Williams College and really great school.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:49

We competed with Ivy League, schools for, for our students and just we're

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:54

really fortunate to like, recruit a lot of the best and brightest.

Mike O'Connor: 00:03:57

There were so many students that I worked with that were just one or

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:01

two steps away of really sort of stepping into themselves, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:04

They were feeling this sort of deep sense of imposter syndrome.

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:07

Their, their confidence was shaken for, for different reasons.

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:11

And my wife, who's a psychologist, and I would have these like longer conversations

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:16

around clients and friends and different people that we have in our, in our life

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:21

that were just short of really sort of like finding that happiness or that

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:26

contentment or whatever it was to sort of really sort of get to the next level or

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:31

that we're dealing with real anxiety, and that weren't able to sort of perform in an

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:35

interview setting or, or whatever it is.

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:36

So what I wanted to really sort of create is how do we sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:40

recalibrate somebody's floor?

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:43

I think we all talk about potential a lot, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:45

And we all talk about, wow, my ceiling's here, or, or you know, if this person

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:51

could, whatever, could they, you know, could they a gvax or, or y.

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:56

And all of us, I think, have this incredible, incredible

Mike O'Connor: 00:04:59

potential and that's great, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:01

But how do we really sort of LA raise that floor?

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:04

So what, what I wanted to do was have somebody do a really sort of deep dive

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:08

into their values, into the, the version of themselves that they want to be.

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:15

And then start to kind of reverse engineer from that to look at your practices,

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:20

to look at your actual habits, to look at do deep time audits and social media

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:25

audits and all these other sort of fairly extensive things and really sort of hold

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:28

that up against the brand of yourself.

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:31

And how did the two really sort of juxtapose with each other?

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:34

So that's when I sort of went on this journey of mapping together things

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:38

that I've done, through the coursework that I led at, at different schools.

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:42

and through a lot of sort of research on social sciences and behaviors and James

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:46

Clear kind of stuff, to really create something that, would hopefully let people

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:49

sort of walk away with a new operating system and new way of doing things and

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:53

have a little bit more accountability.

Mike O'Connor: 00:05:55

That cool?

Stephen Box: 00:05:57

So, so the thing I love about this is, you know, I know you

Stephen Box: 00:06:00

focus really a lot on career and personal development and you know, I think for a

Stephen Box: 00:06:07

lot of guys out there, we tend to focus on just like one area at a time, right?

Stephen Box: 00:06:12

So it's like, if I'm focused on my career advancement, then everything else

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kind of falls to the wayside, right?

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My health falls to the wayside, my relationship suffer, right?

Stephen Box: 00:06:21

Everything else kind of falls off except for my career stuff.

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And then at some point, you know, I'm going like, oh man,

Stephen Box: 00:06:27

I gotta take care of my health.

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But then other things start to fall off because I'm focused on health, right?

Stephen Box: 00:06:31

Oh man, now my marriage is in trouble.

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I gotta focus on my marriage.

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And now our career suffer and our health suffers, right?

Stephen Box: 00:06:36

So it's like, For a lot of guys, it's, it's really hard to figure

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out like, how do I balance all this?

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How do I take all of this in?

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And, you know, what I love about this framework that you're talking about

Stephen Box: 00:06:48

here is it can be applied to career and personal development, but it

Stephen Box: 00:06:53

can also be applied to your health.

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It can be applied to your marriage, it can be applied to your relationship with

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your kids if you, if you have kids, right?

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So the concepts what we're talking about are universal, right?

Stephen Box: 00:07:06

It's just the specific application of how we're, how we're applying

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:09

them.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:11

That's, that's really well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:12

I, I think one thing that we do is males, and, and you and I

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:15

talked about this briefly before, was we, we solve for X right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:20

In, in our life.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:21

And I think we've, we've sort of evolved to some degree to really like,

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:25

think about the food source and how am I gonna sort of, how am I gonna

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:28

make sure I'm providing for family?

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:30

Or if there's this problem or there's this challenge or there's this goal.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:34

I'm gonna think about the stuff that I need to do to get there and then go do it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:39

We can focus really well on one thing, but to your point, we do that at

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:45

the expense of so many other things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:48

And when we do that, when we get out of balance with ourselves,

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:52

then we know we have this sort of trickle down effect, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:54

It's like you don't sleep well one night and you're not eating

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:57

as well the next day, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:58

You're not eating as well.

Mike O'Connor: 00:07:59

You're gonna feel a little bit more sluggish, and then that really

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:02

important call that you have.

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:04

All of a sudden you just don't show up as your best self

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:07

cause you're just not focused.

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:08

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:08

So what I wanted to do was sort of create something, I take some different

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:13

social scientists and people that are sort of like working on these

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:15

different systems for doing that and sort of weave them together in

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:18

a way for us to sort of look at most like a diagnostic, like a dashboard

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:23

of like, you know, how's my health?

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:25

How's my financial health?

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:26

What am I doing in my career?

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:27

What are these different aspects that I have?

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:29

And then what are the gauges that I have?

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:31

And when you, when you do that deep analysis and audit and then you

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:36

sort of compare that to how you're really showing up, you can really

Mike O'Connor: 00:08:39

sort of then do the thing that I think males do well, which is solvex.

Stephen Box: 00:08:43

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:08:44

And, and I think you just kind of hit on something super important here, right?

Stephen Box: 00:08:48

It's this idea of, you know, imagine that you're going on a trip and

Stephen Box: 00:08:54

you know where you wanna go, right?

Stephen Box: 00:08:56

You know what you wanna do when you get there and everything else that's.

Stephen Box: 00:08:59

That's that thing you were talking about, about, you know,

Stephen Box: 00:09:01

establishing your values, figuring out what's important to you, right?

Stephen Box: 00:09:04

I mean, that's, if you don't know where you're going, then there's no

Stephen Box: 00:09:07

address to putting the G p s, right?

Stephen Box: 00:09:08

So we have to get clear on where we're going first.

Stephen Box: 00:09:11

But at the same time, I think for a lot of guys it is, we start with goals, right?

Stephen Box: 00:09:17

But we don't really know why we're setting that goal.

Stephen Box: 00:09:20

We have, we've missed the vision part of it, right?

Stephen Box: 00:09:23

So maybe we know we want to go across the country, but we're not sure

Stephen Box: 00:09:27

exactly what city we're gonna end up in or what we're gonna do when we get

Stephen Box: 00:09:30

there, or why we want to go there.

Stephen Box: 00:09:32

We just know that that's where we're gonna go and you know, so

Stephen Box: 00:09:36

you need that, that vision part.

Stephen Box: 00:09:38

But at the same time, I think even if we've gotten that part, even

Stephen Box: 00:09:42

if we understand all those things, another common mistake I see is

Stephen Box: 00:09:47

that we don't take the time to take the assessment of where we are now.

Stephen Box: 00:09:51

And that's the equivalent of.

Stephen Box: 00:09:53

If your GPS doesn't have a signal and it doesn't know where you are,

Stephen Box: 00:09:56

it doesn't matter if you put in a destination, it doesn't know how

Stephen Box: 00:09:59

to start getting you there because they can't see where you are now.

Stephen Box: 00:10:02

So if you can't see where you are right now,

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:05

you're, you're lost.

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:08

That's a really great point, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:09

It's like you can, you can have that long-term vision, you can have those

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:13

different, but if you don't have an honest assessment of where you're sort of sitting

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:17

or a way to really sort of like assess that or test that, then you're, I think,

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:21

I wouldn't say dead in the water, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:23

But you're gonna, you're gonna really sort of tread and struggle a, a bit.

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:26

And I think there's this sort of like reflective component of looking in

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:31

a little bit more inward and asking those uncomfortable questions and

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:34

those kind of things that I think as males we're not necessarily as good at.

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:39

And this is something that I've found myself sort of struggling

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:41

with, quite a bit in life too.

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:43

And for me it's almost this like, I need this sort of like, Go through some

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:47

level of like pain or discomfort and just sort of like have this sort of gut

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:51

feeling about like, what am I doing?

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:54

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:54

Like rather than, I think in over time I've learned to sort of close the gap

Mike O'Connor: 00:10:58

of like, what are the questions that I can ask earlier to sort of sort so

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:02

I'm not there or what's the sort of gut checks that I can do to really

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:06

sort of self-assess about, okay, here's the thing that you're in right

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:09

now, here's the thing that you're struggling with, and then really sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:12

recalibrate on, on mission and vision.

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:15

And you know, I, I think when, when people think about what's my mission,

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:20

vision or what am I sort of doing long term, there's, I don't think we talk

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:27

enough about as men that like that's something that can change, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:30

Your vision at 20 years old shouldn't be what your vision is at 30.

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:35

You have a completely different frame of reference.

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:37

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:38

And, and that's gonna change very much when you're 40, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:41

Or 50.

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:42

And, and that's a good thing and that's a healthy thing.

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:44

And that's, that's a, you know, that's you evolving and sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:47

of stepping into yourself and being a very different person.

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:50

So by doing this sort of deep dive exercise, is that really sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:54

figuring out this orienting who, where am I right now, to your

Mike O'Connor: 00:11:59

point, and where do I want to go?

Mike O'Connor: 00:12:02

You have the gps, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:12:04

And, and you have the systems and that pain and discomfort

Mike O'Connor: 00:12:07

and all of those roadblocks and obstacles and all of that stuff.

Mike O'Connor: 00:12:10

We know we're gonna hit my, becomes a lot easier to sort of get through

Mike O'Connor: 00:12:14

because you have a purpose behind it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:12:16

Yep.

Stephen Box: 00:12:17

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:12:18

And I, I love the fact that you brought this up because I think

Stephen Box: 00:12:22

this is something that a lot of us struggled with, over the years.

Stephen Box: 00:12:26

I know even me personally, I, I actually used to take a sense of pride

Stephen Box: 00:12:31

in being able to say, you know, I'm the same person that I've always been.

Stephen Box: 00:12:35

I, I haven't changed who I am, because some point, I, I had this

Stephen Box: 00:12:40

wake up call and I went, wait, and that's not a good thing, right?

Stephen Box: 00:12:43

Like, I, I shouldn't still be the same person I was when I was 20.

Stephen Box: 00:12:47

That's, that's, that's horrible, right?

Stephen Box: 00:12:49

Like, it's good that maybe some of my foundational beliefs, some of my

Stephen Box: 00:12:54

principles are still in place, right?

Stephen Box: 00:12:56

I mean, hopefully I've done a good job of creating solid principles in

Stephen Box: 00:13:01

my life that are still the same, but hopefully I'm a better communicator.

Stephen Box: 00:13:07

Hopefully I have better control of my emotions.

Stephen Box: 00:13:11

Hopefully I'm in better shape physically.

Stephen Box: 00:13:13

Hopefully I'm a better partner to, to my wife.

Stephen Box: 00:13:16

Hopefully I'm a better, you know, leader.

Stephen Box: 00:13:19

You know, all these different things.

Stephen Box: 00:13:21

Hopefully I've developed skills and I'm not the same person anymore.

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:26

Completely.

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:27

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:27

I, I think what happens when you, when you do that, and when you do that

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:30

sort of systematic audit and, and you think about yourself in a different

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:34

capacity, you really create that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:36

It's kind of like you're, you're sort of stepping up the staircase, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:39

You're creating a new floor for yourself, and then you're looking at where

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:43

you want to go next and, and sort of starting this sort of like, you know,

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:47

I don't like the word manifest, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:48

But you're starting to sort of speak that in exist a little bit and

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:51

you're, and you're using the thing that I think males do well, which

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:54

is, okay, here's where I want to go.

Mike O'Connor: 00:13:56

Here's the parameters I need to control for, here's the step that I

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:00

really need to, to, to go and do that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:02

And I've done, I've done the same thing at different points, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:04

Like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm so similar, or I'm the,

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:07

I'm the same kind of person.

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:08

And I think there's, there's values that people, I think, naturally

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:13

have from upbringing and that are inherent to them, that aren't

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:16

necessarily fixed, but, but evolve.

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:18

But, but there's some, some patterns that I think to stay the same.

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:22

But you're absolutely right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:23

Like you wanna level up on the person that you are and, and really sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:27

of fit that to the, the life that you currently have and wanna have.

Mike O'Connor: 00:14:32

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:14:33

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:14:34

The thing I, I think is so important for people to kind of see here is

Stephen Box: 00:14:39

it's recognizing your strengths, but also recognizing your weaknesses.

Stephen Box: 00:14:43

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:14:43

And, and as you said, for a lot of men out there, problem

Stephen Box: 00:14:47

solving is a strength, right?

Stephen Box: 00:14:49

I mean, that is something that just generally speaking is a

Stephen Box: 00:14:54

commentary for a lot of guys, right?

Stephen Box: 00:14:55

We are very good at problem solving, but the issue is that we aren't necessarily

Stephen Box: 00:15:03

all great at seeing the big picture.

Stephen Box: 00:15:05

And so the problems that we're solving are so small in the

Stephen Box: 00:15:11

grand scheme of things, right?

Stephen Box: 00:15:12

They might feel big in the moment.

Stephen Box: 00:15:14

But they're smaller in the grand scheme of things.

Stephen Box: 00:15:16

And then we don't understand why we keep solving problems

Stephen Box: 00:15:19

so things don't get better.

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:22

Yeah, that's really well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:24

and it's, and it's hard sometimes, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:25

To see this sort of bigger picture about what is, what is the thing that

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:29

I'm really sort of trying to control for and do that, that really sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:33

gets me to, to where I, I want to go.

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:36

And one thing that I'm guilty of is like, I'm a big to-do list person and like I'm,

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:42

I'm constantly sort of like writing down what I need to do and then just like,

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:46

I'm good at just focusing there, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:48

And I get that little like dopamine stack every time I cross the thing off the

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:51

list or what know, like whatever it is.

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:53

But what I've had to do with my system, and I, and I have this in the course

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:56

cuz I just find it pretty helpful.

Mike O'Connor: 00:15:57

But I found the student from White Combinator that essentially took

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:01

your, the test that you have, but then it puts them in a a three column

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:05

spreadsheet where it just like, okay, test impact and then complexity and.

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:11

When you start to really sort of control for what's the impact of this specific

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:15

thing and what's the complexity of it when you start with things that

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:18

are high impact and low complexity.

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:21

You know, I'm, I'm hesitant to use the word game changer, but it's, it's

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:24

really helpful, because you're almost sort of doing this like daily 80 20

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:29

analysis and you're doing of the things that you talked about earlier, Stephen,

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:32

which is like, you're, you're, you're tapping into really sort of where you

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:36

are and where you want to go and, and it forces you to really sort of really

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:40

think of, is this really sort of useful?

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:42

and is this something that I want to do?

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:44

Like I have this instinct that just like go all the time and to sort of just try

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:49

to head, head down, charge into the next problem and try to knock down whatever

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:53

is in front of me, through my male d n a.

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:56

And that's not always the best thing.

Mike O'Connor: 00:16:57

Sometimes she needs to like, to think and recalibrate a little bit and be

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:00

like, okay, like rather than playing lead bocker right now, Maybe step

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:04

back and see the, the broader field.

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:06

And, and for me, the, the simple task of like that orient and principle, it's like,

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:11

okay, we've got, we've got your task.

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:13

Great.

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:14

You know how to do that really well, but what's the impact and what's the

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:17

complexity and how are you really using your time to get what you need to be done?

Mike O'Connor: 00:17:22

Helping me step back a bit.

Stephen Box: 00:17:24

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:17:24

And, and I love, like I was looking over, your, your course here, right?

Stephen Box: 00:17:28

And the thing I love and just looking at your curriculum is, first of all, you

Stephen Box: 00:17:36

start like, even before day one, right?

Stephen Box: 00:17:38

Just like on the getting started section, one of the things that you have on

Stephen Box: 00:17:42

there is like showing up every day.

Stephen Box: 00:17:44

And, and I love that because I think that is something that a lot

Stephen Box: 00:17:50

of people struggle with, right?

Stephen Box: 00:17:51

It's, I have time for this today, so I'm gonna focus on this today.

Stephen Box: 00:17:57

But then tomorrow when seven other things come up that I wanna

Stephen Box: 00:18:01

prioritize, I'm gonna let this go.

Stephen Box: 00:18:04

And you cannot achieve anything in life until it becomes a

Stephen Box: 00:18:10

regular part of your routine.

Stephen Box: 00:18:12

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:14

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:15

That's like, that's so, so well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:17

And like, what I've had to do for myself over time and, and what I've

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:20

tried to sort of like, build in for people, and you, you talk about habits

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:24

a lot is, is sort of just helping people habituate the new normal.

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:30

And for me, like I'm a, I'm a big systems person that if you, if, if I can just

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:36

sort of slowly over time evolve my system to just be like, here are the

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:41

five things that are non-negotiable that I'm doing every single day.

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:47

And, and you know, I've, I, I've tried to really sort of embed this into, into

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:50

the chorus about like, you're gonna get in the habit of really sort of doing

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:53

this and being consistent with it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:55

But if you, if I, for instance, for me, it's just like, okay, every

Mike O'Connor: 00:18:58

single day I have to do writing.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:01

And that's a non-negotiable.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:02

I have to do it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:02

And I have specific sort of KPIs that are sort of set out for that and different

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:06

places that it needs to go, but it needs to sort of happen and the blocks.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:10

And if I don't do that, then I'm not gonna sort of reward myself with, you know, with

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:15

the different things that I have that, but like, you have to build these, these

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:19

to checklists and then you have to build in, I think, some positive reinforcing

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:24

mechanisms to reward yourself for the good things that you're already doing.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:28

and that looks very different for everybody.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:30

And, and you and I were having this really great conversation beforehand about, when

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:34

we're most productive and how that works.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:36

But, you know, you, you have to have systems to really sort of keep yourself.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:41

Focused because the reality is like life is just gonna get in the way.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:44

You're gonna have things pop up and a lot of them are gonna be

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:47

completely outside of your control.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:49

So what the new baseline was, the new floor you create for yourself to know,

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:52

here's my daily non-negotiables, and if I do these, it's gonna get me towards sex.

Mike O'Connor: 00:19:57

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:19:58

And, and, and one thing that how I just wanna kind of point out

Stephen Box: 00:20:01

to people here, and, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this as well, is

Stephen Box: 00:20:06

don't try to change everything at once.

Stephen Box: 00:20:08

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:20:09

It's, it's impossible.

Stephen Box: 00:20:11

Like you can't, you know, do this whole like thing where like, Hey, you know

Stephen Box: 00:20:15

what, suddenly I'm gonna start waking up two hours earlier than normal.

Stephen Box: 00:20:19

I'm going to, you know, do a workout first thing in the morning.

Stephen Box: 00:20:23

I'm gonna start, you know, fixing breakfast at home when you normally

Stephen Box: 00:20:26

stop to get something to eat.

Stephen Box: 00:20:28

And you know, then when I get to work, I'm gonna do this, this, and this.

Stephen Box: 00:20:31

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:20:31

And all of a sudden you're trying to make seven changes and it's, you might

Stephen Box: 00:20:36

pull it off for a couple of days, right?

Stephen Box: 00:20:38

But it's not sustainable.

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:41

No, no.

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:42

It's, you know, James Clear talks about this in his book, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:45

Atomic Habits, which is, I, I think one of those books I just find myself, you know,

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:48

encouraging people to read more and more.

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:50

but he talks about habits stacking, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:52

And yeah, and the triggers associated with that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:55

And you're exactly right, like the w with the people I know that are

Mike O'Connor: 00:20:59

sort of having, that are feeling that they're stuck or whatever, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:04

And they're just, they're not feeling great about, you know, their, their

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:06

life trajectory, whatever the, the three things I tell them sort of to do, and

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:10

I don't have them sort of do it all at once, but I'm like, okay, you're

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:13

feeling stressed or feeling anxious when you get to work in the morning.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:17

Spend five minutes, you have five extra minutes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:19

Great.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:19

Spend five minutes just jotting everything down and just do a complete brain

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:23

dump of everything that you're doing.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:25

All right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:25

And just sort of releasing that about getting your monkey mind on paper.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:29

Just letting it go is great.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:30

Okay?

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:30

Once you've done that, What we're gonna do is we're gonna start, we're gonna start

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:34

to note things that you're grateful for.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:36

Again, we're not talking big changes, we're talking five

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:38

minutes of, of brain dumping.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:39

Then you're gonna spend maybe even three to four minutes just writing

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:42

the few things that you're grateful for, whatever comes to mind.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:45

Yep.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:45

VOing yourself.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:46

That's a big amount, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:47

Great.

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:48

You do that and you have those two pieces, and it's just like, okay,

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:50

let's, let's put in a little bit of like breathing technique, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:55

Or like a, a simple, you know, I know meditation has different connotations, but

Mike O'Connor: 00:21:59

like some type of mindfulness, maybe just sitting quietly for a little bit, maybe

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:02

it's a longer walk or whatever, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:04

But like, you start to sort of like layer in these behaviors and once people

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:09

get habituated to doing the, they see that positive benefit, they have that

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:14

positive feedback loop, then you can really start the layer on more stuff.

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:18

and, and I, but you're exactly right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:20

If you try to sort of like force dive everything sort of into, you

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:24

know, it's the thing all at once, it becomes really, really tricky.

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:28

You know, another real thing that I really like, that I've just personally

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:31

found helpful is, but when you change your environment or you make

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:35

like small tweaks to, to that, and you have different triggers, yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:40

That can really sort of help, help quite a, quite a bit too.

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:43

And, like a really sort of small example, but I've got, in my office here, I've

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:46

got like all sorts of different exercise equipment that I leave strategically

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:50

in different places that like, as I'm sort of going through the day, it's just

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:55

really easy for me to, or I'd almost say it's actually harder to just sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:22:58

of see the thing and be like, okay, well I can do a little bit right now.

Mike O'Connor: 00:23:02

yes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:23:03

But as you start to build these things in organically to your, you know, to

Mike O'Connor: 00:23:06

your life, you, rather than trying to make the big change, you, you start

Mike O'Connor: 00:23:10

to see this, ramp effect over time.

Stephen Box: 00:23:14

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:23:15

So one thing you just, touched on there is this idea of, trigger workouts, right?

Stephen Box: 00:23:18

Which is something that I teach and.

Stephen Box: 00:23:22

It's this idea that you just put things literally like you just said

Stephen Box: 00:23:25

in your environment where when you see them, it triggers that thought

Stephen Box: 00:23:29

of, Hey, you know, I got two minutes right now, let me knock out a couple

Stephen Box: 00:23:33

curls or a couple squats, or whatever.

Stephen Box: 00:23:35

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:23:36

maybe you got a kettlebell sitting next to you and you just pick it up and do

Stephen Box: 00:23:38

a couple of, you know, squats or some kettlebell swings or something, right?

Stephen Box: 00:23:41

It's, it doesn't have to be big.

Stephen Box: 00:23:43

It doesn't have to be a huge workout.

Stephen Box: 00:23:44

It's just kind of that mental model.

Stephen Box: 00:23:47

But one thing that I've actually seen happen with people, and this

Stephen Box: 00:23:51

goes back to our earlier points you made, is after a while you

Stephen Box: 00:23:57

become blind to that object, right?

Stephen Box: 00:24:01

It's just in there, but you start to ignore it unless you have a system in

Stephen Box: 00:24:08

place that forces you to use it, right?

Stephen Box: 00:24:11

And that's, that's where these things, like, I think a lot of

Stephen Box: 00:24:14

times we get, you know, messed up.

Stephen Box: 00:24:15

We hear these ideas are like, that sounds like a great idea.

Stephen Box: 00:24:18

And it works for a week, and then it stops working.

Stephen Box: 00:24:20

And it's because we never put a system around it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:24

Yeah, yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:26

That makes, that makes a ton of sense.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:27

And like for me, I have to constantly sort of switch up what my system is.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:33

and I'm, I'm a big systems guy.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:34

Like, like you, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:35

So it's like I, but I have to constantly sort of reinvent that

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:39

because to your point, I just start to ignore it at some point.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:42

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:43

So the new thing I have, just because it sort of works with the current schedule,

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:46

it's just like I need to either A, go to the gym, b complete this, like it's,

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:52

for me, it's like this simple diagnostic of e every day's 30 sets, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:56

It just needs to be 30 sets of something.

Mike O'Connor: 00:24:58

and that can be pushups, squats, blah, blah, blah, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:00

Whatever.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:01

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:01

But it's like, it's 30 sets.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:03

Or it's like a three mile run.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:05

And then there's different calibrations there.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:07

Like I did one mile and I did 20 cents.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:10

Great.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:10

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:11

yes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:11

But I had to really sort of invent that around my current life.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:14

And I know that at some point this system or this sort of diagnostic I have, like,

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:19

I won't like as much, so I'll have to sort of like reinvent something else to

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:23

sort of form fit what I have in my life.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:25

But that's, it's, it's a really good point you made of like over time the trigger

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:30

becomes less, like you just don't have the same conditions or response that you would

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:34

if you sort of, when you had it initially.

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:36

So you have to reinvent how you're sort of using your environment, your system

Mike O'Connor: 00:25:40

to really, you know, reach your goals.

Stephen Box: 00:25:42

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:25:42

You, you just kind of hit on this and, and I love, cuz this is actually one of the

Stephen Box: 00:25:45

things that I teach that's a little bit different from what most of is out there.

Stephen Box: 00:25:50

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:25:50

Even looking like James Clear, you know, a lot of the stuff that he

Stephen Box: 00:25:54

teaches in his book is very rigid.

Stephen Box: 00:25:58

It's like, you do this, you do this, it's step A, step B, step C.

Stephen Box: 00:26:01

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:26:02

And I think it's easy to fall into that trap when you're writing a book, right?

Stephen Box: 00:26:07

Because in a book, people expect you to give them the exact steps to take.

Stephen Box: 00:26:12

And so it's very easy to fall into that trap.

Stephen Box: 00:26:14

But to me, your systems have to be flexible.

Stephen Box: 00:26:20

If they are not flexible, they will fail because every single system has a

Stephen Box: 00:26:26

pressure point at which it will break.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:29

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:30

I couldn't agree more.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:31

you know, and kind of to the point that we were both making earlier,

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:35

like, fins are gonna pop up, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:37

You're gonna have a loved one die.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:39

you're gonna, you're gonna absolutely have days that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:43

For whatever reason, you can't get to the gym, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:45

Or, you know, you can't hit this sort of this daily goal that you have for X Or

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:50

if you're taking the course, you might have like legitimate life circumstances.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:54

Like, okay, I have to, I have to put an hour and 10 minutes into this today.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:57

Like, I'm not gonna have that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:26:58

And, and I think the, the thing that I, that I sort of like always sort of fall

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:03

back on for me, it's just like, it's not gonna happen two days in a row, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:07

That I, yeah, I might, I might miss the gym or I might miss a workout or, you

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:12

know, something might happen with one of my daughters that I need to sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:15

go do X and this client meeting sort of in the way of this or, or whatever.

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:20

But I'm not gonna miss that second day.

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:22

And that's just the rule and the thing that I've had for myself to sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:25

just have the, the fallback from, from what I know is gonna happen.

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:29

But you're right, the systems have to be, they have to have a

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:32

degree of flexibility with them.

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:34

because over time, you know, you're just gonna have things pop up and

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:38

you're gonna just become less.

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:40

the word like I rigid to sort of the, the thing that's not

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:44

gonna sort of be as effective.

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:46

So if you're not reinventing the system, you have to have some degree

Mike O'Connor: 00:27:50

of like, flexibility in, I think.

Stephen Box: 00:27:53

Yeah, and, and I think this idea of, of reinventing your systems

Stephen Box: 00:27:56

and, and making these changes, which you've touched on in a couple different

Stephen Box: 00:28:00

ways, already is important to recognize that it's not just a matter of you get

Stephen Box: 00:28:07

bored or that circumstances around you change, but internally we change, right?

Stephen Box: 00:28:14

As we grow, our systems need to grow with us.

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:19

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:20

They, they have to, they have to really sort of evolve and, you know, the,

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:23

the version of you like five years ago is very different than the version of

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:28

you shelf that you, that you are now.

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:30

and, and one of the other reasons that I sort of really sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:32

of landed on this course and.

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:34

I, I was on this track professionally to be a college president, and feeling,

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:39

feeling pretty, pretty good about that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:40

where I got very long story short, I got promoted in a couple roles, stepped into

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:46

a dean role and then sort of stepped into, essentially sort of a role in a

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:49

president's office where I got sort of see behind that mechanisms and works with

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:53

this incredible woman leader, really, really bright and such a great mentor and

Mike O'Connor: 00:28:58

all of these different types of things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:00

And I was on this track for like a very long time, and planning my day and my

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:04

life and, and the content I was consuming and all these other things and be like,

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:09

okay, where are the, where are the big gaps that we have in this industry?

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:13

And one of the things that I can bring that are, that are competitive

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:15

an advantage that I value that do all these different types of things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:19

But what happened for me personally was I was just, I hit this point

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:22

where, kind of to the point that we were where book making earlier.

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:26

My, my values just weren't mapping to the places that I was in, working in, or the

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:31

industries that I wanted sort of be in.

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:33

And, and I really value autonomy and, and being able to create and add value

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:40

in ways that sort of makes sense for me.

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:41

Whereas, not that that's not allowed at all in terms of the industry, but

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:46

it, for me, it was just not jiving with the long term vision of what

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:51

I needed, what I was actually sort of doing in my professional life.

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:55

So I knew, I was just like, okay, you've been teaching this for a long

Mike O'Connor: 00:29:58

time and you felt a lot of students really sort of recalibrate, find

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:01

things that are up needed to them.

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:03

You have to do this for yourself and if you're not doing it for yourself

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:07

and you're not really li living with this integrity, you know that

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:09

that's just gonna eat at you and it's gonna really sort of bother you.

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:13

So yeah, I had to really sort of reinvent a lot of pieces of identity and.

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:20

As much as I was sort of like, I think tried to be detached amigo and all the

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:25

different types of things, there was a really core piece of my identity that

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:28

was so, that was connected to my job, and I knew that I had to really sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:32

rethink who this was and who I wanted to be and do it in a way that sort of served

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:38

the broader values that I have of how I wanna sort of serve and help people.

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:42

but it's, it's tough.

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:44

It's, it's definitely, I think, it's a humbling experience to go through and,

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:48

not easy to really sort of rethink and honestly assess where you are, where you

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:52

want to go, and then reverse engineer the steps that you're actually taking

Mike O'Connor: 00:30:58

to, to see if those are fitting or not.

Mike O'Connor: 00:31:00

Could be a, I think a humbling process and a, yeah, I think

Mike O'Connor: 00:31:03

humbling is probably the best word.

Stephen Box: 00:31:05

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:31:06

I, I think it, it takes a lot, right?

Stephen Box: 00:31:08

And that's why, you know, I encourage people, you know, Take a course like

Stephen Box: 00:31:13

yours or get coaching with somebody like me, because what that person can help you

Stephen Box: 00:31:19

do, what that other person can help you do, is they can ask the questions, right?

Stephen Box: 00:31:26

They can help you start to get the answers to these things.

Stephen Box: 00:31:28

They can help you.

Stephen Box: 00:31:29

We talked about this a little bit before we, started recording this

Stephen Box: 00:31:33

idea that, you know, you get really focused in on one specific thing and

Stephen Box: 00:31:39

you can't see the bigger picture.

Stephen Box: 00:31:40

You can't see everything around you, right?

Stephen Box: 00:31:42

And so going through a course like yours or getting coaching is really like,

Stephen Box: 00:31:47

imagine that you're in a museum and you're staring at a picture and you are

Stephen Box: 00:31:52

so locked in on this picture that you can't see all the other art around you.

Stephen Box: 00:31:58

And what this outside help does is it helps you to take a step back and realize

Stephen Box: 00:32:03

there's an entire wall with pictures.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:05

one, one exercise that I love that just something you said

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:08

just trigger triggered it in my mind.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:10

but I, I found this like so useful and I started doing it in a,

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:13

in a few classes that I taught.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:15

it's called What's My Superpower, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:17

And there's something about having, not you self-assessing necessarily,

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:24

but the power of asking other people to tell you what is the thing

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:28

that I'm really uniquely good at.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:30

And there's something about other people's feedback on that process that

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:34

just puts a few lights off for you.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:36

It just says like, huh, okay.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:39

Because the thing that you, that just come easy to you that are natural, you

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:43

undervalue those relative to other people where it's like the mentors, the friends,

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:49

the people that really know you, the work colleague that you worked really

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:52

closely on, they lean on that superpower.

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:55

And, and when you ask them for that help, they're happy to give

Mike O'Connor: 00:32:59

it and sort of tell you, but it's.

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:00

It does something where it's like, you, you see that and then like you

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:04

start to really connect that with like, okay, well what does the world need?

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:08

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:09

Or, or what, how is this really sort of applied to, to, you know, different

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:14

industries or this, this, you know, this entrepreneurial idea I have.

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:19

And when you start to kind of connect those dots, it's really sort of freeing

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:23

and unlocking for the person that you could potentially be, because

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:27

you're just sort of seeing yourself in a completely different context,

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:31

than, you know, than you, you might, and in undervalued and I think skills

Mike O'Connor: 00:33:35

that are really sort of unique.

Stephen Box: 00:33:37

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:33:37

There's actually a, excuse me, a book that I love, it's called Insight.

Stephen Box: 00:33:42

It's by, Tasha Urich, hopefully I pronouncing her name correctly.

Stephen Box: 00:33:47

and, and it's, it's called Insight, why We're Not Self as self-aware as we think.

Stephen Box: 00:33:52

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:33:53

And she kind of touches on a lot of this stuff.

Stephen Box: 00:33:55

We're like, We so severely un undervalue our own skills while completely

Stephen Box: 00:34:04

overestimating our ability to do so.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:11

It's fascinating.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:12

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:13

I, so I, I not, I did a lot of like, with, with interviewing and, like the,

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:18

the school I worked at, we had one of the most robust employer networks of

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:23

any small cool school in the country.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:25

So we had like 150, 160 companies that were actually coming onto campus every

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:30

year and, and actively recruiting.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:32

So, in the basement of the building that I was in, it was, it was kind of cool

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:36

to meet all different types of employers from all different types of industries.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:40

They're just walking around.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:41

You have these informal conversations with them, and what I learned is like

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:45

the, you know, the best employers and, you know, we, we all know the names and

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:48

the, the biggest companies and the, the places that recruit most students, the.

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:54

The amazing skilled interviewers that they had, despite the fact that they had these

Mike O'Connor: 00:34:58

like very well thought out questions that mapped very specifically to the types of

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:03

person that they were seeking that fed into their funnels in terms of like, who

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:07

they're recruiting, blah, blah, blah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:08

Like all that was thought through.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:10

But human biases still played such a role in terms of like how they

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:17

were showing up in the interviews and even the best places, the best

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:22

people, the best interviewers, and the most sort of like the, the humble,

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:26

like incredible sort of people.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:27

They were, everybody has biases, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:31

and little tiny things that you have, like first impressions are forming

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:34

in like all of seven seconds, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:36

And, and similarly enough, like the biases that you have around yourself.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:42

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:43

And, and like, and how you're showing up to like a, to professional interaction

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:46

like that and like the imposter syndrome that you are feeling that like sometimes

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:51

is kind of coming through, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:52

Because you're undervaluing to the point you made and around

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:56

that book you're undervaluing the, the things that you have.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:59

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:35:59

And undervalued your ability to really sort of assess it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:02

But it's, it's fascinating the role of that biases play, in, in this sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:07

of space because the most brilliant people I've ever seen and worked with,

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:12

the most accomplished people, everybody has biases and, and it's really hard

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:17

to really sort of step outside that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:20

and you're never gonna sort of like work outside the

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:21

boundary of those, those biases.

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:23

But you can learn to sort of work with them and and I think to some

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:28

degree be, be more self-aware.

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:30

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:31

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:36:32

You,

Stephen Box: 00:36:32

you've, we've mentioned a couple times the importance of, of setting

Stephen Box: 00:36:35

those values and kind of understanding, and I wanted to kind of create this tie

Stephen Box: 00:36:38

in because you just kind of brought up a very good point that happens, right?

Stephen Box: 00:36:42

With people go to do interviews and there's that, that nervousness that,

Stephen Box: 00:36:49

you know, fear of what if I'm not good enough, and what if they see that?

Stephen Box: 00:36:54

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:36:54

So we work extra hard to make a great first impression.

Stephen Box: 00:36:58

And so, you know, you go and, and you dress the part and you

Stephen Box: 00:37:02

try to say the right words and you try to answer questions in

Stephen Box: 00:37:06

the way that you've been taught.

Stephen Box: 00:37:07

It's the best way to answer questions.

Stephen Box: 00:37:09

But the thing is, if those things you're doing are not in align with who you are,

Stephen Box: 00:37:16

you're going to feel like an imposter.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:19

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:21

Incredibly well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:22

you, you're exactly right, and I think like good interviewing is.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:27

I think connecting the real to like what the person wants to hear.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:30

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:31

because I, like, I, I think we could also to be asked, there is a

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:33

performative aspect of it, right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:35

And it is, it is straight competition, like, for sure.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:38

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:39

But you know, the first question that you're gonna get in any kind of

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:42

interview is some variation of why are you interested in this position?

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:45

I can be asked in all sorts of different ways.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:47

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:48

But if you're not able to talk about the, you, the real you mm-hmm.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:53

And sort of map that to the them, and if you're not able to Correct.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:56

Create that connection, the interview's dead in the water.

Mike O'Connor: 00:37:59

Right, right away.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:01

And, and that's a hard thing to do.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:03

it's, and it's like, and it takes a good amount of practice in different pieces.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:06

And, just to sort of back up to what you were saying around sort of the

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:09

anxiety and all that, that pre, pre stuff, one thing I work with my clients

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:14

and, I, I find this just to be a really sort of helpful practice, is.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:18

Everybody knows you need to do a bunch of research.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:20

And, I've got some simple frameworks that people can use to really sort of tap

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:24

into like what they should be looking at.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:26

But a simple, a simple framework of exercise, quick exercise, just getting

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:32

that heart rate high, followed by some type of mindfulness, followed by, sounds

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:37

funny, but a power pose, to get your, your testosterone and your, your, your

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:41

dopamine surgery and all that goes in a good direction lowering cortisol.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:46

And then, like a, a pump up song, like a, a song that puts

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:49

you in a good elevated mood.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:51

That rubric right there, I, I pulled that from Josh White Skin who wrote

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:54

this really incredible book and he does some great performance coaching.

Mike O'Connor: 00:38:57

But that simple thing of like, okay, channel that stress, you know,

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:01

get, get that heart rate pumping.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:03

Do some mindfulness to just quiet.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:05

Get your thinking clear.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:07

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:07

And then, you know, get your, get, do the power poles, get your cortisol and,

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:12

and everything sort of going in a good direction followed by that song to put

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:15

you in a good mood set does so much more like that like little simple thing

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:22

does like as much as hours of research.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:25

Like, and it, and it puts you in just a good position and it quiets your

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:28

mind a little bit and you still wanna do like all of that other stuff, don't

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:32

get me wrong, but like that 20 minutes like has so much r o i relative to like

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:38

hours of extra research that people do.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:41

and it just helps you show up and like just be present and be there and, yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:45

I love finding like little things like that that just help people sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:39:48

like perform and be themselves better and be a little bit more comfortable.

Stephen Box: 00:39:53

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:39:53

I, I like the, the idea too of, you know, we talked about the importance

Stephen Box: 00:39:59

of, of showing up as you Right.

Stephen Box: 00:40:01

Which is to me, If you take the time to really understand these values and

Stephen Box: 00:40:07

who you are as a person when you're doing that research, ideally you're

Stephen Box: 00:40:12

seeing things that this company stands for that align with your values.

Stephen Box: 00:40:16

Otherwise, I'm not sure why you want this job.

Stephen Box: 00:40:18

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:40:18

so hopefully there's an alignment there.

Stephen Box: 00:40:20

And so now when you are sitting down to talk with this person, they ask that

Stephen Box: 00:40:25

question of Why do you want this position?

Stephen Box: 00:40:29

You're now able to speak confidently about your values, what's important to

Stephen Box: 00:40:34

you, and tie that back to the company.

Stephen Box: 00:40:37

And if you just do that, you're already giving yourself a buffer for mistakes that

Stephen Box: 00:40:45

you might make later in the interview.

Stephen Box: 00:40:46

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:40:47

Just because it's, because like you said, that first impression is fixed so fast

Stephen Box: 00:40:53

that just talking about that and getting that person to be like, wow, this guy's

Stephen Box: 00:40:57

really in alignment with what we want.

Stephen Box: 00:41:00

They will miss other mistakes that you make later on because they've

Stephen Box: 00:41:04

already convinced themselves that you're the right person.

Stephen Box: 00:41:07

That's so well

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:08

said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:09

And it's so true.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:10

It's so, so true, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:11

Because person, it's this, it's like these biases that we talked about before, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:15

first impression bias is a huge one.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:17

Like Halo, a fact is another one, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:19

Where if the person's really good at one, they're good at other things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:22

but those biases like work to your advantage to some degree.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:25

I think people are afraid to say that, but it's true, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:27

So if you're able to sort of map that, and another thing that just I think

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:30

shows that you're a really high value target, you know, or high value person

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:35

if, if you really spend the time to ask very, very thoughtful questions.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:40

Questions that get at the, the, the soul of the organization or,

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:46

or things that sort of get to the, the deeper understanding of.

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:49

Of, mission culture values, like whatever, like if you're, if you're, if you're

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:53

doing the research on the podcast that, that the c e o has done and you're taking

Mike O'Connor: 00:41:58

notes and you're sort of using that to sort of inform thoughtful questions, or

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:02

if you're going a little bit deeper with, you know, finding content that's out there

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:06

on, company values or how they're showing up in the community, or like all these

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:09

different things that map to who they say they're, it shows that you're really sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:14

of like, not just intellectually curious, but you're really thoughtful, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:18

And you're, and you're being really sort of intentional about

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:21

how does this map to who I am?

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:23

And it puts that value pro proposition on them to really sort of have

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:27

to sort of tell you who they are.

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:29

yes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:30

But yeah, but those, those things are all hard to do if you're trying to just

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:33

like perform and be the person that you think they are, that they want to be.

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:38

And when, when somebody's sort of been, and I've been on the other side of this

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:41

where I've done, HR kind consulting work.

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:43

It's like when you're.

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:45

Looking at and assessing like a wide number of people.

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:49

it's hard to remember all the spec specificity or whatever, but you

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:52

remember how they made you feel, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:54

And you can, you can suss out the people that don't really sort of seem to map

Mike O'Connor: 00:42:59

to the vision that you have for, you know, for the organization, whatever.

Mike O'Connor: 00:43:03

So to your point, right, like, you, you want to put the thought into

Mike O'Connor: 00:43:07

like, how does this really sort of fit for me and what's that bridge?

Stephen Box: 00:43:11

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:43:12

I, I mean, it's kind of like somebody's listening to this interview right now

Stephen Box: 00:43:16

and we've hit on so many different things and so many different ways that

Stephen Box: 00:43:21

if I were to sit down right after this interview, finishes and say, okay,

Stephen Box: 00:43:25

tell me five points that Mike made today, you would struggle to make, to

Stephen Box: 00:43:31

write down those five points, right?

Stephen Box: 00:43:33

I mean, unless you were taking notes and you're like cheating on it, right?

Stephen Box: 00:43:36

Glancing notes, but just like off the top of your head, you would

Stephen Box: 00:43:39

struggle to give me those five points.

Stephen Box: 00:43:42

But what you would do is that one that really hit hard for you, right?

Stephen Box: 00:43:47

That one that really stuck to you.

Stephen Box: 00:43:49

You'd be able to tell me that one.

Stephen Box: 00:43:50

Like instantaneously, and that's the one that was the most important for you.

Stephen Box: 00:43:55

Now, the other ones might be valuable.

Stephen Box: 00:43:56

You might write 'em down, you might implement them at some point, but that one

Stephen Box: 00:44:00

that was stuck with you, that's the one.

Stephen Box: 00:44:02

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:44:02

And, and that's kinda what you're saying here is that it's, it's not really

Stephen Box: 00:44:06

just about like remembering everything or getting every detail perfect.

Stephen Box: 00:44:13

It's about the feeling and feelings come from what, what

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:16

we value.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:17

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:19

That's really well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:20

I, I, I almost sort of look and you just made me realize, or, or think about this

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:24

in a, in a, in a different way, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:25

It's almost like a, a sort of a mental model, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:28

That you're, that you're sort of building on the fly about, you know,

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:31

like who, who am I in terms of like my identity for this organization, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:37

And.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:38

And that's going to change to some degree.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:40

But the core you is, is you.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:42

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:42

So you're trying to sort of figure out like, what's this unique bridge or sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:46

of unique thing or the aspects of my like, you know, hyper uniqueness that

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:51

really sort of ran and connect me better to this sort of place it place itself.

Mike O'Connor: 00:44:57

but yeah, that was an interesting connection that you just made for me cause

Mike O'Connor: 00:45:00

I hadn't really exactly thought of it like

Stephen Box: 00:45:02

that before.

Stephen Box: 00:45:03

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:45:04

For, for me, everything starts with the mindset.

Stephen Box: 00:45:06

and, and honestly, I'm, I'm actually, I'm, I'm happy that I gave you that insight,

Stephen Box: 00:45:10

but I'm, I'm actually a little surprised because, and look into your course, one of

Stephen Box: 00:45:15

the things that I really love is, I mean, I already kind of gave you like the, you

Stephen Box: 00:45:19

know, the one about showing up every day.

Stephen Box: 00:45:22

But I think people would expect, okay, I'm only gonna get 15 days to do this.

Stephen Box: 00:45:27

So we're, we're gonna jump right into the deep end.

Stephen Box: 00:45:29

You're gonna start giving me, you know, like, actions to go take things

Stephen Box: 00:45:34

I'm supposed to go do every day.

Stephen Box: 00:45:36

And from what I can tell, just in looking at the curriculum, you don't

Stephen Box: 00:45:41

really give someone that first like solid, like go do this specific physical

Stephen Box: 00:45:48

thing until about day 12, right?

Stephen Box: 00:45:51

Everything up to day 12 is all about setting your values,

Stephen Box: 00:45:55

getting your mindset right?

Stephen Box: 00:45:57

It's about taking an assessment of where you are.

Stephen Box: 00:46:00

It's all about getting all the pieces in place, right?

Stephen Box: 00:46:03

It's like the old, I don't know if it's real, quote or not, but I've, it's always

Stephen Box: 00:46:07

been attributed to, Abraham, Abraham Lincoln about, you know, if I had to

Stephen Box: 00:46:10

chopt down a tree, that's been the first two hours sharpening the ax, right?

Stephen Box: 00:46:15

And, and that's what you're doing here.

Stephen Box: 00:46:17

You're helping people to spend those first 11 days sharpening the ax.

Stephen Box: 00:46:22

So that day 12, when you start chopping the tree, that bad boy's coming down fast.

Stephen Box: 00:46:27

Yeah, that's

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:28

really well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:28

No, you, you're exactly right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:29

You're doing a really sort of deep diagnostic.

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:31

The first part of it is you're really sort of looking at, okay,

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:34

who's the person I wanna sort of be?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:35

What are those values?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:36

How am I sort of showing up in the world?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:38

But then there's a lot of audits, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:39

Where you're essentially sort of looking at like, okay, here's the

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:42

brand that, here's the me, here's the brand that I wanna start to put out

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:46

in the world that's organic and true and all of those different things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:49

But then I'm really sort of looking at like, how am I, how am I sort of doing it?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:52

What are the audits?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:53

Like?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:54

How am I showing up?

Mike O'Connor: 00:46:55

But I'm doing a deep dive on, on these different, these metrics that I have

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:00

and like, am I sort of going towards the goals that I say I, I wanna have or not?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:04

And you're really doing that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:06

But then what you're doing sort of as you're sort of doing this sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:09

of deeper di diagnostic is you're starting to one, sort of get in

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:14

the habit of self-improvement and you're building that into, that

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:16

you're doing this, this meditation, or some, some type of mindfulness,

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:20

I shouldn't say just meditation.

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:21

Combined with, with some journaling and some real sort of task batching and,

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:26

and, and trying to get better at your, your daily sort of 80 20 analysis.

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:31

But then you're really starting, starting to think of what are the

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:34

things that I can do that I can build into my routine that have outsized roi?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:39

How am I starting to hold myself accountable?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:42

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:42

And as you do that, and you go through it, you're gonna then get prompts after the

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:47

course ends two weeks later, Hey, where are you at with these types of things?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:51

What have you been doing?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:52

who is the, who's your accountability buddy?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:54

Or like, who's the person that you're checking in to make sure that's happening?

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:59

Maybe that's me.

Mike O'Connor: 00:47:59

Maybe that's somebody else.

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:01

But you are building in something and you're trying this operating

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:05

system and the first version, 1.0 isn't gonna be perfect, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:10

And we know that, and it never is, but it's gonna be better and it's gonna be

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:14

better than what you're currently doing.

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:16

And the hope is, That by recalibrating where your floor is and really sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:22

of looking at that and seeing the positive end of recalibrating that

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:26

floor, you're gonna then sort of like 30 days later reassess again and make

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:32

this a, a continual sort of practice.

Mike O'Connor: 00:48:35

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:48:36

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:48:36

I think, you know, and this is going back to what I said in the introduction, right?

Stephen Box: 00:48:40

Where this at, at the surface might seem different than

Stephen Box: 00:48:43

what I normally teach, right?

Stephen Box: 00:48:44

This idea of like, you're gonna do this in 15 days, but you know, I'm hope,

Stephen Box: 00:48:49

I'm hoping that now people see that it's not about you're gonna completely

Stephen Box: 00:48:52

change everything and fix everything and have life be perfect in 15 days.

Stephen Box: 00:48:58

It's taking that 15 days and using it as a launchpad for the next 60 days, 90 days,

Stephen Box: 00:49:07

whatever, and being able to implement those things and make those changes.

Stephen Box: 00:49:12

But those 15 days are.

Stephen Box: 00:49:15

What's going to give you the foundation you need to be

Stephen Box: 00:49:19

successful in those changes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:22

Exactly.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:23

Exactly.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:24

You know, and we're, we're trying to sort of get people up to, to

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:27

some degree of base camp, right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:29

but you're gonna sort of, you're gonna hike these foothills and you're gonna

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:31

do things that are, that are hard and challenging, really sort of make you

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:35

think so that you can sort of like look at and sort of reassess the bigger

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:39

mountain mats that's in front of you.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:42

but you're exactly right, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:43

I mean, 15 days is a short period of time.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:45

It is, is it enough time to, it is enough time to sort of recalibrate

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:49

and sort of pull together a mission vision and start to pilot things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:53

But in terms of long term, 15 days is a drop in the bucket, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:49:56

So trying to reset your floor and then sort of think bigger picture

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:00

about where you want to go and who you want to be and start going in

Stephen Box: 00:50:03

that direction.

Stephen Box: 00:50:04

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:50:05

And, and I think something that people miss out on so often is it's really

Stephen Box: 00:50:10

about that mental clarity, right?

Stephen Box: 00:50:11

It's about.

Stephen Box: 00:50:13

Having an understanding of what you actually want to do, because how often do

Stephen Box: 00:50:17

we struggle to accomplish something for no other reason than we're just not sure how

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:24

to start.

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:26

Yeah, that's really well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:29

and yeah, that, that, that direction and then that clarity in all of

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:33

these different pieces, you know, I kind of going back to the point

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:36

that we made before about men, those are, I think those are tough, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:40

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:40

And, and I think it's, I, I don't know that I know I, I certainly wasn't raised

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:45

to sort of like, think about myself and think about like, What do I want

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:50

or what do I sort of need or whatever.

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:52

It's like I'm putting, I'm, I'm thinking about my family.

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:54

I'm thinking like, how am I providing for them and what am I doing and how am I

Mike O'Connor: 00:50:58

sort of doing the different things to sort of help them be their best self, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:02

So I think there's, there's pieces of it that are uncomfortable and

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:06

weird and, and just different, but there is this, I think this sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:11

gut check reality that we all have.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:13

like when things aren't, you know, even if you're not the most, sort of inward

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:18

looking person, and I know that I've, I've had to really sort of grow a lot of that,

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:22

but there's this gut check piece about things just don't feel right sometimes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:25

or, or, you know, I, I, I'm doing all of these kind of things and it

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:28

just doesn't, there's just something in my gut that's telling me this

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:31

is like, this is something wrong.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:33

yes.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:34

And that's really like the, the, I, I kind of created this thing to sort

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:38

of solve challenges of, of people that I know and work with that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:42

That we're sort of having it, but I also did it for myself, right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:45

About, you know, what's, what's, what are the things that help me sort of

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:49

level up to get to where I want to go?

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:51

and, and force me to really sort of like, look at the thing that I

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:55

don't necessarily wanna look at.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:56

And, and stare those in the face.

Mike O'Connor: 00:51:58

Because as soon as you confront them, you know, again, we can kind

Mike O'Connor: 00:52:02

of solve Forex a little bit more.

Mike O'Connor: 00:52:04

but we need to know what those, what those pieces are, and to the points

Mike O'Connor: 00:52:07

that you've made a number of times.

Mike O'Connor: 00:52:09

It's like they're so interconnected and holistic that if, if we're not doing them,

Mike O'Connor: 00:52:15

if we're not sort of serving ourselves, then we're not gonna show up for the

Mike O'Connor: 00:52:18

people around us as best as we can.

Stephen Box: 00:52:21

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:52:21

And, and I think, you know, something that you just kind of highlighted

Stephen Box: 00:52:24

there that I wanna point out is, It's not about what we do, right?

Stephen Box: 00:52:32

It's about the interconnectivity.

Stephen Box: 00:52:35

you know, I've seen so many guys, you know, who have, have come to

Stephen Box: 00:52:39

me and had that realization of my entire existence to this point, as

Stephen Box: 00:52:45

an adult, has been about my job.

Stephen Box: 00:52:48

It's about my job title.

Stephen Box: 00:52:49

It's about the amount of money I bring in.

Stephen Box: 00:52:51

And they've convinced themselves that the things that they're doing

Stephen Box: 00:52:57

chasing after these things, finale is hours at work dedicating themselves

Stephen Box: 00:53:01

to, to their job is all in the name of being a great provider, right?

Stephen Box: 00:53:06

That's what they see themselves as.

Stephen Box: 00:53:08

And they've missed the point that their, their spouse, their kids

Stephen Box: 00:53:14

don't really care about the money.

Stephen Box: 00:53:15

They want to spend time with them, they want them in their life.

Stephen Box: 00:53:19

And, you know, the.

Stephen Box: 00:53:21

Going through a lot of this stuff that Mike is, is talking about, is

Stephen Box: 00:53:24

gonna start to help you to realize what's actually important, right?

Stephen Box: 00:53:29

Like what actually matters to you.

Stephen Box: 00:53:30

And it's not to say that you can't make money, it's not to say that work shouldn't

Stephen Box: 00:53:34

be important to you or anything like that.

Stephen Box: 00:53:36

That's not what we're saying.

Stephen Box: 00:53:38

But it's a matter of, it's gonna help you to find that balance to actually

Stephen Box: 00:53:42

help you start to show up as a better version of you so that your family, the

Stephen Box: 00:53:49

people who depend on you, the people that you're providing for, can also show

Stephen Box: 00:53:53

up as zen besa as their best selves.

Stephen Box: 00:53:55

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:53:57

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:53:57

That's, that's really well said.

Mike O'Connor: 00:53:59

I, I'm almost cautious to say anything more because you,

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:02

I think you, you nailed it.

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:04

You nailed it right there.

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:05

it's, it's about being the best version of, of yourself and sort of showing

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:09

up in ways that I think supports and augments, you know, the, the good around

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:14

us and the good that we, we wanna be, And that's, again, I think it's, I think

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:18

it's incredibly challenging, work and I, I wanna sort of acknowledge and own that

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:22

cuz I think as men, you know, are not always the most sort of self-reflective

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:26

or in we're looking or, or whatever.

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:28

but the, the more that we can sort of just see the bigger sort of holistic

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:32

patterns is sort of interconnectivity of some of these different pieces

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:36

in the broader context of how these inform, how we show up as a father

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:41

and how we're sort of helping, you know, helping be a better spouse.

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:44

How we're helping our communities, how we're helping lead, how we're

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:47

doing all those different things.

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:48

You know, then we start to kind of see just how critical and, and

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:51

important they're, and you know, I I, you could, you could tell anybody

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:56

or I could tell anybody, like, if you're not doing the things to level

Mike O'Connor: 00:54:59

yourself up, you know, you're, you're, you're not just stopping yourself.

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:02

You're actually stagnating the growth of other people around you, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:07

And, and the people that really sort of depend on you or that

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:10

spend a lot of time with you.

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:13

If you're not being your best self or the sort of best version of what or whatever

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:17

it is, then there's a, there's a real sort of trickle down of how that's helping

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:22

them sort of show up in, in their lives.

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:24

Right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:24

So I, I hope this has been helpful.

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:28

I'm, I'm more than happy to talk to anybody, about any of these topics

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:31

because, I think as somebody that's sort of gone through and gone through the

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:34

journey themself and, and has sort of had to recalibrate and really refine, what,

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:39

what brings joy and where can I add value in all those different types of things,

Mike O'Connor: 00:55:44

I'm, I'm hoping it's, I can, I can really help serve other people in that as well.

Stephen Box: 00:55:48

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:55:49

yeah, we, we didn't get a chance to really touch on a much, and we're,

Stephen Box: 00:55:51

we're kind of like hitting up on time here, but, you know, I would just kind

Stephen Box: 00:55:55

of share with people, you know, in our previous conversation, you, you told me

Stephen Box: 00:55:58

that this course for you actually came about because, you know, Like most of us.

Stephen Box: 00:56:07

2020, your life was in turmoil, right?

Stephen Box: 00:56:10

both because what was going on in the world and a lot of things that you had

Stephen Box: 00:56:13

gone on personally, and this really came about as something that you had to

Stephen Box: 00:56:19

do to help you get right, like right.

Stephen Box: 00:56:22

You had to find what was important to you.

Stephen Box: 00:56:24

You had to figure out how to become your best self.

Stephen Box: 00:56:27

A and now you, you know, similar to my story now have this passion

Stephen Box: 00:56:32

where like you've seen the changes this's made for you and you wanna

Stephen Box: 00:56:35

share that with other people.

Stephen Box: 00:56:36

You wanna give other people those tools.

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:39

Yeah.

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:39

No ex exactly right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:40

I mean, I think, just sort of cover it briefly, but I think yeah, March

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:44

of 2020, just like everybody, right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:46

you know, I, I was in this, you know, I think, I think a big job where I had a

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:49

lot of people at every level organization relying on me, to sort of do, to do more.

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:55

And I'm, you know, I'm trapped inside a house for one year

Mike O'Connor: 00:56:58

plus with two small kids.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:00

and working insane amounts of time.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:04

My wife's also sort of working and serving and just like we talked about

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:08

before with, with regards to that sort of broader diagnostic, I saw things

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:12

just not working the way I wanted to.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:15

Right?

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:16

Like my marriage was strained, my relationship with my kids was strained.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:20

people at work are, are sort of, are feeling sort of strained and

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:23

I'm doing all these different things and, and trying to sort of like

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:26

hold up everybody as, as best I can.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:29

And I think I did a really good job all things considered, but

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:33

internally I was struggling, right and compounded over time.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:37

by the time we actually got our kids into daycare, which was a year plus later,

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:41

so it was 13 months of all of us being in a really sort of confined space.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:45

And all these sort of crazy stress stresses and triggers and the

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:49

things that are sort of happening.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:50

I just noticed all of the things about myself were like,

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:53

were kind of deteriorating.

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:55

And I, and I felt like there was this shrinking part of me about the

Mike O'Connor: 00:57:58

things that I loved and all of that, like that little, there was still a

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:01

light there, but man was a damn right.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:04

It just wasn't, I just wasn't as happy.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:07

And, you know, it wasn't until I went out, I, I had a trip with friends

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:11

to, to Colorado in May, and it really just sort of reignited like

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:16

the things that I sort of loved.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:18

And, and that was like, that was so much later and I, and I, I started outta

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:22

this sort of path of creating something that, that I, I hope will sort of bring,

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:27

bring a lot of value to, to people.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:28

But, Yeah, I, I think everybody's sort of probably gone through

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:33

their own versions of that.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:34

and as somebody that's sort of like, come out the other side of it and has been able

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:38

to sort of recalibrate and find so much, you know, keep, keep moving, keep going.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:42

and I would, I would love to help and work with you to just help,

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:46

help you connect to that theme that is bigger than you, that gives you

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:49

purpose and really find what that is.

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:52

As simple as it sounds like, I find that like a, having a, a simple mission

Mike O'Connor: 00:58:57

vision, just a, a two sentence, you personal mission statement helps so

Mike O'Connor: 00:59:02

much in terms of sort of seeing bigger picture, contextualizing problems,

Mike O'Connor: 00:59:06

working through challenges, and, and using it as a filter to decide is

Mike O'Connor: 00:59:10

this something that I wanna do or not?

Mike O'Connor: 00:59:13

so it's been a, it's been a real sort of big, big thing for me and,

Mike O'Connor: 00:59:16

and wanna help more people find.

Stephen Box: 00:59:19

Awesome.

Stephen Box: 00:59:19

I love it, man.

Stephen Box: 00:59:20

so again, I want to thank Mike for, for coming on today, sharing so many

Stephen Box: 00:59:25

insights, so much wisdom with us.

Stephen Box: 00:59:27

appreciate it.

Stephen Box: 00:59:27

In the show notes, there will be two links.

Stephen Box: 00:59:31

one is to a free, guide that Mike has for you, and then the other

Stephen Box: 00:59:35

one is going to be to his course.

Stephen Box: 00:59:37

so definitely encourage you guys to check that out, especially if you feel

Stephen Box: 00:59:42

like there's just something missing.

Stephen Box: 00:59:43

It's like something doesn't quite feel right, but you

Stephen Box: 00:59:45

can't figure out what it is.

Stephen Box: 00:59:47

this is gonna be a great course for you to help start taking those steps to

Stephen Box: 00:59:51

figure out what that is and to correct it.

Stephen Box: 00:59:53

but as always, guys wanna remind you that none of us are born Unshakable

Stephen Box: 00:59:59

or we can all become Unshakable.

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Thank you for listening to the Unshakable Habits

Podcast Into/Outro: 01:00:05

podcast with Coach Stephen Box.

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