The Kevin Miller Podcast

I continue to interest myself with the concept of “attachments.” How and why we attach to anything. In this episode, I’m focusing specifically on relational attachments again.The concept is that in our childhood, we learned how to best attach to our primary caregivers and others. As no parent or caregiver or person is perfect, we have to hypothesize that nobody learns how to attach in perfect health. We adapt and cope. And unless you have given specific attention and done the work to understand yourself, chances are high, if not 100%, that you have some attachment styles and habits that are not serving your relationships best today. I start off questioning how attached we should be, at all, and looking first at how we attach to ourselves. My expert guest is Jessica Baum. Jessica is a renowned psychotherapist who has specialized in trauma, attachment theory, and interpersonal neurobiology. Jessica feels that connection—to ourselves and others—is at the heart of healing, and she uses a range of modalities to help individuals and couples find wholeness. She is the founder of the Relationship Institute of Palm Beach, a private group practice, and she leads a global coaching company offering support to clients worldwide. Jessica previously authored the bestselling book, Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love, which established her as a trusted voice in the healing of attachment wounds and building secure, fulfilling relationships. Her new book is, Safe: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships, which was the catalyst for the conversation you are about to hear. Type “Jessica B-A-U-M” in anywhere and you’ll find her. If you buy her book she has some free gifts at her website Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How will you age? Whether you are in your late twenties, fifties, or late eighties, everyone feels they are getting older. Of course we are chronologically getting older, so is a child, but we view children as growing older and better. Earlier and earlier these days however we view every day getting older as a negative and we expect to be less capable. Should this be the case? And how is the negative view of aging hurting us all, no matter what age you are as you hear this. This is a big topic of interest for me. I’m 54 and feel as capable as ever, and want to maintain this as long as possible. So I brought on an expert. Dr. Becca Levy, Ph.D., is an award-winning professor of Epidemiology (Social and Behavioral Sciences) at Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She has given invited testimony before the United States Senate on the effects of ageism, contributed to briefs submitted to the United States Supreme Court in age-discrimination cases, and participated in United Nations discussions of ageism. She is credited with creating a field of study that focuses on how positive and negative age stereotypes affect the health of older individuals. She is the author of Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Love. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s marketplace, it seems the best teachers, trainers, and guides must also become performers. We call it “content creators” and if you’re not devoting half or more of your time on camera or writing and posting memes, you just won’t get any traction. And I find many of the best teachers, trainers, and guides are not naturally the performing type, and they don’t want to be. And if they try, it might be embarrassing. So the gap grows between them and the performers who are grabbing the spotlight, getting the attention, and quite possibly selling an inferior offering. What do we do? My guest today is an expert in the world of personal branding. Rory Vaden. I’ve known Rory for about a decade and watched him become one of the greatest influencers to the world’s greatest influencers. His expertise is in studying the psychology of influence – which he defines as the ability to move ourselves, and others, to take action. He’s become a personal advisor to many of the world’s biggest personal development influencers including: Lewis Howes, Ed Mylett, Amy Porterfield, Trent Shelton, Jasmine Star, Eric Thomas, Dr. Caroline Leaf, John Maxwell and more. He is a very in demand speaker and best selling author. His business, Brand Builders Group, has grown to be a powerhouse for personal branding. But you are about to hear a very sobering conversation. You will hear Rory admit that much of the marketing game today disgusts him. And, if we have something of value, we don’t need to become something we are not or do things we don’t agree with, but we do need to care enough about helping people that we are willing to play the game to a degree. Even if it’s not totally comfortable for us. His new book is titled, Wealthy And Well Known: Build Your Personal Brand and Turn Your Reputation Into Revenue. We talk through some of my frustrations, talk about options and solutions, and in the last quarter of the show talk about the necessity to be primarily known for…one thing. And how he believes you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You can get Rory’s book, Wealthy & Well Know, totally free, if you’ll go to freebrandaudiobook.com/kevinmiller Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I revere people who have made a significant transformation to their identity. We like to celebrate people who have make huge accomplishments out in the world. But people who actually transformed who and how they are are now my heroes. Now my guest has some big, worldy accomplishments, but I invited him onto this podcast because of his personal transformation. Josh Peck is an actor, comedian, YouTuber, and social media star. He rose to fame in a lead role in the Nicleodeon sitcom, Drake & Josh, from 2004-2007. More recently he starred in the Disney+ Series, Turner and Hooch and I actually saw him a few weeks ago in an episode of HBO’s original series, The Last Of Us. But his story comes from a troubled home. Josh became…fat. The fat kid. To offload the teasing, he turned to being funny. His run on the Drake & Josh show as a childhood actor was literally as the funny fat kid. The show got cancelled, he turned to drugs and alcohol. Lost all his fat. And didn’t know who he was. He finally wrote about it all in a book titled, Happy People Are Annoying. You’re about to hear about Josh’s journey first hand. You can find Josh anywhere you type in Josh Peck. When we talked here he had 13.3 million followers on Instagram and I saw he now has almost 17 million. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” This is the quote by Holocaust survivor Viktor E Frankl that headlines a new book titled, Dealing With Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want. The book comes from my guest in this episode, Marc Brackett. Mark is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine at Yale University. Marcs research for over 25 years has focused on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and performance. The quote from Viktor Frankl that came from his time in a concentration camp, and that Marc has devoted his life to, is saying that no matter what happens to us, we get to choose how we respond. And my experience of humanity is that no matter what happens to them, even great traumas, tragedies, and victimizations, what harms them more than the incident or event is how they conceive of it and how they respond. My concern is that culturally we have come into a place where we don’t believe this. We feel it is our right and it’s just, to respond to pain, with pain. And to say otherwise is actually offensive. Looking at the mental health stats these days, I don’t think this perspective is working. This is the conversation you’re about to hear with Marc Brackett. Marc previously authored the bestselling book, Permission To Feel and most recently, along with Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann, Marc and his team co-created the Apple award-winning app, HowWeFeel, that was designed to teach emotion skills and enhance well-being. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are at an all time high of mental illness diagnoses. Some argue the reason is better diagnostic methods, others because we are just increasing in mental un-health. The discussion in this episode is in regards to the prevalence of mental diagnoses and the impact on individuals. In  Brene Brown’s bestselling book, Atlas of the Heart, she outlines 87 different emotions that are in and of themselves, normal and healthy. But when do we go over the line from normal to abnormal? From feeling some depression to being clinically depressed? Having anxiety or an anxiety disorder? Do we need or want an official diagnosis so we can get needed help? Or do we want to deny and boycott any such limiting label? I’ve brought on an expert to discuss it. Sarah Fay is an author, educator, and activist on the issue and has a book titled, Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses. Sarah from a young age displayed some unhealthy behaviors and was diagnosed, labeled, and treated. Over the next 30 years she went on to have multiple clinical diagnoses and labels for Anorexia, Major depressive disorder, Anxiety disorder, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Obsessive compulsive disorder, Bipolar disorder, and has also dealt with alcoholism, being a compulsive exerciser, and many bouts being suicidal. You name the drug, she’s been prescribed it and taken it. Today…she is well, though still accepting of a couple diagnoses and medications, but has much to educate and warn us about regarding our current culture which has nearly half of all Americans being given an official, clinical diagnosis during their lifetime. Sarah Fay writes for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and The Paris Review. She is also on the faculty at Northwestern University. She’s the founder of Pathological: The Movement, and you can her at sarahfay.org. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know the saying and the truth of how much we judge a book by its cover. I feel it is a dramatic metaphor for much of humanity. And I don’t minimize it either. I feel it’s our responsibility to address our “book covers.” I feel we are in a culture that gives a lot of attention to physical aesthetics. Whether it’s how we look or the car we drive or the phone we have and clothes we wear and on and on. But I amaze myself with what seems a stark lack of attention to what’s behind the physical accouterments. A big one is how we talk. How we communicate. My guest is communication expert, Michael Chad Hoeppner. Michael is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and the CEO and president of GK Training, a firm dedicated to giving individuals and organizations better communication skills. He is a speaking coach to…a long list of incredibly impressive people and organizations. Michael is alone a leader among a growing chorus of voices identifying the link between the physical aspects of spoken communication and broader issues of health and wellness. He has a new book titled, Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life. But as you’ll hear, the title is a bit tongue in cheek. The concepts we discuss go far deeper than our cultural propensity to say, “um, er, like, and you know.” How we speak often gets us judged, for better or worse, much more than what we speak. But we don’t get it. We are intent on what we are saying and talking about and miss how we are delivering it. But how we are communicating really does bely who we are. Using filler words and not addressing our body language doesn’t just make us sound dumb, it honestly questions what level of personal security and confidence we actually have. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are three very popular topics that I don't think that many people are really driven by; Sell! Control! Lead! My experience however, is we all desperately want the ability to positively influence other people. We have people we care about. A world we care about. We have ideas and solutions we care about for addressing the pain and suffering in the world. We want to be able to impart value to others. This is what influence is. The definition of influence is, "The capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something." A few years ago I sat down with Zoe Chance to discuss what influence really is and how to increase our personal influence. Zoe teaches the most popular class at the Yale School of Management, titled, “Mastering Influence and Persuasion." Her research on behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology has been published in top academic journals and covered by the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, BBC, Time, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Zoe's TEDx talk, How to Make a Behavior Addictive, has more than 700k views. Before coming to Yale, she earned a doctorate in marketing at Harvard and managed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand at Mattel. From Zoe’s Yale course, “Mastering Influence and Persuasion,” she wrote a book that caught my attention, INFLUENCE IS YOUR SUPERPOWER: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen. Following is our discussion about what influence is, and is not and how to deftly wield influence so you can have the positive impact on the world you desire. Find the book, Influence Is Your Superpower anywhere you buy books and connect with Zoe at zoechance.com Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". Said Benjamin Franklin. What are death and taxes? Arguably, losses. What is trauma and tragedy? I submit they are losses. And I feel we generally go about our lives, day in and day out, trying to avoid losses. Hoping "that doesn't happen to me." And yet, it's going to happen. We will have a financial fall. We will have a once beloved relationship end. We will have a car wreck or house fire or disease. Almost 100% of people will agree it's wise to have money in savings, just in case. Why don't we have emotional understanding and strength in savings, for the loss that will come? My guest is Colin Campbell. On March 14, 2023 Colin and his wife were driving their car, both in the front seats. In the back were their two teenagers, Ruby & Hart. A woman who was driving drunk went through an intersection doing 90 miles per hour and never saw them or braked. She hit the car right at the passenger doors. And Ruby and Hart died that day, while Colin and his wife were able to walk away from the crash. What followed is the dramatic amount of grief you’d likely expect. Colin says, “I always believed, deep in my heart, that my life would just keep getting better and better.” Isn’t that all of us? Waking each day hoping and really expecting things to be ok, and we won’t get the dreaded call or have the accident ourselves. Now I sure don’t want to go about expecting tragedy. But, I have recently gone through the loss of my marriage and family home, two things I literally thought were impossible. I also have nine kids and multiple grandkids. I’ve lost my arrogance to think “that won’t happen to me” and my odds are plenty high that I’ll experience more significant loss. What can I be doing now, to be prepared? This is what Colin and I discuss in depth. Colin Campbell is a writer and director for theater and film. He teaches screenwriting at Chapman University and theater at California State Polytechnic University. Campbell’s highly anticipated solo performance piece titled Grief, will be performed in Los Angeles and New York City this year. His book that I got ahold of is called Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose. Before we get started, let me give you this quote from Colin, “A profound loss is when you lose someone, and I’d add, “or something,” that you feel is entwined intrinsically with your identity. In  other words you define yourself partly in terms of this other person or thing.” Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who is the authentic you? Some people feel like they remember being an authentic self at some point, and I feel many never experienced it. But I feel we all long to just be comfortable being us. What does that look like? How does it feel? Following is a conversation I had with Dr Thema Bryant. Thema is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. She’s an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She earned her doctorate from Duke University and completed her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. In the world of academia and psychology she is royalty. When we recorded this conversation, Thema was president-elect of the American Psychological Association. She is now president. Other top psychologists look to her for guidance. Thema has half a million people following her on instagram because she is her authentic self. You’ll find her dancing and see her efforts in-play to decolonize traditional psychology and meld science, spirituality and faith, and our very humanity. Thema has a book called, Homecoming: Healing Trauma to Reclaim Your Authentic Self,  and here we take a very base look at the real world issues and hope for today’s mental health desires. Find Dr Thema Bryant’s book Homecoming anywhere and everywhere, and connect with her at drthema.com. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices