The Kevin Miller Podcast

As this Self-Helpful podcast grows and as I continually read, review and critique the latest and greatest knowledge being shared about self-help, I’m frequently exposed to misconceptions around what self-help is, and isn’t. ⁣⁣I admit my own constructive criticism of the category, yet and surprised by often incredibly wise people who sometimes give unconstructive criticism to the concept of self-help. I find myself wanting to ask them, if self-help is not the foundation of our personal evolution, then whose help is? ⁣⁣Who else is responsible for helping us as adults? While achieving the best and fullness of what life has to offer will only come from us getting guidance from others, it requires us to step up for the getting. This is a brief episode about stepping up with inspired intention. ⁣⁣The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.⁣Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL.If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/SELFHELP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, very few if any of us will have one job. One thing we do from young adulthood till the end of our lives. Which is fine. ⁣⁣The marketplace today is full of opportunity to try our hand at many different endeavors. While we can do many different things to earn a buck, long-term vocational fulfillment will come from working in roles and doing tasks that fit our skills, and more so, our values. ⁣⁣When we are self-aware and know our values we not only can find work and pursuits that fit and fulfill us, as our guest shares, we will often fall into them and they, in essence, find us. ⁣⁣Ian Morgan Cron has been an author, speaker, consultant, coach, therapist, spiritual director and even award-winning songwriter. But all along the way he found he was doing the same thing amongst all these careers. He had the same motivation. He wanted to help people enter into a deeper conversation with the mystery of who they are and with the meaning of their lives.⁣⁣This is part two with Ian where I walk through the Values, Motives, and Habits of his life, and this was the conversation around his work and career that was entirely relevant to our previous discuss on the Enneagram, the personality tool he is an expert in and advocate of. ⁣⁣In this talk we cover his time as an Episcopal priest. He goes to AA meetings five times per week. He loves rigorous, hot yoga sessions. He talks about the first half of life being about addition and the second part being about subtraction, as while he can afford whatever he wants he is selling off his large home, cars, and more to simplify. He'd rather spend time getting himself into environments where he will bump into God. ⁣⁣Find Ian’s book, The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self and you can visit his website, typologyinstitute.com and take the Enneagram test and find his online courses. Use the discount code SELFHELP to receive 20% off a monthly or annual subscription which provides access to all 3 of his courses⁣⁣The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.⁣Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL.If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/SELFHELP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We were all kids living in a life we didn’t choose, for better or worse. To make sense of it, our minds crafted a story. It’s impossible for it to be a perfectly reasonable story. It has flaws and fractures in it that are hurting our progress, achievement, peace, and fulfillment today, to some degree. How do you become aware and course correct? Whether you’ve heard of the Enneagram or not, this is going to be a new perspective. At face value, it’s a personality profile, but we’re going to take you on an eye-opening and really hope-filled journey. My guest is Ian Morgan Cron. Ian is a bestselling author, psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, Episcopal priest, and the host of the popular podcast "Typology," which has over 20 million downloads. His books include the Enneagram primer The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, which has sold over 1 million copies. Not long ago I had renowned author and influencer Michael Hyatt on the show, for the fourth time, and after our three-hour conversation he said, “You’ve got to have Ian Cron on the show.” I didn’t need more than that, but then I got into Ian’s new book, The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self, and I agreed. Ian takes us through the Enneagram’s nine personality types and brilliantly showcases our propensities and especially where we tend to fall when we are unaware of ourselves. Many, if not most of you, will want to take the Enneagram as you hear this conversation. And if you’ve taken it before, you’ll likely want to do it again. You can go to Ian’s website, typologyinstitute.com and take the test and find his online courses. Use the discount code SELFHELP to receive 20% off a monthly or annual subscription which provides access to all 3 of his courses The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL.If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/SELFHELP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Low energy is an ongoing national pandemic. Not many years ago coffee was a little pick me up for the mornings that people enjoyed. Now there isn’t a checkout counter in America that doesn’t offer some type of energy drink. The “energy drink” industry that didn’t exist in the recent past was estimated at $86.35 billion in 2021, $91.94 billion in 2022 and is forecasted at $177.5 billion in 2030. Billions off our increased lack of energy. What is happening to us? Our voracious appetite for any resource claiming to give us more energy but it’s generally like tying helium balloons to a sinking ship. The problem is the sinking ship. How can we get it riding high on the water on its own? Energy is simply a symptom of a deeper issue and there is no one way to increase consistent energy. But there is much you can address to help yourself. In this episode I’m joined by my Functional Friday co-host, Randy James, medical doctor and Functional Medicine expert, to discuss some of the key issues that zap our energy and the primary initiatives you can take to give you more energy. Not in the moment, but long term, every day. The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Understanding and becoming our authentic selves may be our greatest life quest. And I’d pose that it is just that, a lifelong quest. To expect less is to minimize and miss it. Honestly friends, it’s not something I really gave gravity and focus to till…recent years. I’ve been pursuing personal performance most of my life, but I missed personal understanding and awareness. I see a lot of high performers who this is the case for. And it catches up to you, unless you want to settle for achievements only and miss true peace and fulfillment. I don’t want to settle, which is a big reason why I’m here, studying the best of the best in self-help and bringing my findings to you so we can learn and grow together. This aspect of authenticity was brought to me by Vienna Pharaon, renowned NY therapist and author of The Origins of You. She has been my muse and this is part four and my wrap-up of the series. It’s left me with five key takeaways that I’ll be grappling with and striving to apply to my own life. The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL.If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/SELFHELP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve been talking about authenticity. The authentic you. Who and where is it? First off, it’s not a totally unfiltered you. It’s not just a raw you. It’s a you who has become self-aware and at peace by resolving your hurts, wounds, angers and voids. And in that, it’s a journey to becoming authentic, to the greatest degree you can. Our muse is Vienna Pharaon, who I’ve been talking with. Vienna is a licensed marriage and family therapist and one of New York City’s most sought after relationship therapists. Her new book is called, The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love. Vienna has nearly 700k followers tuning in on Instagram at her @mindfulmft account to get help discovering and becoming their authentic selves. This is part 3 where I bring a peer on to co-host with me. Someone who has experience in this topic. I chose Broadway and film star Renée Marino. I brought Renée on the show a few months ago to talk about her book, “Becoming A Master Communicator,” and we just hit it off. This is the second time I’ve asked her to co-host with me because it’s a topic she is close to. As you’ll hear in a moment, when hardship hit Renée’s life she realized she was repeating negative patterns and she started therapy with a counselor on “inner child work.” And right there. If the phrase, “inner child work” rubs you wrong in any way, I feel you. At face value I have no desire to waste my time looking backward and trying to uncover feelings from my past. I struggle to even remember how I felt as a kid. But please listen, the point is to figure out how you may have reacted unhealthfully to events in your early years, and brought them forward into your adult life. And…you did. So did I. This is an audit. If you’ve ever bought a used car in recent years, you’ve likely gotten a CarFax so you can know the history of the car. How it’s been maintained, any wrecks or recalls, how many owners and more. What occurs to me as I continue looking into the origins of me, is how unaware I’ve been about some wrecks along the way that have not been resolved and are impeding my progress. The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL.If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/SELFHELP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even if we are being authentic, we often put on different faces for the roles we have in life. I’d like to think I’m the same guy all the time, but how I interact with my 10 year old daughter is different from how I interact with a podcast guest. I’m still me, but I have different expectations and engage from different orientations based on who I’m in front of. Sometimes we can struggle to switch gears. This is my part two session, Values, Motives, and Habits with Vienna Pharaon, licensed marriage and family therapist, one of New York City’s most sought after relationship therapists, and now author of her first book, The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love. Vienna has nearly 700k followers tuning in on Instagram to find their authentic selves. It is in the beginning topic of Spirituality where Vienna discusses her efforts to “de-role” in her life, a concept I’ve not heard defined quite like this before. You’re also going to hear a special insert in this episode, as at the end of the show, Vienna asked to share something else that greatly altered her spiritual life. The death of her dog and holding him as he took his last breath. She shares how it shifted her relationship with death and made it less scary. I was really honored Vienna was moved to share this. Honestly her candor and relatability touched me as well. She really engaged in our conversation much more like a patient than a counselor and I felt I was just talking with a friend. I’d say this is why she has such a massive following of people who feel the same. Other highlights you’ll hear, regarding Relationships, Vienna works to accept limitations and strengths in her relationships. With Health & Wellness she says for her, “Movement is salve.” Mind & Mental Health are her profession and she shares she learned to like alone time because she was a single child, yet also shares she’s an introvert and I press in as to which she gives more credit to regarding wanting alone time…it’s a bit of nature vs nurture discussion. With Work/Career Vienna said she loves being in meaningful conversations with people, and with Money & Finances she shares how her relationship with money has changed throughout her life and makes a quip that I found really interesting and asked her to explain, when she said, “Wounds and gifts are neighbors.”The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance.Get free chicken nuggets for a Year and 10% off your first box when you sign up today at butcherbox.com/SELFHELPFUL and use code SELFHELPFUL.Go to Zocdoc.com/KEVIN and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.Get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store when you sign up at insidetracker.com/HELPFUL.If you’re looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/SELFHELP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are at an all-time high of mental health being a mainstream topic. My experience is people are either fairly tuned in to it, or they just don’t have much thought towards it. Similar to spirituality. And in neglecting to audit and tend to our individual mental health we are missing out on key aspects of our performance. I know I have and it’s a constant challenge to make it a priority. Culturally we stay very busy and have very little margin and downtime, if any, in our day to day lives. We think getting a brain-break with entertainment or exercise or sleep is enough. But we’re seeing that this is more like being on a long road trip and stopping for 5-10 minutes at a rest area. It’s a little break for the engine, but not hardly enough for it to cool down. What most of us need is a daily tune-up. Not just to let the engine cool off, but to get fresh fluids, check for leaks and make sure the tires are rotated and balanced. This is what meditation offers. And let me start by admitting this is possibly my least favorite health and wellness effort. I’d honestly rather fast from food. So we’ve brought in a guest. Ariel Garten. Ariel is a neuroscientist, innovator, and entrepreneur on a mission to help people understand how the mind works and empower them to live their best lives through meditation. She is the co-founder and visionary of a highly successful tech start-up called Muse, which tracks your brain during meditation to give you real-time feedback, guiding you into true rest and letting you know when you are actively allowing your mind to recover. Muse is a multi-sensor meditation device, a headband, that syncs with an app on your phone and provides real-time feedback on your brain activity, heart rate, breathing, and body movements to help you build a consistent meditation practice. I use the “desert” mode and as I try to rest, it tells me how I’m doing by the level of the wind. As I slow down and settle my mind I hear the tell tale birds chirping. The app monitors my progress day to day so I can see my accumulative results and progress. It’s really ingenious and takes the guesswork out of wondering if you really have your mind at rest. This episode is about the benefits of resting your mind and being present, not the Muse app and technology, though you can check it out at choosemuse.com. The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know this quote, “It's not how many times you get knocked down that counts, it's how many times you get back up.” The quote is attributed both to legendary army officer George Custer and legendary football coach Vince Lombardy. As I said in a previous episode in this series, I get this concept if you’re in the middle of a battle or football game. But otherwise, I feel it’s fairly misleading and has us all missing out on available growth from our challenges. If you are alive, you will encounter something you desired to achieve, not working out, or something negative you didn’t choose, happening to you. And there you are. How you deal with it has to do with your ultimate life success and achievement, and your general well-being…right down to your health and wellness. Just “getting back up again” or persevering may or may not positively serve you any more than being overcome and defeated. This is my wrap-up on the message and discussions with Dr Neeta Bhushan and the message in her new book, That Sucked. Now What?: How to Embrace the Joy in Chaos and Find Magic in the Mess. It brought me to grappling with how we as a society tend to polarize and view someone as an overcomer or a quitter. Like it’s simply two ends of a rope instead of a multifaceted spectrum with a lot of nuances. Walk with me a moment through some aspects I’m pondering and seeking to apply to my life. The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being authentic is a big buzzword in our culture today. We want authenticity from others and we want to claim our own authenticity. Yet you’re about to get schooled in a stark, yet hopeful reality, and it starts with understanding and accepting that nobody comes into adulthood being authentically who they are, and discovering your true authenticity is a massive undertaking. The hope in this is in realizing that most of your personal struggles in your relationship with yourself and others and even the world, can only get better from this point as you start stepping into your authentic self. Two big points you are about to hear; You come into this world with an already installed operating system based on your genetics and it is further programmed and hardwired in during your upbringing. So you leave home with a solid OS. You don’t wake up on your own free and authentic. This is realization number one. Two, from the moment you come into this world your natural desire is to attach to others and this is far more important than being the authentic you, to the point you never really experience the authentic you. Right now, whether you are a navy seal, executive, stay at home parent or student you have spent your life with a priority of belonging and being attached to others far superseding being who you really are. And it’s diminished your entire life. My guest, expert, and guide on this subject is Vienna Pharaon. Her new book is called The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love. Vienna has been posting her insights, driven from thousands of patient encounters, on Instagram has nearly 700k followers tuning in to find their authentic selves. Vienna Pharaon is a licensed marriage and family therapist and one of New York City’s most sought after relationship therapists. She has practiced therapy for over fifteen years and is the founder and owner of the group practice, Mindful Marriage and Family Therapy. Pharaon has been featured in The Economist, Netflix, Vice, and Motherly, and has led workshops for Peloton and Netflix, amongst others. The Origins of You is her first book and is endorsed by renowned therapists such as Nedra Glover Tawwab and Whitney Goodman who I’ve had on this show. As of this recording The Origins of You is at the top of the charts in Amazon. The Self-Help(ful) podcast is brought to you by Ziglar, your premier source for equipping coaches to help leaders and top performers excel professionally and personally. Visit Ziglar.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices