The Kevin Miller Podcast

If you could choose right now what tomorrow would look like, if you had complete freedom, would you rather be consumed with something you are interested in, or be entertained? Really think about it. And you can take it further if you feel exhausted and would just love a day of entertainment. For how long? Two days? A week? A month? I ask because I’m back for part 2 with Melodie Beattie, legendary self-help pioneer and famed author of Codependent No More and we’re talking through her personal Values, Motives & Habits. In regards to spirituality and her overall ethos and purpose of life she said, “My job is to make life interesting, not have life entertained.” Now, I like some good entertainment as much as anyone. I love getting into a great story in a fiction book or movie. Yet I’m aware that when I’m highly interested in something I have little time for entertainment, and when I do read or watch something entertaining, it’s generally about people who are completely interested in something…a cause or mission or purpose. So would you rather voyeuristically watch people interested in something, or be the person interested in something? On a similar note, Melody shared how she keeps a barometer on herself regarding service to others and said, “If I get too selfish my life stops working well” and it showcases her primary interest in…people. I also appreciated her quip to me, saying, “You want the truth or want me to make something up?” She’s as real as they come. Which is why at age 74 one of her personal joys is listening to the Rolling Stones. You can get her newly revised and updated Codependent No More book…anywhere, as it’s currently at the top of the bestseller charts. 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

We as humans are driven by our appetites. Yet much of the health and wellness culture is around curbing and suppressing our appetites, and for the most part, it’s just a recipe for failure. Today my cohost Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert discuss our personal belief. And it is that we will seldom succeed in squelching our appetites, and we…don’t. I love feeding my appetites and one of the things that adds joy to my life is great food and drink. Our goal is to strive to upgrade and elevate our appetites. This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the physical and mental capacity to help ourselves and others. Regarding appetites, our goal is to try to evolve and grow our appetites to crave more life giving food and less life taking foods. As a pro cyclist my evenings often consisted of walking down to the 7 Eleven in Ft Collins to get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and a 4-pack of Reese's Cups for the walk home. I still have that appetite, but today I fill it with some dark chocolate and sea salt covered almonds and a glass of red wine. Would I be better to not snack after dinner at all? Probably. But I’m just not going to. I love feeding my appetites. I’d also like a big bowl of popped corn, but my body doesn’t like corn and eating it disrupts my sleep. So I do some salty nuts or some bean or cauliflower chips to get my salt fix. You get the idea. How can you imbibe your appetites and still have the health and wellness you desire.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 are codependent. So am I. So is everyone, to a degree. We are humans and we innately look for the A’s from other people; approval, affirmation, attention, and acceptance. How codependent we are relates to how much we need those A’s to feel ok about ourselves. It’s nice to get them, but are we ok without them? Can we be at peace without desperately needing positive feedback from other people? The answer is yes and this show will discuss how. With me is…Melody Beattie. Yes, the famed author of Codependent No More. Melody is literally cited as one of the pioneers of the self-help movement. Her breakthrough book still remains the resource on codependency and after 7 million sales she’s revised and updated it. Newsweek name Codependent No More one of the four essential self-help books of all time. Melody actually added a chapter on trauma to this revised edition and it’s at the top of the best seller charts, once again. I could not be more honored to have her on the show and as usual, I dig into the questions I have for myself regarding codependency. When I asked her about her own life regrets, she flatly stated, “I regret that I've spent much of my life ragging on myself for not being enough.” This is a thoughtful, pondering discussion with Melody where her compassion for herself and others will pour through. 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

When we look at jobs and businesses our natural inclination is to look to something we’ve learned to do, that people will pay us for. Generally it’s something we’ve done enough to get good at, and we work to get better and hope to make more. What we are significantly missing in the culture is the most important thing for our ultimate success potential; doing something we enjoy enough to gain a level of mastery and sustainability with. We have a majority of people in the workplace and business world engaged in things they have gotten good at. And quite possibly find satisfaction in. But it’s activities that drain them. Not many people, not nearly enough, spend a majority of their time doing the things they truly enjoy and get energy from. Hard work, but inspiring work. This is part 3 of my series on business management guru Patrick Lencioni and his new book, The 6 Types of Working Genius. You can get the book, but you can take the assessment right now at workinggenius.com for only $25. It gives you 6 types of working genius and showcases the two areas of your working genius, that’s the great stuff, the two areas of your working competency, this is often where people are working at what they are good at but it’s not their genius, then the two areas of working frustration…where you’ll see why certain tasks and roles just totally drain and frustrate you. I am with my co host Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar and son of Zig Ziglar, to discuss this further. We both share our assessments and I share one from my oldest son that showcases why I often missed giving him what he needed from me as a father, so you parents will be interested.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

I asked the Self-Helpful audience this question, “For all my health, wellness, and fitness minded friends, what is the primary motive (reason) that drives you to stick with your healthy lifestyle plan?” This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the physical and mental capacity to help ourselves and others…We received a wealth of responses to this question and I’m joined by my co-host Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert. And close friend. We spent a good while talking through many of the responses. There were definite threads and recurring themes of motive for health and wellness and I believe you'll find yourself inspired and equipped to further commit to your pursuit of being as well as possible. 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

In this episode…I’m back with heralded business leader, best selling author, renowned speaker and top podcast host, Patrick Lencioni, who I find to be masterfully insightful regarding human behavior and performance, which is what he’s famous for and why he’s one of the most influential people in the business world today. This is my values, motives, and habits episode and you’re about to hear Patrick’s insight into his own behavior and performance and what drives him. A key perspective we land on is how as he strives for success in his life, he continues to work on being, as he says, “peacefully detached from the outcome.” He shares a story and we dig into this very attractive, yet seemingly impossible endeavor. Also in the discussion he shares his desire to conduct himself like the very earliest followers of Jesus. How he went awry in his closest relationships thinking his job was to fix and serve at the sake of his own well being. In sharing about his health and wellness routine he divulges his early participation in running sports was due to childhood wounds he was trying to address, as he was terrified that if he was simply mediocre, he'd go unnoticed by his family. He talks through this further and how it caused him to initially lead his life in a defensive posture, and how he worked out of this perspective. In discussing work values Patrick shares that in his experience the most successful businesses, organizations, and families are quite messy. You can hear him explain this further. We then get more into this concept of being detached from the big outcomes of our life. And we end with Patrick admitting he is trying to discover and engage with things that just give him personal pleasure as he continues to work out of the obligatory feeling of his life being all about service to others and forgetting about himself. If you missed part one of our discussion together where we talked about his new book and assessment, The 6 Types Of Working Genius, find the book anywhere and take the assessment right away at workinggenius.comThe 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

To be your best self, you need to be doing your best work. The great news is, the product or service of your work focus is not what makes your work great, but the specific tasks and roles you are fulfilling, day in and day out. If they fit you, you’ll flourish in your work and have great joy and satisfaction in your life. If it doesn’t fit you, your work success will suffer, and your mental health will suffer far worse. So how do you know which tasks and roles you should be engaged in? We have a quick and simple test for you to take. My guest today is Patrick Lencioni. Patrick is one of the foremost influencers in business management and his expertise is teams. He’s author of 11 best selling books and most anyone in business in America has read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He’s a prolific speaker who stands in front of thousands of leaders each year at business’s greatest conferences. This is the second time I’ve had Patrick on the show and I experience him as one of the more insightful people I know regarding human behavior and performance. He’s just come out with a new book, The 6 Types of Working Genius, which right now is sitting in the top 400 books overall in Amazon, and climbing. Along with the book is an online assessment that takes about 10 minutes, and it spits out…your working genius. Take it right now at workinggenius.com. I have my whole family taking it because I want them working not just at what they are good at and can make money from, but what gives them inspiration and energy for their life. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you were on your own, you’d likely make all the positive health changes you desire. Eat cleaner. Exercise. Meditate. Go to sleep earlier. Do less screens. But you’re not alone. You may have a spouse. Kids. Co-workers. Friends and family. People who are living out the cultural norms. There are the office donuts, birthday cakes, and pizza. Beers after work. A spouse and kids who want their meat and potatoes, and chips while watching a show. The church potlucks. BBQ parties. Someone who labels you a health nut if you abstain from imbibing in it all, or go for a walk or run during your lunch break. And on and on. We as humans most long to fit in and the pressure isn’t just about being weak and folding, it’s often about being kind and not wanting to offend. It’s a very real and present danger we don’t give enough gravity to. This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the physical and mental capacity to help ourselves and others…and today we we tackle this issue. I’m with my co host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert. Cultural pressure is not a conspiracy theory, it’s merely humanity and our very nature. 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

We generally talk about negative things in our life in a way that brings us and those listening to us, further down. When something hard happens to you and you blame, accuse, and criticize, this is what we call venting. This wraps up my series with Whitney Goodman, author of Toxic Positivity, and she is probably the fifth or six therapist I’ve had on the show who cites from much research, that venting only pours gas on the fire. It does not help. But neither does stuffing it. What does? Sharing how you feel. This is at the root issue we are circumventing. When something bad happens to you, the blaming, accusing, and criticizing is just victim response to the truth, which is…you are hurting in some capacity. In Brene’ Brown’s book, Atlas of the Heart, which we discuss in this show, she gives us 87 different emotions we can choose from and from them discuss the issue really at hand. When we discuss how we feel, we can then address the pain and gain ground in reconciling it. And in sharing our emotions, not our criticism, with someone else, instead of also dragging them in and down with venting, we instead evoke their connection and compassion which also helps us instead of further hurting ourselves. Join me and my co host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert, as we drill down on this issue and walking it out in our roles as spouses, parents, and co workers. 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

I’m back for Part 2 with Whitney Goodman, author of Toxic Positivity, to walk through her personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive her to guide us in working through our emotions instead of just slapping a happy face on things, and what she does to design a life that fulfills her. Along the discussion I press in on some of the areas and her perspective as a full time therapist and what she is seeing in the culture. We walk through her spiritual values and discuss what she calls an interfaith marriage with her husband and how she feels much of America’s toxic positivity was born in the Christian church she was raised in. In mental health Whitney talks about the toll it’s taking on us all as we gravitate toward strong identification with certain groups and are more disconnected from individuals in our culture and her own striving for awareness as to how her beliefs are affecting her. She decompresses by reading fiction and we discovered we’re both reading some of Colleen Hoover’s books. As for achievements, her leading goal right now with a relatively young marriage and first child is having a strong marriage and kids who like her. Her new book, bestselling book again is TOXIC POSITIVITY: KEEPING IT REAL IN A WORLD OBSESSED WITH BEING HAPPY, and you can find her and over half a million followers on instagram at sitwithwhit. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices