The Kevin Miller Podcast

We can better solve tough problems and make decisions we feel confident about, by not taking an either-or, black and white, or right and wrong approach to them. We are in a culture and media that is radically doing just that. And yet most truths and daily decisions we must make are not a result of right or wrong issues that we will live or die from, but rather, choices we make where one may prove more beneficial than another. When we hold things as right/wrong, good/bad, and either or we cause ourselves undo anxiety. And further, we are pressured to make one sided decisions without the wisdom we’d benefit from if we didn’t view different perspectives as opposing forces. This show is meant to equip you to make smarter decisions, and with less anxiety and more confidence. With me is Wendy K. Smith, a Harvard educated, award-winning academic and the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and faculty director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at University of Delaware. She is an expert on organizational paradoxes, exploring how leaders and individuals effectively respond to contradictory, yet interdependent demands. She spends her time continually working to better manage the paradoxes of life that we all face. Wendy’s research focuses on strategic paradoxes – how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory agendas. Not with us, but a co-author of their new book,"Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems" is Marianne W. Lewis who is dean and professor of management at the Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. Marianne too is  thought leader in organizational paradoxes exploring tensions and competing demands surrounding leadership and innovation. Again, the book containing the message in the following discussion is Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems which you can find at Amazon or anywhere. 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

Wrapping up my series on Dr Benjamin Hardy and the message from his latest book, Be Your Future Self Now. Tom Ziglar joins me today and the conversation veers into Tom calling us to not fall in love with success, but with the habits that create success, and I absolutely agree with the concept. Think about it. The healthiest people I know, and the ones most at peace in their health, are not those that love looking in the mirror at themselves or love the scale, they are the ones who enjoy the daily activities of moving their bodies and procuring and eating whole and healthy foods. They enjoy slowing down to be present. They are in love with the daily habits of health. You can say the same about financial health and success and relational health and so forth. If you want to achieve success in any certain area, you’ll be best served to find habits leading to it, that you truly enjoy and look forward to. For one person with exercise, they may love running indoors on a treadmill with the TV on or a book, while another only enjoys it outside, while another loathes running and looks forward to classes at the gym with friends, while another would far rather chop wood and mow their lawn for physical activity. The point again, is finding habits of growth you enjoy. 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

This is my Functional Friday episode and I’m of course with my dear friend and frequent co-host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert. We’re going to talk about nutritional supplements. Are they really necessary for you to spend time and money on, and if so, why? We seldom feel much difference in our immediate health from these expensive pills, powders, and tinctures and they are generally just a hassle to maintain. The compliance rate for taking nutritional supplements is horrific. We heard from a rep it was about 6% after 90 days. My experience says this is true. Traditional medical practitioners downplay the validity of nutritional supplements while the health industry generally way overdoes it and everyone’s supplement is promoted as the magic pill for…everything. Which is a stupid and impossible claim. If you’re not taking any nutritional supplements, we’ll give you some key ones to consider. Conversely if you’re taking a handful a day, or more…you might want to question if you’re really able to assimilate that much. And just because some supplement changed your friend’s life, it doesn’t mean it will do a thing for you. In this episode I believe you’ll hear information that will take some of the doubt, frustration, and confusion away. For most of you, it should help save you money, hassle, and increase the efficacy of any supplements you choose to partake of. I will say, my co host Dr James is a believer in supplements, but quite a minimalist. 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

I’m back with Dr Benjamin Hardy to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and his blogs have been read by hundreds of millions. His latest book is Be Your Future Self Now and was our topic in part one of our discussion, in episode 1047. I actually walked through Dr Benjamin Hardy’s habits for success in March 2018 when I had him on the show, so here we really looked at how his values and habits have changed since then. He is not his future self, four years later. And attesting to the power of really looking at who is is becoming, he shares a lot of his own evolution. Some highlights...spiritually he recognizes his past self was a lot more human doing, than human being, and his continued desire to slow down and...be. This is the top of my list as well. Relationally, even though four years ago he says he was a devoted father, in some ways he had not truly embraced being a parent like he's striving to today, making it more of a priority and sacred role. He is also growing to be much more relationally oriented and collaborative in his life. We get into an interesting discussion he credits Dan Sullivan for bringing to him, of relationally being a buyer more than a seller, and our propensity to all generally be trying to sell ourselves to others. In health and wellness he culminates by admitting he's overall just striving to be better to himself, and what this looks like. Mentally he is working to be less reactive and with money he talks about his chosen perspective of everything happening for you, not to you. You'll hear more in the episode. Ben’s new book, Be Your Future Self Now, can be found everywhere, and check this out, if you’ll go to futureself.com/free, those of you in America can get free Kindle codes and get the book…free! No catch. He just bought a ton of codes and offered them to me to share with you. You can connect with him at benjaminhardy.com. 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

We are talking about your future self. Who are you becoming? Who do you want to become? And the question is, can you conceptualize and connect with that person right now, and from this connection, drastically accelerate your personal growth and success? I’m with Dr Benjamin Hardy, who you hear me refer to often. His first book, Willpower Doesn’t Work, is at the top of my book referral list. His second book, “Personality Isn’t Permanent” is up there too. His recent book with Dan Sullivan, The Gap And The Gain, is a runaway best seller. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and his blogs have been read by hundreds of millions. Ben is also the intro story in my forthcoming book which you’ll see…sometime in 2023. This is my third time having Ben on the show, and the occasion is his brand new book, Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation. When I talked to him about a year ago he shared his research and piqued my interest with the “End of history illusion”, which we start this episode off talking about, and I think you’ll want to hear about it. As we talked in this episode, what intrigued me as much or more than just trying to become your future self now, was Ben’s concept of how powerful it is for our progress and ultimate success if we’ll connect with our future self. This is something we do pretty well as kids, but after entering into adulthood, we basically lose any perspective on who we are expecting to become. And we so often lose our way. Ben is an organizational psychologist and has devoted significant research to the issue and become a leading expert on the application of the Future Self science. Ben’s new book, Be Your Future Self Now, can be found everywhere, and check this out, if you’ll go to futureself.com/free, those of you in America can get free Kindle codes and get the book…free! No catch. He just bought a ton of codes and offered them to me to share with you. You can connect with him at benjaminhardy.com. 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

This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the ability and capacity to pursue all we desire, and the topic of this episodes is Having The Courage To Live Better. People who live with different health habits than the norm often get labeled as extremist.  If you don’t partake of the office pizza or the church donuts or the family potlock and you go for a run during your lunch break or play tennis on your date instead of seeing a movie, you’re a “health nut.” Like you’ve joined a new religion. In truth, this reality and social pressure is enough to deter many people from practicing the healthier habits they would otherwise adopt. A core longing of humanity is to belong, and conforming to our surroundings is a natural desire and reaction. When you join a gang, the entire point is to conform to its ways. We all belong to numerous “gangs” of sorts and we generally accept their subsequent social pressures. Most people have three primary gangs; their immediate family, their workplace, and friends and extended family. Bucking the norms is difficult. But for you to adopt a healthy lifestyle that does not include the norms of our current times, requires seemingly “extreme” choices. We live in a time when characteristics such as kindness, compassion, ethics, and justice seem extreme as well. It may simply come down to the courage to do what is best for yourself and humanity. Which often is not in fact, the norm. 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

Wrapping up my series on Kindra Hall and the message from her new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. In this episode I’m joined by my co-host, Randy James, Medical Doctor, Functional Medicine expert, and my dear friend to discuss how we create and accept our stories and the conversation veers towards…striving and aspiring, and the tension between being ok and at peace and in essence, content, with the here and now. With who and how you are and what you have, right now. There is a big piece of all of us who can feel tired of the constant striving and just want to be at peace and have joy, now. And to that, we agree and desire as well. And yet, is that enough? Do we just find a good place of comfort and leave it at that. Coast from there on? Or is there a responsibility, to God, to others, to ourselves, to take what we have, and grow and give? Continually? As you’ll hear, we feel there is. The issue is often simply the spirit of our striving. Like the old religious perspective, do we carry our belief like a song in our heart, or a burden on our back? If your striving gets to feeling like a burden, I’d say…stop. Maybe you need a time of rest. Or recalibration. If you are giving and serving and striving in bitterness, acting as a martyr, and wearing yourself out, you’re likely not helping anyone too much. The goal is to give from a full heart. To grow and strive in joy. This is where you’ll find us discussing and grappling with you in this episode. Find Kindra Hall’s book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life, which was the muse and catalyst of our discussion, anywhere, and connect with her at kindrahall.com. 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

I’m back with best-selling author and the former Chief Storytelling Officer of SUCCESS Magazine, Kindra Hall, 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 lead us in the stories we write about our lives, and design a life that fulfills her. In episode 1042, the longest show I’ve ever published, Kindra and I talked about…story. Specifically the message in her new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. Here we go behind the scenes into the ever evolving story she is writing in her current life. The Cliff Notes I think you’ll want to hear more about, regarding her spirituality she pondered that her purpose is easy when she understands it, but hard when she doesn’t. A key for her health and wellness is to consider the most essential uses of her time. On mental health, Kindra said she is consistently paying attention to what is working, and what isn’t. And being aware that what did work might not anymore. In work and career we got to talking about our propensity to feel we need to put in a solid week, 40 hours or whatever, when so often, as she said, "I can create magic in only 10." We ended on achievements and I think you'll be curious to hear how Kindra views her own story regarding what she wants to achieve, as she admits that she's currently aware the big achievements so often did not provide as much fulfillment as the achievements she wasn't even looking for, like yesterday's testimonial from a teacher about her child's character. Kindra is the 191st guest I’ve had on my show and is one of the most thoughtful and interesting conversationalist I’ve experienced. Find her book anywhere and connect with Kindra at kindrahall.com.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

Cost is one of the primary deterrents many people cite for healthy living. Buying whole foods, nutritional supplements, exercising, and seeking alternative health care simply costs more money and can often lead us to minimizing or abandoning the effort altogether. Then there is the time expense of working out every day and grocery shopping for fresh food and cooking and cleaning. It is not convenient and time is...money. It can all be overwhelming and demoralizing in an already busy life. When it comes to fast food and processed foods, many people who would be willing to eat healthier simply fail due to convenience and time savings. So what do you do? In this episode we talk with empathy, but also with some helpful perspectives and solutions to help you on your journey and desire for health amidst the increased cost of money and time. 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

We all wake up every day and participate in what we feel is simply our reality. Yet it’s truly a storyline we’ve created, or accepted, or feel we are forced to live and in that case, agreed with and submitted to. For you, which is it? This is not some hoodoo guro motivation that life is make-believe and we simply decide to have it be something else better. That is offensive. But it is interesting how we live our daily lives and we let things like marriage, children, getting hired or fired from a job, an injury or even a windfall of money, totally change our story. If that’s the case, can’t we not only do things to change our stories for the better, but can we also change our perspective of our stories right away and make things better? And I have with me, Kindra Hall. Kindra is the best-selling author and the former Chief Storytelling Officer of SUCCESS Magazine, whose work and research teaches individuals and brands to harness and leverage the power of their stories. Her first book, Stories that Stick debuted at #2 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List and Forbes said it “may be the most valuable business book you read." Inc.com said her newest book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life is "the business book you need to read in 2022." I however read this new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life and felt it was a must-have conversation for…all of us. As humans. And what follows is my longest interview to date because the topics are so profoundly important. Find her book anywhere and connect with Kindra at kindrahall.com. 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