The Kevin Miller Podcast

#979: I’m back with Ethan Kross, author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. Ethan is a PhD and one of the world's leading experts on controlling the conscious mind which we discussed in episode 977. Here we walk through his personal habits for success and as all of our habits are generally achieved, or not, as a result of the winning voices in our heads, Ethan has some profound perspectives on how to achieve his habits. Perspectives you’ll be able to harness for yourself after listening to this show. Connect with Ethan at Ethankross.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#978: How you perceive people and institutions of power and their so called success influences you to the core. So this episode is not a mere discussion on world views and power and morals, but an audit of your own perspective and how it’s influencing you specifically, for better or worse. I was given a VIP ticket to see Jordan B Peterson and as he’s a significant person of influence as an author, speaker, podcaster, and youtuber, I went, out of interest from a few angles. His talk was based on his premise of, “Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions.” He discussed studies on power and bullying from rats to humans and cited the enforcement of absolute power seldom if ever creates success. In fact it generally results in being ostracized, and he did a deft job of turning our paradigms around. The discussion brings into acute question how we define success, and the influential spirit we carry forth regarding those we view in power. And our spirit is my focal point in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#977: It’s no secret we all have an inner voice, whether you speak it out loud, write letters in your head like I do, or it’s just the constant stream of thoughts and feelings running amok at all times. A frequent directive is to shut the voice up or ignore it. One this is impossible, and two, that voice is there for a reason and the opportunity we all have is to harness it for our personal success. Ethan Kross is a PhD and one of the world's leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. Which I start the show pushing back on a bit…can we really do this? Ethan is an award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and its Ross School of Business and is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. Ethan has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR's Morning Edition. I brought him on the show because I got a hold of his new book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. That tagline is the hook…why it matters and how to harness it. Not shut it up or out. Connect with Ethan at Ethankross.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#976: I asked our audience this question, “If you're having surgery, do you want the absolute best surgeon working on you, or the one with the best moral character? How about an accountant? Car mechanic? Professor?” The responses added up to saying, it depends. Of course everyone would like both, but we have an older culture who generally says character and a younger generation who wants to be given credit for skill alone and I wanted to flesh out where we really put our personal values when it comes down to what we pay for, and what our customers will pay for. The issue was acute when I posed it, as I had a son going into a serious surgery. Do I want the nice doc to work on him, or the absolute best regardless? What it comes down to is not deciding which we’ll choose to lead with in our business and life, character or skill, but how we position ourselves in the public eye. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#975: Anthony Trucks became a player in the NFL because he followed certain successful habits day in and day out to a somewhat severe degree. The reason he lost his marriage and went bankrupt was from following other habits which didn’t produce such success. Today he talks about his habits progression and pulls out his quest to employ active and passive habits and gives us a great perspective on this distinction, and as you heard, how the good habits we associate our identity with are the most powerful. I highly recommend you listen to our first talk together in Ziglar Show episode 973 where we dig into identity, the message from his book, Identity Shift. Find Anthony’s book, courses and more at anthonytrucks.com and check out his podcast, Aww Shift Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#974: If you’ve seen the Matrix you remember the spark of the entire movie, when Neo takes the blue pill and he ends up in the construct of what he’s shown is a made up world. Inside here he sees himself dressed a certain way and is told he’s seeing himself as his residual self-image. And there you go. We all have this image of ourselves we believe is simply who we are. It’s our default mode and this is where we generally live unless something significant happens in our lives. Victor Serebriakoff (Sara bria koff) was labeled a dunce at 16 by a teacher and lived the next decade or more believing this, until a job test showed he was a genius, so be believed that too and went on to have many patents and serve as president of the Mensa society. We tend to be what others have said we are and what we’ve agreed with. Unfortunately most of us will never have someone say we are a dunce or a genius and we’ll just go along being…whatever. It’s up to us to claim what we can be and start seeing ourselves differently. This was the message from my previous episode, #973, with Anthony Trucks, and in this episode Tom Ziglar and I talk through it. I actually asked our listeners this question, “Thinking of a primary goal or two you have...can you actually see yourself there? Can you envision yourself as the person in that new reality? Or are you just going after it anyway? Examples: Making that much money, owning and running a business owner, being at that weight, etc...?” This question got very few responses compared to the boatload we often receive. Why? I believe it’s because we don't’ take the time and give focus to our desires for progress, in regards to envisioning ourselves there. And thus we often don’t make…much progress. Thus, why we give it focus today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#973: The self-help and personal development world gives primary focus to increasing our performance so we can achieve greater successes in our lives. And it’s true we all are capable of more. Nobody is performing at their max capacity. But we won’t outperform the level of ability we believe about ourselves and all we have to go on is the proof of what we have and haven’t done thus far. It brings to mind Roger Banister breaking the four minute mile mark in running, which was deemed humanly impossible, but more importantly the four other runners who then did it within a year. All that changed is once they believed running a sub four minute mile was possible, they did it. Prior, they could not. Most of us are sitting where we are and desiring greater performance from ourselves but unable to see ourselves being at a higher level. If someone came along and ran a diagnostic test on us and said they had proof we could do it we would in short order. But that won’t likely happen, so how can we get ourselves to really see ourselves as a higher performer? To have a performance upgrade we need an upgrade to our identity. I have Anthony Trucks on with me in this episode to talk about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#972: Have you ever fully considered exactly why you work at the job you have now? Or why you chose the career you’re in? Or even why you have the current business you own? I asked this question to Ziglar listeners, which by the way I invite you to give your feedback, just friend me on facebook at agentkmiller. The responses ranged from the valiant and purposeful intent to save the world to the admission it was just a direction they were pushed or fell into. The latter doesn’t mean they ended up in a bad place, but the exercise itself caused a lot of pondering. It may cause you to feel confirmed, or uncover it’s time to think about why you’re doing what you are and consider if this is where you want to be and remain. So join Tom Ziglar and I as we talk through some of the comments and the realities of why we all end up doing the work we do, and how to pursue the work we actually want to do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with NYT bestselling author and top TED speaker, Dan Pink to walk through his personal habits for success, and this habits show had a twist. Coming off our talk in episode 969 where we discussed regrets, which is the topic of his brand new book, The Power of Regret, I asked him how his research on regrets changed any of his habits. What you heard in that intro clip was him leading off with his top one, Connection regrets, and now reaching out to people more. We hit on some other habits he’s changed as a result of this regrets focus, such as he realized in the Foundation regrets piece he’s actually been too frugal over his lifetime. I also found the irony in him citing he lived in a busy urban area and prefers running on a treadmill, especially since he fell on a sidewalk while running and now has a bent pinky. Dan Pink with…a bent pinky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following up from my conversation with Dan Pink regarding the message in his new book, “The Power of Regrets”, Tom Ziglar and I went through the exercise of listing out some of our regrets and what we learned from them. And are still learning. And finding some regrets where we haven’t fully considered the lessons learned, which is very much the point. As Dan Pink points out in his book, regrets have power when we use them to learn, as opposed to denying them and being a “no regrets” person, or wallowing in them and living in guilt and shame. This episode really helped bring Tom and I to revisiting our past mistakes and what we have learned or can be learning. I think you’ll gain some insight you can benefit from to redeem your past mistakes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices