The Kevin Miller Podcast

#956: What goals are we actually excited about? It’s the start of a new year and most aspiring people are taking time to think about goals for the new year. In this episode I wanted to address the emotions behind them, as this speaks to our motive and whether we’ll likely see the goals through, abandon them, or achieve them with collateral damage. I did a survey showcasing 12 categories of goals, from money to health to experiences and asked what people were actually excited about. I’ll tip you off by sharing the area of life people were most excited about is…experiences. What should that mean to our priorities? Tom Ziglar and I had a discussion on the results and what it means to our overall joy, fulfillment, and success when we are habitually not engaging in what excites us and instead in what does not bring us inspiration. It is not a call out to abandon anything that doesn’t excite you, but rather to consider how we could attach more joy to everything, and increase time spent in our greatest excitements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#955: The two primary ingredients we think of in regards to success, is talent and hard work. Greatness comes from having above average talent and putting in your 10,000 hours. Yet if we audit everyone who has achieved relative success, we find many, maybe even most, who do not have either of these. So what did they do? They just figured out what works and modeled it. Ron Friedman is an award-winning psychologist and from his research in neuroscience, human physiology and behavioral economics wrote a book on what he found in regards to this issue, called Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success. In this show I dig in and question Ron on how we can all use this reality to better embrace and accelerate our opportunities and success. For those who get the book, if you’ll go to decodinggreatnessbook.com and submit your receipt Ron will give you access to “The Reverse Engineering Success Masterclass” course. You can join like minded people in my Driven To Live private community to discuss how to decode your own greatness, come over to kevinmiller.co and go from listening to participating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#954: In our last show of 2021 Tom Ziglar and I take to task, goals. It’s time for New Year’s resolutions and goal setting for all the aspiring people of the world. Truth is, the idea of setting goals is a downer for many. It comes with guilt and doubt, and at the root is…what drives us. Or not. Our motive. My intent is to free you from some goals, and amp your motive for others. Naming a goal you have or a problem you want to solve is a beginning. It’s a map in front of you. But the journey is getting into something that will actually transport you there. This is your motive. Do you really want to achieve the goal? Why? What does arriving at it look like? Is it really that important to you? Conversely, what if you don’t make it? Is that ok? If so, maybe it’s not necessary. Are you driven by desire? Or is the better, more true motive, pain and fear? Some of my goals are driven by what I deem a healthy fear. The point is knowing why you have a goal and what is actually driving you and discerning which goals really matter and which you can be free of. If you want to join like minded people and get feedback and support on working out this topic I invite you to join our community of people devoted to making positive change in their life and work, come over to kevinmiller.co and join my Driven To Live Community. Go from listening to this podcast episode on goals and motives and engage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#953: We’re back with Jonathan Fields, host of the top podcast, the Good Life Project. He has a new work focused profile you can take at sparketype.com, just this morning I asked a couple friends to take it, as I wanted them to know if for themselves, and I was curious where they’d land. I really appreciate the profile, and Jonathan uncovers more about it in his new book, Sparked, which I also recommend. In this episode I walk with Jonathan through his personal habits for success, and as you heard in the intro, Jonathan is a deep and intimate thinker, which is what people love about him. I think you’ll be touched and inspired by what he shares. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#952: The sales process is no longer what it used to be. In the past sales people were needed to inform and educate and fully showcase a product or service to people who came in with a desire, but were pretty ignorant. Today nearly all sales happen online with no need for a so-called sales person. With any product or service we can fully research it. Compare it. Get unbiased user reviews. All that’s left is deciding from which person or company we’ll make our purchase from. So how do we all adjust for this new scenario? That’s what Tom Ziglar and I discuss in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#951: There are key, intrinsic activities and aspects of work that truly make you come alive and within which are your greatest opportunities for top level success, and your greatest fulfillment and joy. But we don’t tend to realize what they are. We attribute them to a specific job or business and the roles we had, the product or service we were involved with, the people included. But nearly every job or business ends or significantly changes and we lose it and try to recreate it based on those external ingredients. And often can’t recreate it. Why? Because those are not the right ingredients. To showcase what the right ingredients are, I have Jonathan Fields back on the show. Jonathan was with me years ago and we talked about his book, How To Live A Good Life. He has a really big podcast called the Good Life Project, and now he’s put together a work profile you can take for free at sparketype.com, and he goes deep into what sparks us in our work, in his new book, Sparked. If you want to go beyond merely listening and join our community of people devoted to making positive change in their life and work, come over to kevinmiller.co and join my Driven To Live Community. Go from listening to this podcast episode with Jonathan Sparks and join us to talk and grapple with and apply the concepts to your life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#950: You have problems in your life that need solving. You have goals for your life that require decisions. The greatest minds of all time budgeted specific time in their days to simply…think. To really sit and without input or distraction, think. To use the machine of their brain to crunch the data and consider the options and do what nobody or nothing else could do for them. The great art and ideas we all benefit from and applaud came from someone who took the time to think them up. To fertilize the seeds of their mind, nourish and nurture, and come forth to bear fruit. If we want great solutions and ideas and actions, we must take time to sit and…think. Here is the concern. In his book, 2 Chairs, author Bob Beaudine who I recently had breakfast with, calls us to spend time listening to God. Setting a chair in front of us and trusting God knows what our needs are, then sitting to listen for his direction. What is the primary obstacle here? Trusting you’ll actually hear from God. My concern is when it comes down to it, we doubt that our thinking…our listening to ourselves, will actually result in anything. Instead we clamber to hear from others so they’ll tell us what to do. This isn’t a call for self-sufficiency. Just a budget. We take in input. We take in counsel. And…we think on it all. Deeply and with faith and expectation. Next Tom Ziglar and I have a conversation on this issue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#949: Tuesdays with Morrie is the bestselling memoir of all time, selling over 15 million copies. Best-selling author, screenwriter, playwright and nationally-syndicated columnist Mitch Albom has now sold over 40 million of his combined books. In this episode he comes to us to discuss his latest, The Stranger In The Lifeboat. The moment I saw the request to have Mitch with me for a the show I simply replied with a resounding, “Yes! Of course.” I didn’t need anything new from him. That said, this new book and the message within is just…incredible. It’s an enthralling story with a powerful message, which is indicative of Mitch, who gets billed as writing messages where the spiritual and the earthly collide, and they sure did in The Stranger In The Lifeboat. I start us off simply talking about personal transformation. Mitch had his own radical life change that resulted in the Tuesdays With Morrie book and in the 20+ years since then, this has been his devotion. What does it take to transform a life? Our lives? That’s what this episode is about. We got…deep. Into the very tenets of faith and our cultural views of God, and our personal lives. It was a significant discussion, and it’s coming up next. Get Mitch’s new book, The Stranger In The Lifeboat, wherever you get books. And you’ll hear him mention an orphanage in Haiti he literally took over Havefaithhaiti.org. And when you hear some of the significant issues of our lives we cover in this episode, I invite you to join our community where we go…deeper. Into meaningful conversations and how to apply what we hear, to our lives. To our transformation. Find my Driven To Live community at kevinmiller.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#948: I asked the Ziglar audience, “To make progress in your work/career/business/vocation; if you had a willing angel investor, what investment or action would you put money toward?” Tom Ziglar and I talked through the listener comments and it was really insightful for us all to consider… where we really feel the priority is, for making progress in our work and businesses. The top three areas cited were Marketing, such as ad copy and social media, physical resources like land and tools, and people, staff and team members. Go beyond just listening to this episode of The Ziglar Show and join me and a group of aspiring people like yourself to dig into the topics and actually apply the messages to your life. Come to kevinmiller.co/community, get my Drive Formula for free, and join the Driven To Live Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#947: We are back with Jon Acuff, the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including his most recent, Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution To Overthinking, which we had a deep conversation about in episode 945. In this episode we dig into his habits for success, which as you heard in his intro, include keeping queso out of the house, which I completely understand. I have a friend who calls it liquid love and I’m prone to ODing on it as well. This references my friend Ben Hardy’s book, “Willpower Doesn’t Work” and the reality that our willpower is finite and instead of relying on it to not eat all the queso, we set up our environment for success and just not have it available. Listen in as I ask Jon about his primary habits following the Ziglar Wheel of Life, and you can get Jon's new book Soundtracks wherever you get books and connect further with him at acuff.me. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices