The Courage to Leave: Rethinking Career, Identity, and Joy

[00:00:00] John: Welcome back to the Beard of Wisdom podcast. I am still. Always your host, Les McDaniel. Thrilled to be with you once again. As we are going into these holiday seasons, man, I hope you are being filled to the brim with all sorts of new tools to experiment with, with all your friends and family as you go through these holidays.

[00:00:17] John: Oh my goodness. I hope this lands right in the middle of your Thanksgiving dinner and you immediately put it into action. that said, here's some hopes for me today and here hopes for us today. And that is first and foremost that you remember that this show is here to inspire the uninspired to unstick what is stuck and to liberate that leader within you.

[00:00:37] John: And may you be that liberated leader this year in during this holiday season. Man, what a great opportunity for you to tap into that. Woo. That'd be so much fun though. I'd love to hear all your stories of ways in which the things that you've learned here, the drips and wisdom that, that you don't just make them knowledge that where you understand 'em and you're trying to impose 'em on other, but instead, You actually put them into action and we call that wisdom.

[00:01:00] John: Wow. You may not be bearded, but you can still have the wisdom. Let's go, let's go. Let's do this. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. That said, remember, you can find me on all your favorite social media channels, Facebook and Instagram. You will find me@epicfusion.life. If you wanna find me on TikTok, you can find me at Bearded Wisdom.

[00:01:18] John: Same on YouTube. Bearded Wisdom. It's just like the podcast. We're, I'm there, I'm there. And I, I will tell you again, this mug is the one, this is the bearded mug you're looking for white around the, the jaw line, little bit of, darker edges, and then this kind of weird thing that happens up on top that, that pom adora like looking thing.

[00:01:37] John: I don't know what it is. I just do my best, that's all. But that's what I'm saying. Look for that guy. Bearded wisdom. And don't forget, if you're listening to this on the podcast, YouTube, you can also watch all these episodes there and, and get a little bit more movement and, and see my cool background.

[00:01:51] John: And yeah, do whatever you want. But if you're driving, I would recommend Same with a podcast that said, let's move on in today. I am so excited cause I'm gonna be recovering this thing by a doctor Danny Friedland.

[00:02:02] John: He is no longer with us. He was a friend of mine. He was a friend of the exchange community. He was a friend of so many and such a generous soul. In my life and in our lives. And he wrote this book called Leading Well From Within. And, and it's a part of the conscious leadership movement.

[00:02:19] John: He started this movement , with John Bergoff, who is the founder of. Called the Awakening Conscious Leadership. And this is the baseline premise for me of what I've taken away from my training in awakening conscious leadership. It has been a powerful tool for me to be able to just simply make a small shift in my mind and when I can make that shift.

[00:02:41] John: It really begins to impact everything about how my emotions are experienced, , how I respond to others, , it's just a great place to allow me to have that reset and that reframe. You see, all of this is about self-awareness for all of us. None of us are sitting around here, know it, know-it-alls.

[00:02:58] John: We're always learning. , we will never stop learning. But the question really becomes for me is, is as we begin to understand our emotional intelligence, as we begin to understand where we are personally in the midst of others, as the backdrop of our life, and as we engage in those relationships and we start utilizing our emotions in such a way that we begin to move more into a creative process, I think we will find in that, that that is a very unifying element of.

[00:03:29] John: When we are for something, we are in a creative mindset. When we are against something, we are moving into a reactive mindset. And, the diagram, and, and I'm gonna just describe this. I'm not gonna try to even post a picture here. Actually. I will, I'll show you the picture if you're on YouTube, and maybe you can find it later.

[00:03:46] John: I'm gonna move this up. It's just a book. You're gonna see it here. You can see at the top is creativity. And on the bottom there's reactivity. And then you can see a line with an arrow, an arrow pointing down that says stress and self doubt. And a line that is pointing up to creativity. That is called inspiration.

[00:04:04] John: And the most beautiful thing about this is that the driving factor of both of these is stress. And stress is nothing more than energy. And, and what we can do with energy is unbelievable. I can take the energy of stress and I can get reactive and we can see this playing out all over social media channels worldwide.

[00:04:28] John: We can see this in our news worldwide. We can see this in wars that are breaking. Worldwide and everywhere that's ever happened, we can see this. It's a reactive state where we, where our ideas or ideologies come head to head and clash. And, and we, instead of looking for solutions that lead to new outcomes, not my outcome, not your outcome, but collective outcomes , that are for the highest good of all, we will move into that state of reactivity.

[00:05:00] John: And at the center of this, that picture you might have seen, it, is the baseline level of mass. Lowe's hierarchy of need, safety, belonging, and significance at the top. But safety to belong is at the bottom is the first layer of needs that we have. Belonging is second and significance is next. And what we can find in that is, , and there's some, there's a lot of science around what's happening in the brain, and there's something that we definitely will probably pour into down the road for, I mean, of course we are going to, but what's important for us today after, as we're talking about this emotional intelligence, is just an understanding that what, what really happens is this.

[00:05:38] John: Just imagine kind of a cyclone a, a tornado, this downward spiral that that comes down and it hits the ground and it causes all sorts of chaos and it destroys everything in its path. It's not looking for significance or maybe it's actually thinking that it's gonna make itself significant, but it's fighting against this feeling of lack of significance, of lack of belonging, a lack of safety.

[00:06:03] John: It's where our insecurities reside and it leads us into this place of re. And it's in that place of reactivity that we start to create more of the unease, not ease of life. It's in that moment where we start get, getting caught up in a past, hurts and trauma and, and where all the things that, that have seemingly are against us.

[00:06:24] John: They, it victimizes us and it creates this immediate upfront to almost any given situation where we are quick to react rather than, than to take it. And to be able to manage our emotions. But what's exciting is, is as we go through that process of, as we described the other day, of perceiving our emotions, facilitating the thoughts, using those emotions and understanding the emotions, dynamics that are playing out, and then being able to manage the emotions of any, everyone for a different kind of outcome.

[00:06:57] John: We are literally talking about, that's an inspirational. And from there, it's an upward spiral that is just beautiful and, it allows us , to go into that space where we find ourselves tapping into creativity and it's in that creativity where we are truly tapping into our purpose that, unique individual gift that was given to me.

[00:07:21] John: I don't know if this would be called a gift, but my ability to see things and to talk about things the way I am, you can decide on that. If you're still listening to this after all the episodes I've done, then I would assume that I have a gift at that. Not everybody has that gift, but my hope is is that it's not something that is tearing things down like so many of the news channels you see today, but that together, what we're doing is we are putting a different kind of word out there.

[00:07:42] John: We're putting a different kind of energy out there. We're taking the stress that comes with even me doing these podcasts and deciding what is important for you to hear or for. Share. And those two things are not always the same. I admit, sometimes I'm just saying what I need to say so that I can work through my own shit.

[00:07:59] John: And what I'm here to tell you is, is that we have an opportunity together. When we bring my words and your ears and you're listening and you take action and you start to learn and nurture, and I am learning how to be better at communicating and all these things, all of these things come together and they move us into this creative space where we start to find ourselves more at ease.

[00:08:23] John: And in fact, I can tell you that the, it's, it's a very common place that every podcast that's ever started does not stay in the same kind of way, operates the same way, doesn't have the same message, the same feel, the same sounds the same. It shifts and it grows as we all grow and learn and we listen to the feedback, and we take the feedback and we make shifts and changes in our behaviors and how we do things so that we can improve upon those things.

[00:08:48] John: Well, the only reason that that happens is because it takes a person who's willing to. Who's willing to grow, and yet so many today, so many of the people in our world today are just caught in the stress and anxiety that comes from not being emotionally intelligent. They've not been taught these things.

[00:09:09] John: They have an immense amount of knowledge. We've talked about this and how the, how much info is flowing in through the chan, every channel of this little device called our iPhone, or whatever you guys use that aren't a part of those who are going to heaven and and, and the, the, I mean, literally, I have so many devices just sitting right here.

[00:09:28] John: I'm talking to a camera, into a microphone, to you. You're getting information from all sorts of different podcasts, YouTube channels, social media, all. So much so that we're just swimming actually. We may be drowning in a lot of this, and we don't really have the means and the modes of expression our, what we really feel without getting defensive because we're so afraid of losing that safety of that first and foremost, our safety, then the belonging, and ultimately our significance.

[00:09:58] John: When we can land in a place where we fall in alignment or fall in line, would be a better way with some sort of ideology, whether it be , red or blue, or whether it be a cross or the m symbol or whatever it might be. . Okay. If you're not fall, if you live in a world where you're having to fall in line with those, you, find that to be a place where you can find significance and safety.

[00:10:22] John: And , when a threat comes up against you, that is aka something that is that, really is different. It's a different experience. It's a different culture. It's a different upbringing. It's a different context. It's a different day. , it's a different, it's raining outside. It's sunny outside today.

[00:10:40] John: I mean, our emotions are so complex and impacted by so many different things, and when we're unwilling to believe that, And that life is so over overly simplified by some dogmatic, fundamentalistic belief that we lose sight of, that our ability to connect with humans. We actually believe, I think I, shouldn't say we.

[00:11:03] John: I have been in situations where I have sat a AITs in the midst of several people who all had very different ideas of what life means, what it looks. And they all had this one overarching principle that they agreed on, and yet when I dug into them about what they really agreed on, they all found out that they didn't really agree at all.

[00:11:30] John: They had an overarching premise where they all could get to this place. I mean, let's go with the idea that Santa Claus is real. Let's play with Santa Claus is real. It's the right time, right? It's the holiday season. We tell our kids, oh, Santa Claus is real well, is Santa Claus. Well to the child. You cannot tell them that Santa Claus is not real until a certain reasoning, certain level of reasoning and common sense comes into play into their life.

[00:11:58] John: They have to begin to experience those things. However, there is a thing called Santa Claus and he looks a lot like me. Not, not because I have a beard. This isn't about the beard. He looks a, a lot like me, looks a lot like mom, looks a lot like grandparents, looks a lot like siblings. Looks a like, looks a lot like aunts and uncles and it's not untrue that Santa Claus exists.

[00:12:22] John: It's just that we have a different approach to what that means. And as a child, we think one way and we're supposed to grow up and begin to experience different ways of that express. And our understanding of things are supposed to broaden and expand, not shrink, or be or stay at the same place. If that was the case, many of us would be standing on one side of the street and never crossing it.

[00:12:46] John: If that was the case, we wouldn't understand that it's okay sometimes to go through a red light that is stuck. We'd just sit at the blinking red light, meaning, oh, well this is, that says, stop. I can't move forward because that's still blinking. It's not turning green. But our common sense and our reason is we grow.

[00:13:03] John: Begins to empower, Our sense of common sense and reason starts to build up within us and allows us to begin to be creative and to have different ways of expressing ourself in ways that that move us beyond this moment or the past or what we used to think into new ways of thinking. It's never not been this.

[00:13:22] John: This whole thing that we call earth, the cosmos, the universe, all this whole thing was once nothing did. They did that nothing to sit around and debate whether or not this thing could actually exist as it is right now, or did it just happen? Did it just understand that this moment is what it is and it began to embrace in a loving way this, this attraction of different particles and elements, and I'm not gonna get all the science to, to ultimately form.

[00:13:51] John: What was once formless into this thing called order or earth, or this thing that orbits the sun that maintains a perfect temperature. Can it change? Can our sun explode? Can our cosmos go bigger? Could, could everything. Yes. We don't know the full capacity of what things could happen in our world, and yet today what we're talking about is how can we begin to be.

[00:14:19] John: That things are always shifting and always changing and never remaining exactly the same, and that our experiences grow, that our, we have an expansive understanding of each person that we meet with, every interaction that we have with them. of course, that is, , if you choose to be curious, not reactive, not protective.

[00:14:39] John: Not fearful, , at the core of my desire to really share about this emotional intelligence was one driving factor , that, woke me up in the middle of the night one night. And it was just this awareness that all I desire for myself in my life and those that I am with is the full unadulterated ability for those people to be themselves and for me to be.

[00:15:06] John: And to be accepted on that, on those terms. Now I understand, I, I'm not talking about someone who has a, an unhealthy view who really is dissed with life, who maybe has some, , someone who's prone to the most horrific acts you can imagine. But at the core of who that person is, you have to understand they still have the same bookends of darkness.

[00:15:31] John: They came into the world just like you did, and they're gonna leave this world if they haven't already, the same way that you will one day. And every time the every time it rains, it rains on them. If every time the sun shines, it, sun shines on. And when the crop grows for you, it grows for them. They can go to the same stores and pick up the same stuff that you can.

[00:15:56] John: We're all pretty equal in this. And the idea that we're going to build a life on reactivity, where we're gonna start pointing out all the reasons why you don't belong to humanity. Don't think that your ideologies and your fundamentalist behaviors or your, belief systems or your opinions are not something that actually divide us substantially

[00:16:18] John: if that's what you're building your life around, you're really living into that stressful world of activity that is ultimately creating chaos in the lives of people. True peace comes when we don't get impacted by that. When you don't worry about what everybody else thinks or if their opinion is exactly like yours or if they fall in alignment.

[00:16:39] John: But instead, what you are doing is you're really listening and you're curious, and you wonder how they got to that point and then, By, all means, eventually they will ask about you, and if they don't, they won't be around long anyways, but eventually they will ask about you. And when they do and your two stories can come together, it's then, it's then that you begin to truly flourish.

[00:17:03] John: It's then that you can help be a creative resource in their life for them to tap into their truest and highest calling. And that is what we're here for. We're not here to decide who's in and who's out of this or that. We're here ultimately to love people no matter what, because that is literally what every single day is like for someone who takes a breath in and breathes out because something is allowing for that to still continue.

[00:17:35] John: No matter how messed up your life is, it's never the end. End all. You can make a different choice today to quit being that living into that reactive life and choose a life where you are truly soaring into that creativity. So, I could go on and on on this topic because it's right in my wheelhouse. It's something that I love so much.

[00:17:54] John: I cherish you so deeply. And I can tell you right now that every single time I, lean into this, Mike and I speak into it. I am fearful that you are going to be reactive to something that I might say, that I might be misunderstood, that I might not, that I might not have significance or belong. And quite frankly, what happens if at the end of all of this, I don't even feel.

[00:18:19] John: And I know there are, that I am a privileged person living in a privileged time where there is more peace, more love, more caring, more goodness, more abundance, more all the things than we've ever experienced. At least as far as I know, and at least as far as what I've heard throughout historian, that I, I listen to and read and what a privilege it is, but I still have those fears.

[00:18:44] John: And all I long for is for us to be able to live into that space where we begin to allow people to be who they are, whether it's in the workplace and, and, and they're not in the right job for their, for their giftedness. What would happen if you could just make that slight correction and you could put them in alignment with that rather than firing them and trying to find somebody else who wants to live in a culture where there's always the fear that if I'm myself, I might get.

[00:19:10] John: Instead, if we could find a way where we lift and call those people up to a, to their giftedness and we find ways to plug them in. And if it's not at that a role with your company, what would happen if you helped them find their next job and you recommended them right outta the gates? It's a totally different way of thinking and I recognize that and I know some of you're like, I ain't got time for that man.

[00:19:33] John: I gotta get this done. I understand getting done . I do. But right now I'm working with my daughter and about to bring my other, one of my other daughters on, and I am loving it. And are they perfect for the job? No, but neither am I. I am learning this as we go. When I had my kids, I was raising my kids as I was raising myself.

[00:19:56] John: And I made so many mistakes, and they are amazing kids who have been graciously forgiving to me for the times I've messed up and unbelievably, unbelievably gracious in how they speak of me and honor me as their dad. I love having that type of belonging in my life. I love knowing who my people are. I love living into the ease of life where I don't feel the stress and the anxiety of performing according to the standards of someone else who has different gifts, different ideas, different beliefs, all the things.

[00:20:30] John: But instead, we can find ways to live in this community, this place where we come. In unity and enjoy one another, and our differences and the gifts that you bring to me and I can bring to you, oh my goodness, what a beautiful life that would be. Well, I have gone on and on and I wanna keep going and I wanna keep talking about how good you are and how amazing you can be and, all the mistakes that you've made.

[00:20:56] John: I've made them. I've made, I mean, I haven't killed anybody. I haven't, but I've killed things. I know what it is to kill a deer. I know what it is to step on a bug. I mean, I'm not saying it's, I get it, I get it. It's not the same. However, there is something that happens within. When you take a life, there is something within you.

[00:21:17] John: When you hurt someone. There is something when in you, when you're angry, that is a small little death. And so we gotta know that we have the full capacity of goodness within us and the full capacity of name, the most evil person you could ever think of. Everybody's go-to these days seems to be Hitler.

[00:21:35] John: I don't know. Maybe he is. Maybe he's one of the worst, but even he, even, he was born into this world and left this world in the same fashion that you and I will into darkness. That said, Let us find peace and joy in this life and find ways in which we can carry forward in with tremendous momentum, a creative outcome from the energy that we call stress.

[00:22:02] John: When we feel that tension in life, let's look it as an opportunity for us to create something new. Problems are nothing more than something that, that for us to find new outcomes and new ways of accomplishing exciting things in our world that, I mean, good grief, can you imagine a cave man landing today in the 21st century and what they would, I mean, they might even kill themselves because it'd be too much for them to handle.

[00:22:25] John: It may, they may die from the moment they step into a movie theater and look at the gargantuan, unreal life that's happening at them. I mean, Jurassic Park would scare the hell out of 'em for sure. That said, You have the full capacity within you to manage that energy, that stress your emotions, and you have that ability to begin to see in others ways in which you can tap into those emotions for the greater gain and good of all of humanity.

[00:22:53] John: And wouldn't that be an amazing place for us to truly find an overlap of goodness? Let us all be creators. Let us all be peacekeepers. Let us all be peacemakers. With that, I will leave you and say, once again, peace to you my friends. Have a blessed day.