043 - Choosing Love Over Fear: A Mindset Shift That Can Change Your Life
What is it like to live your life from a place of love instead of fear? Imagine the impact it could have on your relationships, your sense of fulfillment, and your overall well-being. In today's fast-paced and often stressful world, it's easy to let fear creep into our decisions and actions. But what if we chose love instead?
This week On This Walk, my walking partner is David Henzel, CEO of the online coaching platform, upcoach. Our conversation revolves around the significance of living with love instead of fear, and how it can influence our relationships and overall sense of fulfillment. We also delve into the importance of the narratives we create for ourselves, as they shape our life experiences, and explore how vulnerability and transparency build trust and strengthen team bonds. Stay tuned for more!
In This Episode
[00:01:24] The impact of love not fear
[00:09:11] David’s self-discovery and impact project
[00:13:21] How David overcame his fear
[00:16:36] How David manages his life and business
[00:18:03] Love not to fear in spiritual traditions
[00:25:41] The importance of finding a balance between accountability and empathy in leadership and personal relationships.
[00:28:39] The impact of fear on our lives
[00:33:31] The different manifestations of love and how it can show up in our lives
[00:35:37] The importance of self-care and self-love
[00:40:32] The concept of building a muscle when it comes to choosing love over fear
[00:48:18] Gratitude and changing perspectives
[00:49:12] The power of storytelling
[00:50:00] The idea that life is happening for us, not to us.
[58:13] The importance of trust in building a successful business
Notable Quote
-
“All the extreme things that happened to me in my life, I can grow from and learn from them. If you change the way you look at things, for example, my mother passed away 10 years ago and she was an amazing person. Not because she was my mom, but because she was really an outstanding, phenomenal person. And if I look at it from the standpoint like, ‘oh, poor me, I don't have her anymore. She would be retired by now living in our other house here on the property. Our daughter would learn so much from her, suck so much. She's not there’. Then I'd drag myself down versus if I turned around and see it from a place of gratitude. I had this amazing person in my life that I learned so much from. I'm so grateful that I had her, it's unbelievable how lucky I consider myself that I had this amazing person in my life. Then it just completely changed the story.” – David
Our Guest
David Henzel is a veteran entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building successful companies. He is the CEO of upcoach, leading a portfolio of businesses with more than 500 employees.
With a personal mission to help individuals and organizations reach their full potential, David’s passion project is ManagingHappiness.com, an online platform dedicated to personal development akin to Toastmasters, and LoveNotFear.com, a community-driven initiative focused on helping people and organizations to act out of love and not fear.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
David Henzel
Mentioned books
A Course in Miracles - https://www.amazon.com/course-Miracles-Foundation-Inner-Peace/dp/1883360269
Conscious Capitalism - https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Capitalism-New-Preface-Authors/dp/1625271751
Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil - https://www.amazon.com/Outwitting-Devil-Secret-Freedom-Success/dp/1469259036
-
[00:00:00] David: Things happen for you, not to you. And if you, you kind of consider yourself lucky, I think like a lot more good things happen to you. It may be a lot of attraction or whatever it is. And I think when you're in state of fear, you think the world is against you, not pro you. And like social interactions, a lot of things are very different.
[00:00:18] If you melt gold down, the impurities will come out and then it become, becomes better. So all the tough stuff, all the. Extreme things that happened to me in my life I can grow from and learn from.
[00:00:30] Luke: Welcome to on This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me in my brilliant heart-centered guests each week as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul, and with something bigger than ourselves.
[00:00:51] Now let's go on this walk. Hello there everyone, and welcome again once again to on this walk. Today we're gonna be interested getting into a very interesting topic, and I wanna preface this with a little bit. So the topic today is love, not fear. And I wanna preface this in a very specific way. This is a phrase that, that I have heard many times in my life, and I want to be very clear that this is not gonna be kind of focusing on this as a trite or a Pollyanna phrase or Pollyanna conversation for us, because this is a conversation around love, not fear.
[00:01:24] That actually speaks to a lot of the challenges that we are experiencing in our lives, as well as with all types of relationships. It affects us in so many different ways, whether we come at life from a place of love, not fear, it affects the way we make decisions, the way that we move ourselves, either towards or a way fulfillment and passion and deep alignment in our lives.
[00:01:45] It changes the way even that we respond on a moment to moment basis, to the ever-changing circumstances of our lives. So why do I start? Why do I say right at off the bat that love, not fear is not meant to as a, is a trier, a Pollyanna, or just surface level philosophy? Well, Because I'll be honest, there was a time in my life that's the way that I looked at it.
[00:02:04] I could have easily just brushed off this conversation. I don't know why, but there was something about reading the words that just, it didn't hold it for me. I didn't know why there was such a deeper conversation to be had here, and instead I just assumed, uh, it's a nice phrase. Maybe it inspires some people, but I'd keep moving on because at the end of the day, I didn't understand the challenge that this actually presented for us to live from love, not fear.
[00:02:29] I didn't understand the implications on my relationships, all types of relationships. For me to consider this more directly and more deeply. I didn't understand what this represented about, what was even going on in my body and in my mind, the way that I actually function as a human being. I didn't realize how much joy and magic and wonder.
[00:02:50] I was actually blocking out from my life by not diving into this quite bluntly, I was just ignorant. In fact, I was willfully ignorant because I always felt like I had more important things to focus on because I was focused out on doing things in the world. And so I would just brush off this conversation.
[00:03:06] I had not yet been exposed to other deeper work. I had not been exposed to this conversation in different ways, but I had been exposed to a work called A Course in Miracles and decades ago, but I never actually took it very seriously. Even the word miracles at that time in my life, back more in my, my twenties and mid twenties was a turnoff.
[00:03:26] It was something that didn't interest me, and yet, interestingly, when I did finally crack open the book and I started to dive into, well, what? What is this thing? Why are there so many people talking about a Course in Miracles? Well, you find out that the underlying premise is that the greatest miracle is the act of simply gaining a full awareness of love's presence.
[00:03:47] In one's life. That was a very different definition of miracle than I was expecting. So later on, as I started to become more aware, not only of that conversation, but I also became more aware of how fear was showing up in my life and later still how fear started to show up in the lives my clients. In fact, if you go onto the website on on this walk.com, go to the blog, you'll see an article, a post that I put up there called The Faces of Fear, because fear can be a really sneaky devil.
[00:04:15] And so now love not fear in my eyes, it is not just some philosophy, it's not protz some way of of life or faith. It actually has physiological and neurological roots to the way in which we operate in this world and how it does connect us to happiness and fulfillment and meaning. At the same time, fear in its many forms has become deeply rooted into our bodies and into our nervous systems, and plays a role in our cognitive function, our perceived reality, even our emotional regulation.
[00:04:43] And from there, it's no wonder that it affects all levels of our relationships, be they intimate or familial friends or colleagues, even communal, even the way that we look internationally in our place within humanity. Fear has become present in all too much of this. So it's time to take a look past just the words of love, not fear, and get into the depth and context to see just how much this can impact the quality of our lives.
[00:05:08] Relationships, even our sense of fulfillment and meaning. And to do that, I've got David Hensel with me who hasn't just adopted this as a guiding life mantra, but it's building. He's building his whole life and his work around it. At this point, David is a veteran entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building successful companies.
[00:05:27] He's the c e of Upco, leading a portfolio of businesses with more than 500 employees with a personal mission to help individuals and organizations reach their full potential. David's passion Project is Managing Happiness, which is managing happiness.com. It's an online platform dedicated to personal development akin to Toastmasters, and he also has Love Not fear.com, a community-driven initiative focused on helping people and organizations to act out of love and not fear.
[00:05:56] He has embedded this into his life very, very deeply. And so through various endeavors, David remains committed to positivity, impacting the world, one person and one organization at the time. For those of you, you do know the drill, hopefully you already subscribe to this. If you're new to the podcast, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button so you never miss one of our weekly episodes.
[00:06:15] And now let's go on this walk with David Hensel and let's walk with Love, not Fear. David, how are you sir?
[00:06:23] David: Wow, look, this was like quite the intro talk. I think we can stop here and it's already like an amazing episode.
[00:06:30] Luke: We've already te we teed up a lot of things. You're teed up. I had to be honest, like as I started to come into today and prep for our conversation based on on previous conversation we had, I had to think about the fact that now something like love not fear resonates with me so deeply and it speaks to me energetically, philosophically like across the board.
[00:06:50] But I had to be honest with myself that. I didn't necessarily always see it that way. You know, I kind of had that struggle of relating to it because I didn't get. Truly, actually even just the practicality of it in my life, let alone the impact, like the powerful side of, of what it can be as well. So I had to be honest with that and that's what kind of, kind of teed up the way that we, we entered into today.
[00:07:09] I'm curious, maybe if you could share just as a kind of a baseline for everybody to share a little bit of your journey with us, because I was struck that when we, when we did connect, there were some similarities in our paths of, you know, work and achieving of things that we've done, but also this spiritual underpinning that just kept kind of pulling us back into this deeper sense of life and this deeper calling.
[00:07:33] So I was wondering if you could maybe just start there to share a little bit of that story and journey with our listeners.
[00:07:38] David: I'm born in Germany and my father and a friend brought Shambala to Europe, which is a Buddhist religion. So the first years of my life, we lived in this ashram, so to say, and then my, my mother was Roman Catholic and I became an auto boy later on and was even indeed auto boy at some point.
[00:07:56] And then when I turned 15, I just was more into crazy stuff and partying and smoking a lot of weed and just doing stupid stuff. Then later in, actually when I was 19, I met my wife and. She has Turkish parents and I convert to Islam and I lived Islam straight for seven years. So I've been like very exposed to lots of different religions.
[00:08:18] Then moved to Los Angeles and became more spiritual, yoga, meditation and, and these kind of things. I've always been entrepreneur. I went to 14 different schools. I got kicked out everywhere. My parents raised me with all authorities, so I, I did not really fit into the, the normal system I guess. And one day a friend of mine said like, Hey man, how about we start a business together?
[00:08:37] You could put computers. Let's do some things like, yeah, sure, I have nothing else going on. Let's do this. And this worked out, um, really well. I found like my thing with entrepreneurship and I had a few businesses in Germany and then saw the taxi scene in Los, in America, what was going on there. And I really wanted to move over there cause I felt a little lo a little lonely in, in Germany.
[00:08:58] Cause it was like, no. No startup scene. Sold my business, which gave me the money to get my investor visa and I moved to Los Angeles and started Max cdn and we had a really good exit in 2016 and there also had like a very big aha moment where my wife went through breast cancer. Hmm. And this was, I imagined myself laying on my deathbed, looking back at my life thinking, did I really do it or supposed to do it?
[00:09:23] Did I have the impact I want to have? And I was like, kind of like early midlife crisis, like really questioning everything. And I realized I want to do something with more impact. And this is why I, we sold the business and I went on a journey to figure out something that has more impact. One thing that my wife and I always did sort of started when our daughter was born, was to apply business principles to our personal lives.
[00:09:47] So one day, my day, I came home from a long meeting about the roles and responsibilities and Emma had a full diaper, our daughter. And I said like, Hey honey, look, Emma has a full diaper. My wife got really upset cause she thought, I'm telling her to change the diaper, which was not my intention. I was just tired making an observation.
[00:10:02] And I thought like, why do we fight about this? And then I had this aha moment that we never talked about our roles and responsibilities in our household. And the next morning we sat down and we spelled this out and this took away 80% of the friction we had. Mm-hmm. In our relationship before. And I thought like, holy cow, if this works so well, maybe we take other elements of business and apply it to our personal lives.
[00:10:21] And we had like family core values, mission and vision, shared calendars, shared task management, kind of all the stuff we do in business. And it's worked so well that I want to. Turned this into a course and shared this with, with others. Right. And I felt like, okay, that's going to be my impact project. And uh, I created this online course and it was really frustrating to me that only 7% of the people who bought my course completed the course.
[00:10:43] Cause I was not doing this for money. You know, had a, just had a good exit and I just wanted to chill and then do this and have impact. So I was wondering like, how can I, first I thought like, oh my God, my course must really suck cause only seven, seven people like complete the course. Mm-hmm. Then we, I looked into like, how can I get this into people's heads and make sure that they actually complete it?
[00:11:01] And I switched to cohort based coaching where we meet like once a week. They watch some, you know, videos and get some homework. And so really well we have a 93% completion rate now. Mm-hmm. But I needed the tools to make this easier on myself. Cause by the time I also started a few other businesses, bought a few and then, and started a few.
[00:11:19] So I was like very busy. And so I need something that makes it easier on me. And then I started to build some tools. I asked the CT or one of our businesses to build me. We start with a group habit tracker. Cause I'm a big believer that habits determine everything in our life. So we start with a group habit tracker.
[00:11:34] Cause I couldn't find one where I can see, you know, like, Hey look, are you doing your stuff or not? You know, so I can reach out to you. And like, I love positive peer pressure. I think it's, it's a beautiful thing. Mm-hmm. And so we built more and more outta the course to it and like added all these tools that I needed.
[00:11:47] And at some point I thought like, hey, this is actually a really cool piece of software that could be very useful for cultures, not just for me. And I shared this with Todd Herman. Back then it was just somebody at, I met at some entrepreneurial dinner and I sent him a Loom video saying like, Hey, might I put this coaching software?
[00:12:03] I just wanna get feedback from somebody who does this professionally. Cause I'm not just, you know, I'm not a trained coach. Yeah. And he responded with like, Hey, this solves 80% of my business problems. Can I please invest and be a business partner? Like, well this was not for that in mind, but I take it, you know?
[00:12:19] And so UP Coach was born, which I spent a lot of time on, is also like another impact business for me cuz if I can help coaches to transform more people's lives, you know, it's like, it's perfect. And also did the reason why I started other businesses was because I read Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey.
[00:12:34] Those few do not know the concept. The normal or the old idea of a of a business is it has to increase shareholders' value so the owners of the business get richer. This is why business exists and the conscious business does good by stakeholders, meaning suppliers, customers, employees. The planet community, really everything the business touches, basically it improves the people, um, that the business touches.
[00:12:56] And this was something that was like really? Made so much sense for me. And so this is why I went back into the business world and now these businesses are ran by business partners or general managers and I focus most of my time on managing happiness and up coach cause these are my main impact businesses.
[00:13:11] And then with the story, but love, not fear, I was always an entrepreneur, but I was always very shy and introverted and like I would've never in a million years gone on the podcast or public speaking and all this stuff was like, nah, I can't do this. I was even uncomfortable running a meeting with my own team or being on a conference call with a, with a customer, like, And a friend of mine was crushing it with public speaking and with networking.
[00:13:35] I thought like, man, I, I want this. I saw how much fun he had and how good this was was business. So I thought like, okay, how, how do I get this? So I did Toastmaster twice a week and I, even though it was like really painful, uh, and I did two networking events per week talking to everybody there, which was also like incredibly painful.
[00:13:52] But through this exposure therapy, I guess it got better over time. But then the real transformation happened when my yoga teacher said, have a decision in life. You either make it of law for other fear, you say two basic emotions, why you do anything you're doing. Hmm. And this was like this like wow thing.
[00:14:08] Like I was like blown away. Cause I always knew this deep downside, but now she gave me this framework to, mm-hmm. To use this in all areas of my life. For example, public speaking, before a student stage, even though I would not have gone on stage, but if I would've stayed on the student stage, I would've thought like, oh, do they think what I'm saying is stupid?
[00:14:26] Do they think I look? Where do they think I have a weird German accent, whatever. And then it's about me. And it's like fear and I, I can't, but if I think, hey, what I'm sharing here can help them in their life, in the business, it's super easy. Or sales, I used to hate sales for their passion, but if I know, hey, the product can actually really help you, then I'm doing this because I want to help you.
[00:14:45] Right? I'm doing this out of love. And then I can even be pushy, say like, look, freaking buy this. It's gonna be amazing. And last less little example I give from love and fear is with my wife. My wife always asks me to do stuff around the house. Like, Hey, could you please do this to that? And I always, Hated it.
[00:15:00] Like, you know, like hanging up a, a painting or something like this. You know, I prefer to do my taxes cause I do not enjoy it. And when I do this then I just do it out of fear because I do not want to have conflict with my wife. Yeah. And then I do not do a good job cause I'm doing the work out of fear, not with love.
[00:15:20] And then afterwards I had to fight with her anyway because she's not happy with the, the outcome. Right. And so nobody was winning. But now did I have this mantra? I still start out of fear sometimes cause I still don't like, but then I think like, Hey, I want to make a place nice. I don't want to make my wife happy.
[00:15:34] And then like it flows off. The task is not that bad actually. I
[00:15:37] Luke: appreciate the journey that you've been on and you know, I think there's several interesting points just that you know, that I wanna pull out. Pull out is most people wouldn't have caught or reflected on how the success that they were having maybe professionally or in business, how is it they could take something that they were very good at?
[00:15:54] And then begin to see, well, how can I integrate this in other areas of my life? Which is what you described of like roles and responsibilities and core values and vision and mission and stuff with your family, where all of a sudden you could take something that was a talent of yours, recognize it and say, wait, I can use this in a way that's gonna serve the rest of my life as well.
[00:16:14] And you know, I, I think that's just, I wanna extract, cuz many people may not think that way. They may, unfortunately, we tend to compartmentalize different parts of our lives. Right. And we don't really take a look at, oh wait, there's a lot that I can move from one to the, to the other. That really speaks to the talent that I have, that speaks to the skills, speaks to the things that come easy for me.
[00:16:31] And I can make other areas of my life easier if I would. Right. If I'd carry those over. Yes. Because
[00:16:37] David: before I was like a one trick pony. I was like, really good business and I've been together with my wife forever. So we kinda like had a system going. But then once our daughter was born, I, I realized like, Hey, I've, I.
[00:16:47] Keep everything in business and like everything else, I hope that it's like somehow magically happens. And my wife was like really good, like being a social coordinator and kind of like keeping everything running, you know, so kudo to her. But now with this awareness, you know, if I, if I run my life the way I run the business, you know, like everything is one calendar.
[00:17:05] Family stuffs in the calendar, right? Like, you know, me, time is in the calendar. Before I didn't even wanna go to the gym cause I thought like, hey, I should be in the business not recognizing that if I actually go to the gym and work out, I'm have a much clearer mind and I, I process stuff while being on the run, et cetera.
[00:17:20] You know, it's kind of came later. But yeah, just like managing myself the way I manage a business made everything so much easier for
[00:17:27] Luke: me. Well, even just the way that you described that part of what then comes into view is that you're looking at the whole of your life. Business is an aspect of your life, the relationships or an aspect of your life, your self-care is part of your life.
[00:17:40] But when we view it more from a, it's one life. So all of this is integrated and how am I gonna look at it that way as opposed to trying to keep all these things separate where we feel like we're being pulled in all these different directions. And so it's just opened you, opened you up in a lot of their ways.
[00:17:55] So I wanted, I just wanted to kind of call attention to that from many aspects of your story, cuz I think it's something that, that others can, can borrow from and take a look at how that may support them. I wanna come back to the fact that you've had exposure to so many different spiritual traditions and not in a, a light way, like, in a way that you had years of exposure to a lot of these types of traditions.
[00:18:17] So it gave you, you know, a very different view of, of being able to be more integrated with those types of practices and beliefs and everything else. And one of the things that struck me was that as you arrived at Love Not fear in terms of that mantra that spoke to you so clearly through your yoga teacher.
[00:18:33] Was that you then stepped back and started to look at the other spiritual traditions and you recognize there's a common thread, there's more intersection here. And I was wondering if you just speak to that because you, you have such a varied background with the spiritual traditions of what you started to recognize in your experiences and how a lot of them just keep pointing back at this theory or this, this philosophy, this understanding of love, not fear.
[00:18:56] David: Yeah. I think if you really boiled down what all these different scriptures, traditions say, it's like it really boils down to this essence like make decisions of love and not out of fear. And you could even say that God is positive energy and love and the opposing forces negative energy. And yeah, I think if you boil it down, it's really the essence of, and it's a book that I really love.
[00:19:17] Uh, it's. Napoleon Hills, outwitting the Devil. Yeah, that's the, that's the workbook. And in this book he also talks about this, that, yeah, God is positive energy and the devil is negative energy and how impactful this is in our
[00:19:31] Luke: lives. I read that as well. And I had been an Napoleon Hill year, uh, fan for, for years.
[00:19:36] And I think that frame of Outwitting the Devil is an interesting perspective. Cause for me, I think part of what I had to recognize was what does it mean to outwit fear? I'm curious, you know, what were the many different ways in which you began to, like, when you started to get clearer on choosing from love, not fear.
[00:19:53] You gave us some examples. But how did you get clear or, or what became clearer to you as to the different ways that fear was actually showing up in your life? I mean,
[00:20:02] David: fear shows up in, in, in many different forms, and I think it's about your emotions, how you feel in the moment. If I feel good about something, I lean in.
[00:20:09] If I do not feel good about something, I take a step back and contemplate why do I not feel good about something? Is it that's not in love with my values? Is it some, is it wrong? Should I not be doing it? Or is it something that I just, I'm uncomfortable with? Or is it something where I want to push my comfort zone to grow?
[00:20:27] Right. For example, like public speaking, quantum Podcast center or recording, posting stuff on social media, like recording videos so that it's like, something's like for me, byebye, you know, I, I sit down and think, okay, but it, it makes sense. You know, it, it brings me towards the direction, towards my vision, my mission, and my goals.
[00:20:44] And then I can push myself and say, okay. Let's do it. Yeah. And like it's the awareness and listen, listening to your, your gut feeling, if it's good. Ok. If not, contemplate wise, it not good.
[00:20:55] Luke: It's interesting if I, if I break down a little bit of my experience and, and I think if I go off of that physiological sign right of that, that feeling in your gut of what's going on, I began recognizing that if I, if I kind of break down this, this mantra of love, not fear, I then had to look at what were, and I had written that one article on, on the Faces of fear.
[00:21:16] What were all the different ways that fear was showing up in my life. And I recognized, like when I had that gut feeling of anxiety, of fear, it would bring me to a place that would be, it could be judgmental, it could be trying to control, it could be trying to avoid the fear that was there. Kind of, you know, trying to find ways of avoiding the whatever it was that was, was stirring up my energy at that given moment.
[00:21:39] And it would bring about, you know, the recognition of all the things I was attached to, all the things that I was trying to overprotect myself from. And so I kind of, I share that back with you to see what that stirs up. Because for me, outwitting the devil, outwitting fear was recognizing that fear begins to manifest for us in so many different ways.
[00:22:00] Right? And that, that's what all of a sudden, like when I started to understand that and then all the ways that love manifests, which we will get to, then all of a sudden this was no longer just a, a nice philosophy. This was no longer a, you know, just words. This was, oh wow, there's extraordinary depth. To what?
[00:22:16] This conspiracy
[00:22:17] David: tool, for example, something where I caught myself in, where I was acting out of fear. We had, like in one of my portfolio businesses, we had like one of the, actually the person running the business messed up massively. And then I came in and I put everybody under a microscope and I was like super critical.
[00:22:33] Like, and I was criticizing people really harshly not thinking like, hey, actually, you know, kind of taking a step back and not being in this protective, you know, after protective. Yes. You know? Yep. Cause I came from fear of protect versus like from love. Cause these people have been with me for years. They have the heart and the right place.
[00:22:51] They, they do a good job. Right. And every, if anybody you put another microscope, you'll find things that are not right. You know, and it was like overly harsh with, with this and this like realization that I had. Took a step back, okay, let's change it. Or, my mother always said, be hard in the case, but soft with the person.
[00:23:11] When you, when you give criticism to an employee, for example, if somebody, let's say easy example, somebody's always late. I've never yell at this person. You know, I'd put this person aside saying like, Hey Luke, uh, you've been like late X times. You know, this is really bad for X, Y, Z. Reason. Perhaps it's bad for the team, you know?
[00:23:30] Bunch of examples. I see what's going on in your life. I want to help you. I have, I think you have a lot of potential. I really want you to work here with me. I think we can like do cool stuff together, but if you can't change this, I'll have to let you go. I'll have to fire you. Right. You know, so I'm very kind with you, soft with the person, but I'm hard in the case like, dude, if you don't, yes, we can change this.
[00:23:48] I'll freaking fire you.
[00:23:56] Luke: Hard in the case, but soft with a person. There's a lot to unpack in just this one statement. First, I think about how often I have heard people of all kinds, leaders of all kinds, push against this idea of being too soft. That being soft, which they also equate with being compassionate, being empathetic, listening deeply, seeing the human being in front of you, even.
[00:24:21] It's gonna erode progress. It's gonna erode performance in some way. It's going to lead to people taking advantage of you. It'll lead to getting absolutely nothing done. I've heard all of these stories yet. This simple statement, hard in the case, soft with the person already begins to illustrate what's actually possible and a way to kind of walk this line.
[00:24:42] So meeting somebody where they are, showing them that you understand them, or at least that you hear them and that you are trying to see them for who it is that they are. This is what allows you to build that bridge to connect with others, and that's critically important when you're a parent, a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, a c E O of some big business, doesn't really matter.
[00:25:03] Whoever you are, you can do this, you can connect with people this way all while naming the reality of the situation too. The part of this that both of you need to be accountable to for that person, it may mean being accountable to the change or the new behavior that they need to take on, for example.
[00:25:22] And for you, it may be that you're accountable to a bigger situation, meaning when you are a manager or you are a business leader or you are running an office, you have to keep your eye on the whole of the team, the whole of the organization, the whole of what it is you're trying to accomplish, and it's okay to state things in the reality of that.
[00:25:41] Part in the case speaks to those real consequences. It speaks to the accountability that's there. It speaks to the reality of what is needed. In these examples, again, when you are part of a team or a workplace or a company, you need to know what that context is and that you're accountable not only for your own actions, but accountable to the impact that you have on the whole system.
[00:26:02] It's true for even being in a family or being in a classroom, being in a doctor's office. Whatever the setting is, you're accountable to more than just yourself. And it speaks to the fact and this idea of hard, in the case, soft for the person. The hard in the case part still speaks to the fact that something cannot go on endlessly hard in the case, but soft for the person is meant to find balance between what is needed and where the person is right now.
[00:26:29] These don't have to be at odds with each other. We can actually find a way of walking this line and balancing these two items, two aspects, two perspectives of what's actually unfolding. So people respect when people are forthright with them, they can honor that, but if it's all hard and no connection, then they can dismiss you.
[00:26:48] They can dismiss you because you may not have have demonstrated any understanding, willingness, or connection to them as a human being and whatever is unique about them or their situation. Similarly, if you are always forgiving the person and you disregard the context, you disregard the accountability.
[00:27:05] Then they or others that are watching you lead can dismiss you as not being mindful of not paying attention to what it is that the situation calls for, of not challenging someone or believing in someone that they can grow and that they can accept responsibility and make the changes that they need to make.
[00:27:23] Many people get stuck here in pleasing mode. For example, finding the balance between these harden the case, but softer. The person is where things truly begin to create a new way forward to meet people where they are, while also being accountable to what it is that needs to shift.
[00:27:51] When we get caught up in some of these cycles, I, you know, I like both of those examples. And because I've, I've recognized times, you know, in my life where things have, you know, they're, they're not going the way that that was originally expected or planned. And then you start to lean in because you start to worry.
[00:28:07] You start to be afraid of where this ultimately can go. Will it spiral outta control? Will it cause all these other challenges? And then we tend to operate from that. That paradigm and what I, you know, later on, again learned there, there, to me, why this ended up having so much depth to this, this conversation was that as we move in that direction, it's not even simply that, okay, we're afraid what might happen.
[00:28:31] But when we get into that mode where we then are very specifically focused on it, we've got things that are actually specifically actively working against us. Because when we get into stress of that type of fear, we start to trigger off our sympathetic nervous system response, meaning the fight, flight, freeze aspect of who it is that we are.
[00:28:51] We actually narrow our focus because that's part of what fight flight Freeze was meant to do. Mm-hmm. Right is to narrow our focus so that we can focus on the danger and get outta the danger. But what unfortunately, our nervous systems, you know, have not adapted to the modern environment. They're still being chased around by sabertooth tigers and so, right.
[00:29:09] So we still get this very myopic view where now we're cutting ourselves off from all of this brilliance and ingenuity and intuition that we could be connected to because we're focused with a negativity bias of, you know, what's going wrong and how do we need to fix this and what's the problem. And so it has.
[00:29:28] When we allow that fear in, and its many forms of worry and doubt and anxiety and over control, et cetera, overprotection, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When we get into all those imbalanced perspectives, it has this vicious cycle that starts to really eat away at how mu how much joy we could have in our lives and how much fulfillment we could have in our lives, and just even being able to be more open to the way in which certain issues, certain challenges may end up getting resolved.
[00:29:58] We're cutting ourselves off from that whole perspective. I have started, as I got further and further into this. For me it was amazing how this isn't simply a philosophy, but it actually has. Presence in the spiritual traditions. It has presence in neurological science and neuroscience, the way our nervous systems work, our physiology.
[00:30:18] I'm just curious, I, I want to talk about the love side of this even more, but I'm just kind of curious cuz of, of the work that you've done in happiness, some of the influences of the, the way that you've gotten there. I'm just kinda curious what has been your experience in understanding like the ways in which fear has this really full connectivity to the way in which we operate?
[00:30:37] David: One thing I'd like to share is also, I call it managing happiness. Cause you can do a few things to manage your happiness. Mm-hmm. Right? For example, for me it's like working out, sweating every day. You know, if, if I know if I do this, then I'll just like be much better. I'll be much happier. Yeah. So kinda like I've been watching myself and others to see like, what really helps me to be on my a game, to be to be happy, right?
[00:30:58] To be also be in a state of love, you know? Cause when, when everything is managed properly, then it's much easier to. Deal with the stresses that are coming to us. And another thing I've been doing for you many years mm-hmm. I have this little rock that I pick up every morning and I go through, it's a gratitude rock.
[00:31:13] So I pick it up every morning and I go through the things I'm grateful for. You know, my healthy body, my wife, my daughter, my businesses, la la like very long list. And then I put the stone in my pocket and sometimes I get stressed over something. I'm in a state of fear, but then I feel the stone in my pocket.
[00:31:28] This brings me back to like, dude, you have so much beauty in your life. Like, why do you stress out over this little thing? You know? And then I'm like, when I get back into this, all this well state of mind and this 30,000 foot view of like actually seeing everything, not just like hyper focusing on this, on the problem of the moment, which most of the time we don't even remember six months from now, this big issue.
[00:31:47] Right? Like, you know, like it's, it's gonna water under the bridge. Yes. This just always brings me back. And then at the end of the day, I go through the things that went great this day. Cause often you have a very productive morning, you know, great conversation with you or whatever, right? Yeah. And then at 7:00 PM I have an unpleasant conversation with my wife or with an employee, or we lose a customer, I think like, oh my God, everything sucks.
[00:32:07] Like, uh, but no, it's not, you know, there's so much good stuff going on and I've been like training this graduate muscle Yeah. Over many, many years. And so it's like becomes much easier for me to go through the entrepreneurial rollercoaster, the rollercoaster of life. You know, and also kinda like lots of mindset tools, for example, thinking like things happen for us, not to us.
[00:32:27] And also like the acceptance, the, uh, serenity prayer give me mm-hmm. The power to, yeah, the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the power to change things I can, and the wisdom to know which ones which. Just, if somebody really deeply understands and lives by this, I think life becomes so much easier.
[00:32:43] And it's much easier to stay in the state of law for us than the state of fear. The way
[00:32:46] Luke: you describe this and even, even the way that you start your day, even just like with exercise and things like that, what it brings up for me is the recognition that we can activate our love circuitry as opposed to our fear circuitry.
[00:33:00] Right? And I was describing some of the fear circuitry, even physiologically and everything else that goes on and, and then the cascade of that. Well, we can do the same thing on the love side. And if we do those types of things that connect us to that feeling and that state of love, it is so much easier for us to then show up in that capacity throughout the course of the day.
[00:33:21] And you know, so you're priming yourself to connect to that place. And I appreciate, you know, one of the things very first and foremost that you brought up then is that connection to gratitude. Because just like fear has all these different manifestations that we're talking about. So does love. It can show up as gratitude, it can show up as compassion, it can show up as passion.
[00:33:39] It can, I mean, it can show up in so many different ways. And so we think of it as choose love, not fear, but there's, you know, there's a full rainbow of choices of spectrum that's included within those. And so gratitude is one of those things that unlocks us. And it, it makes it so much easier for us to connect to the bigger picture.
[00:34:00] So much easier for us to connect to the things that are bringing us joy at an even moment. And then the fact that you've got a gratitude rock. I, you know, I immediately being on the podcast of on this Walk, I'm like, oh, that's cool. You literally walk with it and it's right. It's, but it is, it's something you can tangibly walk with that recenters you, that re-anchor you to that circuitry of love.
[00:34:22] So you can open up from that regard. What are all these things that then change when we're connected there? And I'll, I'll give you an example of like, what I've already got in mind or experienced is that, you know, when we say that we're then operating from love, not fear. Right. What that connects to is things like, it's easier for me to create trust.
[00:34:41] Mm-hmm. And to be trusting. Mm-hmm. Right. And then to know what are the, what are the ways in which I can create that and shape that with somebody? What are the ways that, yes. We still do need boundaries, because boundaries can also be loving and it just, it makes me more aware. So it's not just that I'm, you know, uh, fancily, you know, just like loving and Okay.
[00:35:00] I give everybody everything. And just kind of like, it's not that perspective. It's that love from that state. That circuitry opens up my consciousness. That opens me up to a more expanded state, and then I've got more. Kind of tools and capacity to be able to, to relate to and be with other people, and even be with, with myself in my life.
[00:35:21] At least that's sort of the way that I'm, I'm associating it. I'm curious for you, like, what is it that you recognize that, well, the more that you're plugged in to that love and that gratitude, what are the very practical ways that that just starts to show up in your life? And make things easier.
[00:35:37] David: Oh, I mean, it makes, makes, makes everything easier.
[00:35:39] You, you, you'll become in a, you get into a state of flow, you know? Mm-hmm. And it becomes just way easier, something, what you said, just trigger the thought with self-love and self care, you know, it's really important that, that we have this, this, and, and managing happiness. We have this, uh, a reset routine every time when I'm falling off my good habits.
[00:35:59] Mm-hmm. We have this reset routine and it's like self-care stuff, like getting a haircut, pedicure, getting a massage, buying myself in the gadget, whatever. Right. And once I go through this reset routine, and I always do this, like when I'm like overwhelmed and stressed and I have, you know, inbox zero is like a thing of the past.
[00:36:16] And so once then I. Do this half day reset routine. And then I tell myself, okay, now you're in good behavior again. And you do the, the good stuff again, you know, working out, et cetera. Getting to inbox zero because like going to the gym is not a hard thing. Like everybody can pack their back and walk. It's just like this mental hurdle that you wanna jump over.
[00:36:35] Right. And sometimes when you, when you are burnt out and you don't do enough self care, you know, you give too much. Like you can't just give to everybody. You have to healthy egoism. You wanna make sure you are okay. Cause if you're not okay, you can't be strong fathers when you're in a plane and the mm-hmm.
[00:36:52] Masks come down, you take it first before you give it to your daughter. You know, it's just kind of a tough thing to do technically. Like, oh, I wanna give, help my daughter first. But it just, you have to be solid. To be solid. Yeah. To be
[00:37:02] Luke: a rock father from that perspective of coming from a place of love. It is that, that recognition that you just shared is that I want to be able to give that love to others in my life and I wanna be able to show up that way is as.
[00:37:16] Be it a husband or even be as a, as a leader, be it as whatever role that we have to be in. But that means that we have to do the work for ourselves to be able to be in that place, right? And so that self-care, that self-love is something that becomes a very important part of this process to live this way, to show up this way.
[00:37:34] I love the idea of just a, a reset routine and even. Thinking or, or, or planning or having options for yourself so that when you feel like you're getting off track, you feel like you are getting into a place of, of stress and overwhelm and the fear is creeping back in all those things. Having that almost like list of options, like a little menu for yourself, it's literally what this, yeah.
[00:37:55] Is that what, okay, so it's literally something like that of, okay, here's the five things that I know that usually help me reset and which is the one that speaks to me at this time, right? Which is the one that's calling me that I think is gonna help most right now.
[00:38:07] David: Another thing, business applied to personal life.
[00:38:09] Yep. What you like Business 1 0 1 is what you measure will improve. So I measure the things that are important for me. So I do have a habit tracker, the first thing we built. So I'm tracking these things and my canary in the coal mine is my inbox. Zero habit. For those who you are familiar with, inbox zero is like you.
[00:38:26] Mm-hmm. Delegate, archive, all the EM emails. So only the ones you still have to work on are in your inbox. Mm-hmm. And ideally by the end of the day, all of them are gone. So you at inbox zero, if I'm not reaching inbox zero for over a week, I know I'm overwhelmed. I know I have too much on my plate. I know I have to take something off because if I'm not doing this, then my good habits will fall away.
[00:38:44] I get overwhelmed, I get stressed. Yeah. And things go downhill, you know? Yeah. So this like, uh, for me has been very helpful to have this canary in coal mine.
[00:38:54] Luke: That's a great example as well, and a great, just a great reference point for everybody is to, you know, what are, what's that major sign, right? What's that major flag that you might be present for you that lets you know, oh, I'm off track.
[00:39:06] You know, I need to take a step back. I need to do that reset. So I think that's a great reflection for, you know, for everybody just to, to consider, because that's when you, that's how you catch yourself, right? How many times of, I know I've caught myself in my, or I haven't caught myself in my life, where you get so caught up in what the busyness of, of the routine is, whether it's work or it's family, or usually it's both and you get caught up and you're, you're in the details, you're in the story of your life, and you don't have that, that flag, that sign that comes up until, usually it's something a lot more dramatic than that.
[00:39:40] It's, you know, something that you really don't wanna deal with. It's a, a real challenge. And so where can we put those flags that give us an indicator and say, Hey, hey, hey, slow down, slow down. So to build those in and to do so intentionally and consciously is a great, uh, great design. And what I also, because you've referenced this before and I I just wanna remind everybody of this too, is you described this as like building a muscle, right?
[00:40:05] Mm-hmm. So if we're gonna operate with this, this way of being, and we're gonna come from love, not fear, it takes time to build that up. And it's because we, we don't normally start there. We're not normally conditioned from that perspective. And so it is like building a muscle, which means, cuz I do that, I talk about this with clients all the time, that after they've maybe connected to something like this and this is the way that they wanna start showing up in their life, you can't expect tomorrow is gonna have it all figured out.
[00:40:32] You need to give yourself a little more time. This is gonna be a process. I mean, even both of us are talking about how, you know, we are still, we still go through this even though we, we have adopted this as more of a philosophy and a core mantra for us. It's still something we need support around. But you build that muscle of how you get started.
[00:40:50] You also build muscle based on how you reset and how, you know, maybe I've pushed too far, I've gotta take a, a step back. Those are all different parts of train, quite literally training ourselves that we need to need to very much be aware of. As you've made more of the shift, and obviously, I mean, you've, you've been around it now in terms of even building the, the program of managing happiness, while it's not specifically focused on love, not fear, it very much is inherent within the, the process of what you're doing.
[00:41:18] You've got the love not fear movement. What is it that you have noticed is different about you and different about your life since you have really embedded this as central to, to the way you operate?
[00:41:31] David: Oh, I mean, everything changed For me. It's like, it's almost living in, in color. Before I wasn't black and white, as I mentioned, I'm, I was really introverted.
[00:41:39] I would've never been on a podcast, never been on stage, and you know, it's just like really changed. I'm almost a different person by leaning into this. So my relationship with the relationship with my wife got like, so much better. It really, really transformed my life in, in all aspects. Yeah, it's, it's really
[00:41:56] Luke: extreme, I'd say for, for me.
[00:42:00] And I'm curious how this, you know, this also may, may spark a few things for you. I would say more than anything, I think I recognize more peace. Mm-hmm. As well as more patience I think in my life, among other things. But I go to those because to me it feels like I have more spaciousness as I begin to look at life and relate to life.
[00:42:25] So if I put that in context and something people, I'm sure can relate to, when you're fearful, when you're anxious, when you're worried, when you're, when you're struggling with some doubt, when you're trying to control things. Even as I mentioned them, I can feel it. I feel like literally my body start to constrict.
[00:42:42] Right? Exac exactly. You feel the tightening, you feel the constriction, the contraction that's there. And when I have more of love, gratitude, compassion, empathy, et cetera, you know, coming through for me, and I'm more connected to that circuitry, I feel the spaciousness of that. And in that spaciousness I connect more easily with peace.
[00:43:05] Like it's more just inherent in the way that, that I'm able to operate in life. And with that sense of peace, I'm a lot more patient. And that patience allows things to unfold in a way that I'm not Like when we come outta fear and you know, part of the way our nervous system gets charged up, it's like we're waiting for something to go wrong and as soon as we think something goes wrong, right, we just pounce on it.
[00:43:28] We jump on it and we're like ready to go cuz we're always alert. But when you're in love, you can still notice all of those things, but you also have that sense of patience to say, hold on, let me, let me look around. Let me see what's really fully going on yet. Is that even actually a challenge or is, do I not have the rest of the picture?
[00:43:46] There's a German
[00:43:47] David: saying nothing will be , which means nothing has been eaten as hot as it's cooked.
[00:43:56] Luke: I think it's been as hot as it's cooked. Yeah,
[00:43:59] David: I like that. You know, so what was it like when you're in a state of this fear? Like something happens, you go like, ah, and like it's then was like, okay, things happen for us, not to us.
[00:44:09] We'll figure it out, chill out, and kind of like approach it with a clear mind and uh, BB level head. Yeah,
[00:44:15] Luke: absolutely. I, well actually, I'm, I'm glad you say it with a clear mind cuz that's, that to me is also another aspect of this right, is, again, I, I've kind of alluded to it before, but when we're out of more of that fear-based circuitry or fear-based response, we already are so n almost like tunnel visioned on what's going on.
[00:44:33] And we're, we're so focused and we lose sight of all this other stuff that might be going on. And yet when we are coming more out of that love circuitry, we can be so much more open-minded, so much more level-headed. In the way that we're receiving everything, and that in and of itself starts to give us possibility when we're at a fear-based kind of mentality or mindset.
[00:44:56] Things are gonna be black and white because part of that circuitry is about being in danger. And so you want to know, yes, no black, white, right, wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You want to know how to make a quick, binary type decision. But that's not usually helpful to 98% of what it is that we do in life.
[00:45:13] Yeah, there's all shades of, not even just shades of gray. There's a whole spectrum of color in in the middle of everything going on. And when we're in that love circuitry, which has that more conscious mindset, all so much more is possible. Because we can see so many more perspectives of what's going on, what's coming up for you.
[00:45:32] David: Yeah. It's two things. Things happen for you, not to you. And if you, you kind of consider yourself lucky, I think like a lot more good things happen to you. It may be a law of attraction or whatever it is, but I, I believe that this is true. And when, when you're talking about this being in this fear mindset, the story of the hammer, do you know the story where the neighbor wants to ask for a hammer of, of this other neighbor?
[00:45:53] Uh, tell me more. So it's, he, he does something at home and he needs a hammer. And he thinks like, oh, damn, I, I need a hammer for this. I have to go get one. Hey, buy one. Oh, no. Actually the neighbor, you know, two doors down. He, he, I saw him last week and he had hammer, but you know what? I also greeted him and, uh, he didn't greet back, you know, and then like there was this other time where he looked, wheeled me and I kinda like he right.
[00:46:18] Gets all in his head. And then at some point he gets so upset, he walks over and knocks at the neighbor's store and says like, he can keep your freaking hammer. You know, so often like things, things are not negative. I see the world as pro David, not against David. And I think when you're in a state of fear, you think the world is against you, not pro you.
[00:46:37] And like social interactions with all things are very different when you're in this, the state
[00:46:42] Luke: of perhaps. Absolutely. And it creates a different sense of, it's, for lack of a better term, empowerment. Right? Mm-hmm. Of if we believe that things in some way are conspiring for us, even the things that are challenging and problematic and the things we don't wanna face, but if we make the assumption of, you know what?
[00:47:00] Something here is being revealed for me, something, this is gonna lead to something I wouldn't have seen otherwise. This is gonna build a different connection with a relationship that otherwise we never would've had this conversation, like something had to occur for us to get into it.
[00:47:13] David: Right. Something good is will come, come from this, even though it's bad.
[00:47:16] Luke: Exactly. Yeah. Even exactly. Right. When we get into that type of perspective, all of a sudden we, we feel like we have more ownership, more authority, meaning the ability to author what's going on in our lives, whereas when, again, we're out of that fear-based mindset, it's like the script is being written for us, and we're just kind of playing it out.
[00:47:36] We're victims. We're
[00:47:37] David: victims. Victims. Like we can't act. A friend of mine gave a talk at Toast Masses, you know? Mm-hmm. To allow toast masses in la. And he said, we all go through fire. We all have to go through the tough situations, the tough things that happen to us. But we have to decide are we precious metal or are we wood?
[00:47:54] If we are precious metal, we burn down our ashes in the fire. You know, being the victim. If we're wood, we burn onto ashes. If you're precious metal, we get refined by this. If you, yes, you know, if you melt gold down, the impurities will come out and then it becomes, becomes better. So all the tough stuff, all the extreme things that happened to me in my life, I can grow from and learn from.
[00:48:15] Or if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change. Example, my, my mother passed away 10 years ago and she was like an amazing person. Not cause she was my mom, you know, but she was like really like an outstanding, phenomenal person. And if I look at it from the standpoint like, oh, poor me, I don't have her anymore.
[00:48:33] She would be retired by now living in our other house here on the property. Our daughter would learn so much from her, uh, suck so much. She's not there. Then I'd like drag myself down versus if I turned around and see it from a place of gratitude. I had this amazing person in my life that I learned so much from.
[00:48:47] I'm so grateful that I had, it's like unbelievably how lucky I consider myself that the hat, this amazing person in my life. Yeah. You know? Then it just like completely changed the story.
[00:49:01] Luke: What story are you a part of? I'm actually gonna be diving pretty deep into this in just our next episode, so do stay tuned for that with Jeff Harmon. The story that we tell ourselves, the stories we are actually writing right now have tremendous influence on the way that we relate to perceive and feel about our lives and what's occurring.
[00:49:23] There's the part of us that at any given time may not wanna face the loss and pain that comes with just being a human being. There are the parts of us that don't want to feel the overwhelm of the enormity or the pressures of life. There are the parts of us that just want things to be easier, to be more like we wish them to be, to match up with our expectations and desires and all of that's natural.
[00:49:48] It's understandable. And also, if we stay in that place, if we let the story of life write us, then we let our circumstances write our scripts, and that begins to feel like life is happening to us. Over time, we can feel disempowered. There's almost a learned helplessness that begins to kick in as Martin Seg talked about.
[00:50:09] But if we begin to tell ourselves stories about who we are, what we have a gratitude for, all that's unfolded for us, for all the ways in which we've grown, even amidst the challenges that we have been through for all the needs that we have had met in life, for all the experiences that have enriched us.
[00:50:26] If we tell those stories, when we write those stories and we focus on how we're empowered about how we are finding a way about how we are co-creating with the beautiful energy of life, then we change the way that we relate to all it's unfolding. We change our perceptions. We change our focus. We change what it is we get present to.
[00:50:46] We change the way that we see ourselves in relation to our lives and the way that everything is unfolding. We begin to recognize our role, our gifts, our impact, our joys, and it all begins with the stories we tell ourselves and our actively writing. So consider based on this conversation, are the stories that you have been writing the story that maybe you even feel that you are living right now?
[00:51:13] Is it a story of fear or are they stories of love? Are they stories of loss? Or are they stories of gratitude and joy? Are the stories that you write, the stories you tell yourself big enough so that they can hold the loss and the grief while still maintaining the remembrance and gratitude for the love, joy, blessings, that even those challenging moments have represented?
[00:51:42] We are the authors, the co-authors of this life. So each day I've got a challenge for you, just for the next week. Each day start by asking yourself, what's the story I'm writing today? And then at the end of the day, Ask yourself, what was the story I ended up writing today and what do I want to shift tomorrow to better write the story I intended to create that I intended to live?
[00:52:14] Do this for just a week. See the way in which what you intended to write, the story you intended to create. See the way in which it plays out? Review it, debrief it, reflect on it at the end of each day so that you can keep making even just 1% adjustments every single day forward. And see the way in which your experience of your life, the experience of the story that you are living and writing actively see how it changes.
[00:52:45] See how it begins to even shift and transform. But it begins with recognizing that you author it, you create the experience of life based on the narrative you decide to write.
[00:53:06] And even, even having had such an amazing mother, she is, you know, having that impact on your daughter because of who you are. Yes. As a father, father of it, right? Yes,
[00:53:14] David: yes. Absolutely.
[00:53:15] Luke: It's a good point. Yeah. So I mean, she, she is there, she is there in, in just a different, different way, different energy. Right?
[00:53:21] There's so much that begins to open up when we consider this conversation, and I think that's why I wanted to, to get into this more deeply with you today, is so that people could understand. This isn't just a good t-shirt, right? It's not just a good yoga message. It represents so much more energy that's behind it.
[00:53:39] And that's why this phrase that has such meaning in different communities, whether that be spiritual traditions or or other traditions, et cetera, it has grounding in like neuroscience. It has grounding in the way that our nervous systems work. It has grounding in the way that our bodies work. And the more that we open up to it, the more that we get to see all this beauty that begins to get unfolded inside our lives.
[00:54:04] And so to be able to really interact with life in such a way as feeling like things are happening for you because you're connected this. So I wanted to share, there's one other thing that you brought up as you shared that, that story and, and, and about your mother is the recognition for me that when we say that life is happening for you, Really, really, really easy to say in hindsight, right?
[00:54:25] When we look back at things really easy, oh yeah, that was because we already know how the story ended, right? So we know, oh yeah, it did work out the, in the moment of when you take more of that perspective of how is it that I can come to this situation that is very challenging, very difficult, seems like it's upsetting my whole world right now.
[00:54:43] But when you approach it from that place of love, and it's not just this like blind faith or blind hope that's there, but to be able to interact with everybody from that, including yourself from that place of love, is going to add spaciousness. It's gonna add compassion and empathy to what's going on.
[00:55:00] You're gonna be gentler and kinder with yourself and gentler and kinder with others as well. And so you may not know how something is happening for you for months, maybe even years. It may take a really long time to get that part of the, the vision revealed to you, but the way you experience. That period of time is gonna change fundamentally based on are you coming from that place of love or are you allowing fear to guide the way that you interact with everything that's going on?
[00:55:32] It's gonna fundamentally change the way that you know, that you go through that. And I, I honestly, I know that firsthand, I know the times and certainly in in business, that I allowed fear to kind of kick me up and stir me up. And those were the times that added so much more stress and I was so much more kind of controlling and, and, you know, overly critical as you, you described before, David, of overly critical of things I didn't need to be.
[00:55:56] And it made my experience of that period of time so much rougher than it had to be. And then those times where I could say, no, actually, I understand things are not going the way that we want, but let's approach this from, from a standpoint of checking in with everybody. Let's have some compassion as we do this.
[00:56:11] Let's be clear about what we need to move forward. Still, we're not gonna like just. Let it go. We're still gonna do those things, but we can do this in a very, very different way, and a different energy and a different relationship. And those are the times that, if I just speak from the business perspective, that the teams that came through those periods of time were some of the strongest, most well bonded teams I've ever had the honor of working with because they felt.
[00:56:36] Like they were in it together and they connected in that way. And to me, just a better way to experience life. If we gotta go through the challenges, let's go through it together and let's go through it knowing, you know, the person next to you on either side of you is there with you and cares just as much, you know as much about what's going on and who you are and each other as anybody else.
[00:56:55] As opposed to a lot of what we usually see right now, especially from the business sector where there's not that level of understanding, there's not that level of trust among colleagues and among peers. Among frenzy trust
[00:57:05] David: equals good culture. Good culture equals trust. I think it's like the, the number one thing, right?
[00:57:09] You can level measure your, a good company culture on, in my business is we have an error log. Some businesses call it improvement log cause they think error log sounds too negative. I, I still like to call it error log. The idea is that every time we mess up, we add it to the error log, customer complaint outage, what?
[00:57:28] Whatever it is. And so it's what happened, which customer was affected? Is it soft? And most importantly, what do we do to make sure this never happens again? Yeah. Right. And then we can change standard operating procedures or whatever and improve. So it's no problem. We are a self-healing machine. Mm-hmm. If we have this level of trust that we put these things in there.
[00:57:49] So the rule is you never get in trouble with messing up with me in, in the businesses. Yeah. But if you do not add into the airlock, I'll freaking murder you. So that's kinda like, that's kinda the idea. It's okay to mess up, it's fine. We accept this and then we'll find a way to, to fix it. Yeah. I'll take
[00:58:06] Luke: this again, another example of how fast things can then be improved and how fast things can evolve.
[00:58:12] When you develop that level of trust with your teams, with your employees to be able to contribute in that way and say, listen, this is, it's gonna happen. We're gonna make those mistakes. There are gonna be errors that occur. It's part of being in business and being human. Let's, how do we bring that together and build trust around the fact that actually we're gonna use this?
[00:58:31] In a manner that just, it makes us better and it progresses, and we can use that as a team to learn from each other as well as we do this. Again, you can do that in an environment that instills love, instills trust. We can't do that in an environment that is instilling fear and instilling distrust in the process.
[00:58:47] And it has real world consequences on the success of that business as well as just the effect that that's gonna have on the customers that you're meant to serve. So just another great, you know, great, great example of, of how this
[00:58:57] David: plays out my vision with with Love Fear is what I'm currently working on is a course that individuals can take to switch from a state of, first of all, understand the concept of love and fear, and then switch from a state of fear to a state of love.
[00:59:09] And the second step is to work with companies to instill this concept or this mantra or like even core value of love, not fear in inside into the business. And give them tools that they can build up by culture, have more trust. And with managing happiness, I initially headed for applying business principles to your family life.
[00:59:26] And then I switched it to do this with the leadership teams in my businesses. And you know, And it is amazing when you do this exercise of go through the course and especially in the beginning when you do the lifeline exercise, in case you're familiar with this. It's like in the old thing where basically I'm 45 now, so zero to 45, and I'll share like three high points and three low points in my life what people have worked with.
[00:59:49] I've been working with them for years, and they shared heartbreaking and crazy stories on like what they have experienced in their life. And this, this openness and transparency and vulnerability like makes a team bond so much more. And then you can also, like, it becomes much easier to share mess ups and just like, it's just, it's, it's crazy.
[01:00:08] How, how impactful is this in, in terms of trust, in terms of culture?
[01:00:13] Luke: It's powerful. It's a very powerful exercise and you know, to, to be able to understand and, and relate to the people around you and work in that environment and even. You know how many of us, some, you know, some of us might be lucky enough that we've, you know, a lot of friends around us, maybe we've grown up with for a long time, but how many of us also have friends that we've made as adults and we don't know the rest of, of what has been their lifeline.
[01:00:34] Right? And yet it's, it's getting to know each other in, in those ways, which is, is a bit on the intimate side that makes the relationship what it become, you know, can become, and what makes it so much more fulfilling and meaningful and supportive in all the things. Well, David, I guess before we wrap up, I'm just curious if there are other messages, any final messages around love, not Fear, that is what you would love to, you know, relay to the audience.
[01:01:00] Any final parting words or, or stories you'd like to, uh, Leave them
[01:01:05] David: with maybe one thing when I went through the toughest time in my life where my business was going extremely well, so I was like really busy and then our daughter was born, which is awesome for all the parents, you know, it's, it's very stressful.
[01:01:18] Once you have newborn, it's, it's extremely stressful. Yeah. And then two weeks after my. Daughter was born, my mother passed away, which really sucked. And then my wife had very severe abdominal pain and nobody knew where it was coming from. She needed two surgeries to get this fixed. It was like, was, was was crazy.
[01:01:38] And then a week after this, my grandma passed away. So also like this kind of like storm wow in, in my life, an employee of mine came to me and said like, Hey man, how can you have so much shit going on in your life and still be productive at the work positive run around with a smile on your face. And so like, first I'm gonna reflect on this, like, hey, this is like, and, and he's like, why can you do this?
[01:01:58] And I was like, I have no idea. And he's like, please think about this and tell me. And I think the acceptance piece, no, serenity Prayer is like, you know, accept things you can change and change the things you can and the gratitude rock. Like definitely two really big things that helped me to, to go through this stuff.
[01:02:17] Yeah,
[01:02:18] Luke: David, I thank you for that. There's so much that, you know, again, out of that love circuitry, acceptance opens up so many different possibilities for us, and it it opens us up to just how much we really are truly capable of if we're not getting attached to, we're stuck with, with the details of some of the challenges we might be facing.
[01:02:34] I wanna thank you for this conversation. I mean, this, this totally came up out of, out of us just connecting a couple of weeks ago, and I love the fact that, that we did. I love the fact that, uh, you're focused on love, not fear inherent in all the things you're doing. Uh, cause I think this is an important conversation and like I said, one that I wanted to get deeper into so that people can understand a lot more than just the words of, of what this means.
[01:02:55] So I thank you for that.
[01:02:56] David: Thank you very much for having me on. Uh, really appreciate you love the work that you're doing. And please visit us in Turkey. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks David.
[01:03:06] Luke: Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode.
[01:03:15] Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation. To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to on this walk.com, and click on community in the upper right hand corner.
[01:03:34] It's free to join until we go on this walk again on Luke Iorio. Be well.