Do you yearn for a life of clarity, free from the weight of stress stories and negative narratives?
Are you ready to discover a path to inner peace? Join us as Stephen Moegling shares his profound solution to help you achieve the desired outcome of increased clarity and the ability to overcome stress stories. Prepare to embark on a transformative journey as Stephen unveils the keys to unlocking a life of purpose and fulfillment.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Delve into gripping stories of surmounting stress and unmasking clarity within life’s bustle.
- Embrace techniques that challenge the credibility of stress-filled narratives and center around evidential truths.
- Create a trajectory of growth in personal and professional life using goal mapping strategies.
- Recognize how self-awareness and mindfulness can serve as potent tools for stress reduction.
- Understand the significance of harboring personal satisfaction and resisting societal dictations.
My special guest is Stephen Moegling
Imagine encountering a man who thrives in the world of business strategies, leads teams with tact, and grooves to the beat of his own drum, literally! That’s Stephen Moegling. He is not just an individual with an acute sense of business acumen but also a passionate musician who has used the lessons learned from drumming to manage companies effectively.
His unconventional approach to leadership extends into guiding individuals through life’s turbulence, with a focus on overcoming stress-inducing narratives. With his unique blend of strategies, Stephen offers the golden key to unlocking self-imposed barriers, establishing genuine connections, and ultimately constructing footprints of success.
Chapters
00:03:16 – The Role of the Drummer
00:04:08 – Stress Stories
00:14:25 – Moving from Emotion to Logic
00:15:06 – Casting Vision and Setting Goals
00:21:53 – Addressing Inner Stress
00:27:31 – The Importance of Success and Fulfillment
00:28:23 – Embracing Being a Misfit
00:33:01 – The Stress Story Framework
This is Stephen Moegling’s story:
The impact of Zen Master Frank’s words on Stephen Moegling was profound. It was as if a veil had lifted, letting him see clearly the distinction between facts and stories. He was no longer a passive participant in his life, swept away by the tides of his own narratives. Instead, he began asking himself three questions: Is this a story? Is this story helpful? What is the truth here?
These questions became his guiding light in the darkness, helping him to unhook from stress stories and anchor himself in the reality of the present. This newfound clarity helped Stephen navigate life’s challenges with a calm mind and a strategic approach, transforming him into the resilient leader he is today.
“We have to at any age stop and say, well, what do I really want here? And that’s one of the reasons why I named my company Band of Misfits.” – Stephen Moegling
“Our own skills and abilities are not the biggest threat to our success, it’s the inability to work and manage those stress stories because they debilitate us.” – Stephen Moegling
Table of Contents
Stress Stories and How to Crush Them
Stephen Moegling discusses the concept of stress stories and how to overcome them. Moegling explains that stress stories are the narratives we create about predicting a future we don’t want, which can hold us back from reaching our full potential.
He distinguishes stress stories from scenario planning and discusses the detrimental effects they can have on personal and professional growth. Moegling then shares a simple framework to overcome stress stories, involving acknowledging and challenging their validity.
By separating the facts from the stories we tell ourselves, we can gain clarity and perspective. This episode highlights the importance of managing stress stories and offers practical strategies for overcoming them, ultimately helping listeners unlock their full potential.
Moegling shares a framework with two simple steps:
- Acknowledging the stress story
- Questioning its facts.
By separating facts from the narratives we create, we can gain clarity and take action toward our goals. This episode offers practical strategies and a new perspective on managing stress stories to help listeners unlock their full potential and find clarity in their lives. A must-listen for individuals struggling with stress and negative narratives.
Stephen Moegling – Welcome Misfit!
Stephen Moegling is the founder of Band of Misfits, a coaching and consulting company for businesses and leaders.
Stephen is a marketing leader who has generated over $700M in new revenue for his clients in his career. His consulting clients include Fortune 500, Fortune 50, and billion-dollar brands. Stephen also works with leaders to uplevel their professional impact. He coaches his clients to navigate life and career inflection points: so they advance on purpose with confidence and ease.
Stephen is also a speaker, author, and podcaster. Companies and events hire Stephen for a fresh perspective on how to grow a business in challenging times, and what we can learn from ancient wisdom teachers about becoming a better modern leader.
He is also a drummer in a Led Zeppelin tribute band, home chef, husband, and father to Ollie and Edith, two shaggy dogs who are small in size but big in heart.
Resources
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Follow Stephen Moegling on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Other episodes and articles you’ll enjoy:
Benjamin Hardy on Happiness, Reality, and Writing for Yourself (Rebroadcast) – BtR 104
A Life Well Lived: Lessons Learned From Hospice Chaplain Bryan Crum – BtR 312
Using Emotional Intelligence to Become a More Effective Leader – BtR 326
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/beyondtherut
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/beyondtherut
Twitter: https://twitter.com/beyondtherut
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrydugan/
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Transcript
Transcribed by Capsho.
00:00:00
Hey, Stephen, how are you doing today? I am wonderful. How are you doing today, Jerry? Doing well. Doing well.
00:00:05
I mean, you saw before we hit record, my coffee is waning. It’s afternoon. We’re getting close to nap time. But it’s okay because once we power through this, we’re going to have a great conversation anyway, guys. So don’t think I’m going to fall asleep on y’all.
00:00:20
We found a connection through our business approach, helping leaders get better at what they do and not just be better in their jobs, really finding that success where they’re flourishing in every aspect of their lives. And that’s what really gave me that. AHA. I need to have you on the excellent. Yeah, yeah.
00:00:38
Now, for folks who don’t know, I just found this out while I was doing my homework on Stephen. He’s kind of like a quadruple threat know, business strategist, leadership coach and consultant, podcaster musician. I didn’t find any videos. You doing any dancing or improv, but very talented individual. And you’re in a band called Spider.
00:01:02
Kelly, is that right? That’s right. Richmond’s best led zeppelin tribute band. There you go. Yeah.
00:01:11
I was listening to some of the videos you have on your channel and forgot I was doing homework for this interview, and I was like, oh, man, I was jamming out to some songs here. Now, you play drums, correct? Yeah. How long have you played those? Oh, I’m 48, 45 years.
00:01:32
Okay. Gosh, I sound like an old man. Jerry, geez, as soon as you had. The motor, 45 years. Oh, man.
00:01:41
So you were about three ish. Yeah. Give or yeah. The drums were the only thing that came easy to me. I picked up a pair.
00:01:48
My brother older brother is amazing drummer, and maybe I just was born with his gift or vice versa, but it was the only thing that ever came easy to me. Everything else that I’ve done in my life has been hard.
00:02:02
But I’m sure that helps you with pacing and just timing of things. I don’t know. I’m not making that up. I mean, I played tuba, so I was really into heavy metal myself. Oh, I love it.
00:02:13
Oh, timing is everything. Yeah. Pacing, listening for certain pauses and cues in a conversation or in a sales pitch. Yeah. Tempo, timing, groove.
00:02:22
Yeah. I have found a lot of application of learning how to play the drums and running companies and leading teams. Yeah. And for those who don’t know, percussion is kind of the informal leader of any musical group. Like, you’ve got your conductor at the front or the band leader, and they’re the ones waving their arms and giving cues and so on.
00:02:42
But everybody’s really following the beat of the drummer. They’re set the rhythm. I mean, if they want us to play slower, they will go slower. If they want us to play faster, they’ll go faster, and everybody else just hears it. And then without thinking, we just start following or we get confused and stop.
00:03:01
Exactly right. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah. Nobody comes to see the drummer, but if the drummer is not on point, everybody suffers.
00:03:10
Yeah, everybody. No pressure.
00:03:16
We just got to play a note that’s at the foundation of whatever chord we’re on, we’re good. Just the fact that you can blow into that horn is impressive enough. I don’t even know if you need to hit the right note sometimes. Oh, man. Now folks are like, what does this have to do with like, what does this have to do with leadership development and personal growth?
00:03:37
Sort of everything. Sort of not at all. Now, something that you and I talked about before we hit record, but we also had emails going back and forth, and that was this concept around the stress stories we tell ourselves. And I’m guessing that it’s stress stories that could hold us back or keep us stuck in a rut, in a sense, whether it’s in a pinch or in the long term, keeping us in a rut, tell us, what are stress stories? Yeah, well, first thank you for the question, Jerry.
00:04:08
Let me just take a step back and share first where I learned stress stories from, which was my Zen Master Frank. Not sure if Frank was actually technically a Zen master. I don’t know that he lived in a monastery most of his life, but like all Zen masters, frank really embodied a sense of wisdom about him. And when Zen Master Frank, when I first met him and he became my guide over ten years ago, I was telling him, Jerry, all these stories about how everybody was wronging me, and I was going through a really challenging time in my business and my partners and I in the business, we were at ODS with each other. I was going through a divorce.
00:04:48
And I told Zen Master Frank all know everything that was going on in my life and how miserable I was and how everybody was out to get me, and life was unfair. And he paused. As a good Zen master does, let the silence start doing the talking, and he know. Stephen, all I’m hearing is stories. Where are the facts?
00:05:08
And fast forward. Today, when I work with companies in terms of helping them with their growth, or when I work with executive leaders and helping them with their personal growth and impact, leaving their own marks, I find over and over again that we have these stress stories that we tell ourselves. In fact, there are dozens of stories, but two in particular. One stress story is when we’re predicting the future that we don’t want, it’s not going to work out. I’m going to fail.
00:05:35
I don’t have what it takes. This business isn’t going to succeed. Nobody’s going to buy my product. These are all stories about a future that hasn’t happened yet. But they feel real.
00:05:44
Yeah, because as humans and you know this. You’ve had storytellers on your podcast. You do this yourself, Jerry, you know that we’re wired for story. We know from neuroscience that the dopamine hits and we’re attached to the dopamine, and it’s such a feel good chemical, and stories elicit that. And so we get swept away by these stories caught up in our minds.
00:06:06
We go from the check from the client didn’t hit the mailbox today to I’ll be bankrupt within six months. And those stress stories can happen at the speed of light. The other stress story maybe we’ll get into today, if you’re interested, is, and I find this over and over again in business, and this is really where we create tension and anxiousness when we go into relationships or conversations or deals. It’s a story of reading people’s minds as if we all have ESP. You might say, Well, Stephen, I already know what the person’s going to say.
00:06:40
Well, do you? You’ve already read their mind. Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you ask? Why don’t you just assume you don’t know what the outcome is?
00:06:48
What the other person is thinking or feeling when you’re doing business with that person, when you’re making that prospecting call instead of telling yourself that story of, I’m reading the person’s mind. I know what their intentions are, what they think about me, what they’re going to do, what they’re not going to do. And in my opinion, Jerry, the economy is not what the biggest threat is to our success. Other people are not the biggest threat. Our own skills and abilities are not the biggest threat to our success.
00:07:15
It’s the inability to work and manage those stress stories because they debilitate us. They take us out of what I call our brilliant mind. And I love the fact that you’re putting the word stress in front of these stories, because these aren’t stories we typically will tell ourselves when things are operating at the desired norm. These are the stories that come out in the heat of the moment a flight gets canceled and you say something like, oh, man, this always happens to me. Or I know somebody that I worked with where before any training event that we hosted, this person would go through a series of things that could go wrong.
00:07:53
And even though we would put things in place to mitigate those risks, I would watch this person single handedly implement all the things that could go wrong himself to cause the thing to derail so that he would have to swoop in and save the day. And I’m looking at the guy like, you just made this thing fail because you spoke it into existence when it wasn’t happening. You made it happen. And it just blows my mind, the stories that create the future that hasn’t happened or the future we’re afraid of happening, in a sense. And it blows my mind that these are the things that come up under stress, not when things are going smoothly.
00:08:35
Is that exactly yeah. No, I love those stories and those great case study examples. And I think oftentimes what we find if we really look closely at ourselves and our lives and really want to explore our blind spots, we’ll find that we’re just creating self fulfilling prophecies over and over again. I don’t want this thing to happen. And then it happens.
00:08:54
Well, what did I do to contribute to that thing? Right. Yeah. And I just want to acknowledge the listener who’s saying to himself or herself right now, well, Stephen, Jerry, you don’t know my life. You don’t know how smart I am.
00:09:08
Of course I can sort of predict the future because I have some basis for it. But I would say that there’s a difference between storytelling and scenario planning. Right. We want to be good at scenario planning, but scenario planning isn’t involving emotional stories that we get swept away by. It’s by using logic and insight and rationality and data points.
00:09:30
Yes. Yeah. Because scenario planning, you’re looking at the facts or potential facts. What could go wrong with this procedure? Somebody might forget I I’m know.
00:09:39
Don’t thinking military now. Somebody might forget the maps. Exactly. Great. So what’s our backup?
00:09:45
Well, Jerry gets to carry the extra guys. You know what if the batteries in the GPS device run out? We carry extra batteries. And so these are contingencies that fulfill the things that could realistically happen. But it’s not like, oh, the GPS could die.
00:10:03
Oh, that’s it. We’re not even going on this mission. We could all die. Everything’s ruined. Yeah.
00:10:08
This always happens to me. Why even bother getting out of bed tomorrow? Oh, yeah. And my extended family was like that when I was growing up. Just, what’s the point of going to school and getting a degree?
00:10:19
We’re just going to get fired from our job anyway.
00:10:25
Are you only allowed to have one? Holy cow. Yeah. That was when I was 14, being exposed to that kind of thinking. I just thought, wow, that is sad to think that’s what we have to look forward to.
00:10:36
Therefore don’t even try. And you just said the million dollar thing. We don’t even try. And I think what I find over and over again as I work with leaders, we have these stress stories about predicting the future we don’t want, or what people think about us. Right.
00:10:54
Reading minds and these stories because they cause so much stress. And as humans, we run from pain and run toward pleasure. I mean, it’s just the basic human nature law I find over and over again, Jerry, that the real sad part about these stress stories is that we just don’t try. We don’t even go there. We don’t even have hopes and dreams.
00:11:16
We don’t even really think about exactly what we want in life because it would mean potentially dealing with these stress stories. And I think that’s the biggest challenge. That’s the saddest part of it all. Wow. Yeah.
00:11:32
I heard somebody tell me the other day that people don’t typically fear change, they fear being changed. And what said resonates, that, like, just a little bit louder in my head, like, wow, that is huge. Now, if somebody wants to they’ve gone through an event, they realize they’ve probably self talked themselves into failure or self sabotage. How do we, in a way, go through a process? In a way, is there a process we can go through to identify and overcome these stress stories?
00:12:05
Yeah, I’d love to share. It’s very simple, and it was first taught to me by Zen Master Frank over a decade ago. I do it all the time, and I teach this to my clients now. It’s a wonderful weapon to have, and it’s a wonderful tool and a framework. And it’s just two parts to what I call the stress story framework.
00:12:23
Just two parts. The first is what has to happen, of course, is that you begin to tell yourself a stress story, predicting the future you don’t want, reading people’s minds and feeling that inner chaos of rejection, shame, defensiveness, et cetera. First step is to unhook yourself from the story. And you just ask yourself three basic questions, yes or no’s for the first two, and then an open and a question for the final. And the first question that you ask yourself for unhooking yourself is simply yes or no.
00:12:58
Is this a story? Am I telling myself the story? Am I predicting the future I don’t want? And we know it’s a story because the future hasn’t happened yet. We can’t predict the future.
00:13:12
You may say to yourself, well, okay, I’ll say yes, it’s a story, but it’s still not helping. I’m still stressed. Fair enough. Second question, yes or no, is this story helpful to you? Yes or no, is this story helpful?
00:13:26
And I would invite because I bring a lot of mindfulness based practices into the work that I do with my clients, I would invite people to be to the best of their ability when they’re experiencing the stress, just to settle into themselves and just inquire. Ask your brilliant mind these questions, not the fear based mind that currently has you captivated. Is this story helpful? Yes or no? Because I find over and over again, Jerry, that every story has a grain of truth, right?
00:13:54
We’re not delusional people. There’s some truth to all of this. So you have to ask yourself, is this story helpful? And 99.99% of the time, the answer is no, it’s not helpful. I’m stressed, I feel tight, constricted.
00:14:11
I can’t think of expansively. It’s not helpful. And then the final question to unhook yourself is simply to say and ask yourself, what is true here? What is true? What is true?
00:14:25
Just get the facts on the table. That’s all you can pay attention to. What are the facts? Right? Now, what do I know to be true?
00:14:33
Now, that process of asking those three questions begins to unhook you, to begin to calm your mind, to move you from that amygdala know, the old primitive brain that’s very emotional and very fear and fight and flight and freeze. And then you start to move into your mind starts to move into thinking from the executive function. Now, pointing to my forehead to show Jerry here, that’s typically where you would find the executive function of the brain. And that’s where your logic and your reasoning and your strategic thinking skills come into play. And that’s where I call your brilliant mind.
00:15:06
That’s where you really want to live most of the time. And when you’re in that space, you are going to ask yourself just another few questions. It’s all about casting vision, right? So I know we’re talking to leaders, we’re talking to entrepreneurs, we’re talking to people who want to cast a vision for their lives and to achieve and succeed and thrive and flourish. So the last few questions to ask yourself, casting vision, there’s just two.
00:15:30
What’s my objective and what’s my best path forward? What’s my objective? What’s my goal here? You might say, Well, Stephen, I already know my goal, blah, blah, blah. Well, okay, but you were just living in a stress story, so you weren’t thinking rationally.
00:15:46
You were being swept away by emotion and fantasy and what the stories do to our minds. So get back to what is my goal here? What’s my objective? What do I really want? Do I want to fight?
00:15:57
Do I want to be defensive or do I want to succeed? Do I want to continue going? And then, what’s my best path forward? So I write long term business growth plans for my clients as part of the consulting. And I also help my clients with kind of designing their own playbooks.
00:16:13
And I always say, forget about the five year tent. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You know, what the tactics are going to be. But right now, in this moment, what’s my best path forward? What’s the next best thing to do?
00:16:26
And then move from that place. And that’s going to get you so much more of what you want versus what you don’t want when you’re living in a stress story. Man, I probably could have used this interview when we originally scheduled it. Yeah, a while back. I’m blaming you.
00:16:45
No, I’m not. But seriously, though, I found myself going through a stress story. I didn’t realize it was a stress story at the time, but hearing you unpack this, I’m like, holy moly, that was a stress story. And for those who know my story, I mean, I left my corporate job about six or seven months from us recording this. We’ve been living off of savings, started my own business, launched a book, checking boxes off of my bucket list.
00:17:12
And then I’d say, about a month or two ago. I just had not a panic attack, but I had this moment of, oh, no, we’re going to run out of savings. I’m going to have to give up this dream. I’m going to have to go get a job. And my wife just shy of doing I don’t know if you ever saw the movie Airplane where they’re shaking the passenger who’s freaking out and they’re smacking.
00:17:32
Her, and there’s a line of people ready to help. Yes, they’re done with her, and they just want to snap her out of it. And metaphorically, my wife was doing that to me, and she’s the one that usually worries about finances and income rolling in on a regular basis. And so for her to say, well, why are you thinking this way? And I was like, probably because I haven’t generated any revenue in X number of months.
00:17:58
Okay, well, why is that? Because we don’t have any paying customers. Okay, why is that happening? She was unpacking for me. It was almost like she paid attention to all my coaching skills.
00:18:07
And in the end, I was like, because I’m worried people aren’t going to like what I have to offer. And she’s like, Where is that coming from? Who have you talked to about what you have to offer? And I was like, nobody. She’s like, Wait, so you’ve talked to nobody about what you have to offer, and you’re freaking out because there’s nobody wanting to pay you for what you have to offer, rather than just face the facts?
00:18:33
I got zero customers because I’ve talked to zero prospects. That was the fact. I was freaking out in terms of nobody’s going to like me. Nobody’s going to find value in what I have to offer. And Olivia just was like, why don’t you try talking to some prospects first, then see what they say?
00:18:50
Don’t you have a business coach around this? I was like, I do. Well, what does she say? Sounded a lot like what you just told me. She’s like, Well, I heard it from you.
00:19:00
My wife for free, and I’m paying this business coach. Exactly. Which kind of annoyed my wife a little bit. But I told her, you know me, I got to hear things in stereo. And then I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s right.
00:19:13
Especially if it’s something in my own head. I’ve got to hear it from the outside. Well, if I can just share back, thank you for sharing. That two things. One is part of what you experience and what I experience.
00:19:26
And all of us experience in that moment is we all know now that the brain has multiple biases. Biases aren’t necessarily bad things, sort of. It’s just shortcuts to how our minds are wired to think. And one of the biases that you were tapping into was the certainty bias. Our brains need certainty.
00:19:48
So your version of certainty at the moment was, I’ll never get paying clients because it satisfied something in the mind’s need for certainty. This just happens to be a certainty that you would not want. And also, if I can also relate back to you. So you went out on your own six, seven months ago, as did I, maybe the same day. Who knows?
00:20:12
We’ll have to trade notes afterwards. And I had decided when I left my last employer, I am never working for anybody ever again. I’m going to work for myself. I’m going to launch Band of Misfits and I do this work and I teach people all these things. But Jerry, those stress stories, predicting the future, reading minds every day, I had to do my own framework because the mind has tactical advantage over us.
00:20:40
Like David Goggins would say, it knows our weak points. It knows what buttons to press. And my buttons were pressed multiple times in my thinking of. I think it’s Susan Scott who said know, most conversations happen within ourselves and sometimes we include other people. And then goes on to say that when we’re in our own heads we have a tendency to go to the dark side with our thoughts as opposed to thinking more positive potential outcomes.
00:21:11
You said often think go to the negative. I would say almost 100% of the time go to the negative. Yeah. Anytime you haven’t had a conversation with somebody and you’re already thinking in your head, oh, yeah, I’m going to say this so and so is going to be all full of themselves and say that. And you have a full on conversation in your head with somebody else and that somebody else wasn’t even there.
00:21:34
And I think you kind of said something similar at the beginning of our conversation and I was like, yeah, reading. Minds, we’d love to do it and. None of us are good at it. Oh, man, I love that. You’ve walked us through this process of about five questions.
00:21:53
Three yes or no’s. Actually, two yes or no’s and then three what questions? What is true here? What are the facts? Let’s separate the facts from the story that we’re telling ourselves and what is the thing we really want to achieve and what is the best path forward so we get that future focus going back in, reengaging that forward momentum.
00:22:13
I love that. I don’t think I have a question following that. I was just like, yeah, that’s cool, but I don’t want to end there because we’re only like 20 minutes into our conversation. Well, if I could just add one. There’s actually technically a next step to this framework.
00:22:26
Perfect. There we go. Yeah. Well, it’s very short and sweet, but do it again and again and again and again. So you realize you’re having the stress story.
00:22:36
You unhook yourself and you cast vision with those questions, and then you take action. And then the next time the story happens again, which could be 20 seconds from now you repeat the process. Yes. Bingo. It’s not a one and done.
00:22:52
And that makes sense because we don’t develop these stories in one moment. These have been no. And depending on where your listeners are in their journeys, what’s going on in their lives right now, I think we have what I would call two types of stresses that I think about. So we have the outer stress of what’s happening to us. That creates the stress.
00:23:14
We get the job layoff, the customers aren’t coming in. The client said that they’d pay their bill. And I just went to the mailbox and check isn’t there again and I need the money. So these outer stresses hit us all the time. There’s often not so much that we can do about it because bad luck happens to us all.
00:23:34
But then what we’re talking about here, Jerry, is addressing what’s happening to us, and that’s the inner stress. So we have the outer stress that we can’t control very well. Inner stress. We actually have a lot more tools and capabilities than most of us even realize. And that’s where the stress story framework comes from.
00:23:53
Because anytime we want something great in life, anytime we close our eyes and envision our desired future state, what does life look like in the near future? What do I want? I call it the beautiful day. What’s your beautiful day look like? How does it feel morning, noon, night?
00:24:09
Anytime we begin to have that and cast that vision, we’re just simply inviting the inner stress because it means we’re going to take action, we’re going to make the leave. So to the extent that we can become more self aware of our thinking, which scientists would call metacognition, thinking about your thinking, being able to be that observer, which is where the mindfulness tradition is born, to be able to be able to pay attention to your thoughts and see them and not necessarily participate with them. And the last thing I’ll mention here and I’ll turn back to you is when you do the framework, if you decide to, then always write your responses because the mind is already in control. So if you just live in your mind and say yes, no, blah, blah, blah, the mind will sweep you up in another stress story. But if you detach yourself by just handwriting your answers, you’ll find that you’re able to unhook yourself and cast that vision in a much more beautiful way.
00:25:05
Yeah, and I love the idea of writing it out or typing it out, making it physical, tangible. Because now we’ve taken an idea and we’ve created a thing with it. If it’s just an index card, that reminds me. If it’s a whiteboard writing, I don’t know, a sculpture, if anybody’s ever actually sculpted something like that. But if you did, let me know.
00:25:25
Put a picture in the show notes. But yeah, you take that idea that is already influencing your behavior and your outcomes. But if you make this declaration of, this is the direction I want to go in, and you write it out, I think that’s like a first step in creating it and making it real and tangible. Yes. And sometimes we just need to remind ourselves what the hell we want in life.
00:25:50
We get so swept away by the stresses of the day that we almost forget, well, what’s my path? What’s my mission? What am I really here to do? What’s my purpose? What’s my spirit?
00:26:00
Sometimes I think we get so attached in a very understandable way to the outcome. But as that saying goes, the map is not the territory. Sometimes the outcome that you’re looking for in the moment isn’t exactly ultimately your true objective. It might just be a strategy or a tactic, and you’re on your way to something. Okay.
00:26:24
And are we often aware of that, or is that something that we may need to dig in deeper on for ourselves? What’s funny, I just did the version of what we’re talking about today for a group of about 300 people on Thursday, and I talked about objectives, and these are all people in the business community, but not all are deep strategists like me. Air quotes.
00:26:48
Actually, I was really overjoyed because so many people had questions about, well, what’s a good objective? Right? I mean, what’s a good goal? And I don’t know what your experience is, Jerry, but I just find with a lot of the goal setting curriculum out there, it’s like you’re so racing to fill out this piece of paper with my five goals and ten X yourself and all this stuff that sometimes we don’t think, was this even the right goal? Am I even wrong?
00:27:14
The right path? Yeah. And I know, as we were catching up before we started, you acknowledged on my website, welcomemisfit.com. For my coaches and consulting agreements. I always think about, I want you to succeed, and I want you to feel that sense of fulfillment.
00:27:31
Like, one without the other doesn’t work for me. And we often trade one version of success for a feeling like I’m just stressed and drained all the time. And I don’t think that’s true success. I think you need to have that bridge, knowing what you want, what is your objective, what’s your goal, really getting clear on that and letting that kind of move you forward instead of the stress story. I love that you bring that up.
00:27:57
It’s that ROI plus that personal fulfillment. I want to succeed in my career, but I also want to succeed in life and find enjoyment, and that what I did was worthwhile. And that’s a tough question for folks to ask. Well, it’s a tough question because most people don’t even know that they can ask the question. We’re swimming in a culture that is all about the grind, the hustle, the bling, and so many of us have grown.
00:28:23
Up in families who with well meaning parents. Jerry, they just wanted you to be a doctor. You make a good living being a doctor, right? Yeah. Not a tuba player.
00:28:35
It’s like, come on. And it’s like we have to at any age I mean, I was 48 when I woke up to the fact that I’m not happy doing what I’ve been doing, and I was very successful doing it. So at any age, we can stop and say, well, what do I really want here? And that’s one of the reasons why I named my company Band of Misfits, because I’ve studied people who are icons and outliers for the last 20 years. They’ve changed culture, business lives, communities, the world, 201.
00:29:06
They’re all misfits. They didn’t fit in. They stood out. Everybody was over here thinking one thing, and they went over here and did something else. And so in our own ways, we should all rise to become our own version of a misfit, to be who we really are and define that as we want.
00:29:25
And that’s where happiness comes from. That’s the birthplace of a life well lived. Yeah, because we’re looking for that piece of life that we can call our own for whatever reason. It’s what is that thing that goes against the grain that we really want to do? And I love the idea of Band of misfits.
00:29:45
And your website is so welcoming. It says, welcomemisfit.com. And that is the website, right? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
00:29:52
Because a lot of times misfits don’t fit in. So they need to know they’re welcome when they come say hello. Nice. And just a quick postscript to your story of going back to connecting the stress story framework. We might wake up one day and realize we’re not happy.
00:30:07
We’re successful in multitudes of ways, but not feeling the inner fulfillment. And then we might say to ourselves, well, I think I want to make a change. And the moment you realize you want to make a change, just be ready for the stress stories to appear. Predicting the future. You don’t want, I’m going to have to give everything up in order to be happy.
00:30:27
I’m going to have to trade money for satisfaction, fulfillment. That’s a story. It’s a stress story. Not necessarily. Not at all.
00:30:36
In fact, the people that I study, the misfit icons that I document as I’m working on my work, they didn’t trade anything. I mean, they did hard work, certainly they sacrificed. But just know that if that’s where you are, if you’re kind of following Jerry’s journey, it’s like, hey, just because you want to make a change doesn’t mean that the predicting the future stress story has to be your story. I love that. Now, if folks are like, yes, I want to be a misfit, I want to join this band of misfits.
00:31:09
I mean, you already know the website, guys. Welcomemisfit.com. What can folks expect when they go there? What’s that journey like to work with you? Well, if you’re coming in as a company, it’s because you want to grow.
00:31:21
Or if you’re coming in as an individual, it’s because you want to grow. We just do it in a couple of different ways. And usually when I consult with companies, it is about finding their misfit identity. How are they going to stand out in the marketplace and seize those opportunities that the competition has missed or overlooked or undervalued? And from a coaching standpoint, it’s all very individualized.
00:31:41
But at the end of the day, client says, I am here wherever here is, and I want to be there wherever there is. And then we develop the playbook, and I help make the leap together with that client. So, yeah, you can learn [email protected]. And can I plug my podcast, too? I think your show and mine are very similar in terms of what we desire to help people with.
00:32:04
So I host a podcast called The Business of Being, which is about the inner work of success. And as of this recording, in early May, we have just launched season two. And the entire theme for this season is Making The Leap. All the fun things about Making the Leap. All right, I’m subscribing right now.
00:32:22
I listened to the episode where you talk about lessons learned from Marvin Gaye, and I was like, that is. Yeah, that’s a fun story to tell. Now, before we go, any final words of wisdom for everybody listening in? Well, that presupposes that I shared wisdom, so I don’t know. I’d say you did well.
00:32:46
I would just say the stress Story framework. It’s so simple. Just two little blocks. Unhook yourself, cast vision, a few simple questions. Go back through, rewind and listen and write it out for yourself.
00:33:01
Your stressed out mind will tell you you don’t need to do the framework it doesn’t want you to unhook, but you owe it to yourself. Try the framework. See what happens for the next seven days. And if you don’t feel calmer, more relaxed and feel like you’ve got some brilliant thoughts that are going to take you to the next level. Bye.
00:33:20
Awesome. Stephen, it was great to have you on here, and I look forward to staying in touch. Same here. Thank you, Jerry.
