Ep #46: Becoming a Self-Leader in Your Life and Practice with Jason Goldberg

Welcome to Practicing with the Masters for dentists with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. Allison believes that there are four pillars for a successful, fulfilling dental practice: clear leadership, sound business principles, well-developed communication skills, and clinical excellence. Allison enjoys helping dentists and teams excel in all of these areas. Each episode she brings you an inspiring conversation with another leading expert. If you desire to learn and grow and in the process take your practice to the next level, then this is the show for you. Now, here’s your host, Dr. Allison Watts.

Allison:        Welcome to Practicing with the Masters podcast. I’m your host, Allison Watts, and I’m dedicated to bringing you masters in the field of dentistry, leadership, and practice management to help you have a more fulfilling and successful practice and life.

Jason Goldberg, I’ve heard your story and now I get to tell it. I don’t even want to call you a geek but I get it. So Jason Goldberg is a geek turned entrepreneur, turned international transformational speaker, trainer, and coach. JG has worked with everyone from pro surfers to CEOs. He’s helped transform countless small businesses.

He’s worked with organizations such as NASA, the Society of Women Engineers, Wyndham Vacation Ownership, Northrop Grumman—I may not have said that right—National Association for Entrepreneurs, to overcome challenges and develop opportunities through the power of humor and simplicity in the messages he shares.

As the founder of MEometry.com, JG delivers hilarious and empowering talks and training and has coached hundreds of aspiring and inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, and groups to create the mindset and the skillset to become powerful self-leaders, be more prosperous, have more fun, and create a bigger impact in the world.

Some of JG’s other fun and creative projects include hosting the Masters Circle coach training program, as well as creating the Serve Your Way to Wealth Selling By Serving training intensive for service and purpose-based entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants. That’s a mouthful. [Laughter]

Jason:         Yeah, it is.

Allison:        JG also cohosts the hilarious and transformational Not-So-Serious Life show, with the godfather of life coaching and prolific author Steve Chandler, whom I love and I enjoy that very much, listening to you guys there. Jason’s book Prison Break: How to Master the Art of Self-Leadership and Experience True Freedom is due to be released in the spring of 2016. I’m very much looking forward to that.

I actually, Jason, when I first found out about you, and saw you on, I think it was Brian Johnson’s thing, the thing with the Zen Buddhist or—yeah.

Jason:         Yeah.

Allison:        I went and looked for your book. I was going to buy it. So I’m ready for it to come out.

Jason:         Me too.

Allison:        I’m so excited to have you here because I really do enjoy your wisdom and your humor and the blend of the two. So I’m thrilled to learn from you and to laugh with you. Your energy is contagious.

Jason:         Absolutely. I’m honored. Thank you, I really am honored. I’m honored to be here. You’re awesome. The interactions that we’ve had, we’re right on the same wavelength as far as energy and wisdom and things that we love and things that drive us and things we think are powerful and things that we know can change our own lives.

So it’s great to be here with somebody that’s like-minded and a lot of fun at the same time. I know that we’re going to have fun before I even know exactly what’s going to happen. Just because that’s kind of who you are, at least to me. I’m really excited to be here with you.

Allison:        Oh, thanks. Cool. I feel the same way.

I love this concept of self-leadership and I actually was kind of jealous that, I was like, man, I kind of wanted to talk about this in dentistry too. I used to say, “First you’ve got to lead yourself, then you lead your team, then you lead your patient.” I’m excited that somebody’s grabbed it and made it a thing. Like it’s a conversation we can talk about.

So I don’t know where you want to start but I just want to throw open a big open-ended question and have you talk about what self-leadership means to you. What do you see people need to hear? Or what do you enjoy talking about when you go out? What do you think people need to hear?

This is specifically usually dental people. They’re not always all dental people, but I mean just life in general. We all have challenges with, gosh, I want to know what you see out there as the challenges and what you think would be the most helpful thing for us to talk about.

Jason:         Yeah. I love it. It’s one of those things where to me at least, self-leadership is like you said, leading yourself first. It really doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. It actually doesn’t even matter if you’re looking at doing it in your professional world. It has just as many implications and potential opportunities using it in your personal life, your personal relationships, with your kids, with your significant others, with your friends, with strangers. There’s just so much opportunity for being a self-leader and choosing to be a self-leader.

For me, it’s kind of necessity. It came out of me essentially being what I call a prisoner the first 30 years of my life. That’s kind of my distinction is that in any given moment, we have a choice to either show up as a prisoner of circumstance, where we are blaming or looking for ways to blame, and making everything very permanent like I used to do.

Saying, “That’s just the way I am,” when I would get really super angry. I would throw things when I got mad. Or I would chase people if they cut me off in traffic. Just all of this really powerless, weak, victim-y, prisoner-type living, type perception of the world.

I have a choice in every moment to either respond that way, or to respond as a self-leader. Responding as a self-leader, it’s about optimism and there’s a big misconception about optimism. That optimism means rainbows and butterflies and living a delusional life, and tricking yourself with affirmations.

In my mind, it has nothing to do with that. Self-leadership is really about the truth. It’s about questioning the things that come up initially. The things that you maybe have been programmed to react to in the world. And challenging how true those things are for you. How true they really are. And shifting into a place of a possibility-based thinking.

So instead of being this prisoner who’s always in reaction mode, always trying to change people, places, and situations outside of you. You recognize that you have full control over one thing and it’s really your response and your perspective and how you choose to, or choose not to, lead yourself at any given moment.

That kind of shift, moment by moment, is the work that I’ve been doing for the past six years. It’s work that continues. Like I said, it’s a moment by moment thing. I have to decide at every moment, choose whether I’m going to see the world and behave in the world as if I’m a prisoner of circumstance. Or if I’m going to be a more empowered self-leader.

Allison:        Cool. What helped you make that shift? How did you discover that, and figure out what you needed to change? Because really you were a prisoner to your beliefs, right?

Jason:         Absolutely. I was a prisoner to my thoughts, my beliefs, my stories, and it’s the only thing that any of us are ever a prisoner to. My best friend in the world, a guy named Sean Stephenson, he’s a world-renowned speaker. He spoke at a TEDx in a prison.

I remember him saying in his TEDx talk in a prison to the prisoners that were in the prison, that he knows people who are outside of prison who were more prisoners than the people who were inside that facility. That’s so true. And that was really the story of my life.

I grew up that way, being a prisoner is not something that you’re born with. Just like being a self-leader is not something that you’re born with. It is something that’s learned, it’s a condition. It’s a choice. For me, I was raised in a household where the prisoner way of being was prevalent. So just like if you’re raised in a family that speaks nothing but French, when you leave the house and go out into the world, you speak French.

There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re not stupid, you’re not wrong, you’re not a bad person. You were just never exposed to another kind of language or another way to communicate in the world. So for me I was raised speaking French. Which, that sounds wrong, it sounds like I’m saying French people are prisoners, which I’m not saying.

But I was raised with this kind of prisoner mentality, things happen to us. Saying things like, “Why is this happening to me?” and “When will I get a break?” These are very very common things to say in my household, so I said them as well. It was really a matter of seeing at some point that reacting as if you’re a prisoner, or reacting as if you’re a self-leader, this is not a right or wrong conversation.

This is not a conversation about ethics or morals or whether you’re good or bad or ambitious. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff. This is simply a case of less effective versus more effective. When I was acting as a prisoner all these years, and still being really successful–that’s why it was difficult because I don’t have this transformation story where I was destitute and living paycheck to paycheck and almost homeless and the bank repossessing my car and my house and everything. Then I had this epiphany and decided to become a leader.

I was doing pretty well. I was making six figures in my mid-20s. I had gotten into IT really early and I was the director of engineering and operations for a tech firm in my mid-20s. So I was doing pretty well. At the same time, at the most successful time in my life professionally, was also the time in my life that I was the closest to death, and I mean that literally, that I’ve ever been in my adult life. It’s because I was at that point 332 pounds.

I’m six feet tall, but 332 pounds, 35 percent body fat, morbidly obese, dying a slow death, is a very real thing. No matter what I did, I had plenty of excuses as to why I’d gotten that way. But none of the things that I would say caused me to be that way, had anything to do with personal responsibility. It was always something outside of me. I recognized, I had a big wake-up call actually, that I’m happy to share with you. Do you want me to—can I tell quick story real quick about how that happened?

Allison:        Yeah, I would love—that’s what I’m curious about. What had you, the light goes on and you’re going all of a sudden, “Man, I’ve got to take responsibility for some of this.” Yeah.

Jason:         Yeah. Absolutely. So, thank you. There happened to be one day where I was in my office. This is in 2009. I don’t know what time of year it was in 2009 because it’s Florida, and like in Texas, there are two seasons. It’s hot and hot as hell. So I’m not exactly sure what time of year it was. But it was a Wednesday, and I know it was a Wednesday because Wednesday is staff meeting day. Staff meeting day was also doughnut day.

So I had gone in there and double-fisted, grabbed my two doughnuts, and went back to my big, beautiful office with my big wall of windows and my huge, cushy leather chair, and pulled up to my big high-definition monitors and I did what anybody in a leadership position does when they have a day full of projects. I started surfing the internet.

After a little while, I made it over to Amazon, and I was looking to buy some socks, because I’m into fun, funky socks, which you’ve probably seen on Facebook before. I find some socks that I liked, they were really cool, and I go to buy them and my credit card gets declined. It’s not a huge deal, in and of itself. So I put my credit card number back in. And again, I hit submit, and it says, declined. And it says call your bank for further assistance.

At this point, I responded the way I responded anytime something didn’t go my way, is I flew off the handle. I just had so much rage in me at this point in my life, that I was able to hide and mask as I needed to to be successful in my career. But it was really eating me up inside, on top of being so heavy at over 330 lbs. So I snatch up my cellphone and I storm out into the lobby of the office building where my company was. And I called my bank and I smashed the zero button 50 times to get a live person to get through the stupid automated system.

I finally get the bank representative, this guy Steven. I say to Steven, “What’s going on? Why is my card being declined?” I know there’s plenty of money in the bank. I know I’m making good money. This is my debit card, so I know there’s money in the bank, what’s going on? He said that there were some potentially fraudulent activity on the card so they had deactivated it, so they could investigate the charges.

I said, “Okay,” so now I’m getting really pissed off because again, I’m looking for somebody to blame. Why is this happening to me? Why can’t I get a break? That whole prisoner language. And I said, “Well what were the fraudulent charges? What did they buy with my money?”

While I’m expecting him to tell me about some Waldorf Suites or bottles of Cristal at a swanky New York nightclub, what he told me was, that there had been four fast-food transactions the day before. All in one day, across Orlando, and they assumed somebody had stolen my card and was testing it to see if it would still work. And of course, it wasn’t fraudulent activity, it was me.

Allison:        Right.

Jason:         I had eaten at all those places. So it took a billion-dollar bank to step in and cut me off and say, “Dude, you’re done. You have got a problem. You’re out of control.” As much as I tried to find a way to blame other people and other circumstances in that moment, it was the first time ever that I finally listened to this wake-up call from the universe that I’d gotten I’m sure so many times in my life. But I finally paid attention to it.

I said, “The thing missing in my life is not better genetics or more home-cooked meals or better temperature so I can go outside so I can be outside and exercise. It’s self-leadership. It’s personal responsibility.” So that was kind of the big turning point for me to say, “Okay, I need to explore if there’s a more effective way to be in the world. Because what I’m doing now is not working.”

Allison:        Wow, cool. Awesome. Thank God, right?

Jason:         Yeah. It was a gift.

Allison:        Yeah. So then what happened? It’s been a process, obviously. So you go from now you’re, now what? On a day-to-day basis, how does that awareness come? What do you do to work on this? How can we see ourselves, is what I’m trying to ask, I guess. If we’re in this place and I guess what I would call it is unconscious that we might be doing this.

How do we begin to see ourselves and how do we begin to do this self-leadership thing? I feel like I’m doing that, but I’m just asking that from the standpoint—I  think I’m still blind to somethings that I may be relinquishing responsibility for.

Jason:         Sure, absolutely. Here’s the thing, is that so many people, and I see this all the time, especially in my coaching. I see it when people ask questions at talks about self-leadership, and this whole thing comes up a lot. People like to try to make their feelings wrong. They say, “Oh, I’m pissed off that I’m not more of a self-leader. Or I’m mad that I’m not more of a self-leader more often. How can you be a self-leader 100% of the time?”

That’s just one of those questions I can’t answer because I haven’t figured out how to be a self-leader 100% of the time because I’m human, and it is a moment by moment decision, for better or for worse. So if I give it some prisoner tendencies in this moment, that’s done. And me being a self-leader is saying in the next moment, I can choose how I respond. I don’t have to be a prisoner to the past moment where I was acting a different way.

The reason I bring that up is because our feelings, not only are they never wrong, we don’t have to make them wrong, we don’t have to beat ourselves up for no matter how long we feel like we’ve been a prisoner. They’re also the most sophisticated and at the same time simple early detection, early warning guidance system that we have.

I don’t know that I necessarily believe that anybody is unconscious to the fact they’re being a prisoner because you’ll know by how you feel whether you’re being a prisoner or a self-leader. Nobody sees the world as a prisoner and behaves as a prisoner and speaks as a prisoner and makes excuses and blames other people and feels really really good about it. It just doesn’t work that way.

So your feelings, people talk a lot about cause and effect. I believe that in order to get from prisoner to self-leader, it’s really effect and cause. You can look at the effect, you can look at how you feel right now, and work backwards and say, “Okay. Here’s what I’m feeling right now. This is not serving me. This is not making me feel the way I want to feel. This is not having me show up the way I want to show up. This is not helping me be as successful in my career or in my relationships as I’d like to be.”

So the question in that moment is, what would be a more productive interpretation of what’s going on right now? What is it that I can change in my thinking, because the thinking is what is going to cause all your beliefs and all of your feelings and the way you experience the world. It’s strictly based off of your thoughts. If your feelings are telling you, “I don’t feel good, this doesn’t feel empowering, this feels heavy, this feels like it’s not serving me.” Well, good, that’s no more significant than the gas light in your car coming on letting you know that you need gas.

You would never yell at your car. Or think your car is a loser. Or think your car is hopeless because it’s running out of gas. “You stupid car, you should have gotten gas on your own. Why do you need more? I put gas in you a week ago. What’s wrong with you?” We would never do that. But we beat ourselves up.

So if we look at our feelings as just being like that gas light that just says, “Hey, just so you know, I think something may be off. Let’s slow this down and see what we’re thinking right now that’s causing us to feel this way. And see what other thoughts we can create that would serve us instead.” Does that make sense?

Allison:        Totally, totally. When we’re in the what I’m calling unconscious, we’re not truly unconscious, but we might be numbing ourselves, or we’re making our feelings wrong, or we’re in some kind of denial and just not yeah. I get it. You knew you weren’t, it wasn’t working what you were doing. You weren’t happy. Then you have the wake-up call, and then you got it. Like, okay, I can start. Yeah, I get it. It does take a certain level of awareness.

Jason:         Yeah, it does.

Allison:        Yeah. If you haven’t been paying attention to your feelings and you haven’t been seeing them that way, then to become aware of your feelings and become aware of your thinking then, that process. It does take a certain about of awareness.

Jason:         Yeah, it really does. And the thing too is that the first step in personal development that I took is one that I think most people try to take is, they say, “Okay, “ they get the first level of awareness. Something is not working, right? “This is not how I want to be feeling. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way I feel. I don’t like my relationships. I don’t like my career.” Whatever it is that just doesn’t feel right.

They think, and by they I mean also, they think that the answer is to change or manipulate or modify something outside of them.

Allison:        Exactly, yeah.

Jason:         So if we go out into the world, and that’s all we’re trying—and that’s what I did. When I started, it was, “Okay, how can I get a different job, because a different job will lower my stress level and then everything else will change. If I just lose the physical weight, then I’ll be thinner and I’ll feel better about myself and then everything will change.” But the fact was, that didn’t happen.

I lost 130 pounds and yeah, a lot of things got better and I felt a lot better about myself. But at the same time, what I realized was it wasn’t just the physical weight that I was carrying around. There could be people on this call right now that have five percent body fat. They say, “I don’t know what this guy is talking about I can’t relate because I was never overweight.”

Well, the real debilitating weight I was carrying around had nothing to do with pounds on the scale. It was this other kind of weight. This mental weight, this emotional weight, this spiritual weight. The anger, the hopelessness, the helplessness, the sadness, this prisoner thinking. This is actually the weight that was really holding me down.

On top of that, it wasn’t just a feeling. It wasn’t just some anecdotal, get in touch with your inner child and everything will be okay. The fact that I was carrying around this weight was actually causing me to wait to do the things I wanted to do. W-A-I-T. I was waiting to do and become all the things that I wanted to do and become in the world because I was carrying around all this weight.

So I waited to leave my corporate job because I was so tied to my identity and my purpose being that title. And I waited to bring my silliness and my goofiness into my coaching and speaking practice because I was so worried I’d look unprofessional. Waiting just to do all these things in my life because I carried around this weight.

The question I would ask everybody that’s listening here is, to get in touch with where you may be holding on to some kind of weight. And why or how that’s causing you to wait to do something that you really desire to do in the world and that you just think isn’t possible. Getting rid of that weight is what is going to allow you to stop waiting to do those things.

Allison:        I’m listening to you and I’m trying to relate this to something in my own life. I’m thinking, in my life the weight, W-E-I-G-H-T, might look like a belief, like I’m not good enough, or I don’t want to look stupid. Or I can’t because of blah blah, right? Is that what you’re talking about? Is there a way…?

Jason:         Absolutely. It is that story. Yeah, you nailed it. And there’s so many people that carry that kind of stuff around with them. The thing is too, you got to know, Allison, and anybody else listening to this, this is not me saying, “I’ve figured it out, I’m done.” I still have weight that creeps on to me. New weight. Just like if you’re on a diet all year and Christmas comes around and you splurge, you may gain a few pounds. So things can cause you to gain a few pounds, so I still have weight that comes on to me.

I still have stories and beliefs and thoughts that pop up in my head that don’t serve me. They’re less than productive interpretations of myself and of the world around me. So the real true reinvention in my life has not been the losing 130 pounds. It hasn’t been leaving my corporate job and starting these different companies or becoming an international speaker or coach or all the other things that seem like they’re the big reinventions.

For me, the big reinvention is exactly what you said. When I wake up on a random Thursday morning and I feel like I’m not good enough, and to really be gentle with myself and to question and challenge and inquire into those stories to see if there’s any truth to them. To allow myself to be released from these beliefs that again cause me to wait and cause me to have weight on me. Does that make sense?

Allison:        Yes, 100 percent. Yes. I was just thinking…You said it beautifully. Be kind to yourself and then inquire about whether or not this is true. I was thinking reframe your story or tell yourself a new story or change your languaging. I know you talk about changing your languaging. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. Very beautifully said.

Can you talk about the power of language, or what you see in that? I don’t know your specific tools or philosophy on that but I did read a couple chapters of your book and I was curious when you talk about languaging. The thing I know you did talk about was “always” and “never” can be very powerful.

Jason:         Absolutely. Yeah, I think language is huge because language creates this, there are biomarkers in the brain and there’s a neurological feedback loop that happens when we use our language. One of my favorite quotes in the world is by a man named Hafiz, and he says, “The words you speak become the house you live in.” It’s such a true statement because the words    that we use, and we know this. We know it intuitively.

You don’t need someone like me to come and tell you about the science behind language. You know when you hear a coworker complain, it brings your spirits down. And you know when you’re around certain people that speak a certain way, you feel like their energy is infectious and you’re uplifted. We know intuitively that language plays a huge part in the way we experience our world.

So the power of using the language of the self-leader is really using the language of truth, the language of possibilities, the language of ownership. Again, I have to just drive this home so much, this is not about the power of positive thinking. This is not about positive affirmations. This is not about vision boards. All that stuff is fantastic but that’s just not what I’m talking about right now.

The power of language that I’m talking about here is being more truthful and seeing how you can use your language to create your world. Instead of just reporting on your world or describing your world. What I mean by that is, a prisoner tries to justify their language choice because they’re just reporting on what’s going on, right?

“Well, the economy sucks. I’m just telling you what’s happening. I didn’t create a bad economy, I’m just telling you what’s going on.”

“My kid’s being a huge pain and I don’t know what to do about what an idiot he is. I’m just telling you what’s going on. That’s just what I’m experiencing, I’m just letting you know.”

That’s what they do. They go through their entire lives just reporting on what’s going on. They’re the worst news reporter ever. They just get out there and they report on everything and they’re totally passive and they have no ownership.

Whereas the self-leader says, “Sure, all that stuff you said, those aren’t lies.” You can watch the news and see what the stock market’s doing or you can see whatever’s going on in the economy. There could be facts in that. But the self-leader says, “Whatever that factual information is, it is simply a condition of the game.”

It’s not some unfair punishment from God or from the universe. It’s not something where we throw our hands up and become passive and roll over and die. It just means that in that moment, we can say, “Cool. Given that the economy seems to be struggling right now, what would I like to create? What role would I like to take to create something better in my own life?”

I’m not trying to control the economy, I’m not trying to fix the economy. But the fact is there are a lot of people that made a lot of money when the economy “tanked.” So what’s the difference between them and people who just reported on their world and said, the economy sucks? A lot of that is language, and the language we use to describe our situation. Things like that are a big one.

“Always” and “never.” The big difference between a self-leader and a prisoner, prisoners are all or nothing. And that’s in a lot of different ways. If a prisoner will say, “I’m going to go to the gym five days a week,” and if they miss one day, they say, “I’m a loser and I’m done and there’s no way this is going to work. I’ll just quit.” It’s a very all-or-nothing base mentality.

Whereas the self-leader says, “I will make whatever change, whatever difference I can make right now in this moment.” Right? “I’m going to be very present and do what I can right now, no matter how seemingly small it may be. Whatever difference I can make is a difference I’m going to make. I’m going to take ownership of making that difference.” Just really having that all-or-nothing mentality versus what difference can I make right now mentality, is another big language shift between a prisoner and a self-leader.

Allison:        Oh. I love that. That’s very empowering. I’ve gotten a lot of coaching on this, because I’m very honest and I’ve gotten criticized for it. I kept saying, “Well, I have to say the truth. I have to tell the truth.” And so sometimes, if the truth looks bad to me, then I’m going to say so. I’ve got to say it. And then I realized, it’s just because I’m only seeing. It’s not that I’m consciously asking myself a question, but I’m looking for what’s wrong. Instead of looking for what’s right. They’re both there.

I’m just often looking for one side of the coin and I like what you’re saying even better. Because it’s not just, do I see the positive or see the negative that’s there. It’s, what do I want to create? How can I, in this moment, choose something, not only are you creating your experience and the person you’re with’s experience right now. But you’re experiencing what’s going to happen in the next two seconds. I love that. Very empowering.

Jason:         Yeah, and you set such an example. Especially if you’re on a team, when you set the example of doing that and again, remember this is not about rose-colored glasses and glossing over what’s really going on. It’s about saying, given this thing, let’s say these are the facts of the situation, what’s possible here? What would I love to create? How would I love to feel? I don’t know who can make that happen, but don’t we owe it to ourselves to at least be creative and try? And to take an active role in what we’d like this to look like.

Under the big language shift directly in that, especially when you’re experiencing challenges, the difference is that a prisoner would say the word—and everybody that’s listening, I know that you’ve heard this before, you don’t have to out yourself. But I know you’ve heard this before, and I know that I’ve said it before so many times, is the phrase, “Get through.” Right? “I just got to get through this.”

Allison:        Oh, yeah.

Jason:         “It’s a hard time in the economy, just got to just try and get through it.”

“My teenager at home is an idiot, just trying to get through that.”

“How’s everything with your spouse?”

“Oh, we’re having a rough patch, just trying to get through it.”

And that’s how we go out in the world, it’s always trying to get through something. If we’re always trying to get through something, then we’re trying to escape reality. We’re trying to fight what is, instead of accepting what is and finding the gift in what is.

So there’s always something that you can shift in here. The self-leader says, “Get from.” Right? What can I get from this? When a customer or client calls and you get the call, “Oh, Allison, it’s John calling. He’s got another complaint about his bill.” You can very well say, “Oh, God, it’s John again. I just got to get through this.” And the energy you bring to that call is going to be much less effective than if you approach that call with love and attention and creativity and optimism. And you say to yourself before you get in that call, “What can I get from this? What is going to be the gift in this conversation?

What typically is the gift is that once you get off the phone, you can say, “What I got from that is that I have a very clear understanding of the way John wants to be handled as a client, as a customer. I have a very clear understanding of what’s important to him and how he needs to be managed or how he’d like to be managed.”

I had a significant person in my family, a very close family member, who was dealing with some addiction issues. I went with her to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. My first thought, the first time I was getting in the car and going there was, “This is going to be really uncomfortable and I just really got to get through this.”

When I started making the shift and I went a couple times, what I realized was, there was a gift. What I got from this was a better understanding of addiction. And a better understanding of how to support my family member as they were going through the recovery process. It’s just that little shift.

I had one that just happened recently. I had the absolute worst meal of my entire life. The food was absolutely disgusting. It’s true. What I got from that was that when my wife says, “Let’s go try the new vegan restaurant downtown” that I should have dinner at home first. Right? So I can always get something from every situation no matter what happens. There’s always a gift in there somewhere if you get creative enough to see it.

Allison:        How would this work? I may be not on the right track. I’m curious what you think about this. What can I bring to this conversation? Or what am I bringing to this conversation? What can I give?

Jason:         Oh, I love that.

Allison:        Okay. That was my other thought.

Jason:         Yeah, I love that.

[Allison and Jason speaking at the same time]

Jason:         Yeah. No, no, no, that’s great but that brings up a really important point too, is that self-leadership is honestly not a place to get to. I’m not trying to help people get to this promised land of being a self-leader. It’s exactly what you said, self-leadership is a place to come from.

Imagine if you’re watching a movie and you see some big blob of something on the big projector screen and you’re up there trying to rub it off and spraying Windex on the screen and it won’t do anything. It won’t go away. It’s just there and it’s really annoying. It’s not until you realize that it’s on the projector itself and you can just very quickly wipe it off the projector, that it’s not on the big screen. It’s on the source.

So when you can get back to the source and say, “Oh, I need to show up as a self-leader. I need to bring this sense of self-leadership, this sense of ownership, this sense of I’m empowered to use this amazing, intelligent, and amazing gift of free will and high consciousness that no other being on the planet has. I can bring this to every situation that I encounter, even five percent more than I’m doing right now.”

You don’t have to overnight become this self-leader guru. But if you can bring five percent more self-leadership into your next conversation or your next interaction or your next situation that you encounter, massive things can change.

Allison:        Yeah, I can see that. That’s awesome. The other night I was reading a book and I was like, “I want to be the space for transformation to happen. When I walk in the room, I am being…” That may sound really weird to some of you but like, who am I being when I walk in the room? When I get on the phone? Yeah, that’s what I’m working on. That’s awesome.

Jason:         I love that. In case that does sound weird to anybody, like, who am I being? Because when you’re in the personal development space…

[Allison and Jason speaking at the same time]

Jason:         Oh God, yeah, it gets very very woo woo and spiritual. So for all of you people on the phone that are cringing right now thinking we’re about to sing Kumbaya, I promise, I won’t let that happen.

Allison:        We’ll do that after you all hang up.

Jason:         Yeah, when you guys hang up we’ll do a fire circle and we’ll burn all of our fears on a piece of paper in a bonfire. It will be great. But I used to be kind of weirded out by that too. I consider myself a spiritual pragmatist. I’m spiritual but I’m also very of this world. I need some pragmatism. I need some real world. I need some real world with my woo woo is what I say.

So when I think about this like who do I need to be or who am I showing up as, anytime that sounds kind of weird to people, I give a very simple example. That you and I right now are having a conversation like adults. We’re not using slang, although I think I said “pissed off” a couple times which I hope is okay. I’m using slang or I’m using kind of PG-13 language but we’re talking like adults and we’re not doing characters or whatever.

Now, if right in this moment as I was talking to you somebody put a baby in my arms, immediately, in a split second, [starts making cooing sounds like an adult speaks to baby]. All of a sudden, I’m being this person that’s speaking a gibberish language like it’s absolutely, totally fine. So when people wonder about like, “What do you mean? How do you change who you’re being?” It’s that natural that depending on what situation you’re in, you have a choice of how you show up. When I’m on the phone talking to Allison, I’m a human being using my English language skills and if in this exact moment a baby is put in my arms, I go into complete gibberish mode. It’s a choice. We have access to this at any given time that we want.

Allison:        Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, you rescued me from a potential woo woo label there.

[Laughter]

Jason:         I’ve got your back. I’ve got your back, Allison. Don’t worry.

Allison:        Thank you, cool. Is there more about language? Is there something else we should say about languaging?

Jason:         Yeah, definitely. I can do a couple hours easily on language when I do talks. One of the big ones—so “get from” and “get through” I think are really really big. For anybody who’s listening to this, I just want to take a step back real quick.

When you hear this language “get from” / “get through” and some of the things we’re talking about like the all-or-nothing mentality or things like that. You may have a sense of awareness and enough truth and honesty with yourself that you say, “Oh, crap, yeah, I say get through all the time.” Or, “get from, or “get through” all the time rather.

What I don’t want you to do is sit there and then beat yourself up that you’ve used this language before. It’s totally okay. This is just a chance for you to recognize, with the awareness that Allison was talking about, having that unconscious incompetence, you don’t know what you don’t know kind of thing. The fact is is that you can’t leave a place you’ve never been.

So if you’re noticing that you’ve used this language before, this is a good thing because now you have some kind of baseline to say, “Oh, okay, cool. I remember I have used that as well. I don’t have to beat myself up. I can recognize that in that moment I chose this type of wording.”

If that same situation came up in the future, I would now have access to a different type of wording to use, a different type of language to use. So just to put that out there. This is not like, you don’t need to put yourself into some state of eternal damnation because you’ve used prisoner language. We all have. It’s called again being human. So I just wanted to say that.

Another big part of language besides the “get from” / “get through” that’s really really important and really really prevalent and I guarantee everybody listening to this is going to know exactly what I’m talking about. Is of course, the should. Right? Should.

Allison:        Oh, yeah.

Jason:         People “should-ing” all over themselves. It’s one of the most blame, guilt, shame-laden words in the English language. Nobody is excited when they say the word should. If you were to walk around with a tape recorder every day and record people who were saying they should do something, you would hear if you take that recording and put it in a computer and saw the wave form of it, you would see a downtick in their language, in their voice tone.

You would actually hear it go from being at one level to being a lower level. They say, “I [changes tone] should.” Right? Like it goes down. You say, “Hey, are you working out regularly?” And they go, “I [changes tone] should.”

Are you eating nothing but organic quinoa and acai berries? I [changes tone] should. It’s always a downtick. It’s never, “I [changes tone] should.” Like, that sounds exciting! I should! That’s just, people don’t react that way. But that’s the language we use. Should is just a very very heavy language.

So the other side of this, and with should, there’s some other things, right? There’s “I should.” There’s “I have to.” There’s “I need to.” There’s “I must.” All these things that take away all your power. Beyond them taking away your power and again giving all the power to external circumstances. It’s also just not true.

There’s actually nothing in the world that we have to do. This is the one where inevitably I always have to take a question break when I do live talks because I always get somebody and it’s typically somebody who raises their hand because they think they have the most original question in the world. They say, [speaking with an accent] “Well, I have to eat or I’m going to die.” I don’t know what that accent was, I’m sorry if I offended anybody.

Allison:        That was Texan, thank you.

Jason:         That was not Texan. No, you guys sound super intelligent. That is not a Texan accent.

Allison:        Well there are some places in Texas that might have that.

[Laughter]

Jason:         Okay, well, I haven’t been there so I refuse to believe it. But it happens. People will say like, “Well I have to eat or I’m going to die.” The other side of this language of the I should, I must, I need to, I have to is a language of intention. A language of action. Things like I will, I choose to, I want to, I intend to. These are all language that’s more empowering but it’s also the truth.

So when somebody says, [speaking with an accent] “Oh, well, you’re wrong Mr. JG because…” Now, I don’t know what, I’m getting even worse. This is like lower Alabama now.

But anyway, they say, “You’re wrong. You’re wrong Mr. JG. I have to eat or I’m going to die.”

So I ask them very simply, I’ll say, “So you eat because you want to live, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So you choose to eat because you want to live?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess so.”

And it’s over. But it’s so much easier to blame an outside circumstance and not take ownership of it. So anything that you do in the world, and again, I don’t intend for people to believe me when I say this the first time they hear it because it took me a long time of having it smashed into my head before I would really believe it. But there is nothing in this entire world that you need to or have to do. Nothing.

When you believe that, you do to your own peril, you’re only level of despair because walking around thinking that you need to and have to do something will always drain your energy and make you less effective and more pessimistic about the world.

Allison:        That’s what I heard when you were talking about the should. When you were talking about the voice going down, it’s like, oh, their whole energy went down. Their whole power, energy, vibration, whatever you want to call it. Their whole field just went down.

Jason:         Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. That’s a very good point.

Allison:        I know that’s true what you’re saying about the have to thing. I don’t know what that is but we want that. It’s like an excuse to not be responsible. It makes us feel like, I don’t know, I’m trying to think of why I have chosen those words when I’ve chosen them.

There’s something. It makes you feel, I don’t know, I guess maybe from being a kid and being blamed for stuff and getting in trouble when you’re irresponsible, sometimes we don’t want to be responsible.

Jason:         Yeah, absolutely.

Allison:        But it’s empowering to be responsible, you know? Totally empowering to be responsible.

Jason:         It is. There are tradeoffs to everything. There are payoffs and there’s seemingly positives and negatives to everything. So there are positives to be a prisoner. Sometimes you get more sympathy.

Allison:        That’s true.

Jason:         You get to abdicate responsibility. You get to not fail because you can say, “Well that wasn’t my responsibility to begin with.” Or you could blame somebody else. If you can find somebody else who is a prisoner now you can have comradery around prisoner-ness. There are payoffs to it and at the same time there are potential negatives at least on the surface to being a self-leader because it does mean that you take responsibility and it does mean that you may do something wrong or you may not do something as effectively as you would like.

There are things that are kind of scary to people but the benefits of being a self-leader, to really being in touch with who you are and showing up from that place are so far reaching. The studies on optimism and these are not, again, these are not woo woo studies. These are studies that have been done by Dr. Martin Seligman, the godfather of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the School of Psychology there.

With half a million people over twenty years and the fact is is that people who are optimistic, people who exhibit these tendencies that I call self-leadership but he would call optimism, not only is optimism something that you can learn, it’s not something you are born with. But it’s more effective. People who are optimistic do better in school, better in work, have better relationships. They live longer.

And I know what you’re saying, if you have better relationships and you did better in your job, then you would live longer too. But that’s not the way it works. If you show up that way, if you show up from a place of being optimistic, your brain is just primed to see the opportunities, to see the possibilities and to be able to respond from a very creative and grounded and relaxed and innovative place.

So imagine if you were able to do that and the people on your team or the people in your personal life were able to do that more as well from seeing your example. Imagine what could be accomplished and imagine how you’d feel while you were accomplishing it.

Allison:        Man. Nice painting a picture there. That’s beautiful.

Jason:         It really is.

Allison:        Yeah.

Jason:         Yeah. It’s just a moment-by-moment practice. That’s how you get there. You get there by practicing it moment by moment and recognizing that in every single moment, you have another choice to exhibit self-leadership. Do you know the comedian Demetri Martin?

Allison:        No.

Jason:         Okay. He’s one of my favorite comedians. He’s kind of a sharp, funny comedian. He has like a joke where he says he wants to get an apartment near Carnegie Hall so when people say, “How do I get to your apartment?” He could say, “Practice, practice, practice, and then take a left.”

Allison:        Oh. [Laughs]

Jason:         Sorry, I don’t know. But anyway, what he said that actually applies to our conversation since that joke didn’t apply to our conversation at all, is that he calls grapes the fruit of hope. The reason he calls grapes the fruit of hope is because he says that if you have a crappy peach or a crappy apple, you’re stuck with that crappy piece of fruit.

But if you have a crappy grape, all you do is reach down and pluck another grape and every grape is a new chance to have a new experience with fruit. I love that. He’s kidding but it so applies to what we’re talking about because in any given moment if you had a crappy moment where you were a prisoner, it doesn’t matter because you have another moment that’s right there next to it that you can try again.

It’s so beautiful and so freeing to know that in every single moment we have a chance to be five percent more of a self-leader.

Allison:        Beautiful, I like that too. I’m curious for you, you talk about fun a lot.

Jason:         Yeah.

Allison:        Fun for you, is that just something you value so when you’re using your self-leadership principles, like how can I create more fun in this moment? Or do you just think that being a self-leader creates more fun? Just automatically because you’re, like you said, you’re lighter? I don’t know exactly what you said but when you were talking about how things are just freer and lighter and more creative? Does fun just flow out of that more or do you actually intentionally have fun? Is it both?

Jason:         Yeah, I think it’s both. I think they feed each other. Which is nice, right? It’s a nice kind of built-in feedback loop and a built-in self-fulling mechanism, self-propagating mechanism. So my goal, like right now on my phone, and I change it once in a while but right now my phone lock screen I made a little image. The image says, “Choose … Choose fun.” Because I really believe that the more relaxed we can be and the more we choose to go into a situation relaxed, not to require the situation to bring us relaxation and not requiring a situation to bring us fun.

But if we bring a sense of fun, of levity, of humor, of playfulness, it’s a spirit thing, right? Being fun doesn’t mean that you tell a bunch of jokes and you’re comidicly a genius. I tell plenty of jokes that fall flat. It has nothing to do with being comedic. Being light and having more fun is about bringing a spirit of playfulness to what you’re doing. What that means for me is I call that being seriously playful.

So I’m sincerely devoted to the work I do. I’m not flippant with my work and say, “Oh, I’m fun. So I’ll kind of do this for a while then I’ll just go party for half a day and maybe I’ll come back and finish the work or maybe I won’t.” No, I am a sincerely devoted person. I work very hard. I work a lot and I love it. At the same time, I try as much possible to remind myself that nothing I’m doing is that serious.

That was the entire premise behind the Not-So-Serious Life show was that 99.99999 percent of things that we face on a daily basis are really not that serious. Once we see the truth in something not being super serious, in something not being nearly as significant as we think it is, it frees us up to approach that thing with so much more lightness and levity and playfulness and creativity that we experience it in a way that we just can’t when we’re bringing nothing but heaviness and seriousness to the situation.

Allison:        Yeah. I totally experience you that way. I mean, I get you. I can see that you’re sincerely devoted to your work and I can see your spirit playfulness. It’s awesome. I’ve always been a very playful person but somehow my husband said I lied on my resume because when he met me I was really fun and spontaneous and as I’ve gotten older and gotten really serious about my business and da-da-da, so that’s why I asked you that question because I would like to bring more of that and I was curious how you…

I think that’s a pretty common thread. Not everybody’s that way but I think a lot of people, we can lighten up. We could have a lot more fun. We’re at a retreat right now. You know, I told you we’re at a retreat right now and oh my gosh, we laughed and laughed and laughed today. It was just good for the soul, you know?

Jason:         It is. I truly believe that comedy and humor and levity are the conduits to transformation. Again, they’ve done studies on this too. I remember when I was in grad school and I had one professor and I love him, he’s my favorite professor. His name is Dr. Piccolo. Dr. Piccolo, he was the youngest tenured professor there and anytime he would come into class, he would have a YouTube video queued up that was just something funny. Sometimes it’d be ridiculous. Sometimes it’d be standup comedy. Sometimes it’s be just some candid video, whatever it was.

It always just got us really relaxed and light and playful before we dug into some pretty heavy stuff in our MBA program. I asked him one day after class, I said, “Dr. Piccolo, I love that you play those videos just because I love comedy. So for me, it’s great. I don’t know what anybody else thinks, but I love it. Are you a huge comedy fan? He goes, “Not really, but the studies show that if you are able to laugh before you learn, you absorb and retain so much more information than if you’re just given it straight away.”

I just love that. I’ve never forgotten that and that’s informed so much of my work. And making sure that I try to bring as much energy and enthusiasm and playfulness into the work that I do because I truly believe it has people take the information in at a deeper level and transform it into transformation instead of it just being more knowledge to add to knowledge.

Allison:        Yeah. We’ve got plenty of knowledge and information out there.

Jason:         Yes.

Allison:        Yeah. Drowning in it actually, yeah.

Jason:         Yeah.

Allison:        Okay, cool. Well that’s helpful. So it’s both. That’s part of your, I don’t want to call it mission statement, but that’s like part of your mission is to have fun.

Jason:         Oh, absolutely.

Allison:        And it’s also been a result of the self-leadership thing because things are just lighter and more creative and more fun and more go with the flow.

Jason:         Absolutely. And I know, this is something that I would invite everybody that’s listening to this to do. Is to sit down and write out your top five or however many you come up with but five is a good number, your top five superpowers. The things that are really your genius zone. Write those things down. If you’re not sure, you can ask people like, “Hey, what’s the one thing you really get about me? What’s the one thing you really value about me? What are a couple things about my personality that you just love?”

Find out what it is that comes easy to you and that you really love being, not so much doing, this isn’t about finding out like, “I love archery or I love cooking or I love cat videos.” It’s not about that. It’s about who you’re being. So for me, I know that when I am coming from a place of enthusiasm and joy and I’m performing and I’m entertaining and I’m educating, these are the things that are in my genius zone.  So as much as possible, I bring those feelings and I bring that energy to the work I’m doing.

So for me I know enthusiasm is my big word. I know that if I am able to tap into or generate enthusiasm about whatever task I’m doing whether it’s doing the dishes or it’s giving a keynote speech to a thousand people, if I can bring some level of enthusiasm or tap into some level of enthusiasm about what I’m doing, everything works out better.

So I would invite everybody that’s listening to find what that thing is. Think back to the time that you felt the most fulfilled, the most happy, the most successful, the most peaceful, the most accomplished, the most fun, the most loved, the most safe, any of those things.

See what it was you were doing and really tap in. Close your eyes and put yourself back in that place and see how it felt to be there. If you can do that, what that proves is that you have access to revisit that feeling anytime you want to on demand. So if I’m about to go into doing something that is not seemingly really fun on the surface and I can take thirty seconds and remember being on stage in October of last year in Costa Rica speaking to these 300 amazing people who are all passion-driven entrepreneurs.

I remember what it felt like to be on …, remember what it feels like to be on stage and to be saying things and people are laughing and people are clapping. I can just feel their energy and they’re really into the message. I’m getting eye contact and head nodding.

I get so enthusiastic and so passionate and now that energy is flowing through me and now I can literally go do my bookkeeping. Not sexy at all and I can go do that bookkeeping because I’m bringing this sense of enthusiasm to what I’m doing.

Allison:        Yeah, wonderful. I love that. Write out your top five superpowers. I’m definitely going to do that.

Jason:         Yeah, yeah, cool.

Allison:        Awesome. Shockingly, we’re almost out of time. I could sit here and do this for another infinity probably, hours. I just want to make sure nobody else has a question before I’ll have Jason just kind of see if there’s anything he wants to leave us with. We’ve only got like four minutes left.

Jason:         Yeah, if anybody has a question, I will give them a gift just because I like to bribe people to engage with me.

Allison:        Oh, he gives good gifts, too. I’ve gotten gifts before.

Jason:         Oh, that’s right. You have.

Allison:        Yeah. If nobody else asks a question, I’m going to ask one.

Jason:         You’ll just keep getting more gifts, that’s okay.

Allison:        I’m going to call on somebody. I can’t believe none of you guys are raising your hand. Oh my gosh. All right, I’ll ask you a question.

Jason:         It’s because of the Texas accent, I’ve turned everybody off.

Allison:        Oh, maybe so. Maybe so. No, we have a North Carolina, California, Michigan. We only have a couple Texas people on here.

Jason:         Hey, I’m the North Carolina.

Allison:        Oh, cool. Yeah, Janet is originally from there. She’s in California now.

Jason:         Oh, nice.

Allison:        Okay, tell me about, this may be too big of a question and I actually just wrote down a note and I don’t even exactly remember what it is but I know that when I read your book I wrote something down about the dance.

Jason:         The dance…

Allison:        Oh, we have a question. Okay, stop. Stop because Bethany has a question. I’m going to unmute you, Bethany. There you go.

Jason:         Awesome.

Allison:        Bethany.

Bethany:     Hi. How are you?

Jason:         Hey, Bethany, how are you?

Allison:        Great, how are you?

Bethany:     Good evening. I have a question because I love this subject, the subject about changing the language, changing your thoughts, thinking differently, changing your world. I mean, I love this subject.

So I have a question about waking up in the middle of the night and just immediately feeling anxious, what could you have waking up in the middle of the night and just worrying about everything in life and you can’t go back to sleep. You know, what do you do?

Jason:         Yeah, yeah, that’s a great one. I love that. There’s a Byron Katie, who is one of my favorite spiritual teachers in the world and I’m grateful to have gotten some private mentorship from her. She talks about this concept of what is it that keeps you out of heaven in the morning? Right? It’s the same kind of thing.

You’re in your bed, you’re comfy, you’re sleeping, you have not a care in the world and then something happens and it kicks you out of heaven. Like, you’re in heaven in that moment and then all of a sudden, boom, you’re smacked in the head and knocked out.

Bethany:     Then you remember.

Jason:         Yeah, exactly. So what it always is is some kind of thought, right? The problem that we have is that the suffering that we have in that moment where we’re awoken and we can’t make it back to bed and we’re super anxious, it’s because we’re believing whatever that thought is that we came up with. So I don’t know what the thought is for you and if you feel comfortable sharing it. That would be—do you want to share an example of that or would you rather I keep it kind of more generic?

Bethany:     Well, just anxiety about the future. Anxiety about, what if I don’t succeed in this? What if I don’t get things done that I need to get done? I mean, just that kind of thing.

Jason:         Yeah, I love that. That’s great. So the fact is is that we have these thoughts that come up and then we believe those thoughts. So a thought comes up, “Oh, I may not be successful. What if I can’t get everything done?” Then we believe that those things are actually occurring in this present moment. If we believe that those things are actually occurring in this present moment, that they’re actually true, that it’s now with certainty, you know with certainty in that moment that you’re not going to succeed long term, then of course, how would you not be anxious?

That’s stressful to be in this present moment and trying to have certainty about a future that’s just a concept that you have no real clue of what it’s going to look like. So the answer for me in that moment, because believe me, Bethany, please, I’ve experienced that so many times in my life. It happens still once in a while. I can’t stop the thoughts from coming. It’s like spam email. You can’t stop spam from coming in, but you have a choice on what you do with it once it arrives.

So when I have that kind of thing come up for me, it allows me to say to myself, “Okay, let me slow down in this moment and let me think about where I am in this exact moment.” In this exact moment, sitting in my bed, do I literally have everything that I could possibly need in the world? Is there anything that I really need in this moment? I have never found a time where there was something else I needed besides what I had.

Bethany:     That’s great. So that calms the anxiety and you’re able to just calm your mind and realize that you’re comfortable and warm and safe and everything’s okay?

Jason:         Yeah, and to really have—it probably sounds cliché, but it’s to have gratitude. But I practice gratitude in those moments because it takes a little extra when you’re really feeling anxious, or at least for me when I’m really feeling anxious is that I process gratitude a different way.

I thank the fact that I have a bed that’s supporting me without me asking for anything in return. It’s not asking me for anything in return. It’s just there allowing me to lay on it. All the people that touched the bed and constructed the bed and delivered the bed and set the bed up in my room, none of those people are here asking for anything and yet here I am, fully and completely supported in this moment in a comfortable bed that is asking nothing of me in return. When I really get in touch with that…

[Bethany and Jason speaking at same time]

Yeah, go ahead.

Bethany:     The bottom line is stay in the present moment and stop being neurotic about the future and worrying about the past.

[Laughter]

Jason:         Yeah, and that’s okay. When that stuff comes up, and that’s the thing too. It can be so easy for us to have a thing that comes up and says, “Oh, I’m worried about the future and I’m anxious. Now, stop doing that. Stop worrying about the future. Stop being so neurotic.” Then we start beating ourselves up about it.

Well, the alternative there is to welcome that and say, “Oh, okay, cool. I realize in this moment that I’m worrying about the future and I really don’t have any idea what’s going to happen in the future. I happen to be perfectly fine the way I’m sitting right now. So cool. It’s cool that I felt those feelings. It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with feeling those.

Now let me slow everything down and recognize that there’s no truth in those anxious feelings. Just get back to this present moment and see how things are going in this present moment, the only moment that we actually have.

Bethany:     Thank you, that’s great. Thank you.

Jason:         You’re welcome. Thank you, Bethany, great question.

Allison:        Yeah, thanks for asking the question, Bethany. You get a prize.

Jason:         You do get a prize.

Allison:        Yeah. I will give Jason your info.

Bethany:     Okay, thank you.

Allison:        All right.

Jason:         You’re so welcome. That was a great question.

Allison:        I’m actually going to get—is there anything you want to say, Jason, to close it out for us before I unmute the lines and let everybody say goodnight?

Jason:         Yeah, I’m just again, thinking about this present moment. I’m super grateful to be here with you and to be able to share this message with people. I hope that it was valuable. I know sometimes it can maybe be a little daunting to jump on the line and ask questions, especially when this is not like a functional talk. You can’t ask me questions about legal structures and taxation, so it can be kind of weird to come out and say, “Let me talk to you about my deepest, darkest fears in front of everybody else.”

So if there is something that came up for you while we were talking that you want some clarification on or something that’s kind of “yeah, but” in your head and you want to shoot me an email, I’m happy to clarify anything that I’ve talked about for you and you can email me. I don’t know, Allison, if you have a way to send out my email but if you don’t, you can email Jason@MEometry.com that’s M-E-O-M-E-T-R-Y, like geometry with an M like Mary, Jason@MEometry.com.

I’m happy to give you whatever I can resource-wise. I may have an audio or something I can send you that will help as well. If this is something that’s calling to you and you’re feeling inspired to make it a part of your life, reach out to me so I can send you something that you can use on your own and may be helpful.

Allison:        Yeah. You have a lot of good stuff. I appreciate that.

Jason:         Thank you, I appreciate that.

Allison:        Do you have a second just to tell us what MEometry is?

Jason:         Yeah, sure. So MEometry is…

Allison:        I’ve been curious about that since I saw it.

Jason:         Yeah. That was my attempt to be really clever with branding when I started my company four years ago and now I hate it. No, I’m just kidding. I actually really like the meaning, I’m kidding, but it was me trying to be clever. It’s so funny how the transition happens as you get deeper and deeper into this work and you realize that you want to stop being kitschy and clever and you just want to be yourself. So I’m kind of rebranding everything now to be just Jason Goldberg but I still love the meaning behind MEometry and I stand by it.

So MEometry really is about the “me” as in me or you. Then the metry being “the measure of.” The measure of something. So MEometry is about finding the measure of success or happiness or fulfillment for yourself. That there is no prescriptive “this is what happiness looks like, this is what success looks like.” So there’s as many MEometrys as there are people.

Even though I don’t stand by the kitschiness as much of the name anymore, I fully stand by the meaning that there is no prescriptive way to live your life or to be happy and that everybody is on their own individual path to find out what that means to them and that it doesn’t have to be compared to anybody else’s description or definition of what it should look like.

Allison:        Awesome. I like that, that’s great. Okay, cool, that makes sense. I made up my own thing and it was nothing as…

Jason:         Well what’s yours? I want to hear yours, maybe I’ll switch.

Allison:        Well, no, I mean, I knew MEometry was, I didn’t really know but I was just thinking, “Okay, it’s me.” I guess it was me and measure but I didn’t get the thing like we each have our own way of measuring. I mean, that’s cool. No, I didn’t go very deep with it. I was just like, oh, okay. So the me is me and the ometry is like geometry then I couldn’t figure it out after that [laughs].

Jason:         Yeah, yeah, no, it can be rough sometimes. And one last thing, Allison, I was just thinking of because we were talking earlier about superpowers and things like that. There is something that may be useful to the people on the call. If you want to check out, I wrote an e-book, it’s called Mastering Your Entrepreneurial DNA. It is a two-part workbook.

The first part is all about discovering your core values which for me when I did that work with my first coach was really really powerful for me. The second part is about really finding your why, especially if you’re an entrepreneur to get really in touch with why you’re doing what you’re doing in business and to see how your core values do or do not align with the work you’re doing.

So if that’s something that you’re interested in, you can just go to MEometry.com/DNA. You know, like your DNA in your body, your genes. MEometry.com/DNA and you can pick up a free copy of the e-book there and have fun with it. If you have any questions about anything in there, let me know.

Bethany:     Awesome, thank you.

Allison:        All right. Oh my gosh, I so appreciate it. I had a ball. You and I will have another conversation. I really want to visit with you more about what you’re doing and learn from you. So for now, I just want to say thank you and I’m going to open up so you guys can say goodnight.

Thanks for listening to Practicing with the Masters for dentists, with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. For more about how Allison Watts and Transformational Practices can help you create a successful and fulfilling practice and life, visit transformationalpractices.com.