SUMMER REPLAY: DONALD MILLER: Edit Your Life for Success

19:59And I went and bought four tickets and I said, Betsy, we'll just figure out what other couple to take with us. And she emailed back and said, you realize you're speaking on that night. It's like, I hate this. I mean, there's just no, you know, this is why I don't handle my own calendar. Yeah. And honestly, that's the problem. I handled my own calendar once. Yeah. Yeah. So whenever I make an exception, I screw it up. Yeah, that's exactly it. And so, no, I would say that if I'm allowed to complain, if I'm allowed to go to HR and say I'm being overworked, that would be it. You work for a really driving boss.

20:38For myself, I hope that's not true. That's exactly it. You know, business isn't easy and you run a sizable business. How many teammates do you have now? 30. 30. It's really close to 35, I think. Yeah. So that brings with it a lot of stress. And so how do you kind of manage the stress? How do you think about that? Do you feel that stress? Yeah, I do, especially when things aren't going well. I think a lot of leaders in my position are good at worrying way before they actually need to. Oh, word. We have a master's degree in this.

21:15Donald Miller:I was going to say, maybe a double PhD. I mean, I think in a way it's a gift. Because it's how you keep an organization alive. I can't remember who was it who said only the paranoid survive. Whoever used to run IBM wrote a book called Only the Paranoid Survive. And as soon as I saw the title, I went, uh-huh. Yeah, I get that. No argument there. And so, yeah, I do feel a lot of stress. And I'm actually seeing a therapist now that is helping me understand that I don't actually feel stress. And that's a problem, by the way. Interesting. The three of us see the same therapy. Well, I didn't want to say it out loud.

21:54I didn't know if that was allowed.

21:54Donald Miller:Well, we had a really funny experience. We're keeping her in business. I know. We really are. We've referred so many people. You and I ran into each other in the therapy waiting office. And what we should have done is said, look, I'll just be a fly on the wall and pay half. That's right. Exactly. Maybe we could do like a group session. I know. It's so true. Yeah. We definitely have anxiety that we deal with. I'm looking at you, Dad, while we're talking about this. Yeah. I mean, totally. I mean, I went through a period where I had a little health scare starting back in November. And it caused me the most anxiety I've ever felt.

22:25And I never admitted to myself that I ever struggled with anxiety. Now I realize it's probably something I've struggled with my entire adult life. But it gave me the tools to kind of deal with it. But it comes and goes. But now I feel like I've got some tools to effectively manage it. Yeah. There are some things that I can do. I can not get on airplanes. If I don't get on airplanes, my anxiety level is much lower.

22:48Donald Miller:What is it about airplanes? The fact that you have to pause your entire productivity schedule to go to Topeka and give a one-hour speech and then come back without a night's sleep. So it's basically, let me give up a week of this massive task list so that I can go speak somewhere for 45 minutes. Does that mean you don't speak as much? I don't speak as much. Yeah, I don't either. Yeah. I try to stay home. I try to leave once a month. That ends up being twice a month. but that often knocks out three or four days. It's really true. I don't like to travel. That's why I don't do it. No. I mean, I like to travel for fun, but I don't like to travel for business.

23:20Yeah, I haven't been able to figure out how to do that. This is a game changer for me. I now mostly speak at events in Nashville and Nashville has become so hot that so many event planners are having events here or I bring clients in. I just don't go out to see them. Yeah. I know it's a luxury, but it's a period of my life where I'm doing that, focused on that. Yeah, I think it's a smart decision.

23:42Donald Miller:So back to this idea of stress, what do you do that helps you manage stress and what do you do that doesn't help you manage stress? Because we all have both. We have helpful coping strategies and unhelpful coping strategies. Yeah. I mean the two basic things are the cold plunge actually reduces anxiety significantly. We need a cold plunge clearly. I know. It's not the answer to everything. It's actually there's tradeoffs and the tradeoffs, just so everybody knows for cold plunging, I put a blood pressure monitor on. My blood pressure goes up by 40 points whenever I get in that cold. So you are shocking your heart.

24:15Donald Miller:Yeah. And even ended up in the hospital with some heart stuff. And the doctor didn't think it was because of cold plunging. But I do. Yeah. And that was when I was in, you know, sub 35 degree water. I mean, you're practically turning it into ice. Oh, my goodness. So, you know, that you've got to be really careful about that. The plus side is the dopamine release, the extra energy, the mood boost. And then the willingness, the want, desire to work out. you know all sorts of things you can angie huberman has written a lot about this so you know um but there's a downside uh and i tell people i have friends who open the garage come in cold plunge and leave and actually one of them was like can i just put this blood pressure monitor on you want you to see what's happening he was well over 200 and systolic when he got in wow so i just said hey your call but this i just want you to know what's happening yeah wow and i have turned down the temperature and become adapted to it.

25:06So it's not too bad anymore. And my blood pressure is actually slightly under 120 over 80. So I'm okay on that. But I do that. That reduces anxiety. And then I try to prioritize sleep.

25:18Donald Miller:Yeah. That's huge, isn't it? Yeah. And it's actually the hardest battle. It is. It's just getting a good night's sleep. I have a hard time to get to bed on time. Yeah. Same here. After we put the baby down, We used to be 7. Now it's more like 7.45. Yeah. We've got about an hour. That's hard. I think that's one of the hardest things to reconcile yourself to as a parent. Yes. Is that you just get this really truncated evening. And you don't want to talk to each other. You want to veg out and watch TV. But you also need to talk to each other. But then your mornings when your little kids get up early, that's hard too.

25:50Donald Miller:Yeah, we're heading there. We're heading there fast. Naomi's up at 5.40 in the morning. It's just, I don't know. No, that's too early. We're going to build her a cave. You can get up at 5.40 in the morning, but you got to go to bed at 3 in the afternoon. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. We got to get that time back somewhere. Yeah. So those are the two things. And then just it's been a constant battle for 25 years. I just try to eat a little bit healthier. So I just try not to eat too much bread, too much sugar. Yeah. Try to go most days without any kind of dessert. And that helps a great day. Yeah.

26:35There was a point at which you kind of woke up to your health because, as you said, you were near 400 pounds. And I don't know when that happened or what precipitated that. But when did health become a priority for you? And what did you do to get – I mean, you look fantastic today. I don't know if it's your ideal weight, but you certainly look like it. But what was it that was sort of the, as my friend Don Miller would say, the inciting event? I remember it. I went home to Houston. I spent 20 years in Portland, Oregon, went home to Houston. Blue Lake Jazz had taken off and I had some money. Not a lot of money, but money.

27:11And I decided I was going to quote unquote remodel my mother's house. And so I ripped out the carpet and started putting in a wood floor. And I don't know what I weighed at the time. I was probably like 350 or something like that. And doing that physical work realized at 20 whatever years old, I'm just worthless.

27:31Donald Miller:Wow. And it was just that. And I just that was kind of a moment where I said, this has to stop. That was moment number one. And then there was another moment that I've struggled to write about because I don't want to give people the wrong impression. But there was a moment back in Portland where I didn't have any money. and this was before the book had taken off. I was a writer and I realized, I don't know how I realized it, but I was literally looking in the mirror, which sounds so cliche, and realized that identifying as a victim, which is how I identified, I identified as somebody that people should feel sorry for and I felt sorry for myself.

28:13The literal realization that I had was that it was unattractive. It wasn't that it was destroying my life or that it was negative or that it was going to, that's the reason that I was, it was unattractive. And that if you wanted people to be attracted to you, you should actually try to become a winner.

28:31Donald Miller:Wow. And I realized that, no, you want people, you want attention, you want recognition, you want people to be kind to you. And the way you're going about it is by pretending to be a victim or convincing yourself that you're a victim and you're not getting any of that. that's a huge insight so what if you actually just said well I think I'll try being a winner and I did and it worked does that make sense it wasn't like I was you can do it the realization was no you have an effective strategy that you think to get what you want and it's not working like women aren't attracted to you turns out women don't want to nurse their man back to health That's not what most healthy women are not interested in that.

29:19And I just said, well, what if you tried being a winner? What if you tried actually like working hard and being in better shape and, you know, being somebody that isn't a burden to others? And I'm telling you, it freaking worked. I mean, it was immediate.

29:36Donald Miller:That's amazing because you were not a winner overnight. I mean, it wasn't like your whole life changed and suddenly you were successful. You had money. Then I had to go out and win. Yeah, but what happened? The attitude shifted right then and there. So that's what I want to know more about because you went from I'm a loser or some version of that to I'm a winner. The real realization was that you are a – let's be – we're being blunt here and I don't mean to disparage people who are actual victims. I was not an actual victim. I was using victim mentality as a tactic and I was feeling sorry for myself as a tactic to get what I wanted.

30:12And I was flopping like a European soccer player all the time. And it was just ridiculous. And realized that, quite honestly, I realized that women are not attracted to that. And as soon as I realized they're not attracted to that, I went, well, then that's not me anymore.

30:25Donald Miller:Well, hey, whatever works from a motivational standpoint. Okay. That also brought in a flood of other problems that we won't talk about in this podcast. It's an imperfect journey to get where we want to go. So you wrote a book, and this is related to what you just said, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. As I told you before we started recording, this is my favorite book that you've written. I've given dozens of copies away, including our grandson has read this and it had a profound impact on him. But does the story that you just told, you talk about editing your own story, did that play into this?

31:00I think that happened in the season that I was figuring out the stuff that will eventually go into A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which is essentially that not unlike editing a work of fiction to make it more interesting, you can take the principles that you're using to edit a work of fiction to make it more interesting to the reader and actually apply them to your life. For example, if you handed me – well, not you, Michael, because I think both of you would probably write a pretty good novel. But let's say an amateur handed me a novel and said, I'm really close, but it's not working. Can you, not being so close to the book, read it and just give me some tips?

31:41I would probably say things like, it is not clear to me what the hero wants. You've got a great hero. They're charming. They've got a great dialect. I love that they live in New Orleans. I don't know what they want. And so you have to make it very, very clear that they want their boss's job or they want to marry their high school sweetheart or they want to lose 30 pounds or they want to solve the murder. There has to be something that the hero wants that is incredibly defined. And then they go back and they fix that. And they come back and they say, still not working. And I said, well, OK, let me read it again.

32:18Here's why it's not working. The hero wants seven things. They can only want one. And every story is about a hero who wants one thing, right? Lord of the Rings is not about trying to destroy the ring and rebuild the infrastructure in the village. because what happens is you're actually asking the audience to watch two stories at the same time and they can't do that they can't it creates too much cognitive dissonance literally the brain has to over process and burn too many calories and the survival mechanism in your brain is when you have to burn too many calories that will shut off so you're gonna have daydreaming so what so okay let's just take those two there's many more but let's just take those two things well that what that means is that your life needs one, and we call it in screenwriting, a controlling idea.

33:08Your life needs one controlling idea. So if I could say what you guys' controlling idea would be, it would be the pursuit of the double win. And you say, well, Don, isn't that like two things? Well, yes, but you've worded it in such a way where we can get our mind around one. One thing can be two things and it can have a dozen subplots, but it has to be one thing. that thing also has to be mutually beneficial so if your goal is to hoard all the money in the world well you've got a great single focus thing but it makes you an asshole yeah so that also doesn't work so there are these rules in screenplay that that by the way that principle is called save the cat and there's a book by blake snyder called save the cat that is affected almost every movie you see in the theater for the last 20 years fantastic book and when he says save the cat.

33:57What he means is make the hero do something kind early in the movie. So the audience roots for them and wants them to get what they want. And so there, there are all sorts of little tips that, that you use to write a better story and they all work to, to, as life principles, to live a better life. You know, one of them is the hero has to face their challenges rather than run from them. Another one is the only way, if you have somebody who weighs 400 pounds and at the end of the movie, they weigh 160 and they're in great shape. And they did that because they decided to, you'll lose the audience.

34:37That doesn't work in a story because it's not true in life. Nobody wakes up and says, I'm going to change because I want to. They wake up and say, I'm going to change because I have to.

34:47Donald Miller:Yeah. I don't like this about life. This is on my list. But you can control it. Yeah. So let's say that you want to get into good shape. It's super easy. Sign up for a marathon. Yeah. You have to throw yourself into a situation where you are forced to change. Adopt a kid. Yeah. Right. I raised my hand. Marry the girl. Marry the girl. Right. I mean, you know, you force yourself into these life situations. And literally I was at 276 pounds when I signed up to ride a bike across America and finished at 216. Wow. You know, we were, we were averaging 13 miles per hour on the day we left. We were averaging 26 on the day we got to Delaware.

35:22Donald Miller:That's amazing. That is a transformation. Yeah. I mean, nobody averages 26 unless you're in the Tour de France, right? And so you have to force yourself into – and there's another principle of screenwriting and storytelling. The only way people change is through pain. That's it. I also don't like that. I really don't like that. I don't know if it's God's design, but I think it's God's redemption. I don't think there's supposed to be pain. My faith would say there's not supposed to be the sort of pain that we experience in the world. But God's redemption is, I'm going to use it. I'm going to use it for good.

35:58And if we agree with that and say, okay, well, we have to experience pain. So why don't we just use it for good and use it to transform ourselves, I think is a redemptive perspective on suffering. So the premise of a million miles in a thousand years is basically - Edit your own life. Edit your own life. In real time. Create a better story. Yeah. And when I say a better story, I don't mean a story that impresses people. I mean a story that is actually meaningful to live within. So it's really about you, experiencing more meaning in your own life. I'm going to put you on the spot. Use these principles to do so.

36:27What is it that you want? In my life right now? I would say that the single focus is in the negative is to not negatively affect my daughter's life. That's it. I want to build a legacy that she's proud of. I want to be present so that she doesn't wake up someday and be attracted to a man who isn't present because she's trying to fix the brokenness between her and her father. The other day we were on an airplane and the gentleman kind of leaned over and said, you are beautiful. And she said, I know. And he turned and looked at me and he goes, good dad. That is beautiful. You know, so, and I mean that as a, as a sort of controlling idea that affects everything else, you know, be faithful to her mother, be kind, be present, provide financially, don't spoil you know if you if you get that right you got a lot of things right do you think a controlling idea shifts over time like oh 100 okay yeah yeah yeah i mean you know and i think it's phases of life i think when when you are young and single i think you are learning and you need to you need to earn respect you need to even to yourself you know you need to create and earn an identity.

37:46And then I think usually about the time we become parents, we begin by necessity becoming less selfish and start thinking about how other people can win. And then by the time you're my age, you're beginning to transition into the wise sage who's more interested in helping other heroes get out of their hole. And those things are all really satisfying. I would say if you're controlling idea, if what your story is about doesn't shift and change, something's wrong. And I think of it almost as sequels. I want to take something you just said. Sorry, Meg. Do you have a question? I do. It might be the same question now.

38:18It might be. Well, my question is the phrase you just said, helping the hero in a hole. You and I did an interview yesterday, totally different topic, but you mentioned that phrase and I was thinking about it all night actually, but that's the role of the guide. Yes. Talk about that in the story structure and how it fits into life. Well, every story starts with a hero in a hole. It actually starts with a hero who has a stable life. And within about four minutes, they have to be in a hole. And the whole movie is about the hero getting out of the hole. That's it. So, you know, let's say we're writing a rom-com.

38:55A gentleman meets a young woman at a coffee shop, maybe spills some coffee near her, cleans it up. They have a meet cute moment. They sit down. We now know what the hero wants or in the audience wants them to get together. We really like these two people. But if we have them getting married in the next scene, we've ruined the movie. There has to be conflict and there has to be change. So the woman after about five minutes realizes what's happening and says, I have to go. I shouldn't be talking to you. She fumbles her paper. She gets it and she leaves. He doesn't have her phone number. He doesn't know her name.

39:29None of that. Now we have a hero in a hole. We have a hero who wants something but can't get it. And now we have a story. But we want to make the hole deeper. And so the hero gets a call from his mother, says, hey, can you come to dinner tonight? Your brother is in town. And it's been a long time since he's been willing to sit with the family. And the hero says, well, for good reason. He's a jerk. He's a bully. He's a con artist. And I don't want to see him. She goes, please, we always have to give a second chance. He's family. He goes to the dinner reluctantly. And the brother says, I've got an announcement.

40:01And he introduces his fiancee. And it's the girlfriend of the coffee shop. Now we have a story.

40:05Donald Miller:That was a legitimate gasp. I did not know that was coming. We have a hero who's the love of his life is about to marry the con artist's brother. And now we've got a hero significantly in a hole. And so what we need at this point in the screenplay is we need a guide to come along and help them out of the hole. So this can be a therapist. It can be a Sunday school teacher. It can be the father. It can be the mother. You know, it doesn't really matter. Sometimes there are multiple guides. But the purpose of the guide is actually to solve a psychological problem. And that is that we know heroes can't get out of holes on their own.

40:39And if they, if he does have some realizations and get out of this hole, the audience loses interest because this just is not the way where life works. So we are always, because in life you were always looking for somebody who has the knowledge to get you out of this. So probably our therapist, i.e. Goodwill hunting is going to have had a relationship that was very difficult and he solved that problem. And now he knows how to get out of the hole and he's going to turn around and help the hero out of the hole. and the whole story is about the hero. There are rules, by the way, for the guide. The guide cannot transform.

41:11The guide does not have realizations in the movie that get themselves out of some hole because then we don't know who the movie's about. The guide has to be authoritative. They have to know what they are. They don't have to be perfect. Hey Mitch has a drinking problem, Hunger Games, but in the area of his expertise where we're using him to help the hero out of the hole, he has to know how to win the Hunger Games and of course, Hey Mitch has done that in the past. they cannot apologize you know there's a scene a wonderful scene in Mary Poppins where George Banks the father who is the hero of the story confronts Mary Poppins she has just instigated a series of events that had the kids go to the bank and there's a run on the bank and George Banks says Mary Poppins explain yourself now there's a critical scene in the book if Mary Poppins says well let me just tell you where I was coming from first of all I apologize The movie is ruined.

42:02It's ruined because now the guide is transforming. Mary Poppins says, Mary Poppins does not explain herself to anybody and walks up the stairs. Wow. So this speaks to the importance that as guides, we have an area in our life that we are extremely competent in. You don't have to be the most competent, but you have to be a lot more competent than the person that you're helping, at least in that area. And I think as a life lesson there, those of us who are getting older need to decide what area that is. And we need to refine those skills. And we need to turn around and use them to sort of help people.

42:38Again, you don't have to be perfect. But you've got to be pretty darn authoritative in the area in which you help people out of the hole. So that's the guide is used in that. And I should also say that in Hero on a Mission, the book that I wrote maybe a few years ago, So I believe that these roles, the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide, all of which we've talked about except for villain in this podcast, all of those roles, we think those roles exist in stories because there are people who are victim, villain, hero, and guide. Those four roles exist in stories because they all exist in you.

43:11All four of those characters exist inside of every human being and they come out every day. and if you watch a movie you know sometimes if you watch tennis i'm a tennis fan sometimes it's really fun when you're watching tennis to not watch the ball to watch one player the whole point and watch what they're doing with their feet watch and don't follow the ball and then you'll really learn a lot about tennis you want to learn a lot about life watch the villain for an entire movie just pay attention to what they're doing and put yourself inside of there and here's here's what they are. They have been injured in the past.

43:45They are bitter about having been injured, and they are seeking vengeance on the world that hurt them, which tells us something. And then watch what happens to the villain at the end. They are imprisoned.

43:55Donald Miller:They are killed. They are rightly dealt with because they are evil. And then ask yourself, where does this show up in my life? Who am I bitter against who's hurt me, unwilling to forgive and seeking vengeance? I want you to know if you can answer that question easily, you are in that compartment of your life a villain. And what will happen to you over time is what happens to villains in a good movie. People will seek justice against you and they are right to do so. But look at the hero. The hero has also always been injured in the past. In fact, 90 % of the time they're an orphan. Watch movies from this point on.

44:32Early in the screenplay, they will show you a father or a mother abandoning them. They are alone in the world and they are having to figure out on their own. This is a way of eliciting sympathy from the audience. So they've been hurt. But what they do with their pain is they decide, I'm not going to let this happen to anybody else. And they begin, that's the difference. Instead of seeking vengeance, they say, no, I'm going to not let this happen to anybody else. And they become the hero. So how we answer the question, what do we do with our pain determines whether or not you become a hero or a villain in a story.

45:06It also determines whether or not you become a victim. If you say, well, I'm going to continue letting this happen to me, and I'm going to seek for rescue, you are now playing the victim. And what happens to the victim? Nothing. Nothing happens to the victim. A blanket gets put over their shoulders at the end of the movie, and then the camera goes right back to the hero where it should. So if you are playing the victim in life, you're playing a bit part in which you do not transform.

45:33Donald Miller:Okay. So one of the things that we were talking about a minute ago was the idea of the guide. And you have really put a stake in the ground around the idea of coaching. And you are now teaching coaches how to be better coaches, how to build their businesses and all of that through Coach Builder. I want you to share why coaching, why is this a passion for you? And kind of what do you see the role of coaching and success and all that? It's such a good question. I think just personally, from my personal story, when I look back over the seasons of punctuated evolution, and by punctuated evolution, I mean seasons of very fast, rapid growth.

46:16Two things happen in every one of those seasons, pain and a person. So pain and a person who helped me understand the Whether it was a therapist or a business leader or a friend, there was a principal figure who stepped into my life. And I can name them. Many of my books are dedicated to them. Of those people who stepped in when my father left or gave me a shot, a delusional, ridiculous, don't deserve it shot at running their business. Things like that that happened. And so I would – those people, you can call them what they want. I would just call them coaches and they coached me to success. So one, it's, it's, I believe in the power of it.

46:57I believe in the power of relationships to change lives and somebody who is older, wiser, and who has been there, they don't have to be older, but wiser and who has been there to turn around and say, Hey, let me help you out of this hole. Uh, so I loved that. I, that idea. The second reason that I really loved helping coaches is because I think there are, there are people out there who are underpaid and under respected for the wisdom that they offer. You know, for instance, we're working on a program now called Defend the Home. And Defend the Home is where a police officer off duty or even retired or a former military member of our military can come into your home and go through a giant checklist of here's everything you need to do to defend this home and your security systems, your alarms, your if you want weapons, your weapons, how you keep those very, very safe from kids.

47:47Let's go through a protocol of what happens when you hear a glass breaking in the night. This happened because I personally was threatened by somebody with a mental health issue and had to have overnight security for about two weeks while we got eyes on that person. And it turns out they were a homeless person with mental health issues. And suddenly I realized, wait, I don't have a plan. I don't have a strategy. And then the other part of that was police officers. The guy who actually spent the night at the foot of my driveway for a couple of weeks was being paid$35 ,000 a year. He was also running for sheriff.

48:21This was not a – they are severely underpaid. And so we're starting a coaching certification so that former law enforcement, former military can go through this checklist, charge$2 ,500 or$5 ,000 depending on the scope of the consulting to offer this. Well, there's a gentleman, Officer Cotton, who guards my daughter's school, as most schools are now guarded. He probably makes$45 ,000 a year. He's supporting his family. I can make him another$50 ,000 in 10 days.

48:51Donald Miller:That's incredible. And also utilize his wisdom and his expertise. So we're partnering now with Bill Rapier, who was head of SEAL Team 6 on the night they killed bin Laden. Bill will not say whether or not he killed bin Laden because he's not supposed to. And he's very angry at people who are speaking up about that. Not angry, but disappointed. Yeah. Uh, but you know, Bill's home is prepared to be defended against ISIS. He knows what he's talking about. And so, you know, defend the home will be a brand and we'll put it, the coaching certification inside of coach builder, but that, that will help these police officers go from, wait a second.

49:25I can actually put together a CRM and a landing page and sell these products and do this in one day a month and double my income. And that's the dream that I have. I want to do the same thing with teachers who are, I believe are underpaid. imagine a teacher being able to come in your home saying, you know, here are the common characteristics of a household, of parents, of a child who perform extremely well in junior high. And let me walk you through those.

49:52Donald Miller:Please send that. You need to have dinner four times a week together as a family. You need to, you know, whatever those things are. That's a wonderful consulting gig. Imagine a nurse, let's say you get a health scare. Well, you could pay a nurse 800 bucks a month for a six month engagement to come into your home and help you understand which pills to take at which time so you don't get a stomach ache and to understand that, you know, that one's a little more complicated because there's so many different, differing opinions on health. But, you know, many of these underpaid people in society could do this.

50:26We're starting with business coaches. We have close to 500 business coaches now. We're at, we'll add another 500 by the end of the year. It will continue to grow. And then what we do for those coaches is we put them in a small group to teach them to run a coaching business. We give them a CRM that we pay for that has hundreds of emails that I've written. What's a CRM? A CRM is a customer relationship management. It's a way to email people. It's like a database, right? We teach you to use one because I think it's the primary tool that you're going to need to grow a coaching business. A lot of coaches are great with people, great bedside manner.

51:01They're effective at at helping people change and transform and get wins in their life, but they have no idea how to get a client. We help them figure out how to get a client, and we want to get them$100 ,000 the first year in their coach builder membership. So the vision right now, and it's working really well, is we provide you with all the tools you need to grow a coaching business, and then we provide certification in the business realm. We are quickly expanding the mindset, life coaching, and then hopefully defend the home coaching and all that other stuff. You have really, with this book, significantly disturbed my sleep.

51:33I don't know if that's a good thing. In this book, he talks - Sleep is akin to stress. You got to be careful. I know. So he talks about eight steps to build your coaching business. We won't go into those. You can buy the book and do buy the book.

51:44Donald Miller:And the book is Coach Builder. Coach Builder is the book. And you can find it where better books are sold. How to turn your expertise into a profitable coaching career. And it's so like your head will explode.

52:05Donald Miller:We have three lightning round questions. Got it. So just prepare your heart. All right. The answers are three blue and sea biscuit. Perfect. What is the biggest obstacle for you in this season to getting the double win? The biggest obstacle. That's a, that's a terrific question. I mean, for me, it's the biggest challenge is having to settle, having to say, hey, you're not going to get a big win here because it would cost you a big win there. Thomas Sowell has some great thoughts on tradeoffs. Yeah. And he says, if you can begin to understand all of life involves tradeoffs, then you will begin to have more success and more productivity.

52:53And so for me to say, well, you're not going to be able to wake Emmeline up in the morning so that you can get some writing done is a tradeoff. So you actually ask yourself, do I want a legacy of a better father or do I want to finish that book? I wrote a book every year for probably four to five years every year. And then when I became a dad, was immediately a year behind. And to me, that was a tradeoff. So I chose to win in the area of being a parent and a husband and take a loss in the area of getting another book done. And to me, that trade-off was well worth it.

53:32Donald Miller:That's great. Good way to look at it. How do you personally know when you've gotten a double win, like a given day or period of life? Not that it's ever perfect. I mean, that goes without saying. Yeah. Yeah. Victor Frankl has something called logotherapy, and it's a therapy of meaning. So if you experience meaning, it is healing. And he defines the way to feel meaning. He gives a recipe for it. It's an objective that you have, a community that you're sharing your journey with, and a redemptive perspective on your suffering. So you have to take every bit of suffering and say, well, what does this make possible?

54:13You're always asking, what does this make possible? So that you have a redemptive perspective on it. If you do those three things, you will experience meaning. And he doesn't explain what meaning feels like, but I will give a stab at it. It's feeling that you are playing an important role in an important story. And so for me, going back to our earlier conversation here, I need to know what my story is about and what my role is in that story. And that story needs to be mutually beneficial. If I can conquer those three things, I feel terrific about life, whether or not I win or not, by the way. It doesn't actually matter.

54:46In fact, I shared with Michael, there was recently a heart scare in my life that ended up being a non-event. The doctors were just like, okay, we don't understand. And the doctor has now cleared me and said, you're going to be fine. You have the artery of a teenager, arteries of a teenager. You're going to be great. Plaque score of 57, which is ridiculous. Way to go. You're very envious, aren't you? I am very envious. But there were seven days where we didn't know. And it was one to five years. Pretty much 100 % certain you're dead in five years. 80%. We were going back and forth during that. Yeah, we were.

55:24I was texting Michael. And what was amazing to me during that short, thankfully, season was that no accomplishments mattered anymore. I'm a very driven person, very competitive. Enneagram three. and yet none of it mattered. I didn't care whether I finished the next book. I didn't care whether I got to run for office. The only thing that mattered was relationships. So it was a little clue into what life was really about. Yeah, what a gift. It is a gift. Yeah, and it's also easy to forget. You get back into the game and you forget that none of this means anything. And so that was a big realization that I had.

55:58Donald Miller:That's great. Okay, last one. What is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do? You shared some already. Maybe one you didn't share. about? Well, cold plunge would be the, would be one sharing his affiliate link later on. Yeah. So there's a, there's a morning ritual that I do, uh, probably 50 % of mornings and I credit it with all of the success. If I've had any in my life, uh, it's, it's all on a website called hero on a mission. It's completely free. We used to charge 10 bucks a month for it. And then we paid off our coders and now it's just free. And so we have 50 to 100 people a day who sign up for it.

56:39It's just a morning ritual. And basically, it involves, among a few other things, reading your life vision, which takes me about a minute to get through its bullet points, reviewing my goals, identifying the three primary tasks I need to get done today, identifying secondary tasks and then writing down the things that I'm grateful for on that day. And then there's this little slot for a journal entry. It takes me about 10 to 12 minutes if I read my life vision. Sometimes I skip that. It takes me six minutes if I don't. And I've been doing that for 10 years. And in that 10 years, I've lost 200 pounds, got married, became a father, written, I think, seven New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers, built a multimillion-dollar company.

57:25I would say in the last 10 years, I'm more productive than I'd been in the previous 40 combined. And that is because of that morning ritual.

57:33Donald Miller:Amazing. I'm signing up today. Yeah, let's do it. Where do you do that again? Hero on a mission. Hero on a mission.com. And it's free. We don't even have a thing that we can sell you after you do it. So I need to work on that. You only need somebody marketing. Well, again, thanks for joining us. This has been amazing. And we're going to be spending a lot of time together. that even this next week we're recording the certification class for a coach builder that I'm doing. I'm looking forward to that. I couldn't be more excited. I think, you know, if we can get five to 10 million people using full focus planner, we've, we've partnered together in something really significant.

58:11Wow. So I consider that part of my personal life vision. From your lips to God's ear. That's right.

58:16Donald Miller:Thanks for being here, Don. Thanks, Don. My pleasure.

58:25What in the world could we take away from this without taking another 30 minutes? I know. Because I mean, literally.

58:32Donald Miller:So many things. I love that conversation. I did too. And one of the things that I love about doing this show is that because we talk through the lens of the double win, we get to ask people who are well-known questions that maybe they're not getting asked all the time. And I'm just so endlessly fascinated by how people live and how they struggle through some of these things. And I really appreciated Don's candor and how he's kind of used the story of his own life and the evolution of that and the way that he's been intentional about making that a great story and really kind of pivoting his life toward meaning and purpose.

59:17Donald Miller:he's used that to create a template for other people to do the same. And now in his work with coaches to help people help other people do that. You know, I think my biggest takeaway, besides cold plunges. Yeah. Hashtag cold plunge. Yeah. I'm going to definitely look into that. Just don't go crazy with it. I feel like that is the other part of that takeaway. Don't miss that people. Well, you know, the funny thing about it is I literally have considered it, but the thought of it makes me so uncomfortable. Right. Like right now, who does that? Yeah. You know, but I think one of the biggest takeaways for me was this idea of a hero in a hole.

59:54And that's true for all of us. And I think that part of the reason we're able to be increasingly helpful as we get older is because we've fallen into more holes.

1:00:03Donald Miller:Yeah. So true. And we've struggled to get out of them. And so now we're in a position to point other people toward how to get out of the hole. Yeah. And I think that was a fantastic insight. I do too. To Todd Davis. Yeah. I also love the way that he's pursuing his family intentionally. Mm-hmm. And because we know him personally, we know that that's really happening. And that ultimately for him, success is defined as meaning and meaning as other people see it, the people that matter the most to you. You know, you're his wife, his daughter, that ultimately he wants to do right by them. And if that doesn't happen, kind of nothing else matters.

1:00:53Donald Miller:And I think that's true. You know, I think the research says that's true. I think our own experience says that's true. And I think he's a powerful example of, you know, because he got married later in life. He had kind of this before period and then this after period. And there was probably a during period that got him to the after period. And I think it's instructive, you know, that ultimately, you know, acting like the person that you want to become is a powerful way to become the person you want to become. Yeah. Beautiful. One last insight I want to share, and that's just for those of you that would like to pursue the things that we talked about with Don.

1:01:29He's got a plethora of books and they're all great. I mean, I'm finishing Coach Builder right now and my head's exploding. but the ones that are apropos to our conversation today would be A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, subtitled How I Learned to Live a Better Story, and then Hero on a Mission. Those two books, I really recommend that you get and devour.

1:01:51Donald Miller:And listen to them if you can, because Don is a great reader. He is a great reader. And not every author is a great reader. And you will enjoy, there's a sense of story just in the reading of the book that I think you'd miss if you didn't get to hear him read it. Guys, thanks for joining us today. We look forward to talking to you and introducing you to another great guest here in a week.