The Secret Weapon to Sustainable Change

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now?

0:33This is The Ed Myron Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. It's so great to be with you again this week. And today I get to tell you a story. I think you're going to enjoy this. And my hunch is you probably won't forget it very soon. I certainly never will. It's a 20-year-old story that really changed my life and about a doctor who really changed my life. Maybe even saved my life, you could argue. It's ironic because only a few episodes ago, I did an entire episode with my current two doctors who I do credit with saving my life and about my heart and the fact that, you know, I've got some arterial sclerosis and that they sort of intervened and helped me make the decision that I need to just downshift and slow down a little bit.

1:15And so, for example, like a lot of the podcasts I'm doing are now from home in my studio here. I've cut my speaking schedule down by about 50, 60 percent. My one on one coaching is reduced very small. I'm doing more group coaching now. I'm doing some one-on-one, but not a lot. I'm not doing any social media stuff for a while. Just all the grind of the day-to-day social, traveling and my speaking, my businesses, the coaching, all of that. I had to downshift and focus on my health. And I actually have had to do that twice because I had no focus on my health like many young people. So this story is a little bit about health, but it's more about how to change things, how to get leverage, how to go from being one way to being another.

1:50And I think this story is very illustrative of how exactly you do that and how one person can change your life if they understand how to persuade and influence. So I'll take you back about 20 years ago and I'll get most of the details right. It is 20 years old, but the important things are like burned into my memory. So I had an uncle that had passed away of a heart attack very young. And so when that happened, I just started to, I said this premonition, like, well, I should just go check on my own heart and my own health. And so at the time, there were these new scans that had just come out where they'd inject this dye in you and they could look into your arteries and see different plaque accumulation in your arteries.

2:26And so they were hard to get into in those days. So anyway, I went in and I scheduled the scan. And the day I did the scan, it was really interesting. I had no focus on my health. I'm 33 years old, I think, at the time. And I never forget this. You go in and you do the scan. they've injected dye in you and it takes a little bit and then when you're done back in those days they would say you can come back in a couple hours and the doctor will give you your results and so i'll never forget i went to lunch in between those two hours super unhealthy lunch this big old burrito for lunch like just a dude who was not focused at all on his health and so i remember i ate the burrito and then i had to wait in the car and then i came back in and what i didn't know is that there was an you know there's a difference would you agree with me between like a great doctor and a pretty good one.

3:09You know, a great dentist who they treat your pain the right way and they're gentle and they get the job done and so-so one. Big difference between a great father, a great mother and a pretty good one, right? A really great athlete and it's in professional sports and some of the good ones. There's just there's a big gap between good and great in life and that gap matters. And thank God that day I ran into a great doctor who understood persuasion and influence, which is really what we're going to talk about today. How do you persuade and influence yourself to create change? And so I call this Bella's wedding day story.

3:47So I'll take you all the way back. At that time, my son, Max, I believe was about two years old, year and a half, two years old. And Bella was about six months old, my daughter. And it's important that you understand their ages to give you context for the story. So anyway, I come back in and I'm in the waiting room and there's two people in the waiting room. and I'll never forget the doctor walked in the waiting room and he immediately started to play me, but I didn't know he was playing. He pretended not to know who I was. So I remember him walking in these glasses on and he had this chart and he's looking at the chart and he goes, I'm looking for an Edward Milet.

4:20And I go, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm Ed Milet. That's me. And he looks at me. Now, by the way, what I didn't know at the time is he already knew who I was because he had seen me doing the scan, but he was already starting to get persuasion and influence and leverage on me because he knew how important it was that I make this change. You understand? He knew how important it was that I make the change. And change isn't easy. Change is an all-in job. And he understood that. And so Edward Milet, I'm Ed Milet, and he looks at his chart and he goes, wow, oh my gosh. Already my heart's like, what? He says, I can't believe these arteries are in that young a body.

5:04I was like, oh my gosh. He goes, yeah, come on back. So he's already got my attention. If you're in sales or something, right? He's got my attention. If you're just trying to sell yourself on change, you have to get your own attention. He got my attention. I was hoping there was nothing in the scan, right? So now we're walking all the way back and he doesn't turn around. We get all the way back. And now my heart's actually starting to race and I'm kind of concerned. And he sits down and I sit down and remember he crosses his legs. He was an older man. And he says, now what could he have done? What he could have done is just gone right into what was in the scan, right?

5:36Hey, here's what I've got. Here's the prescription. Here's what you need to do. Isn't that what a good doctor would do? Here, let me tell you what I see. Let me tell you what the prescription is. Thanks for coming in. He did not do that because that doesn't create change. It doesn't create change even with yourself if you go, look, I really know I need to do something. So I'm going to write it down and then I'm going to get a game plan and then I'm going to go do it. I'm going to write my goals down. I'm going to write a strategy down. I've got a battle plan and I'm going to go do it.

6:04unfortunately, that's not what creates change. It's part of it, but that's not what creates change. We'll go through what the takeaways from the story are in a minute. But what you have to do is get leverage to create change. And so he looks at it and he says, he says, young man, he says, do you have children? And I said, I do. And he said, so I assume you're married. I said, yes, sir, I'm married. And he says, well, how old are your kids? And I think they were two and six months time i said my son max is two and he goes i bet he's the apple of your eye i said oh man it's the greatest thing i've ever done in my life is having my kids he says yeah might me too mine are in their 30s now i've got a couple grandbabies he goes as good as you think i have kids wait till you have grandbabies someday and then he goes if you're lucky enough to be around to have them i went huh and he goes so okay so your son's two do you have another one i said yes my daughter is six months old.

7:00And what's her name? I said, Bella. He goes, that's wonderful. He goes, let me ask you a question. Now, he hasn't even got to what's in here yet. He goes, let me ask you a question. He goes, you want to be there when your son graduates high school, son? I said, excuse me? He says, I asked you if you would like to be there the day your son graduates high school, which is like in 16 years. I said, well, yes, sir. I want to be there and I plan on being there. He goes, uh-huh. Okay. He goes, your daughter. And I melt over my daughter, right? And he says, so Bella, he says, let me ask you a question.

7:37And he says, I want you to really picture this and think about it. He goes, do you want to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day, Ed? Or would you like her to be on the arm of another man? Because you're gone. I said, excuse me? He said, I'm asking you if it's okay with you that some other man walks your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. And I said, what? I said, wait a minute. No, of course. I said, what's in the scan? What is in that damn scan? Right? He's got total leverage over him. You want to get leverage over a dad, you talk about his daughter and their wedding and not being there.

8:14Right? And he says, I want you to listen to me, son. He said, if you keep going down the path you're going down right now with your genetic history, with the way you're eating, with your lack of working out, you will not be there to walk your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day. She will be on the arm of another man who's probably married to your wife at that time, and that's who her father will be in those days. You will be nowhere near close to that wedding day. And I went, my gosh. And I said, what's in the scan? And he said, here's the good news. The good news, young man, is, now that I've got your attention, is that if you do what I tell you to do and you start eating correctly and you get on the right medication, the right nutritional program, you start eating the right way, you start doing the things I tell you to do, I feel very confidently that someday you can be there when your son graduates high school and when your precious daughter walks down the aisle on her wedding day so she can have that first dance with you.

9:09And I have to tell you that changed my life because I leaned in and said, tell me exactly what I need to do. Now, he got leverage. Now, how many doctors would have done that? Not most. Most would have just said, hey, sit down. Great. Nice to meet you. Hey, look, you've got this arteries a little bit blocked. This one's the widow maker. There's blockage in there as well. You've got some plaque accumulation. Here's a statin and you should start eating clean. Here's a pamphlet on what you ought to do. And I would leave there with no change. But that's not what he did. What he did is he did a few things I'm going to point out to you.

9:38But I can tell you this. To this day right now, people ask me, hey, Ed, you're in pretty good shape. Why do you do that? Do you know how many mornings when I've gotten up and I didn't get home until 2, 3 o 'clock in the morning and I'm up at 5, 30, 6 o 'clock and I don't want to go to the gym? You know what comes up? Bella's wedding day. Bella's wedding day. When I'm traveling on the road and I'm at a hotel that doesn't have a good gym and it's freezing outside and I don't want to go work out in the cold? Bella's wedding day. Bella's wedding day. When I got a plate full of food in front of me most of the time that I know is not healthy, Bella's wedding day.

10:08People have asked me, because I'm 53 years old this next month, you're a relatively fit guy. Why is that? Well, of course, you want to make sure you have a good presence and you want to look your best in all those things. But I can tell you that I'm a relatively fit man, however fit you think I might be. Bella's wedding day. It changed my life. It literally altered me in one moment, one decision, one conversation, one doctor, one set of leverage. Completely changed my life. I have literally thought of Bella's wedding day probably hundreds of thousands of times to get myself to eat better, to drink more water, to stay true to my nutritional program and the medication that I take and especially working out.

10:50What's got me in the gym now for 30 straight years, five, six days a week consistently is Bella's wedding day. And those are the things that change our life. And so you got to have a Bella's wedding day type story in your life if you're going to create change. I'm going to give you a few points, essentially four points that are takeaways from that story, because in that story are the clues, the clues of how to create change with yourself or change for other people. So if you want to help change people that are you want to help them buy your product or service, You want to help change their life, change your kids, and especially change within oneself, which is what I'm going to focus on today.

11:35So I'm going to give you four keys that come from that story. I got to tell you, I'll bet today you will not forget Bella's wedding day because I certainly haven't. So what are the four keys? Number one key from Bella's wedding day story from many years ago, 20 years ago, why matters most? You show me somebody with a big enough why, a big enough reason. I will show you somebody who will solve for how to do it, for what to do. I will promise you that. Why is the most important thing? You give a father a story like not being there, and the picture, the mental picture in my mind of some strange man that I've never met before having that first dance and walking Bella down the aisle on her wedding day, I'll do anything to make sure that doesn't happen.

12:19I'll do anything to be there. And I can tell you I've done just about anything. In fact, my doctors that I'm with right now, Part of that journey of staying healthy where I found both of them, Gabrielle and Amy, is because I want to be there on that day and beyond. One of the reasons I'm willing to take this sort of downshift to some extent is, yes, I'd love to help more people. And yes, I'm going to contribute. And yes, we've got one of the number one podcasts in the world. And I'm one of the top speakers. And my businesses are growing. And all that matters. And I want to help all kinds. I want to continue to help millions of people that I've been blessed to help.

12:52But not more than I want to be there for Bella's wedding day. And so number one key is why matters most. And if you say, I don't know what my why is, I can tell you. Let me give you a hack to find your why. Your why will always be your dreams, whatever your dreams are, or other people. Whys can be distilled down always into dreams or other people. Doing something for other people that you love or proving people wrong. And what I will tell you under the why is that love is the biggest force in the world. when you attach your love for another person and your willingness to do it, because you won't do much for you, will you?

13:29All your life you've given to other people. And I'm not going to spend the next 10 years trying to get you to change that. So what I want to do is leverage your model of the world. Your model of the world is you always give to others more than you give for yourself, don't you? You're always the last one in. You're always feeding everybody else. You're always caring for everybody else. You always seem to come last, right? And we could try to rework that. But the truth of the matter is, I think that's a beautiful thing that you love people so much. So what I want you to do is I want you to leverage that love for your dreams, your love for these other people that you want to do something for.

14:01There's a lot of reasons why I've stayed pretty fit and healthy most of my life in spite of my cardiovascular disease, in spite of my genetic bad hand that I've been given. I'm here today to be able to do this episode, and I'm hoping to be here five years from now in this downshift that I'm taking. because I love my family so much. I love Bella so much. Heck, I want to be there for Bella's daughter's wedding day. So remember this, love is the biggest force in the world and that will help you solve for the hows, the whats, and the wheres. Number two thing that's a key from the Bella's wedding day story is it created a trigger for me.

14:38You got to be able to get a trigger in your life. A trigger can be something auditory that you hear, verbally something you say, something you see, or something physical you do. I can tell you instantly, Bella's wedding day, that saying became a trigger for me. I say it out loud. I think it. Now, sometimes a trigger can be, by the way, here's how a trigger is established. In a high emotional state, you do something to anchor that to the emotion. So in a high emotional state, you snap your fingers. In a high emotional state, you grab your ear. That's why there's certain things that trigger you to this day.

15:07High emotional state, you hear a song from high school and it takes you right back to that moment or your first kiss or whatever it might be, right? There's triggers, right? There's certain things that have happened. I've even a strange trigger I have is one year I had on New Year's Eve. In the daytime, I ate a tuna melt. It was bad tuna melt. And I had the worst food poisoning all of that New Year's Eve. I mean terrible. My family was at dinner. I couldn't go. And I'm sweating and throwing up. And it was horrible. To this day, if I smell a tuna melt, I get sick to my stomach. That's a trigger for me to feel sick.

15:39And so triggers can be physical, auditory. They could be something that you see or something that you say. And in my case, Bella's wedding day is a trigger to get my butt up and do something about it. So create a trigger in a high emotional state. Link it. You'll see athletes do this all the time. They'll get in the batter's box, tap the plate twice, put their hands up. That's their trigger. They're in the go zone. You can see a golfer go through their pre-putt routine, right? You go through their pre-putt routine and that puts them, that's their trigger to get in focus. Tom Brady used to say, let's F and go.

16:11That was his trigger. I believe even though it was a play that he was calling, I believe Omaha when Peyton Manning would be under the center, even though that was a play call was still a trigger of sorts. So athletes have mastered this, but people that aren't athletes haven't taken advantage of the thing they see them doing all of the time. Successful people create triggers. By the way, trigger can be a sign that you see. It could be a person. Believe it or not, some people trigger us, don't they? Some words trigger us. And so if that's true in the negative, you can make that in the positive. Bella's wedding day is a trigger for this man right here.

16:44And that trigger is to go into action on nutrition, hydration, medication, fitness, mindset, assistance and help, making sure I find the best medical doctors to help myself. So that's key number two. Key number three is this. Leverage is influence. You have to learn how to get leverage on yourself, or if you're going to persuade or lead people, you have to learn how to create leverage with them. Leverage is pain or pleasure, which we'll talk about next. So remember this theory, facts tell, stories sell. Facts tell, stories sell. What that doctor did that day that was so brilliant is he told me a story, all the way starting with, I can't believe these arteries are in that young a body.

17:27All the way to the back, you going to be there for your son's high school graduation? Who's going to walk your daughter down the aisle on her wedding day? He told me a story that I linked because he could have given me all the facts. Hey, listen, this one's 20 % block. This one's 11. This one's 32. Your cholesterol is this. Your lipoprotein A is that. Those are just facts that wouldn't have sold me. He told a story that he linked to the facts. So when you're going to get persuasion on other people or yourself, facts tell, story, sell. Tell a story and then link it to the facts. And same with yourself.

18:00If you're going to get yourself to do something, you can't just say, well, I've got to get in shape. I'm 25 pounds overweight. That's not a story. Tell yourself a story about, I'm going to become an Adonis. I'm going to be transformative. This is going to be my testimony. You begin to tell a story to yourself linked up with the facts. Leverage is influence. When you get leverage, that doctor had leverage on me. My daughter was leveraged. My son was leveraged. My eminent passing that he was creating in my mind was leveraged. Those arteries being in that young body, he created leverage, which made me open to change.

18:33change people won't change unless there's some type of leverage that's created and then lastly fourth what is leverage how do we make decisions when i'm trying to get leverage on myself or on someone else leverage is by the way just means persuasion and the mechanism of change all the time every decision we make in our life is either to gain pleasure or avoid pain i'll say it to you again every decision you make everyone is to gain pleasure or avoid pain once you understand that formula. You learn how to leverage gaining pleasure or leverage avoiding pain. And in my life, I've been pretty good at using both mechanisms.

19:12So, I mean, I mean, every decision you make, like I decided today to get up and brush my teeth and brush my hair and get dressed a certain way to be presentable on the podcast today. You could say I either did that because I want to make sure that I look good and feel good about myself to gain pleasure or the pain of feeling like I look like crap and not looking good, right? When we decide to eat, you either eat because you want to avoid pain and you're suppressing some pain, or you have hunger pains and you're hungry, or you eat for pleasure, either the taste of it or the nutrition, or that's going to make you healthy and strong.

19:44Everything you do, once you understand why do I do what I do, and you break it back down to its most basic form, its mechanism of design, is to gain pleasure or avoid pain. And I've learned to use both leverages. I'll use gaining pain. Sometimes I'll use fear as my friend. If I don't do this, I might lose that. Or if I don't do this, this could happen. That's okay. People try to always avoid pain. There's nothing wrong with leveraging pain. Pain is designed in life to get us to focus and pay attention to something, right? Right now, my lower right back is really painful right now. Now, my body telling me, pay attention to this.

20:23Pay attention to this. And so if you could learn to gain leverage on yourself more often and do it in a healthy way, I can tell you that most people I know that are successful for a long time in their life, it's pain avoidance that's their number one mechanism. Because they just don't believe enough that they're going to win, that it's going to be pleasurable. But I will warn you about that. What I will warn you about is that eventually you can fry yourself if you're always only leveraging pain. The smart person here will learn to leverage both pain and pleasure. And I think there become a point in your life where you transition, where you're doing things to gain pleasure and bliss more often than just to avoid pain.

21:04I'm not one of these people that believes everything you've got to do is to gain bliss. Everything you got to do is to gain happiness. I believe there's contrast and contradictions in life that make, see the painful times make the pleasurable times that much more sweet. But when you're always only avoiding pain, when your mechanism is to just worry and fear and getting leverage always just on pain, that's a dangerous way to run your life. It'll work short term. A lot of athletes, you know, a lot of great coaches talk about leveraging the dark side or leveraging, you know, intensity and passion or fear.

21:35And it's an unbelievably awesome thing. and most of the greatest athletes in the throes of their career leveraged pain more than they did gain pleasure. In fact, if you ask the average athlete, it's incredible. I've asked a lot of them. What was more emotional for you, the pleasure of winning a Super Bowl or the pain of losing it? And I'd say about 85 % say the pain of losing it was worse than the pleasure of winning it. And so a lot of athletes, a lot of top performers operate out of pain. That's okay. But that's why athletes' careers aren't an entire lifetime. because you can't go your entire life leveraging pain.

22:10You have to design a life that eventually is to gain bliss as well at the same time. So what I would encourage you to do when you're leading your business, when you're working with your children, right, is you have to understand that sometimes you need to leverage pain. That's the leverage you're going to get. But the healthy way long term is to begin to learn to leverage pleasure in a way, bliss in a way that serves you the most. Pain is like something you're moving away from. bliss and success and happiness peace that's like a magnet you're being pulled towards and it actually ultimately to me long term is something that's more sustainable and that actually is easier to do because it's got a magnetic and gravitational pull to it that's incredible another reason is is that pain is usually you're lying to yourself about fears and worries that aren't real that vibrates at a low frequency whereas pleasure and bliss is speaking the truth to yourself and that truth vibrates at the highest frequency.

23:05So without getting into the weeds on it, let me just say to you that you can leverage pain and pleasure. And once you understand that's why you make every decision, you can begin to unpack why you do the things you do and how to rework it, rewire yourself. So you do the things that serve you, that serve your goals, serve your ambition, serve your happiness, serve your success, serve your family, serve your body. And so let's review those four things just one more time in order. Number one, why matters the most. Focus on why. Get leverage with your why. Number two, make sure that you're creating triggers.

23:41Triggers are something that can put you right into the state of performance that you need. Third, leverage is influence. Facts tell, stories sell. And fourth, understand why you do what you do. It's to gain pleasure or avoid pain. And once you get that, now you know how to create leverage on yourself or in any environment that you're in. So I'm excited to tell you that I'm still in the battle to be there on Bella's wedding day because I know why I want to be there and I've created some triggers that serve me in doing it and I've understood the leverage I've got facts tell stories sell I've got Bella's wedding day on my mind all the time and I know how to leverage pain and I know how to leverage pleasure I believe this is a formula to create change in your life and I hope that it serves you today so that whatever it is that big dream you've got that thing you want so badly that you've sown a seed into yourself that's going to harvest someday and be a beautiful moment in your life, a beautiful time.

24:30I've given you some of the strategies and tactics in order to make that dream in your life a reality. All right, I hope today blessed you. Thank you so much for being here. Max out your life. This is the Ed Mylon Show.