Listen Now

Over the next few weeks, I am going to introduce you to meditation: what it is, and just as important, what it isn’t. Because there is definitely some confusion there. I know that some of you already have a meditation practice, but I urge you to keep going — because there’s a good chance you were taught how to meditate the wrong way, or you weren’t provided the whole picture.How do I know? Because I spent 20 years thinking I knew how to meditate and what meditation was… and when I realized I didn’t, I was kinda pissed off. And I don’t want you to go two decades building bad habits, too.I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

To wrap up this series on surrender vs submission, we’re going to look at two important footnotes:One is the phenomenon of the rebel, a character we all love to love, and the dangers that come with glamorizing rebellion — there is a fine line between a rebel and a consummate teenager.Second is one of the most common forms of resistance that you are likely to experience in life: your natural fears when confronted with an opportunity to change.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Now that we have a firm handle on the context of individual consciousness, we can dive into the content: specifically, the distinction between surrender and submission, how our society tends to conflate the two, and why this distinction is actually critically important when it comes to coaching, self-management, and growth.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

In the last episode, we examined how individual consciousness evolved rapidly, from the invention of the printing press to the establishment of the United States of America to pioneering the school of psychology.Today, we are going to look at the shadow side of this nation’s obsession with individuality, which is very much present in our world today.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Before we dive into the content of this course focusing on the dynamic between healthy surrender and unhealthy submission, we need to look at the context of the historical evolution of individual consciousness — how it evolved rapidly from the 1400s to the modern day and how our concept of individualism is still very much in flux, especially in the United States.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

About two-thirds of the time, your shadow, your addict, is sitting in the driver’s seat.This keeps us stuck where we are — and, if you’re listening to this, where you are right now probably isn’t where you want to be — and, inevitably, we end up driving right into a wall of reality that rebuffs us for living in delusion.To close out this series, I’m closing the loop on Learning for Change, and offering you an alternate orientation towards life that will help you slowly shift that ratio and, eventually, if you continue to intentionally lean into the work, kick the addiction to overwhelm altogether.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

The addict in us has ideas about reality that aren’t true — and they’re asserting that into our beliefs, the way we orient towards problems, and the way we engage with life .That’s why, for so many people, real change only happens after hitting rock bottom. But that doesn't always have to be the case.Today, we’re going to talk about embracing the addict to move towards something more productive and in line with reality — both as a manager of others and a manager of self.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

What do overwhelm and opiates have in common?They’re both addictions that are far too common in our society today.One may seem significantly worse than the other on the surface, but the deceptive nature of our addiction to overwhelm is truly insidious — and don’t let it tell you any different.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

We’ve been spending the last couple months going through a few classes from the Learning for Change course. Learning to orient yourselves to change in a healthy and productive manner is an important skill set for anyone who endeavors to go down the road of self-mastery, but it’s also a critical skill set for everyone in the world as we know it at the end of 2020, when this episode originally releases.This series focuses on how most of us tend to orient ourselves towards the process of change, almost as a default, and how we can shift that to more easily embrace the reality of change.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

In the last episode, we looked at the first 2 of the 4 stages of relating to change — Ignoring and Dabbling — and how they correlated with the first 3 of the 5 stages of engagement. This week, we’ll examine the last two stages of relating to change, which will bring us full circle and parallel our conversation about discovering your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Sometimes in life (pretty often, actually), reality holds up a mirror and forces you to see a reflection of yourself. This doesn’t always come in the form you expect, it’s almost never when you expect, and it’s generally easy to shrug it off and just keep ignoring whatever reality is trying to remind you about. But if you do keep ignoring life, you will continue to experience suffering — because life doesn’t cooperate with being ignored. In this episode, we’ll discuss the first two stages of relating to change, beginning with ignoring, and how you can start evolving the way you relate to change and your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

We just wrapped up a series on The One Thing from the Learning for Change course. Over the next three weeks, we’re going to continue working through this course, focusing on the four stages of relating to change.We’ll build on what we learned about The One Thing, and you’ll hear from some people who are still grappling with what their one thing is and how it relates to their values. This series will also build on The 5 Stages of Engagement, which were introduced in episodes 90 to 94 and expanded on further in episodes 277 to 279. You don’t have to listen to all of that to get value out of this series, but those episodes will provide additional context to help you navigate change.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

We finish up this series on The One Thing by examining some tools that can be used to identify it, like writing your own eulogy or reverse engineering your one thing from your greatest achievements.If you’re willing to go deeper and commit to finding your one thing, you can sing up for the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com.

Last week’s episode brought up a big question: What is your one thing? Or what’s the question that you will dedicate your life to?But don’t worry if you don’t have a definitive answer to those questions yet. Even just thinking about the question with intention puts you closer to the right path.And today, I’m going to give you some questions and tools you can use to continuously re-orient yourself towards fulfillment as you stumble towards your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Last week’s episode brought up a big question: What is your one thing? Or what’s the question that you will dedicate your life to?But don’t worry if you don’t have a definitive answer to those questions yet. Even just thinking about the question with intention puts you closer to the right path.And today, I’m going to give you some questions and tools you can use to continuously re-orient yourself towards fulfillment as you stumble towards your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Management is a constant exercise in shepherding change, internally or externally.But most people don’t like change, internally or externally. It makes most of us feel uncomfortable, and maybe even a little icky.Which leads me to what may be bad news for some of you: whatever it is you want in life will require you to change.But how do you even know what change is necessary or what steps you’ll need to take? That’s the question we’re going to address today — and when you’re able to find an answer, it’s going to make almost every single other question easier to answer.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Being an adult means never having to say, “I have to.”At the end of the last episode, I shared why this idea that you have to do anything is just one of the most commonly shared delusions — a delusion encouraged by the structures of capitalism, sure, but a delusion nonetheless. What does the alternative look like, then? What does it look like to practice adulthood as a verb and embrace saying “I get to” instead of “I have to” or “I should?”That’s what we’ll be exploring in this final piece of our dialectic on adulthood.If you want to keep going deeper on this subject and start applying these lessons, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.

In the last episode, we started a dialectic to investigate the truth about adulthood. When does it start? What does it mean to be an adult?The answers to those questions aren’t so simple, though, and the definitions seem to keep shifting over time, both for us as individuals and for society as a whole.This week, we’re going to move past the logistics and legal considerations for adulthood and start addressing the concept of Emotional Adulthood and the “I have to” delusion.If you want to go even deeper on the subject, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.

Do you consider yourself an adult?If you’re 18 or older, you probably answered to yourself, “Yes.” You might even have thought it was a stupid question to ask. And by the way, if you’re not 18 yet, kudos for listening — you’re way ahead of the curve.Now, especially if you rolled your eyes at that first question, consider the answer to this: What is the definition of an adult?The answer isn’t quite as obvious as you might think, and there’s a good chance that you’ve just never considered the question. But it’s a critical question to answer on the The Accountability Path, both as a manager of others and a manager of yourself, and it’s the question we’ll be engaging with over the next three episodes.If you want to go even deeper on the subject, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.

To close out our first guest series, Matt Niblock shares how to identify the best candidates for the long haul in a high-pressure job and how hiring managers can create a good candidate experience — which doesn’t always mean making the candidate comfortable, although any good job interview should still be a safe space for truth. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.