My wife and I grew up in San Diego.
Oh, born and raised in San Diego.
And then we lived in Santa Cruz for about 10 years in the nineties.
And, uh, just have been here ever since.
Okay.
You know, we're, where's next?
Cause it sounds like you're, you're looking at
Yeah.
I not yet.
You know, we always say, well, about Costa Rica or what about older Colorado?
You know, first we have a list that we haven't really decided yet.
That's cool.
I would like to do actually just a little bit here, looking like three or
four months here, three or four months there and just, it's not really vacation.
You get to know the place you get to know cafes and restaurants and the people
and the hikes and the nature outside of town.
But, um, uh, then you get to go explore somewhere else.
It's like the, um, the Florida snowbirds.
Yeah.
I see people who do just that half the year, one place half the year.
That's the problem because, you know, a beautiful place like Florida
and January and February, just like Phoenix, Phoenix is amazing in January
and February, 70 degrees.
That's like, it's been a hundred days of over a hundred degrees in
Phoenix, it's like, can't have three months at 110 degrees.
So, um, there's always something, always something.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Life changes, lots of opportunities there.
I live in Texas, so we have those extreme weathers, uh, new brothels.
It's right in between San Antonio and Austin.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Got a lot of, a lot of merryweathers in San Antonio and Dallas and, um,
Fort Worth and all that.
Okay.
Very good.
Well, today we're going to be talking about, um, putting anxiety
and leadership to the test.
Um, we got Craig Merriweather on here, clinical hypnotherapist, um, you know,
and, um, one of his, one of his unique, um, abilities is to help individuals
pass their tests, um, you know, and overcome the anxiety associated with that.
So we'll be talking about that too, but before we dive in into those subjects,
um, and, and I also want to give one more caveat, Vision Pros.
Um, we're all tested in life.
There's lots of different tests that we have to pass, um, whether it's
in front of a boardroom or it's, uh, talking to your boss or it's a school test.
Maybe you have a child who's going through, uh, opportunities for testing.
There's, there's so many different applications for the realities of how
anxiety can, uh, get in the way, um, you know, or prevent us from being
able to do what we need to do.
So we'll be collaborating about that later in the show before we do again.
Craig, what are three resources that you recommend for other entrepreneurs or
visionaries on their journey?
Cause you've been, you know, you've been building businesses for a while now.
Right.
Well, my, my main resources, I know, uh, probably people talk about, uh,
this book or that book.
I think a lot of people have the books they need to read.
I certainly have a stack of six or seven on my bedside that's been
sitting there for about a year.
And so when I was thinking about this, the resources, really what, uh, I
wanted to offer to people is ways of getting themselves in state for their day.
And that's been probably the most resourceful thing I've been able to do in my life.
Uh, and whether that's some form of meditation or, uh, intentional prayer
or doing something like Tai Chi or Qigong or yoga or taking a walk outside
in, in the sunshine or in the rain, if that's what it is, a way to settle
yourself before you start your day.
And I know that's a, maybe a little difficult when you got two or three kids,
you got to get off to school and you got that meeting right at nine o'clock.
But if there's a way somewhere, even if it's just for five minutes and, and
maybe at a point, uh, somewhere, uh, uh, during our conversation, Jackson, I can
show, uh, people, uh, little technique or two that they can do in just five
minutes to help settle themselves.
I think that'd go along with the conversation that we're about to have.
But just a little exercise, even if you have five minutes, okay, I get it.
You don't have an hour and you don't have an hour and a half, but if you take
five minutes to settle yourself, put yourself in state with whatever that needs to be.
That may be the meeting at nine o'clock.
That may be the parent teacher conference at three 30.
That may be the, the, um, uh, family gathering at Thanksgiving dinner.
Put yourself in state of who you need to be every actor, every singer, every
presenter, whether you're Tony Robbins or someone else puts themselves in state
before they walk out into, uh, whatever performance quote unquote performance
they need to give.
So what about you?
What about putting yourself in some sort of state, just taking a minute?
So that's what I like.
Quick question.
You name dropped a couple of people.
Do you work with those level of individuals?
Uh, no, I certainly train with them.
Uh, I, uh, I have been following them, uh, for quite a number of years.
And that's maybe another resource I was about to, to dive into finding
that coach or that mentor.
Look, I don't know Tony Robbins personally.
I don't have the million dollars to have him.
I his personal cell phone number in my cell phone, but I do follow his stuff
amongst many other people.
The people who resonate with me.
And so the next two resources, one is just finding those coaches, whether,
you know, they're personal growth people, or maybe there's more of a, of
a spiritual nature, people who can help, uh, encourage you.
And those are the books to read.
Those are the YouTube videos to watch finding that group of people, you
know, it's that, that thing of, uh, the five people you're going to invite to
dinner and it was Abraham Lincoln and it's gone, Mother Teresa or whoever.
Well, what, who would those people be for you?
And maybe make them people you could go watch a YouTube video on.
Uh, maybe not somebody so far back in history, but somebody
today who inspires you.
But then the third resource I'd like to offer to people is
creating a mastermind group.
And this has helped me so much over the years in terms of, you know,
just being encouraged and being supported.
Uh, it's nice, maybe if they're in the same field as you, but, uh, one of
the best mastermind groups I had was just with two other people.
We met once a week.
They weren't really doing the same thing I was doing, but we were there
to support and encourage each other.
And there's, uh, an accountability there that happens when you tell somebody
at your meeting, your gathering, you're hanging out for coffee and you say,
well, by next week, I'm going to have two more chapters written in my book.
By next week, we're going to have that video made by next week.
I'm going to have my, you know, Facebook or Instagram or TikTok all organized.
You better have it done by that next week.
Otherwise you're going to have to explain why that didn't get done.
And so there's not only accountability, but they're there to encourage
that air support.
Yes, there's constructive criticism, but that's what we're doing.
But that's what helps you move forward.
So while not necessarily resources in the form of books or maybe videos to
watch or documentaries to watch, if you were to find a way to put yourself in
state and also have those resources of maybe, you know, the mentors, whether
you know them personally or not and, and create the, if it's possible for you,
create that mastermind group.
Zoom makes it super easy to find people from around the country, around the
world to, to gather with each other.
And that's what's helped me most of the time.
One of the things I love about what you're doing is your skillset.
The things you're talking about nurture a lot of beginners on this journey.
You have a, you have a big heart for helping people get out of that darkness.
I'm going to level up everything that you said a little bit in a controversial
style, because it's so important that if you're going for excellence and you're
going for that next level, you're the visionary who really wants to bring it to
fruition, then a lot of these elements are, aren't going to get you there.
Um, so getting into flow state, absolutely huge.
Uh, you mentioned the books on the shelves.
Most of us have not read the books that we need.
That's why we have to keep reading.
Um, I, I remember the, uh, the, uh, the emeth, I regret not reading that the
day that it came across my desk.
I read it eight years later.
Um, right.
It's super, super valuable.
So definitely make sure that you're diving into those.
I know Craig wasn't pulling those away as much as saying, Hey, there's
other opportunities here too.
Coaches and mentors look at the playing field and see who's
actually winning championships.
Very few coaches are actually championship level coaches.
Most of them are pretenders.
Most of them will tell you what you need to do, what you should do, what you have
to do, those are control words, they're control tactics.
So knowing how to recognize the difference between somebody who is in
a championship level coach that also inspires their players to move forward
versus one who controls super, super important to recognize that I love the
five people dinner concept and masterminds as well.
One of the things that was said there is yes, constructive
criticism, um, is necessary, but.
There's no, but to constructive criticism and entrepreneurship
and vision and vision life.
Constructive criticism is the medicine.
It's the vitamins.
It's the way to figure out what you're doing and what we can let go of the
negativity associated with criticism and we can embrace it and realize, wow, this
is fostering me to be my best self.
I'm not talking about toxic behavior.
I'm not talking about people who are abusive.
I'm not talking about people who are controlling.
I'm talking about people who can look at opportunities with you and help you see
how to get out of your own way, which is very hard to do.
Uh, if, if again, if I, as an individual am looking at criticism as some type of
enemy of my success or enemy of my own state of being or wellbeing.
So it's very important that as visionary leaders, we learn to embrace, even, even
the negative criticism with the strength of a lion, right.
It just because a lamb.
Baws at me, you know, or a gazelle, um, you know, tries to make a noise
at me to scare me if I'm a lion, there's nothing that's going to happen to me.
Would the hyena even coming at me like good luck.
So it's very important visionaries.
You're building something amazing.
Go and seek criticism from people who love and care about you and love and care
about you feel it, Craig, Craig, feel free to double down or contrast that.
Well, no, I was going to, I was just, everything you said is spot on.
Brilliant.
Uh, don't surround yourself with yes, people who are just going to tell
you what you want to hear.
You need to have that those people in your life who have the courage and
the respect and love for you to tell it the way it is.
And they, you know, they may not necessarily be raised.
They, well, I don't think you should be doing this, that or anything.
I was like, eh, but my vision has me in my guts telling me this is the right way to go.
That's always great.
This is advice, but you know, that there was important about that mastermind group.
That was so important to my growth, not only just as a person, but in
business and, and other endeavors.
Was that the, the honesty of, well, I'm thinking about doing this.
It's like, Ooh, I don't think that's a good idea.
Uh, and, and, and talk about it.
You know, we, we, what was nice about just having three of us is, you
know, in an hour you get 20 minutes just to focus on yourself or if necessary.
I take a whole hour.
If some things are, you know, on fire and you need some, uh, some massive
attention, they'll give it to you because of that respect, because of the lot,
because they know when they need it, it's going to be there for them.
So just, yeah, just to double down on what you just said.
Yeah.
Cause such as criticism is important, but not abuse and not toxic really
where they're always coming down to you.
Did this wrong?
You just don't want that, but you also don't want everybody just to nod and say,
yeah, yeah, yeah, just so they can get onto their thing or choice too.
Right.
So you got, you got masterminds, make sure again, those people I would, I
would highly recommend making sure those people align with the principles
of healthy boundaries.
And you can, again, we can recognize if they constantly tell you what to do
or not to do that shows the signs of somebody who is controlling in nature
versus somebody who says, tell me more about that.
Right. And figures out a little bit, a little bit more about the depth of it.
And then says, well, you know, if that's what, you know, you feel called to do,
then you might do it.
And here's another perspective.
Or here's another way of looking at, have you considered these potential
obstacles?
Right.
It's because if I had told, you know, if I had a mastermind with somebody
and they're like, Hey, I'm writing a book on a napkin, you know, and, and
I'm excited for it.
And I said, well, you should never write a book on a napkin, you know, or, oh,
I don't know if you should do that.
I could have very well discouraged J.K.
Rowling from writing Harry Potter and becoming a billionaire.
So having that, having that knowledge, you know, to not control the actions
of others and to recognize how to bring people into a mastermind environment
that can be supportive.
And as Craig talked about, we're going to circle back to this after the break,
not immediately, but hopefully in the conversation.
I love to talk about how to recognize yes, men, personal, and
recognize yes, men, personalities, because it's not the person who comes to you
and just says yes to everything.
They have very, we have very subtle ways as individuals of, of influence
and manipulating.
And when we learn those, we can either learn to use them for good or to use
them for bad.
And if you can learn how to detect them, you can see who's coming to you and
who's coming at you in life.
And I have a feeling Craig's got some very good insights related to that as
well.
We'll be right back and we'll dive into Craig Merriweather's vision, talk more
about anxiety leadership and putting those to the test.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And I'm excited to have Craig Merriweather on today because we're going to be
talking about a lot of very powerful elements related to anxiety and leadership.
I love the Ted Talk.
If you probably look up Ted Talk Anxiety, you will find an amazing Ted Talk.
You might bet it's the first one that pops up, but the gentleman talks about how
anxiety is not a disease.
It is actually something that is within all of us and learning to work with it.
It's actually strength that protects us, not something that we should deplete and
kill.
So I love that concept.
And as leaders in the world, if you're leading multiple people, the more people
that you're leading, the more likely you have a compound reality of people who are
going to be facing decisions and facing reactionary situations and anxiety.
So this is a super important skill to hone in and talk about and understand as
a leader.
Before we dive in too deep, though, with that, I want to make sure to give you
some other resources, some of them that I find a lot of fun.
One is Brain Glue by James Bond.
This book Brain Glue, Jack Canfield said, you'd have to be an idiot as an
entrepreneur not to buy this book.
It does an excellent job of helping entrepreneurs, marketers understand how to
make their message emotional.
A lot of us go into the logic.
I'm not going to go into it right now.
It's about helping people feel really, really attached to your message.
And the book does a much better job than I can.
Then there's Dave Marl with the Hard to Kill podcast and hardtokill.org.
He's helping a hundred thousand veterans lose 2 million pounds collectively.
And I have absolutely enjoyed Dave's leadership.
I'm in the program as well.
He expanded it to civilians so that all of us can join into the community.
It's a free community and you can go in there and get inspired to start
getting jacked, if you will.
I had no mentality like that before going into this group.
I wasn't even working out for pretty much the last eight years.
Now I'm up to 125 pushups per day.
And I just added on to my weekly habits of doing 40 oblique crunches.
And somehow he has meagered me into being my best self physically.
I highly recommend checking out what he's up to and building that community out.
And if you're in the Atlanta, Georgia area, he's at that military influencer
expo presenting right now.
Go check that out.
Lastly, there's the water project.
We're not affiliated with the water project, but I'm a huge fan of what
their mission is and their transparency for how they give back.
I had never had to consider what it's like to not have clean drinking water in my life.
So when I found this and started to learn about it, I literally forced myself to say,
you know what, I don't feel emotionally attached to this yet, but let me, let me
check it out.
And what I saw was these kids, they celebrate water.
Like my kids celebrate Christmas day.
And there's millions of people out there who don't have access to clean drinking
water.
What the water project does is you can choose which project you want to donate
to, and then you get to see that project come to fruition.
They send you the before and after pictures of what they've done to help
these communities build what's called a sand dam or a borehole well.
And they specifically focus on communities that are really, really hard for people to
get to because those communities are less likely to ever get the help that they
provide.
And I think all of that is just super awesome.
So if you're in a position to be able to give back, then absolutely go ahead and do
that.
If you're not, my request is just take like two minutes, probably maybe 30 seconds
to just meditate and think.
Who would I know that might be interested in hearing about this and then send them
the link.
You never know how far the ripple effect of doing good will go.
And we got 8 billion people to help.
So it's time for us to get up and do that, especially those of us who have the
benefit of rocking the mic or listening to one.
So without further ado, Craig Merriweather, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Thank you, Jackson.
Just got on Amazon and ordered brain glue.
I think you can feel my we're just talking about mentors and things.
He's somebody I've been following for years and years.
And so if Jack Canfield says, read this book, I'm going to go read the book.
Smart man.
Smart man, I think it's a wise decision to listen to people who've sold 130
million books worldwide.
He knows a thing or two.
He literally expressed in the video that I watched on that how upset he was that he
did not think of this concept first and didn't get it.
So enjoy the book.
Definitely let me know what you enjoy the most about it.
And I will, too, because I'm also in the very beginning stages of listening to that
audible.
And the first story made me laugh out loud.
So thanks for diving in with me on that.
Those of you who are listening in, you know.
Take some notes on this show.
I think we're going to be covering some frameworks that can really help you unlock
some things that often go overlooked or we often assume we already know enough
about. And I think Craig's going to bring up some frameworks that that can really
help us all level up.
So I'll be doing that myself.
Craig, before we dive into the frameworks, what is your vision for those that you
serve?
My vision for them is to learn that they can stand in the power of their own
strength and they have the ability to heal and to change.
In my humble opinion, change happens in an instant.
There may be some lead up to that.
There may be some set up to that.
But in the work I've done with people over the years, change happens in an instant.
You're either a smoker or you're a non smoker.
It's not three or four months of maybe, yes, maybe, no, kind of, sort of not really.
It's your smoker.
You're not a smoker.
You're holding on to that hurt and pain, clutching it, or you've let it go and you
dropped it. And so if people.
Could understand how powerful they are and have the ability to use their own
unconscious part of mind, subconscious part of mind to use basically what they
call the placebo effect.
Mind will heal the body, not only just emotional issues, mindset issues, living
beliefs, but physical issues.
If you're holding on to pain in your low back or your neck or you're getting
migraines or headaches or you have digestive issues, irritable bowel syndrome,
a good chunk of that is due to emotional issues.
And yes, there's also always sickness and illness and virus and injuries and
things like this.
And of course, take me to the emergency room when I'm in a car accident or my
appendix is about to burst.
But some of these issues are a direct result of the pain and the hurt we've
been holding on to.
And if you realize you have the power to let it go and to heal, and it doesn't
take a long time, that is very empowering, very empowering.
That's huge.
I love the way that you put this to you said, my vision is to help people stand
in the power of their own strength.
And I think it's again, something that if you breeze past it, you don't really
internalize what that means.
You can miss the majesty of understanding that one, if that was really true, right?
If we got there to that aspect, we could let go of our expectations.
And Shakespeare says expectations are the root of all heartache.
And so stay with me, everybody, because we live in a world where expectations are
glorified, even though it's a synonym of entitlement.
And so if I expect my wife to do the dishes, right?
Or I expect her to clean the house, right?
If I expect her to take care of all of our household, well, that's a brand new
marriage that is pretty much destined for the divorce track, or to be extremely
unhappy.
And when we truly stand in the power of our own strength, we don't rely on other
people to be our saviors in any aspect of life.
Not that we're not willing to exercise humility and receive help or receive
people who can do things for us.
But it becomes a bonus factor that we're always grateful for.
And that took me far too long in life to figure out.
What are your thoughts on that, Craig?
Yeah, I think that's really part of it is those expectations that we have of
other people.
And I think the big part of the frustration comes when we don't even let them know
that we have expectations of them.
And yeah, I know you're talking about the dishes and vacuuming and things like
that, but sometimes just expectations.
Can you sit and listen to me?
Or can we go and take a walk and be together in the busyness of life and the
extraordinaryness of where we've come to just in the last 25 years since...
I can listen to you.
I'm listening right now, Craig.
I mean, that's just kidding.
Go ahead.
Sorry, I had to do it.
Well, and that's a great example because even are you really listening or are you
just kind of waiting for yourself to jump in?
And I know you're being facetious there, but I think a lot of people, and that's
why I find networking...
Well, I'm not reacting.
I'm responding.
Right.
Okay, go ahead.
Continue.
Yeah, I think you and I need to get into some relationship counseling.
And I think a lot of us find networking events so frustrating and maybe a little
bit of a time waster because you're not there to meet and create relationships.
You're there to pitch yourself and nobody wants to hear your pitch and you don't
want to hear their pitch.
And so I think when you have the expectation, especially if you're in a
serious relationship, a long-term relationship, committed relationship,
whether that's a romantic relationship or even a business relationship,
if you have expectations of what a person is supposed to be doing, do they
know that?
Because they may be real happy to fulfill those expectations, but if they
don't know you have them.
So that's where a lot of this honesty and vulnerability to sit down and say,
hey, I need your attention.
I need you to focus on me because I had a really bad day today and I need you to
listen to me.
But if you're getting your own minds and they're running around getting their
own lives together and they got that PowerPoint to get done and they got to do
the dishes and the kids got to get to bed and you're stewing and frustrated
because your partner isn't paying attention to you, do they know you need
attention?
And that's where the vulnerability comes in.
And so it's all about just one day at a time, how much can you grow today?
And be honest with yourself as well, not only with the other people and what you
need.
It's powerful.
You mentioned having a bad day.
Tell me more about that.
Right.
So that's what we talked about.
I reacted on purpose, guys, I was playing.
I jumped in for that respond because we think that's the highest level.
And I had a great family therapist who knocked me off my high horse because I
was in this counseling session.
And my marriage is on the rocks.
And I wasn't reacting.
I was responding.
I was very much hearing what she was saying and I was responding to it.
And he said there's a third level and it's called listening to understand.
And I mean, he's about soft as he could push me off that horse, but I hit the
ground.
I was like, oh, what?
There's another level.
I was like, okay.
So I heard the words that she said, but I didn't really understand what she
meant.
And I assumed that I did and we'd all know in English assume what assumptions
make.
Oh, and I love that the A S S U and M E it makes an ass out of you and it makes
an ass out of me when I'm the one who jumps to assumptions.
I'd write that framework down, by the way, if I were, if I didn't know it,
because it has saved me from myself many times.
And sometimes when I find myself in a travesty with somebody, it's because
I jumped into an assumption.
So Craig, what is, what's the worst leadership experience that you've ever
had?
Well, I guess it can comes back to what we were just talking about.
It's the having of expectations, leadership, having expectations of
you, but not informing you of what those expectations are.
And so you're thinking, oh, I'm going home at five o'clock on Friday.
And they're thinking, oh my God, where did, you know, sales aren't where
they're supposed to be.
And, you know, leadership is worried about even making payroll.
You don't know that.
And they're expecting everybody, okay, we need, because they're going to work
all weekend long.
They're wanting you to work all weekend long.
And that's where that frustration gets.
We're at four 59 or like, why are you grabbing your code?
It's like, oh, it's five o'clock.
It's time to go home and be with my family.
Say, oh, we know we were staying all night.
I told you, we got to finish that project.
The great wall of China is not done, Craig.
Yeah.
I mean, certainly all of the 500 emails you got today, you read the one where I
said that everybody's staying this weekend.
And so in terms of, I mean, it goes right into what we were just talking
If leadership isn't providing you with the ability to do that, you're
going to be lacking what they expect and their expectations of you and your
work.
And that may change.
Excuse me.
That may change over time.
You may be hired and you've doing your job.
And as the company grows, if you're in a company that start off with, I don't
know, 10 employees and now there's a hundred employees, if not a thousand
employees, the expectations of you may have changed significantly.
Have those been addressed?
Has anybody even come to talk with you about that?
And so in terms of leadership experiences that I've had in the past, and I hope
in terms of when I've been in leadership positions, I've hopefully made my
expectations known in a clear manner.
I like what you're saying about it.
But in terms of whether, again, we just mentioned it, whether a romantic
relationship or a relationship business, or just even within family, that
family dynamic of older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister,
mom and dad, grandparents, what are the expectations within that framework?
Huge.
Well, in that word expectation, I'll tell you what, if you want to ruin most of
your relationships in life, follow the advice I'm about to share, which is to
let go of expectations because expectations are a toxic vice and move
to a word called aspirations.
But the benefit of moving and ruining all of my inauthentic relationships,
all the superficial ones that are following me, but moving towards people
who have a higher state of communication, that have a more appropriate alignment
of balance and appreciation for life, is that the relationships that then
gravitate towards our relationships that are absolutely golden.
So I, as a leader, strive so hard, I have expectations, absolutely.
And I strive very hard to kill my expectations and to say, you know what,
I am going to be grateful for the outcome and I'm going to give my best effort.
And I'm going to strive to inspire my team members to give their best efforts.
The byproduct of that has been a team that does not plan Facebook, that does
not waste time, that does not quite quit, that does not check out on Friday
evening, on Friday early, a team that shows up sometimes on their days off,
not prompted by me.
I want them to go do their balance, but it is amazing to see people who usually
clock in early and clock out a little bit late and my constant job, my
responsibility is to constantly tell them, hey, please, please don't leave
late.
You've got a family that's counting on you to be there.
And if you make this a habit, who are they eventually going to not like?
They're going to want you to find another job.
And I love working with you and you're amazing.
And so I don't want our work-life balance to get in the way of a great thing.
So let's try to unplug.
I know we wanted to get it done.
And nobody's going to die.
And I don't work in an ER.
So I'm fortunate that I get to do that.
Yes, that would be the next level up.
And my opinion is for all of us to actually look at, you know what?
Are my expectations causing disappointment in my life?
Is there anything good that comes out of having an expectation not fulfilled?
And the feeling associated with that?
I've never been uplifted by my expectation or somebody else's
expectations on me.
So what's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
The best leadership experiences I've had in the past is when I'm supported and
encouraged.
And I think you just get a great example of it.
And you're specifically talking about focusing on balance and making sure they
have that balanced time.
And family is important.
And so having a leadership that recognizes that you are a human being and a person with a life.
And it's not all just about the bottom line and the spreadsheet at the end of the month and the way
it's looking.
But also having leadership because, assumingly, I'm hired out of the maybe 100 people that
applied and the five or six that were interviewed because you saw something within me that you felt
could help your company, help your business improve, grow, and let me do that.
And I think the best leadership experiences are allowing you to do that even while making
mistakes.
And I think Steve Jobs in one of those, you see those little blurbs on Instagram or Facebook
sometimes of things that Steve Jobs talks about.
And he talks about getting frustrated about somebody did something, they did it wrong.
But instead of him going to fix it himself, he says, let them go through it and let them figure
out how to fix it themselves.
Yes, that might take some time.
That might take a month or two for them to figure out what they did wrong, how they did it, and
how they can improve it.
Now they know how to do it instead of you constantly going in and cleaning up the mess.
And so having the respect that, one, I can do the job and encouraging me and supporting
me in that, but also, OK, yeah, I'm going to stumble and fall.
And yeah, I may fall off the horse and hit hard.
But if you allow me to pick myself up and realize how maybe I did that wrong or I turned the wrong
direction, then I'm not going to do it again because I learned how to do it.
And I'm not going to do it again because I learned from my mistakes.
Yeah.
And so leadership is like it's not in your face telling you what to do all the time.
Do it my way.
You hired me for a reason.
And yes, I might not do it your way, but I'm going to get the work done and I'm going to do it well.
Yeah.
Empowering our people.
It's a really hard concept to implement and to do for most of us, especially those of us who are
alpha in nature and we want things to be done a certain way.
But most people who are en route to being an alpha are still very much beta and how they go about it.
And that's that discipline of that inferiority complex of having to control or trying to make
things happen a certain way versus true alpha that does exactly what you're talking about,
allowing the space for things to happen, knowing there's slight consequences,
but the long-term travesty and consequences of doing everything yourself or forcing the issue
is far more catastrophic.
And this is the last opportunity, Craig, that you had to share a powerful lesson.
What powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
And this was something I learned a while ago.
It was actually just a story I think I might have read in a book or heard somebody else say.
But this manager of a big business was talking about his experience of growing his company.
And what was interesting is he lived down the street from a vice president of a company who
had been managing companies for decades and was maybe even close to retirement.
And what he would see this guy at barbecues and neighborhood gatherings and get together
and they would talk business.
And he was managing a smaller company that was growing and he was doing a lot of the work.
And the manager who had so many decades of experience would pull him aside and say,
look, you're doing all this work.
I see you come home late on Friday.
I see you not going to work on Saturday and Sunday.
You're a manager.
That's for you to manage other people.
You're going to grow this company and you're going to go from 10 employees to 100 employees
in about a year.
You can't continue doing everybody's job.
And so from now on, you are going to leave at 8 a.m.
and you're going to be back home at 5 p.m.
and you're going to be home on the weekends.
And this new manager promised that he would do that and he would look out the window and
wait until he saw the other guy leave for his job.
Then he would grab his briefcase and get to his car and drive to work.
And he knew he said, I got to be home by five because he wanted to be home in his car in
the driveway for when the other guy came on to see what he was doing.
And that was the best thing that ever happened to him because he grew the company to 100,
200 employees.
Of course, he can't do everybody's job, but he was there to manage.
And that was very inspiring to me.
In that if I need somebody, I'm just at the moment, just kind of, you know, I hire consultants
to help with graphic design or maybe podcast editing or recording, anything like this.
I don't have employees per se.
But if I do need that extra help, I let them do that.
You know, I don't edit the recording and then give it to them so they can tighten up
the recording and say, you do what you need to do in the world.
You do what you need to do in the way you need to do it.
And that saves me all the time so I can start focusing on something else.
Correct. Huge, awesome, powerful principle.
The E-Myth does an excellent job of breaking down how to do that as well.
It's again, that book changed my life and helped me level up in big ways as a leader
because a lot of times we one, we do try to doodle, right?
We try to be the one who gets it all done.
But the second phase of that is we hire people and a lot of times we hire them and we move
way out of the way and we just let them go nuts with what they're doing.
And in the worst case scenario, we actually hire an absolute rock star.
But the rock star continues to do more and more and more and more.
And they usually don't set healthy boundaries.
So they usually end up doing far too much while we enjoy that process.
Well, what happens when that rock star then leaves because they felt taken advantage of?
Then you end up with a huge amount of success thanks to their contributions.
But now you have no idea what procedures, resources and templates they followed.
So the implosions that can occur in business are many.
There's so many different variables and variations of what that can look like.
It's very important to know how to develop the personnel skills to be able to empower
people the right way, position them for success and continuing to magnify our own leadership.
With that said, frameworks, Craig, we did promise it.
And so I'm excited about it.
Go ahead.
I'd love to have just one framework for you for either leadership or managing anxiety.
Either way, I know it's going to level us up.
Well, what I like to tell people is what's strongest within your mind is what you practice
over and over again.
It's what you do over and over again.
Of course, whatever your practice, you're going to get better at.
If you're learning how to play the piano or the guitar, if you're learning dance,
you're learning martial arts, you only get a black belt in judo or taekwondo.
If you're practicing over and over again, we see this with little kids.
We saw it ourselves when we learned how to walk or ride a bicycle.
What you do over and over again is what you're going to get better at.
What's strongest in your mind is what you do over and over again.
So what if you're practicing anxiety?
What if you're practicing fear?
What if you're practicing being angry?
I've seen, I know people who are the calmest, most peaceful people, most pacifistic,
if that's even a word, kind of people you will ever meet.
And yet you get them behind the wheel of a car on a freeway.
And the rage that comes out, the anger, the curse words.
And because they have trained themselves that while in this little capsule of a piece of metal
with their hands on a steering wheel, sitting in this kind of strange little seat with a seatbelt
and moving their foot from the accelerator to the gas pedal, puts them into a certain state.
Unfortunately, it's a state of anger and rage.
And by practicing that, they're literally anchoring this kind of environment,
maybe even to the music that may be playing on the radio or through their phone or whatever,
to this experience.
And this experience has trained them to get enraged.
And so maybe what in your life do you notice that the minute you realize this event is going to
happen, which may be Thanksgiving dinner with family or that get together with family,
get together with family, that's all of a sudden the anxiety or the anger or the frustration
starts up.
Maybe it's not family, maybe it's work, maybe it's something else.
But what you practice, you get better at.
But what's fascinating about this work, it doesn't take weeks.
I mean, it doesn't take years and months to change.
It may just take weeks because what you practice, you get better at.
And so if you're noticing an aspect of yourself, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's fear,
maybe it's anger, maybe it's overwhelmed or worry or something else.
If you're noticing an aspect of yourself, a mindset issue, you're allowed to change that.
Now, it does take some practice.
It does take some work.
But again, it doesn't take months and years to change your state of mind or even state of body.
You start rewiring your brain in less than a week.
They've showed that through multiple research studies.
And so the University College of London states that it takes 66 days to create a habit.
That meaning, now whatever that activity or thought process or mindset or even emotional state
you want to create has become an automatic habit within two months, two and a half months.
So by practicing and depending on what it is you want to work on,
by practicing multiple times a day, even if just five minutes here, five minutes there,
10 minutes over there, you can start rewiring your brain, creating new neural pathways within
your brain in less than a week and have a fully formed habit within about two months.
That's pretty extraordinary.
But it's that thing you have to do it.
It's like some of the addiction kind of programs say, you know, the process has worked,
but you got to work the processes.
You know, just like you were talking about a little bit with your physical health.
I mean, you didn't start with, you know, a hundred pushups.
Well, I would.
That's funny, though.
I don't agree with the timelines because timelines are arbitrary to paint on a person.
But so the general realities that exist out there, they're important benchmarks.
But, you know, for general statistics, my life was supposed to be an absolute failure.
I was raised by my single mom in a broken home, experienced all the different types of abuse you can.
You know, and so there's all these, you know, so you grow up learning that, OK,
well, you're supposed to be the failure.
You know, and I knew that I needed to have I need to live a different way in order to get different results.
And so I'm 100 percent in agreement with you that what I love that you said, where are you practicing those aspects?
So when I got in my car and one day I don't even remember what prompted me, I just realized like, you know what?
I sit forward when I drive and I'm like, it's go time and I don't believe in the defensive driving.
I believe in I believed in proactive driving.
And so it's like, you know, you can do that all you want, but see you.
You know, I'm weaving in and out, making sure I'm getting to where I go.
But I changed that years ago.
And one day I just decided I was like, you know what?
I was like, I'm going to lay my seat way back and scoot it way forward and I'm going to drive in a super chill position.
And I find myself often going, you're going to you guys are going to hate me now under the speed limit.
I find myself saying, you know what?
If I'm going to be stuck in traffic, I've got I've got Pandora, I've got TED Talks, I've got all these things.
I've got all sorts of things I can do.
It's no different than being in my office.
Why not just enjoy this process?
And then, yeah, I'm a little bit aggressive.
So when somebody gets upset at me for whatever reason, and they're, you know, you can see I'm honking, you can see I'm yelling.
I like to go like this.
I put my ear up to the window.
I don't know, maybe somebody I'll get shot for doing it, but I like to just tease them and be like, I can't hear you.
You know, and I don't have anxiety when I drive, you know, and so there's lots of things we but we don't have to rely on the timelines.
And we are out of time.
But one thing that you also shared, you talked about you're a smoker or you're not.
And it made me really happy because as much as I love the AA programs and what they do for people and the programs like that, so many people fall into this trap of permanently label themselves.
And those programs encourage you to do that in some aspects.
And I think it's beyond unhealthy and stupid.
So there's this movie, The Gambler, and then at Mark Wahlberg, I'm going to ruin the movie for anybody who's listening, by the way.
But when you when he goes to the end and he finally finishes his last gamble and he has destroyed his life and everybody's life in the process pretty much.
And he finishes his last gamble.
But, you know, at the end of the movie, he ends up giving that money to the people who he owes it to and he walks away with nothing and one of them wants to give him one hundred thousand dollars.
And he tells the guy, F you.
And he had just gotten this lesson from the guy that you should have enough money in your life.
Like you arrive when you get to the point where you could say F you to somebody and and and just move away because you have the money.
Well, Mark Wahlberg in the end of the movie says, by the way, I'm not a gambler.
Then he walks away from one hundred thousand dollars and says, F you.
You know, he's got nothing, right?
Nothing but his relationship that he's going back to.
And the whole movie is actually about grief and overcoming the loss of his grandfather that just disrupted his life for a specific time.
But he knew in his heart that he was not a gambler.
He was not what he was doing to cope with whatever it was he had going on.
So we are chameleons.
We have the ability to evolve and to not be limited by some label that somebody else puts on us.
And we do have the ability to create habits instantly.
I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not going to have the framework for all of you.
All I'm saying is, please don't beat yourself up if you're like, well, I'm not at day 66 yet.
Oh, you know, and looking at things from this scientific perspective.
But the the the formulas that you just blessed us with, Craig, where are you in these circumstances?
I'm absolutely going to be applying that and saying, you know what, where am I still not coming out as my best self?
Because that's that's robbing me of my best opportunities.
Yeah, I love what you just said, because you said I'm not there yet.
And so that implies within your unconscious mind that you will get there.
And whether that's tomorrow next week or next month, you're going to get there.
And you've already programmed yourself.
You already and that's what's so beautiful about a lot of the work I do.
It's not so much that I have to hypnotize people.
We're already hypnotized.
That's why we feel the anger.
You already did it to me.
...missing people.
But by hypnotizing yourself to say, this is going to happen.
It hasn't happened yet.
And so that implies to every cell of your body that's going to get done.
And it's pretty powerful.
Oh, it's amazingly powerful if we will put in the work, if we will get after it.
So Vision Pros, we hope you get after it.
And we're super grateful that you all joined us today.
We'll see you in the next episode.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.