Burnout, Identity, and the Power of Starting Over – with George Bryant

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Welcome to Grace and the Grind, the podcast where we dive deep into the journeys of heart centered and purpose driven leaders and entrepreneurs.

Speaker A: 00:00:09

We're here to equip and encourage you on your journey.

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So let's get started and find the grace within the grind.

Speaker A: 00:00:17

This is Grace in the Grind.

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And now your host, Jim Burgoon.

Speaker B: 00:00:23

Welcome to Grace in the Grind, where we're here to tell the inspiring story behind the story of some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Speaker B: 00:00:31

And today I have one of my really dear friends, George Bryant with us.

Speaker B: 00:00:34

Welcome to the show, George.

Speaker A: 00:00:36

Stoked to be here, brother, as always.

Speaker A: 00:00:37

I'm glad.

Speaker A: 00:00:38

We should have recorded the first hour of our conversation, but we'll just hit go now.

Speaker B: 00:00:41

Yeah, we should have because it was very rich.

Speaker B: 00:00:43

But you know what, there are conversations for the audience and there's conversations for us and so we'll chalk that up as a conversation for us.

Speaker B: 00:00:50

But with that being said, I know a lot of people know you, but for the audience who doesn't know you, can you take the next 60 to 90 seconds to tell the audience who you are and what you do?

Speaker A: 00:00:59

Oh, Jim, I love this question, my friend.

Speaker A: 00:01:01

Yeah, I today I'd say I'm an A minus father, I'm an A son, and I'm an A son with God because my identity is no longer wrapped up in the things that I've achieved or the things that I've done, no matter what labels the world puts on me.

Speaker A: 00:01:14

And my mission in the world is truthfully at the core, to give entrepreneurs a permission slip to build businesses their way in alignment and scale with impact and integrity in the process, like throwing out outdated business models and copy and paste strategies and tactics and having a permission slip to be unapologetically themselves so that they love every ounce of their business and get to reap in the rewards and the revenue and the things that come with it.

Speaker A: 00:01:41

Because I have a pretty big hill with a flag planted that says business is supposed to be an integrity as well and nobody has to sacrifice themselves in the process.

Speaker A: 00:01:50

I either sacrificing your customers and transacting with them or sacrificing yourself and becoming the world's version of you instead of sharing your gifts authentically.

Speaker A: 00:01:59

So that's today on, you know, Tuesday, how I would describe what I do.

Speaker B: 00:02:03

And now we're going to dive into some really cool conversation here because number one, we had started already a cool conversation, but something you said in your intro and it's about the identity and the identity shift and I feel like this is the Direction I want to go in because so many people deal with identity, we turn the TV on, you have so much identity crisis happening.

Speaker B: 00:02:23

So tell me about when was the portion that you recognized that you had an identity that didn't align to who you really are?

Speaker B: 00:02:30

And then what were the steps to start to shift that?

Speaker A: 00:02:34

Oh, I wish that this was like a pretty little unicorn riding a rainbow journey where it was like this one aha moment.

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But truthfully, there were about three or four very painful catalystic moments.

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The first one I remember like it was yesterday where I had built a massively successful multi seven figure business as a food blog.

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I had roughly a million followers online, there were 3 million people a month coming to my website and I ended up in the jungles of Costa Rica and had my first encounter with God and it was put on my heart and convicted.

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That entire business was out of alignment because I didn't know who I was.

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Like my identity was wrapped up in what Instagram thought and how many likes I had and how many cars I owned and houses I owned.

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And truthfully, I had a hollow soul.

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And so against the wishes of everybody in my life, my coaches, my friends, my ex wife, in 24 hours I gave that entire company away.

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I deleted my social media, I changed my phone number and disappeared off the Internet for three years.

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And in that process started the discovery of realizing that my entire identity had been dictated by everybody else but me.

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Not once that I ever asked myself what do I value?

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What, what do I care about?

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Who do I want to be as a man, who do I want to be as a father?

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And I was basically everybody else's version of what I thought was the right way.

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Here's how I should be a dad, here's how I should be an entrepreneur, here's what society tells me.

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These are the people I follow and look up to.

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And it was just this advocation of responsibility throughout my entire life, everywhere.

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And it rooted all the way down to my childhood because the way that I survived as a 11 to 12 year old kid who was basically homeless and dealing with social services and abuse and neglect was becoming a chameleon so that I could get food and I could have somewhere to live.

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And then I ended up in the marine Corps for 13 years, which gave me this entire identity of hey, those feelings you have, that's not pain, that's weakness leaving your body.

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So go, robot, achieve.

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And it carried all the way through into every relationship, every bucket, every business bucket.

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And so that was the first big one.

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And then throughout the years that led to me becoming a consultant and taking all the accolades and the credit of being a New York Times bestseller.

Speaker A: 00:04:49

And look at all these things I did.

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And then I started consulting all these companies and I helped make rich people richer.

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And I convinced myself that we valued the same things in the world.

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And yet I got to be behind the scenes and under the hood of everybody else's lack of alignment, to where there were months at a time where I felt like I couldn't have enough showers to clean my soul because of the things that I was involved in and the lack of integrity, to where it happened again.

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And I was like, I can't do this.

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I can't get paid these copious amounts of money to help these people who on the surface say we care about people and yet they sacrifice their employees and they don't really care about the customers.

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And so I went through it again, and there Was this like 5, 6 year span where every single time I tried to go somewhere or do something, it's like I intentionally or unintentionally put blinders on and I created my own cognitive dissonance.

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I convinced myself that it looked different than it actually did, which just created these massive pockets of misalignment for me.

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So, you know, what it looked like in real life is that I would achieve the things on paper, but I got.

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And then I would wake up exhausted and I wouldn't want to work and I would try to avoid my calendar and I wouldn't want to get on connection calls.

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And yet on paper, everyone's like, you're crushing it, look.

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But like my soul was dead.

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And it was like every single thing I did felt like it wasn't me.

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And the more and more I did it, the more repulsed I got.

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And so there were numerous times that I basically had to step away and almost sabbatical myself and with no means to do so at some of the hardest points of my life.

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Like, there was a point where we were like three weeks away from bankruptcy and my ex wife was pregnant with my son, and that's when I gave away that company.

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There was no backup plan.

Speaker A: 00:06:38

I had driven it so far to the bottom by ignoring the signs that I had to just throw it out in the trash and rebuild it again.

Speaker A: 00:06:46

And truthfully, the most important step and the thing that I never asked myself was, what's my vision for my life?

Speaker A: 00:06:54

Right?

Speaker A: 00:06:55

What's my vision for the world?

Speaker A: 00:06:56

You and I were talking before the show about priorities and how no matter what, when it comes to time, we all have so much of it that we're going to sacrifice somewhere in some bucket.

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But I was sacrificing the wrong things.

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I was choosing work and idolatry over my son.

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I was choosing status and connections and false relationships over the people that were closest to me.

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I was choosing self suffrage through hustling and working 20 hours a day instead of taking care of myself.

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And I had these.

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This life of gain £100, lose £100, replace one addiction with another addiction, go from opiates to caffeine and not sleep and convince myself it's okay, or I'm gonna sprint really hard and destroy myself at the gym and then not take care of my body in the process.

Speaker A: 00:07:43

Or I'm gonna just sprint so hard for two years and not sleep, and I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Speaker A: 00:07:48

And the truth was, is every foundation was built on sand.

Speaker A: 00:07:51

And so all that effort and all that energy I put into everything, when I came time to rest or pull back, there was nothing left because it never really matched who I was.

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And it wasn't.

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I wasn't able to maintain it.

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And so it was more of a truthfully five, six year process through me not getting the message.

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And so the first thing I did was I had to have really, and I say this with full integrity, have a come to Jesus moment of who am I?

Speaker A: 00:08:16

Right?

Speaker A: 00:08:16

If I erase the business, if I erase the results, if I erase the labels, like, who am I?

Speaker A: 00:08:22

And I didn't like that question because it forced me to look in the mirror and take some truth pills of the way that I claim to show up is not the feedback that people are giving me, the way that I want to make people feel, not the things that they're saying.

Speaker A: 00:08:37

And so it became this, like, discovery process of who I am and what I want to do.

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And then over time, as I started to answer that question, I started to bring in people that felt in alignment with me in that bucket and serve them in that bucket to where now I was even sharing with you.

Speaker A: 00:08:53

I get bummed when I don't have standing client calls.

Speaker A: 00:08:56

I'm like, wait, when's the next one?

Speaker A: 00:08:57

Like, when are we scheduling this again?

Speaker A: 00:08:58

I love this.

Speaker A: 00:08:59

It feels like family and friends.

Speaker A: 00:09:01

But it wasn't this.

Speaker A: 00:09:02

I think people hear this word alignment, and they're like, oh, I'm just gonna bring everything into alignment.

Speaker A: 00:09:07

That's not how it works.

Speaker A: 00:09:07

Alignment is active pursuit of the things that we value, and it requires that we know what we value.

Speaker A: 00:09:13

If you value family, you can't sacrifice that in the process.

Speaker A: 00:09:17

Realize they turn 18 and you don't get that time back.

Speaker A: 00:09:20

Like it has to be a priority now, right?

Speaker A: 00:09:22

And it has to be this pursuit, but also this protection of it when you're in the process.

Speaker A: 00:09:27

Because the world isn't going to value the same things.

Speaker A: 00:09:29

The industries that you're in, the buckets that you're in, they're not going to protect your values.

Speaker A: 00:09:35

They're going to try to distract you and get you to become that version of yourself.

Speaker A: 00:09:38

So you have to have this like deep knowing in your core that's really aligned like that.

Speaker A: 00:09:42

Your heart, your mind and your belly is.

Speaker A: 00:09:46

Huh?

Speaker A: 00:09:46

This is like who I want to be, but it requires some humility as well, because it required me letting go of things that I thought I wanted, that I had big houses, all these cars, private jets and blah blah, blah.

Speaker A: 00:09:58

Like those are the things that were on my vision board.

Speaker A: 00:10:00

Like I didn't have on my vision board.

Speaker A: 00:10:01

Like, oh, memories with my son playing in the park, doing backflips on the trampoline.

Speaker A: 00:10:08

And at the deepest level, I had to have this really integrous talk with myself.

Speaker A: 00:10:12

What is it that I want?

Speaker A: 00:10:13

And not from what the world told me or what my childhood was like, because I was basically reacting to my whole life, right?

Speaker A: 00:10:20

I wasn't loving the results that I got.

Speaker B: 00:10:23

So this brings up a great question.

Speaker B: 00:10:25

Matter of fact, I think it brings up several.

Speaker B: 00:10:27

But this is the one we're going to go with.

Speaker B: 00:10:28

So you had said like that at some point you would become a chameleon, right?

Speaker B: 00:10:35

And during this time, you kept getting rid of different businesses because they weren't you.

Speaker B: 00:10:41

If you're at a place of a chameleon who's struggling with identity, how did you know if they were part of were for you or weren't aligned with you?

Speaker B: 00:10:47

Like, how did you have that sense?

Speaker A: 00:10:49

That's a great question.

Speaker A: 00:10:50

I'm going to answer this in a fortune cookie.

Speaker A: 00:10:53

I'm going to answer this in a fortune cookie because it resonates at the deepest level.

Speaker A: 00:10:57

I was able to know because I was willing to spend enough quiet time to hear God's whispers.

Speaker A: 00:11:02

I only knew because I created the space to actually slow down and feel.

Speaker A: 00:11:07

And the markers of being out of alignment is that there's never a finish line.

Speaker A: 00:11:13

There's always more work to do.

Speaker A: 00:11:14

There's always more calls to make, there's always more content to make.

Speaker A: 00:11:17

There's always more tasks to do.

Speaker A: 00:11:18

Right?

Speaker A: 00:11:18

You, your task list feels like no matter how many things Go on it.

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And how many things that you cross off that it's never enough because it's this permanent distraction.

Speaker A: 00:11:29

And I had a very wise mentor back in that period where I gave away that company.

Speaker A: 00:11:35

The reason I ended up giving it away is he wouldn't let me do the healing breath work because he said I had no purpose for my life.

Speaker A: 00:11:42

And I was like, yeah, that's why I'm here.

Speaker A: 00:11:43

A hole, right?

Speaker A: 00:11:45

Like, why do you think I paid you?

Speaker A: 00:11:46

And I came all the way to Costa Rica.

Speaker A: 00:11:47

That's the point.

Speaker A: 00:11:48

He's no, nobody can give you purpose for your life.

Speaker A: 00:11:51

Only you can.

Speaker A: 00:11:52

So he told me that I could come back and participate when I could answer this question.

Speaker A: 00:11:57

And he said, what is the purpose for your life?

Speaker A: 00:11:59

And I was angry.

Speaker A: 00:12:00

I yelled at him.

Speaker A: 00:12:01

I was like, do you know how many ways I could kill you?

Speaker A: 00:12:04

Like, I have this entire skill set.

Speaker A: 00:12:06

And.

Speaker A: 00:12:06

And he's just smiling at me.

Speaker A: 00:12:08

And I'm like.

Speaker A: 00:12:09

And he's.

Speaker A: 00:12:09

Your biggest problem is you've never been quiet enough to hear God's whispers.

Speaker A: 00:12:14

And he's come back when you have an answer.

Speaker A: 00:12:16

And it took me, like, three days.

Speaker A: 00:12:17

But for me, I actually had to intentionally create the space to feel, to reflect, to look at my life, to look at my day.

Speaker A: 00:12:27

And now, as a man of faith, here's what I say to myself quite frequently.

Speaker A: 00:12:31

If Jesus walked through the door right now, would I be proud of my morning today?

Speaker A: 00:12:36

Would I be proud of my week this week?

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Not from fault, not from blame, not from guilt, not from shame, but from a place of integrity.

Speaker A: 00:12:45

And we need space to be able to do that.

Speaker A: 00:12:47

And so many of us wait until it's the reaction where it's.

Speaker A: 00:12:50

And I know everybody listening to this has done this because I still do this.

Speaker A: 00:12:53

You have a day.

Speaker A: 00:12:54

You pull into the driveway, and yet you sit in the car for 30 minutes before you go inside.

Speaker A: 00:12:59

Like, you're just like, I just need a minute, or, I just need to go for a drive, or, God, no matter.

Speaker A: 00:13:05

I'm just going for a walk outside or I need to go to the gym.

Speaker A: 00:13:07

It's like our bodies are craving for us to create that space, but it's not something we proactively do.

Speaker A: 00:13:13

It's something we react into.

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And so what it really required was me having intentional time to be with myself.

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And not from a place of judgment or beating myself up, but really from a place of thinking.

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And I love Keith Cunningham as an author.

Speaker A: 00:13:27

He has this book called the Road Less Stupid.

Speaker A: 00:13:29

Hilarious.

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Listen.

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Because he narrates it himself.

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But he's a massively successful entrepreneur, and the book is broken up into a series of, like, independent stories.

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But the one thing that he has at the end of every one of them is intentional thinking time.

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He's no, I want you to go sit in a room with just a pen and a paper and ponder and just allow yourself to write.

Speaker A: 00:13:47

But we forget that the sharpest tool that we have is ourself, but yet we never invest in that relationship.

Speaker A: 00:13:53

And so we have to intentionally create that space to be in relationship with ourselves.

Speaker A: 00:13:58

And I think for me and you, that's relationship time with God.

Speaker A: 00:14:02

To be able to consecrate that relationship, to hear that.

Speaker A: 00:14:05

But it doesn't come in the noise of the world.

Speaker A: 00:14:07

It comes when we quiet the noise of the world to create that space.

Speaker A: 00:14:11

And so that's the biggest part.

Speaker A: 00:14:13

Even with my private clients, the number one exercise that I give them, and they fight me hard, they yell at me, they tell me I'm crazy, is they'll be here.

Speaker A: 00:14:21

And I'm like, all right, cool.

Speaker A: 00:14:23

I need your phone.

Speaker A: 00:14:23

I need your computer.

Speaker A: 00:14:24

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:14:24

I'm like, I'm leaving for an hour.

Speaker A: 00:14:26

I just want you to sit here in silence.

Speaker A: 00:14:28

And they're like, you would swear I committed murder.

Speaker A: 00:14:31

What am I supposed to do?

Speaker A: 00:14:32

I'm like, no, you can't write anything down.

Speaker A: 00:14:34

You can't listen to music.

Speaker A: 00:14:35

I just want you to practice being.

Speaker A: 00:14:37

And they're, like, repulsed, and boom.

Speaker A: 00:14:39

And then six months later, they're like, hey, I'm going to ignore you for three hours tomorrow because I'm doing this and this in the morning.

Speaker A: 00:14:44

I love this space.

Speaker A: 00:14:45

Right?

Speaker A: 00:14:46

We tend to wait for this outside catalyst, but really, we're not designed to be go do, do.

Speaker A: 00:14:51

Like, it's be, do, have, not do behave.

Speaker A: 00:14:53

And so we have to intentionally create that space.

Speaker A: 00:14:56

And to your point earlier, we live in a noisy world where what's the number one traded commodity is attention.

Speaker A: 00:15:02

And so in the world that we live in, it's not going to be like, hey, I want you to go be by yourself and find yourself.

Speaker A: 00:15:09

I want you to be an independent thinker.

Speaker A: 00:15:10

It's no, I want to capitalize on all of your attention so that you do what I do or you follow what we want, or we can manipulate you with marketing or whatever to get you to do these things.

Speaker A: 00:15:20

And so it requires this, like, deep level of commitment to self, and then it also forces this relationship with self.

Speaker A: 00:15:27

And the way that I anchor this in for people is we spend our entire life Avoiding the one relationship we're guaranteed to spend the rest of it with, which is ourselves.

Speaker B: 00:15:36

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:15:37

Can't divorce yourself or at least get rid of yourself.

Speaker B: 00:15:40

So here then becomes the challenge.

Speaker B: 00:15:42

So as somebody who is a hard charger.

Speaker B: 00:15:45

Go.

Speaker B: 00:15:46

To put on the brakes is a death sentence.

Speaker A: 00:15:49

Yeah, it feels that way.

Speaker B: 00:15:50

It feels that way.

Speaker B: 00:15:51

It's not one, but it feels that way.

Speaker B: 00:15:53

So how did you navigate having to shift those?

Speaker B: 00:15:56

Because that's not an easy off and on switch.

Speaker B: 00:15:58

That's not like, go, stop.

Speaker B: 00:16:00

Great, go.

Speaker B: 00:16:01

Because then stopping is also now part of your going.

Speaker B: 00:16:05

So how did you shift into this more contemplative version of yourself to put the brakes on without really.

Speaker B: 00:16:12

I don't know.

Speaker B: 00:16:12

I don't know if I would say driving yourself crazy, but without having to constantly fight through all the challenges to give up on the contemplative space.

Speaker A: 00:16:21

It's a great question, and I think to even answer it in the way you frame the question, you're going to have to be honest with yourself.

Speaker A: 00:16:26

It is a fight.

Speaker A: 00:16:27

It's fighting for what truly matters, right?

Speaker A: 00:16:29

I had a wise mentor who said, do you want to know why Olympians win gold medals?

Speaker A: 00:16:34

It's because they understand what temperance means.

Speaker A: 00:16:37

Nobody trains at 100% every single day.

Speaker A: 00:16:39

They train at 70% all day, every day for four years, to where, when 100 is required, they push the gas pedal.

Speaker A: 00:16:47

This is a fight because the world that we live in is not designed before the Internet, for sure.

Speaker A: 00:16:52

I'm blessed that I started as an entrepreneur before social media really existed.

Speaker A: 00:16:56

The only thing was Facebook with college email addresses in MySpace.

Speaker A: 00:17:00

Right?

Speaker A: 00:17:00

There wasn't this constant fighting for attention, so we would actually have time alone.

Speaker A: 00:17:05

We would drive in the car without satellite radio and our phones in our hands, and it's either look outside or drive in silence or have conversations, right?

Speaker A: 00:17:13

There's this metric underneath it that we have to fight for.

Speaker A: 00:17:16

And it was a fight, and it is a fight, but it's really this intentional relationship to understand.

Speaker A: 00:17:21

And this is so cheesy.

Speaker A: 00:17:23

But as much as, like, I fly, we hear it all the time.

Speaker A: 00:17:26

You have to put your oxygen mask on first, right?

Speaker A: 00:17:29

You can't pour for an empty bucket.

Speaker A: 00:17:30

And.

Speaker A: 00:17:30

And the hard reality of this is that if you don't proactively choose it, it gets reactively forced upon you, except it causes permanent damage.

Speaker A: 00:17:40

Adrenal fatigue, burnout, resentment to the business, losing clients, and all these different buckets that we say we want to avoid, and yet we create them in the process by constantly ignoring ourselves.

Speaker A: 00:17:54

And so it's not even that.

Speaker A: 00:17:55

It's like this fight that you choose to do or not do.

Speaker A: 00:17:59

It's this almost fight that you're required to do every single day to actually have the things that you want to have.

Speaker A: 00:18:05

And it's not a finish line.

Speaker A: 00:18:08

Just like going to the gym is.

Speaker A: 00:18:10

All too often, I've achieved these goals, and I'm like, oh, there's.

Speaker A: 00:18:12

I have a six pack at 40 and blank.

Speaker A: 00:18:14

And then what's the first thing that goes out the window?

Speaker A: 00:18:16

Oh, I'm there.

Speaker A: 00:18:17

I'm gonna lighten up on my food.

Speaker A: 00:18:18

I'm not gonna do as many steps, so I can skip the gym a couple of days this week.

Speaker A: 00:18:22

And that's like planting a garden, seeing your first strawberry sprout and be like, oh, I got it.

Speaker A: 00:18:28

I never have to water it again.

Speaker A: 00:18:29

I'm just gonna pick strawberries from this thing forever.

Speaker A: 00:18:32

And there's that part where the tending to the garden is what keeps it producing fruit.

Speaker B: 00:18:36

Right?

Speaker A: 00:18:37

It's no different with our souls.

Speaker A: 00:18:38

It's no different with our alignment.

Speaker A: 00:18:40

Our values should change as we grow as people.

Speaker A: 00:18:44

The things that we value change, our priorities change, but we have to consistently tend to that garden.

Speaker A: 00:18:50

And so everybody wants there to be an easy button, and they want there to be a truth button.

Speaker A: 00:18:54

The truth is that the resistance that lives in the world is the workout program God designed to make you the person strong enough to maintain it.

Speaker A: 00:19:03

And I did this post a couple of months ago where I said, all too often, I've prayed for things that I don't have the scars and the character to maintain.

Speaker B: 00:19:11

Right?

Speaker A: 00:19:12

Absolutely.

Speaker A: 00:19:13

It's this constant fight.

Speaker A: 00:19:15

And I think if you look at the systems of the world that we live in, we don't make them wrong.

Speaker A: 00:19:20

I don't make marketing wrong.

Speaker A: 00:19:21

I don't make social media wrong.

Speaker A: 00:19:22

But those are not the rules of my life.

Speaker A: 00:19:25

Those are a field that I choose to play on, and if I choose to play on it, I get to dictate the rules, but I can't let them dictate my identity.

Speaker A: 00:19:32

Just like our iPhones, right?

Speaker A: 00:19:34

It's either a tool that you use or it's a tool that uses you.

Speaker A: 00:19:38

And if you look at it, just open screen time, you'll have a pretty sobering moment really quickly where you see the results of your life dissipating away on TikTok and on games and on YouTube, and you're like, man, I don't have time to do this.

Speaker A: 00:19:50

And I was like, you spent four and a half hours scrolling through TikTok today.

Speaker A: 00:19:53

How much inspiration are you looking for?

Speaker A: 00:19:55

There's this, like, constant eradication.

Speaker A: 00:19:58

And I use gardening all the time because even when you plant a garden, no matter how good you are, weeds are going to grow.

Speaker A: 00:20:05

But the weeds are only painful to you if you never pull them out of the garden and they start to choke your plants, right?

Speaker A: 00:20:11

But you can plant these seeds.

Speaker A: 00:20:12

You can plant, pick your fruit, strawberries, whatever you want, go dragon fruit and get really crazy, right?

Speaker A: 00:20:16

Let's go exotic over here.

Speaker A: 00:20:18

And you can tend to them and you can water them, but every single day, the world is planting weeds in that garden.

Speaker A: 00:20:24

And if you ignore those weeds, eventually it chokes out your plant.

Speaker A: 00:20:27

But if you're intentional every day about, hey, I watered it, I pruned it, I gave it sunlight, oh, I pulled that weed out.

Speaker A: 00:20:33

I pulled that weed out.

Speaker A: 00:20:34

When you operate like that, you have the ability to plant more seeds or to go sit at your kitchen table and eat your dragon fruit or strawberries.

Speaker A: 00:20:41

But it's this consistent daily requirement to be able to earn those things in your life, just like your wellness, just like your mindset, just like your body, just like your business.

Speaker A: 00:20:51

The garden only grows when we tend to it.

Speaker A: 00:20:53

And we have these core buckets in our life, and we tend to think that if we just pour into the business, then my life is going to work.

Speaker A: 00:21:01

No, that's like saying Tom Brady because he played college football and he won a Super Bowl a couple of times, that he can stop training and stop practicing, and he'll still be able to win the next Super Bowl.

Speaker A: 00:21:11

It's this constant moving line that we have to fall in love with the process.

Speaker B: 00:21:16

Right?

Speaker B: 00:21:16

So then there's a great question that this arises for me.

Speaker B: 00:21:20

All right, so here's George puts the brakes on contemplative.

Speaker B: 00:21:24

Working through the challenges, working through the issues.

Speaker B: 00:21:26

Continually.

Speaker B: 00:21:26

We're continually working through them.

Speaker B: 00:21:28

At what point did you find that the contemplative state, and I'm calling it a contemplative state.

Speaker A: 00:21:34

I love it.

Speaker B: 00:21:35

Place of silence is that you started feeling alive again, bro.

Speaker A: 00:21:39

That is such a good question.

Speaker A: 00:21:41

And I'm going to be really blunt with people.

Speaker A: 00:21:43

It took a year and a half for me to go from resisting the process to.

Speaker A: 00:21:48

To enjoying the process and pursuing the process.

Speaker A: 00:21:51

And there's a movie that I watched on Apple tv, and it's only on Apple tv.

Speaker A: 00:21:55

It's called Chasing the Present.

Speaker A: 00:21:57

And it was this New York restaurateur, vegan restaurateur, had everything, the houses, the apartments, In Manhattan, all these successful restaurants, and he felt empty on the inside.

Speaker A: 00:22:08

So he spent two years traveling the world to talk to every spiritual leader and was really talking about presence.

Speaker A: 00:22:13

And there was this one point in this movie where they're, like, sitting on the rocks by this lake with this, like, castle or something behind them.

Speaker A: 00:22:20

And he asked this guy a question, and the guy's answer was so easy that it broke me.

Speaker A: 00:22:26

So I hit pause on the movie, and I ended up laying on my couch staring at the ceiling for 12 hours before I realized I was still laying there.

Speaker A: 00:22:34

There was just this, like, state of peace in my body.

Speaker A: 00:22:37

And the closest thing I can relate it to is, like, when you finish a hard run or a hard workout and you're like, oh, I did it.

Speaker A: 00:22:43

And then you just want to, like, lay in the grass, or, like, you get out of the sauna and you're, oh, I just did it.

Speaker A: 00:22:47

Like, you just want to sit there and soak in that presence, right?

Speaker A: 00:22:51

It gave me that feeling.

Speaker A: 00:22:52

But even now, in my day to day, I start every one of my days in silence.

Speaker A: 00:22:56

And multiple times throughout the day, I'll just go get in the car, Windows down in silence.

Speaker A: 00:23:01

It's something that once I achieved it, doesn't stick around.

Speaker A: 00:23:04

I have to earn it every day.

Speaker A: 00:23:05

And it's also the law of diminishing returns, where the more and more I do it, the more of it's required to get the same payoff.

Speaker A: 00:23:13

Just like if you haven't run in 10 years and you're like, I'm gonna go run a mile today, you might run the mile in 15 minutes.

Speaker A: 00:23:20

So if you run consistently for 30 days, you're gonna drop five minutes off that mile time.

Speaker A: 00:23:25

But when you get down into the seven minutes, the six minutes, the five minutes, you're gonna have to train at an increased capacity for a couple of years to drop 10 seconds off of it.

Speaker A: 00:23:34

And so it's this, like, active pursuit.

Speaker A: 00:23:37

And truthfully, you can't be attached to the results of the process.

Speaker A: 00:23:41

You have to love the process.

Speaker A: 00:23:43

Just like entrepreneurship, right?

Speaker A: 00:23:45

The moment you get attached to your marketing working or not working, you're actually putting the writing on the wall that it doesn't work anymore, because the moment you're attached to the result, you miss the inputs of what made it effective or didn't, because we just want it to be done.

Speaker A: 00:23:59

And so it's this active pursuit of it in every bucket that makes it so powerful.

Speaker B: 00:24:04

So before we start shutting down, like landing some of the planes in the episode, I do Want to make note to the audience just to remember everything's going to be in the show notes so that any resource or anything that we put there, I want to make sure you real that we're going to make it super easy how to connect with George, how to get the books that we mentioned, all those things.

Speaker B: 00:24:20

I have a question before we get into some of the closing portions of this.

Speaker B: 00:24:25

So what were some of the things?

Speaker B: 00:24:27

Because obviously healing is a multifaceted multi thing.

Speaker B: 00:24:31

So getting quiet is just one portion of that.

Speaker B: 00:24:35

Not even, you know, a big portion, but not even just the only portion.

Speaker B: 00:24:39

What were some of the other things that you did that were able to help you on this journey of healing?

Speaker A: 00:24:44

I love this.

Speaker A: 00:24:45

So yeah, and I'll keep these shorter so we can land the plane because I know God gave me the gift of gab and I'm learning how much I let out at a time when my thought process.

Speaker A: 00:24:53

So the space is the starting line.

Speaker A: 00:24:56

It's not the integration.

Speaker A: 00:24:57

As somebody who's navigated a lot of trauma, myself personally, from war trauma to abuse to all these things, wellness is an active pursuit.

Speaker A: 00:25:05

Okay.

Speaker A: 00:25:06

So in order for it to begin, you have to create the space for it to start, right?

Speaker A: 00:25:10

So the joke that I make with people and for everybody listening, if you open Google maps on your phone right now and you pick a destination a thousand miles away from you and you hit start, the first thing it's going to ask you for is your current location.

Speaker A: 00:25:22

You can't get to where you want to go until you know where you are.

Speaker A: 00:25:25

That's why space is so powerful.

Speaker A: 00:25:27

It's this place of being your own triage nurse of God.

Speaker A: 00:25:30

You know what?

Speaker A: 00:25:31

These relationships aren't good.

Speaker A: 00:25:32

I'm not taking care of my health here.

Speaker A: 00:25:35

I'm having self deprecating thoughts.

Speaker A: 00:25:37

It's from a place of awareness.

Speaker A: 00:25:39

Once that space is created, that clarity is your current state to where that destination is still ahead of you.

Speaker A: 00:25:45

But then it requires active obedience and intentional decisions to be able to start getting there.

Speaker A: 00:25:52

And the hardest part about this is it's so simple, we neglect it.

Speaker A: 00:25:57

It's taking care of our bodies first.

Speaker A: 00:25:59

It's choosing to take an action that our future self is going to thank us for by using the history of our past to protect our future decisions.

Speaker A: 00:26:09

And so it's your sleep, it's your nutrition, it's your water intake, it's your environment, it's the people that you talk to, it's the conversations that you have, right?

Speaker A: 00:26:17

Look at what you consume.

Speaker A: 00:26:19

If all you're doing is watching shows of people cheating and people being hurtful or manipulating people.

Speaker A: 00:26:25

Or you're listening to music that is constantly bombarding you with all these messages.

Speaker A: 00:26:30

It starts to filter and tilt your brain.

Speaker A: 00:26:33

And there's this part of it where you have to love the process.

Speaker A: 00:26:35

And so in the Marine Corps, the one thing that we were always taught is when the world gets loud or crazy things happen, a bomb goes off, somebody gets shot, is you shrink your world as small as possible to what you can control.

Speaker A: 00:26:46

Because it's those micro choices and microhabits that allow you to make progress.

Speaker A: 00:26:50

And so that could be as simple as I'm going to go for a five minute walk outside every morning.

Speaker A: 00:26:54

Regardless of how I feel, I'm going to take an alarm and put it in my phone three times a day to go off that says go for a five minute walk and take five breaths.

Speaker A: 00:27:03

It could be I'm going to intentionally drink water.

Speaker A: 00:27:05

The hardest part about this for all of us is that we know this already.

Speaker A: 00:27:08

We know where we're sacrificing ourself.

Speaker A: 00:27:10

We know where we're not pouring into our own bucket.

Speaker A: 00:27:13

And for me, the biggest thing was having a son and realizing that he doesn't listen to what I say.

Speaker A: 00:27:18

He watches what I do so I can be talking all day, but he's modeling my behavior.

Speaker A: 00:27:23

And that kind of created this accountability for me.

Speaker A: 00:27:26

And so number one is current stating yourself.

Speaker A: 00:27:28

Number two is finding the areas in your life where you're not where you currently want to be.

Speaker A: 00:27:33

And here's the short answer.

Speaker A: 00:27:35

You're never going to be where you want to be.

Speaker A: 00:27:37

But you should always love being in pursuit of it.

Speaker A: 00:27:40

I've found that it's my heart, like my journey of faith, my mindset, my physical body and my business.

Speaker A: 00:27:46

Those are the four buckets that I focus on.

Speaker A: 00:27:49

And every day I make a deposit in those buckets and I set myself up to win.

Speaker A: 00:27:53

I have a goal that I go to the gym an hour every day.

Speaker A: 00:27:56

Does that goal happen frequently?

Speaker A: 00:27:58

No, but that's my ceiling.

Speaker A: 00:28:00

My floor is.

Speaker A: 00:28:01

I'm going to go for at least a 15 minute walk outside and do some push ups and squats every day.

Speaker A: 00:28:05

Because I can do that and I'm protecting my progress.

Speaker A: 00:28:08

Like I'm.

Speaker A: 00:28:08

I'm valuing consistency over integrity over intensity.

Speaker A: 00:28:12

And so what it really boils down to is being able to look at ourselves and then surrounding yourself with people who hold you accountable to your potential.

Speaker A: 00:28:21

But don't believe your story that if you tell me that you want to get loud and proud in your business.

Speaker A: 00:28:26

I'm like, hey, when are you posting?

Speaker A: 00:28:28

Hey, when are you posting?

Speaker A: 00:28:29

Hey, why hasn't it gone up yet?

Speaker A: 00:28:31

And utilizing our environment and our community and the people that we love, like sharing our goals with our significant others, with our kids, with our business friends and be like, hey, I want to do this.

Speaker A: 00:28:40

Here's what I'm committing to and allowing ourselves to be in that process.

Speaker A: 00:28:44

Because you have to crawl before you walk.

Speaker A: 00:28:45

You have to walk before you run, and you have to run before you sprint.

Speaker A: 00:28:49

So we just have to fall in love with that process and be in active pursuit of it.

Speaker A: 00:28:52

And it really boils down to, I have this belief that my clients, the people I work with, that the answer is way better than I can.

Speaker A: 00:29:01

I don't live inside your pill bottle.

Speaker A: 00:29:02

You do, but with the right questions.

Speaker A: 00:29:04

We tend to think about these things all the time, but we guilt ourselves and shame ourselves into not doing them instead of when we thinking about them being like, I haven't really taken care of my body today.

Speaker A: 00:29:14

I have 20 minutes.

Speaker A: 00:29:15

I'm gonna go chug 8 ounces of water and I'm gonna go for a 10 minute walk outside.

Speaker A: 00:29:18

And then celebrating that win and then stacking those wins on top of each other is what starts to create that momentum and the confidence in the process.

Speaker B: 00:29:25

That's powerful.

Speaker B: 00:29:26

Thank you for that.

Speaker B: 00:29:27

So with that being said, this is the part of the show where we talk about the hashtag wisdom bomb.

Speaker B: 00:29:31

If you've been following me on Facebook for any amount of time, this is a portable truth that we share that people can say oh and apply to our lives.

Speaker B: 00:29:38

I asked every guest this.

Speaker B: 00:29:40

So, George, what is your portable truth or your wisdom bomb that you'd love to give to the guest or to.

Speaker A: 00:29:45

The Oh, I love it.

Speaker A: 00:29:47

I love it.

Speaker A: 00:29:47

Here's how I'll frame this one.

Speaker A: 00:29:49

If you're listening to this, it's not an accident, it's a permission slip to let this be the moment.

Speaker A: 00:29:54

Let this be the moment that something shifts.

Speaker A: 00:29:57

But know that any delay from the clarity that you've had for what's hit your heart today to what tickled, is just preventing the inevitable.

Speaker A: 00:30:04

Life is a journey, it's a destination, and it requires our active pursuit of it.

Speaker A: 00:30:10

But there is no tomorrow.

Speaker A: 00:30:12

There is no I'll start Monday.

Speaker A: 00:30:13

There's no I'll start next week.

Speaker A: 00:30:14

There's a reason you hear it today.

Speaker A: 00:30:16

You're worth starting today because you have the ability to lay a brick today that your future self is Going to look back and thank you for, but only if you protect it and you think it's important.

Speaker A: 00:30:28

And so know that you're worth it.

Speaker A: 00:30:30

Know there is no other you.

Speaker A: 00:30:32

No, there is no other version of you.

Speaker A: 00:30:33

There is no voice of yours.

Speaker A: 00:30:35

It's yours.

Speaker A: 00:30:36

You're unique, you're special, and the world deserves it.

Speaker A: 00:30:39

But you deserve to give it to yourself first.

Speaker A: 00:30:41

And so I would let today be the permission slip to start and celebrate every victory, learn from every shortcoming, learn from every mistake and just keep making adjustments because as long as we're in pursuit, you're going to win the game.

Speaker A: 00:30:55

This is a game of consistency and not intensity.

Speaker A: 00:30:58

And so just keep making deposits and celebrate the victories as you get there.

Speaker A: 00:31:03

And before you know it, you'll look back and you'll be standing in the vision board of this moment, reflecting on how you got here.

Speaker A: 00:31:10

But it requires that you start.

Speaker A: 00:31:12

So stop moving the starting line and just start the race.

Speaker B: 00:31:16

So how can people find you the easiest way?

Speaker A: 00:31:18

If you want to see the pinkest website in the world, it's mind of george.com and Jim knows I have my podcast up there.

Speaker A: 00:31:25

And then if I can support you in any way, like shoot in my DMs on Instagram.

Speaker A: 00:31:28

Like, I love connecting, I love helping people.

Speaker A: 00:31:30

I love having these conversations.

Speaker A: 00:31:32

They what, bring me life and they hold me accountable to the things that I share.

Speaker A: 00:31:35

And so if I can expand on anything or help you, my Instagram is, it's George Bryant, but the it's is included, so it's actually its G E O R G E B R Y A N T.

Speaker A: 00:31:45

And I know Jim will have all that linked in the show notes.

Speaker B: 00:31:47

Absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:31:48

We'll have the Instagram, we'll have the website so that they can see the pinkest website ever, biggest website ever.

Speaker B: 00:31:54

As well as a link to your podcast because it is an incredible podcast.

Speaker B: 00:31:58

So audience, I want you to make sure that you do check out George connect with this man of God.

Speaker B: 00:32:03

He's an incredible dude with a huge heart and he literally means what he says.

Speaker B: 00:32:07

I've known him for years.

Speaker B: 00:32:08

So connect with him, reach out to them and see how you guys can work together.

Speaker B: 00:32:12

With that being said, George, thanks for being on the episode today.

Speaker A: 00:32:14

Oh, bro, we're gonna have to do it again.

Speaker A: 00:32:16

We might need like a special longer episode because I talk too much.

Speaker B: 00:32:19

So I'm right with you.

Speaker B: 00:32:21

I have to calm myself down because I'm like, wait.

Speaker B: 00:32:23

Because we both have the gift of gab.

Speaker B: 00:32:25

Yeah, we can definitely schedule something like that.

Speaker B: 00:32:28

But here's the thing.

Speaker B: 00:32:28

I to you, the audience.

Speaker B: 00:32:30

We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Speaker B: 00:32:32

So let us know in the comments.

Speaker B: 00:32:34

Like if we had another episode, what would you have us talk about?

Speaker B: 00:32:37

Let's ask some questions.

Speaker B: 00:32:38

Let us hit up some of your biggest challenges, your biggest fears.

Speaker B: 00:32:42

Let us have those conversations that you benefit.

Speaker B: 00:32:44

And with that being said, you have been listening to Grace in the Grind, where we're here to tell the inspiring stories behind the stories of some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Speaker B: 00:32:53

Make sure that you hit the subscribe or whatever social you're watching this on or listening to.

Speaker B: 00:32:58

Do the thing, Hit the review and we'd love you for it and we'll see you on a future episode.

Speaker A: 00:33:02

Oops.

Speaker A: 00:33:03

I almost this has been Grayson the Grind.

Speaker A: 00:33:07

We hope you've enjoyed the show.

Speaker A: 00:33:09

If you did, make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon.

Speaker A: 00:33:14

But in the meantime, find us on social media LeadWithJam.

Speaker A: 00:33:18

Take care of yourself and we'll see you next time on Grace in the Grind.