212: How to Experience More Purpose and Passion Each Day with Passion Struck Author John Miles

In this episode of The Light Watkins Show, Light Watkins engages in a compelling conversation with John Miles, a former US Naval officer and Fortune 50 senior executive who has successfully pivoted to become the host of the acclaimed Passion Struck podcast. John is also the author of the self-help book Passion Struck, where he explores themes of personal transformation and discovering one's true purpose.

The episode begins with a look into John's early life, including a significant accident in his childhood that led to cognitive challenges and a speech impediment. John discusses how running cross country in high school helped him tap into the flow state and develop perseverance.

The conversation delves into John's time at the Naval Academy, where he navigated a major cheating scandal that tested his values and shaped his understanding of leadership and integrity. John also shares insights from his corporate career, revealing how his experiences led to a spiritual awakening and a critical moment that made him reconsider his life's direction.

A key highlight of this episode is John's recounting of his transition from the corporate world to starting the Passion Struck podcast. He describes how the podcast grew from zero to millions of downloads, offering listeners practical advice on building a successful podcast and living a life of intentionality. John explains the principles from his book, providing actionable steps for overcoming obstacles and achieving personal and professional fulfillment.

This episode promises a wealth of knowledge and inspiration, especially for those feeling stuck in their careers or contemplating new ventures. John's story demonstrates the power of self-leadership, resilience, and the pursuit of purpose.

Listeners will leave with motivation and practical strategies to embrace their own paths and ignite their most intentional lives. Tune in to hear John Miles' extraordinary journey and discover how to apply his insights to your own life.

Transcript

JM: “ I really felt stuck because I'd built my career up to this point, and now we had the nice house, the nice cars, the social status and everything else, and I couldn't see a path to get out of it. And about this time is when I started to do some initial soul searching, and I was starting to see a psychologist for some help trying to deal with what I was experiencing when I started to hear this inner voice that was telling me that this path that I was on was not the path that I was destined to be on or that my unique skill set was being called upon me to utilize for the benefit of anyone really. But the inner voice was telling me that I was supposed to start helping people in a way that I just couldn't comprehend. And I guess for the first time in my life, I started to feel like that I could understand what it felt like to be Abraham or Isaac or these people in the Old Testament who are going about living their life when all of a sudden they get this calling to do something completely different. And they're like, what me? No frickin way am I doing that. I mean, that's really hard. I gotta give up all this crap that I have. I gotta alienate people who are close to me. I mean, what you're talking about here, there's no way I'm gonna do this."

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I am Light Watkins and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. And in doing so, they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed them in action or people who've directly benefited from their work.

The goal is to expose you to as many people as possible who found their path and to humanize them. And after hearing story after story, eventually, hopefully you give yourself permission to move further in the direction of whatever feels like your path and your purpose. Because what you'll see is that anyone who does that has to overcome many of the same obstacles that you may be dealing with right now.

And this week I'm particularly excited to introduce you to John Miles. John is a former us Naval officer and a former fortune 50 senior executive who pivoted dramatically to becoming the host of a hugely popular podcast, which is called Passion Struck. He's also an author who recently published a self-help book by the same name, Passion Struck. 

And in this episode, we are going to unpack John's fascinating backstory, starting with the unfortunate accident that caused John to have cognitive functioning challenges and a speech impediment as a young child, and what running cross country in high school taught John about accessing the flow state. We're going to look at the real-world lessons that John learned while navigating a major cheating scandal in the Naval Academy. How John's experiences in corporate America led to his spiritual awakening. 

And after that awakening, when John continued to ignore his heart, as we sometimes do, he ended up facing down the barrel of a gun and we'll look at how that moment led John to realize that he really needed to make a lifestyle change.

We'll talk about those first steps that he took when following his new purpose and how that later led him to start his podcast. We'll examine how John grew his podcast from crickets to millions of downloads in just a few years. And we'll of course, dive into the principles of John's new book, Passion Struck, which is based on the lessons that he learned throughout his life, as well as the interviews that he had during the early days of his podcast.

So there's a lot packed into this episode. And I think you're really, really going to enjoy it and find it super insightful. So buckle up because I think John story is going to inspire your next big move, especially if you work in corporate America and you're starting to feel like it's no longer for you, or if you feel called to start a podcast, either way you are in for a real treat.

So, without further ado, here's my conversation with Mr. John Miles. 

[00:04:31] LW: John Miles, welcome to the podcast, man. I'm so excited to talk more about your work with Passion Struck and to get to the genesis of what that actually means and how we can incorporate more of those principles into our life. Thanks for coming on. 

[00:04:48] JM: Light, it's such an honor ever since our mutual friend, Emma Seppala told me about this podcast. I've really enjoyed getting to know you through your episodes and how you do your interviews. And I just consider it a huge honor to be on your show. 

[00:05:05] LW: Thanks so much, man. So I always like to start off talking about the early days. I know you grew up in in, well, I don't know. You were born in Rochester. Did you actually grow up there as well? 

[00:05:16] JM: No, my father at the time worked for Xerox in sales. And so we were there for only three years. And then we moved to Bay Village, Ohio, which is just outside of Cleveland. And then spent about three years there and then moved to Chicago and then eventually to Pennsylvania.

[00:05:34] LW: All right. So when you were a young person, little Johnny or whatever they called you, and you know, your dad's in sales, your mom's a homemaker. I'm curious what sort of philosophies and ideologies were echoed around your house that you can recall that helped to sort of shape how you view the world as a young person.

[00:05:58] JM: Yeah. So I would say that my maternal grandparents, along with my parents, probably had the greatest influence on me because I never, got to meet my paternal grandfather. He died before I was born and my maternal side of the family were very big, high achievers. And I guess my grandmother's expectation for us all back then was to be a lawyer like her daughter or a doctor or some high profession. So she and my grandfather were always discussing with us the importance of learning, the importance of education, the importance of working hard in the pursuit of unlocking whatever it was we wanted in life. And I think when it came to my parents, my mom was definitely more on that train.

And my dad was more of the disciplinarian because he had served in the military, in the Marine Corps, and he was more, I would say, the realistic, but also was pretty demanding of what he expected of us, especially our behavior and family values and things like that, and living up to what the core values kind of of the family unit.

[00:07:20] LW: And you had a pivotal moment when you were five or six years old playing tag. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that shaped your trajectory? 

[00:07:27] JM: Yeah, I didn't even start talking about this at all until this year and kind of what prompted me to talk start talking about it as I was interviewing my friend Jim Kwik and he starts talking about his backstory of being the boy with the broken brain.

And I said, Jim, you know, I've never told you this before. But I can completely relate to everything that you're going with. And he goes, how is that possible? And I said, because I too was a boy with a broken brain, different circumstances, but pretty much the same after effect in many ways happened to both of us.

And I was living in Bay Village at the time. We were pretty close to the end of cul de sac as I remember it. And I was about five years old. And just as young kids do in the backyard in an afternoon playing games with our neighbors and started to play this game of tag and as games of tag go, they tend to have unintended consequences sometimes.

And that's exactly what happened here. We were roughhousing and. The pushing became harder and harder. And as I recall, I was running away from one of the neighborhood friends who was trying to tag me and with my speed from running away in the force of him pushing me from behind, it kind of catapulted me in the air and I landed headfirst through our basement window.

And I don't remember much about the after effects except that what ended up happening is that tranquil life that I had lived as a pretty normal kid, I knew when I woke up in the hospital that things were changing and I didn't realize at first how drastically changed. They would change over the coming months and following years from that, but it really caused a number of physical and mental health issues to start arising.

I think the first one I started really comprehend was that I had memory issues and I started to develop a speech impediment following it. But I also started to realize that in class I was having a really hard time following what the teacher was saying and having a hard time following what kids were saying.

And it turns out I developed what they now call as an auditory processing issue, which really rewired how I was learning. So here you have this kid who everyone saw was normal, who now is having memory issues. He's having cognitive functioning issues. is now having speech impediments and now is having trouble just fitting in with the rest of the class and the day to day conversation he was having before, and I really started to feel like an alien.

And then on top of that the injury caused me to have a condition called amblyopia which meant I started to have a lazy eye. And so now when everything else is hitting me, now I'm having to start wear a patch on my eye. And so you can imagine, I was now having to wear glasses and they put this plastic patch on top of the glasses, but I kept on sneaking peeks around it with my good eye.

So, because I couldn't stay trained in doing that. They ended up putting this bandage over my one eye. So now I'm walking around with a complete bandage over my eye, still wearing glasses. That was at Catholic school, but it was still rough. At that time, kind of my only way to get out of the constant taunting and ridicule that I was faced with the kids is instead of going to a normal English class during that period, I walked across this field and went to a speech pathologist who at first I hated doing it because I just felt it was another thing that was making me feel different.

But what ended up happening was she ended up becoming a huge cheerleader for me and not only taught me how to get over that learning disability that I had. But she also taught me that we have superpowers that are unknown to us and we can maximize those superpowers in different ways and to have confidence and to believe in myself and to realize that these things that were affecting me could either define me, or I could choose my own path, which was at five, six, seven years old, when this was all going on a really huge awakening for someone that young. 

[00:12:12] LW: It's interesting too, is that when you're In primary school, you're taking these classes, right? And I don't know about you, but in my experience, almost everything felt arbitrary. I'm thinking to myself, I'm never going to use this. I'm never going to use that. I'm learning these things. I don't really want to be here learning them. But I imagine when you walked across that field to the speech pathologist, it's life or death. You have to learn, you have to learn how to overcome these afflictions. What did you learn about learning as a young person going through that experience? 

[00:12:42] JM: Well, I guess the biggest thing I learned is that we. all learn differently. And it made me appreciate the learning abilities that I had before. And it made me really understand that we all learn in unique and different ways. And I had to learn new ways to educate myself because the classroom setting definitely wasn't working for me. 

And interestingly enough, as I've interviewed professors even at major universities, they've said that the classroom learning environment is typically the worst place for us to learn. And a laboratory, some type of learning laboratory, Where we're put actually hands on is much better.

So, I would go to the classes for much of my upbringing and take as many notes as I could, but when I went home is when I had to do my learning, because I learned really through reading and doing and working out everything that we had learned in class. Because I wouldn't retain any of it 

[00:13:49] LW: And leadership becomes a theme in your work much later on in life, but you're also the eldest of three and so going through this very difficult moment, were you cognizant of the fact that, Hey, I'm setting the tone here? Did you step into the leadership role with your siblings? And if so, what did that look like? 

[00:14:11] JM: Well, I don't think I stepped into it at that young an age. I. When we moved to Pennsylvania, I was lucky enough to have kind of a start over because throughout my time in Bay Village and then when we lived in Chicago, I was having to wear that patch, which really made every first time that I met someone, it just ingrained in them.

I always felt like a sense of weakness coming from me. So when we moved to Pennsylvania, when I was eight or nine, It was a huge sigh of relief because I had finally gotten the patch off and I felt like I could establish a new identity for myself. And when I was in fifth grade fourth, fifth grade, this whole aspect of leadership started to become a real passion for me because my father and my grandparents especially would talk about historical figures or inspirational figures who were leadership icons, whether it was CEOs of companies or presidents or people leaving, leading movements. And so it kind of started to instill in me this idea that I wanted to be a leader. And it amounted to kind of this feeling that if I was going to lead people, I had to learn how to first lead myself.

And the first aspect that I learned of this was that I needed to push myself into doing something that would be hard or difficult for me. And that amounted to a paper route came open in my neighborhood, and I decided to put my hand up in the ring to get it. So here I am, fifth grade, and I have a paper route now delivering to probably 200 houses a day, which I have to tell you as a kid that age, when it first started was really challenging.

[00:16:09] LW: Well, you're also waking up at what four or five o'clock in the morning to get started. 

[00:16:13] JM: I was fortunate because the paper route was actually an afternoon paper route. So it really impacted though, my ability to play with friends. So I would typically get to school, do the homework type of things. And then by 3:30, four o'clock in the afternoon, I was out delivering papers. 

[00:16:34] LW: I listened to an interview with James Dyson, who ran cross country and in school. And he said that one of the things that he learned from that experience was everybody gets tired around the same place. And so he would intentionally train himself to accelerate at that place where everyone was fatigued. And obviously this became a big business lesson for him as well. There's a point where everybody wants to give up because you've, and you'd be right to want to give up at that point. But if you can train yourself to accelerate, then success is almost inevitable. And I know you meddled in cross country. What sort of learnings did you have through that experience that served you in life?

[00:17:19] JM: So my parents wouldn't really let us play too many contact sports. In fact, the sport I really wanted to play growing up was hockey. And I remember sitting in our garage for hours on end, just shooting slap shot, wrist shot, everything I could trying to become a master of the game. And I would go to the ice rink every opportunity that I could to learn to skate, trying to convince them that they should let me play and they never would. Ironically, they let my brother play who never really even had a passion for it.

But as I was growing up, I was a bit chubby and I guess I started to run in between eighth grade and my freshman year in high school, because I was trying to approach high school again as a fresh start, and I was hoping I could shed some weight, never thought I would become much of a runner, was doing it more for just trying to get myself in better shape.

And so that first freshman year, I initially kind of got off on the wrong start because I was following the lead of a couple of the seniors who were on the team who actually were more goofballs than they were the hardcore athletes and runners on the team. So for those of us who were freshmen, they kept putting us through our, their own rituals of welcoming us to the sport.

Some of which was they take us into hospitals and make us run up and down the hallways. Had nurses and guards chasing us out of these places. And I quickly realized that this wasn't going to be the path to anything, but me getting in trouble. And so I was lucky enough that I started looking up to a couple of the juniors and sophomores who were on the team who were much better runners.

And started to examine what they were doing from training. And I started to see that they had a real passion for it and that there was really a yearning to be successful. And so as I started to get more into following them, I realized that they were really intentional about how they were approaching everything from what they were eating during the days that we were practicing, to how they were actually going about practicing and trying to get better, to just the effort that they were putting in, into even the practice runs preparing for meets. And through that, I started to form a new identity and kind of a new passion, that I, too, wanted to be like them and wanted to be as good as them. And fast forward into my sophomore year, I made some drastic improvements between that cross country season, running track, then running throughout the summer, and really came back my sophomore year a significantly improved runner. So much so that I went from barely even being able to make the varsity team to be wanting, running one of the top three or four fastest on the team.

And I was very fortunate that we had a runner, Keith Dowling, who ended up almost qualifying for the Olympics. He was the fastest finishing American when he ran in college at Pitt because when you go to the national championship and cross country, almost everyone who wins, it comes from Africa or some other foreign countries.

So I think he finished 6th or 7th overall, but was the top American and missed qualifying for the Olympics and the marathon. It was really an unfortunate event for him, but I really started to get in my head. How do I get to be as good as Keith? And so I really started doing everything that he was doing, trying to get better, et cetera.

And I realized that I had this real phobia for the races where I was almost psyching myself out before I even hit the starting line. And so I started to realize that if I was going to better myself for the races, then I had to start treating practices like it was a race and start figuring out why was I having so much anxiety and post or pre race jitters and wanting to throw up and these things that were, I was almost psyching myself out before I got to the race.

And so learning how to achieve this optimal state of anxiety where I could start learning how to put myself almost into a state of flow. Before I started a race really allowed me to channel my focus and took taking ownership of how I wanted to command myself and my performance during the races and that was a huge change for me.

And so we ended up winning the state championship that year. I ended up finishing each race kind of in the top two to three runners that we had, never really beat Keith, but then junior year had another great, fantastic year and then my senior year, I was the top runner in the city, top in our district was supposed to be one of the top two at States and really altered my entire running legacy from that point forward. 

[00:22:39] LW: Yeah. I heard Tom Brady say something like that too. He said, you have to treat every game like it's a Superbowl. And by the time the Superbowl rolls around, it's just Tuesday. It's just another day. 

All right. So you ended up going to West point, which is actually a quite a big deal. I remember being back in school and there was like one or two kids who got accepted to what a couple of the mill, no one woman, one woman got accepted to all four military academies. And it was just like, there was a huge rally just for that accomplishment. 

Were you at the top of your class, academically was that something that the cross country transfer into all the other aspects of academia for you or how did that all happen?

[00:23:20] JM: Yeah. Well, first of all, my Naval Academy classmates would would be very upset if I said I went to West Point. So I went to the Naval Academy, but coming out of my high school, I was the first graduate in something like 20 years who had actually gotten into a service academy. So it was a big deal, but the school didn't do anything special for me because I got in. But I finished in the top 5 of my class. But I don't think the grades alone would have gotten me in. It, they're really looking at who you are as a total person. And so it was the combination of the grades. The athletic prowess, the leadership acumen that I had developed at that point, my work history, extracurricular activities was kind of all of it.

But I mean, that was a really hard decision for me to make because I had always grown up thinking I was going to go to the University of Michigan because that's where everyone in my family went before me. And I remember when I made that decision to go to the Naval Academy my father was actually pretty upset with me because he kind of wanted me to follow in the family tradition, but he also had a really rough combat tour when he was in the Marine Corps. So I think he was also a bit worried about what my future could hold if I too was in combat. 

[00:24:42] LW: And I wanted you to talk a little bit about this cheating scandal, because it sounds like that was one of your first very adult experiences. One of your first real world experiences of how the world works with the politics and with the scapegoating and all of those things.

[00:24:58] JM: Yeah. So at the Academy, one of the most important elements that we have is the honor code. And when I was there and it's changed in recent years, it was a pretty much black and white code. If you were caught cheating, you were expelled or lying. There was no if, ands or buts about it. So you just realized that at all costs, it was something you wanted to avoid because it would result in expulsion.

And I saw it really my junior year, because one of my roommates, who was a varsity swimmer, was caught cheating on The electrical engineering exam, and he was expelled as a result of it and fast forward. Now, my 1st year, I'm selected to be 1 of the brigade officers on the honor committee. And normally, this is an honor and.

You do have some honor boards, but in a whole year, you're probably looking at a handful. And typically these are similar to what you would see in a courtroom where you've got a number of jurors, and then you have people who are presenting the case, both for the person who's up for the honor violation.

And then that person gets a chance to defend himself or herself. I get back from Christmas vacation for the first a year to discover headlines saying that midshipmen have cheated on the electrical engineering exam. And the first two who came forward, I didn't know him personally, but they were both of them in the top 10 in their class.

So people who absolutely didn't need to cheat on this exam and they had talked to each other over the Christmas break and had written one of the physics or electrical engineering teachers. that they had received the exact exam and were coming forth to let them know. And I think the superintendent made a fatal mistake because instead of actually treating them with grace and recognizing them for their bravery of coming forward, he expelled both of them.

And so that caused a whole impact to the rest of the proceedings because it set the tone for what was going to happen. And so from this point forward, everyone who was involved, the midshipmen were trying to cover up what was happening. But unfortunately, so was the superintendent because he was a person who had been the captain of the football team. And I think was trying to protect the honor of the academy. 

What we realized as midshipmen on this honor committee was that we weren't dealing with five or six midshipmen who had cheated on this exam. We were looking at hundreds and hundreds who had cheated. And so we kept going to the superintendent saying, this is way too big for midshipmen to deal with. This really needs formal investigations and it needs to be handled by the uniform code of military justice, meaning. Take it out of the hands of the midshipmen. You guys handle it, who are officers, and deal with the enormity of it. And instead, one thing that did happen, they did launch these huge investigations, so the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, was all over this, interviewing people, including the professors, petty officers, others who were involved, as well as the midshipmen who were involved, but the superintendent, instead of looking at the enormities, basically took some number out of his head and said, we're going to try 27 midshipmen.

And so these, even though it's only 27, you could think out of a hundred who were implicated, each one of these, it's like what we just saw with president Trump going on trial. So you're having witnesses, and these are prolonged things. So each one is taking a week or two to deal with. And so my entire second half of my first year was sitting on these honor boards.

Well, about half of the people who were put up for the honor violations were football players. And I think out of the 27 people who came forward, 26 out of the 27 were found guilty by the honor boards. And every single football player conviction was returned, was overturned by the superintendent. So now you have even this bigger thing that's spiraling out of control.

And unbeknownst to me, while this is ongoing, one of my classmates who was, on the honor committee was giving very intricate details of what was happening. I found out 25 years later at a class reunion to his father, who happened to graduate from West Point and was a general and he, and a number of other generals upon hearing what the superintendent were doing, then went to the Baltimore Sun and started exposing everything that's going on.

So in addition to the superintendent writing us. about there will only be 27. This is it. Stop complaining about everything else. All of a sudden, he's also interrogating us about which one of you is giving away the information to the Baltimore Sun, and no one would come up with the information, so he starts putting us on different punishments, meaning we couldn't even leave the base.

And so, I guess during this time, for some reason or another, he convinced himself that I was the person. It was going to the Baltimore Sun. And so all of a sudden I'm really in the bad graces of this two-star Admiral. But we all graduate. I go to my training, my master's degree program for what I had service selected and 9, 10 months later, as I'm completing that program, I'm expecting to go to my first duty station and thinking that this whole thing is behind me. Well, what has happened since I had left is that this Baltimore Sun thing became a complete whistleblower action. And now the Navy inspector general, who's a three star, is now redoing the whole investigation where he finds that basically what we told the superintendent, that they're like half the classes involved with this is actually correct that there's this big cover up going on. 

And so, fast forward, I get pulled into this whole thing. So, I am called up into my Admiral's office now, who tells me that there are orders from the Secretary of the Navy, this is like on a Friday, saying that I had to report to the Naval Academy on a Monday in my dress whites. meet at the library. He doesn't know why, but that it could hold up my deployment and my progress in the Navy. So I'm beside myself now with nervousness. I have no idea what's going on. And so I show up seven o'clock in the morning or whatever it was to the Naval Academy Library, and I'm met by two JAG officers who informed me that they're there to represent me because the superintendent is trying to pin all of these events on me.

And so it was a huge wake up call for me. I had already seen the issue when leaders abuse their power, but now this had become If it wasn't personal already, it was now extremely personal. And so now I go up into this conference room and when you're a new ensign, I mean, you were very intimidated by flag officers and now I'm sitting in a room with like five or six of them and then a number of other high ranking officers.

And I'm being represented by these JAG officers as I'm starting to get ruled by them on everything that went on. And this hearing went on for about three or four days. I'm excused finally, but it got to a point where the superintendent is standing there, like, making up stuff and I actually had to make a choice.

Was I going to just roll over or was I going to stand for what I knew was true and what my core values were? So there were points in this session, very out of character for me, that I'm actually screaming at the superintendent, calling him a liar. I'm telling them that this is fabricated, telling him that, you know, the whole tribune, that I would never do these things, that this isn't true, that I never went to the Baltimore sun, that I wasn't behind these things, that I didn't coordinate these sessions to, to let football players off.

I mean, it was a complete nightmare. So I came out of this thinking my whole naval career was over and they did let me go to my duty station, but. I spent the next three, four years of my naval career, always expecting that it was over. And if not over that, there was a huge black mark in my record as a result of this.

So it's a long story, but something pretty intimidating for a 22 year old to experience and the ramifications that came with it. 

[00:34:14] LW: Well, you ended up working in various positions in corporate America later on, and I'm just curious if you learned anything or if there were any, there's anything that got reaffirmed in that experience, Naval Academy with the scandal that ended up sort of teaching you how the world works and kind of how to navigate the politics of even corporate America.

[00:34:40] JM: Yeah, well, it definitely, corporate America didn't do any wonders for me, teaching me that people weren't in it for themselves or for what, or what was best for them. I mean, that just became even a bigger tendency as I got more senior and senior in my career. I guess, what I learned was that there were leaders who really had core values and would speak with their feet and really match their actions with their words.

And then there were others who did the opposite and it gave me the realization, which really helped me to always try to surround myself with the people who I felt. We're at least authentic in the way that they were leading as opposed to those who I thought were just doing this for personal gain. 

And in some companies that was easier in the culture than others because in other cultures that I was in, it was almost as if everyone was on that gravy train and no one was really concerned about the welfare of the company or its customers. They were more concerned with how much money they were lining their own pockets but it's something you have to realize and kind of put in the back of your mind as you're trying to work through the politics of the day and who's benefiting who and who's against who.

So it definitely was something that was a core learning lesson for much of what I was going to experience throughout the rest of my civilian career. 

[00:36:18] LW: And you ended up working or taking on positions in Booz Allen, Anderson consulting Lowe's Dell, working your way up in the C level positions. You mentioned in the Passion Struck framework about the inner voice, and I'm just I'm curious what your relationship was like with spirituality or any sort of divine guidance as you were moving around from position to position, what was your driving motivating force?

[00:36:50] JM: Yeah. So I had a couple unexpected career reinventions to say, I mean, one of them was actually me becoming cryptologic officer and not going down the path I originally wanted to coming out of the Naval Academy, which was, to go into special warfare because I had gotten a couple of concussions playing rugby, of all things.

But I came out of my last command which was down in Key West doing counter drug operations and on that staff, we had representatives from every sea level. Three letter agency you can think of and all of them started recruiting me. And I had always grown up as a kid wanting to have that type of exciting career where, you know, I always pictured myself as kind of like the superhero who was saving the day.

And so as I went through all these grueling actually entry processes, I think I had to get Polygram for each one, physicals for each one, interviews for each one, and other things. I eventually selected the FBI and was pretty excited about it, because they were going to have me do a couple of things.

They were going to have me continue to concentrate in everything that I was doing with counter drug, but also wanted me to get more involved using some of the cyber technology background that I had at that point. And then literally, I'm, I get out of the military, The previous Friday, about 10 days later, I'm supposed to go to Quantico to start and somewhere in the middle of that week, I get a call from my detailer saying, John, I got some rough news for you. Your class has been basically rescheduled and we don't have a date for it yet. And I naively thought it was going to be, you know, 6 weeks, maybe a couple of months. And I got the rude awakening that it could be 36 to 48 months and that I had to find a plan B. So that's why I ended up at Booz Allen. And the Booz Allen thing was great. Learned a ton. Can't say enough good things about Booz Allen. And I ended up at Anderson and things were going well. I was leading the cyber security practice for the Southwest region. I had started a high growth mid market practice which was booming and then out of nowhere NRON, which was our largest client imploded, and we were at the epicenter of it. And I remember I was working at this point for one of the top 6 or 7 partners in the whole company. And these partners would get on the phone calls with us, tell us nothing was wrong. This is all a bunch of just noise. Don't pay attention to it. 

And then about three weeks later, that partner I was working for told me that he had resigned because he had lost confidence in the leadership and advised me to do the same and to get out of there as quickly as I could. And he was right, because within five weeks, I had gone for millions of dollars in business to less than a hundred thousand. I mean, every client had bailed on us and the company, 80,000 people in 160 countries, completely out of business within probably two months of the initial implosion of NRON. 

And so again, here I am. Like, what do I do? I've just had to figure out a plan B within the past six years. Now I'm working on another plan B and the easy thing would have been to go back into consulting, but I have to tell you, I was pretty disturbed because just like the superintendent, situation here, just like going into the FBI where I'm let down by Congress, here I am again, let down by leaders who are doing the wrong thing. And so I decided at this point to go into industry. I thought about going back and going back to school for something different a PhD program, which in hindsight I wish I would have done, but I ended up going into industry and that's what led me into these different roles that you talked about.

I'm one of those types, because of that upbringing that we started with about always trying to be a high achiever. Even though this was completely foreign to anything I even thought about as a kid that I wanted to do. I mean, never in a million years did I think I was going to sit behind a desk and wear a suit, et cetera. I mean, I would strangle myself as an eight or nine year old thinking that was my destiny. I became extremely good at what I was doing. In fact, my career was elevating like a rocket ship. I was the, one of the first chief information security officers by the time I was 32 working in a Fortune 100 company.

Where I was working directly for both the CIO and the CFO reporting to the board, handling basically all risk management for this company at 32 years old. And then that propelled me into becoming the youngest vice president when I entered Lowe's, to becoming one of the youngest CIOs when I went to Dell.

So I was really on that fast path, but I always did have a spiritual belief. I had been raised Catholic, throughout this time, but somewhere around my mid thirties, when I was at Lowe's. I became a little bit disillusioned with what was going on in the Catholic Church and we decided to, at that point, seek out other alternatives, and it led me to start going to a Methodist church, and that's where I discovered something called discipleship, which my former wife suggested that we both do, and this was not something that was an easy decision because it was a 36 week long program where you met twice a week and you basically were studying the entire Bible end to end.

But for me it was one of the best experiences from a faith standpoint that I went through because The pastor who was teaching us, in addition to being a theologian, also had a PhD in history, so these complex topics that were in the Bible, he suddenly was able to teach us in a way that made sense because he kind of took what was happening in these thousands of years in the past and was able to transform us in time into the future and what this would look like in modern day times.

And so through that experience, one, it was the first time I'd ever read the Bible end to end, but I think it also really opened my mind to I guess to religion and God and understanding this more than I ever had. Plus understanding that across all these religions that we were really being taught the same subjects, the same myths, Joseph Campbell does a really good job talking about this and the power of myth, but whether it's the Muslim religion, Catholicism, Christianity, even Hinduism, it's They all have very similar stories that they tell, they just tell them through different characters.

And so I, kind of coming through that, realized that really all of these religions were created by man, and they're just trying to tell the story of something that's very hard to comprehend through stories that illustrate the points that were being made. But it did start putting me probably in the most profound state I had ever been on my spiritual journey of understanding how spirituality in the universe comes to us and our role in it.

[00:44:20] LW: Yeah, and I have also experienced that when you become intentional about your spiritual journey, it allows you to be able to see things about the other aspects of your life that you may have been invisible to you before, even though you probably felt them, you felt the contractions, but you didn't quite connect the dots and you described this period while at Lowe's as you were living a life of quiet desperation.

And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that because you have what you call the portfolio career. You know, very impressive on paper, but internally. There's not a lot of fulfillment. So first, can you describe what the symptoms of that were like and then what does it feel like to tap into an inner guidance telling you're on the wrong path?

Does it speak to you in English? Does it come to you through feelings? How did you know that was what was being communicated?

[00:45:20] JM: Yeah, so the time at Lowe's was probably some of the most rewarding and most disappointing in my career, rewarding from the standpoint of I accomplished some really great things that never in a million years had I ever thought I would be able to do or had the leadership acumen to pull off because many of the things I got thrust into were completely new things that I had never dealt with before in my past.

However, when you're working for a retailer, it is all consuming because the cash register never turns off. And so we were working just insane hours that, and my two bosses that I worked for, the chief operating officer and his brother, the CIO. We're notorious for getting in at like five o'clock in the morning and staying until seven or eight o'clock at night.

And so you're working these long hours if you have incidents because we're in the I. T. group, you're working weekends, dealing with them. And I guess over time, unbeknownst to me, I was starting to get burned out. And the only way I can describe this is I think It's similar to depression. It's not as if one day everything is going great, and then the next day you're depressed to me. It's something that's building up in the background for a period of time. And in my case, I think that some of the signs were there, but I was ignoring them because I was putting the mission of Lowe's and everything else before my personal health, my relationships, anything that had to deal with me.

And what starts out as something almost unnoticeable starts building up gradually, but you're still not really noticing it because it's slight changes over a long period of time that are building upon each other. I started to feel Definitely that things were different from the standpoint of I didn't feel the same excitement anymore.

I didn't feel the same connection that I had with people. I didn't feel the same burning desire with the mission that I had before. And I started to just really feel physically tired. But the most alarming thing to me was I also started to feel numb. And for the first time really in my career, when I was getting out of bed in the morning, I really didn't feel like anything I was doing really mattered in the big scheme of things.

And I mean, it's a terrible state to be in when you feel numb like that, because you really don't feel anything. You don't feel pain, you don't feel sorrow, you don't even feel joy and jubilation, you're just kind of existing, as you said, in this realm of quiet desperation, and I really felt stuck.

Because I'd built my career up to this point, and now we had the nice house, the nice cars, the social status and everything else, and I couldn't see a path to get out of it. And about this time is when I started to do some initial soul searching, and I was starting to see a psychologist for some help trying to deal with what I was experiencing when I started to hear this inner voice that was telling me that this path that I was on was not the path that I was destined to be on or that my unique skill set was being called upon me to utilize for the benefit of anyone really. But the inner voice was telling me that I was supposed to start helping people in a way that I just couldn't comprehend. And I guess for the first time in my life, I started to feel like that I could understand what it felt like to be Abraham or Isaac or these people in the Old Testament who are going about living their life when all of a sudden they get this calling to do something completely different.

And they're like, what me? No frickin way am I doing that. I mean, that's really hard. I gotta give up all this crap that I have. I gotta alienate people who are close to me. I mean, what you're talking about here, there's no way I'm gonna do this. And that's actually what happened to me. And I found that the more that this voice was coming to me, the more I was resisting it.

And I think there was a critical point here as I was leaving Lowe's where my ego got the best of me. I think at that point I could have done the jumping off point much earlier and started to pursue something much different, but I decided to play into the ego and to take a role at Dell, which at the time was something that I'd always dreamed of.

But my family was very much against it, and I think inside, I knew that I just wasn't at the right emotional state to, to do the best job that I could taking it. But, you know, I fell for the money, I fell for the prestige of the job, what it would mean, getting to work for Michael Dell, all those things, and that's what I ended up doing. 

[00:50:31] LW: Did you know that you were being driven by your ego when you took that decision or did you kind of convince yourself that you were just doing it for your family or you were doing it for some other noble reason?

[00:50:42] JM: At that point I didn't see that I was being driven by my ego, but I was definitely being driven by my ego. And I remember when I was at Lowe's, they hired Korn Ferry, why any company hires a search firm to come in and evaluate their employees and their employee structure is beyond me because it's like giving the keys to the kingdom to the person who's just gonna benefit off of it.

But they came in, they did this lengthy evaluation of all the vice presidents, senior vice presidents in the company to look at who had high potential to sometime in the future be a C level. And I was put in the top right hand corner, which I was really psyched about, but I remember going through my exit interview and I met with this woman named Bridgette and came out of this probably more mad than I'd ever been in my life because she said the famous Marshall Goldsmith saying, you know, John, you've had this incredible career up until this point.

You're, like I said before on this rocket ship, everything has gone so well for you, but what got you here isn't going to get you to where you want to be or where you could be in your life. And I was so pissed off because everything had been going so well. I mean, everything had come so easy, but what she was talking about were a few different things that to be honest, I was blinded by one is that I wasn't putting enough effort on being intentional about the relationships with my peers. And how their help was going to be needed to get me where I needed to go. But I was also relying on my intellect and my intelligence in many ways to outthink people and to come up with strategies and futuristic endeavors which had worked up until this point, but as I was getting more senior, that was gonna become less and less of my job and more of it was gonna be handling people issues and politics and things like that. And I wasn't the best groomed to do those types of things at that stage. So she was absolutely right, but I didn't wanna see it at the time which I think is something that a lot of us face. I sure saw this a lot more vividly by the time I got to Dell and was in the role 12 to 18 months later, realizing kind of the disaster of a situation I put myself in and the ramifications that it was having, not just on myself. But on others around me because of my own selfishness to take on something that was great for me, but wasn't necessarily great for my family.

[00:53:21] LW: Yeah. And you had a wake up call in the fall of 2017 that I would love for you to share what happened there. And then I want to pivot into talking about Passion Struck.

[00:53:32] JM: Yeah. So November, 2017, I mean, it started out like every other day, does, which is how all these stories go. And I took my daughter to school that morning, just typical morning. And then after that, I would then go to the gym at that point in time. I was typically going to orange theory, which I loved and class got disrupted after about the first five minutes because we started smelling smoke and there was some type of electrical short in the air conditioning panel in their studio. And so the fire trucks come, we're all told to leave. And so I go home unexpectedly half an hour earlier than I typically would have. And unbeknownst to me, there were some characters who had ill intentions who had been watching my habits and my goings to and from my house. And so when I got home, what I ended up walking in on was an active burglary of my house where they never anticipated me being there, although they had canvassed my house prior to me being there because it turns out that they, the perpetrators were from the rental company I was renting the house from. So they had actually been in the house a week before looking for all my valuables, where they were. So when they had the opportunity to go in, they'd know where they were. So I walk in on, in the house and I still want to get a workout in.

So I'm going up the staircase to go change into some different set of clothing because I was going to go out and bike and as I was going up the stairs, that spidey sense just kicked off and at the same time I started to hear some really labored breathing, but kind of that propulsion of me going up the stairs. I couldn't just stop in my tracks, but I realized with my military training that something wasn't right. And so as I came around the corner, I immediately looked for a threat. And there at the top of the stairs was someone standing there from pointing a gun at me. 

And at that point, I had to make a split second decision. Do I try to rush this person who was larger than me, holding a gun, who has the upper ground, or do I try to somehow evade and get out of there and live for another day. And I quickly came to the conclusion that I had a very high probability of getting seriously injured and would have a much better opportunity trying to evade. And so that's what I did and managed to get outside. The intruder went out the front. And this is when the police arrived and everything else and the person entered the house using the key that they had to it because obviously they worked in the office and it had my alarm codes on it, my gate codes, everything my passcode to the alarm company. So they had the whole keys to the kingdom. 

But that transpired and as I was really processing it and my daughter was scared to death so she wouldn't come back to the house, I mean, even I wouldn't go back to my bedroom, which is where they had been doing most of the burglary activities, I just felt completely threatened in my own house. So I was sleeping in another portion of the house on the couch. I was still pretty freaked out about it and got an opportunity to talk all day Saturday with my friend Tim about it. He was my best friend. And a couple days later, I had to go to New York to give a talk. And just before this talk kicks off, I get a whole bunch of phone calls basically telling me that Tim, who I just spent the day with two days earlier, had committed suicide.

And so here I have these two extremely traumatic events hit me. And over the next weeks to months, as I'm trying to process this, I really just went back in history to that time at Lowe's when I had that opportunity to make a change and I didn't do it. And I really thought, you know, I've been spending all this time making other people's dreams come true and making them money, but I haven't gone out and fulfilled this mission that this inner voice has been telling me.

And it is time to get off my rear end and to start making some drastic life changes because life isn't getting any shorter, I mean any longer. Life is finite and I needed to drastically change the direction of my life and now was the time I was going to do it. So that was kind of the last major event that pushed me in that direction. 

[00:58:18] LW: And everybody in their mother nowadays at least thinks about starting a podcast, so you had an experience that led to the beginning of the Passion Struck podcast can you share a little bit about that And didn't just give us a bit of a montage of that journey as you started your podcast because obviously everybody who has a podcast wants to be Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan, you know, and you have a very successful podcast right now. You're publishing three times a week. I'm sure it didn't start off like that. So how did that happen? Was there a hockey stick growth? Was it just slow and steady wins the race? What was your experience like?

[00:59:01] JM: You know, even in 2017, I never thought I was going to be doing a podcast. I mean, I barely even knew what they were at that point. I did know that I had a mission to fulfill. And one of the things I was working through was initially I was trying to do it through consulting. And I started to work through this company where I was for the first time exposed to really the publishing industry. And we had our CEO previously had been the publisher of chief executive magazine and through this had done a number of interviews and things like that. So I'm thrown into this world that I had never seen before. And I started to realize the power that media could play at getting your word out.

And he put me in this role where I was the assistant publisher and then we ended up firing our editor in chief and so I was asked to take on that role of editor in chief for about 18 months. And during this time, I came up with this new idea to create something called the Bold Leader Spotlight. And so, I created these eight principles that defined what meant to be a bold leader.

And as I was doing this, I started to realize and I actually had this job even before this incident happened in 2017, but this kind of gave it new meaning. As I was doing this, I realized that not only did I have a gift in interviewing these people, but that there was a huge power in it because suddenly these articles that we were publishing in the videos We're far more popular than anything else that we were publishing. And I went to the person who owned the company at that time. And I said two things to him, one is we people aren't coming to us because of this overall brand and being invisible behind it. They're coming to us because they're starting to see the personality that we have playing through. And just like going to CNN or Fox News or NBC or ESPN, viewers typically go there because they like the anchor who's hosting the show.

They don't really necessarily care about what network it's on. And I also encouraged him that we needed to start doing the podcast. And he kind of came back to me and said that wasn't what he was going to do. He didn't want anyone to be the face of the company. And I kind of just disagreed with them. And he also didn't believe that anyone could break through and do a podcast. 

And so we ended up parting ways, you know, we're still friends, but I took a year off at that point and really started to think about how do I want to amplify my message? And at this point, from all the years that I'd had in business, I really didn't have a personal brand. I don't even think I was on Instagram at that point. And I knew I had a message I wanted to get out, so I started to publish a blog. And some of those started to get some views. And I could see that some of this was resonating, but it still wasn't having the impact that I wanted. And so at this point, I kind of came to this conclusion that I wanted to write a book.

And I started to go out and talk to agents. Well, every agent came back to me and said, The publishing industry is changing. And you need to have a platform for any publisher to have any interest at all in publishing your book, and you have zero. And so at this point, it was at the start of COVID, and I realized I couldn't public speak, which is what they were encouraging me to do.

The virtual speaking really didn't give you a chance to analyze how your message was being heard by the people on the other end, because you can't really see them. And so I just came to the conclusion that probably the best way for me to test these theories at scale. Because I had now moved away from wanting to do coaching on a one to one basis to realizing that what I was being asked to do was impacting people at scale.

And I started to think that the only way I could do this was by starting a podcast, doing YouTube and starting to get this out to a much broader audience. And so when I started the podcast out, I started with two episodes a week. One was an interview. One was a solo. And it was really to try to amplify the ideas that I had for what I hoped would be a book, and to start to put them out there to see what resonated. And for the first six months, I think like anyone who goes into podcasting, I was deeply disappointed by the results. I remember when I did my first episode, I was expecting, I don't know, naively to get hundreds, if not more downloads. And I think on the first one I had maybe 20 or 25, and it wasn't getting much. I mean, it was slowly like a drip feed picking up, but then I started to really do some soul searching. And, I started to do some work with Rory Vaden and his team at Brand Builders and they have this exercise they put you through where you have to define a one word problem that you're trying to solve.

And I think at that point, I still didn't really realize what was the thing that I was really trying to help people overcome. And it took me a good chunk of eight to nine months to really get to the bottom of this, because I kept thinking about what the symptoms of this were, but not the underlying issue. And so I started to really look at  we have really billions of people right now who and this is the words that my inner voice was given me, who are lonely, helpless, bored, broken, battered. And we have all these mental health issues. And so to me, underneath all of this, what I realized, the thing that I had to solve was unmattering. Why do people lack significance in their life? Why do they feel like they don't matter? Which we are best positioned to help the person we once were. And that's exactly how I felt at my lowest stage when I was in that state of quiet desperation, I was so stuck. And so unfulfilled that I didn't feel like I mattered to myself. And I certainly didn't feel like what I was doing was mattering to anyone else. And so once I started to look at that unmattering was the thing I was trying to solve, I then had to figure out how do you solve this? Because you can't start doing a marketing pitch around the beaten board, broken and battered of the world.

And no one's going to respond to that. So I really realized that. But if you wanted to figure out and live a life that mattered, you needed to be very intentional about the choices that you were making, the actions that you were taking. And so this really realized led me on a completely different way that I started to structure everything about the podcast. I changed how I was approaching the interviews, how I was doing my solo episodes, I changed out the album cover, and really went out for everything. A much more niche audience who I was helping with more of a compelling targeted message. And from that point forward the podcast just started hockey sticking.

I remember at the end of that year, I hit about a half a million downloads by the end of the second year, I was at about 5 million downloads by the end of the year after that, I was at 30 million downloads and now probably 25 million downloads. And now we're over 40 million downloads. So, this message is definitely one that needs to be heard. And it also played a vital role into me constructing my whole book differently than I had been doing this research for a while, but I was now doing it on, really, how do you create a life of significance, which is kind of subliminally throughout the book, Passion Struck, what I'm trying to teach people, but I didn't want to put it front and center in front of them.

So that's where this whole intentionality coupled with persian, perseverance and passion really started to take root. And I created this whole passion struck model that the whole book is based upon. 

[01:07:26] LW: So let's dive into that a bit and talk about the the six steps to the mindset shift, which is in part one, and then we can get into part two after that.

[01:07:38] JM: Yeah, Light. So as I was thinking about how do you approach this book, I'm one of those people who always has to have some type of framework in my mind to logically put things against. Because if you look at the principles that I have in the book, and I was talking to Scott Miller on a podcast about this he was laughing. He goes on the surface, I would have never thought to put these different, in some ways, completely unrelated things together, but the way you packaged it actually makes them flow. And so the model behind all of this is that there are six mindset shifts, which influence kind of our, why, you know, why are you taking the actions that you're taking there's six behavior shifts that then influence your what and how you're doing it.

And then the last section of the book is really around the psychology of progress, which really brings this idea of mattering. The importance of intrinsic motivation and the deliberate action process into being. And so, in the first two sections, I'm really explaining what these principles are. And in the third portion of the book, I'm actually telling you how to deploy them in your life.

So that they're not something that you just read, but something that you actually can utilize to make yourself better. And I think as I've read a lot of books, a lot of books kind of put out Part A, but not many actually tell you how to implement it and how to put these things into action, and that's what I wanted to do in the book, and so that's how it's organized. So then I had to think logically, you know, what is the best way for telling someone, how do you completely rebuild your life if you're trying to rebuild it from scratch, or if you're stuck, how do you get to being unstuck? Or if you're a high achiever, but you're kind of plateaued, how do you get to the next level?

So it led to then coming up with you know, I need to teach them how to lifecraft, I need to teach the importance of reinvention, I need to teach the importance of the things that get in your way to that reinvention, the first of which is toxic people that come into your lives. then the most toxic person that we have in our life is ourself.

So how do you get over your own self doubts and your inner critic? Then to the perceptions that we have, because most of us practice black and white thinking, to then how do you start taking actions to and having that confidence to create actions. So those became the six shifts. And then I really tried to come up with some nifty ways or metaphors for people to think about it.

So the first chapter on lifecrafting I did through the, this metaphor of being a mission angler, which just as a fisherman is trying to angle for the best grouping of fish that they can to take in the biggest haul, we have to approach. Our life with that same intentionality and angle for the life that we want, the brand reinventor is really about reinventing ourself in a continuous manner. The mosquito principle is really looking at the invisible influences, meaning the toxic people in our lives and how they are very much like mosquitoes who we think are just these innocuous creatures, but actually can really cause some great havoc in our lives. To then the next chapter is on really being a fear confronter, then a perspective harnesser and an action creator. So that's kind of how the methodology formed. 

And I really wanted these to be taught in a way that it was, I read so many of these books that are filled with so much science that it's hard to really relate to it, and I wanted this to be approachable by virtually anyone, so I do give you the science, and I tried to do it in a dumbed down way. But more importantly, I tried to show examples both from my own life, and in many of them, I tried to be really humble about things that I screwed up or did well. And then I tried to tell stories of both well known people and regular people, so you get both examples of superstars and people who are just like the rest of us, and how they apply these principles in their lives. And then I end each chapter with exercises for people to do. 

[01:11:59] LW: What is the response been, because every time you put a book out into the world, you may hear from people who kind of got it. They understood exactly what you were trying to say. But then you also may hear of different ways people have interpreted the work that you didn't even really anticipate. Has any of that has any of that happened since your book came out?

[01:12:22] JM: Yeah. So, so surprisingly, in a good way, it has responded really well to critical reviewers. So the reviews I've gotten on the book have been It's been primarily five star reviews. It's also now won five different book awards, which I never in a million years thought it would. And I guess what has been really the most inspiring is hearing from people who have read it and who are using it is how it's completely transforming their lives. And so a constant stream that I've heard is that people are finding that the way it was written is useful, is approachable. I think the thing I've struggled the most with is when you're not with one of the top five publishers, the news media tends not to give it as much coverage.

And so my hardest challenge has been just getting the news about the book out there, which with a podcast as large as I have, you would think would be pretty easy, but that's probably been the biggest challenge. I think the reception I've gotten once people read it has been extremely good. It's been much harder than I ever thought to actually promote. And get the books in people's hands like I had hoped to.

[01:13:41] LW: Did you read the audio book? 

[01:13:43] JM: I did. And I wish someone would have told me before I did it, how grueling a process that is. And the audio people actually came to me initially and it scheduled me for a Friday, then take a weekend off, then come back for a Monday and Tuesday. And I naively changed it to, I'm just going to do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and get done with it. Well, after day two, I'm already about 10 hours into recording this thing. And my voice is so, just, I can't even describe it. I mean, it's not only hoarse, but it is just so painful to even speak. And I am just downing hot tea and as much honey as I can get. I'm just thinking there to myself, I should have just listened and not tried to take control over something I know nothing about, but I ended up getting through it just fine and recording it in three days. And then the funny thing is they write me and say, well, you have to come back and do edits.

And they said they're actually not that many. They're about 300 and only take you about two and a half hours. So I go back in the studio and they said about half of these are just things that you, as the author can decide to change or not. They're really not substantial. And then 50% of things are like factual or consequential that we want you to change.

And I asked them if they could divide them into the two lists, because I was going to tackle the consequential ones and then come back and do the nice to haves but they didn't do that. So I get there and I'm on the first correction. Well, what they didn't tell me is I had 300 corrections, but correction one was part 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, and 1F. So I'm actually looking at like 1,500 corrections that I have to make. And so anyone who tells you that recording a book is a simple process you're naive to think about that, but I'm so glad I did it because I can't imagine with what I was trying to explain it coming out of anyone's mouth, but my own.

[01:15:48] LW: I love it, man. Yeah you also forget how to pronounce simple words like those and that you're like, is that how it's, are you sure except it's, is it accept or accept it's so funny. You say complete bizarro world recording a book.

[01:16:04] JM: Well, I think the thing you don't realize is how sometimes you're not putting space in between words. And so you're just saying a phrase that ends up meaning nothing to someone who's listening to it. And I realized after the first day that there's absolutely a certain cadence to reading a book. And once you get used to that cadence, it's a lot easier. But you don't want to talk too fast, but you don't want to talk too slow. There's like this happy equilibrium in between the two. But what was really nice about having the person listening as you're going on is you don't understand the inflection points. And when you need to make something more profound or you need to say it in remorse or you need to put more emotion into it. So that was also eye opening for me. 

[01:16:52] LW: Beautiful. Well, I know you have a hard stop. So I'm going to send everybody listening to this to get your favorite format of the book, audio book. Hardcover book, passion struck 12 powerful principles to unlock your purpose and ignite your most intentional life.

I wish we had more time to talk about the actual framework in the book because it's quite fascinating. And some of the specific examples that you used, but I'll put links to all of the ways of getting in touch with you in the show notes and people can dive into your work, into your platform, your podcast. And hopefully you and I, John, at some point we'll have a chance to cross paths, maybe on the keynote speaking circuit. 

[01:17:36] JM: Oh, that would be great. I mean, if you did want to spend five minutes and just go through one of the examples from the book, I'd be happy to do that. 

[01:17:42] LW: Sure. Is there one that you are that you find is the best for, to kind of represent the entire book, I know you mentioned The Rock and Robin Sharma. Those are two of my favorite ones, but I don't know if there's another one that you would like to point out, Angela Duckworth. 

[01:17:59] JM: I think one of the ones, I think the one I'm going to use is Wendy Lawrence. So Wendy Lawrence is not a common name to people who are listening to this podcast, like the other people you just mentioned, but she is the first female astronaut that was selected out of the Naval Academy in the first to fly in outer space from the Naval Academy. And I've now known her for 35, 36 years, because the backstory of this is when she was selected to be an astronaut, she was my physics teacher at the Naval Academy. And had already become somewhat of a mentor to me even back then. And I guess when I looked at Wendy, she joined the Naval Academy during the second class where females were allowed in it, and she came in under some pretty difficult circumstances because her father was the superintendent of the Naval Academy when she came in. So not only is she coming in as a female, but now she's coming in as the soup's daughter, which is putting even more pressure on her to perform and she wanted to become an astronaut from the time that she saw Neil Armstrong on the moon.

And I think what is so important about her story is it really talks about the importance of taking continual an intentional action and something that she likes to talk about, and she often talks about to kids when she's on her own speaking tours, is that you have to give yourself permission to dream your dream. And I think, as I look at my own life, and even when I was at Lowe's, I faced that fundamental challenge that many people face much earlier, meaning she talks about how people say that they want to do these aspiring things. Like be an astronaut, but then they start taking calculus or some advanced science class, and it's so difficult that they end up just quitting. 

Well, I had this life I wanted to lead to and I came to realize that I wasn't living authentically to the person I really was and to my innate talents. Yet we end up putting our own speed bumps. It's something that I call, you know, we become the visionary arsonist to our own life, meaning we arson the very things in life that we want to attain.

And so what I love about her message is when she started out with this dream, the Naval Academy wasn't even an option for her. It didn't even become an option for her until her junior year in high school. But even up to that point, she was looking at alternate paths that she could take to make this dream a reality.

And so when the Naval Academy became an option, she immediately applied for it. But then when she got in, she realized that not only did she need to graduate, she needed to be the best she possibly could be and demonstrate her acumen in every area. And she was just really intentional about showing up and being at the top of her class because she knew that she had to get a coveted aviation billet because all the astronauts up until that point had been aviators. And so, at that time, the women weren't allowed to be combat pilots, so she chose the path to becoming a helicopter pilot. And even in that, she had to excel at being the top of her squadron, demonstrating her acumen because she knew she had to stand out if she wanted to get master's programs.

And being selected, she then knew that most of the astronauts were picked from M. I. T. So she applied and got into M. I. T. Where she thought the Naval Academy was hard, but when she got into M. I. T. She realized that she was dumb compared to the other students who were there. And it was really, she almost faced failing out and losing it all, but she doubled down on her belief.

And if you look at her life and where it took her, it's just this continually this continual action to put her core values, her core beliefs and aligning them with her ambitions. And her long term aspirations of where she wanted to be and how it was constantly doing this work in the wee hours in the morning, the unseen hours that really catapulted her over time into this life of greatness and achieving all the dreams that she had aspired to.

So that is just one of the different stories that I tell. The other person I talk about in that chapter is Mark Cuban, who's a much more well known person. But I mean, that'll give a person a taste of the book and how I try to infuse these stories into the concepts. 

[01:22:40] LW: Hey, one more question. John, if you had to summarize your definition, your current definition for success, what would you say it is?

[01:22:48] JM: Man, when I think of success to me, it's really waking up in a way that when your feet hit the floor, you just have this overwhelming sense of significance. That you're making a difference to the world that you're, and that doesn't have to be like your Richard Branson. You're changing the world. I think we overcomplicate it.

To me, it's, you're making a difference in one person's life. If that means you're making a bigger difference in your children's life, then so be it. If that means you're making a bigger difference in your church community, so be it. That means you're making a bigger difference through your podcast or whatever medium you have.

To me it's, feeling fulfilled in that you are actually using your unique gifts to solve a problem that, that only you uniquely can solve. And to me, that brings you fulfillment. And it makes you feel like what you're doing holds significance, which I, which is what I think ends up bringing us happiness.

I also don't view myself anymore through how much money I make or the titles I have or what I drive or where I live. I've come to realize none of that really matters. And it doesn't really bring you happiness or anything else. I think there are three things that they found through self descripi self discrepancy, no, self determination theory that really hold huge weight.

And that is you need to have relatedness, meaning the relationships in our life truly matter. You need to have competence, meaning that you need to pick some type of mastery where, like they say, you've got to spend 10,000 hours becoming an expert in something. matters. And then you need to have personal agency, realizing that it doesn't matter where you grew up, what side of the railroad tracks you were on, that you have the ability to change the outlook of your life. And that's to me where intentionality really comes into bearing that we have personal agency and self control to have that competence and that autonomy and that relatedness, which really drive us to achieving a state of happiness and well being. 

[01:25:02] LW: Beautiful. I think that's a great place to end it. 

[END]

Thank you for tuning into today's episode with John Miles. You can grab a copy of his book, Passion Struck, which is available everywhere books are sold. And to follow John for more inspiration on social media, you can go to @john_r_miles, M I L E S or passion_struck_podcast. And we'll put links to everything that John and I discussed in the show notes, which is always available to you at lightwatkins.com/podcast. 

And if our conversation sparks some ideas and you're thinking to yourself, wow, I'd love to hear a Light interview someone like dot, dot, dot, then I want to hear from you. Email me your guest suggestions. light@lightwatkins.com. 

And then here's a simple but very powerful way that you can help me make those interviews happen. All you have to do is leave me a review. It makes a huge difference. Reviews are what a lot of guests use to see if this is a show that they would like to come on. And all you have to do is just click on the name of the show on your podcast app, scroll down those first handful of episodes, and you'll see a place to rate the show and just tap the fifth star to leave a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous, write a quick line about what you enjoy about this show. And that can go a long way as well. 

Also you can watch these interviews on my YouTube channel. If you prefer to put a face to a story and don't forget to subscribe there as well. And for those of you who crave a bit more, the raw unedited version of each podcast is available in my happiness insiders online community. Just go to thehappinessinsiders.com and you can not only access the full uncut interviews, but you can also access my challenges such as the meditation challenge. There's a moving challenge and a bunch of other challenges and master classes that are designed to help you become the best version of yourself.

And finally, you may have noticed that I'm now releasing a bite size episode every Friday. I'm calling them Plot Twist episodes. A plot twist is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of the pivotal moment in their life trajectory, which is usually that moment when the plot of their life shifted away from the conventional thing that they were doing and it helped them learn something profound about life or to live with a greater sense of purpose, or it just allowed them to become more aligned with their why. So look out for those episodes every Friday. 

And until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, keep taking those leaps of faith. And remember, if no one's told you lately that they believe in you, I believe in you.

Thank you so much. Have a fantastic day and see you for the next plot twist this Friday.