E406: How to Create a Life That Matters | Mental Health Podcast

EMPOWER AND STAND UP FOR YOURSELF WITH AMANDA ABELLA

Michael: Talk to me about how now today with what you just said your intuition, your voice is so loud for yourself, like how do you even tap into that?

Amanda: That's a really great question that I've been trying to figure out the answer to, as more people ask me, I think to a certain degree, it's always been there. I remember I've just always been an observer ever since I was pretty young. So I remember just observing my peers in high school for example, and being like, oh, well, that's a really bad decision, noted. I'm not going to do that. So I'm constantly taking notes in my head, and I think what ends up happening is in the beginning, when I didn't realize I was intuitive. I just saw as, ‘Oh, I'm observing things, and then I'm picking up on patterns, and then I'm making decisions that way.’ But as I've gotten older, and particularly with certain things that have happened, like, I completely shifted business models, starting in 2017 partially because I had an intuitive hit that was like, oh, we are overdue for a crisis and your current business would not survive it. There was no rhyme or reason for this there was no like I mean, I was in finance and people are always talking about in my first business and people are always talking about a crisis and finance, but there was no reason for me to really believe that or maybe a month prior to not a month, a year prior to the pandemic coming. I actually moved out of my condo in Miami and moved back home, I had to move there a lot of construction issues in the condo and now with what just happened in Miami with condos, I was like a good move, getting out of there, but they were just lots of issues and I was like, I'm out of here and I went back home and part of the reason why I went back home was that there was again, an intuitive hit that was like, something's coming, and when it comes, this is where you're going to want to be, and it was just a voice, a year later, we have the pandemic, and it's true. This is exactly where I wanted to be, not hold up in a condo, and then in addition to that, when I hired Zhenya who you met, I had this crazy sense of urgency when I hire her.

I was like, I hired her at the end of 2018 and she was my first employee, which was already like a huge leap for me, from my first business, and I was like, we got to get these systems figured out, we got to get this foundation figured out, it was so urgent, it was so like we have, maybe 18 months, 18 months is what we got, right? And learn and behold, within 18 months, most of the systems in the structures were already taken care of so when the craziness of 2020 happened, the avalanche that came to us in terms of like business, and then also the fires, we had to put out at the same time at least our systems were good.

So now, my team comes to me or and they're like, okay, when Amanda gets on one of these kicks where she just gets to hit. We're just going to follow her because she's always right and then other things have happened like clients have come to me. One of them is a Dina. She runs a program called immigrant finance school and she's like, hey I worked with you in, I believe, it was 2018 because you told me that all the world systems were going to come down, and we were going to need new leaders. Well, it's 2020! Look, where we're at, look at the state of the world! And I was like, I don't remember saying that but I'm not surprised. I said it, or I had another client whose like, I used to have a column at ink and they came to me and they were like, hey, so remember when you wrote this whole article back in 2017, exposing the coaching industry for all the fuckery going on and how it was going to expose. Here we are in 2020 and 2021. So I was like, dang, there is something here and I just could not really explain it. I always thought I was just picking up on patterns and I'm like; ‘Don't people see this? Don't they see the same things I'm seeing?’ And then in 2020, I realized they don't.

Michael: Yeah. But I think people do see them but they don't listen.

Amanda: That's it. Yes.

Michael: Have you always been a person that has listened to their gut, to their intuition or did you have to? For me, I literally have to force it like because I was so used to not doing that. We're not listening was kind of the precursor for everything and so listening became new over the course of the last seven, eight, nine, ten years. Have you always been able to listen to your intuition, or do you have to train this?

Amanda: I think I had to train it. I think it was always there and I think we all always have it. Like, I mentioned I was a really good observer when I was a kid and I would take diligent notes, right? Based on what other people were doing, but I will definitely say, like, as a young adult. I definitely did not listen, I did not do good things as a young adult because I was not listening to myself and put myself in precarious situations, but I will say, I think my saving grace in a weird way. Sorry, I got my dark night of the Soul, a little early in life. I was 21, and basically, I got really, really sick in college, and now in retrospect, I realize it's because I had been dealing with depression for a long time, I've been dealing with anxiety for a long time, I was angry over a lot of things that have happened in my life. I was also dealing with the grief and the loss of a family member and I was not paying attention to any of that. I was just ignoring it, still, high functioning, still doing whatever, and then shortly after turning 21, I got really sick and it was to the point where I had to take a look at a medical leave of absence from school. So, I actually did half of my senior year of college from bed at home on a medical leave of absence. And when that happened, it started triggering a lot of panic attacks like a lot, like I was so terrified of just going to sleep at night and even putting my head down because that's when the attacks would start, and it was to the point when I did go back to school, because I had to go back at some point and finish off my last semester.

The only way I could finish with anxiety medication, I couldn't get through, and then that set me off on a journey to kind of figure out what the hell is going on, like, why am I feeling this way? Why has no one is taught me how to deal with my emotions? What is going on here? And then that led me toward a path of, you know, personal development, yoga, meditation.

I think has been the big thing for learning how to listen to myself and I started doing that about 10 years ago because I was just trying to find anything to help me deal with my anxiety, and the other part of it was, my whole first business started, as a result of that too. Everybody knows the part or if you know who I am. Everybody knows the part where it's like, oh Amanda graduated from college and couldn't find a job for 6 months and started freelance writing and talking about money, the part they don't know about because I didn't realize the connection to it was the year and a half prior where I was struggling with panic attacks.

The panic attacks actually, triggered me trying to go find solutions of which one of them turned into a business. One of them turned into just trying to heal myself, anyway that I could meditation came through that, and then through meditation, it's just learning how to listen to yourself. And I think when you have a lot of practice at it, there's a knowing that kind of comes with it and you know what, it sounds like, and you know what it feels like over time I just trusted it, you know, and the other thing is maybe in the beginning, it wasn't in the first few years, maybe I didn't trust it as much, I was still very scared, but then when I was 28 years old, a good friend of mine from college passed away, really unexpectedly, and he was only a few years older than me.

So I was 28, he must have been 32 just dead like just gone and I still don't even really know what happened. I think it was a work accident and I just have this moment where I was like, Holy shit, you're going to die someday, like, we're all gonna die someday and I don't mean to like get morbid, but it's more like that urgency came in of, you have to listen to this voice, you have to at least try. Like if this voice is telling you, to go blow up this business or help people in this way or take this risk or travel there. You have to follow it because you're going to die someday.

HOW TO SHOW UP AND LIVE LIFE ON YOUR TERMS WITH MEREDITH VIGUERS

Michael: How do you start to step through to make that pendulum swing to go from I'm blaming the world to recognizing that through my actions I can create the life that I want to have?

Meredith: Yeah. So, this is an interesting thought process and because it's something that I've actually been processing for myself for the last couple of days. I'm going through a bit of a journey right now, in terms of redefining some things and I think the first thing for me is, I don't get to say out loud that anything is anyone else's fault. So part of it is, you know, I think oftentimes, we feel like we have to make this massive change internally for anything else to occur and I think sometimes we do, just have to walk ourselves through it step-by-step, whereas even if I think cognitively this happened because and it's this person's fault, I don't get to say it and I'll get to open my mouth, so my brain does not get to hear my voice say that there's anything to blame anyone else for. So that's kind of the first step in that it's a really practical thing, right? That you can do because your words carry massive power in your brain and so that's a first step that I just don't get to say it out loud.

Now, the second step is I have to squash it fast when I think it, right? So, you know, one of the ways that people do end up with a lot of blame is they dwell, they dwell on things and the more that you dwell on it, the more power you give it in your thought process and so for me, I have to the second identify anything. And look as a business owner it's so super simple to blame a lot of things going on in the world right now and I won't go into them. It would be really easy and everyone around us is like, oh, yeah, no, this is why this and this is what? Okay, you know what? I don't get to; I get to figure out solutions. So what I look at is number one, I squash the thought as soon as I have it number two, it doesn't get to come out of my mouth but number three is anytime there is something that we want to blame someone else for it's because we have not yet come up with the solution on how to solve that problem for ourselves. So if we can flip the script and go okay, if I don't get to blame, anyone else, it's me, if I'm the issue, guess what? I'm also, the solution I get to solve this problem and so when we go into that thought process, then we always have something more to solve. And when it comes to this thing of, you know, what's good enough, right?

This is what I've been processing the last couple of days, so in fact, I was just telling someone the story yesterday. My husband and I when we first met in Florida, was literally our second day, we walked on the beach for four hours, we were engaged in five weeks, married in less than six months and honestly, if he would have asked me on that second date, I would have said yes, but we spent four hours walking on the beach dreaming our life together. We talked about kids and houses and cars and all of these different things, vacations, the kind of stuff that you get excited about. And what's interesting is today, 24 years later we live every single one of the things that we discussed all of them, it is our life. And yet I want more, I want more, it's good, but it's not good enough because now that I am where I am, my responsibilities have changed, I know that I have to certain more people. I know that I have to give more, I know that I have to be more and in order to do all of the things I need to do I've got to have more and so this whole thing of you know, when is it good enough, when is it good enough, it really happens, it will be because if it is, then we're not growing.

And if we get to this point where everything is now, that doesn't mean don't be content in the moment that you're in, and this is something that I struggle with because I'm so gold driven that I always want to move forward, so struggling to be content in everything that I have while I'm driven to move forward, is something that I constantly have to work on because it's very easy to get focused on the road and just go, okay, nothing's going to work until I get out there. But that's not a healthy way to go about it either, so it's kind of this constant struggle of I'm content with where I am because this is exactly where I said I wanted to be but now I know this isn't the destination, this was like a stopping point along the way.

Michael: Yeah, I love that and I totally relate. As a person who is so incredibly goal-oriented and looks at life from a perspective of momentum and really needing to understand the way that momentum plays a role in your life, IE the faster you go, the faster things start to happen and get into this place where I watch my life evolve and change because of the choices that I make, I'm an alignment with you entirely but it's so difficult, right?

When you sit down, you go, okay, I want to have this; people lose sight of the ability that they have to create the life that they want to have, and I often of said this many times. I believe that we live in The Matrix are we in a Malaysian, no, probably not but we are in this wonderful place in the world were now better than ever, we have the ability to create the framework of the life that we want. And it's literally at our fingertips and I look at the last 18 months of my life and I go, these are the best 18 months I've ever had And the next 18 will be better than these and so on and so forth, because I'm always thinking about what's next and that comes from being able to tap into my intention and I hear you very much as a person and from knowing you as this person who's able to not only tap into their intuition but bring it to fruition but that starts so much with listening to yourself. Has that always been something that you've been able to do, what was that been like? Because I know when I started like really getting serious about my journey to speak about Think Unbroken and step into this, I was like – okay this is terrifying, but I'm going to do it in every time I step further into my intended, my intuition and my gut I just kept being able to prove myself, right? What does that journey be like for you?

Meredith: So it's an interesting journey for me in that I think I am very intuitive, generally speaking. So I know what my intuition is at the same time I love to serve people and so I often in terms of finding my own voice stepping into my own intuition and things of that nature, I'd have let that take a backseat to all of the things that I do because someone asked me to.

And so a big part of that journey for me and this has really only happened somewhat recently is learning how to trust myself enough to say no and I think this is probably harder for women, generally speaking than it is for men and especially when you're a mom and you're a wife and you've got all these demands on your time, but understanding who I am and what I'm capable of is something that I've stepped into fully now, but I think for a long time there's a little bit of guilt that goes along with that, right? I'm going to say this specifically to women, they're listening to this because somebody really needs to hear it as a mom, especially we are made to feel guilty for starting our own business for not being there with our kids, every minute of the day when they're little, for taking them to daycare, for you name it, there's like, all of these kinds of things that people associate with that.

And what I want to say is you get to prioritize, just because you're a mom, or a wife does not mean that you have to step back and take a backseat, you don't have to wait 18 or 20 years until your kids are grown to do the things that you are supposed to do. And so for me where that really came into play is that when I started the catering company, I was six months, pregnant, with my youngest, son and my husband was in Iraq, okay, so I had two boys at home, he was deployed, I was six months pregnant, with my youngest son, no experience in the food industry, you know, when people say when's the right time to start a business, let me tell you. Yeah, I picked the perfect time, the reality is, there never is a perfect time, but there were people who gave me a hard time about like, is this really what your kids need from you right now? Well, you know what? Yeah, it was what they needed because they needed to watch me do the thing that I wanted to do because I was passionate about doing it because I knew I was supposed to, I knew I was supposed to. And so there was no question in my mind that I needed to move forward with it. And I think prior to that time, I might have let some of those outside voices, steer me in a different direction, but I'm going to tell you, I was so crystal clear on what needed to happen at that point in my life that you could not have told me anything different and in fact, so much that when I got the idea for that company because initially, I've been in banking for a while and I could not stand the thought of going back to a desk job, right? It's not me, I like to move, I like to be around people and sitting in front of a computer all day, is not my gig and so I was cooking for people because I enjoyed it my husband was deployed, I was trying to keep my mind occupied, right? And we had a fight over the phone about me, spending the money, I was making overseas, you know, providing meals for other families and so I had this idea that I could start this meal service, right? Clearly, if people called me all the time because someone just had a baby or was in the hospital, it needed some food it's because there wasn't a service that was doing that for people so that's where the concept came from.

And I just knew that I could make something work, I had no idea what it was going to be at that time. I mean, it's turned into this massive company and you know, thousands of employees over the years and, you know, all of these other things. But at the time it was literally just a way so that I could stay home with the kids and not go back to a desk job and my youngest son, his playpen was literally in my commercial kitchen to give you an idea. So when I called my husband and said, hey, I've got this idea, this is what I think I can do with this. He said, Okay, and like for anybody who knows us, I'm the crazy idea person, he's the no-man, like –he's very supportive but we have two very different risk tolerances and so when he said, okay, I hung up on him and he was in Iraq and there had been times where we had been on the phone and a bomb went off while we were talking. So, maybe not the best thing in the world to do, but I also knew at that moment that the second, he said, okay figure it out. If I stayed on the phone with him, if I gave him any more time to talk, he would have talked himself out of the okay, so I needed to take the affirmation that I had at that moment and go with it.

And three weeks later, we were knocking bricks out of the garage to turn it into a commercial kitchen, right? So when that intuition hits, and you know that you know, that, you know, that you need to move with something it's important that you move fast before, you have time to backtrack, before someone else gets in your head and that's how that whole thing went down.

But there were people, who did things, you know, this is not what your boys need from you right now. Well, yeah, it was exactly what they needed from that moment, and over the years, not my older boys they saw the struggles of that time because they were tendon seven, right? So they remember how tired I was sometimes and they remember some of the growing pains and all of that, but they look back at it now and are using some of those lessons to help them with other things that they're going through at the moment because they know that if they can watch me go through that and do everything I've done over that time frame, that they've got a lot of strength inherently in them just by virtue of being in that environment.

HOW YOUR VOICE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD WITH BLAIR BRYANT NICHOLS

Michael: And in that, you step into this thing about trusting yourself and about believing in yourself and I know as an entrepreneur myself and trying to build things, there's always these moments of the limiting self-beliefs and the negative self-talk in the thing in your head that says, are you crazy?

You're going to walk away from all these things to try to build your dream, how dare you. How do you navigate that? Like as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as someone trying to create an impact change on the world, how do you be louder than the voice that tells you; you can't, shouldn't, don't or won't?

Blair: Yeah, I mean in my case it was about aligning with clients that kind of helped build me up. I really have gravitated to clients who have been very complimentary have been very generous have been engage with me and have actually helped me like realize what I'm capable of and what value I've brought to them. So I've almost kind of unfortunately, relied on the reflection of the people that I've served and what they have shared with me on the impact that I've made in their business, or in their lives and the relationship that we've built that it started to make me feel like, okay, this is why I want to continue these types of relationships because it's not just they're validating and gratifying but there is a mutual respect, there's a partnership, there's a shared language that makes me feel confident I can be honest, I can be candid and that were both accountable to each other and getting things done.

The role of a manager in my mind is to be a strategist and to keep nudging and helping encourage someone's creative dreams, but also to be the one that's kicking them in the butt as much as they are kicking, you in the butt to say, hey, this is they say to me, you know, this is my dream, this is want to have happen like help me. So that mutual accountability and respect for each other, I think drives both of us forward and that's what's helped me kind of quiet those inner saboteurs or the critics that think like, who are you? You're you're a nobody like look at all these other really amazing managers and agents and you know, especially in L.A. or surrounded by enough people that you can easily feel inferior. But I know to the few clients that I work with or the the many hopefully authors and speakers that I've worked with over the years that I hopefully have made an impact, I have made a difference and in the success of their book or getting out there as a speaker for the very first time or building something beyond what I could have imagined myself doing a long time ago. And then, so every once in a while, I have to kind of, hopefully, reflect on how far we've come and how I'm unique in this industry and not just another person that they could easily replace and so I do try to use all that to help fuel.

I think the biggest thing is just working on yourself and even if it doesn't relate to your job, I know all of the things that the practice is that you have. I also meditate and work out in the mornings now and I never thought I would be the person doing either of those things and went vegetarian and just all the things that I do to try to take care of myself in different ways. I think is also really helped me in an emotional, and a mental way, because it just helps, if you feel good, you're going to work better, you're going to find more joy, more confidence in what you're doing and the stress that used to really, sideline, me and force me to self-medicate with weed and alcohol for years and years has dissipated. You know, I've got enough perspective now to say, yeah, that's someone's upset, someone's different results this or that, okay, you know, we go to work to solve them but I let anxiety and stress and kind of crazy bosses that I had really run me ragged for a long time and I've been working on walking out of that and really, just owning what I want my experience of my career to be by being intentional about the people that I choose to work with.

Michael: Yeah, I love that you mentioned that it's not as simple as just doing the things for your job or for your business. And I found just by doing the work for me first by proxy, that impacts everything in my life but much like you like I can rewind to a time 10, 12 years ago where I think personal development self-help, these guys are full of shit like this is nonsense, I'm never going to do any of this. And now it's almost the only thing that I do because one of the things I recognized was if I'm the smartest person in the room like I'm in the wrong room and I just kept like trying to push myself more and more and more. One of the things that I found to be so incredibly beneficial and you kind of hearkened into it but I want to go a little bit deeper was being surrounded by the right people in alignment, and with my values and who it is that I want to be and what I want to build and become. Talk to me about the power of community in your life and how that impacts you not only as an individual but as a business owner and entrepreneur and as a human being, what is the power of community like for you?

Blair: Yeah. You know, I struggled to think about a lot of communities that I really do feel like I've been part of this speakers Bureau kind of speakers agency world, I've got a lot of connections within that and that's been really amazing because a lot of us move around and then I continue to see the same faces and people and it's great to feel like, you know, you've got a history, you've got rapport with a lot of different people that are passionate about what you're passionate about and are doing that and I can support you in a different way and so that's been really amazing.

You know, as you change jobs and move other places, the people who reach out and the people who kind of lift you up and encourage you, and been excited about your next venture, and all of that. But also coming out of business school I've taken on the responsibility of leading, our LGBT Alumni group for Anderson, and that's always been a little bit of like kind of my mission is getting involved in boards, getting involved in other nonprofit organizations that serve the community and that help align people with different connections. Even before I was a manager and an agent, I loved helping people just connect to jobs, if I heard about someone hiring, I would be going through my mental rolodex to figure out if there's someone that I thought might be a fit for that. I've helped friends right out of college, get their first job in New York and ultimately set them up for the rest of their careers, and I don't say that to brag, but just because it feels very exciting to me to be the one that can help align people with their creative dreams, with their things like that.

So I think about the different kind of communities that I've come from with my undergrad alumni or now my business school alumni and then different friends and colleagues I've met along the way and always am grateful to hear from previous people who've worked for me, who still want me to be a reference like five, six, seven years later because they know that I'll pick up the call and actually speak kindly about them and encourage them on those next things. So I think all of those different communities along the way have helped me, connect and make connections that have been meaningful to my career but also the joy of giving back and being able to help them as really probably been a lot more gratifying than anything they've ever done for me, because I just have loved playing that role of connector and being someone that hopefully people can come to when they're looking for their next gig or when they're asking for help with something and I think it's just nice to be needed sometimes and to be the one that isn't looking for a quid pro quo from it.

LEARN TO LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE WITH JM RYERSON

Michael: And in that when people are going through that and looking at pain often being this really interesting kind of precursor for action, it is there a way to do that in so that you're not only looking at it, from the aspect of worst-case scenario, but from the positive side of things?

JM: Well, I actually hope that people do, right? I actually try to, you know, yes, fears are real thing, but it's actually pretty much created. So I try to always look at; let's say your goal is to make 10 million dollars, okay, cool, why is that important to Michael? And Michael would say because then I can buy a nicer home, I can provide X or whatever the answers, ok, cool. Now you've at least associated something positive or something meaningful behind making this amount. To answer your question can you absolutely that's probably the biggest thing I do when it comes to mindset. Why do we focus on the negative? So if you believe in the power of attraction, whether that's energy, the Law of Attraction, if you believe that everything you focus on, actually, you are able to manifest, which I truly do believe. Then if you're focusing on negative that will continue to come with you, and when I work with athletes, I see it every single day because when they focus on what they don't want, guess what comes immediately? The thing that they don't want. But when they start to focus on what I really want something positive, something, maybe they don't even think they can obtain, it's amazing how the world just starts to open up for you.

So sometimes I've had people be like, well, that's a little woowoo cool, it could be but guess what, if it works? Do you care? No, okay, cool, are you willing to try? Yep, all right, let's give it a shot. So it's just amazing to me when you put it out there. And that's why I have every client I ever work with, write down their goals, then we verbalize it out to the world and then we're willing to share it because then the Universe, God, energy, whatever you want to believe, and I really don't care what you call it, it starts to provide for you. So that's probably just one small shift that we can all make is focusing on something positive rather than something that probably won't even happen unless you put it out into the world.

Michael: Yeah, you know, it's the old adage where attention goes energy follows. And I've seen it play out in my life so many times where, you know, sometimes I do stuff that's in like where do I look at it? I go, that's insane like I got Grant Cardone to invest, 10,000 dollars into my business like that's insane like nobody does that, people normally giving Grant Cardone their money, you know what I mean? I've spoken on stage in front of 10,000, people have traveled the world, and back again. I'm just a kid from the hood, who was homeless but I made a decision and I put it in the world and I close my eyes, and I visualized it and I put it out there and it's so funny to me when you sit down and you write your goals everyday and I've said this ad nauseam on this show, but hopefully people are really starting to understand it, that when you do that, your energy goes there because it's that the center of your mind, it's where you go. But I think so many times in life people are just so focusing consumed on winning and the result and wanting the end of it they're just like I just want that thing but I don't know that winning is about the result and I know you feel the same. Talk to me about why winning is a mindset and why that matter so much?

JM: Yeah, brother. I mean winning, 100% is all about the process, talk to anybody that's ever succeeded to any level whether it's a business or in sport they will tell you, it is the process. You can listen to Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James they all talk about the process. So to think about okay, for them it's the NBA Championship, that's a big goal, that's a big thing to try and accomplish today. So why would you put your focus and energy on that? What you would break it down to is okay, that might be the end result but what I have to do today is I need to go work out x amount of time, I need to take care of my body, I need to read, I need to work out, whatever it is, and you start to do that every single day, and then you fall in love with the process because getting just a little bit better and you've heard people say, I just want to get one percent better every single day. Just that goal alone just by saying, you know what, I just want to get a little bit better today, what's amazing is, whatever that end result is, it's going to be far more fulfilling if you just follow this process on a daily basis.

So it is that trick that everyone, you mention Grant Cardone again, he is a guy that has pretty audacious goals and he just goes to work, puts his head down goes to work. So it's one of those things man, it's like don't worry about what's down the line and I have a saying that I use with all my clients, passes pain, future is anxiety, present as everything because I can't do anything about the past that doesn't mean all my stuff in the past is negative. It just means that if I'm sitting today thinking about how great it was in the past that's a negative, if I'm sitting there thinking about how great it's going to be in the future when well, guess what? How good is moment present today? So, if you can trick your brain or yourself to every single day, just give 100% today, it starts to just be this domino effect, it's like, oh today was an awesome day, of the next day, is an awesome day and then when you keep just adding it up, it's like holy cow look what you can accomplish, but stop worrying about a year down the line, three months down the line, tomorrow be in the present and enjoy every moment because that is the one certainty I do know. We don't know when our time is up so you may as well get that everything out of every single moment, just like I'm with you right now, I want to give you 100% of my attention and then when I'm done with this, I will go give 100% to whatever my next project is. But right now I'm going to give everything and receive everything back from you and it's going to be amazing.