Episode 224: How Do You Get Struck with Your Own Passion? John Miles Tells All
John Miles is the Founder & CEO of Passion Struck, Podcast Host, Keynote Speaker, Author, and Navy Veteran.
In today’s episode, John joins Erin to talk about the differences between your actual self, ought self, and ideal self; why he felt numb when he was at the height of his career; and what it means to pursue your passion versus a profession.
John shares about his near-death experience, how it shifted his life perspective forever, and how you can start playing big by picking one small element of your life and doubling down on it.
If you want to start letting your passion lead you instead of your stress – this is the episode for you.
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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 224 Transcription
Erin Diehl (00:01.185)
Improve It peeps. Y'all aren't even ready. You're not even ready for today's guest. This is my friend, my confidant. Welcome to the Improve It podcast, John Miles.
John Miles (00:14.07)
Hey, Aaron is so awesome to be here. I've been looking forward to this all week long.
Erin Diehl (00:19.189)
Me too. I was prepping your show yesterday and I was like smiling from ear to ear and I said to myself, John and I are about to have a fun time. So y'all buckle up because this is so fun. So okay, I want to start just because every month we have a general intention or theme for the show and your book, the day that this show airs, will have launched the day before and our theme for the month is radical empathy. So
I would love for us to just take a moment and before we dive into our conversation, set an intention for the show. So what's a one word intention for you that comes to mind when we're talking about Passion Struck, this amazing book that's going into the universe or is in the universe at the time that the show airs and radical empathy, is there a word that comes to mind?
John Miles (01:15.054)
I think a great word for today's discussion is mattering.
Erin Diehl (01:18.917)
Oh, that's a good one. I love that so much, John. I am given the peeps behind the scenes glimpses of just how we've gotten to know each other. I love that you talk about intentionality in the book and you're talking about passion struck as overcoming self doubt and finding your true passion.
but I see the connection with even just setting an intentionality and the themes that come throughout your book. So how would you say intentionality played a role in overcoming your own self-doubt and helping you get to this place as amazing podcast host and new author, keynote speaker, all the things.
John Miles (02:09.774)
Thank you so much for that question, Aaron. I don't think anyone's ever asked it like that. To me, self-doubt was one of the major reasons that I wrote the book. And I'm just going to go back in time. So I graduated from the Naval Academy. And I'm going to use that to fast forward to, I remember the first time I picked up Angela Duckworth's book, Grit.
And in it, she talks about the two major ingredients of grit, which are passion and perseverance. And she launches into her book by discussing how West Point cadets were able to graduate from their plebe summer. And it's since been updated with research that talks about how thousands of cadets have successfully made it through West Point. And they came to that same conclusion that it was just passion and perseverance.
And I don't want to say just because they were absolutely essential ingredients for getting through, but to me, if you were looking at this, as if you were looking at a triangle, they're missing one side and that's intentionality because you can have all the grit that you want in the world, but if you're not applying it to intentional actions that are leading you closer to your aspirations, then you're going to be heading in the wrong direction. And for me, that's what self doubt.
Erin Diehl (03:14.405)
Hmm.
John Miles (03:28.914)
and overcoming it with intentional actions is all about. It's knowing when things that aren't going in the right path and having that intentional awareness to understand that you need to course correct and shift your passion and perseverance in a different direction. That to me is the importance of intentionality.
Erin Diehl (03:49.633)
Mm, so good. So good, I loved the triangle there. Cause it could be two-sided, but adding in that intentionality just gives more purpose to it. I feel like more purpose and passion. It makes it a triangular effect. And I see that in everything that you do, but I wanna ask you this. How do you use intentionality in your day to day? What's something, and I know a lot about you.
but my peeps don't. So how do you use intentionality in your day to day?
John Miles (04:23.878)
And something I've been using for two decades now is an approach to life and to my career that I call the deliberate action process. And the deliberate action process has six steps in it. And when you hear it, you're going to think it's like really simple to think about it at a high level, but actually implementing it is a different thing altogether. And the way I came up with this is I was a consultant at Arthur Anderson and
We had this methodology that we were all trained in called method one, and it was designed to help do large scale ERP implementations, but a lot of my clients were in high growth, mid market space. And so that methodology was way too heavy for him. And so this was before agile even became a thing. I ended up taking this large methodology and I boiled it down into what I saw were six essential things you had to do.
And so the steps that I take are analyze, prioritize, ignite, execute, measure, and renew. And why, why this becomes important to how you're trying to take intentional action is I analyze the future self that I want to become, and this is something that comes out of self discrepancy.
Theory we have our actual self which is who we're living as today We have our ought self which is who we project in our mind We should be because of the burdens and obligations that are hitting us and we have our ideal self which is who we desire to become and So for me, I am constantly trying to look at my actual self versus my ideal self
And then when I'm doing that analysis, I start looking at what are the actions that I need to do in a day, a week, a month to get me closer to that. I then start going through a prioritization of them. So, because you don't want to try to take on too many things, you want to set small achievable intentional actions that can give you that intrinsic motivation to proceed, then you go in. Once you've picked those out, you.
John Miles (06:46.334)
you go into one of the most critical and overlooked steps and that's igniting. Meaning you need that intrinsic motivation to ignite that inner spark within you that you're gonna actually take the actions and execute on them and you have this momentum carrying them forward. You then execute them. And then after that, the thing a lot of people fail to do is they don't measure.
from their actual self to what they've just accomplished and look back and see the gains that they've made. And then you use that again as an intrinsic motivator to take that momentum, renew, and then go through it over again. And I have used this as a daily practice. I use it as a week long sprint. And that's how I have built my life.
And it's also how I've 10 Xed every single position I've ever been in, because I apply the same thing to my, my different career roles.
Erin Diehl (07:46.185)
I mean, you are the epitome of intentionality to me. When I think about just what I know from you, I think about...
Somebody who takes a project, puts intentional time and effort and grows that project, 10Xs that project, before moving on to the next. Just what I see from the outside of what I know of you working together. I think it shows, and I love that you gave us that breakdown, because somebody listening could feel overwhelmed. They could feel like they're in this negative space. They could have self-doubt. They don't know how to get there, and you're giving us a clear picture.
and a step-by-step approach. I wanna go back in time a little bit to John, prior John, who was not passion struck, John, what got you to this epiphany of becoming passion struck? Like, was there a bottom for you? And what was that? And...
How did you know in that moment things needed to shift?
John Miles (08:57.502)
And Aaron, that's a loaded question. I've got a loaded answer.
Erin Diehl (08:58.897)
It is, it is. Isn't it? Lay on the couch. Yeah, I'm your therapist, lay on the couch. No, but I'm, cause this, you, you are intentional with these two words, passion struck, and it's everywhere. It's in your, your podcast, your book, your brand. It's amazing. But if somebody listening here today is not feeling like they have an ounce of passion in them, could you help them get out of that? Could you share a story with them that would share?
how you got to this place.
John Miles (09:33.242)
And I'm going to start this out with one of my favorite quotes. And this is how I actually open up my book in the preface. It's by Henry David Thoreau. And he writes that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. And I was in a state of quiet desperation. And I think so many, I'm not even going to say millions. I'm going to put a B on it. I think billions of people are feeling this because.
They felt what I was experiencing unmattering. I started out this by saying, let's do the intention of mattering. I felt like I was going through the motions and that nothing I was doing brought any significance to the world. And I think a lot of people are faced with this quiet desperation. We end up getting into this career and sometimes it unintentionally happens to us.
because of forces that just carry us in a certain direction. And all of a sudden we look back over, it could be five years if you're at the beginning of your career, it could be two decades. And you realize that you're now in this position in something that's causing you to lack fulfillment. You're spending your days in a monotonous loop of meetings, emails, presentations that do everything to drain you, but they don't inspire you at all.
And so many of us fall into this trap. We get stuck here and that's exactly where I was. And when I look back, I think it was because of something that Tim Kasser calls the high price of materialism and our contemporary culture, we really focus on consumerism and materialism and it affects our everyday happiness and our psychological health. And that's exactly what was happening to me.
I had really positioned my career against the things that extrinsically were called to do, all this constant achievement. I wanted the titles, I wanted the recognition, the awards, the accolades, the money, the possessions, everything that comes with it. But what I didn't realize came with it was unhappiness, depression, low self-esteem, relationship inadequacies. And when I was at the height of my
John Miles (11:57.678)
career at that point, C level position in a fortune 50 company, inside I felt absolutely empty and numb. And so for anyone who's listening to this, I think the thing that they need to understand is you don't come to this state overnight. I mean, what ended up happening to me is I was completely burned out. But I was burned out in many ways because I wasn't pursuing my passion. I was pursuing this portfolio career.
Erin Diehl (12:15.181)
Thank you.
John Miles (12:27.746)
that I had gotten myself into, and I was stuck because of all the burdens that were now infiltrated my life, from my car payments, to my mortgage, to my family needs, to this social clout that I had built up. And the other thing that was happening was I was allowing myself
to be moved by all the distractions around me. And because I was so focused on wearing this mask and living inauthentically, I wasn't doing the introspection and the mindful practices at that point in time to understand that I had this inner voice that was like just begging me to look at my life and to do something different. And so fast forward.
I think once you start hearing that inner voice, it's not as if you hear it and you immediately take action because for me, when I finally started to quiet my mind and started to focus on what this next chapter was supposed to be, the visions and the words that were coming to me were 180 degrees different than where I was in my life. I kept on hearing, John, you're supposed to be helping others. You're supposed to be helping
the helpless, the hopeless, the lonely, the bored, the battered, the beaten, the broken of the world. And I'm sitting here as a senior executive going, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? And how do I make the leap from where I'm at today to even knowing what that means? And so for me, it launched this journey of a few years of discovery. And even with that,
Erin Diehl (14:06.125)
Hmm
John Miles (14:21.214)
Although I was pursuing new things, I had switched from being in a Fortune 50 to try to stabilize my life more, but I pivoted into private equity. So what I found after a couple of years is I was doing the same thing in a different area. And it ultimately culminated for me, 2017. Um, I have always had a lifelong practice of going to the gym pretty much every day. And at this point in time, I was going to Orange Theory.
Erin Diehl (14:36.055)
Yeah.
John Miles (14:50.538)
which was my favorite workout to do. And I went to the gym, I had just dropped my daughter off at school and it just happens this day, they had an electrical fire in their air conditioning system, fire trucks come and obviously we can't do class, so we get sent home. And unbeknownst to me, someone had been canvassing me and had been watching my patterns. And this day just...
it serendipitously decided that they were going to rob my house. And so I end up coming back from the gym early. I was going to pivot to still get a workout in, but I needed to change. And so I start going up the stairs to my bedroom. And as I'm about ready to turn, we have like a 90, 90 degree turn in the stairs.
I start hearing heavy breathing and I realize in that instant that I'm not alone. And as I'm trying to wrap my mind around this kind of my military training carries forth and I position myself so I'm kind of now in a ducking motion as I'm conforming my body around this corner. And luckily so because as I broach the corner, I see this intruder standing there with a gun pointing at me. It turns out it was my own gun.
And I'm left with an instant to make a decision. Either I'm going to charge him and it's charging someone uphill, pointing a gun at you, or I've got to do some maneuver and get the hell out of there. And I, to this day, I'm thankful I chose the second because who knows what the former approach would have resulted in, but I was able to get out. Um, I was injured my way down because I kind of.
haphazardly went down the stairs and got out of the house, was able to alert the police. And so I was faced with that situation and it's as if over the next week and days, I started seeing my life flash before me, but even worse, five, four or five days later, I have to give a keynote in New York city and it's right before the keynote and my phone just starts blowing up and I
John Miles (17:11.906)
keep wanting to just turn it off, but something told me I needed to answer it because so many different friends were calling me and I found out a few days after that my best friend committed suicide. And so I have to tell you, the incident with the gun kind of took a back seat because I was grieving for my friend. But over the upcoming weeks and months, I really just started thinking like, what am I waiting for?
Now people say life isn't short, it's not short, it's finite. And I've been putting this off for so long because of my self doubt, my fears, like why am I allowing that to rule who I am destined to become? And so from that point, I started to really forcefully take actions to change. But yeah, I would say that was the low point coming out of that.
Erin Diehl (18:10.945)
Okay, I said I knew a lot about you. I did not know that story. That is insane. Two questions. Did they find the guy that robbed your house?
John Miles (18:22.178)
They did find the guy and it turns out that at that point in time I was renting and it turns out that it was one of the employees at the rental company and they ended up catching him robbing a bunch of boats in a marina and when they went to his house they found some of the items that he had stolen from my house in actually in his bedroom.
Erin Diehl (18:48.257)
My gosh.
John Miles (18:50.902)
And the crazy thing is that this person was in my house a week before this happened. And as I look back, I wasn't there at the time, but I remember coming home that day. And it was just weird because I had called them up because I was having an issue with, uh, one of my toilets keeping backing up, which was on the bottom floor. And I remember it was interesting because when I got home and maybe I came home while they were there or something.
Um, all the lights were on throughout my house and, um, the, the toilet, uh, upstairs wasn't touched and the one downstairs wasn't touched. It didn't appear, but I think in retrospect, what happened is they used it as an opportunity to go through the house and examine where I had my valuables. Because when they did go in, they knew exactly where they were, which was up in my bedroom.
Erin Diehl (19:45.166)
Wow.
John Miles (19:46.614)
So it just really makes you realize how quickly we can become a victim.
Erin Diehl (19:53.045)
Yes, and I'm gonna metaphor that right into what you did with your life. You were a victim to your own demise in a way. Like you were the person that was limiting yourself from achieving this greatness. I mean, John, you have a top 0.001% podcast and you're a new author and a keynote speaker with Harry Walker. You
walked right into this land where you're supposed to be. And I think people listening today, maybe they weren't robbed, maybe they, I am so sorry about the loss of your friend by the way, but you had these turning pivotal moments. You were literally in a life altering situation. You lost a life of a dear person in your life and you had to make a decision. Am I gonna stay put or am I gonna play big?
and you chose that. And I know you always say you went from passion stuck to passion struck, and look at you now. I mean, this is an incredible story. I wanna ask you this because I don't wanna lose sight of that incredible journey that you just shared with us. Somebody listening today could be going through their own version of that story, and it's definitely not gonna be the same.
But what is one step that you would tell somebody listening who feels self doubt and feels stuck in their own life? What is one action step that they could take?
John Miles (21:35.37)
Yeah, Aaron, it's such a good question. And it's such at times an over complicated thing in our mind. And it becomes really an easy step that we can take. I have this concept that I talk about when I discuss self-doubt and that is we become visionary arsonists to the very aspirations and dreams that we want to accomplish and becoming our ideal self.
And what I mean by that is we allow self doubt, imposter syndrome, fears, uncertainty, all these things get in the way of creating the life that we're destined to live. And when we end up making choices based on those self-limiting beliefs, we're arsoning the very visions that we have for ourselves.
And so the very first thing that I found I had to do was to start taking tiny steps to do things and all it has to be in one area of your life differently. So that you start getting the confidence boost and you start getting the self belief and you start getting rid of the fires that you're constantly lighting all over the place and you start to a stint, just
Erin Diehl (22:57.43)
Okay.
John Miles (22:59.886)
extinguish these things, but it's picking one element of your life that you know you need to fix and doubling down on it. And I'd like to use this analogy. I'm not sure if I've talked to you about it before or not, but I remember when I was at this low point, I went and I hired a career coach who was a psychologist. And after a couple of sessions with me, he kind of sat me down and he said, John,
I want to take you through a visualization and close your eyes. Imagine you're walking into your kitchen and there in front of you is a kitchen stool and now I want you to sit down on it. And he said, now think about what's under that stool. He goes for you, the way that you're living your life right now, you've got one pillar, this thick pillar that's holding it up, but what it's become is the constant grind.
you have let this inauthentic life permeate every aspect of who you are. And he goes, what do you think is, is going to happen? And I said, it's going to topple over and he goes, yes. And when it does, what's going to catch it? And I'm like, nothing. And he goes, now I want you to think about your life and the future self you want to be, and imagine it having multiple pillars. And that really was a light bulb for me. Of how.
I had been living my life so differently than how I could properly approach it. And it's important for a listener to understand that whatever these pillars choose can be your own. For me, I decided to make them the core components that I thought were essential in becoming my future self. So first and foremost, relationship health, physical health, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health. But I knew that in order...
to get to where I wanted to be, I had to get better at self-awareness. So the first step I took was I knew that I needed to build a mindfulness practice. And for me, I have to tell you, Aaron, this was hard to do because I thought this was a bunch of crap. I was such a doubter that any of this stuff even worked. But something we'll talk about in the book is I started...
John Miles (25:18.906)
I had been examining leaders for a while. And one of the things that I found the greatest leaders do is they have mindfulness practices. It's exactly what allowed Mark Benioff as he was leaving Oracle and contemplating what he wanted to do next in life to visualize that he wanted to create this software as a service company and redefine software. But...
understanding how to do that from reading a book and applying it in your life are two different things. And what I found was, I remember buying the 101 guide to how to do mindfulness, and it kind of told me to sit on the floor across my legs and, you know, do the routines to create this environment that you could start practicing it, and it just did not work. But when I look back upon it, it actually was working. But
Erin Diehl (25:49.124)
Mm-hmm.
John Miles (26:13.878)
I wasn't allowing myself to understand that one of the first steps to realizing you need to be having a better mindfulness practice is that you need to realize that getting distracted, getting called out of that practice is one of the first things to perfecting it because the more that you recognize that you are being distracted, that recognition is the opportunity for bringing.
to bring yourself back into your core and to bring yourself back into your introspection. But for me, what really worked the best was creating some type of movement or flow that went along with it. So I found that by going out in nature, especially earlier in the morning, when I could just tune in and focus on what was around me, that allowed me to then start quieting the noise, which allowed me to then...
start really doing this introspection. And then I started to do a daily practice of gratification followed by setting intentions for the day. And so for me, it was getting into that habit formation of creating that routine that ended up helping me to start building in this practice where every single day I would look at what happened to me yesterday, say what I was grateful for, for achieving and then using that as that intrinsic motivation.
along with that deliberate action process I mentioned at the beginning to start taking more and more steps. And what I found is that once I started that mindfulness practice, it started to permeate every other aspect of my life. And then other things started to 10 X. And I think that's what ends up happening is you, you just need one center of gravity and from there you can start rebuilding your foundation and from that foundation, other flowers will sprout. And
Just as burnout, I think takes a long period of time to happen because it happens almost unconsciously, the same thing kind of happens as we're rebuilding our life, you've got to rebuild that foundation, which doesn't happen overnight, but once you do, you end up being a gardener and you start planting more plants along the way.
Erin Diehl (28:30.397)
I like that analogy. Also, John, yes, I know you're a member of the 5 a.m. club. Okay, and I know that mindfulness, listen, this is where woo-mates work on this show. Okay, like I'm as woo-woo as they get. The mindfulness meditation practice changed my life forever. And I know it has the ability to permeate every area of your life, including most importantly, for leaders listening.
It transforms you as a leader and as a business owner or a leader of a team. And I think what's so interesting to me about you is that you have, you've done the other side of it. A lot of people don't talk about what happened before they found mindfulness. A lot of people just talk about mindfulness, but you're here as the case study of somebody who was the complete opposite.
and has rebuilt their entire life around this entire mindset. Because passion struck is a mindset. And it's so cool what you're accomplishing as you're taking it. So let me ask you this. Let's go back. You were talking about visualizing the future version of you, but I wanna like take this back a little bit. This is not a therapy session, but I just found this fascinating as I was thinking about you.
Did you ever think in your childhood that you would become this person who you are now? A top.001 podcast host, an author, a speaker. Did you ever envision this when you were young?
John Miles (30:17.322)
I wouldn't say I ever envisioned quite this. I always envisioned that I wanted to be a leader. And that's something that I aspired to at a very young age. And I tried every opportunity I had, whether it was being a team captain or taking a job and trying to get leadership experience to position myself for that. But...
Erin Diehl (30:24.066)
Yeah.
John Miles (30:40.754)
I didn't think it would result in what it has, but when I look back upon my corporate career, a lot of times people ask me, you're doing all this self-improvement, personal mastery stuff, but you don't have any experience in it. And I'm like, you're absolutely incorrect because everything that you do, if you're a good leader and coach is you're applying all these things to help your team members become
better individuals, better workers, better human beings. And so I've been doing it actually for decades, just under a different lens.
Erin Diehl (31:15.865)
Yup.
I love that. If you could tell younger John Miles one piece of advice, what would you say to that younger version of you?
John Miles (31:29.478)
I would tell them to read this book that I wrote. I mean, because I wrote this for different groups of people, and I can explain that. But I dedicated it to my two kids who are 19 and 25 because I it is really scary, this world that they're going into right now and the amount of change that is going to be hitting them throughout their life. And so much of this change, we can't even comprehend because
Erin Diehl (31:32.14)
YEAH!
John Miles (31:59.286)
the world, let's face it, is changing so much quicker than it was when we were growing up, Aaron. And so what I wanted to do was to give them the playbook on life. Like how do people become the 5% that Robin Sharma talks about or Hal Elrod talks about? You know, how do you become this 5% who create this ideal self that we all desire to become? So that's what these principles that I wrote about are. It's the pathway.
Erin Diehl (32:10.074)
Mm.
John Miles (32:28.258)
to creating this 5% life, passion struck life that so many of us desire to have, but we don't know how to attain.
Erin Diehl (32:36.357)
I love it. I did not know it was dedicated to them. So that is so cool. And I think a playbook for a lot of parents listening as well. Let me ask you this question because this is where this is where I'm excited. I want to take this in. You've done self improvement on so many levels. You have worked on yourself intuitively. You've worked on yourself internally. You've worked on your mindfulness. You've worked on your physical.
But I know one other area that you have been working on when it comes to Mindset, and that is your improv training, John Miles. How have you seen or have you seen the training that you're doing using improv just for the stage spillover into your career?
John Miles (33:31.53)
I think something, so something that I have always felt is that there are so many people that I look at who are so quick at being able to give one-liners or adjust a scenario or be able to come up with that, that remark or that idea just completely on the fly. And to me,
It was something that I never thought I had the gift to do. And so actually when I signed up to start doing improv, man, I was scared to death because you are constantly thrust into that situation where you have to do those things if you're an improver. And so I guess the biggest thing that it's brought me is a lot of self confidence that I am capable of doing it.
And what really surprised me was that I was much better at it than I thought I was going to be, but it really does teach you that you can really turn any situation around into a positive outcome. Um, by just improvising your way through it. And it, it really, and it really teaches you to be quick on your feet. And
Erin Diehl (34:28.206)
Yeah.
Erin Diehl (34:40.621)
Yes and.
John Miles (34:46.346)
Not only that, it helps you to, I have found that one of the things I was trying to do early on was trying to project or imagine what I thought the scene was going to do. And when you do that, you end up screwing up. And it really has focused me on being more present in the moment because what you often, if you're trying to look too far ahead of what you want to do in a scene.
you're not listening to the cues that the person who you're working with is giving you and they're often giving you gifts that allow you to just take something that they've said, whether it's a prop or a character that they've created and then run with it. So it's really made me, I think, more present in the moment and how I'm experiencing life.
Erin Diehl (35:37.089)
Oh my God, I love it. I swear, if everyone took an improv class, I think the world would be a better place. It really is all of those things. And I am so glad it's bringing you the confidence because the reality is we are all improvisers. We're improvising right now. Every conversation, every interaction we have is improvised. But when we put a label on it, we get scared. I was the same way. It was exposure therapy for me. In the beginning, I was an actor and dancer. I was used to a script, used to a choreography. And...
Taking that away was a loss of control. So for a control freak, it's a great lesson, right? It's a really good lesson. Can I play a game with you, an improv game? That's fun. But here's, this is not to scare you, because you already know this. This is called Five Facts, OK? And it's a game that we play in a lot of different scenarios. We use it in our networking workshop. It's usually about five facts about a person that you wouldn't know about them. But I want to hear.
It has a little ditty to it. I'll do the little ditty. I want you to give me off the fly, five, the most five interesting facts about your book, Passionstruck, okay? The most, anything that comes to mind. So I'll do this little cheer. It goes like this, five facts, five facts, five facts, five facts, five facts, and I'm gonna go number one. And you're gonna give me a fact about the book that we might not find on the internet, but you want us to know. And you're gonna give me five of them just off the cuff. Are you ready?
John Miles (37:06.008)
Let's go for it.
Erin Diehl (37:06.933)
You got it, John. Here we go. Five facts, five facts, five facts, five facts, five facts. One.
John Miles (37:13.678)
The book features interviews that I did with two astronauts who I actually know personally, and one of them became the chief astronaut.
Erin Diehl (37:23.577)
Dope as hell, too.
John Miles (37:27.574)
book features a race car driver who took his life from being a naval officer to being on a cruise one day and imagining himself as a race car driver to actually achieving it. And I'll show you how to do it too.
Erin Diehl (37:42.277)
One, two, three.
John Miles (37:45.978)
In the book, I was fortunate enough to have Matt Higgins, who's the author of burn the boats, read a copy of it and come back to me and say, I love your book so much, I want to write the forward.
Erin Diehl (37:58.894)
4
John Miles (38:01.634)
Or I found out something from interviewing one of the astronauts that I never knew about Elon Musk. And it's something that I call the beetle, the bee and the turtle effect that I expose in the book.
Erin Diehl (38:16.644)
Oh must read five.
John Miles (38:20.45)
Five, I found out while I was writing this that learning how to get into the zone of optimal anxiety, which is one of the principles that I talk about, McKenzie did a 10 year study on this and found that those who can perfect it perform 400% better than their peers and they have better work-life balance because they train themselves to accomplish in two hours with the vast majority of us does in eight.
Erin Diehl (38:49.317)
Okay, round of applause, take a fricking bow, John Miles. Heck yeah, heck yeah. Improve it peeps. If those five facts don't make you want to rush to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, wherever, today is February 7th. It launched on February 6th. Go now, run!
Get this book. I want to know the Elon Musk story. So you can tell me that or I will buy, I have bought the book, so I will be getting it on February 6th. I'm gonna open it up and find that one out first. That is so fascinating. What a cool collection of stories. And I'm so glad we did that exercise because that is just fun. Like those just randomly came to you. And how cool of it that improv training helped you feel confident in doing that. You crushed it.
John Miles (39:36.19)
Yeah, now I got about another five. I think it's come to my mind.
Erin Diehl (39:38.481)
Yeah, well, see, and see, and that's the thing. It's like when you get, when I first said this to you, I could see the tension. You're like, why, Erin, why? But then you just crushed it and you got five more ready to go. So I love that. I love that you're exploring all different types of learning in your life. Let me ask you this. I want to end the show because I always ask people this and I'm very curious of your answer.
We always say that you're it, improve it. That it is the thing that you bring to the world. It's why you're here. It's John Miles' assignment. What is your it?
John Miles (40:20.706)
And it's a big one. So when you think about what I started this whole episode about that. Mattering or the sense of unmattering is a huge colossal issue. What I was dumbfounded about was I interview behavior scientists, some of the top ones that you could possibly imagine.
And I started to do some research on like what has been studied on the science of mattering and I started, I asked Adam Grant, I'm not aware of anything. Katie Milchman. I'm not aware of anything. Max Bazerman. I'm not aware of anything. Hal Hirschfeld. I'm not aware of anything. I finally talked to Ethan Cross and he said, well, look at something called self-determination theory that Richard Ryan created.
And it kind of talks about the three components of self-determination theory, but it didn't really go into the whole idea of mattering. And then I finally was interviewing this guy, Thomas Curran, who did a book about imposter syndrome and perfectionism. And I said, hey, he's a professor in England. And I said, do you know anyone worldwide who's doing this? He goes, there is only one person I know of, and that's Gordon Fletch.
So he teaches at this University of York up in Canada. And I was just dumbfounded that on something that is as important as mattering, that so few information is none about it. And so if you asked me, what do I hope to accomplish by all of this? I started this off by that quote by Henry David Thoreau. I'll give you another one, which is another one of my favorites by Mark Twain.
20 years from now, you'll be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the things you did do. And if you want to see how this plays out in real life, according to research that was done in 2018 by Cornell University, they interviewed thousands of people who were nearing the end of their life and asked them, what is the biggest regret that you ever went through? And this really
John Miles (42:39.946)
aligned very closely with Bonnie Ware's work. If you're not familiar with her, she does a lot of palliative care. And 76% of the recipients came back with the same answer, their regret about not living their ideal self. So you look at Mark Twain's quote, you look at Henry David Thoreau's quote, and what it shows is so many of us are living in this quiet desperation because
We have this regret of an unlived life. And so what I hope to do with Passionstruck and the community and everything else is to teach people how do you live a lived life? How do you become your ideal self? How do you move in constant pursuit of self-realization?
Erin Diehl (43:25.316)
Mmm.
That was amazing. That is like the most thoughtful, thought through, research backs answer to that question I have ever received. And I love it. And I can, it's everywhere. It's everything you do. I want our people to follow your show, follow you, do all the things, buy the book, tell them where they can get more of John Miles and become passion struck.
John Miles (43:53.058)
So Aaron, a few years ago, and I will tell you, one piece of advice I have for every listener is start doing personal branding right now. I don't care where you're at. It is so important. Just think about being a realtor and a client wanting to know more about you. If you don't have something out there that represents how you wanna be perceived, you are setting yourself up for not being as good as another person who you might be competing against. Same thing about going on job interviews. So...
Erin Diehl (44:00.537)
Yeah.
John Miles (44:22.442)
When I started this whole thing, I fell under that old regime where we were kind of told by our employers not to create personal brands because they wanted us. And the company to have the same brand. So I bring this all up because you can find me anywhere now, but the easiest place to do it is, is johnrmiles.com. John R. Miles on any of the social platforms. And if you want to learn more about what we're doing with passion struck and
I'm excited to talk about this. We've actually started a 50 week challenge of different micro challenges that we're asking people to do all throughout 2024. That I've curated to make the challenge hard enough that it's you're stepping out of your comfort zone, but not hard enough that.
You feel like there's no way in heck I can pursue this. So I started out the year with giving an assignment of the challenge of creating a journal and journaling through gratification, three areas of gratification every day. Last week I moved it to.
the concept of Sisu, which comes out of Finland, which is how to create more resilience in your life. This week it was about how do you optimize anxiety and throughout the whole rest of the year we'll have a challenge every week, which I'm trying to do to help the community realize that they can step out of their comfort zones and you can sign up for that by signing up for my newsletter on passionstruck.com.
Erin Diehl (45:59.429)
We will link all the things to John Miles and the show notes. I am so thrilled to share you with our community. It is an honor to know you. You matter. I'm so grateful that you're putting this topic out into the world. And I'm so grateful that you were on this show. I am passion struck, okay? I am not stuck after this. And I hope everybody listening is passion struck.
John Miles (46:26.174)
Well, Aaron, I see you too. And I love your book as well. And I think, I think you nailed that cover. I absolutely love it. And I've been loving the videos that you're doing leading up to it. So nicely done.
Erin Diehl (46:29.726)
Ha ha!
Erin Diehl (46:39.477)
I received that. I see you, John. I see you.
Okay.