Episode 113 – Jeff Goins: This Is Your Life Story

DN113 – Jeff Goins Recording

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] What’s up Dream Nation. We are back again with another episode that I’m sure will spark some ideas into your mind and hopefully spark some conviction and to your heart today on the show, we have the wonderful, the amazing artist Mr. Jeff Goins. Jeff, want to go ahead and say what’s up to Dream Nation.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Hey, Casanova. Good to be here. Thanks for having me

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Man. It’s a pleasure to have you on now for many people who don’t know you, you have been now featured in many publications, you’ve wrote at least five books. Is that right?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yep.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Five books. Wow. So I always like to make sure that I could give the proper introduction.

So everybody knows who exactly that they’re listening to and getting inspired by and always like to think of us as entrepreneurs and also artists as superheroes. And the reason why is because we’re constantly putting on a cape and we’re trying to solve problems in the world, whether that be our own or other people’s.

So before you became a bestselling author, before you became a world renowned speaker, let’s take it back to when you were just a young boy and tell me, who is Jeff Goins?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] I thought you were going to ask me what my favorite superhero was. So I was bracing for that answers. Spiderman!. yeah. You know, I’m somebody who’s always made things, although I never would have thought of myself as an artist or even as a, as a writer.

I was talking to my kid who’s eight now. The other day. And I said, buddy, this was maybe a couple of years ago. He was six. I said to him something, I said, you’re so creative. Cause he’s always drawing something. He makes his own comic books and sells them. he’s a bit of an entrepreneur too. And I said, you’re so creative.

He was six. He goes, what does that mean? So, you know, like you just like make things and draw pictures and make up songs and create things. And he was like, Oh, I thought everybody did that. And I can relate to that so much because you know what it was, Picasso’s said we’re all born artists. And so as a kid, you know, I was the shy, you know, red haired boy who was never very popular. Cool.

I didn’t play sports. always had lots of feelings that I didn’t feel like I could really express. And so I would make things I would put on little. Plays for my parents, you know, with stuffed animals, I would write songs. I would, draw Garfield comics and share them with my friend. I would draw Garfield.

He would draw Odie and we would, you know, make these little comic strips together. And, I think my whole life, this is true today. I’ve always wanted to make things and then share them with people and the way that that’s taken shape through the work that I’ve done, whether that was as a marketing director at a nonprofit, as a professional musician, as an actor or as an author today, or even an online entrepreneur, Those are all just kind of variations of the same kind of work, which is I use my creativity to make things and then share them in a way that hopefully transforms other people.Finding your calling

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] When was the moment that you knew, cause we all have this passion that we want to be able to make this world a better place, right? Whether it’s online or offline. And you said, and a lot of people struggle with that. Whether it’s building relationships or whatever, it might be just expressing themselves and expressing what their passion and their creativity is.

Was there one defining moment where you made a piece of art, whether it be, you know, whatever it was that someone else gave you a response that either fueled you to do it even more or let’s use that, that would do it even more.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yeah, there’s been a bunch of moments like that, as I imagine, you know, there has been in your life.

I think that every story of success is really a story of community. So in America, we love this idea of the self made man or the self-made woman. And I love that. I love the, the self-reliance the ambitious determined I’m going to do this. And I think that drives a lot of us to succeed. I also think it would be dishonest of me to not point out all the people.

That helps me connect the dots and encouraged me when I was discouraged and gave me a piece of advice or an opportunity or opened the door. and if that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here today. And so there’s all these moments that when I look back, I go, Oh, that makes a lot of sense. And I like what Parker Palmer says about this , who’s a, he’s a Quaker activist author. He says that “before I can tell my life what I want to do with it. I need to listen to my life telling me who I am “and what that means to me is I need to pay attention to all the moments, all the people, all the voices in my life that were helping guide me.

To where I needed to end up. And, so one of the first voices was a woman named Mrs. Coons, who is my senior high school English teacher. I, my senior, a high school English teacher. And she was notorious for being hard on students. Like if you got straight A’s or whole life, and you got into her class, you were getting a B minus, right?

Like she, she ruined her GVA. Right. And, and I was, I always just coasted through English classes. My mom used to read me the dictionary. which I thought was like a totally normal thing. You know, like spell this word. Spelling was very important to her. When I was in sixth grade, I won the school spelling bee.

The winning word was acquiescence. I made an eighth grader cry, which was the only time that ever happened. I was this little short pudgy kid and I was like, I made an eighth grader cry. I felt pretty good about that. So like, English was easy for me and I get into her class and it’s hard. Hmm. And I actually have to work at it.

Like I just, it was the first time where it wasn’t an easy A, I mean, I had to work at other classes, but like English was always easy. And, so she assigns this assignment that ends up being like a third of our grade. And it’s one assignment. And if you, if you don’t do this assignment, like you’re kind of, you’re screwed, you know?

So, you had to read a book. And then do like, I don’t know, like an annotated bibliography where basically you had to research all of these books that were about this book and it was a bunch of work that I didn’t want to do. so I, right, yeah. Pull an all nighter. I don’t read the book. I write this 15 page 20 page paper, which in high school was a big deal.

And then I turn it in and and then everybody gets the papers back a few weeks later. This is the last week of school I can, if you don’t. Pass this class you’re not graduating. And, and on all these, you know, everybody gets her papers back and I get my paper back and everybody’s like flipping to the back to look at the grade and they’re getting C’s and D’s and B minuses, and nobody gets an a, and I’m like really nervous.

and, And I flipped to the back and there’s the whole thing is marked up with red, you know, all these red underlines and cross. And like, she does not like this, like all kinds of corrections being made and I flipped to the back and it says, “Next time try reading the book. However, there’s lots of good writing here.

There’s good thinking. you should seriously consider being a professional writer or a journalist, A-“. And I was like, Oh, phew. It was like a 92 or something. And, You know, like that was significant to me, but I ended up like putting that paper away. And a year later when I was in college, I was like having one of those existential crises, like what do I do with my life kind of thing.

I have to figure everything out. And I remember opening the glove compartment to my car and that paper was still in there and I pulled it out and, I, I re read it, you know, and I cried and, I. Like I felt seen in that moment and I understood it. It would be years later be a decade later before I ever became a professional writer.

but those words stuck with me. Cause I realized I had a gift. I had a skill that not everybody had. I could write a paper without reading a book and still get an a on it. and. And that really helped even today. Like, I, I understand that. what is Derek sivers say “what’s obvious to me is amazing to others”.

And I try to not take that for granted. Like if you see something in the world differently, from the way other people see it and you notice that nobody else sees that, like that’s significant. And writing, words, communication language, saying things with beautiful words to create change in people. That’s always been something that I’ve been able to do.

And I don’t know that I ever would have known it. Were it not for those words that she wrote on that paper?

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Wow. And that’s man, there’s so much to unpack there. And the first thing is, you know, when you talk about someone’s searching for their gift, right? And it’s what comes easy for you. This is something that I always say what comes easy for you and harder for others.

And that’s the same thing that you just said, which I think is very significant. The thing that. Struck me out as I saw a video that you did, and this was maybe about two or three years ago. And basically you were saying that, you know, you were at a seminar and someone had asked like how many people here have a dream or know their dream and to not butcher it.

Want to go ahead and tell this story again?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yeah, this is a story that I tell in a book called The Art Of Work, which might align well with your audience. Just a book about finding your dream, your purpose, your calling. And, so, so that happens with my English teacher. This is my story, right? It happens with my English teacher.

I go to college, I majored in Spanish, not English. I still didn’t get the message. You know, a dream, I think sometimes is something that you run away from long enough that you get so tired, it catches up to you and kind of tackles you to the ground and you go. Okay, fine. I’ll do this. This’ll be my life’s work.

Like that’s how I experienced.

Do you think your dream and your calling are the same thing?

I think we use a lot of words to often talk about the same thing. and so I’m not so concerned with whether you use the term dream, passion, life’s work, calling. What I think is true is most human beings that I talk to feel like they’re here to do something.

And I believe that you will spend your life unraveling that. And making meaning and understanding it. And it’s not a job. It’s not a role it’s not just to exist or survive. We’re all here to do something, something significant. So whatever word you want to use is fine. And, and I think, you know, a dream is slightly different from a calling, from a purpose.

But at the end of the day, like when I say those words and something kind of Wells up in you. Like listen to that. Good things come from that place where you go. Yes. I got to do something that makes a difference that serves the world. That lights me up that brings joy and meaning. In life to other people and I’m, and I’m spending my whole life trying to figure out what that is by listening and paying attention to the things that happen in my life.

So I got to college, I major in Spanish. I graduate college. I ended up joining a band. So I have all these like weird, random things. Right. I tour the country with a rock band for a year, spend a month in Taiwan. We were huge in Taiwan as a whole other fun experience. And I always thought I wanted to play professional music and I do this for a year and I realized.

You know, that’s not, that’s not really the thing. I ended up moving to Nash. I quit the band. I moved to Nashville, which is the opposite order that those things tend to happen. And, I get a job working at a nonprofit. I become the marketing director there, working with an international relief and development organization, a missions organization.

And, and then while I’m there, I, am learning about writing, online marketing, et cetera. And I do this job for about five or six years, and I start to feel an itch and internal itch that I can’t quite scratch. There’s a sense of like, there’s more. I have a good job. I’m doing something meaningful and there’s more and I feel guilty about it.

So I start reading books. I start searching for the way to scratch this itch. And I go to a seminar. I go to a workshop about finding your dream. And it’s like literally a weekend conference with a couple of hundred people here in Nashville about like how to chase your dream, how to take your big idea and turn it into a business.

And I’m really nervous cause I have a job. My boss has paid for me to go to this sort of as research, but I kind of also using it for myself and. Yeah, it’s just like, I’m feeling guilty. And everybody seems to have like a calling a purpose, a dream, and they’ll have these name tags, like, hi, my name is Soandso and my dream is such and such, and I didn’t have a dream.

And so I like made something up, like I’m a storytelling Sherpa. I was just like wanting to say something so vague that like, people wouldn’t know how, like they wouldn’t ask me any questions about it. And there was a point in the seminar right at the beginning where they said, Hey, who here doesn’t know what their dream is.

Raise your hand. And I was very nervous to use. Cause I felt like the black sheep. And then I started seeing hands pop up in the crowd and about 60% of the people in the room, they raised their hands saying they didn’t have a dream. And so I kind of hesitantly raised my hand. I was like, Oh, you know, I’m not alone.

And then he said, great. Now put your hands down. You’re all lying. You’re lying. He said, you do know what your dream is. You’re just afraid to admit it. And I want you to write down whatever the first word that comes to mind is right now, write down your dream. Whatever comes to mind. Don’t judge it. Don’t think about it.

Don’t sensor it, just write it down. And I immediately wrote down writer. And I began sharing that with other people. Cause it felt like, wow, I know what my dream is, friends. And, and they’re all like, are you kidding me? We’ve been telling you that for years, you know, and you had to go to a seminar, to, you know, learn this.

And and I realized while sometimes people in your community, sometimes people who love you. Know things about you really before, not before you know them, but before you’re willing to admit them to yourself. And that was the first time I realized, Oh, I really want to be a writer. And I wanted to do this for a long, long time.

Finding your calling

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Wow. And I loved that story when I heard it, because it did make me think about today and where we are in the world right now. There’s a lot of people that are almost have a little bit more freedom to go after whatever said dream is.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yep.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] I guess I’ll ask it to you.

Is everyone a dreamer?

Do you feel like that there’s still 60% of the world out there that know what their dream is, but they’re afraid to really go after it.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] I don’t know how we would measure that. I think a better way to think about that is there was a Gallup poll several years ago where they surveyed the world’s workers. And I mean, it was a very extensive survey that happened over the course of several years.

And, they basically people up into a different, several groups of people and it was engaged, actively engaged in their work, engaged, disengaged or actively disengaged. And they were talking about happiness. They’re talking about flow, focus, engagement, and, you know, we work for ourselves, right.

So we understand what it’s like. To be motivated to get it done. And there are days where it’s like, I’ll go for a walk. I’m going to get out. I’m going to talk to me. I’m gonna call some old friends. I

don’t know if you do this guys.

I do this. I’m like today, I wasn’t super engaged in the work.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] No, we all have those days.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] But for the most part, like I’m pretty engaged in what I do cause I I’m my own boss. And I like on the days when I’m not, I’m like, man, you are a bad boss to yourself today. You got to give yourself more work to do. but here’s what they found in this study. Was that when you combined the, disengage means just punching a clock, you know, working in a cubicle, working for the weekend kind of thing, actively disengaged means like you’re throwing wrenches in the system.

You’re not, you’re just not there and you’re on your way to getting fired or quit or whatever. And they found that those two groups of people. It disengaged and actively disengaged made up 87% of the people that took the survey. 87% of the world’s workers based on this study are either disengaged or actively disengaged with their work.

Not almost nine out of 10. People have ever gone to a retail establishment and you go, Hey, how’s your day going? And they go pretty bad. You know, my boss did this and I’m like.

Well, I don’t, I don’t want honesty. Tell me good! This is depressing me. You know, I thought I wanted the truth and it’s like, ah, I don’t want to be in a world.

I don’t want to live in a world like that. I’m not even, so I would love for every, to be happy with their jobs, but can we just start with like engaged? Like you wake up in the morning and you go, I’ve engaged in the work that I’m doing, the person fixing my car, giving me my, you know, checking out my groceries, growing my food, whatever it is, like, the things that I rely on other people to do.

Like that’s their job. I would love for them to be like at just a baseline engaged. And that’s not the baseline for most people. Disengaged is the baseline for most people. So do most people have a dream maybe, but it does seem clear that most people are dissatisfied with where they are vocationally in the world, in their life right now.

And I have a friend, a guy named Ben Arment who says that “a dream begins with frustration”. Hmm. And I think that’s, that’s interesting. I think there’s some truth to that before, you know what you want to do. There’s a sense that what you’re doing right now is not enough that there’s more, there’s angst. There’s gotta be more.

I love that because that’s like every story. I love stories. That’s every hero’s journey, Luke, Skywalker’s going. There’s gotta be more. Right. You know, some, you know, rags to riches story, some kid growing up in the slums or the project is going, not this, there’s gotta be more for my life than this.

Right. And so it’s okay to begin a dream with going, I want more and I don’t know what it is, but it’s not this. And I do think most people feel that

Is everyone a dreamer?

Positive confirmation bias

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] How do people change their baseline? Like, what does that look? Because you said it’s disengaged, right? But the baseline should be engaged. So for someone right now that is disengaged, no, listen at this and they are going to a retailer, big box retailer, and they’re back at work.

And now, you know, they didn’t figure out their plan over these last eight weeks while we’ve been in a pandemic and everything has been shut down or depending on when they’re listening at this, how do they change that baseline?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] I have a friend who says that “the story of your life, the story of your life is not your life. It’s just a story” .

So for example, Casanova, can you tell me a story? You just told me a story before we started rolling. Can you tell me a story about your life? I go, your life is a tragedy. You have to tell me your story. Only using things that would make it a tragedy, a sad story. Can you do that? Yeah.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Yeah,

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] And I go, your life is a triumph, right? Your life is a heroic story. Can you tell me all the events in your life that make your story a heroic story?

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Yeah.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] So when we look at our own lives, the question is, what story do you want to tell and how do you change your baseline? You have to understand that if, if you’re living a tragedy right now, and lots of people are, and I totally get that.

You continuing to tell yourself, this is a tragedy keeps you in that loop of whatever it is of like unhappy relationships, poverty, whatever. And so you have to just begin by understanding like, I’m reliving the same story. And if at any moment I could believe in something better than my current circumstance.

I could change now, how do we do that one? We just have to acknowledge that we’re telling ourselves a story and it doesn’t work as simply change. Right? Like we could just tell everybody’s living in poverty right now. Just not telling yourself, you know, I’m going to be poor for the rest of my life. Right?

Like that doesn’t really work. That’s hard, but they don’t believe it. So what you have to do. As you have to begin to see another reality as possible. You have to be inspired by someone who looks like you acts like you comes from a similar background or somebody who you can sort of see yourself in. You can see your story in their story.

That gives you hope. Right. Right. That gives you hope you go, Oh, he did it. I think I’m maybe a little bit smarter than this guy, or like she did it, like she could do it, I can do it. Right. And so we have more control over that. And then we realize this is called positive confirmation bias. Right? Like you and I both know people who stay stuck in the same patterns and we like, I do this do say, you know, whether it’s like.

Health money, opportunity, relationships, whatever. Like, I can’t get a date. She, you know, can’t get somebody to like me. I can’t make more than this much money, whatever I can only, I can’t lose this weight, whatever it is. And, and we often find information that confirms the thing that we already want to be true.

Hmm. Right. So that’s how you stay stuck in this pattern. You know, you go, well, I work with a lot of creative people and they go, you know, I’m always going to be a starving artist. You can’t make money doing that. I should really can’t make money doing that. You want me to live? It doesn’t matter what it is.

I can fashion, photography, writing music, acting. You don’t have to be Taylor Swift anymore to make a living as a musician. I live in a city full of these people, but half of the musicians in Nashville go, I’m just going to be a starving artist and they are. Right, whatever story you tell about your life ends up becoming true.

And then there’s plenty of people that are, that I call thriving artists that are making a living off of their art because they saw somebody else do something that they now saw as possible for themselves. And they got hope they’re inspired. And then they started searching for more stories like that.

And as you do that, you kind of like build up a body of evidence. Where you go, I can do this. That’s what I did with writing, where I was like, Oh, you don’t have, you can do this for a living. I kept meeting people that weren’t at work like Stephen King, you know, meeting everyday people, people that I could relate to that, We’re doing it.

And so how you begin to change sort of your base state is one. You have to realize that where you are right now as a result of a story, and it was probably a story that your parents told you and their parents told them. And you now tell yourself, and in order to break out of this story, you’ve got to tell yourself a new story.

And in order to do that, You have to surround yourself with other stories. You have to listen to podcasts like this. You have to see that something’s possible. And it’s okay to sort of put blinders on and consume a lot of positivity, especially right now when you’re so used to talking yourself out of succeeding, spend that energy talking yourself into it.

It’s possible.

Positive confirmation bias

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Man that’s right there. That’s, that’s the whole podcast. That’s awesome. What needs to hear? That’s an amazing clip. And it’s just, we tell ourselves these negative connotations all the time, just like you said, and after a while, just like they, they, the saying goes, if you tell yourself a lie enough, you’ll start to believe that it’s the truth.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yup.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Right. And so if you flip that around and you start to tell yourself that dream, that inspiration enough, you’ll start to believe that it’s the truth and you’ll really have conviction in it. And it’s kind of like the saying of a, or not a saying, but the story of Jim Carrey. And I’m sure you’ve heard that where he said he wrote himself like the $10 million check or $1 million check.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] 10 million. Yeah.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Yeah, $10 million check and then, you know, it became possible. And I think we oftentimes look at stories for inspiration, but we never look at our own stories for inspiration, because if we often just look at how far we’ve already come, regardless of what age you are, this is not your first tragedy that you’ve had to experience in life.

Right. Right. This is not the first person that’s ever dumped you or whatever, but yet we always diminished the value of our own inspiration. And we look at other people’s, which I think helps us to stay, you know, stay stuck in whatever that, you know, poverty mindset is.

Yeah. Consider I’ve actually never thought about this before.

The loudest voice in your life is your own

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] I think it’s fascinating. The loudest voice in your life is your own. Hmm. Nobody is talking to me more than me. Nobody is talking to you more than you. Are you crazy? Like me? And you always have some sort of narrator narrating your life. And he said this and dah, dah, dah, and I have sweaty armpits now. And so it’s like, you get.

A choice a little bit. Like there’s crazy things that go on my head, self doubt, all kinds of things. I don’t like that. But you know, like there’s a conversation happening in my head. And the question is like, you have some choice, you have some control over that conversation. I think we, I think anybody listening to this podcast probably understands that you don’t that putting yourself around a bunch of negative voices is, is not good for your success.

Right. Right. So have you ever paid attention to the voice inside your head? Have you ever spent some time going. What why, why is he saying all these negative things? Do I have to listen to that? That’s a really interesting, one of the ways to break out of limiting mindsets is to realize to understand that you don’t have to listen to every thought that enters your mind.

You don’t have to. All kinds of crazy things come from conditioning and something your grandma said, or your teacher said, or whatever, hold onto the good listen to the good things. And, and you’ll start to practice this process. This is what it means to like, think positively. It doesn’t mean that you force yourself to think about stuff that you don’t believe.

It means the things that are true, that are rattling around in your head, that excite you. That other people are saying that you’re saying to yourself, you believe you choose to believe and hold onto. And the things that aren’t true. And sometimes you’ve got to like, Hey man, I, this thing I’m thinking, this thing is this true.

I remember saying this to a friend one time. I said, I’m afraid that I’m bad at relationships. You know, I’m afraid that I’m afraid of I’m going to hurt people. He said, do you_, I go, do I want, he goes, do you hurt people? Are you bad at relationships? I said, I don’t think so, but I’m afraid of it. He goes, do you do it?

Is that true of you? I said, no. He said, then don’t do it. Don’t hurt people. Don’t be bad at relationships. And he was like, calling me out. He’s like, you know, don’t be a victim. Like this is your life. Is that true of you? No. Then don’t believe it. I was like, Oh, okay. I’m dwelling on this thought. That’s actually not true.

I don’t have to hold onto it. And just being aware of the fact that this radio station is playing in your head and you get to like tune in or tune out.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Got it, man. That’s, that’s amazing. I mean, I think that, that’s the exact thing that we never think about is the loudest voice in our head is often the one that’s talking to us all the time, which is ourselves and you don’t have to all what you can suppress those thoughts.

Right.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] And sometimes you can train them to be more positive. Yeah.

The loudest voice in your life is your own

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] For a lot of people right now, they are in a world where they want to become an artist. Right. They feel like let’s, let’s dig into a specific situation. There’s a lot of people that have a story. They want to tell their story, but yet they’re afraid that their story is not impactful enough.

Right. And I’ve talked to even my wife about this, the things that she’s had to overcome. Right. And the impact that she’s had, not only on me, but that she can have on many, a women, but people are just so fearful of telling their stories that it’s not enough. You often encounter that. And how, what do you say to people?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yes. I do encounter that and

How to tell your life storyI have something more to say, than “your story is good. Go tell it”. Because if that were true, it would work and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for you to just run around telling your story. lots of people try to do that and it doesn’t lead to a movement or a message that spreads and the reason for that.

and I do believe that everybody has a story to share an idea to spread, very important. But the reason for that is we don’t pay attention to people because their ideas are good or true. We don’t pay attention to people because their ideas are good or true. Do I have to let you know that every story that spreads on the internet is not true?

Are you aware of the fact that some of the things that the media talks about are not completely accurate and yet we’re talking about them? So, what does it take to spread a story? We don’t pay attention to ideas because they’re true. Or even because they’re good, we pay attention to ideas because they’re interesting.

And what it means to have an interesting idea is an idea that attacks, whatever people take for granted. and that means that it has to be surprising and has to be counterintuitive

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Do you have an example?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Lots of examples. So, there’s a researcher researcher by the name of Murray S Davis who wrote a paper in 1971 about sociology.

It was called “that’s interesting”. And in that paper, he identifies 12 different phenomenon about, what it takes to have an interesting idea. Right. and an interesting idea is anything where you think it’s one way. And it’s actually another way. So every great religion, every political leader who won an election, every great movement, every bestselling book, every slogan that caught in is usually following this framework.

Everybody thinks X, but what’s actually true is Y. Right. So the civil rights movement in many ways was this Martin Luther King jr. Utilizing, there are lots of people talking about it. He was one of the most effective people in America, to, you know, arguably the most effective person, to champion that cause.

And he used, nonviolent resistance. Right, right. That was, I mean, he and Malcolm X had disagreed about this. There were lots of, you know, lots of other organizations that were trying to create similar change. He was the most effective at it. He learned this from Gandhi who employed the same thing and brought the British empire to their knees.

And it was, it was surprising. It worked because it was surprising. What do you do when somebody wants to beat you up? You hit them back. Right. They didn’t do that, but they didn’t completely lie down either. And so it was a nuanced way of attacking what people took for granted and it worked, Jesus launched arguably one of the most successful religions of all time.

Everybody thinks this here’s, what’s actually true. You have heard eye for an eye tooth for a tooth. Now I tell you, forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek, these ideas catch on because they’re interesting. Not because they’re true political leaders, you know, same kind of deal make America great. Again, is it true?

I don’t know,

I’ll say,

you know what I’m saying? But what does it do? It here’s what it does. It says there was a time when things were better than we’ll bring that time. Back old is new and you see this all the time. Stoicism is that there’s a big movement towards stoicism today. My friend Ryan holiday is championing it.

Why do we automatically believe that a 2000 year old philosophy has any bearing on our life today? It doesn’t actually make sense when you break it down, but human beings naturally believe that something that’s very old has authority. Hmm. When, when archeologists discovered the dead sea scrolls, in the Christian community, everybody thought that was great.

Cause now we have these old documents that prove these things are true, which is they’re just old, right? It doesn’t mean it’s not true. And it doesn’t mean it is true, but when old is new, new is old, good is bad. Bad is good. Ketogenic diet great example. You can show me all the science about keto. Right.

And I go, Oh, that makes sense. Why that diet works and it caught on, that’s not why the diet caught on the diet caught on cause a generation of people like you and me who grew up being told you can’t eat butter. You’ve got to eat. Margarine. Fat is bad for you. Everything. I was born in the eighties, everything in the eighties and nineties in our house was low fat.

Right. and now they tell you eat butter and bacon and you’ll lose weight. Something that I thought was bad growing up. They now told me was good. That’s an interesting idea. So if you have a story to tell, tell your story, it’s a good story. I’m sure it’s wonderful, but you have to make it interesting in the way to make it interesting is to pick something that your audience, not everybody in the world, but your audience takes for granted and change it up.

Take something that they expect and, and, and take a left turn. Every Malcolm Gladwell book is this way that if you’re familiar with his writing, the tipping point, right, is about how little things create big change, little big there’s contrast there. he wrote a book called David and Goliath about why strength can be a weakness and weakness can be a strength.

It’s not that these ideas are true. It’s that They’re interesting. Now you can get a lot in a lot of trouble spreading a bunch of lies that are, that are interesting. They’ll spread for a little while and then they’ll die down. But with your story, your story is true. Cause it happened. Don’t think that just because you have a story to tell people will listen.

There has to be some things surprising about it and I don’t make it up, but search for the thing where people think, well, you know, I, you know, most people think this about, you know, about, about me in my story or somebody like me. And so I’ve got to do a man woman, a person of color, like what is something that my audience would assume is true about me?

And then how do I surprise them with the story?

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Man. I love that. And that is so that’s so key and I love the way you just explained and everything. There were so many books that was running through my mind. And coincidentally, one of the first month was the outlier by Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours. And it created that.

The other one that comes to my mind is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You know, I am a huge Robert and he talked about, you know, go to school, get a good job. And that was what everyone thought. Now he’s doing the same thing with, you know, Who Stole my pension, because there’s so many people right now with like the baby boomers that they’re thinking, they got to go to work for someone for 20, some odd years, you get a pension, but it’s like, no, that’s not going to lead you to the promised land.

So the way that you broke that down with super beautiful. And, and I am a big fan of, stoicism and Ryan holiday and, and talking about that different world of marketing. But I think so many people, they, they are fearful of that because they don’t want to feel inauthentic.

Right.

And they don’t know how far to stretch it to where you were.

You said like, are you embellishing or are you completely creating a facade?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yeah. Well, understand that stories are the way that we make meaning out of experiences. Hmm. A story is not true. It is, it is a retelling of an event. We know this is true because when you and I finished this interview, I will say, it went like this and you say, it went like this, duh.

And our stories probably won’t completely match up because I was experiencing it here in this body and you’re experiencing it there in that body. And we’ll remember different things. Wow. Right. And we’ll watch the recording and it still won’t feel like what it felt like in that moment. Right. Right. So understand that, you may not be embellishing, but you may choose to highlight certain parts of the story, for the sake of brevity, for the sake of the audience.

And the point of telling a story is not to recount what happened. This is very important. The point of the story is not to recount what happened. The point of a story is to communicate the meaning that that story has to you, to your audience. Wow. Because your story is for you. And if you wanna write a book, start a YouTube channel sort of podcast and share your story with the world.

That’s wonderful, but there’s a difference between a book and a journal. I write things in my journal for me to make meaning out of my own experience and understand that better. And I put those stories in a book not to lie or be inauthentic or disingenuous. But to connect those experiences with somebody else’s experience.

So when you told me your story, you didn’t tell me your whole life. You didn’t tell me who your third grade best friend was. Right. Or, you know, this thing that your grandma said to you when you were 13 or whatever, like those things are a part of your story, too. You curated certain events that you thought would be significant to me for the context of, you know, we’re gonna do a podcast together.

And that’s great. That’s what a storyteller does. Stories are knows his or her audience, and then communicates the story in a truthful, but also interesting way. I have a friend who says you don’t have to tell your whole story to everyone. You have to do that. Like once or twice say you went through a trauma or something, you know, just something that you feel like has to be told you do that for yourself a few times, maybe even publicly.

And it’s very cathartic. And then you realize there are pieces of my story that I can communicate. In different ways to different groups of people, to help them. It’s about them. It’s about the audience. When you tell your story to the world, it’s no longer about you, your story doesn’t belong to me anymore.

It is something that you’re sharing. It’s a story. It’s not your life. The story of your life is not your life. So do you lie? No. Do you embellish? No, but you may choose to highlight or focus on certain areas, right? because again, a really good story goes, you think you’re going here and then some surprise happens.

Always. Right. So enjoy the story, use it to help someone. use it to help them make meaning out of their own experience. The goal of telling your story to the world is so that somebody can see their story in your story, and they make some sort of meaning out of it that transforms their life. That would be wonderful.

So you can do that in an honest, genuine way while also utilizing storytelling elements like using, like setting somebody up, thinking you’re gonna go one way and then going another way you did that, just you did it intuitively telling me, you know, this, your story, really, really powerful. And you can, can continue to implement these tools where you set it up and then surprise people where it stays with them.

And now you’ve got an opportunity to change a life.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Man. That is so great. And why I’m smiling so much and how much context that it has is, I had just started in the last week

reading by Michael Hague. And I can’t remember the other guy, but it’s a, hero’s two journeys. Right. And they talk about that.

And I even went as far for anybody listening or watching. I went and watched the video, basically, Michael Hagan, another gal had a will Smith. On a youth. And they did basically just like this, except it was all three of them. And they were taught will Smith made reference. They asked them about his storytelling.

Like how did he become such a great storyteller and they, and they go into all of these things. But what, when you were talking, when you said that your life. Is not the story, right? The story is not your life. And so instantly my mind went into a movie like The Pursuit Of Happiness, right. And when we looked at that, that’s an amazing story.

Will Smith did a great job. But when you look at that, if you were to pause the movie 35 minutes in, you’re like, Oh my God, like he’s going through some things, but that’s not the end of it. Right. You still have another hour and 10 minutes. And so just like you said, there’s going to be ebbs and flows, but at the end, what chapter did he want to write?

What story did he want to write? And another key point of that is at the beginning of A Hero’s Two Journeys, Michael Hague. I believe that’s who it is. I can’t think of the other guy’s name, but he said, if you think about it, any movie or any story is not put in place to teach it’s to spark an emotion.

Right. That then will create change, which is what I’ve heard you say a number of times. So it all kind of brings it back and, and it’s an amazing point that you make.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yeah. I mean, I think that stories are the way that we make meaning of experience. And so if you tell a story to like teach a point, it often doesn’t feel as powerful as, like you said, a movie of pursuit of happiness, like pursuit of happiness, where it’s like, there’s so many lessons that you can get out of that story.

Just, you know, true story because they’re not trying to teach one lesson. Lessons of perseverance lessons of love, father, son, relationship. I remember telling my old boss about that and his lesson was, you know, that guy, I was scared. I watched that movie. I was starting a family. I was like, I don’t want this to happen.

I need, you know, I was scared. And he was like, well, that guy had like, no. You know, nothing to fall back on, you know, so the lesson there is have something to fall back on. So I was just like, well, you know, I didn’t get that out of the story. So there’s so many things you can get out of one story. and I have a friend who’s a rabbi and he talks about the Torah, you know, the scripture, being a 70 faceted diamond, you know, you have these stories of Abraham and Isaac and all these prophets and, He says, you know, you’ve got one story, you know, very simple story.

And there’s 70 different ways to look at it. And in the job of, he said the Jewish community is to keep turning the diamond. Right. And so we take them, you do a movie, a book, right. and you go, here’s one facet. Here’s one side of it. One thing that I see on it, I go, I see something else. Let’s turn it a little bit.

And they’re all true. And so your. The story of your life is just a story. It’s where they make meaning out of it. And your life is not just a story, but a story. The understanding of story, as you said helps you understand your life. Right, right. A life, the point of a life of it’s a story is not to be just a bunch of happy-go-lucky positive moments.

And so one of the things I take great comfort in is if I’m in a really sucky part of my life, and I look at it as a story, I go, Oh, this is good. Something really big is about to happen. And it’s true. It often happens now and you can use a struggle, a tragedy, and still be in the moment, still be kind of sad or frustrated or whatever.

But also get a little bit excited. I get a little bit giddy. Sometimes it is still in my pain and fear. I go. I can sense it, something good is going to follow this. I’m going to learn. I’m going to grow. Transformation is coming, coming. And I don’t know how it’s an exciting story.

How to tell your life story

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] I love that. And that makes you think of why certain people, maybe even subconsciously they think in that way, because you see that there’s pain and certain people just smile and you’re like, wow, how are you smiling in a crazy time like this?

And I think because they think that same way, man, something Great’s about to happen. I know one of the things that I. Always said to myself, you know, even through the times of cancer , through whatever else is joy, wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for pain. Right. And so we never think about that because in the moment we think that man, our life is so bad. Like how can we come back from it? And then I don’t think again, like I said earlier, I don’t think that we give ourselves enough credit once we’re out of it, we become just so immune to like us being able to bounce back.

But if you think of it in that way, like man, something Great’s about to happen. I think that that’s going to pull you even quicker out of that slump. And I think that’s an amazing way to think about it. And I know from here on out for the rest of my life, I would definitely always think of that. So thank you for me at least, but I’m sure there’s so many other people that are going to get value out of this.

That’s that’s an amazing point.

The wisdom of our children

You’ve talked about Malcolm Gladwell. You’ve talked about Ryan holiday. You’ve talked about some great, great people. Is there one person that you turn to for inspiration or insight? just to try to level up your mindset. One person that comes to mind, I’ll tell you who you remind me of, but after you say it,

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Oh, okay.

Oh boy. You know, I don’t know if this feels like a throw answer it’s legitimately true in this season of life that I’m in right now, which is that I mentioned my son eight and he’s eight years old. I’ve got a son and a daughter eight and four. but like a few years ago I started calling Aiden my guru.

Cause I would ask him questions, like completely innocently, and seriously like, do you believe in God, you know, Are like, is there something wrong with you? Like existential philosophical questions. And I, as his father was not trying to teach him something, I was trying to learn from him.

And one of the most remarkable conversations we ever had was when I asked him if there was something wrong with him, I grew up with a lot of trauma, abuse. Shame, just stuff, you know? And, and then I made it my mission to succeed. Cause I thought that was going to fix everything. And I realized even in my success, I was still carrying around this image of myself as somebody who was broken and, and that I was going to have to work if I, if I was going to be okay inside, I was okay on the outside, you know, and making money and people thought I was cool on the inside.

I still felt broken. I still felt alone. And, like something was wrong with me. And so I was just curious, you know, here’s my, at the time, my six year old son, this is, you know, sort of the identity formation age for kids. So they start to form their personality and, you can still kind of change and grow from there, but a lot of things get set at that age.

And I always had this toxic shame growing up. I just felt that I felt like a bad kid.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] What that your parents would have asked you that at a young age, that maybe it would allowed you to figure out that you weren’t broken.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] I wish my parents would have provided an environment where I didn’t have to assume that was true.

I don’t think that the question, creates the security. I think the environment does and not just, you know, it wasn’t possible. so I’m, I’m grateful for, you know, how I grew up in all the things I got out of that. And, and that was a thing that I, you know, had to work through. And so I was just curious what my son’s experience was like, is this just a thing, you know, I said, what’s wrong with you?

I’m like, what’s wrong with you, but like, what’s wrong with you? Tell me something that’s wrong with you. Reading chips and guacamole at AAA. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, is there anything wrong with you? He goes, yeah, no. I was like, Oh, thank God. And I said, so you’re perfect. He said, what does that mean?

And I said, well, it means there’s something wrong with you. He said, I always thought it meant that you didn’t mess up. I said, no, buddy. I don’t think so. I think it just means there’s nothing wrong with you. And he said, Oh, well, I guess I’m pretty perfect. Then he started eating. So

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] I love it.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] And, and I mean, that messed with me so much.

Cause if you asked me what’s wrong with me, I got a big long list for you. Right. And the original. Meaning of the word perfect. Which comes from a couple of different languages, including French, parfait means perfect. is complete the original, sort of, middle age, meaning definition of the word is not pristine.

It’s not without flaw. It’s complete. And I love the fact that at six years old, my, my son didn’t feel like he was missing anything, but he wasn’t lacking anything in himself that he was whole as, as an Aiden, as a human being. So, yeah, no joke. Like I learn a lot from my kids. I’ve got plenty of, of heroes and people I look up to, but I’m so fascinated with their innocence and it’s, you know, it’s starting to dwindle a little bit as they get older.

But I just, I love seeing the world through their eyes. cause there’s so many conditioned adult patterns that I have that I don’t even know I’m doing it. Like the other day we were at the park and they wanted to Wade, we were just wearing regular clothes. They wanted to Wade through the Creek and I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay. Yeah. Well, why not? Let’s get wet and muddy. Let’s do it. And we did it. It was amazing. And I’m like, I’m learning so much through their innocence and that I’m reconnecting with that. I love.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Yes. I love it too, man. We’re in the same boat. I mean, my son is almost nine and I did it. He’s a, he’s so much smarter than I ever was and he has so much personality and my daughter is even on a higher level.

just for the fact that she’s two going on 12 and I’m sure you know how that goes, but I love that you said that one thing that, you know, for me, I grew up. Seeing a lot of trauma, just like you. The one thing that I’m always conscious of is how can I make, how can I one be, what’s the word that I’m looking for?

How can I be nonjudgmental of my son? Right? How can I allow him to be. The best him that he could be no matter what it is. And I’ve had these talks with friends and my wife, and we’re constantly talking about this, especially being in a biracial marriage and having a biracial family. The one thing that you said was it wasn’t the most conducive environment to allow me to understand that I was complete or perfect.

What does that environment look like? If someone else is listening or watching this right now, and they’re saying, how can I create that environment for my child?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] Yeah. I mean, lots of the environment. That’s not going to be good for your kids. And this is true. I mean, I’m not a psychologist, but I understand that, when something is wrong in the environment, if it’s an environment of chaos, kids are natural narcissists.

And I mean that in a positive way, meaning they tend to think whatever whatever’s going on in the world is because of them. Things are bad. I’m bad. Things are good. I’m good. So it doesn’t matter so much. What you say to your kids. I have found as much as it matters, the environment that you create. Can we create an environment of peace, of respect, not perfection, and, you know, stability where they understand kind of what the day is going to look like?

My environment growing up was very chaotic. You never knew what was going to happen. The cops might come, somebody might leave, something might break. It was just. There was some chaos. So now, and I’m working through that, but the way that I’ve gone through the world is very nervously, very anxiously. And so I don’t know, what your experience Casanova has been, but it’s like, I just gotta do something.

I gotta do something. I gotta clean something. I gotta achieve something. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta eat something. I gotta drink something. I gotta do something. Calm chill. No, I don’t know how to do that. So I put a lot of that energy into achievement, which allowed me to succeed and the world said, Hey, good job, good job for being anxious.

And I’m like, okay, all right, I’ve got to go do more of the things, got a little more money. And, that comes from chaos. And it’s so interesting to watch my kids who are, my son is very competitive. He’s very athletic loves to win. Getting into video games. Now I’m like, doesn’t like to play something that he can’t be the winner at, but he’s like a pretty chill dude too like, he can just relax.

And I have realized how hard it is for me to relax. He and I had a conversation recently and, Oh, we were watching a movie. We’re watching like a Pixar movie and it was about a father, son relationship and the sun. It was onward and the son wanted to be like the dad and I jokingly sort of tease. And I was like, do you want, do you want to be that we totally joke about this?

You know, my, my pseudo internet fame, like once a year, he has to do a book report on a famous person where he teaches the class about, you know, some famous person. And he did like Johann Sebastian Bach, and he did Walt Disney. And I was like, this year, are you going to do it? Are you going to do me? He’s like, No I’m going to do like a real famous person.

I knew that was like, no. So I was, so we were watching this movie and I was sort of teasing him again. Cause I don’t care. It’s it’s just fun. I said, do you want to be like me? You want to do that? He goes, no, I go, Oh really? He goes, I can, if you want to be like, he goes, I want to be me. And, and then not too long ago, we were talking.

And, I said, you’re so cool. Like really? You’re such a cool kid. I want to be like you, man. He goes, daddy, don’t, don’t do that. Be yourself. It just like totally earnest, very sincere. And it’s like, so, you know, how do you do that? You know, I don’t know. I think you and I both would agree. Like there comes a point where you’re like, I didn’t do that.

Like that kid is special and it’s amazing. And I just don’t want to screw it up, but I do think one of the best things that we can do as parents, as I understand it is provide as stable and a secure environment and connection with your kids as possible. And I’m just so I don’t judge them, you know, there’s consequences and rules and all those things, but I am so curious about them.

And, and, and the best practices that we’ve cultivated is being able to talk about your emotions. It’s okay to feel them, share them, whatever. and I want to hear what you think about something like, I actually want to hear it and I may, I may try to shape that a little bit, but for the most part, I’m very open to letting my kids think and believe and do the things that they want to do.

And just. Encourage what seems to me to be natural gifts and proclivities. And like, you know, the main rule is don’t hurt anybody, right? If you hurt somebody, I’ve got to remove you from the situation. But there’s plenty of things that I let the kids work out between themselves. Cause I trust them. and, and my job as a parent is not to just kind of hover in there and make sure they’d make all the right choices.

Cause that is, is often very dangerous. but rather to create. An environment of stability, love, support, you know, what’s going to happen. There’s some sense of structure without it being too structured. Those things were not necessarily things that I had that created a lot of anxiety in me. and everybody’s different.

Everybody adapts differently to their environments. and, and those are things that in some ways we sort of accidentally created, I wasn’t like super intentional, just like we love these kids. We want them to do well in life. A lot of good things just come out from a sense of love and, and, you know, all is right.

I loved and safe and all, all is right in the world,

The wisdom of our children

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Man. I love it. I love it, man. This has been a phenomenal episode and I can’t say thank you enough. there’s somebody out there that is just as inspired as I am and you know, they love your path. They love how you. You know, really honed in on who you are, your creativity and really just your knowledge.

And they want to blaze a path for themselves just like you, but they have that little voice in their head. the little voice that we all know that says you’re not strong enough, you’re not smart enough. Or maybe you just don’t have enough resources to do what Jeff has done. What’s the one thing that you say to that person to get them to just take action.

Hmm.

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] I think a lot of suffering in life comes from resisting reality. Hmm. we think if we don’t resist something, we have to, give into it. And the truth is the only way for something to not have power over you is to accept it. Now, acceptance is the first step to actually overcoming anything. Right. So if you have, you know, a learning disability too, I have a friend who has a learning disability and he spent his whole life pretending he didn’t have a learning disability.

And, and he said it stunted my growth cause I couldn’t accept. And I adapted in different ways, but I couldn’t accept it. and at some level you have to accept reality in order to work with reality. So what I would do with that voice of doubt is say, thank you. I hear you. Now, please step aside. We have work to do.

You can listen and not have to pay attention. You, you are the one, not the voice. You are not the voice. You are the one who gets to decide. If we keep watching this movie, if we keep listening to this radio station that says you’re a loser or not, and you don’t have to know, you don’t have to fight it. You don’t have to know what’s on the other side of that.

You can simply go. Thanks. Fear self-doubt anger, whatever voice is coming up. Thank you. I hear you. now please move this. I would have worked to do there’s something that I, the one in charge. There’s something I want to do, and we don’t need your help.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] There. You have it. I love it, man. For anybody who wants to stay connected with you, we will have many links in the show notes, but where can they find us?

[strong]Jeff Goins:[/strong] you go to my website, follow all my stuff. I have a podcast blog, weekly newsletter, goinswriter.com, G O I N S writer.com. And I love connecting with people on Instagram. It’s the place where I’m most active. You send me a DM, I’ll read it and respond. And that’s just at Jeff Goins, J E F F G O I N S.

[strong]Casanova Brooks:[/strong] Got it alright. My man. Well, we look forward to having you on the show again and remember Dream Nation, In the dream we trust, but we must take action. Otherwise, it will only merely be a fantasy. We’ll see you on the next one.

DreamNation Podcast