10X Your Life: Rewire Your Mind for Success | John R. Miles

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I am your host, Dr. Axe, and each and every week I dive deep into the science and principles and how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. Today I've got a special guest, John Miles, and we're going to get into everything and how to create a breakthrough in your life, find your passion, and live your dreams. And John is a Navy veteran. I love this, John, because my— both my grandfathers were veterans of the Navy. Um, John is also a former business executive. He's an expert in motivation and helping you grow and take your life to the next level. And he's also the host of the top alternative health podcast on iTunes. And today we're going to talk about social media, how you should use it, how you shouldn't use it, and the impact on our mental health. We'll be talking about how to identify toxic people in your life and what to do about those people. We'll also dive into his critical take on taking risks and getting outta your comfort zone. John, welcome to the show.

Man, Josh, it is such an honor to be on your fantastic show. So grateful to be here.

Well, great. Well, I know we were talking right before we got started and I know you live in Florida. I, I had shared in Tampa, I had shared St. Pete and I shared I've got a brother who runs a functional medicine clinic there and I have my parents live there. So I've been around the area a lot. And, you know, I was just, you know, but before we got started, I, you know, was just continuing to, I told my team, hey, I'd really like to have John on the show because I had, in some of the videos I'd watched and things I'd heard, I just thought you did such a good job of just inspiring people. And you've got a pretty great personal story that I'd love for you to share that you were a decorated naval veteran in the Navy, an executive, and you decided to just do something sort of out of the blue something that you felt passionate about. And I think this is something that is important for people to hear today, because I think a lot of times people, rather than going after their dreams and taking the big risk, they just sort of stay in their comfort zone. So share with us what you did and how you were able to pursue your dreams, find your passion, and take a big risk.

Yeah, thanks for opening up with that, Josh. I think so many of us find ourselves as we navigate adulthood, doing things we never even thought would be possible when we were kids, nor things that we necessarily ever envisioned ourselves doing. I can tell you, I never dreamt when I was a kid of being a senior executive in a Fortune 500 company sitting behind a desk. I was thinking about being a professional hockey player or an FBI agent or a veteran serving in combat, doing those types of things with my life. And when it started, that's exactly how my life came out of the gate. When I was an adult, I went to the Naval Academy, spent 5 great years in the Navy, and had the opportunity to fulfill my dream of going in the FBI. I was 3 days short of going to Quantico when Congress couldn't pass the budget and my class got recycled. And at that point, my whole life changed because I thought it was going to be a couple weeks, maybe a couple months before going back. It turned out being over 3 years, and at that point I had to take a Plan B. And so I started down the path of going into corporate America because that transition from the military to that next phase in life is really difficult when your Plan A falls apart. And so I'm now 15 years into this. And I think like anything I did in life, I put myself and my all into it. So I was climbing up the ladder of success like a rocket ship. I was nominated to be a partner in a Big Four consulting firm before I was 30. I was the chief information security officer of a Fortune 100 company by the time I'm in my early 30s, CEO of Fortune 50 company in my late 30s. And just thought everything in my life was going exactly the way I thought it should go when I came to the deep realization that I had outer success but inner turmoil. I was at this point that I think so many people would envy being at, and I had all the creature comforts that you would want in life, from the house to the cars to not worrying about really anything in my life, yet I was completely detached from the things that mattered most: my relationships, my physical health, getting control of my mental health, my emotional health. And I found that at this point, it was as if I was sitting on a kitchen stool that had multiple supports underneath it, but the one that was holding me up primarily was the constant burnout and the constant drive that had gotten me there, and the other supports were completely out of balance. And it was at that point that I really decided and came to the conclusion that I was doing so much work making other people's come— dreams come true, making them money, but I wasn't focusing on making my own dreams a reality and really pursuing becoming the ideal version of myself I had always imagined. So I hit this chasm of— you could think of it as being on one side of a mountain cliff overlooking the other. And on one side was me continuing to go down the path that I was going down, and the other side seemed to be this unimaginable leap of faith to go to this destiny that in my head I thought would bring me so much fulfillment, but in reality seemed like such a hard chasm to cross. And I'll stop there for now.

Wow. You know, I think I have a— my grandfather I mentioned earlier, he was a World War II veteran in the Navy. And when he was in his 40s, he— when he got done with the Navy after World War II, he went and he worked for a company called Ohio Bell repairing power lines, down telephone lines for 20-some years. And he got to be in his 40s and he said, you know what, this is not what I want to do the rest of my life. And him and my grandmother took their life savings, took it all, and bought this property where they built a campground and a swim park for kids. And people would do retreats there and, um, and family events and reunions. And it was just sort of— he was able to then go and live his dream. But he kind of took this risk of saying, I'm gonna just gonna do— I'm just gonna follow my passion. I'm gonna follow where God's calling me. And it really paid off for him. I mean, it really blessed— now, not financially as much, but in terms of just living a blessed life, it really did. I'd love hear from you because one of the things that you, uh, the name of your book and your podcast are Passion Struck. Talk to me about how what you just shared in the next part of it, uh, what does it mean to be passion struck and how does that— and how has that worked out for you in terms of, you know, uh, you know, what, what you've been doing in life?

Josh, thanks for that question. Passionstruck didn't even exist in my mind 4 years ago. I knew I had been given this task, that I was supposed to be serving people. And the message that I kept hearing when I was meditating was to help and serve the beaten, the battered, the bored, the broken, the lonely, the helpless of the world. And I have to tell you, when I first got this vision back in 2009, 2010, I had no idea what to do with it. I had no idea who those people were or how, being this corporate executive that I was, I was supposed to be serving them and what I was supposed to be doing about it. So I went on this deep, deep journey of really trying to understand my uniqueness and what could I do to solve a problem that is impacting so many people to feel that way. And I ended up doing this exercise where And it took me about a year. I tried to come to the one word that I was trying to solve that I felt these people were feeling, and I initially came up with words like apathy or indifference, loneliness. And as I backed into it more and more, I found that the thing that I feel is really impacting people around the world is unmattering. A feeling that they lack significance not only to others but to themselves. Like, what they're doing— they're just going through the motions of life without feeling like what they're doing matters or is making a difference or serving anyone. And I think in many ways it's what Henry David Thoreau was getting to when he said that the mass of people around the world live lives of quiet desperation. And as I looked at my own life, it's exactly how I felt at that point. I was so desperate, I was struggling, and I was living inauthentically. And so as I got more into this, I started talking to some mentors of mine along the way as I was doing me-search on how do you start living an authentic life? How do you start pursuing becoming the person that you desire to be? And I was talking to a friend of mine, Keith Crotch, and I said to Keith, this concept that I have in my mind is this intense, almost explorable drive to mold one's life so that your actions are in balance with your ambitions and your long-term aspirations. And it's this deep-seated relentless quest for growth, impact, fulfillment, and serving others. And he knew me, knew a lot about me, and he said, it sounds to me like, John, what you're describing is someone going from being stuck in their life to becoming passion-struck. And it just hit me like a bolt of lightning at that point. And as anyone would do, after he and I got off our phone call, I went directly to GoDaddy thinking never in a million years could this phrase possibly be available, and yet there it was. And so to me, I think it was divine intervention being presented right in my lap. And from that point forward, I just started doubling down on the use of the name and trademarked it, and here we are.

Wow. And, and, and, and when did you launch your podcast?

I launched the podcast February of 2021.

Okay, okay. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, I, I love hearing this. You know, I think for so many people, um, let me ask this: why do you think so many people today— and I think you described this well— there's a level of apathy, unexcitement, almost disappointment with the way their lives turned out. Um, why do you think so many people have this sort of apathy, lack of motivation? Um, what do you think the root cause of that is?

So let me just quantify this for people so if they're feeling like I was feeling, they understand the enormity of the situation and how many more people feel exactly like we do. So Gallup has released a number of surveys over the past 3 to 4 years. All of them come to the same conclusion. There are 900 million people worldwide out of 1.1, 1.2 billion full-time workers who feel unfulfilled by what they do. You then couple that with the work that Bronnie Ware has done in palliative care, examining people who are on their deathbeds and what they described as their biggest regret, and that completely coincides with work that psychologist Tom Gilovich did at Cornell University which showed that 76% of people have the same regret in life. And what was shocking to me as I dove into this research was we don't regret the mistakes we make in life. What 76% of people, and what Bronnie Ware found people regret, is the what-ifs, the should-haves. It's not pursuing our ideal self. And that's a huge number of people if you start thinking about it. And so to me, I think there are many different reasons for this, but if you're familiar at all with self-discrepancy theory, it really looks at humans as three different versions of ourself. There's our actual self, there's our ought self, which is who we think we should be, and there's our ideal self, which is who we could be. And I think so many of us find ourselves on this journey where we have become our ought self. So then why is it that that happens, and why is it so difficult to break free from it? Well, I think it all comes down to the burden of responsibilities at this, at this juncture, because you've now built up enough of a foundation underneath you where you now have to support the rent, or mortgage payment. You have to pay for the car. You have to pay for the family if you have it. You're supporting this lifestyle that you've created. And oftentimes, to achieve that state of becoming your ideal self means having to do some fundamental shifts like I did, and it sounds, uh, like your father did, that you have to really make a choice to do something completely different.? And I think that's a very difficult choice for people to make because we often see this future self that we want to be is a separate entity from who we actually are. And because of that, it's so hard to think about how do you close that gap. And so that's really what I wanted to explore throughout the book was how do you close that gap.

I love it. It's brilliant. You know, I, I, I, I, uh, I love studying future self. You know, there's Marcus and Arias, they did a, a good study on this. You might be familiar in terms of looking at our future self and how to become that person now. And, you know, as you had said, I think that there, there are so many ways to slice this. I think a lot of this ties into identity, right? Who we are and then the amount of meaning we attach to our roles and responsibilities in our life. And, and obviously these are huge things, and most people don't see themselves as, uh, as being meaningful. And so because that, they don't see others as being meaningful. And so then their lives lose meaning. You know, another thing that I think is really— if I'm going to, uh, diagnose the root cause of this, I think a big part of it is, uh, people losing, uh, the relationship with God or never having it in the first place. You know, when we pulled out of this, you know, out of school in 1962, God and prayer, uh, you see just a continual decline in morality and a number of things. But if, if you're the biggest thing in the world, um, that's not very big versus if, if God is, then that's infinite. And so I think there's an issue. I think there's a, there's a relationship there with people. You know, if everything you do today, you know that it has eternal significance, that, that, that, that, that's a big deal. And I also think another thing is when I look at priorities today, you know, when you look at the God of America, it's economic progression. Uh, and so if everybody's trying to keep up with the Joneses, everybody has to have the latest iPhone, you know, the latest big screen TV, a nicer car, all of these things, and you have to spend so much time working on just to make money versus working based off your giftings and what you're most passionate about, then, you know, you're going to end up unfulfilled. And I also think that, you know, um If people— I think people think, well, I just need to work in what's going to make the most money. But what they don't realize is when you do what you're most passionate about, most of the time, not maybe the first year or two, but in the long run, you will make the most money because it's what God designed you to be the best in the world at. And so anyways, feel free to share any thoughts on that, but I think those are some just additional thoughts I have on, uh, on what you're sharing.

Yeah, I want to touch on the spiritual aspect of it for just a second. I am a huge fan of the book The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, and it's a book that I read at least once a year. And I look back, he wrote this in the 1980s, and in it he really describes why so many people were leaving organized religion. And it, from his viewpoint, it really came down to the standpoint that most of the religions that we have in the world today are centuries old. And if you looked at history, religions over time are typically updated, yet there hasn't been a major update of the major religions in a very long time. And so what he was getting at is that people are having a very difficult time relating in modern times to what was being taught all these years ago. Now, there have been some new religions like Scientology and other things that have come about, but things like Judaism, Muslim, you know, the Muslim religion, Christianity haven't had major updates to them in many, many, many years. That could be a driving reason, is that if you look at any of these religions and you read his book, they tell the same—

I've read it, by the way. Yeah, I've read it.

Yeah, yeah, they— but as you remember, they tell the same stories, the, the myths The myths get told. They just get told a little bit differently in each version. But what I took from his book was that he was saying that there hasn't been a major update that tells these myths in a way that really reflects modern living and the importance of God in our modern life. And I recently saw this study that said in 1990, if you went to the global populace and you asked them, do you believe in God, it was somewhere in close to 90% of people said yes, the vast majority represented themselves as either Muslims or Christians. But they did that same survey recently and it was under 40%, which shows you the drastic decline of exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. So I saw the Gallup and it was also a Pew Research study. The number dropped to around 78% from around 96%. And so there's about a 20% drop in that. Um, now in terms of people that practice organized religion, that's closer to 40, but in terms of people belief in God, it's, you know, it's actually closer to, closer to 80. But yeah, in terms of people that are practicing Catholicism or Judaism or, or the actual practice, yeah, both of them have dropped off significantly for sure.

Yeah, well, I mean, you can, you can just see it if you're a regular churchgoer and how much empty—

yeah, or the churches are.

I mean, I've seen attended myself for the past decade. Absolutely. But getting back to the whole religious aspect of it, uh, I really got this mission that I'm fulfilling now when I was going through a course that's taught by the Methodist religion called discipleship. And I was going through a 36-week-long program, really going through all aspects of the entire Bible, going to class twice a week. And I think I felt the closest that I had ever been to God. And it was then that this internal voice that I talk about started to become louder and more apparent in my life, that I was doing not what I was created to do, and there was another aspect of my life that needed to be fulfilled.

Yeah.

Wow.

You know, just, just for everybody listening, just for some reference on Joseph Campbell— Joseph Campbell also wrote another great book A Hero with a Thousand Faces. And, um, he is a, uh, we would probably call him a Jungian psychologist. So Carl Jung. And, uh, and if you listen to Jordan Peterson today, you'll see some overlap on, uh, what we call archetypes today. And, um, and, and really to John's point there, now, now, now he believes that all religions are myths that are made up, um, to help us better cope and deal with society, which I, I don't believe that at all. I believe The Bible is inerrant and accurate, but, and these are real events, not myths. But I think again, to, and in terms of just addressing the, if he believes that the problem is they're not updated, you know, I, again, this is not you, what you're saying to Joseph Campbell, but like what I would say to that for Joseph Campbell is that everybody has a God, everybody has a religion. We've actually tried a lot of new religions. If you look today at something like the LGBT community or Democrats or Republicans. Environmentalism, there's another one. I mean, there's a lot of different movements today. Environmentalism is just the god Gaia. I mean, Gaia, I mean, it's a very similar— we're worshiping the earth, we're saying it's more valuable than human lives in a way. And, um, all of us have a god and something we're following, but I would say that those have led to less meaningful lives when we pursue conservatism as our God or progressivism or some other ism out there, environmentalism, versus when we actually follow, you know, the God that's talked about in the Bible and live our lives of that. So because when you look at, again, the religion declining, you're also seeing depression, anxiety, crime, all of those things increasing. And so, but I understand the point and I am You know, and, and, and of course, anyways, this would be a whole different topic, but yeah, I, I love the idea in your book about this idea around passion struck. And so share with me this, if in order for someone to become passion struck, how does that happen? How does someone become passion struck?

I talk about a couple different frameworks in the book. The major framework on which the whole book is based is something that I call the Passion Struck model, and it's got 4 components, which is really how the book was built. Uh, the first portion of the book goes into 6 mindset shifts which really influence how we act out our behaviors. It then goes into the second section, which really goes into behavior shifts, which dictates what we do and really why we're doing it. And then it goes into what I describe as the psychology of progress, which has 2 really core components. One One is this whole concept of taking intentional action. And the second component is the need for intrinsic motivation to be the fuel. So to me, it's how do you get those four pieces working together? Now, there's a model within the model that I really believe that you need a combination of passion, perseverance, and intentionality. So the first two are what Angela Duckworth describes as grit.. And I added the additional element of the need to be intentional in life. And I like to tell this story because if anyone's read Angela's book, she starts Grit Out by examining cadets at West Point. And she comes to this conclusion, and now they've done research over 11, 12 years, that the reason people not only made it through Beast Barracks but graduated from West Point was because of those two primary things, passion and perseverance, over really talent or aptitude. And having gone to the Naval Academy, when I started thinking about it, I thought that she's absolutely correct in the standpoint that grit is absolutely relevant to having enduring goals that you're pursuing. However, I think even if you have the most extremely gritty individuals, they often lack the single-minded sustained commitment to actually put that grip into focus on the right things. And a great way to look at this is while I was at the Academy, I happened to get elected to be a member of the Brigade Honor Board, which considered a high honor. Usually it's not that big a deal. You don't have to do that much work. In my year, unfortunately, I came back from Christmas vacation and inherited the largest cheating scandal in the academy's history. We had hundreds of midshipmen who had cheated on an electrical engineering exam. And what it taught me was that even though you have grit, you also have to have self-control or self-regulation, which to me is what intentionality is all about, which enables you to navigate conflicts between our goals and the hourly temptations that face us. And in this case, hundreds of midshipmen made the choice to go against their moral or ethical relevance. And even if they were typically self-identified as being an honest person or someone who didn't cheat, they made the decision in this case to cheat, which put put the whole goal of them graduating from the academy in jeopardy. And I just think it's a great example of you can have grit, but if you don't have the intentionality to apply it in the right way, making the right long-term decisions, it can have major ramifications on your overall goals and aspirations.

Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a study, John, that I think is really relevant to what you're sharing, and that is, uh, CEOs, 40% of the time, the reason they're fired is due to moral failures. 30— for 35% of the time, CEOs today, executives, are fired for poor performance. So more people today are being fired as executives for moral failures than they are actually performance failures. And so that intentionality piece, self-control, that being one of the, you know, one of the cardinal virtues incredibly important, right? Because it's like, you can be talented, you can be skilled, you can do all these things, but if you don't have that character, that intentionality piece, it's going to fail at some point.

No, I wholeheartedly agree with you, and that, and that's why in this model I integrated the Stoic virtues right into it, where self-control is absolutely one of the most critical ones we have. We need to have, in addition You know, you have to have justice, you have to have wisdom, you have to have temper— temperaments, and you have to have courage to actually pursue the goals that you want to strive for.

Now, John, what, what are some of those practical action steps? I mean, and by the way, I just want to say this, uh, I mean, you've done such an incredible, incredible job of this. Again, you went from being, uh, you know, in the Navy to an executive to just in 2021 starting the podcast and growing to one of the top uh, you know, shows out there, launching a book. I mean, you know, living this life that I know you're incredibly excited about. You're transforming a lot of lives. What are some of those action steps, modeling yourself, thinking about your own life, that other people can follow so they can start doing the same thing?

Yeah, Josh, thank you for that, and thank you for that background as well. That was really nice of you. There's a quote from Abraham Maslow that I think people really need to understand. He said that the story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short. And I'm going to just give a personal example that I, I was talking to Jim Quick last year, and we were talking about his backstory about being the boy with the broken brain. And, and I started talking to Jim, and I said, you know, I'm one of the few people on Earth who probably can, can 100% relate to your backstory, because when I was 5 years old, I was playing tag with some neighborhood kids and was pushed from behind as I was running away from a boy, and it propelled me in the air through a, through a window in our basement, which caused me to black out. I woke up 80 stitches later. My life changed completely. I had, I mean, And Josh, the things that they have shown resulted from this are incredible— speech impediment, auditory processing disorder, vision issues, uh, I, you know, the, the list. Uh, I had migraines continuously. I became a shell of who I was before. And I remember, similar to him, I— we ended up moving in part because I was getting teased so much because I couldn't complete sentences. I was speaking weird. I couldn't think straight. And I remember we moved to, uh, just outside of Chicago, and it was almost as if I would go to class and I was wishing I could put a sheet over my head to hide me from all the stares that I felt around me because I was so terrified of the teacher calling on me because I would mix up my words. I couldn't pronounce things correctly. I looked different at this point because I had a patch on my one eye because the traumatic brain injury actually injured it. The whole reason I bring all of this up is I had a choice even at a young age. I could allow my circumstances to dictate my life, or even at a young age, I could start making decisions to take a different path. And the enormity of it, regardless of what age you're at, seems so huge that it's unfathomable to undertake this. And what I have really learned is that small decisions, small steps that you take over a long period of time lead to colossal changes in your life. And that's exactly what happened to me. I started to go to see the speech pathologist who took a special interest in me. And not only did she start helping me with my speech issues, but she also started to help me with my confidence issues. And I think this— a way to look at this that people can understand is if you read 20 pages a day, that will amount to about 30 books read a year. If you save $8 extra a day, it equates to $3,000 a year. If you walk 10,000 steps a day, it equates to you doing 70 marathons in a year. That is an equation that I don't think we think enough about. It's kind of like this future self gap that happens. We get so caught up in that immediate decision that we make that we don't think about the long-term implications. And so a concept that I really like to talk about is the bee and turtle effect. It's something that whether you love him or hate him, Elon Musk is an expert at because he lives his life in both worlds. Like the tortoise, he is very slow and dedicated to his long-term mission of what he feels is saving society from itself. And yet if you look at his actions across the companies that he has founded, his daily actions resemble those of a bee trying to move those things forward with incremental progress on a daily basis. And he is absolutely a great example where his actions align with his midterm ambitions of getting those technologies built out, because each one of them is extremely important for off-Earth exploration, but they're tied to his long-term aspirations. And this is what we all need to get extremely good at if you want to close this gap that you asked me about.

Wow, it's so good. It's so good. You know, I, I, I, I, I've said this to— I have a men's leadership group I lead, and I think that nobody thinks, you know, again, everybody looks at Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey or some of these people and they think, I could never, I could never do what they do. And you couldn't do exactly what they do. You could do— you could have that type of impact You know, and so many people, as you said with Abraham Maslow, I mean, they sell themselves short. You know, I want to share something that unlocked this for me, and I wonder if you've seen the similar thing. I think that what unlocked that for me is when I started, you know, changing who I was listening to, both my inner circle and the people I was reading about and following. Reading John Maxwell, watching, you know, um, uh, you Brian Tracy and, you know, all of these really inspirational people and then changing my friend group. I think that was a big part of me started starting to believe in myself. How about for you?

Well, I mean, it's an absolutely essential thing. The third principle that I talk about in this book is something that I called a mosquito auditor. And what I'm doing with some of these titles is I wanted to use metaphor.

By the way, I like this one, so keep going with this. This is one of my favorites that you cover in the book.

Going. Yeah, I was trying to come up with nifty names for people to remember the principles that I talked about, but this whole mosquito auditor chapter is really about the hidden forces that shape behavior, and it goes into the science of how others shape our behaviors, often without us knowing about it, and what we can do about it. So as I was thinking about how to approach this, I had recently interviewed, uh, Jonah Berger's a professor at Wharton, and he has this great book called Invisible Influence, which are really the hidden forces around us that shape who we are. And if you want to 10x your life like we talked about, you want to close this gap, one of the first things that you're going to run into are people in your inner circle who are starting to see the changes that you're making, and they might not like it because it's very different from who they're accustomed to seeing. So I wanted to thank about a way that I could teach this that people would get. And on this walk, as I was thinking about how do I write this chapter, I just happened to hear this radio show. And the announcer asked a question, what is the most dangerous animal on the planet? And all the people who were calling in were thinking the same things I was thinking. It's got to be a venomous snake, some type of spider, maybe the jellyfish that they have. The tiny jellyfish down in Australia, maybe a shark. And the crazy thing about it is you can look at all the shark fatalities over the next 100 years and it wouldn't even equate to a drop in the bucket of what a mosquito does to the human race. Wow. On a yearly basis. And it's something like a million to a million and a half lives are taken every year from the mosquito.. And yet it's such a benign creature. I mean, oftentimes we don't even think about it. We swat it away. It becomes this invisible force in our life. And the same thing goes with human mosquitoes and the invisible forces that end up keeping us from attaining many of the dreams and aspirations that we have. And so in the book, I laid out 3 examples of human mosquitoes. There are obviously more than this, but I thought if I gave the readers at least 3, it could help them identify people who are in their immediate circle and probably the circles directly after that. And I labeled them the bloodsucker, the invisible suffocator, and the pita. The bloodsucker— I got this whole concept from my friend Terry Cole, and this is really that something she describes as a boundary destroyer. You can think of these are the people in your life who draw blood by ignoring your boundaries. They make intrusive demands of your time, they question your decision, and they often make you feel undermined and disrespected. They're really trying to get every drop of blood that they can from you for their own purposes. You then have the invisible suffocators, who I know so many of these even in my family and distant family. These are the pessimists in your life who engage in constant complaining, but also they're the ones who are pessimistic about your own dreams and aspirations. Meaning you tell them you have this aspiration of doing X goal, maybe it's running a marathon, and they immediately come back at you and say, look at the shape that you're in, there's no way that you could possibly do that. And then there's lastly the pitas, which some people refer to as pain in the asses. That's what I used in the book. Other people look at these as vampires, but these are people who thrive on drama and conflict. They love disputes and gossips, and they love to create tension and discomfort. And so once you identify these things, it's such a gift because then it allows you to recognize them and to start doing something about it in the form of setting boundaries. So I think that this is one of the biggest areas in our life that ends up curtailing the very paths that we want to take, because oftentimes these are people who've been close to us. It could even be our parents, friends, co-workers, bosses. And yet when you start to change I guarantee you, you're going to find people who are starting to go against those dreams and are trying to influence you to stop going down the path to improving your life.

This is so powerful. I love the analogy. You know, in all my research, and this includes people that want to get healthier, people that want to increase their lifespan, people that have personal fulfillment, people that want to have a higher net worth worth, every single success, the greatest factor is the group you're hanging out with. That's the greatest factor. Like, there's a study at Duke University that found that if you want to get healthy, the top thing you do is hang around with more disciplined people, right? Dave Ramsey, I interviewed him on my podcast, and he said your average net worth is the average of the 10 people you hang out with. I mean, it's, you know, in every single area of life, like, this principle is so important to get out, you know, to, to the, the mosquitoes, the bloodsuckers, the people that out in your life, that you move them out and you start hanging out with— I'm trying to think of a positive, you know, something— but, you know, the, uh, you know, those people that are inspiring, that call you to a higher level, that both love you and challenge you. I love this advice. You know, John, you have, uh, as I was going through looking at some of your shows, I mean, you've interviewed some amazing guests, so many amazing guests on your show. What is maybe of all the shows you've done, what is the best piece of advice or the best thing you've heard, uh, of, of any guests you've ever had?

Well, Josh, that— I've never had Dave Ramsey, so there you go. He's probably given you some advice I've never gotten. I, I just wanted to comment on what you said about him though. Oh sure. Before I answer this, because you said our— what you're really talking about was financial wealth and our wealth health is impacted by the 10 people we surround ourselves with. I want people to think about this a little bit differently. Your whole level of happiness and the level of fulfillment that you feel is influenced by those 10 people. Because if you're hanging around a bunch of people who all they want to do is go out and drink on the weekend, and that's the social circle that you put yourself in, what do you think your life is going to become? You're going to be drawn to that and do that. I, I mean, if I surrounded myself around people like— let's just take Arthur Brooks, Seth Godin, Gabby Bernstein, Sharon Salzberg— you're putting yourself around a bunch of people who think completely differently, who are thinking about manifesting the future you want, manifesting the happiness that you want.. And so to me, those people you put yourself around really influence the complete direction of your life. And as far as someone who has given me some life-changing advice, man, I'm just gonna go to my, my long-term friend, classmate from the Naval Academy, uh, Chris Cassidy. For people who don't know Chris's backstory, Chris is a Navy SEAL, Navy SEAL, won 2 Bronze Stars, one with valor. And if you can ever get a hold of his Bronze Star, I guess you could say, um, award, it's classified, but he was at the epicenter of probably one of the most famous and successful missions that the SEAL teams have ever done. He then went on to become an astronaut and retired after just becoming the commander of an ISS mission, but before that was the chief astronaut in the astronaut office. And right now he's the CEO and president of the Medal of Honor Museum. But something Chris taught me was he was going through BUD/S and he was telling me that that no matter how horrible you perceive what Basic Underwater Demolition School is, it's like 100 times worse than you can even imagine. He's like, it is so rough that it is so easy to psych yourself out of continuing to go on. But he told me that he started to see that he could bend time. and that time was like an elastic rubber band, and that at sometimes you needed to expand it, and sometimes you needed to contrast it or contract it depending on what you were going through. And he said to him, a time when he would try to contract it was during trying times, because he said the people who quit are the ones who are looking so far ahead that they psych themselves out by overthinking the next things that are come their way. And he said, all I tried to do was I just tried to get through the next 5 minutes, the next 10 minutes, going from breakfast to lunch, going from one activity to the other. And he said, we try to overcomplicate these things because we, we don't think that trying times end and that you've got to put yourself in the mental state to understand how to use time to your benefit. So that was one of the most important things that I learned. It, it actually reminded me of times when I was becoming a competitive runner, runner. And you know, there are days when we were doing track workouts where we were just killing ourselves doing mile repeats or 800 repeats But if you really looked at how— at what you were doing and understood more that these repeats are going to end after a period of time, and you needed to do that suffering for your betterment, it helps you to perceive them in a completely different way and in a productive way. So that was one of the more powerful lessons I learned.

I love it. You know, I haven't heard anybody talk about that before, and for me, that was actually a That was incredibly valuable. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I am more of a futuristic thinker, so I am one of those people that probably could be like, well, you know, thinking a year or two from now or how long this trial would be versus, hey, I need to get through the next 5 minutes. And so that's a really— that's incredibly insightful. I love that. What is your best advice for people? So right now, everybody listening, and you've shared so many gems here, what is your best advice for people who are saying to themselves, starting off at the beginning of the podcast, You said most people are sitting in a state of apathy. There's a level of isolation. Maybe they don't feel like they have a lot of great friends, uh, a level of feeling like they need more meaning in their life. What is your best advice for people to go out and start changing their life today?

So I would start with this, and if people are watching this, I am talking directly to you. When I was that little kid who had the broken brain, I remember staring in the mirror and just hating the image that was staring back at me. And over time, I have come to realize— and luckily I realized it at a young age— that the greatest person I will ever meet on the planet is me. And the same goes for you, but The biggest critic that you are ever going to face in your life is that person who stares back at you in the mirror. And so something that I think we all have a tendency to do is we become visionary arsonists. We arson the very things in life that we hope to accomplish, and we do it because that's what subconsciously we end up carrying out. And the reason we do this is because I think so many of us are beyond living our lives on autopilot. To me, when you're on autopilot, at least you're living your life in a positive direction. I think we're living our lives like we're a pinball and we just bounce off of everything. And I think social media has just made that even worse. So this whole concept of being a visionary arsonist means that we misdirect our actions. And it could be because we think we need to be in some constant activity that we're going through the motions but we're not making progress. Or it could be that we want to do something like run a marathon, yet we make decisions then where we change our training regimen, or we don't eat the right foods, or we don't get the right training partner like we talked about, and we end up arsoning the very goal that we had. So learning how to get out of your own way and have the confidence and courage to take that intentional action and direct it in a way that's leading you closer towards your dreams is one of the biggest skill sets that any of us can learn. And a way I like to think about this is Starting really comes down to activation energy. And if you think about two axes on a graph where you have energy on one axis and intentional action on the other, it's almost as if you're— you get stuck in a car before you had a cell phone, and you're left with two options. Either you can play victim and raise your hand and try to wave someone down to help you, or you can take action. And when you do Yeah, it's going to be really difficult at first to push that car, but once you start getting momentum going, your activation energy lessens. And along the way, you're likely going to encounter dips that increase that momentum. And so once you start building upon these actions, as, as is demonstrated in Atomic Habits, you know, the whole habit stacking element of this, this activation keeps on going down and down and down. And so to me, figuring out how to lower your activation energy as you're starting anything to change your life is one of the biggest keys that you can find to stopping yourself from being this visionary arsonist to your very dreams.

That's so good. Yeah, I think that there's no doubt that sometimes we're our own self-worst enemy. And I also think that, you know, sometimes it just takes getting started. As you said, I mean, that's the hardest part, but once you get started, get some momentum, you know. I had a friend of mine who was going to start a podcast, and he started it. He got 3 months in and he said, nobody's listening. And I was like, listen, I, you know, this is the way it is. I'm like, you gotta wait 2 years, 3 years. I mean, time for things to snowball. And so again, you know, I think a lot of times it takes it's harder to get started than you think. But oftentimes, if you really are consistent, 2 or 3 years later, you'll be shocked at the success that you can have. And so I love all the advice and things you're sharing. Hey, I want to encourage everybody to check out John's new book just released this year, Passion Struck. The book has so many more principles than we covered today. It's in bookstores nationwide. It's on Amazon.com. Um, the book is called Passion Struck, and if you really want to, uh, become your best self, if you want to experience a break, if you want to go from feeling that lack of meaning to living a more fulfilling life, check out John's book and all he has to offer. He's also got a podcast, he's got a great social media following. You can check him out, John Miles, on all social channels. I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Dr. Josh show. Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles and how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and life to the next level. Also, hey, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this podcast if you had a positive impact on your life. And if you're watching on YouTube, we'd love to hear your comments on what is the biggest principle and piece of wisdom that John shared today that you're going to take, take action with. And maybe you really resonated with one of John's stories and something he shared, hey, please let us know what that is. And again, John, want to say thanks so much for coming on the show today. Really grateful to have you on the guest. It was, it was an honor, man.

Josh, it was my honor to come on, and you did such a fantastic job with the questions. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, thanks again here to, to, to John Miles. Thanks everybody. I'll see you on the next show.