Whitney Johnson on How to Step Into Your Next Level of Success | Self Help | E43

Hello, my name is Tim Story. Welcome to Miracle Mentality. Remember rooftops, drawn spaceships on the ground. It's for the dreamers, the doers, the believers in something greater. In each episode, I'll invite you to rise above the mundane, to push past the messy, and learn to live boldly in the miraculous. Every episode will have practical wisdom, spiritual insight, and my guests will explore what it takes to activate your miracle mindset. Remember to subscribe, follow, and like. Welcome back to the Miracle Mentality podcast. I also wanna thank you guys for keeping me in the top 10. So thank you for liking, subscribing, and obviously you guys are telling people. Today we have a very special guest, and I want you to lean into this conversation because I'm gonna speak to someone who understands a transition. She understands change. She is a best-selling author. She is a powerful voice in leadership and personal growth, and that I know firsthand. She's amazing. Her last book that she wrote is called Smart Grow. Let's welcome to the program Whitney Johnson. Hi, Whitney. Hi, Tim, how are you? Good, how did I do on that introduction? I think you did a beautiful job. You know what though, I will say though, Tim, I just realized your name is Story. So like, you must be a great storyteller. You were born to be a great storyteller. Well, it's an interesting thing because a lot of little kids will come up to me after I speak places and they'll say, is your real name Tim Story, or did they give you that name after? Cause I am a good storyteller, and I have been since I was little. So thank you for that. Yeah, yeah. All right, so Whitney, let's go back to high school for a minute. When you were a junior or a senior in high school, what were you thinking of becoming? Oh, you know, Tim, I didn't really have much of a plan. I was studying music and I planned on majoring in music, but I didn't really have a plan to become a musician. I wanted good grades, I had good grades, I was gonna go to college, I was gonna do all those checklist types of things that good girls do. I just had this vague notion that I would get married and I would have children and maybe I would work, I really did not have a plan. Okay, I find this super interesting because look at you now teaching us about the plan, teaching us to get unstuck. So I always find that very, very interesting. So who do you think played a role in helping you say, okay, let me start college, let me declare this major, was it your parents? Was it a pastor? Was it a rabbi? Was it a coach? Who was it? It was definitely my mom. I think it's interesting because even though I didn't really have a plan for what I was going to do, there was never any question that I would go to college. So my mother had gone to college, she grew up in a family of mechanics in this small, small town in Arizona and she actually left Arizona to go to Utah for college in the 1950s, which was highly unusual. And so there was always this expectation that I would go to college, but I think as a female, there wasn't necessarily an expectation that I would have a profession. I would just go to college. Yes, so when you declared your major, what was your major? It was music, but then it was English and then it was family therapy. 180 credits later, I graduated in music, but I was in college for almost a decade. Now I did take some time off to work and I went down to Uruguay for a mission, but all in, it took me almost a decade to finally graduate. Like I said, it was very meandering. I did not have much of a plan. I honestly think that you wandering around for a minute is one of the things that relates to the people that you're working with, be it companies or when you're speaking, because I think that most people, as you coach people as well, are in that place where they're kind of wandering and wandering and trying to figure it out and then they find their way. So in your book, Smart Grow, what was the reason that you wrote that book? I had written a book called Disrupt Yourself prior to that and this is based on the principles of Clayton Christensen who wrote the book, The Innovator's Dilemma. You know him perhaps because he popularized the phrase disruptive innovation. And in that book, I had talked a little bit about the S-curve as a model or mental map of what growth looks like, but it was kind of in the background. It was like this backup singer and I was still very focused on disruption. And I remember around the time that Buildin' A Team came out, which was my third book, I was being interviewed by Dan Pink who we all know and admire and esteem. And he was saying, Whitney, I'm gonna talk to you for a minute and we're gonna take and distill the best idea from your book. And I was like, okay, let's talk about this and that and the other thing. And he's like, no, let's talk about the S-curve of growth as a map for what growth looks like. And I suddenly went, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Whitney, you need to write a book about the S-curve to help people navigate the emotional and intellectual job of growing and changing. So that's what that book is about. It's about giving people permission to say, I'm doing something new and it's uncomfortable, but I've got a map, so I'll be able to figure it out. Okay, so this idea of growth and people changing, give me a mentor beside your mother that was really good with you as far as helping you to have, as Carol Dweck says, a growth mindset. And maybe that even started in the musical side. And maybe you could tell us also what instrument you play. I play the piano. I was classically trained, but one of the things that I discovered, and I think this is really important, is when I got to college, I discovered jazz. And I thought, I want to be good at jazz. And so I started taking lots of lessons and studied and had the good fortune to play in our university's big band, jazz big band for several years. And I think that that was really important because as we all know, classically trained, it's you learn the notes and you memorize and you play technically really well, but jazz is about improvisation. It's about, you know what the beginning is, but then you're going to figure it out along the way. And I think that was a really important developmental piece from an improvisation from a growth mindset perspective. But the other person that I think has been really important from a growth mindset standpoint for me is, I had learned about the theory of disruptive innovation. I had worked with Clayton Christensen for 10 years and was really aware of these principles of, okay, you need to disrupt yourself in order to make progress. You need to step back to slingshot forward. But one of the people who was really important for me about eight years ago now was a man by the name of Bob Proctor. Have you heard that name before? Yes, I was close to Bob and I'm close to his son, Brian. Okay, so Bob Proctor, for those of your listeners who don't know, he wrote a book called You Were Born Rich. He was a generation before Tony Robbins, if you will, of really helping people expand what was possible and action this idea of a growth mindset. Well, I had this experience where I was speaking on a panel alongside Bob Proctor. We were at a junior achievement panel and he pulled me aside afterwards and he said to me, "'Witney didn't sit quite like this, "'but he effectively said, "'I think you're living below your privileges. "'I think you're living below what you could be.'" And he said, I wanna help you. And that put me on this journey of, I had all these ideas around disruption and personal disruption and there was this intellectual piece that I understood, but he got me really focused on, Whitney, you need to disrupt your mindset. And he was the person who really changed things for me and set me on this path of understanding that if I was going to actually accomplish what I felt this sort of impulse toward in life, because we don't necessarily know, I was going to need to disrupt how I was thinking and I had a number of mental models that were very self-limiting and I needed to start to change those. Whitney, two things I love about this story is number one, that you like jazz. So I was mentored by the late great Quincy Jones. He was my real, real friend for 37 years, like an uncle. And he obviously loved jazz. He loved to talk about the great jazz movements and all the people he learned from and all the things that he did in jazz. But I also love this thing about how you were willing to adjust. Because Bob Proctor, even though he could be very quiet and soft, could also be a little bit strong. And the fact that he said these words to you, these kind words to you, but you were willing to make the adjustment. And so now with you being at the high, high level, which you are, of people that are going into great companies and speaking on the best stages around the world, how important is it for people to cooperate with the adjustments that they need to make? I feel like that's such a loaded question, Tim. It was very loaded. It was a very loaded question. How important is it? Well, it's completely and totally a thousand percent important. I think about this a lot though, because one of the things is that there are people who are willing to give us invitations all the time to change. They're seeing something in us that we could be different. I also think about this in the context of my book editor for my next book. And she will eviscerate some of my copy. I mean, when I say eviscerate, I mean that. And yet I never, ever feel bad, ever. And so I think there is something about a Bob Proctor that they could tell me the truth about me and where I was and the gap between my ideal and where I actually was sitting at that moment because it was never a sense of you can't do it. It's a sense of you absolutely can. And I want to see you do it and I'm going to help you do it. So there's this fundamental there. It's like they're grabbing onto the essence of you and saying, this is who you are. Be this person and I'll help you be that person. Love it. Okay, so I have some questions that I wrote down. One of them is why do so many people stay stuck even when they know they are meant for more? I think there's two reasons. I think they know they're meant for more. I think sometimes they don't know how to get unstuck. I mean, it's a tools sort of issue. I think about there's one YouTuber that I continually watch because I think she's brilliant. Her name is Emma McAdam. She does therapy in a nutshell and you may have heard of her. And she is so practical in her tools of emotional regulation. She's done the best video I've ever seen on helping people understand how to deal with anxiety. So I think part of it is they just don't have the tools. They're like, okay, well, I feel really nervous about this. Maybe if I just avoid it, then I'll feel better. And she's like, no, no, no, anxiety is like a bear. And if you avoid the bear, then you're gonna keep avoiding the bear. You have to face the bear. And all these really practical tools. So I think there's that one element of people don't necessarily have the tools. The second piece though, I think, Tim, is that we get afraid because when we do something new, even though we know we could, we have the competing priorities, the price of our new self is our old self. We're gonna have to give up who we are right now and what kept us safe up until this moment in time in order to be that new person. And that can feel like a pretty high price to pay because it goes to our identity. And even if we don't like our identity, it still means we're giving it up. And that is very hard to do. So I think there's the tools piece, but I think the bigger piece is fear. And it's this loss of identity, even if we don't like the identity we currently have. I love what you said. Wow. And people get stuck, as you're really saying, in the familiar. And it reminds me of something. My mother, she likes donuts sometimes. And my mother's gonna be 95 coming up in just about a month. Oh, Tim's mom, that's amazing. Yeah, I'm very, very happy. But she likes donuts sometimes. So I went to this donut shop by her house and when I walked up, there was three men in front of me. And I remember the lady said, hi, Bob, the usual. And he said, the usual. And then the next guy, hey, Dave, the usual, the usual. And then the next guy, let's say his name was Scott. Hi, Scott, the usual, the usual. And then she said to me, I've only seen you once before, what is your usual? That's what she said. But Whitney, isn't that so true? People get caught up in the usual, the familiar. Yeah. What comes to your mind when I tell that story? On the one hand, I find that story tremendously comforting. There's a woman who understands and sees her customers and knows exactly what they want. And so there's this safe comforting, especially because it's donuts. Like who doesn't want someone who knows exactly what donut you want? It also goes to the point of what we're talking about right now is that we have these really thick neural pathways, these comfortable routines, these superhighways of habit. And those are so truly deeply comforting. And when we think about doing something new, it's not a superhighway, it's a cowpath, and it's uncomfortable and it's awkward. And part of the reason that I'm doing the work that I'm doing is giving people some really practical tools to help them understand not only functionally how to do this, but more importantly, understanding the emotional journey that you're gonna go through when you're changing, so that when you're feeling super uncomfortable, which by the way, the older we get, the more we can insulate ourselves from ever doing anything new. So we get really bad at doing new things. If we can understand it's normal to feel uncomfortable when you're doing something new, we can start to talk ourself through it. Say, okay, this is how I feel right now. This is normal. Oh, this means I'm growing. Oh, this means I'm not gonna get old, even though I am getting older. And so all those tools and ways to talk to ourselves to help us manage that process. And actually I think this is the miracle mentality on a very small micro basis. Love that. Whitney, when you talk about this thing about fear, as we know, fear can paralyze, it can push a person back. And what I'm finding, as you said, you said that so well, a lot of people that are 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and even sometimes beyond, we get caught up in just doing it as we have always done it. Do you find that people in their 20s and 30s are less fearful or is it similar? It's interesting. My husband's a college professor, so we get to spend a lot of time around college students and my kids are just in their early 20s. So I think there's absolutely fear at that age, right? They don't know what the future will bring. There's lots of uncertainty. Who are they gonna marry? What are they gonna do for their career? All of those pieces of lots and lots of unknowns. But I don't perceive that they're afraid to do new things. So I think when you get in your 50s and 60s and 70s, there's less uncertainty. So you're like, when am I gonna die kind of thing? But there's not uncertainty in large pieces of your life. But there's fearfulness of doing new things, whereas when you're younger, there's fear of all the unknowns. But I don't see there being fear of doing new things because they do new things all the time. I mean, life thrusts that upon them. I love it. I'm talking to Whitney Johnson, best selling author, great speaker, business thinker, leads people, that's what she does. So when I was studying you for the last couple of days, one of the things that I wrote down in my notes is that you teach people how to embrace change, take smarter risks, step into their next level with clarity and courage. Can we go there for a minute? Because it's clarity and courage, wow, wow, wow. We know that so many people, they lack clarity. So what can make somebody more clear in the steps that they're taking on a personal level, but also in a business level? When you think about an S curve of doing something new, sometimes you get disrupted into doing new things. Like, you know, you just land on this island and you lost your job or something happened to you, but lots of times you're gonna choose it. And so what I recommend is when you're on this brand new S curve on this new island is asking yourself some questions, questions like, okay, I'm gonna do this new thing. Do I believe that I can believe that I can do it? You don't have to believe right now that you can do it. You just have to believe that you could get to the point where you could do it. I learned that from Bob Proctor. Number two is, is the cost of what I'm doing worth the benefit? Cause there's lots of things you could do, but there's a cost to them, emotional, financial, psychological, et cetera. The third question I think is really important to ask yourself is, is this in line with my identity? And so when I say that, I don't mean necessarily your identity today, but your identity of who you want to be. So for example, if someone decides that they're gonna change faiths or change religions, it's not in line with their identity today, but it is in line with who they aspire to be. Now that being said, Tim, there's a quote from David Brooks, the New York Times columnist that I love. He was talking to young people, but I think it still applies to us, even when we're not 20 years old. He said, people tend to want to say, this is my purpose in life, and now I'm going to figure out a way to get there. That's not what happens for most people. He said, most people find a problem to solve, and in the process of solving that problem, their self is gradually constructed. That's so good. And Whitney, thank you for constantly quoting people, because we have so many people out there on social media acting as though they come up with these things for the first time. There was a gentleman that I was watching about six months ago, and he said, as I say, tough times never last, and tough people do. I thought, actually that was Robert Shuler. Too funny, right? Yeah. Attribution, it's important. Yes, you have so many skill sets. You're like in basketball, you could play all five positions. In your skill set, give us a few areas where you are right now currently working. You're writing books, you're lecturing, you're speaking, you're coaching, but tell my audience some of the areas where you're using your skill set. Well, thank you for that compliment. I appreciate that. So one of my skill sets is I am a coach, I coach leaders, and it's interesting that one, because I think a lot about strengths. For a long time, when I was working on Wall Street, people would say to me, you should be a coach. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to coach. I am an investor. And there was something about it that I just dismissed, and it was a strength that I had, and I think this is an interesting thing for us to be aware of, because sometimes people will point out things that we're really good at, and we somehow reject them because they almost come too easily for us. Or we dismiss the things that are our actual superpower. So that's the first thing I do is coach. Another thing I do is I facilitate. I facilitate off-sites and help people, teams that are saying, here's our ideal, here's where we are, can you come in and help us audit where we are and then help our team move forward? And I have a whole team of facilitators that do that. I like doing those things because those are very one-on-one, they're very tactile, you can see movement happen. They're very muscular, and I love those. I also do keynote speaking, and I love that. And you're good, you're good. I know a lot about speaking, but you're good. Thank you. It's a craft that I practice. I think as a musician, I feel driven to continually get better at it. But the reason speaking, and I think you're gonna completely relate to this, I like speaking because if it's done well, you have that moment, it's like that preach moment, where you have the opportunity to help people feel something such that they actually want to change, if we could do it well. Yes, I like this. So that's the next one. And then there's two others, I would say, I write books, and I write books because they help me codify what I'm thinking. I mean, there's nothing like trying to put something on paper to say, do I actually have something to say? So I do that. And then the last one I do, although I'm on hiatus right now, is I like to interview people just like you on my podcast, because I love that moment of what we're doing right now, where there's no one else in the world, there's just us, and we're having this conversation about things that are really important, and I love that as well. So it's this fun, interesting portfolio that does lots of different jobs and draws on a lot of different skill sets. Thank you for watching the Miracle Mentality podcast. So many of my friends are texting me, DMing me, speaking to me and saying, Tim, thank you for these great guests that you're bringing on. So share it with somebody, a friend, a family member, a colleague, and then make sure and reach out to us at TimStoryOfficial and let us know that you love what we're doing. Thank you for being a part of this movement. All right, let's help some people. Let's say someone's in their 50s, okay? And they feel like their life is kind of in the mundane and the messy, and it's maybe in their job, but also in their relationship with their spouse. What is a little bit of advice that you'd give them if they feel like their life is just like mundane, and it's a little bit messy as well? What would you say to this person? Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is I would say this is pretty normal, especially if you think about our psychological development, we have these different stages of life. I remember reading in one of Dan Pink's books, he talked about for men in particular, their nadir of happiness is in their early 50s. So there's this point where you sort of say, I'm gonna do this with my life, I'm gonna do this with my life, I'm gonna do this with my life. And then in your early 50s, you're like, well, maybe that's not exactly how my life is gonna turn out. And so there's this adjustment, there's this recalibration that's taking place emotionally and psychologically. So I would say, first of all, this is pretty normal. And so give yourself some grace. The next thing I would do is, as I think about S-curves, and as a way to think about growth, in your life, you actually have a portfolio of S-curves. So you've got your work S-curve, you've got your family S-curve, you've got your hobby S-curve, you've got your community S-curve. And I would ask them to tell me what those major S-curves are. And then I would ask them, are any of these S-curves, where you're on the launch point, where you're doing something new that you don't know how to do? Because if you've lived in the same place, now I want you to stay married, so I don't want you to separate from your spouse. But if you've lived in the same place, doing the same job, in the same role, going the same way to work every single day, of course you're bored. Yes. Now I'm not going to tell you to blow up your life because that's being reactive. What I will say to you is, let's do one or two new things. Small things, simple things, 5% better, different. You're really good at this. So I've studied you, you talk a lot about taking those small steps. Yeah, so I am a big, big believer in 5% better. And so I would say, just pick something, and it doesn't need to be something you don't want to do. It could be something that you're like, huh, what would it be like if I started playing the piano? Not for me, because I play, but let's just pick piano. 5% better is not, I've bought a piano, I've signed up for a year's worth of lessons, and I'm going to practice for an hour every day. Because guess what? You might do that for one day, and then you'll stop doing it. And this draws a lot on James Clear's work. 5% better is more like, hmm, how about if I watch YouTube videos for one week on learning how to play the piano? And then when that week's over, I'll decide, do I want to keep doing this? Do I like this S-curve? Do I want to explore this more? Or no, not for me. Maybe I'll do the saxophone instead. So I'm all about picking one small thing, and then here's the beauty of when you're at the launch point of a curve, once you've decided, you know, I really do want to play piano. Like for me, I want to do tennis. And I've made a commitment that I'm just going to go hit balls once a week, that's it, that's it. Now, at the launch point of the curve, what's happening in your brain, remember how I said it's hard to do new things, your brain is running a predictive model, and most of your predictions are wrong. And so dopamine, the chemical messenger of delight, it de-delights, it drops, it's just like, so the way you get over that is you get dopamine when you beat expectations. So you beat expectations by setting really small goals. So if I say to myself, you know what? I'm going to watch two minutes of a YouTube video every day for five days. Guess what? You're probably going to watch three minutes, and now you get dopamine and it feels good, and slowly, and then suddenly you've built momentum into doing something new. I like that. Okay, so I got to tell you a little story, and then we'll work off this story. So when I first started, people used to say, let's welcome this young man. Oh my gosh, buckle your seat belts, this young man. This before I'd speak, right? Now I get up and speak and they go, the legend is here. My God, he's been doing this for decades. Look at me. Sometimes I think to myself, oh my goodness, because I don't really think that life went by like that because I've had great moments, but it is so strange to like get to these stages where we are an older age, and we have to write it down sometimes. Or you go to the dentist and they put your age up, okay? I find that a lot of people have like, almost like you have sticker shock. Yeah, you're like, really, am I that old? Yeah. And so when I'm coaching somebody and they start talking to me about almost like that sticker shock, but in the area of age, they almost get paralyzed and feeling like, oh man, I think maybe the best is behind me and there's not much I can do. It's never too late for change. Tell us why. Oh, I love this question, Tim, and there's so many layers here. So first of all, it's never too late for change because growth is our default mindset. If you think about children, there's never been a two-year-old on this planet ever that didn't wanna go from crawling to walking. It's wired into who we are, which means that we want to continue to change. Now, it may be more difficult for us because we have physical limitations. There's that element of it. It's more about how am I navigating the fact that, yes, my body doesn't work the same way it did when I was 20. So how do I do that? How do I do it gracefully? I actually have a goal. I write letters from my future self to my current self to help me continue to grow. But I also, Tim, have a goal that every single decade, I will be happier than I was a decade before. So that on the day that I die, yeah, the day that I die, yes, my body, let's assume I live till 90. My body will be frail, but that doesn't mean inside of me here who I am, the essence of who I am, is not the most at peace and the most content. And that is my goal. And if we look at it that way, then to say the ship has sailed, it's just false. It's just patently false. Yes, very good. And I think that's helping a lot of people listening and watching right now, because I think a lot of people feel like their ship has sailed and they have to sit in their setbacks. But as you are saying that is not reality. Okay, let me take you into something that I find interesting. So I find that a lot of the people that I know that are educated people and they're around people that are educated, not just in college, but they're learners, people that are developing, growth mindset people, that they wanna work in their 70s, in their 80s, and sometimes in their 90s. A lot of guys I hang out with, they are not talking about anything called retirement. Okay? No. All right, why are you not thinking about retirement? You're thinking about just moving and doing and growing and evolving and doing assignments. Why is that in you? I think there's actually two things that are happening. No, you're right. I'm not thinking about retirement because the work that I'm doing, I feel called to do and this work gives me great joy. So why would I stop doing the thing that gives me joy doing? That being said, I have noticed that I am slightly addicted to work and Arthur Brooks has talked about this. And so one of the goals that I am working on is how do I continue to do all this work that I love to do? But create more spaciousness in my life. How do I make sure that if on a Monday afternoon, my daughter says, hey mom, let's go hit tennis balls? I say, you know what, I'll get my work done. Let's go hit tennis balls. How do I say when I have a friend who says, I really need you to come do X, Y, or Z right now? I say, you know what, work can wait. I'm gonna go do that. And so the thing that I'm really focusing on right now is yes, I wanna continue to do this work, but more and more doing it on my own terms in a way that there's this spaciousness of doing everything that's important to me, not only work, but family and hobbies and trips with friends, all those things so that there's this fullness that I did not feel in my 30s and 40s. So it's working for you. This idea of every decade, you want to be more fulfilled, more happy and in alignment to what your life is supposed to be. Yeah. All right, I'm talking to Whitney Johnson and I'm enjoying myself, Whitney. I like the way you think. All right, so I have a question for you. How does somebody rebuild confidence after a setback, rejection, or failure? Yeah, it's a great question. Here's what I've seen happen in my own life, is that there are some different parts of this. There's the aspect of the mindset that we talked about earlier, of disrupting your mindset and thinking about yourself, limiting beliefs, et cetera. But I have also found in my own life when I have a really big setback and it feels like I am desolate and I don't know that I'm even be able to go forward. Usually what happens at that time, it's also triggering some of the childhood trauma and I don't use trauma with a big T. I just mean with a small T. Like the things that happened to us because they happened to us and we live on this planet. Almost always I've needed to go back into therapy for a time and address some of those issues and do some more of that really deep inner work. But almost always a setback is a call, a call to adventure in the Joseph Campbell's sort of view of the world to go deeper and become better and become more human. And usually I need therapy because I can't excavate it on my own. And it's not just coaching, it's like actual therapy with a trained therapist. Where were you when I was writing my book called Comeback and Beyond? That was good. Thank you. My gosh, they call me the original comeback coach. What's going on here today? I'll ride in your side car. That was actually so, so good. All right, I only have two more questions for you. I'm loving this. All right, so talk to me about patience. It's something that I think in certain cultures I see people more patient. I started doing things in Scandinavia starting when I was 20 and they have something called Fika time where they would just relax and have tea and cheese and crackers and just relax. And as you know, like in Spain, you have the siesta that was so part of so many parts of what they would do. But I find that a lot of young people, middle-aged people, people that are senior citizens, we lack patience. Why is patience so important in the process of growth? Oh, lots of things are coming to my mind. I'm gonna answer that in two parts. One is I think that sometimes we don't have patience with ourselves and with a situation because we are feeling anxious. And so there's an anxiety, this discomfort that we don't know how to sit in. But that's super uncomfortable. So it's very difficult to sit in, but that's the patience. And I think the more that we allow ourselves to do it, then it makes it easier for us to be patient with other people. I think oftentimes our impatience with others is a more reflection of our internal experience that we're having. And so being patient in growth is a willingness to sit in the discomfort of being awkward and uncomfortable and trusting a process and having faith that, yes, if I do these things, I will get to this, even though I can't see it right now, but I'm gonna trust if I will do it and I'm gonna trust myself that I will figure it out. And that is hard to do. That is such a good answer. The sitting in the discomfort, the guys I coach, they don't like that. My wife's giving me trouble. Tim, can you talk to her? We need to get her back on track. I'm like, come on, buddy. Right? My son's acting up. I caught him smoking weed, fix him. You're like, go read Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute. Exactly. Wow, sitting in the discomfort. Okay, so my last question that I'm gonna talk about your books that they can get. So I created this movement called Lead With Love. I have John Paul De Jorah as one of my partners and many other amazing people. And we go around the world doing these seminars, these conferences, talking about all things we talk about, but also talking about leading with love, leading with compassion. So what does leading with love mean to Whitney Johnson? What does that mean? I'd say three things. One is a love and a kindness and a compassion for yourself. And I sometimes think about if it's hard to do with myself as I currently am about my eight-year-old self and loving that child, I think there's an element of love in the sense that God loves, which I guess is similar to loving the child and yourself, but just this sense of charity and goodness and seeking out the goodness in yourself and other people. And I guess that would be the third piece, is leading with love is looking for what's good and the people around you and trying to find that good. And having all of those things be top of mind as you're interacting with people. And then when you mess up, because you will, then you go back to how can I love myself and be in this place of not self-flagellation, but a place of, okay, I didn't do that so well. Let me try again. And you love yourself enough and you're kind enough to yourself that you do it again. So it's almost like there's three parts. There's this place for you, there's how God sees you, and then there's this place that you create in a relational sense for the people around you and all of those places of goodness and kindness and care. That was so wonderful that I think I need to send you later just the clip of what you just said. That was phenomenal because I'm a wordsmith. And what you just did with this idea of loving yourself, having compassion for yourself, kindness towards yourself. Because so many people just always look in terms of stepping out in compassion towards others, like Anelson Mandela did or Mother Teresa, but about the kindness to ourselves is so powerful. Okay, so Whitney has written many books. One, Disrupt Yourself, Build an Aid Team. The latest book is Smart, Grow. And best way for people to get in touch with you, best place for people to follow you and get in touch with you would be where? They can obviously connect to me on LinkedIn, but you can also just email me at wj at thedisruptionadvisors.com. And if your listeners will send me a note of something that they learned on this podcast, I would be happy to send you a signed copy of my book, Smart Growth. Ooh, I like that. Whitney Johnson, thank you for being you. I like your jazzy side, you're creative, you give people credit where credit is due. I'm gonna tell Brian Proctor that you kept shouting out his dad, that's really kind of you. Because when I'm finally gone after I'm about 118, I hope people quote me. Ha ha ha ha. Thank you for doing this. All right, thank you for watching and listening to the Miracle Mentality podcast. I really appreciate you guys. Thank you for being more than loyal listeners, but telling people about it, liking, subscribing and telling a friend. Let's keep this movement going, leading with love in this Miracle Mentality. Life is good, as I often say, you may not be what you wanna be, but thank God you're not what you used to be. Thank you for sharing space with me on this episode of Miracle Mentality with Tim Story. If today sparked your courage or helped you understand why you're created for success, I invite you to carry that Miracle Mentality forward. Visit me at timstory.com. That story with an E-Y on the end. Until next time, walk by faith, embrace possibility and create your own comeback story.