 Hello, and welcome back to our month on transformation. You remember in the first Toolbox episode this month, we talked about some of the signs that it's time for you to go through a transformation, make changes in your life. Many of them were actually counterintuitive, which makes it hard for you to spot them. We also wrapped that episode with two very powerful techniques to make your transformation so much easier, so check that first Toolbox episode out. In the second Toolbox episode, we shared how to shift your mindset when it comes to transformation. And there are lots of obstacles along the way. We talked how you can actually use some of those obstacles to your advantage. And we ended that episode with a tool straight out of behavioral science that helps you break down your transformation into actionable steps. Last week, we had the pleasure of talking with Brett Bartholomew, a strength and conditioning coach who shared great insights into motivating yourself and others, as well as dealing with the conflict that will often come up for you when you do just that. And we had another bonus episode this month for Father's Day, and for that we had none other than Dr. Warren Farrell with us to talk about his book, The Boy Crisis. Today, it's our monthly Q&A episode where we answer your questions that you sent in. The boy with us is one of our coaches here at the Art of Charm, Michael Harrell. Thank you for joining us all the way from Vienna. Hello guys, glad to be here. Now, many of you may already know Michael through our core confidence online group coaching program, the Art of Charm Challenge group on Facebook and some of our master classes over the last year. But the reason we invited Michael on today is because he went through his own transformation and you're going to see a lot of the concepts that we talked about in our toolboxes reflected in his own story. So we're going to be digging into who Michael is and why he's such a valuable member of the team. And then we're going to be answering all of your great questions. Now, Michael, Johnny and I know about your transformation, but our audience knows you as the guy who helps us on the show. We drop your name at the end of every episode. They give us the great science. Always doing phenomenal research to get us prepped and ready. But we would love for our audience to get to know you a little bit better. And I know that you've gone through quite a transformation. Oh, yeah. I mean, how much how much time do you guys have? We only have an hour. It's all right. All right. Okay. So I think if if you if I want to talk about my own transformation, we need to turn the clock back a couple of decades when when I was a kid, I was extremely shy and I was extremely insecure. And the main reason for that is that I had I have a disability. I'm living with a neuromuscular condition, which is called spinal muscular atrophy. And in short, that means that my muscles are extremely weak. And this gets worse pretty much every year. And when I was a kid, I was still out and about with the other kids riding my little green bicycle through town. And then one morning I would wake up and I was no longer able to ride that bicycle. And a year later, I would wake up and I was no longer able to run with the other kids. And this was something that just, you know, was a part of my life. And I was always struggling with that, always thinking that I'm not as good as others. I'm not as strong and fit as others. And this really was something that followed me throughout my entire life until when I was 30, 32 years old, this was about 10 years ago, I hit a complete low. And I love how last in one of the last episodes, you guys talked about the idea of have you had enough. And I hit that point. I was unemployed. I was living in my dad's apartment. And one morning I got up and I made myself some coffee, as always. And I wrote a list. I wrote a list with all of the things that I couldn't do. I wanted to kind of take all of that into account, like all of the things that I'm missing out on. And so I sat there and I wrote this for maybe an hour. And when I finished with the list, first I was crying because there were so many things I just could not do. I would never be able to do them because of my disability. And after I stopped crying, I got angry. I got really angry at the universe, at God, fate, whatever you want to call it, because I was missing out on all of that good stuff. And then something happened. And I honestly don't know why something clicked in my head. But I got up and I just slapped my fist down the table and I said, screw this. I'm not living with this. I'm going to see how many of those limiting beliefs are actually true. And I'm going to try this out. And maybe this is the last thing I do. Maybe I go through this list. And every single time people tell me, Michael, you're not strong enough. You're not fit enough. You can't do this. It's not safe for you. And then it would be OK. Then I would lean back and I say, look, I tried. But that's what I wanted to do. And there was this one dream that I had. And I had this dream since I was maybe four years old. I was in kindergarten. I still remember that. And I don't know if you guys know this movie, Naushika of the Valley of the Wind from Hayomi Asaki. And I was watching this movie as a little kid so many times. And in short, it's about a character who's flying around in a flying device. Watch the movie. It's well worth watching. So that little Michael was obsessed with flying. So the first thing that I wanted to try on my list was to fly in a hang glider. And for those of you out there who are not familiar with the concept of flying in a hang glider, basically you get strapped in that kind of sleeping back thing. And then you run until you reach the end of the mountain. And then you jump. And then you fly, which, in my case, kind of tricky. It's not something I do every day. And that's the one I wanted to work on first. And so I started calling everyone out there with a website, with a phone number who knew anything about hang gliding. And before you knew it, someone picked up the phone and I explained to them the situation I was in. And they said, yeah, I think we can make that work. You have time on Saturday. I think so. Whoa. Whoa. And so I went there. And again, it's hard for me to put this into words how hard this was. Because the moment they strapped on that flight harness, that's not a sleeping bag. It feels like it's filled with lead. It's just as heavy as I am. I could not walk in that thing. I could barely stand in that thing. And I had to make it to the glider. And there were two people who were like, hey, you seem to be struggling with this. Let us help you. Put your arms around us. We'll get you there. And then I was at the glider. And that's just a construct of cloth and wire and bars that somehow get under that thing. And I kid you not, there were six people that helped me. Everyone came together. And they supported me. And they put me in there. And they put my legs here and there. And a few minutes later, I was up in the air. So this was a tandem. I have to say, this was a tandem flight. You're not supposed to fly those things on your own. So I had a pilot with me. And we were flying. We were up in the freaking air. And we were at a height of 1,000 meters. Now, what's that for you Americans? Like half a mile. Half a mile. That's called scary for us Americans. Half a mile. And you have to imagine that up there, you don't see people anymore. Like cars are tiny. Houses are tiny. The little white dots below you that actually are birds that are flying really high. And we were up there. And I felt so free. And I felt so happy up there. And then the pilot. So the pilot, imagine this. The pilot is below me, right below me. And he has both of his hands on the bar. And he's flying. And he turns his head to me. And he says, Michael, why don't you fly? I said, what? I said, yeah, come on, man. This is going to be fun. You'll fly for a bit. I said, all right. So I freed my hands. And I reached around the pilot. And I grabbed that bar. And I flew. Like this was so incredible. I was up there, half a mile, up in the air. And I was doing turns. And I flew. And in that moment, my entire world, you shifted. My entire world, you shifted from I can't do this to everything I imagined to everything I thought is an obstacle was just a limiting belief. And we touched down half an hour later. And I was bouncing around. Like all those limiting beliefs just blown away. I was so pumped up. And half a year later, so fast forward to half a year later, I was living in New Zealand then. I moved from Germany to New Zealand, which had been the destination of my dreams. And I was living there for two years. I was working on TV shows, like the Penguins of Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, really popular TV shows. And I had the chance to work on them every single day. I went skydiving, and bungee jumping, and dancing, and jet skiing, even though I'm really glad that no one shot a video of that adventure. And just so many things. And one day, I sat at the beach. This was about maybe a year after I wrote that dark bucket list. I sat at the beach during my lunch break. And I remembered that this list was on my phone. I had written it on my phone. So I took out my phone. I looked at this list again. And I realized that I had checked off every single thing on that list. And I hadn't even realized that this was happening. And I sat at the beach, and my jaw was just dropping. I was like, how did this happen? And I thought to myself that was such an impactful moment in my life, where I was looking at the waves. And I thought, I can do kind of one of two things now. I can either keep working in the film industry. I'll make good money. And I'll travel the world. And I'll work on all these amazing projects. Or I could start giving back. And I could teach other people how to go after their dreams and not buy into their own excuses and bullshit. And that's what I did. And a few days later, I quit my job. I came back to Germany, where I'm originally from. And I became a public speaker. And then, of course, I came with all the skills that I had to learn then. But yeah, that was my transformation. So a couple of things jump out to me. Number one is actually taking the time to write down the list. I feel a lot of us live our lives thinking, yeah, I should do that. Or I want to do that. Or that'd be cool. And we have all these thoughts. But we never actually commit to them. And the act of sitting down, writing out your list and committing to it is a very important first step. The second thing that jumped out at me is I feel like for a lot of us, it's easy to look at ourselves and be like, well, I can't do that. Feel sorry for yourself and give up. And just say, that's outside of my reality. There's no reason I should even try to think about that. I'm stuck with what I have. And it's not much. And in my mind, to face both of those fears, right? The fear of committing to this, saying, hey, I'm going to write out this list. And the fear of, hey, internally, I might not feel that this is possible. But I'm going to go after it anyway. Can you talk a little bit about how you face both of those? Because obviously, for a lot of us listening, I'm getting afraid just thinking about being up in a hang glider and some of the other things on your list. Well, it's not necessarily like the scary stuff. There were a lot of, let's say, non-scary things. I'm not talking about only jumping off cliffs and buildings and stuff like that. There were also other really scary things like talking about my disability openly. I have always made a secret of my disability, which is so scary to admit now. But for the longest part of my life, I would not tell people that I had a disability. I would tell them I was, I had an accident. It's going to get fine. There's nothing to worry about. Next three weeks in the future, I'll be good. I'll play soccer with you. So there was this component of just being vulnerable and telling people, hey, look, this is something I can't do. Can you help me with this? There was dating, which was hugely scary for someone who thought that he's not, it's the right word. I think what was going through my mind back then was flawed, not good enough. So take bungee jumping and skydiving and all that and put it to one side and take all of those very normal human things and put them on the other. And I was like dealing with all of them. And on top of that, traveling to a new country, a new continent where, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I did not know how I would get from the airport to the hotel. Like I was back then, I was walking with a crutch. Now I'm using electric wheelchair. But back then, I was using a crutch and I could maybe walk 100 yards. How on earth was I going to get from the airport in Auckland to my hotel and then to work with my suitcase? So there were a lot of very air quotes, normal things that I was deeply afraid of. But for me, this really came down to the idea of, have you had enough? Have you had enough? And I reached the point where I had enough. And I told myself, look, you'll fly there. If this does not work out, you'll just fly back home. You'll eat a burger at the airport. You'll fly back home. But if this works, it's going to be so amazing. And if you manage to do this for six months, you'll get a tattoo to celebrate this. And a year later, to the day, to the hour, I got a tattoo on my arm to celebrate that. And then I stayed an extra year to go through that. So this really ties so many things together that you guys were talking about in the Toolbox episodes. The pain of growth, where there's the pain of being stuck. Did you have enough already or not? Or do you need some more? And all of that came down on me. And that's what needed to happen. And I've been rambling. Did I answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that stands out to me and I, and the words that you had chosen right there to explain of what do you want to face? The pain of growth or the pain of being stuck? And obviously, I know which one we've decided to take. And a lot of people who are listening to the show who've decided to take. And for those of you who like to listen to the show passively as entertainment while you go to work, we suggest you get unstuck as well and face that pain. But it's beautiful because it's pain either way. And you get to decide. Though the pain and growth, and I remember this morning, it being Monday and in berries. And I was like cussing up a storm in my own head. And I was like, well, it's Monday, but this is how it is. And imagine how you're going to feel when you have that coffee after being here and relaxing, checking out the news for a day and working through that. And of course, you know, the pain of growth comes with a certain reward that makes it worth it. While the pain of being stuck only comes with more pain. Yeah, it's compounding. Now, we want to hear how you got up on stage and how that influenced your life. Well, again, this brings us back to one of the toolbox episodes earlier this year purpose. Because guys, getting up on stage is freakishly scary. And it's so much work. People are always surprised when they want me to go up on stage. And they tell me like two weeks before, it's like, Michael, you're ready to go on stage. You're crazy, like two weeks, that's not enough. Like, you know, this is a lot of work to get that stuff ready. And for me, the reason I wanted to get up on stage was purpose. I wanted to be. And I give a TEDx talk about this. I wanted to be the person that I didn't have as a child. As a child, I could have used someone who says, hey, look, I have a disability as well. You can do all of those things. And if you can't do them, there are other things you can do. And for those that you can do, here's how you do it. And I didn't have that person. I had great parents, but they were not in my shoes. I had great friends, but they were not in my shoes. And I'll never get that person in my life, unless someone one day invents a time machine. I'll never get that person in my life. But I could be that person for someone else. I could be that person for some other kid, some other young adult or adult out there who's struggling with a disability. And I wanted to be that person. And I knew that what it took was to get training in public speaking. So I got a coach. My coach back then was Sean Stevenson, who trained me up to be a public speaker. And then I went up on stage. And it came with so much fear and excitement. The first time I was up on stage, and I just blanked. I just blanked for 10 seconds. And I didn't know the next thing I had to say. But this all tied down to purpose. And the idea of if I can reach one person in that audience, if I can implant one idea into one person's head, we're good. All that work was worth it. But what really happened, I'm going to go off on attention, but I promise it's a good one. What happened was, so I was traveling Europe primarily, but I also spoke in the States and Australia. And one of those talks brought me to Vienna, where I spoke at TEDx in front of over 1,000 people. And a week later, there was a workshop happening here in Vienna that was all about get out of your comfort zone, get more confident. And guys, I mean, I was on stage. I was like, what are those guys going to teach me? I got this handle. But I don't have anything to do on a Saturday. Let's go there. Let's see what's happening there. And I have to admit that that was a real life lesson, because I went to that meetup happening in some guy's living room. AJ, you're laughing because you know Till, mutual friend of ours now. So this was happening in a guy's living room. And at the end of the meetup, we went out into the busy streets of Vienna to do comfort zone challenges. And these are exercises that are based on behavioral science. And they have no other purpose than to push you outside of your comfort zone. And the ones that I picked were high five, a stranger, get rechecked by 10 people by asking them really stupid questions like, can I weigh your pants? Can I put on your shoes? Can I have your dog? And the time machines get. And we can get into that later. So we arrive at the busy street in Vienna. And I froze. I completely froze. I could do nothing. I wanted to high five strangers. And my hand wouldn't even come out of my pocket. I felt like a blind hedgehog who was trying to cross a motorway. I was so anxious. And I was asking myself, what's happening here? I really thought I was confident. And luckily, I had a coach by my side who pushed me through this. And half an hour later, I went through my challenges. And I was so happy at the end. This was really the second big transformation in my life. I went through those challenges at this big smile on my face because I made so many people laugh. I got so many high fives. And I was out there. I was living. I was alive talking to strangers, interacting with strangers. And I told Till after the meet-up, I said, man, I need this. I need this in my life. I need to get this figured out. I'm going to come here every single week until I got this figured out. And he said, oh, man, that's too bad because I'm leaving the city next week. No, I was like, no, no, no, don't do this. And I thought about it for a second. And I said, if it's OK, I'll take over these meet-ups. I have no idea how to do this. No background in this. But I need this. I need this in my life because I need to fix this. And I brought in a couple of other guys that had gone through the meet-ups for a few times. And I held them in my own living room for 1 and 1 half years. Every single week I had 20 to 30 people in my living room. And we were doing self-development work. We went out and we did conference on challenges. And two things happened in that time. One, I got that figured out for myself. And now you see me somewhere in Vienna in the pedestrian crossing. And because I'm bored, I'm holding like a wolf. Or I'm in the checkout lane at the supermarket and I'm bored, so I'm getting some high fives. And the other thing that happened was that I realized I'm really good at helping people through this because I've been there myself. And I know how scary this is. And I know how powerful it is to go through this as well. And before I even knew it, I was a coach. And I was helping people through this in all kinds of programs and online coaching programs and so on. Which is now the basis for our core confidence program. What I think is so remarkable about that is I feel that a lot of us have a fear of public speaking for sure. And as you become a public speaker, I would think that you would naturally have that confidence that howling like a wolf wouldn't be that difficult because you're up on stage giving these talks to large audiences. Why would howling in the street be scary to you? Because public speaking, by the way, I don't know if you guys know this, but public speak, if you send a few researchers out into the world with a pen, a paper, and you have them ask people, what are you most afraid of? The first thing they're going to say is public speaking. Second thing they're going to say is death, which is curious in and of itself. But the thing with public speaking is that it's a very specific fear. It's not public speaking and talking to strangers or talking to that attractive person walking down the street is very different. Because when I'm up on stage, now I'm talking, I'm not talking, I'm reciting. I've written that stuff out for weeks. I've rehearsed it for weeks. I got invited to speak at the United Nations last month. That was a 15 minute talk, 150 hours of work that went into it, writing and rehearsing to a point where I could give that talk backwards and forwards at twice the speed, no matter what. And that is very different from talking to someone at a party or networking event or out there in the street, because now you have a two-party operation. Now, two people are talking. There are a lot of variables you can't control. You can't control the outcome. You can't control what they say. And now you're dealing with a very, very different fear and a very different skill set that is a lot more demanding than only being up on stage and giving a talk that you wrote down. Well, the other thing that goes with that is when you're given a talk, and as you were mentioning, it's you're reciting, you've been planning this and rehearsing this for a while, and you can also get it into your head that it doesn't really matter as if I could connect with one person in that crowd, then this is a victory. And you can kind of like shut the crowd out. And the other thing is the more people, the more they blend and you can't make them out individually, and that also helps in that. I personally know from being on stage myself when there's a few people in the room, you want them to like you so much because they're the only people there. So then when you're out in the street and you're doing something that's non-rehearsed, it is you, and as you mentioned, Michael, it's the other person. So if you go to get your high five and they don't do it, you personally just reject it. You gotta deal with it, because that hurts. I mean, you certainly want it to happen. And as you were mentioning, you don't know what's going to happen. And it's a non-rehearsed thing. And it can be difficult if you haven't done the work to separate those emotions from those very thoughts. And as we're talking here about core confidence in some of the work and all the diffusion work that we've talked about on this program before. All right, this is a Q&A episode. So let's jump into our first question but a quick reminder, if you want your questions answered on this show, head on over to theartofcharm.com slash questions or email us questions at theartofcharm.com. Now we got an email here from Jasmine about public speaking. Hey, AJ and Johnny, love what you guys are doing. I recently got promoted into a managerial role and this requires me to do a presentation about once a month. I'm good at my job, but I get very nervous when I have to speak in front of a room full of people. And especially since I'm the leader of that team I don't want to look insecure. Any advice on how I can work on that? PS, if you could do a month about leadership skills that would be highly appreciated and we will be tackling that shortly here Jasmine. So with our public speaking coach and expert here, Michael what are your thoughts for Jasmine? Preparation, preparation, preparation. Whenever I coach someone to get ready for a stage the biggest problem, the biggest misconception that people have is that what you do is you write something down and you go up on stage or in front of an audience and you talk. And fortunately that's not going to cut it. And going through your talk once or twice it's not gonna cut it either. You need to be really solid in your talk so your mouth does the talking Jasmine and your head can be free for gestures, checking your tonality, checking your eye contact. And you don't wanna be in front of your team thinking what do I have to say next? What was the next thing? This needs to be something that is prepared beforehand. It's that simple. It's a lot of work and that's why good speakers are hard to find. But I will say that this gets easier with time because the more you do this the more fluid it gets and at one point you'll be able to get up in front of your team and not worry about preparation too much. I wanna say a big thing for me after doing Dale Carnegie public speaking is realizing that whenever we're in front of a room we tend to speed up our cadence. The nerves get to us and all of a sudden we're talking faster than the audience can follow along. And it was funny I was out with Amy and her friends this past weekend and they were asking the story of how we met. And I got into telling the story and they were all blown away by the story of how Amy and I met and they were like, wow, you're such an amazing storyteller. And that's a skill I've had to hone. I've told that story now in front of multiple rooms at least a hundred plus times. I know exactly where the audience is gonna be on the edge of their seat. I know exactly where I'm gonna get the laugh and I know exactly where I need to really hold and pause for the drama to build. But that came through practice. That is to your point, Michael, not something that I can script out saying, okay, this is gonna be a dramatic pause. This is when the audience is gonna be roaring with laughter. We don't know that until we've practiced the material not only ourselves in front of a mirror but in front of an audience. And there is a great resource to practice your public speaking in front of an audience and that is Toastmasters. We recommend it to all of our clients as an opportunity if you don't have classical public speaking training and you don't have an opportunity to really practice in front of an audience, that is a space where you can get that ability to read the room so that you aren't just delivering words to a bunch of people but you're managing the emotions. You're using pause and tension to your advantage. And certainly, if you're listening to this podcast, I'm gonna guess there's a high percentage that you listen to other podcasts that are led by comedians, probably even Mr. Rogan as it seems that everyone listens to him these days. But Joe gives you what's interesting and fun about Joe, certainly when he has his comedian friends on is you get a kind of behind the scenes look at the work that goes into that. And I don't think that was ever shown to this degree in a history, at least on a mainstream sort of level. And, you know, AJ, you and I went to see Jim Jeffries a few years ago. And I remember that he was working on jokes that didn't end up into a special that we heard again about a year and a half later that he was working on. And as you were saying, you don't know what the audience's reactions are going to be through the story. And you just can't get up there once and tell it and get the knowledge and then that's the joke. It has to be done multiple times. And this is why comedians look for those opportunities to tell their jokes, to get up in front of that crowd taking on open mic lights, jumping on at the comedy store last minute, letting them know, hey, I need to work on my material. I need 15 minutes here. So for Jasmine to get excited and look for those opportunities to practice, storytelling to practice, whatever those opportunities are to get in front of people and speak because it's in those moments that you're going to start allowing that anxiety and nervousness to start to dissipate. And it's only going to be through those moments that that's going to happen. There is nothing else that you could do. Yeah, and with the boot camp experience, the week-long program here in LA, Johnny and I are public speaking, me on Tuesday, you on Wednesday. And it is a performance. It is getting up on stage to share all of the teachings that we have here at The Art of Charm. But what's so great about it is it provides us that opportunity for practice so that when we do get invited to talk to bigger audiences, to go on other stages, we've had that opportunity in front of the room. So that really is key with all of this practice. So there's the preparation and there's the real-world experience. And when those two things come together, you can become a sterling public speaker. Here's a question we got about a romantic relationship. Thank you guys for the episodes you did on dating last month. I've been a committed relationship for almost a year now, but it was interesting to hear you talk about all the mistakes that I was making when I was out in the dating world. I just wish I would have had that advice a year earlier. Anyway, there is a happy ending and I do have a great partner now. However, now that we're close to the one year mark, it feels like this relationship is now the new normal. I take things for granted. Any advice on how I can be more appreciative of my partner and the life that we have together because she really deserves that. Thank you. Ooh, this is a good one. Can I throw out something that's going to be very counterintuitive and might need a few moments to detonate in people's brains? So, whenever a new core confidence group starts, I start out with a metaphor that goes something along the lines of, okay, so you're at a bar, you're looking at your beer and it's half full. And now the question is, half empty, half full, you never know. Now the question is, Michael, how do I see this glass as half full? Or what's the trick so that I see it as half full, right? What's the magic trick? What do I need to learn? What do I need to practice so I see this as beer as half full? And my answer to that would be, dude, you're at a bar with your friends, you shouldn't be thinking about your beer, you should be enjoying it. So, with that being said, this is the counterintuitive part. So, any advice on how I can be more appreciative or whatever it was, I don't know the wording perfectly, but whatever it was, how can I be more appreciative? The question should be, how can you enjoy this relationship? Like it sounds like you have an amazing partner and you should not stand in front of the mirror for 30 minutes every morning saying to yourself, I appreciate the relationship, I appreciate it. Appreciate it, dude, appreciate it. Be there and maybe the question that you can ask yourself and I'm gonna change one of the exercises that we do in core confidence to your specific question, if you would appreciate this relationship, 150%, what would you do? Write it out and do it. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I think what he's really struggling with is he now realizes that he's not present in the relationship anymore and things are starting to be taken for granted, distractions have crept into the relationship and with it, he's probably feeling some pressure that he doesn't wanna lose all of that amazing emotion in the honeymoon phase that starts with any new relationship. And listen, this is a very common struggle in all relationships. So this is not just you, everyone feels this and we're all struggling to give full attention to our partner, but there are certain things you can do to carve out time to be more present and in being more present, you're going to find that that gratitude and that appreciation flows. And for me, I've talked about this on the show previously, but Amy and I, both busy lives trying to have a successful career, it's not always easy to find the time to manage friends, personal life and dedicate time to our relationship. So what we did was we finish our work week with date night every single Friday. And typically it's us exploring one of the great sushi restaurants here in Los Angeles. And with that, we've created time, no phones, and that has allowed me and her to be present and engaged in our relationship. And now because of that, we've added hikes and we've added other opportunities where the devices don't come out and we can just be fully present for one another knowing that other times in the week, it's gonna be hard. You have work responsibilities, oh, you gotta get that other thing done and it can be a challenge. But if you carve out that space and that for us meant putting it on the calendar, this is a non-negotiable, I'm not scheduling anything else on my Friday night. My friends now know till laughs, oh, it's Friday date night, right? Unless Amy is traveling or I'm traveling, that is our ritual every single week to keep us present, to keep us connected in a world where we're constantly being distracted and pulled away from each other. We also have a fantastic toolbox episode on this exact subject, mastering connection and romantic relationships. We're gonna be dropping that on July 1st. So get very excited about that. Boom. We asked you guys on Instagram about what you struggle with when it comes to transformation. And we got a few good messages here that we wanna tackle. The first one is, I feel like I'm running over the same ground. I know things mentally that I haven't yet implemented. I'm too reproachful and underconfident in all of my relationships and I judge myself harshly. And this is a question we get all the time after program. The guys come through the program and they know that they wanna work on themselves, being top performers, trying to squeeze every last drop out of all of your effort and energy. And it's easy to feel overwhelmed and feel like, oh, I'm not getting it done. I'm not doing as good as I want to do. These goals are too far ahead of me. So what advice do you have, Michael, on how to stay in alignment and allow yourself to not judge yourself so harshly? Well, the one thing that stood out for me in that message was something I know things mentally, but I'm not taking action. I'm not implementing stuff. And that is the first problem because this is what we do in the 21st century. Like all we smart people, we have a problem. We get a book. We get another book. We get another book and we get a YouTube channel and we get an audio book and we take notes and we put them in the binder and then we reread them every once in a while. And that's not solving anything. I mean, don't get me wrong. If you're my surgeon, if you're my car mechanic, I kind of want you to read a lot of books before you touch any of that stuff. But when it comes to social skills, that's when you're at a loss because this always goes hand in hand and I like to explain this as climbing up a ladder. So imagine you're climbing up a ladder, two hands, the obvious. One of them is competence and the other is confidence. And what we as humans always try to do is we wanna reach out with competence all the way up and then pull ourselves up there. And that never works because that's not how you climb a ladder. Instead, you reach up with confidence and you catch up with competence. You reach out with confidence and notice what happens when you reach out with confidence. You're outside of your comfort zone. You don't know what you're doing and it's scary but you're out there, you're honing your skills and now competence catches up. And then confidence reaches up again. And this is what happens with social skills. And this is why in core confidence, for example, we just start out with teaching people to be really uncomfortable so they know how they function outside of their comfort zone. And when they rock this, then it's time to talk to strangers and to go to events. So that's the first part. When it comes to being reproachful and underconfident, well, I think the underconfident thing, we got figured out the moment you start taking action that's going to take care of itself. Being reproachful is something that a lot of people struggle with. It's the idea of punishing ourselves and just notice that everyone is struggling with that stuff. And do we have a name for this? No name on this anonymous Instagram comment. And let me, I wanna ask you, why did you ask for a name? Because I wanted to say, look, sir or madam, I feel you. That's why I wanted the name. I wanted to make this personal. I got you. You know, this is what I learned being a coach for a couple of years now. And I find this amazing that, and beautiful that every one out there is struggling with something, every single one. And so thinking that, you know, I'm harsh to myself. Almost everyone is, which is beautiful. Go to a party, like you, sir or madam, from Instagram. I invite you, next time you go to a social event, lean back, look around and acknowledge that everyone in the room is going to struggle a little bit with something. Now, some people are going to suffer from it. Some people are going to take action and they want to get better. But I promise you that nine out of 10 people are struggling with something. So welcome to the club. Welcome to being human. Well, there's a lot there. I know when I was younger that I felt that being critical and harsh on myself would get me to develop faster and would build more character than having compassion. And what we have learned from Dr. Stephen Hayes is compassion is what we're going to do. It's the key ingredient. It allows us to pick ourselves up because we're going to have to fill in order to learn and in order to build resiliency, you've got to have self-care. The other thing about it is you were mentioning about go to a party and start looking at the other people. We know from doing this line of work for 12 years that most people, when they're out, are constantly focused inward on themselves and how they're feeling. And so therefore they're unable to see what's going on with everybody else. And to give you an example of this, one of the things that we have people do in order before they come to their program is to walk down the street and just make eye contact with people. And what they find out, most people think, oh, I'm supposed to nod and wave or make that eye contact and acknowledge each other. And they usually end up writing me saying, I can't get too many people to acknowledge me. They just look away and I'm like, congratulations. You've just learned that most people are asleep. And in doing that, you have to realize, if everyone's asleep and trying to avoid being awoken, then I've been doing that. And so now you're going from inward to outward and where you can start beginning to correct yourself. And as you're correcting these things in yourself, you're able to see them in other people. And this is when you finally get awoken to the idea that everyone else is dealing with their own garbage. And after the boot camp, we have eight weeks of missions for all of our alumni. And the first few weeks we get responses being like, well, that's easy. Why am I doing that? I already know this. Everyone knows everything, but it's the implementation that's not happening that often leads you to the couch, leads you to the boot camp. And these things build off of one another, but we need to create the space to allow them to become habit, to become something we don't have to think about to do any longer. And with that, understanding mentally, okay, I know everything I need to do, then you need to set a goal. And that goal needs to be the first step in the right direction. Not the end goal of where you want to get to be the sterling social master. But the first goal of, you know what? I've allowed my social skills to be blunted and stunted in their growth by not talking to people. So this week, I'm going to get in a conversation with someone new every single day. Not I'm going to get phone numbers and create dates and all this stuff, but I'm just going to strike up a conversation. Once that becomes habit, you're more sociable and now you can build on the next step. You can't do that by consuming all this information, listening to the podcast and watching all these videos, and then say, but I know everything to do, and now when the stakes are high, it's just naturally going to fall into place and I'm going to go, doot, doot, doot, check every box. It doesn't work that way. And over the course of those eight weeks, by the end of eight weeks, you've planned a party now because you've been working on your conversations, you've been working on appreciation, all these things add up to a house party full of people that for a lot of our boot camp participants, they never would have thought that they'd be able to host that event. But mission one was not, okay, host the event, jump in the deep end, mission one was reconnect with people in your life that maybe you hadn't talked to in a while so you can start greasing the wheels for that event. There's a saying that ends up always coming out of my mouth and it's certainly in dealing with life is you can either get busy living or get busy dying and if you're sitting on a couch absorbing another book in order before you master this to go out and do it, then you're getting busy dying. And once it goes back to the implementation, we all know what we're doing and it's like, oh, I could do that, well, can you? Well, let's see it because if you're gonna sit on the couch and talk about it, you're getting busy dying. You better be able to do it. Now we got another message here. This person is struggling with burnout. What stops me from transforming is that I constantly feel burned out. This is also a common problem we hear. That's a, yeah, I mean, that's a tough one. I mean, in our day and age, everyone seems to be either unemployed or burnout. And for me, you know, I struggled with this myself. And for me, so I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not an expert on burnout. I just have my own experience with this. And for me, it always comes down to the choice between hard work or hard choice. Now, hard work, working harder, harder, harder, getting up earlier and working faster. Well, that's hard work and that leads to burnout. The hard choice sometimes is, hey, look, it's 9 p.m., gonna close the computer, you know, turn this off. It's time to chill out. And I actually have an item on my daily to-do list that is CTFO, Jill the fuck out. And I mean 30 minutes of non-purposeful work. So I can't clean, I can't go shopping, I can't cook, I can't work out. This is really Michael doing something that is absolutely without purpose. And if I don't do this, I don't get the check mark, I don't go to sleep. And that's just 30 minutes, but at least it's something. Yeah, I think a lot of us don't realize that we're not taking care of our personal health. And it really comes down to the holy trinity of what you're putting in your body, how you're exercising your body, and then the rest and recovery component. And typically people who are feeling burnout have issues in one or three of those areas that are not being addressed and all they're doing is piling higher, faster, on top of a very weak foundation. So if you're feeling burned out, instead of worrying about how can I grow and work on all these other areas of my life, take a look introspectively at what are you doing foundationally for your health to put yourself in a position to succeed. Now, if you feel that those three areas are great, I'm well rested, I'm eating well, and I'm exercising, and you're still feeling burned out, odds are it's because you're trying to change too much too soon. And we see this a lot where after you realize, you found, you discovered this, you're like, oh, this is fantastic, I want more friends, more dates, and I want to succeed at work. I'm just gonna run in all three directions and you find yourself spinning your wheels. So understand that we all have these lofty goals, they're all these things that we're working on, but my dad used to say, Rome wasn't built in a day and I've been fortunate enough to visit Rome and I could tell you that as a fact it's not built in a day. Everything we want is going to come with time. And a lot of times we create artificial deadlines and we put more pressure on ourselves thinking that that's somehow gonna produce diamonds, but it doesn't, it ends up burning us out. So look at your goals and say, hey, can I scale back some of these goals while keeping in mind that I need a solid foundation in order to reach them? So here is our challenge for you this week. Michael, as always, we love inviting our guests to give a challenge. What do you think our listeners should do this week? All right, so it's gonna be a selfish challenge because I wanna work with these guys. I know a lot of people are listening to this podcast and I wanna work with them. So join the art of charm challenge. Now you guys have talked about this very often on the show to my enjoyment because that means people join the challenge and I get to coach them a little bit. Now I wanna do this. So everyone out there listening, go to theartofcharm.com slash challenge. Join our challenge. This is 10 days of five challenges. You'll get your private group on Facebook where I and also AJ and Johnny and all the other coaches jump in and coach you and help you accountable. There is now what like 15,000 over 15,000 people in the group. So it's a lot of fun happening there. I'm always happy to see new faces coming in. So I'm just gonna be selfish and tell everyone please join. So I can see you in there. Theartofcharm.com slash challenge. That is your challenge for this week. Thank you for joining us, Michael. We're so excited to be visiting you in Vienna. If you would love personal coaching with Michael to meet him, shake his hand. Thank him for all the hard work he puts in on the podcast. Johnny and I are gonna be there as well to do that. That is in September. So if you'd like to join us for our mastermind, that is the fifth through the eighth or the boot camp in Vienna, that is September 10th through 14th. You can find more information on both of those at theartofcharm.com slash Vienna. Thank you so much for joining us. Remember, you can send us your questions anytime by heading on over to theartofcharm.com slash questions. You can also email us at questions at theartofcharm.com. Michael diligently responds to those emails, checks those emails for us. We love getting them and all of our Q and A episodes wouldn't exist without you. You can find us on Instagram as well at theartofcharm. Johnny, we need a favor from the audience here. We would love for you to review the art of charm podcast, head on over to iTunes, find our podcast and give us a big old five stars and leave us a nice little review. We all love reading them and we appreciate it very much. I love hearing Michael's story. I know we've been working with Michael for a little over a year now with the core confidence groups and he's been such an active participant in the challenge. It's always great to sit down and hear from Michael and his transformation is truly remarkable. Next week is July and that means it's a new month. We are tackling a new theme and we'd love for you to join us. The art of charm podcast is produced by Chris Olin and Michael Harold. Thank you, Michael and Chris. This show is recorded at Cast Media Studios in sunny downtown Hollywood, engineered by Danny Lubber and Bradley Dunn. See y'all next week. Take care.