Are You Fully Alive? Discover the Secrets to Real Living, ep 914

Speaker A: 00:00:02

Welcome to the show. Tired of the hype about living the dream? It's time for truth. This is the place for tools, power, and real talk.

So you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life. Subscribe share create. You have infinite power. Are you fully alive, dead, half, or fully alive? Let's dive in. The question are you fully alive?

Is kind of interesting because it's like, are you really living? You know, I know you're breathing, or you wouldn't be watching this, right?

You're not in a coma and you're not dead, or you would not be watching this dead with respect to physical heartbeat and stuff. But fully alive doesn't mean that, like, I know many people, and I'll bet you do, too.

I'll bet you, if you're honest right now, you know people, and maybe you are or have been doing this. You're dead while you're alive. You're going through the motions.

You're just moving through the day or the week or the month or the year or maybe even the decade. Let's talk about some of the symptoms that you might see. You hate getting up every day. Every day is like, ah, I wish I could stay asleep some more.

I wish I could hide. I wish I didn't have to go XYZ. You know the drill, right? I. One of the favorite ones of mine is I wish I could be unconscious.

Because no matter what I was doing, my life was such that being conscious, being connected, and aware was painful for a lot of reasons.

And I've gone over those in other episodes, but mine were depression, addictions, failure, self sabotage, and a whole bunch of other things that were not productive and not good. Now, today I'm recording this episode, and I will be the next few episodes in a different recording station. Usually I have that.

That's a great big green screen. I hope you're watching the video. That's a green screen. That goes. There's a.

There's a whole workstation right over there with a big, nice camera and a bunch of other stuff. That's where I usually record. But guess what? My computer is not fully alive. It is fully dead.

And so at this moment, it is in the workshop of memory express getting looked at. And, you know, I built it, and it ran for a year. And I'm usually reasonably good at those things. And I've narrowed it down.

It's either the motherboard, the cpu, or the graphics card. And I don't think it's the graphics card. Either one of the others are going to cost significant money. But that's okay.

So that being dead doesn't mean I am going to stop podcast production. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing videos. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop coaching.

It doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing music, writing books, or doing the things that are part of my fully aliveness. Now, being dead while alive can look like a relationship that's south. You don't really want to interact in the relationship.

Whatever it is, whether it's work or a partner, you have maybe a marriage that's gone south or sour or blase. You know, sometimes those are the worst that's being dead while still breathing. Maybe your finances are slowly crumbling, right?

You have seen it coming. It's like a slow mo train wreck. And you've seen it coming for days, weeks, months, maybe years. And once upon a time, you had energy and focus for it.

And now it's like, doesn't this ever get any better? Is this all I get more of this for another year, decade, or the rest of my life? Is that it?

There was a song that is old, like old as me almost called is that all there is? And the chorus goes, is that all there is? Is that all there is, my friend? If that's all there is, then let's keep dancing.

Let's break out the booze and have a ball. And it doesn't get any more specific than that. And the lyrics were, you know, the verse lyrics were talking about different things.

But point is, gee, I've made some money, gee, I've got a position, gee, I've got a partner, gee, I had a great relationship, gee, I've got a good business, gee, I'm in great health. And guess what? I'm not like, I'm not living. I'm not really feeling alive.

And for some people, it gets bad enough that they do things to harm themselves, they'll cut themselves. And often, when asked about that, I had a relative, a close relative that had that affliction.

And the answer often is, I just needed to feel something during the decades, and they were decades, that I was dead and living at the same time. I remember saying to myself, I don't feel anything. I don't feel.

And it was so painful that I turned all kinds of substances and habits just so that I could be numb. Hence the phrase, I wish I was unconscious, or I can't wait to be unconscious. Sometimes that was sleep.

More often than not, it was some other activity that was harmful or nefarious or whatever. So you've recognized that. Another thing that contributes to that is this thing that we do. We set goals. We set goals in our personal lives.

We set goals in our business. I'm going to lose this amount of weight. How many of you have set and failed at that? I'm going to make this amount of money.

How many have set that goal and failed at that? I'm going to change everything about this or that in my business. How many of you set that and failed? That's a repeated pattern. You're not alone.

We all do it, and we do it way too much. But there's a reason. There's a reason. It isn't that their goals are out of reach. It isn't that you're weak or stupid.

It is that we have been taught almost from the cradle that we're not good enough. We get judged by friends. We get judged in preschool. We get graded and judged in school, in band, with friends, with cliques.

At home, in punishment, at church, in our community, in our neighborhoods. Right? We get judged. How many of you been picked last on the sports team?

How many of you were the slowest at the 50 yard dash during field day in grade school? You know, I don't know slowest, but I was certainly up there at the top 10% of slowest. And my physical development took place much later.

I was a very late bloomer.: 1617

You're not good enough. Sometimes those judgments come harshly. Kids are notoriously cruel to each other. Maybe not meaning to, but unkind.

Best friends one day on the hate list, the other day you talk to somebody, the next day. The next day they pick a fight. They're going to beat you up. That goes on all the way through high school. And it gets worse as it goes on.

It also gets further along when there's this competition, who's going to make the most money, who's going to drive the nicest car, who's going to have the best vacation? And if you don't come out on top, it's not just okay, I just did this. It is. I'm not good enough. What's wrong with me? I suck. I can't.

And pretty soon that cycle, that learning that you're not good enough becomes a poison. It becomes a lethal poison. And what does it kill? It kills your self esteem. It kills your self worth. It kills your dreams.

It kills the idea that you can create something. It kills all that. And the graveyard behind you is filled with the tombstones of half started and half completed projects. Your bookshelf is probably.

And I'm pointing back there because there's a big bookshelf back there you can't see. Your bookshelf is filled with self help books, seminar manuals, and, in the old days, cassettes. Right.

But endless demonstrations or models or detritus from failed attempts to fix this problem. And the reason they fail again isn't because you're stupid. It isn't because you can't do it. It isn't because you're worthless.

It isn't because you're powerless. It's because you believe the lie. I'm not enough. I can't cut it. This good stuff might be for somebody, but not me. All right, now.

By now, you recognize yourself. Maybe not today, yesterday, last week, a year ago, seven years ago. Mine was 17 years ago, and that was when I was 52.

And I had lived up to then swimming in that sewer, believing no matter what I did, it was never enough. No matter how much money I made, and I made a lot. Didn't matter. Wasn't enough. Not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not.

On and on and on. I know you recognize yourself if you want to. Now, the language might be different, right?

The way you describe that feeling, that fear of inadequacy, the fear of judgment and rejection, whether it's among friends, at work, making money, what you drive, all of your clothes, what you look, your face, your makeup, whatever it is, you know that you felt it, and maybe you still feel it among friends. Can I really do this?

The reason I'm waxing a little poetic on this is because, as a coach, a high performance coach, my work is to work successfully and powerfully with those who want to win badly enough to do what it takes to get there. Think about olympians. Think about best selling authors.

Think about those that, excuse me, have large businesses that make, excuse me again, a lot of money. But they want to do the people. They don't fall into it. They want it badly enough to do the work.

Those that succeed are not any smarter than you are or I am. But you know what they do? They get rid of that story of not good enough. They don't do it by fake it till you make it.

They don't do it any way the ways you've normally been taught. Ignore it, shout a bunch of affirmations, forget that. And here's the reason. Those things don't work.

You've been told in subtle and overt ways, like I said, almost from the cradle, as you were judged, ranked, failed, pushed out of the way, picked last, etc. Etcetera, that you're not good enough. Now, here's the funny part.

If there's ten people applying for a job and they only have one job, only one gets it, that's not. And then we turn that story into I'm not good enough. I never get the gig.

I remember walking down the street in San Francisco, and I did not get a very high level, high paying job. I had a good job, but I went for this big, you know, shoot the moon kind of thing, and I didn't get it.

I remember raising my fist at the sky and screaming, I never get the gig. Gig, you know, musician. So I never get to gig.

And I was furious, and I was angry, and I was depressed all at the same time, believing once again the lie that I'm not good enough, not getting a certain thing doesn't mean anything. I didn't win the lot. I don't play the lottery.

But if I played the lottery and I didn't win and I don't get it, I'm not good enough, we wouldn't think about doing that. But we do it in so many other ways, so let's. And that causes us to be dead. Okay?

Repeatedly living in that world of failure, self recrimination goes to self loathing, self judgment, the inner critic, the voice on your shoulder. Who are you to do this? How dare you think you could do that? And it goes on and on.

Now I'm done talking about that because I know that by now I've painted the problem in a way that you're the nodding your head furiously, and you might be shaking with anger as this conversation drags up in you, all those feelings and wondering what the frick is wrong with me? I don't know about you, but I used to do that. Oh, I would get so frustrated, so angry. What the frick?

I set all these goals, I have all these best of intentions, I buy books, I do this, that, and I never get there. And here's the deal. The deal is the beliefs that we have are the drivers for the results that we get.

When your beliefs contradict, I don't care what you say out loud, your beliefs win every time. So if you're going to live fully, it's going to require something to change.

If you're going to go into the high performance place where you get the goals, where you get the gold, where you get the friendships and the relationships and the physicality or whatever makes sense in terms of your goals. Today, I'm almost 69, so my physicality goals are not going to be what they were when I was 30. I'm not trying.

I'm not interested in trying to be one of those that says, hey, at 70, I'm in just the shape I was in. At 35. I'm not interested in that. I wouldn't use 35 anyway, because then I was way overweight.

40, I was back down and in great shape and fabulous and had a. You know, I'd done a bunch of work in there. But I'm not trying to say that. So that is not one of the areas where I'm beating on myself.

But we all have them, and that means you're dead while you're alive. So here's the question. How deep in that swamp are you? How deep in the swamp are you? There's no judgment here.

But I said what I said because I want to. I want you to wake up. I want you to wake up. I want you to wake up to several things. First, you are not alone.

Every person who breathes air, and, gee, that would be all of us. Yay. Every person who breathes air has that problem. Some have it more. Some have it less. Some who are very successful have it terribly.

Sometimes we call that imposter syndrome. I'm not that good. Yeah.

I've had all this success, and I hope they really never find out who I really am or what I really can or can't do and that kind of story. But these are all versions of the same story. So let's go back to the beginning. Are you fully alive? Now, that.

The answer may be painful, but I want to spend the second half of our conversation here answering the question, how do I fix that? How do I do something different? All right, so we've established how we got here. From the cradle, we have been judged.

Pounded, put down, smashed, crushed, bent out of shape.

Or when we get raised up or glorified, we either don't feel like we deserve it, or they do the silly things of everybody gets a participation medal, which is stupid, because then they don't mean anything. You know the drill, and you know how you got there. Go back through your childhood, go back through your grading, go back through your.

If you were in band or in sports or wherever you were dating or whatever you tried to do, where you got crushed again and again. Now let's move forward in business efforts that you've made promotions that you've tried to get. Jobs, businesses, maybe you've started.

So since that pattern repeats, we can take the view that there's nothing we can do about it. We're dead, we're finished. It's toast. That's just the way it is. Or we can go down a different path.

Now, I'm not interested in the first path, and I don't think you are here. You wouldn't be on a podcast called your ultimate life, because this show is about how to help you eliminate all that and create a life of purpose.

Raging, furious, motivating, loving, powerful purpose that you get up and lean into every day because you love it so much you can hardly stand it. A life of prosperity, which is where you create the cash you want. You know, if you want your purpose to spread out and proliferate, you need cash.

Lots of it. If you have $0.59 or $59 or $5,900 and you're trying to change the world, or even your whole neighborhood, it isn't going to go very far.

We need resources, connections, relationships, cash profile. We need to be out of obscurity. We need to do those things if we're really trying to make a difference in any significant area.

And you know what's funny? Nearly every person, and I would say every person, but I'm going to say nearly every person because I'm sure there's one that wasn't.

But nearly every person says to me, I love helping people. I want to do good, I love doing things that I love and making a difference. Some version of that. Well, we all do. So again, you're not alone.

You're not alone feeling in that circular trap of hell. And you're not alone wanting to make a difference.

You're also not alone knowing, if I could just x, if I could just get started, if I could just get the profile I need, if I could just get the support I need, if I could just then I know I could make a difference. I could make money and I could this. This. You're right. You're absolutely right.

But when you live in the belief that you're not good enough, you're gonna fail every time. Now, I have a book I'd like to recommend to you, but this isn't about selling books, but it's called walking without fear. Walking without fear.

It's on Amazon and other places.

But walking without fear, it talks about how we judge ourselves and more importantly, how to get past it, how to end it, how to stop it, how to move forward. How to create purpose and power and move into the truth of your capability.

or: 1214

We got a dog, a very young puppy, when he was just a few weeks old, and that puppy did not exhibit any cringe responses. Pull back any fear responses.

When you see newborn babies, and, you know, I have ten kids, they don't exhibit those things until they have experiences that hurt, right? Touch hot stove, pull it back, get slapped, fall down, break something, you know, get yelled at.

Whether you're a puppy or a infant or a toddler, it hurts. And so you learn these negative things, and that's part of the stuff I said, you get taught from the cradle.

So the first key is to understand that's a learned behavior. If it's learned, you can unlearn it. If it's learned, you can unlearn it. If it's learned, you can unlearn it.

And if you go down the road that says it's too deep. It's in my DNA. It's just who I am. Okay? You can choose to be that, but it's not true. It's true that it's longstanding, habit and practice.

It's true that it's happened a lot. Maybe you've been in bad relationships. Maybe you had abusive parents or, you know, other relatives.

Maybe all that stuff's true, but it doesn't have to stay that way. One of the most marvelous things about you and I as humans is we are infinitely adaptable. We are infinitely teachable. We are infinitely malleable.

We can unlearn anything that has been learned. Anything. But it takes work. It takes practice.

In my case, when I was 52 and I made radical, complete, radical shifts in my life, walked away from the career I was in, walked away from everything I had and started all over again. And I did it because that was the radical change that it took for me. I'm not saying that has to happen for anyone or everyone, but it is possible.

And since then, I have completely changed. I've completely eliminated fear. I don't fear. I'm not afraid of anything.

If someone hates me or doesn't like things I do, I love them anyway because I can. So here is the first principle. You can change this. It's not permanent. It is like a jacket. You put it on, you can take it off.

Now, something that's been around all your life is not as easy as flopping off a jacket and saying, I'm free. But to understand fully and completely, no matter where you are or where you've been, you matter now.

And you can have big impact as you choose to do the things you feel called to do. The second. So, principle one, you can change this. Principle number two, lean in.

Instead of leaning back, when we feel like we're not good enough or we have been pushed around a lot or judged or whatever, we tend to lean back. We hold back. We live in fear.

We wait till it's okay to say something, to propose something, to write something, to put something on social, to have an opinion. Why? Because we're afraid of judgment and rejection. Lean in. So instead of lean out, lean in. Lean into your life. Lean in.

And I'm going to give you some really important areas. So the idea is lean in instead of lean out. Right. Lean out is over here. It leads to more of what you've got. Lean in. The is the path to change.

The first thing to lean into is learning to love yourself. Learning to love yourself. I ask people, do you love yourself? And often people will say, oh, yeah, I love myself.

And then I say, okay, great, I'm thrilled. That's so exciting.

Tell me, if I watched you for a week and I could see everything you did, what would show me that this is a person who truly loves themselves? And other than, you know, I bought a. Bought something for myself, or I went to the spa or whatever, and both of those are fine.

They can't really tell me anything that really shows that they love themselves. Then we talk about what that means and how. How powerful it is at maintaining that condition of not good enough. So lean in.

And the first area is love yourself. Here are some specific exercises. Stand in front of the mirror every day for three minutes.

Set a timer on your watch and look in your own eyes and say, I love you, Jenny. I love you, Bill. I love you, Mark. I love you, Sally. I love you, Pamela. I love you. Whoever you are, look in your own eyes.

And at first it'll probably be hard, especially if you've got a lot of that old DNA, but do it anyway. Something that makes it easier is to think about something that you love about yourself.

So when I was doing these things, and these are all battle tested, done, them all know they work, guaranteed, absolute. But they take work and they don't happen.

Overnight, when I was learning to do that, when I first started the mirror exercise, look in the mirror and do that, it was hard because I would think of all the things that were wrong with me, all the areas that I'd failed, and what a suckweed I was for one of 500 reasons. So what I did, and I'm offering to you as a suggestion, is think of reasons you love yourself. I love myself because I'm here doing this exercise.

I love myself because I won't give up. I love myself because at the core, I do want to be of service and be the kind of person I have declared myself and that I want to be.

I really do want to do that, and I'm not giving up. In fact, I love myself even more for not giving up. I'm here. I'm staying here, and I'm staying on the path. Those are all valid reasons.

I love myself because I'm patient with my teenager or because I'm not giving up on this business thing that I'm doing is being very difficult. I love myself because I finally got the courage to go see a shrink and talk to him about the depression I've been feeling.

There's a hundred reasons you could think of that are genuinely true, because bullshit doesn't work here. It fails miserably every time because you got a b's meter, and so do I. But think of honest and true reasons and lean in to that practice.

Now, there's a book that I really love. It's called love yourself, like your life depends on it. And it was written by a fellow who was a Silicon Valley business owner.

And he got to a point in his life where he was considering suicide.

And I misquoting everything because I'm trying to summarize too briefly, but the bottom line is he made a choice that he was going to spend all of his time loving himself. And so he just. He did what I said, but then he said, I love myself. I love myself all the time.

And gradually, and it didn't happen in a week or a month, but gradually, he noticed his heart softened toward himself. His heart softened towards circumstances and failures. And what he discovered is invoking the true power of love.

Starting first with you is invincible. Cannot be defeated. Cannot be overcome. He became very successful. Businesses, you know, happened. Good for him.

His self esteem went way up, and all kinds of good stuff happened. But read the book. Love yourself like your life depends on it. There's a first edition and second edition. I have both. Doesn't matter.

I like the first edition better. But whatever. So there's one thing. Lean into loving yourself. Another good thing that will happen because you do that is you'll start feeling alive.

And here's another thing. You'll stop paying so much attention to others opinions, others thinking. The second thing or the third thing I want to give you, one is changeable.

Two, lean in. And the first part of lean in, and this is a lean in thing.

Most people spend staggering, unthinkable amounts of time worrying about what others think of them, of their clothes, of their business, of their podcast, of their books, of their mate, of the amount of money they have, you know, on and on and on. And I gave that a name, and it's a poison disease. It's called the witot fungus. W I t o t. Wittaught. And it stands for what I think others think.

You, in all likelihood, are infected with that. So I'm going to say something that I love from Byron Cady. She said, what other people think of you is none of your business. That's a powerful thing.

And to start with, when you think of that, it's like a slap in the face. Well. And then you'll give me 27 reasons why it's not true. Still not true. You cannot change what people think.

You can spend a lot of effort and energy trying to influence their opinions. Most of it is wasted. It is far better spent. And this is what to lean into.

Lean into being the person you want yourself to be, rather than worrying about what others think. Do they notice I look better? Do they notice I have new clothes? Do they notice I lost some weight? Do they notice this?

Do they notice that that is useless, wasted time. You're dead while living. So lean into loving yourself.

This is lean into trusting yourself, your own opinion, your own beliefs about what is right, what is good. Lean into those and ignore everything else. So, I'm going to stop with those three things and wind up here.

Number one, that it is possible to completely eliminate that programming. Number two, the starting point is lean in to love yourself. And I've given you an exercise that's invincible and powerful.

The third thing is, lean into trusting your own opinion.

Stop asking other people what they think and then worrying about it if you don't know or if they're telling you the truth or all the garbage that comes with it. Trust your intuition. Trust what you believe is true and good and best for all concerned. Stop looking for the external validation.

If you do those three things, I can promise you, in 30 days, you will feel completely different. You will begin to set goals and things that you will achieve.

Now, there are many more parts to this, and I can and will do more of them in other episodes than I've done some in past. But the point is, you're a divine being. You have infinite capability. You can change the world with your divine gifts.

Most of us are too scared to do it. Most of us are too worried about wit ought what I think others think. Most of us are living in loathing instead of loving.

And maybe it's only a little. Maybe it's not loathing. Maybe it's doubting. Maybe it's second guessing. All those are forms of the same thing. So I make you this promise.

If you do that, things will change for you. I'm also going to issue a couple of invitations on the screen. There's www.yourultimatelife.com.

there's another place I'd like you to go also, which is Kellen Fluekiger media. It'll show you some of the things that I'm up to, and I invite you to reach out and get a hold of me. Let's connect. I'd love to get to know you.

I'd love to know what you're up to. I'd love to see your awesome gifts and talents. I'd love to understand how great your capabilities are and how you are adding good to the world.

You can, and you will, start with those three principles. This can change no matter where you are. Love yourself fiercely like your life depends on it.

Read that book if you want to, and learn to trust your own intuition and stop worrying at all. Zero about what others think. Those are three huge keys to move you forward, to create your ultimate life. Never hold back and you'll never ask why.

Open your heart and this time around, right here, right now, your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you. Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything. If you want to know more, go to https://kellanfluckigermedia.com.

if you want more free tools, go to https://www.yourultimatelife.ca.