If you’re a mid-career professional who’s exhausted by your job and overwhelmed by the state of the world, this episode is for you.
Todd and Chris get real about what “growth mindset” actually means when you’re in your 30s, 40s or 50s, and when reinventing your career – and life – is on the table. The purpose of this episode is to give you a tangible framework for controlling – even bending – your mindset and perceptions towards seeing the future with a more opportunistic lens.
You’ll hear:
- Why obsessively following the news quietly destroys your energy and focus
- How to care about what’s happening in the world without drowning in it
- Chris’s honest story of midlife burnout, mental health leave, and rebuilding from the ground up
- The difference between your persona (who you thought you had to be) and your real self (who you actually are)
- Our favorite mantra for Reinventors: “Follow your plan, not your mood.”
This episode will help you:
- Break the spell of worst-case-scenario thinking
- Put healthier boundaries around work, news, and other people’s emergencies
- Start designing a next chapter that fits who you really are, not the role you fell into in your 20’s
Your next career move can be your best one yet…especially when you design it around who you want to become, not who you were.
**Subscribe to our ReInvention Podcast and stay on the cutting-edge with fresh ideas and practical tools to navigate the future of your work!
Episode Transcript
Chris: My boundaries are all wrong. , My priorities as to who I am as a person are not being reflected by how outsized and influenced I’m giving my job that’s not aligned to my values.
Todd: I’m excited Chris to jam with you, my brother on wow, two coaches talking about growth mindset. This is so revolutionary.
Chris: Revolutionary, no coach has ever said the words growth or mindset before. I think it’s pretty cool that we coined these concepts and we’re the first people to ever explore it as coaches.
Todd: Yeah. This is revolutionary, but I think what’s interesting around it is when we’ve been talking, it’s like actually, like we really need to turn into our growth and our mindsets more, especially as we’re reinventing ourselves, Especially as like we’re in this process of trying to figure out what we’re gonna do for the rest of our lives in this crazy fricking chaotic world. This is the time forget about the buzzword and like go into it. Go into it more.
I’m just curious like from your perspective, what is mindset?
What is growth? When you’re coaching people, what is it that you’re actually doing? . What’s the most important thing?
Chris: what’s the most important thing? There’s so many, but I think the first thing for me is just having in general a positive orientation or even a neutral orientation.
Right. I think there’s so many people, I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s ’cause I’m in the northeast and I talk to a lot of people from the Northeast, but there’s a lot of like worst case scenario thinking that goes on, or there’s a lot of negativity going on you know, it’s good to know what the worst case scenario is.
I think like from a, a knowledge objective standpoint to know what that could be. And I think that’s a great perspective to have in the planning area, but that is not helpful when you’re trying to actually surmount the obstacles. Mm-hmm. Right. It’s the positivity, it’s the excitement, it’s the fuel. To get through the difficult times. I think that’s a really important thing is to know the reality, but live and act in the positive.
Todd: So I say the same thing, I’m on board with what you’re saying, but let me ask you how you address this, because people are like, well, there’s so many problems in the world.
How do I not think about that? Or, there’s so many problems in my life, like, how do I not succumb to all the negativity and how do I not succumb to all the negative thinking? Yeah. Easier said than done, I’m curious like what you say to people when they say that to you. ‘Cause for me, I know I get a lot of, oh, that’s just being naive, that’s unrealistic, or that doesn’t have a lot of empathy involved. And I’m gonna address that in a minute, but I wanna hear what you say on that.
Chris: I’ll just kind of come from what I do, and this is, when I’m coaching people, I’m not trying to like tell them what to do, but I am trying to encourage them and lay the groundwork for like, how they can inhabit this. And so maybe it’s a little bit more, I’m modeling it sometimes, but it’s not about being naive and not being tuned into what’s going on in the world. ‘Cause obviously, let’s just say there’s a lot going on in the world right now and leave it at that. Right. And a lot of it’s very negative and people are scared or confused or frightened around it.
And to me it’s like important to be aware of that. Just to live our lives. It’s important to be aware of that, right? And so I do, I do read the news. I’m not like, you know, a hermit who doesn’t read the news, but the locus of what I can control and what I can affect is my life, my family, my neighborhood, my friends, my colleagues.
It’s smaller circles than all the noise you can get caught up with out there. And I think that stuff can be an easy distraction, I don’t in any way mean to disparage people who are really tuned in and really care and are really making an effort to like, make positive change in the world.
Because I think that is awesome. And I also think that that’s what we do. Like we’re coaches because we wanna make a positive change in the world. But if you get caught up in these big picture issues that are like super intractable things that have been going on for hundreds of years, geopolitical issues, that’s, that can be a convenient distraction from just looking at yourself and saying, actually I need to spend more time on marketing or like, whatever really you can control in your life, that’s really important. Actually, I really should be working on that big project so that I, I can be in line for a promotion or, my kid needs more attention with this. Like that big picture stuff can be a real distraction. So that’s where I try to say no about it, but don’t be like, attached to it or sucked into it.
Does that resonate?
Todd: so
I’m a little bit more direct in my boundary I have around like, all the things that are going on in the world. And I’m gonna be upfront with you, man. Not everyone loves my approach on it. Okay. Because mm-hmm. I don’t watch the news virtually at all. I don’t follow the geopolitical, economic warring state of the world as much as 99.99% of the people.
And it has really served my life. And I wanna say a couple things on this. Number one, and my family will be the first people to come at me on this. Like, how can you not get involved? You’re somebody that’s out there trying to help people, yet you’re not really in touch with what’s going on in the world.
And you don’t care is what people say number one, I know what’s going on in the world. I can have like a two minute conversation with you or my sister or somebody and like I know what’s happening in the world. You still get the news when you don’t want the news.
Chris: You can’t avoid the news.
Todd: like I know what’s happening in the world, but I have a boundary around like how much I’m gonna get sucked into and have this affect my mood. And I found this to have like great benefit in my life, for a bunch of reasons. The second thing that people say to me is, well, yeah, it’s because you don’t care. That’s not true at all. I really care, I have a lot of empathy, in my body. My choice though, and maybe this is a little bit different than how a lot of people hold it, but I believe that the greatest thing that I can do to contribute to good things happening in the world is to work on and develop myself, and then help others in my field of influence.
Yeah. in my family, the people in my communities, the people that I’m talking to on social media, and just stay in that lane as much as I can. Even when there’s gonna people coming at me and saying, you’re freaking naive, and you’re not even like involved. I’m. Standing in a frequency of energy because I believe that that holds the keys to truly making big changes underneath the hood.
I don’t really believe that the way we’re gonna change the world and change the economic crisis and change the environmental crisis is gonna come solely from top down political, economic means.
Chris: It can’t, it can’t,
Todd: it can’t.
Chris: All those big problems really have to come from the 8 billion people on earth.
Todd: That’s what I’m saying, and we don’t get that this is a buzzword. It’s like, oh yeah, we all need to change. And then the world changes because, one of my teachers told me long ago, he’s like, look, you think that there’s problems in the world, the problems were created by people like the wars and the economics, and the politics. These are created by humans. If we wanna change it, humans need to change. I took that to heart. And so there’s this whole idea of a tipping point eventually happening. The idea that we can actually change things, but it needs to happen when a critical mass of human beings make the internal change that will then change the way that we commune and create structures and all these things.
And that sounds pie in the sky to a lot of people, but like, I just really believe it. And so that’s the game that I’m playing. And it’s not naive in my opinion, and it, it isn’t that I’m not empathetic. I actually feel that I have a lot of empathy, for my family, for you and your family, for the people, for all the people that are suffering.
There’s so much suffering out there. And for me, I just want to stay in that lane of being light, being a positive influence. And maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I am naive, but that’s at least right now, the choice that I’m playing. What do you think?
Chris: it’s choosing, I think it’s choosing to be effective in the way that you can be effective.
I look at this like I could have been in my corporate career before I was a coach. I could be working whatever, 50 or 60 hours a week. And then let’s say I was like really involved on the outside and, communication or protests or something like that, or whatever.
It was in this big geopolitical scale. The truth is, is that it was very hard to have energy for anything outside those 60 hours of work that week. And then I had my family, and then I had all this. So it was like, there wasn’t a lot of contribution I could do in those other spaces. But now my whole life is dedicated now to coaching people, to supporting people to live better lives, to contribute more. A lot of people I work with are coming from, like a bank and now they’re working for clean technology is one example of it, I’m helping people actually convert their lives into ways that are more contributory and like where the rubber meets the road.
To me, I don’t even accept the criticism of, I’m not engaging in the big picture because changing one human life is the big picture.
Todd: Yeah.
Chris: That’s the whole thing, right? If I could get to all 8 billion people, I would, but I’m probably gonna run out of time Todd.
But like, I’m gonna work with as many people as I can to help them live their better lives and do their better work. And that is how we change this big picture.
Todd: So lemme ask you a question, I’m curious how you do it. It’s hard work because what we’re talking about is putting some blinders and boundaries around, like all the things external.
And then focusing on our internal orientation and making it more positive. Right. That’s hard work. Yeah, because I’ll tell you, I’ve been doing this a lot for like 20 years, and I am still, at times when I sit with myself, like overwhelmed by how much doubt or fear or like lack, and I sit with it, you know, it’s one of my practices, I don’t squash it down ’cause that doesn’t work.
I allow it and then I gently try to shift using all different kinds of practices to start to see things a different way. This is where the real change happens, you know, is when you observe yourself and you start to see now most people don’t wanna play that game. You know, they’re scared to stop and sit or I don’t have time.
And that’s why we distract ourselves with TV and the internet and scrolling and alcohol, all these things, right. But to sit with yourself and observe is the hardest thing to do because then you start to see, man, like I’m wired to be like pretty fearful. I’m wired to be pretty negative.
How have you started to traverse those waters, for yourself and for people you work with? What is it that you do to make that change? Because that’s where it really happens.
Chris: That has been a major, major change for me personally, right. Is that, I would say up until, seven years ago or something like that, my reaction was, the word you said was squash.
Squash that, you know, don’t go there. , And I think the thing is I could, get the work done, advance my life, do the things I needed to do and stay positive enough, let’s say to like, keep moving the ball.
Chris: Really allowing myself to learn to sit with it and feel it. When you have the day where maybe you paid a little too much attention to the news I don’t know what it is, but it’s heavier. It’s heavier that day. Take that gift and kind of be like, okay, let’s feel where all that sits. And like, not try to just put on blinders and run away from it in that moment For me, I think it’s allowing myself to maybe process the hurt of it all sometimes, or the fear or the uncertainty or whatever you wanna say about it and like accept that that’s a part of human life and that’s okay.
Todd: I’m gonna ask you a question on this. Yeah. If you don’t mind interject we started working together, right? Yeah. And we’ve got to know each other, doing all these talks and. You were in corporate and you got really burned out and you even told me at one point that you started dealing with some mental health stuff, right?
Chris: Oh yeah.
Todd: You actually have to take a leave of absence. We never really went into that.
Chris: No. This is big. Yeah.
Todd: I don’t know if you’re open to sharing a little bit about what was going on there, but I think this is what a lot of people are just dealing with is real stuff that they don’t even have an outlet to process this or know what to do with it, you know?
And I think you went through that and then reinvented yourself. What was that like for you and what were you dealing with and how did you eventually hopefully transcend it?
Chris: funny ’cause when I actually ended up taking a leave from a mental health perspective, I would not recommend that people let themselves fight through the wall of burnout for as long as I did.
I actually look back on it and it’s funny ’cause when I actually took a mental health leave, I knew I wasn’t in the right role.
I knew I wasn’t doing the right thing for years, Todd, I’m talking about easily a decade. Right. And just soldiering through being like, work’s supposed to be hard. This is what you do, you know, I’m the breadwinner. All that stuff going on. I started to go to therapy. I actually worked with my own coach a little bit and started to just realize that I was making a choice to keep doing this thing, even though it was hurting me. Like it really was hurting me. The work was so misaligned to who I am.
Todd: , Burnout is like a thing. It’s a medical term even for us to talk about. It is like edgy, but millions upon millions are dealing with it. And you kind of went through it and came out the other side. When did you start? So I’m glad you got help. Like, she saw a therapist and stuff but like your wife, did you start telling her about it?
I mean, like, this is hard stuff, because all of a sudden it’s that identity, who you were starts to break down and then all of a sudden you have to now really think about who you are in addition to this very real internal pain that you’re going through. I mean, it’s like, one after the other. I’m just curious what it was like,
Chris: Well, my wife probably had burnout about hearing about my burnout. So there’s that, right? That’s sort of why I ended up seeking, you know, therapy and working with a coach was because, my wife’s incredibly supportive with all this stuff, right?
In terms of like my entrepreneurial journey and all this, all this stuff. But I didn’t want to continually be burdening her with, it’s not even like I was sitting and having long, deep conversations around this with her as much as like, I would have a shitty workday after the millionth shitty workday, and then she’d have to deal with the guy in a shitty mood coming outta that workday.
Right. And I didn’t want that. I didn’t wanna bring that to my relationship with her. It really got sharper too, like when we had kids, right? So I really didn’t want to be somebody who was, a disgruntled worker who did some escapist drinking and then like, was with his toddler. That was a big, big flag to be like, oh, I have a lot of work to do on me. Originally I thought I was saying going to therapy and coaching to cope with my situation. And it quickly transformed into me being like, oh, I have to change the circumstances because the circumstances are, are hurting me. I have situational, mental health, depression and anxiety it’s very circumstantial. As soon as the work got removed, there was like a sea change in like who I was and how I felt. Right. But it took a lot of time me to realize that.
Todd: Was it like a day when you realized, was it like, this sudden like, oh my God, the situation is that bad?
I am literally like doing things that are not representative of who I am. Like I have a little baby at home and I’m coming home hungover or drunk and like I am not being the best version of me. Like wake up call. Like, I’m just curious ’cause I think so many people are dealing with this and obviously the conversation has a lot of empathy because we want to get people to the other side where you’re at ’cause you’ve reinvented yourself.
Yeah. And it’s really impressive, you know, but like, I’m just curious about that transition from probably hitting some low lows. Yeah. Into like, then being like, man, I gotta turn to this. I need to like look this in the eye and question who am I? And then do things to make that change. I mean, God bless you that you did it, brother.
I’m just curious like how you got there.
Chris: It’s funny, ’cause I’ve always been a, contemplative, philosophical person, a a thinker type of thing. so I’ll tell you this, it definitely wasn’t a one day switch flip type of thing, right? It was probably for 15 years there was just some through thread going through my mind of like what is, you know, what is it all for? Like what are we doing this for? Like why am I doing this? All of that sort of philosophical stuff. But like as I got into just seeing the pattern of first with my wife and then with my kids being like not able to really be present with them as much as I wanted to be.
Some of this was just sort of like on your every day, not being able to be present with them in the moments. ’cause I kind of had something stressing me out that I was thinking about. And then also some real practical examples of like literally having like a senior executive call me while I was in like the Lego store with my kids right before Christmas and had a senior executive call me with a manufactured emergency that like could have fricking waited three days.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Chris: And I sort of went with that and helped him solve his problem. that was like a wake up call for me. I should have said to him, no matter how senior he was essentially grow up. We can deal with this on Monday.
Todd: Did you say that?
Did you like confront him in some way?
Chris: I didn’t say that in that moment. Now, later, on that same project, I didn’t say grow up, but I did put a boundary and he was like, Hey, we really need to do X, Y, Z. And I was like, yeah, that actually we can take care of that next week. That’s fine. And I had that kind of conversation with him. He ultimately signed off on me getting laid off about a year later from, from that company. Right. which I was glad for. You know, so I think that that might’ve been kind of a wake up call for me to be like, my boundaries are all wrong. , My priorities as to who I am as a person are not being reflected by how outsized and influenced I’m giving my job.
That’s not aligned to my values.
Todd: Yeah.
Chris: I’m giving it way too much power over in my time.
Todd: Yeah. It’s funny, I love hearing like the specifics of like in the Lego store, I could feel you like being in there.
Chris: In there with my kid, like looking at Legos this is completely wrong. My one life on this planet. And that little girl’s right there looking at those Legos and wants me to be enthralled with her. And I’m talking to this, what’s the fancy word for dipshit?
Todd: I wanna ask you also, I mean, by the way, we didn’t know we were gonna go here, we’re flowing here, but we’re talking about mindset and I think one of the things that, you know, you and I love to talk about, especially for all these people out there that we’re helping reinvent themselves, and man, it is just. A revolution of reinvention happening right now. And for the people that are like listening to this, in some situation work-wise, mostly it could also be relationship wise, but work-wise where you just know it’s not working.
There just is a lot of hope that you can get to the other side of this. And I think one of the fascinating things is this notion of identity. You know, this question of who am I? Because from my experience, and it’s very different than yours ’cause I’ve been coaching for 20 years, like I’ve been, I’ve been like literally helping people
Chris: yeah
Todd: with processes like this. So I’ve been on the outside, I’ve never gotten burned out. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been stressed or had bad times in my life or career. It just means that I haven’t been in a corporate environment where I’ve gotten burned out. And the thing that I’ve always noticed is that there’s almost like this narrative from school to going to the right school to getting the right jobs, and all of a sudden you’re in this situation and it’s not at all what you thought it was gonna be, or, or then you start thinking, did I even think,
Chris: Well, you didn’t even think what it was gonna be.
Todd: I didn’t even think I knew it was gonna be right. You know? And then all of a sudden you start, the way that it works is people start reading Deepak Chopra books, they start like exploring silently.
You know, I used to see this in New York when I lived there, Chris, when I was living in New York, I would see in the morning these guys in their suits reading the Wall Street Journal. But then I would see a book behind the Wall Street Journal, and then it would be like some, like Eckhart Tole Power of Now book.
You see things where this process starts, but at the end of the day, what you get confronted with is your identity. Like this old identity that got built up and then this realization that man, like that isn’t really me. Yeah. That isn’t who I am in my, my best self.
I’m not being authentic with who I am. And then it’s like a really tough moment where you’re like, well then who am I? And , how can I possibly even start to understand that and maybe even start embodying it because this is gonna be really hard. ’cause people, family, my kids, have an expectation of me I’ve built up this trajectory and now I’m in this place where I’m like questioning it. It’s a hard moment. What, what comes up for you as someone that really went through that and did reinvent and got to the other side?
Chris: I think it’s funny ’cause I think for me, you, you nailed it, right?
It’s like this idea of I was like, go back to the beginning. I was like straight A student. I like got into the good school. I went on the path and I came outta college very sort of like unclear what I wanted to do, but circumstances of life, I snapped in and did the responsible thing.
But in doing that, I created. A persona, not an identity, but this like professional persona. This idea I had a very traditional, you know, a very, let’s say it like straight white man, businessman, professional persona of like what Chris should be you know? And like, maybe that was fine to some extent.
But then as I started to climb in my career and spending more and more hours working, it’s like, how much of my life is this persona versus how much Chris is left around the edges of it? This really helped once I started to actually talk about it and lean into it and think about it more, was that, there’s the circumstantial responsibilities, like as the breadwinner, making a certain amount of money, the financial responsibilities.
Those are real, the persona is constructed. Right. That isn’t the only version of me that can earn money and be successful and fulfill those financial responsibilities and other responsibilities. Right. But I had kind of over time bought into it where it was literally to the point where I would be, I didn’t want people at Moody’s, this place I worked for so long, knowing that I played music, knowing that I had creative elements because
Todd: Oh right, you told me that you had to bring your guitar, you’d hide it.
Chris: I would like go out the back staircase, because I didn’t want them to see, I was like carrying a guitar again I wasn’t like in a punk rock band that was like, f financial services. But it was just in my mind there was this sort of like businessman persona that didn’t jive with, a lot of, that’s my own absorbed constructs from my childhood and famiily.
Todd: No, but this is actually what goes on. You know?
Chris: It is a real thing. Yeah,
Todd: it is. I mean, look from somebody that’s been like helping people do this, it’s amazing what, what people do to protect their authentic self from the persona, you know, that they’ve had to build up to create this career.
And I think it’s probably at the heart of like successful reinvention. And I want to share why I’m gonna get a little bit like Todd coachy here, because I think it’s like really interesting for people to understand. We’re always creating personas, right? We’re always creating a persona. And when we look to this notion of reinvention, which means that, hey, I’m not happy on this current trajectory. Like reinvention. There’s an re in front of the word invention because you’re, you’re lifting up the record needle and you’re potentially putting it somewhere else. ’cause you want a different trajectory. And this is why Chris, when I am doing this work and what we’re doing in our work together is always starting with clarity and getting a clear vision for what you actually want.
Reinvention to me has to start with permission about what is authentically or what would make me authentically happy. Most people were never asked that question. You were a straight A student, you went to Brown like you did well. No one ever asked you that question. No. Like, what, what do you really wanna do?
Who are you really? Very few of us got that level of parenting or teaching from others. It just isn’t built into our culture. We’re all here to like literally fill the workforce, you know, and fill roles in a workforce to some level of financial degree.
Chris: Right.
Todd: And for me, what’s happening right now on this planet, it’s really important where it’s an opportunity for a lot more people to ask this question of like, well, what would make me really happy?
And when you start with clarity and you give yourself that permission to just have that life vision, then what you can start to do is create a persona that is more aligned with that version of you. That’s like the most freeing thing. You want freedom in your life. Create a life vision, you know, that gets you excited.
And then start going for it, you know? And then see what happens. ’cause now you’re aligned because everything you’re talking about before is completely misaligned.
Chris: Well, I love that. I love that idea of creating a, an aspirational persona, right? It’s who I wanna be, but I think for most people it’s actually gonna be, it’s who I am, and it’s peeling back the layers to reveal back to who I am as opposed to like, you know, in my story and many others, I created a persona out of necessity or perceived necessity, but not like desire or joy or excitement to be that person.
I was like, this is what I have to do to get by in this distasteful, dystopian corporate environment, or whatever you wanna call it. You know?
Todd: I mean, look at you now though, you’re doing a podcast with me, you’re doing coaching, you’re freeing yourself to like actually be more aligned with that person, right?
You love to like, play music and perform and you’re, you do comedy , and all these things are now more back in line what is that like for you? Do you feel different? being able to be authentic.
Chris: Even in just some of the stuff I do to communicate around my coaching and then to meet with new clients and even marketing my business, it’s so centered in who I am.
It’s so much more natural that, I mean, the work is easier. Even the hard work is easier because it’s so naturally who I am. But also there’s, just in general, I feel permission doesn’t even apply to me anymore. I guess I was looking for permission back then, but like, it’s almost like the concept of permission is gone for me, where I’m like, yeah, I, I make music.
I, I do comedy, or at least I say words in an attempt to make people laugh, will debate whether that’s comedy, but I feel so free and able to express who I am that it almost is like a non-con to me, this idea that I would suppress who I am, and again, I don’t wanna get it twisted.
Still, like in a business setting, and when I’m working with my corporate clients, or if I’m working with an individual, there is professionalism. , You’re not getting the wackiest, strangest parts of Chris at all times or whatever it is, right? It’s, I, I wanna be clear, like there still is a decorum as, as a human being, but it’s not feeling this need to, to hide or give people the really, really narrow, polished version of what I think they want.
Right? I mean, really it’s kind of ties to like this, this people pleasing idea too, right? If you want to get down to that. not having to even engage with that anymore has been I mean, talk about joy and freedom in life that I’ve gotten from that. It’s unbelievable.
Todd: Yeah. I mean, know what the funny thing is about this whole reinvention thing, this whole process of reinvention, and you and I have talked a lot about this behind closed doors, but we might as well just say it up front now, is that it’s a process, Listening to this, you wanna start gauging where you’re at in the process. So when we went into kind of your personal story, man, I appreciate you letting me do that. That wasn’t planned. We were just kind of like jabbing on it. Like, you know, you come to this notion of reinvention, usually through pain and suffering, you start there where you start to realize that this shit just ain’t working, you know?
And I don’t really have anyone to talk to. I didn’t really know where to go, and I didn’t really know why you were smart. You got a therapist, you got a coach. Like you started to do things out of necessity, by the way, because
Chris: yeah, I was smart after a long time, but yes, okay.
Todd: It beat you down so that’s like stage one, you’re like at this place of stage one, and then you start to open up, you start to open up to somebody, you start to see a little bit of the light, maybe you start to take some action. You’re starting to get to that next stage of reinvention where you’re like, there is possibility on the other side of this. Like, I’m not alone.
Like other people have traversed these waters and there’s a lot of people like us helping people do that. And maybe, maybe just maybe there’s a possibility that my life can be abundant in ways, even my money making, I can’t even tell you how many stories I have. I mean, I will tell you on this podcast of people that I’ve helped reinvent their career that never in a million freaking years thought that they can be making money doing the thing that they’re doing now.
Right. And by the way, making more.
Chris: Yeah.
Todd: Like making more than they were. Like that’s the big aha. So that gets to stage three where you know, then you start transitioning and you’re like, wait a minute, me being authentic and free, there’s a possibility that I could actually like start tying all of these things together.
And become a whole person. And then you start becoming even more present with your family and the people that you love. Like it really is a big transition where at the end of reinvention, you’re a new person, you’re a new identity, a new avatar, but it’s one that’s aligned with who you really are. And all the pieces are working much better than they were before.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. As we’d say in corporate, there’s synergy it is funny ’cause it is revelation in a way, right? For, for me at least, it’s like, this is who I am, right? This is who I am. And on some level, of course, always who I’ve been, but I had like built that persona and was kind of married to that concept and trying to live in that way.
And for me, reinvention was almost rewinding back to, oh, the person underneath who we’ve been holding down for so long, let’s see what he’s got to say about this. And I love what you said about people finding even like more wealth and abundance sometimes when they do this, right?
I mean, we hear that story all the time, right? At some point, the switch flip for me where I said, okay, ’cause I was pretty successful in corporate, right? I was like, I’ve been really, really, really successful doing work that I hate. What makes me think I’m not gonna be successful doing work that I love?
Todd: Exactly.
Chris: Like of course I like, I still have me, ’cause I would always be like, well, I don’t have the skills. I don’t, I’ve been doing this, I have this experience. If I depart from this experience, I’m gonna have to start all over. But I was the one figuring it out all along. I was very capable.
I was solving all these problems that were being thrown at me. Now I get to use all that skill and all that problem solving capability. On the problems that really matter to me, I’m better at it, but that was a hard flip for me to come to. Especially in corporate, that mindset of I’ve done this and people only want me because I’ve done this, so I have to keep doing that.
And things that look just like that.
Todd: Right. No, I mean, reinvention is real life. I mean, it’s a process of transformation because all of us, every one of us is very limited. We are literally like just walking this path, you know, until you get to a point where we’re like, well, what is this about?
And then you wanna like stop and lift up the needle, and then you wanna start to think, well, what is possible for me? And look, I think this conversation and people listening to this and people reinventing, like, we’re lucky to be able to even consider it. A lot of people aren’t even in a situation where this is even tenable, you know, or not even there in their own growth and their own mindset.
Because reinvention, while it sounds like really sexy and exciting, and all of a sudden you’re free and you’re doing comedy and playing your music and like doing work that you love, there’s also this element of that you need to create that plan and have that idea and then follow it even when your mood and even when your attitude like doesn’t match up to it.
Because, and let’s just be honest here, like it’s a very inspiring thing to talk about reinventing yourself, but it doesn’t mean that you’re automatically gonna change everything overnight. Like all your fear, all your limitation, all your doubt, all your anxiety does not immediately drop. But this is why we have a saying, follow your plan, not your mood.
Is really important for reinvention because you do need to use determination. You do need to use some willpower. You do need to get up every day and say, I need to reinvent myself. And this is not always gonna be easy pie in the sky shit. I need to like do things, to actually move the needle.
How does that land for you? This whole idea of follow your plan, not your mood, right? Like getting into the real stuff of it here a little bit.
Chris: Yeah. It’s really important. I mean, I think for, for me too, specifically for me coming from a corporate structure into doing my own thing, right? I mean, my reinvention has been going from on a career level, it’s been going from being a corporate sort of cog in the wheel, even though as a leader to being a solo entrepreneur, right? Initially at least. And you know, for me it’s like so many things were done for me by the corporation. Meaning I had all this work to do all the time, but that work plugged very neatly into like the puzzle piece of what the corporation was doing. And so like I had a plan, I had a calendar, I had a schedule, but like I didn’t really have a whole heck of a lot of autonomy about how I made that, right?
you know, the Lucy and Ethel on the conveyor belt, ’cause I’m 105 years old, like the chocolate still had to be eaten and packaged.
Todd: I get it, I get the reference baby. That’s one of my favorite reference scenes are sitting there eating the chocolate, right?
Chris: Yeah, yeah. We’ll we’ll put this out in black and white you know, anyway, but like, that’s one of those things where I, when I got out sort of on my own and started to like first just like dip in my toe into how I’m gonna do this entrepreneurial thing. I’ll tell you right away, like I was not sort of mindful of this idea of having a plan and, and building a plan. So. Whole days might slip away where really nothing moved forward. That’s a recipe to get right back into feeling bad and having sort of mental health issues around the thing and being like, really negative.
So I found that out where it’s like, structure and a plan is absolutely critical. Mm-hmm. You know, when you start to do your own thing. ’cause for me it’s like, it, it’s just me. It’s just me. And so there was no organization around me putting the chocolates on the conveyor belt.
I had to do that whole thing. You tell me how you feel about this, but like in terms of like, follow your plan, not your mood. I think there’s lots of different ways to make that real. There’s way too many people on the internet saying things like, you gotta get up at five in the morning and do this and, you know, uh, immediately lift weights and then do 16 hours of work
Chris: whatever that is. I think everybody’s got their own sort of circadian rhythm about like when and how they work best and, and all of that stuff. And for me, I feel lucky to have, you know, as a, as a solo entrepreneur or as an entrepreneur to have some flexibility in how I run my day. But calendarize everything.
I really say what I’m gonna do that day, there is some flexibility and I will move things around, right depending on how the day’s going. So I, I think my mood does come in a little bit where it’s like, there’s days where I’m planning to wake up and work out at 5:00 AM and for whatever reason, that’s not it.
Well, then I’m gonna do that, but I’m gonna do it later in the day, or, you know. Mm-hmm. I still know I getting into tactics a little bit,
Todd: I call this calibration, we both love sports, right? And Kobe Bryant, the great Kobe Bryant, who passed, his mamba mentality, you know, like always really moved me.
Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, these people who were the greatest. That’s why I love sports. ’cause you watch people that are the greatest ever. And yes, they were, they were talented, they were given talent, but then they also worked harder than everybody. And like, like you would have to destroy Kobe Bryant to beat him.
Like that guy would have to have broken legs and Jordan too, you know, like the flu game. I mean, forget about this guy. You know? And we learn from that. Like there is an element for me, reinvention is an internal choice where you say, I am going to go for living a greater life than I have right now.
I am gonna do the things that are necessary to do that. And I know upfront it’s not all gonna be roses. I know it’s going to be uncomfortable at times, right? But I’m going to do those things. I’m then gonna build in calibration, which is that you’re not gonna become Kobe Bryant overnight. You’re not gonna become Michael Jordan overnight.
For me, I build in all kinds of practices that those guys probably don’t do, but they really work for me. Like I meditate a lot. I sit in silence a lot. I go into nature a lot because I need that. I’ve learned that I need to have that.
Chris: Right? Right.
Todd: I need to have those things for me, for this persona to live his best life, like needs certain things, but I am also mindful of how I can get caught up in things that aren’t pushing forward.
You know, there’s the very subtle ways that you’re reinventing
Chris: there’s a real balance
Todd: where you start to see where you can go down rabbit holes, and we’ll talk a lot about that on this podcast. But, at the end of the day reinvention is a process that I think virtually everybody’s in right now.
Like just in the state of the world and what’s happening. Like so many people are in this place right now and. It’s a process where you move from a situation that isn’t that great into a place that has a lot more hope and energy, and excitement to it. And it’s a process that goes in transitions and stages.
And I think that’s our goal of this podcast, is to talk about it, talk about our stories, talk about the practices and techniques that work and the tenets that you can grab onto, so that way you can get to where you’re at faster, which is a much happier, more fulfilled life that has a lot more freedom in front of it.
And mindset is like, so at the very core of it, this is why we, we titled this where we’re talking about mindset, growth mindset as something that isn’t just a buzzword any longer. Like this is it, like you need to look internally put on the boundaries of when we talked about, you know, in the beginning, stop going into toxic environments, stop going into toxic relationships, stop going into toxic, like scrolling on social media and news watching, like stop it to an extent, it’s a call to do that so that way you can start doing this work to wake yourself up and get aligned with that vision that you probably don’t even know what it is, but it’s so necessary. So it’s a process and our invitation is say yes to it. You know, say yes to the process. And we just wanna have those conversations, you know, on, on these talks.
That’s what we’re doing here. You inspired Chris?
Chris: I’m so inspired. I mean, I love having these conversations with people too. I mean, anyone that I’m coaching or whenever we have people in the community and we’re just talking with them and you can kind of see, I think it’s like going back to one of the first things you said here, it’s like around the optimism and positivity.
You can see people. Start to get the kernel or the spark of what’s possible for them. And like to me that’s like the very beginning of the mindset of the growth mindset that we’re talking about. What if the thing I like doing could be the thing I do? Or just that little ideas like that.
To me that’s so exciting. When I see someone experience that and ’cause I’ve lived it and I’m still living it, by the way. It’s an ongoing process as you say. It’s been literal years and there’s still sometimes some stuff I have to unravel from like back in that old persona.
Right. And that’s gonna be, I think, the way it is. That’s the process of living and growing as a human being. So exciting though.
Todd: I’m with you, man. And guys please follow us along. This is the thing that we’re both living and breathing, this idea of reinvention.
I mean, we’re helping a lot of people right now, which is great. And it also helps us to continue, on this path of hope, you know, and freedom, to like live our best lives and have our, our work align with that as well. And yeah, man, I, appreciate you, Chris, just for being really open and vulnerable today.
Chris: Thanks for throwing me some curve balls early on. Todd. I think you some curve balls. Yeah.
Todd: I appreciate that.
Chris: Yeah.
Todd: It’s what I do, but it’s the real stuff. Like we wanna be able to talk about the real shit here. You know, it’s not, it’s not so easy, you know, to reinvent yourself.
I don’t think that it’s easy. I think it’s hard, but it’s possible. And , that’s what’s important. there are things that you can do to get there faster, you know, is the most promising thing. So I’m excited to be doing this, man. Yeah, same.
