Greg Berard. On Living a Full Life

Part Oprah, part Joanna Gaines, and part Anthony Bourdain, Dr. Therese hails from Santa Monica, CA, and is a Filipina-American Licensed Clinical Psychologist, self-care and personal development expert, and professional life-enjoyer. Dr. Therese founded the LA Digital Nomads and is the CEO & Founder of Exploring Therapy, a wellness community that helps people build a life they don’t need a vacation from. Berkeley educated, she is a mover and a shaker with a passion for sharing about mental health, entrepreneurship, building community, and traveling full time as a digital nomad. Her mission is to inspire people to create more healthy, free, and connected lives.

https://www.exploringtherapy.com/

We will always want more, but we can always, at any time we choose, decide to curb our desire, and take a moment or two in the pure bliss that beauty is always around us if we only choose to realize it. 

This is the lesson. This is the challenge. 

I’m working on a new theory of sorts. A dumbed-down, simplified, lay-person theory on happiness and fulfillment, and as I work through this mentally, I want to begin putting some of these thoughts down in writing.

My thinking can be summed up by saying I think there are three main modes of living (mentally-speaking).

1. Present.
   
2. Distracted
   
3. Deep thought
   

My question is,  why are we so damn distracted all the time? Why can I be one person in one scenario and a different person in another depending on the process or place I am currently thinking? How do I create a bit more balance, a bit more presence? 

My guest today is one of my oldest friends, J Ross. His real name is Justin, and that is probably how most people know him, but I only know him as J. 

This interview happened in a very serendipitous way. We were just having our normal quarterly catchup call and I told him about the podcast, and we got super deep and philosophical and we both came to the conclusion that J needed to be on the podcast.

Besides being one of my closest friends, J is one of the most unique individuals I know, but more importantly, his story is so poignant and his transformation into a passionate career as an army doctor and living a life of meaning, purpose, joy, and fulfillment is exactly the type of story that I look to share and learn from during these interviews. 

This is a super short, unedited podcast for the holidays. Wishing you all a healthy and happy New Year! 

This podcast is about one of my favorite little mindful meditations that I do whenever the occasion arises. I call it, the “enough-ness” meditation. It’s a super easy meditation, but it’s difficult because it works best when you catch yourself in the mindset of “not-enough-ness.”

I had an interesting philosophical discussion today about this podcast and the work I’m doing here. Essentially, the question was, is consciousness actually a good thing? What he meant was, does being fully “awake” and conscious lead to a happier and more fulfilling life, or is ignorance and unconscious behavior and thinking an actually better way of living in Western society? It was an interesting question and one that I had to really consider.

For those of you that live near an ocean, you may have heard about rip currents. Rip currents are dangerous because if you get pulled into one, they can suck you hundreds of yards out into the ocean. The absolute worst thing you can do in a rip current is to try to swim to shore (i.e. against the current). The current is too strong and will pull you out to sea and you will be so exhausted from trying to swim against it, there is a high likelihood of drowning. The way that you get out of a rip, is to swim parallel to the beach until you swim out of the rip current itself.

When we feel ourselves being pulled outside of our control, our first instinct is to resist, to swim against the current as hard and as fast as we can so that we don’t get sucked out to sea. Being mindful and aware of your situation, you can calm your fear, and you can make a deliberate decision to swim gently parallel to the shore and survive. You may end up hundreds of yards from where you started, but that's ok, you can always walk back. You may not be able to get back if you get pulled out to sea.

There is a wonderful metaphor here for life. Sometimes life takes you in different directions. Sometimes you end up somewhere that you didn’t plan on being. Sometimes you have to make hard decisions. Sometimes you may find yourself involved in new distractions. Sometimes you’re not the person that you want to be. Sometimes you have to take care of things you would rather not deal with. Sometimes, you get caught in a current, a rip, a wave.

It’s November 2020, and it’s a pretty bizarre time to be alive. And I for one, am grateful.

Obviously, we are in the midst of some serious problems. I’m not trying to downplay the struggles that many of us are facing. 

But despite all of the craziness, I still say that we are living in an amazing time and I for one choose to be extremely grateful

The Buddhists have a word, called Maitri. Most commonly translated as love or loving-kindness, Maitri also means loving-kindness to oneself and is the foundation of the four virtues, which are:

1. Loving Kindness
   
2. Compassion
   
3. Sympathetic Joy
   
4. Equanimity
   

What a perfect word to describe the third pillar of living a full life and being the best version of yourself. Practicing Maitri is a way to be kinder to yourself as well as feel connection with all sentient beings and only by practicing loving-kindness to yourself can you experience the upper limits (if there is really a limit, I highly doubt) of joy, connection, compassion, equanimity and pure presence of being.

Following 25+ years as a successful sales executive in Mortgage Banking, Bronwyn decided to shift gears and fulfill her dream of being an executive leadership coach with a personal mission to empower women to achieve their personal and professional goals.

Not only does Bronwyn run a very successful coaching practice, but she is a wife and a mother of three, she’s a wilderness trail runner, world traveler, meditation teacher, outdoor enthusiast, yogi, and former Peace Corps volunteer.

You can learn more about Bronwyn on her website: https://www.bronwynmorrissey.com/

About two months into making this podcast, I became obsessed with listenership numbers, constantly checking how many listens there were for each new podcast, and then I began to think about new ways to grow listenership and make the podcast into something much larger.

Growing the podcast is not a bad endeavor, but because I now know myself deeply, I was able to quickly realize that I was becoming obsessed with the idea of growing for the sake of growing. 

If I never took the time to sit still on those long quiet nights, getting to know myself deeply, I would have likely carried on my life much the same way. I would maintain a subtle nagging sense of mediocrity and unfulfillment. I would have continued to work harder just to beat last year's numbers. I would likely have launched some uninspiring podcast about parenting and entrepreneurship (who needs another one of those), and I would have been looking only at how to grow and interview high profile people just so I could grow a following with absolutely no conscious thinking behind it. And maybe I would have been a huge success, but the feeling of mediocrity and dissatisfaction would still permeate my very being.

And this is precisely why knowing yourself and being honest with yourself is the first pillar to living the fullest life.

The first step to personal awakening is to open your eyes and finally look around you. Some people use the metaphor of climbing a mountain while others may think of climbing down the mountain.  I like to think about it as becoming aware for the first time of where we actually are, visualizing the world around us, and slowly picking up the trash, designing our home, and deciding who we want to let in.

The first step to any self-awakening is self-examination, which is just a fancy way of saying, getting to know oneself. So the first step in any journey is to go inward and get to know yourself. You can't climb up or down a mountain until you first figure out where you are and where you want to go.

There’s that old sage saying passed down from older married couples to young grooms, “Happy Wife, Happy Life.”  And it makes sense: If your spouse is miserable it seems to fit that you might be miserable as well. But I think this advice is not complete, and this podcast is an exploration of how I am trying to make all of my relationships better, by focusing on making ME better. 

Born and raised in a single-parent home in Charleston, West Virginia, Amber attended Point Park University where she received an MFA in musical theater. She moved to New York City to pursue her passion for acting, ultimately working on Broadway and touring with the musical Mamma Mia. In 2009, she left the world of theater and earned an MA in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. She founded two flourishing businesses as a professional coach and facilitator—bodyheart and Fierce Loving.

Amber has a thriving coaching practice where she serves a wide range of individuals and also creates and facilitates her own coaching groups for the body, business, and life. Her individual clients range from moms, artists, small business owners to corporate and creative executives.

Amber’s work as a professional speaker has been featured at TEDx Malibu, MSN, the White House blog (Obama administration), University of Southern California, Pennsylvania State University, and more. Located in Los Angeles, Amber lives with her husband and three rescue pups and helps people change their lives for the better as a coach, speaker, and author.

I had so much fun talking with Amber and learning about her story. We of course talk about her experience on Broadway and her thriving coaching practice, but we cover so much more in this conversation. I felt a real connection and kinship with Amber, and while our stories are quite different, our continued missions are aligned.

I learned so much from this conversation with Amber, but perhaps the most important lesson for me was the way she thinks about default programming. I generally try to ask my guests what they do to avoid slipping back into what I call, “the default mode.” I’m curious about this question because I’m always struggling with this myself. Amber’s response was so simple and so not what I expected. She basically said that the default programming is there for a reason and sometimes it’s ok to just let it be. This simple frame of mind, allowing for a little bit of grace, gave me the permission to give up this internal battle I’ve had with myself, practice a little more loving kindness, and create more space for joy - and I have Amber to thank for that!

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, and I would love to hear how Amber's wisdom and story resonate with you.

You can learn more about Amber by visiting her website: https://www.amberkrzys.com/

For years I have been deeply addicted to self-help and self-improvement content. When I would listen to performance based podcasts or read inspiring words, it became like a drug, helping me to stay motivated, active, and engaged.

So, I would take the self-help drug, again and again, to keep me motivated, keep me productive, keep me pushing, keep me busy. I would read motivating books and blogs. I would watch inspiring documentaries and ted talks. I would listen to high performers on podcasts talk about productivity, work ethic, deal-making, and the like. Each medium, a different drug. Podcasts were my adoral, making me pumped to work hard, get organized, get out there and hustle! Books became my psychedelic, exploring presence, spirituality, and the meaning of life. Ted talks and documentaries my Prozac, keeping me happy, jubilant, and grateful.

These mediums are not inherently bad. I am acutely aware of how ironic it is that I’m literally writing this in a newsletter and speaking about it on my podcast in an attempt to inspire others. But that is precisely the point. When these amazing tools are used for the wrong purpose, they can become a hinderance to doing the deep work needed to create real lasting transformation.

So while I hope this podcast and these words inspire you, my real wish is that they help you take the next step, which is a deeper journey into self discovery. Only then, can you begin to take deliberate action, practice real presence, and loving-kindness, to become your best self.

So enjoy the podcast, and I would be honored if you share with me either via email or social media, how you’re beginning to take deliberate action to create the life that you want to live and be the best version of yourself.

Time, it has been said, is our most precious commodity. Unlike money, you cannot earn more. Unlike life, it cannot grow. Unlike precious metals, it cannot be mined. At best, you might be able to prolong it, but at the end of the day, you cannot get time back and you cannot earn more.

Time is a precious and rare gift, and it should not be wasted, but rather earned.

Sometimes it takes a painful physical reminder, like a Stye in the Eye. A physical pain that there is no distraction or avoidance of, that helps you look in the mirror, frightened by what you see, and helps you wake up to the fact that you are unconscious, and unconscious living creates pain, unhappiness, and discomfort, and only when you begin to live consciously and intentionally can you begin to make the right choices that can help you heal, move on, and live the life you are meant to live.

Celebrating National Recovery Month with a special interview.

Luke Chittick has been working in the recovery field since 2009. Luke started in this industry as a Counselor at Beit T’Shuvah, one of the largest non-profit residential Treatment facilities in the nation.

In December 2012, Luke joined Transcend Recovery Community as the Program Director for two of their Sober Livings.

In July of 2015, Luke, along with the Chief Operating Officer of Transcend, created and implemented a comprehensive recovery curriculum for a new sober living called, the Verve, with particular attention to the structure, necessary therapeutic programming, and accountability required for the early stages of recovery.

In November of 2016, sparked by the desire to return to more clinically-focused and direct client care, Luke joined Patrick Hart Consultants as a Recovery Consultant.

Finally, In April of 2019, Luke founded 10west Recovery. 10west Recovery provides a range of services that include recovery coaching, case management, and sober companioning.

Luke’s extensive experience with clients suffering from substance abuse, anxiety, and psychotic disorders provides him a wealth of strategies and interventions to employ with individuals and families in crisis. He is a certified Field Model Crisis Interventionist, holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has been sober since January 2009.

The gift of being human is that we’re sort of part animal and part consciousness and we have the choice to live like the animal or the choice to live as a conscious being. I always have the choice to resist life, resist what is, or to take responsibility for my own state of consciousness and choose to accept what is.

And the amazing thing is that when you can truly accept what is, you enter a state of peace. And then, and only then, does something even more amazing occur - you actually can experience joy in the thing that you didn’t want to do. Suddenly, by accepting that I’m going to play with my daughter, I can enjoy and laugh that in my house Jafar, from Aladdin, is in love with Gaston, from Beauty and the Beast. I can play with my daughter with vigor, attention, and presence of being. If I’m just dreaming of the time when I get to be done playing, I’m literally wasting my life. I’m wasting these precious moments, and whether I have cancer in my blood, or get into an accident or live a long life, life will always be too short.

Acceptance is not easy. Sometimes, I just don’t want to do what I’m doing. But acceptance takes practice, and you have to make the decision again and again and again. But on the other side of acceptance is peace, and on the other side of peace is joy, and who doesn’t want to experience more of that.

Today’s podcast is a special one for me. My guest today is my grandfather, Mel Osterfeld.

This is a unique podcast because it’s one that I never actually planned on releasing publicly, but seeing that it’s National Grandparents Day, and the fact that many of us have lost our grandparents this year due to the global pandemic, or we are in many cases unable to see our grandparents, I thought I would release this episode as a reminder to take the time to do the things that are important to you because we have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

For years, I’ve tried to figure out ways to spend more time with my grandparents. I concocted fun ideas like cooking for the holidays together, weekly lunches, monthly movie nights, and of course, none of them happened. For years I’ve wanted some sort of audio or video with my grandfather and I always put it off because I was busy traveling for work, or busy with my daughter, or busy being busy.

I wanted a recording, in his own words, his own voice, retelling some of my favorite stories. Like the hilarious story of his first date with my grandmother, when he thought he was meeting some blond and a brunette showed up at the door. Or the story of how he somehow convinced a restaurant franchise owner to allow him to open a franchise without the money to pay for it. Or the strange decision to retire at 49 years old, when he was finally making enough money to save a little, because he thought he wouldn’t make it past his fifties.

This pandemic has been difficult for a lot of different reasons, and I cannot discount how fortunate I am to have grandparents to even talk about, but it’s been most difficult being unable to see my family, to not have my grandparents hold their newborn great-grandchildren, and celebrate birthdays together and so on.

At nearly 90 years old, I can only hope my grandfather is around long enough for this pandemic to end, see his great-grandchildren take their first steps, speak their first words, and celebrate their lives together.

I knew I could no longer wait for the timing to be perfect so I took the initiative, and decided it was now or never to get a recording with my grandfather! There is not a moment to waste in this life, and nothing could be more of a reminder than a global pandemic. So I bought my grandfather some headphones and a microphone, shipped to his house, and walked him through recording a podcast remotely. The audio is a bit muffled as I tried to troubleshoot virtually, but the stories are there and they are full of gold!

My grandfather is not the perfect version of full life living. He can be rigid, aggressive, short-tempered, and downright grumpy, but he loves his family fiercely, he has an incredible work ethic, and he built his life out of nothing, consciously and deliberately building a family, working his butt off, saving, investing, deciding to retire when most people wouldn’t even consider it. My grandfather is a force, and when he puts his mind to something, he gets it done. To say I learned a lot from him is a grand understatement. He taught me from an early age that real wealth is being surrounded by a loving family. He taught me the value of hard work, investing, saving, not living in debt, making your way in the world, being entrepreneurial, and never giving up.

So happy Grandparents Day! If you have grandparents alive, let’s give them a call today, let them know we love them, and that they’re special to us.

Last night I had a wasted opportunity. I wasted an opportunity to have a really special night with my daughter. My desire for a hot bath and some alone time at the end of the day distracted me from being the better dad that I want to be, and I know it is a moment that I’ll never get back.

I want to waste less of my life. I want to see these moments for what they truly are, and even if I’m exhausted, stressed, anxious, or frustrated, I want to truly be aware of these moments and seize them! I want to make them into the beautiful moments that they can and should be. And I’m committed to doing my damn best to see them when they arrive, to seize them, and to honor them by making them the most special moment that they can possibly be. And I will fail now and again, but I promise, as always, I’ll be right back here tomorrow, trying to be better.

I have tried to distill what it means to Live a Full Life in one sentence, or in one mantra, if you will.

I am deliberate.

Deliberate as an adjective literally means; done consciously and intentionally. As a verb it means; engage in long and careful consideration.

This to me, is the basis for any journey into uncovering full potential, purpose, passion, and ultimately an abundant life. Because a Full Life is the one that is chosen consciously and intentionally, and that can only begin after long and careful consideration.

This conversation is with my own coach, Sarah Goodson. Sarah has not only helped me level up and launch this passion project on Living a Full Life, but continues to be my guide as I work to uncover my best self, helping me question my assumptions, thoughts, desires and fears, while maintaining balance and presence.

Sarah was born and raised in Los Angeles. She became certified as a coach through Gallup in 2006. She has a Masters in Organizational Leadership, worked as a director in live production for 5 years, then as director of Student Affairs and teaching public speaking at Pepperdine, then finally as an executive in mental health before she decided that it was time for her to become the CEO of her own life, and to consciously and deliberately choose the life she really wanted to live.

As a coach, Sarah provides high level 1:1 coaching in addition to corporate coaching, workshops, facilitation, speaking, and she also puts on a coaching group for female entrepreneurs called Exceptional Women, which is a specialty coaching program for CEO/C-Suite professionals.

Sarah’s mission is to support people as they rise to the fullest expression of themselves, their creativity, and their vision

And this conversation with Sarah was incredibly fun for me because my conversations with Sarah usually revolve around me talking and this time I was able to turn the table and ask her questions, learn more about her own journey, and how she is living a full and deliberate life.

I learned so much in this conversation, not just about Sarah’s story and journey, but about how she thinks about conscious living. How Sarah has deliberately chosen how to spend her life and her time, and the type of principles and questions that are meaningful to her and her success.

We discuss how the death of her close friend and the birth of her daughter were two key moments in her life that truly made her stop and evaluate her life. We discuss marriage, divorce, going pro with her passion, raising children, important principles, and questions to ask yourself in order to drive real transformation.

Living a Full Life takes work. It takes desire. But it also takes stillness and care, love and compassion - not just for everyone else, but for yourself too. If you can’t love yourself, how can you possibly be of service to others and be the best version of you? How can you possibly find lasting happiness or love? How can you provide the loving home for your children? A Full Life is multifaceted. It’s beautiful and boring, full of joy and pain, messy and fun, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

I think Comfort Zone, the very words are just too nice of a phrase.

I think I’m going to rename it! Maybe I’ll call it the Unsuccessful Zone, or the Lazy Useless Zone, or the Complacent, Boring, Dull Where Nothing of Importance Is Ever Achieved Zone.

A Life (hopefully a long one) is not but one moment. It is a life. It’s all of it. And a Full Life is one that encompasses all of the important things for living a great life. A full life, one that I would like to live, is one filled with love, and purpose. It is a life filled with challenges, adventure, success, and failure. But most importantly, for me, a Full Life is the one that I choose to live, and actually make happen! Not what my spouse wants, or my parents want, or what society wants, even if their intentions are pure. It’s the life that I want. It’s taking my unique gifts and sharing them with the world. It’s about purpose. It’s about presence and mindfulness. It’s about self-love and cherishing the mind and body so that they can be in service for a lifetime. It’s about relationships and passions. It’s about showing up, getting into the driver seat, buckling in, and being the best!

It has become my mission to live an Amazing Life, to be the best version of myself that I can be, and to inspire others to be the best versions of themselves and to create the lives they want to live. This podcast is a narrative of my own personal journey, along with rich and meaningful conversations with truly successful people, exploring how to build great wealth, while maintaining balance for family, love, health, parenting, purpose, and passion.

So please join me, let’s take this journey together, to uncover what it really means to live A Full Life.