Wake Up Eager Workforce 
Episode 123 Transcript

Suzie Price: Today, I'm speaking with a former Major League Baseball pitching coach and pitching director, and the current founder and CEO of Soul Integrated Athletics, Douglas White. He is a coach, and he is a very inspired about something that's very important. So you're going to want to tune in today if you want to think about emotional well-being and better understand how our emotions play a big role in our performance, because our emotions tell us what we're thinking. And all of that matters in regard to success in any endeavor. And it is the difference maker. And so it's really going into something that's very subtle, but is actually everything. We all have emotions. Every one of us does. So it's really helps us to understand those emotions. And it's great to have Douglas to talk to us about this. These are leading edge ideas that are going to help you shift your focus. And interestingly enough, this will help grow your self-confidence. It's going to help grow your relationship with your work and the roles that you have in your life. It gives you more hope for the future. All the things that we talk about a lot when we're using Trimetrix, and we're thinking about how we think and feel about ourselves and these things. Lots of inspiration here around self and awareness and building this level of emotional maturity, and I can't wait to share it with you. I know you're going to enjoy it. Michael. Hit it!

[00:01:37] Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, a show designed for leaders, trainers and consultants who are responsible for employee selection and professional development. Each episode is packed full with insider tips, best practices, expert interviews and inspiration. Please welcome the host who is helping leaders, trainers and consultants everywhere. Suzie Price.

[00:02:04] Suzie Price: Hi there, I am Suzie Price and you are listening to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, where we cover everything related to helping you and the employees in your organization. Build a high commitment, low drama. Wake up eager workforce. That wake up, eager theme is something I've had my whole entire life. It comes from early days where I observed people in my family who were not enjoying their life, and somewhere along the way, I decided I was going to enjoy my life and I was going to make every day a new day. I was going to find ways to literally wake up and be glad for the day. And we can all do that. And I think so many of us do. And sometimes with the busyness of life and the pressures on us, maybe we get away from it. So not only can we create a wake up, eager workforce, we can create a wake up eager self and a lot of that wake up eager self leads to being a wake up eager consultant, being a wake up eager facilitator, being a wake up eager leader, being a wake up eager coach, building a wake up eager team, having a wake up, eager family. It's this wake up, eager tells us. The word eager is just like expectation of goodness. You set things up so that your day starts in a way that leads to a good day. And so a lot goes into that is nothing difficult, but it's intention and it's focus, and it's understanding where we are and where we want to go.

[00:03:30] Suzie Price: And everything we talk about here on this podcast is about that. We want to help you create this idea for yourself and for the people that are around you. And it really starts with self. So I'm really excited about this particular episode because it is about emotional well-being. And, you know, we are the vehicles through which we do everything. And so you can't give people what you don't already have some sense of. So this episode today, the title of it is is How Emotional Well-Being is Key to Performance. And we actually could say it's everything. It's everything to performance. This is episode number 123 of the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, and you can find the show notes and links to Douglas White's contact information and other resources that we discuss, and other podcasts that relate to this topic. If you go to our website at pricelessprofessional.com/emotionalwellbeing, pricelessprofessional.com/emotionalwellbeing all one word lowercase. The three kind of headings of what we talk about today is we're going to explore this idea of self-awareness and emotions and personal growth. And Douglas does a great job of bringing that to the forefront. We're going to talk about what is our relationship with any action that we're going to take. And you'll begin to understand that whatever that relationship is and that's your emotional relationship, how you feel and how you are thinking about anything that you're doing is often subtle, but it is everything, so tuning into it is important.

[00:05:01] Suzie Price: So we're going to discuss that. And then lastly we're going to talk about how personal growth and self-compassion, how closely they are linked. Self-compassion means that you're now able to give compassion to others. We can't give people things we don't have. And so it's an inspirational episode, but there's very practical because these things come up in our daily life. And there's some good examples in our discussion today. Douglas White, as I mentioned in the opening, he's a former Major League Baseball pitching coach and pitching director, and he's the founder of the CEO of Soul Integrated Athletics. And he's an emotional awareness coach and consultant. So he works with others. So not just professional ballplayers or people who want to be out of the lower leagues into the upper leagues. He helps humans tap into their full potential and love for life, and he'll share a little bit about his journey around creating this. He loves coaching, but outside of that, he loves surfing and writing and dedicating time to his passions. So I enjoy this episode and Douglas, and you'll be hearing more from him in the future on the podcast. But let's go to this episode now. At the end, I'll share some of my top takeaways and some additional thoughts. Enjoy the episode. All right, Douglas, it is so nice to have you here on the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast. Thank you for taking time to be here.

[00:06:17] Douglas White: Yeah, super excited and love sharing time with you.

[00:06:21] Suzie Price: I'm going to jump right into our first question. You had a crazy great career as a professional baseball player, a major league pitcher coach, and now you're co-founder of and CEO, actually of Soul Integrated Athletics. So I want you to talk a little bit about some of your experiences in this incredibly high stakes baseball world, and talk about how that translated into your passion for what you're doing today in soul integrated athletics.

[00:06:49] Douglas White: Yeah. Okay. So I mean, I love starting with this. First off, I was not a good player. My career was, you know, for lack of a better term. It was horseshit. It wasn't good at all. But that experience completely set me up for my next role to be a pitching coach, which completely set me up for this next role to be the CEO, founder of Sole Integrated Athletics. The Non-ability to pitch well made me ask all the questions, and so it let the universe just file in all the answers. And I mean the people I met, the conversations we had, the inspirations I had, the downloads I had along the way, all the struggles, all the, you know, running into the same wall over and over again. That set me up beautifully to be able to transfer from a minor league pitching coach, someone who's struggling, not believing in themselves, so on and so forth, to be able to then transfer into the big leagues, because I was able to find a route between lack of belief to man, you better get your act together, or you're not going to be able to get where you want to go in this career.

[00:08:00] Douglas White: And so I had to find a path emotionally, feeling wise. I had to find my path to belief in myself and the knowing in myself as a coach. So one day I was then developing pitching systems, and then I was, you know, the big league guy. And then all that information, all that experience being on the inside of a professional organization or organizations led me to the idea so I could create sole integrated athletics. And the idea behind that is these athletes are wanting so badly a system of ease so they can be better at their job. Most of them very much love what they do, but they can't see the path from where they are to where they want to be. And so it's my job with this company is to create an infrastructure. And we're doing that through a platform. But we want to create an infrastructure where man, the athlete gets the information they want and need to not only survive, right. Because part of it is surviving for sure. And then turn that into a thriving situation. And that's what I'm working on currently.

[00:09:14] Suzie Price: That's amazing. And it's you know, you can relate to them in a way that nobody else can.

[00:09:20] Douglas White: There's no doubt about that. And it's interesting because I don't need to necessarily relate to them as a player in the way of, well, you were in the big leagues and you were pitching and you were at the highest level. No, because I want to relate to the ones that are having the most struggle, because that's what most of athlete life is about. These, you know, when you're watching them, the whole minor league system, you're not seeing. You're only seeing the ones who made it to the pinnacle, to the peak, to the top of their sport. What about the all the ones that haven't made it yet? Those are the ones who are trying to find their path. And so that's what I'm here for. I'm assisting those athletes.

[00:10:00] Suzie Price: Yeah. You understand the struggle. And because you had the struggle, it forced you to create the pathway.

[00:10:08] Douglas White: Yes. To be able to see things in the way. So this would be like my blunt way of explaining it, to see things the way I think you need to see them to be able to actually have success. If you're anybody, it doesn't matter who you are in life, if you're not quote unquote having success in your life, it's basically because you're not seeing it the way you want to be able to see it. You're not holding it the way you want to hold it. It's not feeling the way you want it to feel. So you have to find ways to hold it in a different way. Feel it in a different way so you can shift it to be what you want it to be. There's no other way to create it.

[00:10:51] Suzie Price: Yeah. So anybody who's struggling, if you're thinking about that, if you've struggled with anything, you know, the way it's gotten better is you begin to see it differently, which led you to feel differently. And oftentimes we can't get it out of our own way. So we need a mentor or a coach or a facilitator or a teacher. We can all relate to the idea of that person in our life. At a younger years, maybe that saw something that we didn't see about ourselves. So it's kind of what you're saying. You're able to see something for them, and then they can latch hold of it and start to see it for themselves. And that is a great lesson for everyone who wants to have an impact on the world.

[00:11:32] Douglas White: I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah.

[00:11:34] Suzie Price: Okay, so let's dig into this system and the things that you've created and how mental health and emotional well-being comes into play. But talk a little bit about the system that you've gotten and a little bit about how you've worked, people through it and what you've seen, or just anything you want to share about that, for sure.

[00:11:50] Douglas White: So I think the most important share would be that this quote unquote system is in constant evolution. So the way I feel and the way I speak and the way I've created these processes, this way of being, this knowing about how to kind of go about your life, that is something that I've had more clarity on in the past two weeks of my life than I ever have before. And so it's very interesting how in my life I used this information to go get something right. At first, this emotional well-being, emotional awareness was I got to get to the big leagues. I got to get to the big leagues, right? And that's how I used it at first. But what I've now learned after the big leagues over these last five years of being outside of organized baseball. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I wasn't doing anything right. I was just in discovery mode. And there's always going to be some sort of discovery mode going on in your life. If there's not, the evolution basically gets stagnant and then you don't really like life very much in those moments. So it's this ability that I'm working on for myself to kind of marry all the things, right? Can you be in discovery mode? Can you be in ownership mode? Own my own stuff. Right. Can you be in ownership mode? Can you then observe yourself? Can you allow yourself to feel the things you want to feel at a depth? You need to feel them for the amount of time you need to feel them, to allow them to soothe themselves and dissipate and dissolve so you can move on. Do you allow yourself the time for clarity? Do you allow yourself the time for inspirations, ideas, downloads like all these things are part of the equation of success, and you really do want to spend time on all the different parts. It's not one thing, it's all the things. And how are you in relationship with all the things as you evolve as a human being, which is it's craziness, you know?

[00:14:02] Suzie Price: So staying in discovery mode is staying curious. And ownership mode would be just owning your own growth. First. See that in the assessments that we use, not the tool that you took. But there's another one that measures how we work in the world and how we see ourselves. And a lot of times people in general score lower on how they see themselves and the people that are most resilient and can handle stress the best have the higher self view scores, which is what I believe you're touching into, which is how do they see themselves? Are they staying curious? Are they paying attention? Are they managing how they think about themselves?

[00:14:38] Douglas White: Most people could do that. I would assume the people that have taken those tests, they're able to do that because it's not a self-judgment. They're not attacking themselves. They're wanting to realize what is getting in my way of living, the way I choose to live, feeling the way I choose to live. And so that's not a charge against yourself. That's an amazing discovery of I'm so happy. I know that I am stubborn as this, you know, because if I don't know this, how do I know how it's assisting me and how it's not allowing me to move? Because that's the other thing too, is like, the stubbornness could be a great gift in certain avenues and experiences, but in other ways it might not be the best thing. And so we want to know, okay, what it's like on the continuum for that day or that experience.

[00:15:30] Suzie Price: And that makes sense. So it's that self-awareness and observing themselves, noticing what they're doing. And as you're their coach, you can help point out. Did you notice? Maybe you know. So so when you're working with someone, say it's. Let's stick with a pitcher who's struggling mentally or emotionally. Um, can you give some examples of pitchers that you've worked with and things that worked and things that didn't work, or any thoughts around that?

[00:15:55] Douglas White: You know, there's a couple of ways in which I could answer this. One is that I attempted to set up a system for the pitchers because, you know, what I'm speaking about now is when I was the pitching director for the Houston Astros, and now my job was how to create the vision for the organization. So how do I set up a system that can get guys to success so we can get more guys to the big leagues, or they have more value in them, so we could use them in trades, so on and so forth. And so in that realm, my job is to figure out what is the most simple, up to date system that also then provides feedback to the player so they can have their own success. Because really, what we want to be able to do is we want to create a system where the individual can use it. It's not me telling them how to use it, it's me letting them experience it so they can kind of figure out, okay, what's my way around this? Right. And so there's just very simple things that you really want to have inside of a system. And most of that is how do I learn from my life experience. How do I take a look at what's right in front of me? So, for example, if you're a pitcher, there's a certain thing that you need to be able to do on the mound. So let's say, for example, you need to have a certain type of off speed pitch, because in the big leagues you have to be able to strike hitters out in tight situations. Okay. So we know from our analytics in our system that when you throw a breaking ball with this type of velocity, with this type of spin.

[00:17:31] Douglas White: In these types of locations, you'll get strikeouts. All the data leads to that. We already know that. Okay, great. So now I'm a young minor league pitcher and I go in a game and our system says, cool, we want you to use that breaking ball in these types of situations this much. And they say cool. Got it okay. Go to work. So now they're in a game and they know in these situations come up. This is what I need to take care of. And it's very simple. They were either able to do it or not. And if they were able to do it awesome. Let's reflect on it. What worked well what do we want to continue doing? Great. Hit the ground running. But if they had a day where it's like, man, this did not go very well for me. Awesome. What is the feedback, the objective feedback we can now use to take a look at, so that we know our preparation during the week is going to be of consequence. It's going to help us, right? And that's all we did. To me, that's as simple as can be. But you got to understand how to use the data and you got to understand who are your individuals using the information. Because everybody's different. They all have their own demons inside, and they're all taking that information a lot differently than you might assume. You know, because we're here talking. I'm like, oh, this is so easy. Why? You know what I mean? I saw this, I told them this, let's change it. And it's no, not necessarily happening that way.

[00:19:00] Suzie Price: Yeah, exactly. Humans are much more complicated. So basically, you know, it seems like the parts are you have to have a system that you can share with them. And in the in the corporate world it would be, you know, they have to have they have to understand the company. They have to have the skill set. I mean, they have to do all the physical things, have the experience, you know, the you might call it the resume and then you give them more data and then it's the objective feedback. That's the piece. You know, you're giving them feedback on what you see, but then they actually receive it when they try to throw that ball and it doesn't work. But then they've got you there to kind of talk through what happened.

[00:19:37] Douglas White: This is the interesting part to this one that not a lot of leaders, in my opinion, speak about. A lot of people love to give you the physical steps to everything. Okay. But then they wonder why the physical steps aren't working. Because we're not living in a simply physical world. We're living in an energy world, an emotional world, a frequency world, a vibrational world, however you want to claim it. And so it's how you're feeling inside about the steps you're taking that matters the most. And so it's for me, I always say, what is your relationship with this? So for example, if we bring it back to pitching, if the pitcher doesn't have a quality relationship with their breaking ball, their The breaking ball is never going to be what they want it to be. It doesn't matter what feedback I give them, how long of a conversation we have, so on and so forth. If ultimately inside of them, the energy around the breaking ball is it's not good enough, it never will be good enough. I can't do these things. Guess what? That's exactly what they're going to keep getting. And if you don't use that in conjunction with the physical work, then the physical work is just again, you're just in the hamster wheel. You're banging up against the same wall over and over.

[00:21:00] Suzie Price: Trying to do the same thing with the same effect without changing the internals. Yeah, that is tricky because I always see people say, well, you know, they're so capable. And then, you know, like that. I have the objective feedback on the self view, that assessment I was talking about, because you can say, well, they're capable, but they're also really hard on themselves and they're not feeling connected or energized about the role that they're in, which is exactly mirroring what we talk about in time metrics for my clients that are listening. And so that's where the work is. And so the steps for them is awareness. You're helping them tune into that. And then how do you help them switch that relationship. What kind of conversations do you have when you know they're being really hard on themselves or.

[00:21:44] Douglas White: Yeah. So that's like it could be two separate conversations because in one way, you're wanting to get someone better at this one thing, right? And they have a relationship with that one specific thing. But then here's this other thing that comes in which I think humans do a lot. They make themselves feel bad about this relationship over here. And so now we're talking about two different things. So we're not even ever going to get to the core of what the problem is. The specific thing that we started talking about in the first place, we never get to that because we it's interrupted by how they're judging themselves and how they're hard on themselves or how they're blaming someone else and so on and so forth. So it's like, well, what are we exactly talking about here? If we're talking about the actual specific thing, right. What is your relationship with that? It's simply how do you talk to it. How do you talk through it? How do you talk about it in a way that allows you to bridge a gap that allows you to go from A to Z in a way where you just slowly and surely kind of feel better about it as you're speaking about it, thinking about it, feeling about it. And there's no one way to that. But there is the way to that. The way to that is, I feel this way right now about this thing, and I'm working to feel this way about that thing. There's different ways to get there, but what you want to do internally is be aware of how are you feeling as you're bridging your gap? Is your are your feelings getting lighter? You know, like more positive, more hopeful, more optimistic. Or are you again, you know, the ball and the chain are tied to your ankle and they're not going anywhere.

[00:23:30] Suzie Price: It's remarkable. I've made shifts like that on different things in my life, and oftentimes it's something personal, but that I love your statement of what is your relationship to this? And when you're saying relationship, it's like, how do you feel about it? Are you excited about it or are you depressed about it? Are you frustrated about it, or are you feeling a little more interested? You know, it's like that emotional scale from angry and want to blame somebody to I'm excited and I'm connected and you're taking them up and down that scale, or trying to get them up the scale and with getting awareness of this is the piece and that is the journey of change.

[00:24:07] Douglas White: It's the only thing that I know about because that truly works and is works consistently because again, this is a vibrational world we're living in, meaning we touch, taste, see, feel right. And also the feel not is not just the touching and how we feel on the outside. The feel is the internal guidance of your emotions. And so that ability to shift reality in my understanding, is your ability to shift how you feel about the reality. If you keep feeling the same way about what's in front of you, it's very hard to let it change because you're giving it more food, you know, more fire, whatever you want to say there, right? You're literally feeding into what you don't want. So you got to find a way of, well, how do I feed into what I do want? How do I change that frequency to what I do want? And that's a thing that a lot of people maybe either don't believe in, they're not aware of, you know, people aren't necessarily educating them on it or they're doing it in a way where it bypasses a whole lot of things. Because for me, I used to be the Law of Attraction guy and manifest to this and that. You know, that's how I got to the big leagues. And I think that's great. I think that's amazing. And that's a part of our universal law system. Right? However, what I now understand is the better I feel about myself, the more I tune into me and how I want to project myself in this world vibrationally and physically. Right. The combination of both that the trueness of that, like that message coming out of me that steers my ship all day, every day, and then the universe responds to that, but then you're also choosing based on that. Oh, that's a way different life. That's a way different way of being. And it shows up everywhere. It's amazing how everyone bends over backwards for you in that type of a situation. It's pretty crazy, but I didn't understand that completely until literally this year. Wow.

[00:26:26] Suzie Price: Yeah. And so what you're saying is, or I'll put it in different words, and you can tell me if I just kind of from you can't give what you don't have. And if you fill your tank, you fill yourself up with self appreciation and rest and self-care, and you figure out your relationship to the things that are important to you, then you're walking into. Oh, you're walking to the pitcher mound. You're getting off the elevator to see your team, and you are a different pitcher or a different leader, because you have taken time to bring the fullest sense of who you are to those interactions. And if you do that, really wonderful things happen. The world just happens in a brighter, lighter aligning type way?

[00:27:16] Douglas White: Yes. No, you're right on. And that is a visceral feeling. That is a visceral journey. It's you can't head game that you like for me, because trust me, I'm more intellectual, more brain than most. I love analyzing a ton of things, but I'm also quickly learned that, wow, there's a part of the analyzing. That's amazing. It's great. But if you really want to know something. So it's the difference between understanding and knowing. I understand intellectually this is the best thing for me, but I don't necessarily know that internally inside of me. It's not visceral yet. And so that's the thing that I'm wanting to share with people that I connect with these days is, but how do we get it to feel that way inside of you? So it's not a thinking game, it's a feeling game. It's an interesting pathway because people really have to want to then take a look at what is going on inside of them, and not a lot of people necessarily want to do that work, because part of it is, well, how do I even do that? You know, there's a lot of coaches out there these days. I don't know if there's a lot of people that really like, feel into that completely.

[00:28:27] Suzie Price: We always say, you know, the self-care is greater than the doing is greater than the strategy. You need to have a strategy and a vision and a system. You need to have, you know, the role work that you do and the doing part, but you bring yourself to it. So you've got to prioritize that. That's what you're teaching. How are the young pictures that you're working with today responding to this? And do you have any stories around some differences that you've seen? You know, I know you're just laying it out there for them to pick it up, but maybe you can share some personal examples of things specifically, or examples of people you've coached who've kind of caught on and said, okay, try this. I'm going to create a better relationship.

[00:29:07] Douglas White: The portion I do now with one on ones is, you know, I have a survey that I put together scientifically that allows us to understand how this person is growing, like where their understanding is going. Are they understanding the things that I think as a coach, they're going to need to be the best them and or the best athlete, you know, that they could be, right. And so I use that as a guideline as we go through our sessions and our conversations and they go through their life experience, that's a guideline for me that I can keep looking at to go, okay, are we moving in the right direction here of understanding, or are there some things I need to do a better job here of relaying the message to them? Right. But I do have a specific case right now where it's a kid who he pitched in college, and it's a life of the belief of I'm not enough, I'm not being seen. I'm not being heard. What is wrong with me? That's the belief system behind his career, basically ever since he was in high school. So this has been now, let's say, 8 to 9 years in the making.

[00:30:07] Douglas White: And so his dad calls me up and says, hey, you know, Doug, we really need some assistance because I just don't see his confidence anymore. And I know he has the ability to pitch at the next level. But this confidence, if this is how it stays, he's not going to be able to. So he played it the smallest of schools and his results you know his stats not where we really want to be. And so we spent six months during his actual last season in college, really working on this inner game of not only how I see myself, but how am I relating to others, because there's a whole lot of blame going on, because if you're being attacked a lot where you're, you know, you're being like being told or what he thinks he's noticing is, I'm not good enough, then it's, well, then I'm going to stand. I need to stand up for myself and I'll just blame everybody else for that. Right? And I totally get that. But then his experiences in life keeps showing him self.

[00:31:04] Suzie Price: Yeah.

[00:31:04] Douglas White: So here we go into the off season. So he's done with college and I'm trying to get him into a draft. League. And so he doesn't get drafted. And I understand why he might not necessarily, but I understand why. From my background. But here we are working on this. And then all of a sudden there's just been little changes along the way as confidence is growing. His results haven't yet changed consistently, but the way he's feeling about himself, it is okay. So the season has changed.

[00:31:33] Suzie Price: The way he's feeling himself, just having the relationship with you and having somebody on his in his camp.

[00:31:38] Douglas White: It's that and it's the reflection of giving back. So if your conversation with others is yeah, they're totally wrong. I can't believe they did you that way. They screwed you. If that's your conversation all the time, how are you ever going to change your way? You got to be around a crowd that goes, okay, I see what you're saying. I'm hearing what you're saying. And I in no way, shape or form am telling you you're wrong for what you're saying. But in my experience about how this universe works, what I am going to tell you is, if we don't do something about the way you're looking at this thing, it's never going to change. So let me just ask you the question do you want the change or do you want to be right? And so that's the conversation. And then of course the people say, well I want the change. And I say, okay, so let's go about the change. And then it's do you know the foundation of the universe? Do you understand what your emotions are for? Do you know how to create new relationships with all these things, with yourself and with it? You know, so we just go down that road, right?

[00:32:37] Suzie Price: You're building emotional self-awareness. I had a psychologist recently. We talked about, he called it, every leader needed to have psychological fluency and what he's talking about, what you're talking about, that was his verbiage. What's beyond or behind what you're seeing.

[00:32:51] Douglas White: Yes. Exactly. So so we're chipping away at it. He goes to a workout, he has a great workout. And his dad tells me in private, he says, I'm telling you, Doug, this is not something he would have ever been able to do six months ago. The type of workout that it was, so on and so forth. So he gets enough attention to where he gets an opportunity to go and play in these scout leagues and to pitch more in front of these people and so on and so forth. And eventually he got an opportunity to go play in the draft league. So he goes plays in this draft league. And he does very well. He does very well. He pitches all the time. He's not being held in the back of the bullpen. He's not being asked to pitch like he's front and center. He's basically almost getting abused where it was like the end of the season. It's like, oh my God, my arm is falling off, right? So he's understanding now how his life narrative is changing based on the way he's receiving things, the way he's looking at things in his life. Okay. So now we keep going. He's in the off season now. So now we need to keep making changes because there are some things he does need to get better at on the field. So now one of his main things that didn't really shift in the surveys that I had with him was the ability to be coached, because he's in defense mode all the time.

[00:34:11] Douglas White: These people aren't seeing me for who I am. I gotta be the one who knows it because they're not going to help me and they're not going to tell me the way. So I got to know it. So that's great. That got him to a place where he got that far. But then you get to a point where it's. But wait a minute. If you don't listen just enough to hear something that could change your career trajectory, we're going to be in trouble. So now he's in this right now, literally, he's at this academy and they're trying to help him get better. He needs to be able to do a couple of things on the mound better. Okay. So he has enough awareness just enough where they go to him and they say, hey, we need you to do this differently because we think this is going to help with your velocity into that, right. And he goes, this is all in the moment because this is how life works, right? This is so crazy. This is so amazing about how subtle this is, right? If you don't pay attention, you keep missing it. Okay. So he's in the moment. Normally what he would do, he'd say, these coaches don't know anything. I'm just going to do what I know best.

[00:35:21] Suzie Price: I could know it all, but it's really coming from not feeling good about himself.

[00:35:24] Douglas White: He's aware enough now to know, okay, what's going on here? So he listens and then he goes, okay, I'm definitely trying to work on something. I know right now what I'm working on is stagnant. I'm not getting the changes I want. Let me just I'll listen and I'll try it just a little bit and let's see. So he goes he does this one drill and he's like, what are they asking me to do here? But he did it. And he's like, oh, okay, there might be some here. The next time he gets on the mound. Arm feels great. His body was in way better positions to deliver the ball and now he's off and running. So now he got that hit. And now we're going to, you know, go to the next place. And he did that in real time. Being aware that if I shut these guys out I may be shutting out an opportunity. Now this is the thing. It doesn't mean you just. Yes to everything. You still want to be curious. You still can be critical. But if you're paying attention and you're like, is this an opportunity? Is this something I should be paying attention to? And then you try it and it works.

[00:36:31] Suzie Price: It's a little bit of an emotional maturity maybe is what layering in there, you know. And you do find people with a higher sense of self can do that better. So if they're too high and they think I'm the best or they're too low and they think I'm the worst, none of those work. But you've got him in a way where he's saying, okay, I've got this. So that is amazing. You really went to the source of the change.

[00:36:57] Douglas White: And that's what I mean by that ownership. The individual you're working with or, you know, if you're just working with yourself, that's fine, right. You got to take ownership of where you are. You got to know where you are if you want to know where you're going. And there's no other way to do that. And so his ability to now own his stuff, it's helping them break free from it.

[00:37:21] Suzie Price: Yeah, yeah. Ownership mode. You talk about discovery mode, ownership mode, observe self, feel things deeply, take time for clarity and inspiration, and just do that cycle over and over again, over.

[00:37:32] Douglas White: And over again. And it never ends. That way of being never ends because we are vibrational beings. We're ever evolving. Being because when you're done evolving, you just don't stick around any longer. Yeah.

[00:37:45] Suzie Price: So continuously being curious in the zone, I mean, you hear about that in the athletics and it applies to life. And I often will say, oh I can feel it sometimes I'm really in the zone. And when I'm not I'm like, okay with it because I'm taking ownership of it and I'm observing myself. I'm looking at your system a little bit, feeling it deeply and saying, okay, whatever I'm focused on right now, I don't have a good relationship with it, so don't move forward. Figure out how you want to fix it. And I can think of a lot of examples. And that's what you're doing here. And in the zone is such a great thing for leaders who are listening right now. Are you in the zone or are you out of the zone? Are you kind of in or are you kind of out take the action when you're in the zone?

[00:38:23] Douglas White: Yeah. So that's a pretty interesting thing. So I have a new relationship with that now because I used to have the relationship I'm in or I'm out, but now I know differently. The way I would explain it now is because I'm having a new relationship with myself viscerally, meaning I do now feel, you know how they say, well, you're in love, right? You're worthy. You're deserving. I spoke those words. I understood it like it sounds great. Like totally, I'm love. But I did not have that visceral understanding of like You are Love. And just recently I've started to have the actual visceral feelings of no, I am love, I am value, I am worth, which is a total different place of being. But here's to what you were saying about the zone, about being in or out. If our original place of being is love, is value, is knowledge is confidence, is all of this beingness right? If that's who we are, you're never out of the zone. You just are not connected to it in the way you want to be. So the way I'm describing it now for people is you're just your field view is distorted. So the way I talk about it is like you're going downstream. You got rocks, huge boulders on the side of the stream. You got some rocks and some water on the outside of the stream. And in the middle of the stream. It's like cruise sailing, you know, there's enough water. It's built up where you're just, like, going. You don't need any oars. You're good. Right? I'm fully connected, man.

[00:39:53] Douglas White: I'm one with me. I'm one with the universe. Here we go. You. I could do anything right now. Leap tall buildings in a single bound. Okay, but now a thought comes in or an experience comes in and I get a little a little off kilter on it. Okay, cool. So now no problem. Now I just need to grab the oars because I. I feel like I need a little more control of what's going on right now. And now another thought comes in and another hit comes in. Another trigger. Right? Another response comes in that way. And now, oh, I'm seeing more rocks here. Like, oh man, now I got to not only I need to hold on to the oars, but now I got to start, I got to start using my oars to navigate so I don't run into these rocks. And now eventually, you know, more thoughts come in, so on and so forth. And now again, you're still in the stream. You're still you. There's less water, you're hitting more rocks. And this is not very fun. And then ultimately you're out. You're carrying the raft on top of your head with the boulders. And as you're walking down the, you know, you're not even you're you're still in your street, but you're not inside the raft, inside the stream cruising down. And it's like anywhere on the continuum is where you could be. But it's still you're still love. You're never disconnected from you. It's just you feel differently. And so that's how I understand it now.

[00:41:11] Suzie Price: And so when you see a picture, that's just what we would say is in the zone. Meaning the zone is always there, but they have stepped into it. They're floating down the river, they are hitting it. Or you see a leader or you see yourself, you know, excelling or feeling completely full of energy and love and excitement about something. You're doing that connection point that we want to move towards, and then to be okay when we're not there because we can get back there.

[00:41:36] Douglas White: Yes. And I would say like most of the time you're in the zone because you just haven't introduced any sort of self-judgment or blame or judgment towards others. You know.

[00:41:47] Suzie Price: It'll take you out of that more than blaming yourself, and it doesn't mean you don't take accountability for mistakes, but you don't, you know, thrash yourself.

[00:41:54] Douglas White: Yes. Because how I used to see it and have a relationship with it is that I was doing something wrong. If I wasn't in the zone. It's not about anything wrong. It's about, oh, cool. These emotions, these feelings are offering me feedback. That's my objective feedback, you know, my internal system to be like, oh, okay, I'm just a little bit off here. That's interesting. Okay, well, what am I thinking about? What am I doing currently and what could I be doing to allow myself to to go back in when I choose to?

[00:42:25] Suzie Price: And it's interesting with this young person and I think about my journey to and you probably could maybe say, this is when I have done these subtle changes, and then you notice what comes back. You become a believer in understanding it is about energy and how your relationship with whatever it is you're focusing on, because everything changes. The only thing that really changed was how I felt about it, but everything around it changes.

[00:42:50] Douglas White: I am so sold on this more and more as I live my life. Every single life experience you're having is for you. It's letting you know where you are, what's going on, and it's allowing you to then make decisions on where you want to head. And so it's just that ability to sit right there in some of the moments, not all. You don't have to go crazy. But in some of those moments, slow down and stop and just go. Is this one of those life moments I might really want to pay attention to? Because in my opinion, most of the time your soul gives you just little hits, subtle hits. There's not these big signs and there's these big. It's just these little pulses throughout the day. And if you're not paying attention, if you don't slow down, you just keep missing them. But it's okay because they'll keep coming. They'll keep coming, they'll keep coming, keep coming. Yeah, yeah. However, it's really fun to hear them more often, to feel them more often, to play with them more often because it's such an amazing life to live. And you're like, ooh, thank you, source. Thank you for that answer. Thank you for that guidance. Thank you for that hit. Oh my God, this is easy I got this. No problem.

[00:44:04] Suzie Price: Yeah. And you really start to feel love. So if somebody's listening today and they're intrigued by this conversation before we go to some information about you, what are some of the habits that they could start today to tap into this better feeling about self and this heightened sense of paying attention?

[00:44:24] Douglas White: Well, first things first is you definitely want to be asking for it, so you just want to either make that statement internally or externally. It doesn't matter, but just say, hey universe, if you got something that I want to be paying attention to, let me know, because I really do. I really do want to feel better. I want to know myself better. Whatever that statement is for yourself. You want to say that, right? And then for me, I always suggest observation. I always suggest that a person for at least seven days goes all in on one thing and one thing only, and that's observation. So you still live your life the same exact way. You don't need to do anything different other than you're reminding yourself constantly for seven days straight. Oh, I'm in observation mode. Oh, I'm in observation mode. So you could be inside of a conversation. You're still having the conversation, but you're observing. What is this person telling me right now that's provoking those feelings? Oh, that's interesting when they say this, I feel this. When they say this, I want to respond this way. Right. I'm driving in traffic. This is how I'm feeling right now.

[00:45:31] Douglas White: I'm walking into the store. This is how I'm feeling. Like I want to be observing all day, every day. Then I want to. Right? What am I thinking and feeling. When these experiences come up, you don't have to write them all down. But the ones that triggered you, the ones that hit you, the ones that you noticed. Write those down. No judgment. Just this is what happened and this is what I thought. And this is what I felt. And the reason why I'm saying this is because if you don't have awareness, we don't have anything. You have to start becoming more emotionally aware, emotionally sensitive. And so if you don't ever observe and allow yourself to tune into it, how the heck would you ever know that you got it in the first place and everybody has it. This is one of the like I always say as a coach, oh man, I hate doing blanket statements right? But I'm here to tell you and I will literally lay my life down for this. Everybody feels there's not one person in our entire existence that does not have emotions. So that's our starting point.

[00:46:45] Suzie Price: There we go. Perfect. Let's learn a little bit more about you as we move towards the close. As usual, we have our wake up eager strength segment. And we do this because it's a great way to learn more about people who are on our podcast. And it also helps people who are training and learning these assessments, you know, understand the differences and use them with their teams to help help others use their strengths. So we're going to look at your strengths. We had you complete the Talent Insights assessment and go to the page that combines your behavior style and your motivations. What according to the assessment and motivates you. And I ask you to pick two of your favorite statements. What did you pick?

[00:47:36] Douglas White: So I went under strengths Rank's ideal environment and keys to motivating, right? So actually I wrote 1 or 2 down for all of them, so maybe I could just nitpick on a couple of them. Um, okay. So let's see which one do I want to pull. I'm actually going to do both for keys to motivating. Okay. So I pulled out reassurance. And the reason why I pulled out reassurance. Because yes, I love to be loved sometimes I do sometimes want somebody to tell me, hey, you're doing really good. I really love the work you're doing. It feels really good. I love the seeing the change and the people that you're working with. Right. That just feels good. Yeah. And I do understand that me being my own reassure is really cool too, but it's still nice to feel that connection from others. So that was one thing.

[00:48:29] Suzie Price: I love that we want what we want.

[00:48:31] Douglas White: That's good. Yeah. And and then the next thing I said is an opportunity to put systems and processes in place to support the balance and workings of inside the organization. Right for the organization. And it's just like, man, I feel like really strongly that something that I've been put here on earth to do is to set up the systems and processes. I just feel like I just see things. I'm like, oh yeah, well, just do this and this. We're good. And I'm like, that was easy. Not necessarily that way for the people that I'm with. Yes. But yeah, I love systems and processes. But the reason why I love the systems and processes is because I understand human beings love to be linear, linear in their thinking. Right. Like I need the straight line path. And so what I'm able to do with the systems and the processes I put in place is okay, this is a linear path, but I'm going to explain it to you in all the ways that it could work for you or against you as we go, because that's what you need to be aware of. It's like I can tell you something, but unless you have your own relationship with it, it means nothing.

[00:49:44] Suzie Price: Yeah, yeah. And you know what? So to the listeners and to you in the assessment, according to the assessment, one of your greatest strengths is the analysis of things and the accuracy. So that's the in the disc assessment. It's the this compliance above the energy line. Just that you do the structure process and come up with that. But and also in the motivators which is according to the assessment which you like to spend time doing is you're a thinker, you're very curious, you love to learn and you like to use it in a way that creates balance and harmony in the world and with others. The theoretical static, when you said, you know that and the aesthetic is something that is. So you bring the objectivity of knowledge and you bring the subjectivity of the aesthetic, and the aesthetic is someone who can look at the big picture and see and feel and intuit things. And so it's like you're going to take systems to help people do that. I mean, it's just I almost got emotional. I was sharing because like, oh my gosh, this is really what he was made to do. I mean, as you're talking, it's just so obvious, you know. Yes.

[00:50:55] Douglas White: Yes. Yeah. I continued to work on what the vessel is. It's like, I know what I want to be doing, but I don't know if I necessarily pinpointed the vessel, or maybe I have. And there's several vessels. It's not just one vessel. And that's just my human brain, human beingness, figuring out like, oh, it doesn't have to just be one way, you know? Yes.

[00:51:18] Suzie Price: It's the vehicle vehicles through which it's going to flow. And, you know, in the consulting and coaching world, as you know, from being in the world you did in professional sports, it's a never ending journey. So most of many people that I meet in the consulting world have that theoretical. Whether you're always curious, you're always learning. And you started that saying, you know, just this past two weeks, I've got a whole new way of explaining gets us more excited than that. You know, it's like, let me take the knowledge and refine it so it can help people.

[00:51:45] Douglas White: Yes, exactly, exactly.

[00:51:47] Suzie Price: Are there any others on that list that you picked that really stand out? We'll share 1 or 2 more and then.

[00:51:53] Douglas White: Sure, for ideal environment, I did have an environment in which he may deal with people on a personal, intimate basis. And the reason why I picked that because even though you're creating systems and you're doing this umbrella type thing, everybody needs personal connection. Everybody wants personal connection. So you have to find a way to pull that system and then go on the side and say, okay, but how do I talk to this person this way? And how do I talk to this person this way? Like that is always and forever going to be a part of our human nature. And so you got to find a way to be able to be intimate with the people in front of you. Yeah.

[00:52:29] Suzie Price: Yeah. So not being dogmatic, being very tuned in to yourself as you show up and then therefore allowing you to be tuned in to where they're at right now and what they can hear and what's going to help them and what they want to achieve. That sounds like a magnificent, beautiful coach to me.

[00:52:46] Douglas White: Yeah. Thank you, I appreciate that. The best coaches.

[00:52:49] Suzie Price: Aren't in there showboating. They're in there curious and trying to help people get to where they want to go.

[00:52:56] Douglas White: Yeah. Yes. You can feel very quickly when a coach is, you know, it's more of a ego type. Let me just show you how smart I am type deal as opposed to a coach who's okay to say, man, I don't know this one. Like, I don't think I have the answer for you on this one, but let let's see if we pick at it a little bit. Let's see for both of us if we can, you know, figure it out in a way.

[00:53:17] Suzie Price: Yeah. I guess over the years, you know, I have always hired different coaches throughout the years and have had different mentors and stuff to help me. I think good coaches do that. You have people mentor me that they didn't even know they were mentoring me. I just followed everything they did and learned. And then. So I think that's really important. But I've also had bad coaches, like what you just said are people who did not have my best interests at heart.

[00:53:41] Douglas White: Yeah. So it's interesting because I got to hit on this. You know, when we first started talking, the coaching situation I think is really interesting because as the individual that you're working with grows their need, wanting relationship with coaching is also going to shift. Right. And so you could be in a situation where it's like a little tickling and you got to put the light on and you got to help feed and so on and so forth. But sooner or later like that, you don't need to do those things for that person anymore, that the relationship changes. And so for me, the way because I agree with you, I want a coach. I have a coach now. But the coach word for me that doesn't fit our relationship at all. You know, what she is doing for me now is it's like we're up to speed with each other where I can go to her with, hey, not I'm stuck, but this one, I'm right at the I'm right at the edge of it. Can you can. This is how I'm feeling and thinking about it. Can you assist me with it? And then she'll say something. I'll go. That's it right there.

[00:54:45] Douglas White: So she'll say it in a way that makes it fit. And then I'm off and running and I'm off and running and I'm off and running. Compared to what I would be doing early on in my career, you know, at any point in time, which is probably crying half the call or pissed off half the call, or like, this is not helping. Half the you know what I mean? It's like to anybody listening to this who does have a coach or is wanting a coach but is scared of the bad coach, the only thing with that is it's like there are no bad coaches in the way of the way life experience is teaching you. There are no bad coaches because it's just helping you have better understanding. Standing. And so here's the deal is no matter who you are, if you're gonna receive coaching, understand they're a human being. They're not the answer. They should be thought provoking people, not answer people not telling you what to do, how to do, when to do. It's just to provoke thought. So then you can find your way. That would be my $0.02 in that realm.

[00:55:50] Suzie Price: To me, it's like the best coaches that I have had, and it's going to sound hokey the way I say it, but they create a space where I can say exactly what's rumbling through my head, and they listen so much that I hear myself and leaders to to everybody listening. If you're not typically a coach, but you are mentoring and everybody's a leader in their world, but think about the power of your listening. We talk about that a lot, about just being present with people and listening. So what advice would you give your 25 year old self?

[00:56:23] Douglas White: Man, Go back to bed. So I told my 25 year old self, go back to bed. No, I would tell my 25 year old self, it's okay. It's okay. You're not doing anything wrong. That's the biggest thing is you're totally okay. You're not doing anything wrong. You're going to figure these things out as you go. Do the best you can to be as soft with yourself and as nice as you're with yourself as possible. That's what I would say. Yeah.

[00:56:55] Suzie Price: That touches you?

[00:56:57] Douglas White: Yeah. So much because I'm in this much different space with how I treat myself these days. But it took me 46.5 years to get to that space. And so I've only been doing it for six months. And so I have some resistance to release. So when I go back to my 25 year old self, I'm like, oh man, I could be so nice to you right now. I could love you up so good right now. And so let me just offer that to you. And so that's where that that, you know, those tears come in. So it's a nice release, you know.

[00:57:34] Suzie Price: Yeah. It's beautiful. It's good to know that everybody has a journey. And I appreciate you sharing yours around that. Because if we can all remember that everybody we're dealing with is going through something and maybe we can be hard on themselves. And they may not look like that. They're being defensive or any of those things we've talked about. But love always lightens the load.

[00:57:59] Douglas White: Compassion is, man. One of the biggest things that I love about myself these days? I feel like I'm a very compassionate person.

[00:58:07] Suzie Price: If you've given yourself more grace, have you found your compassion growing?

[00:58:10] Douglas White: I tell you what, that's one of the most amazing things about my life right now, is the understanding of how to be able to love more and oh my God, is it only about your ability to feel about you? Because the moment you get into the connection of self and the way you want to feel about you, you can't wait to love others. You can't wait to show others how amazing they are and how beautiful they are, and offer words of encouragement or support or love or whatever, you know, whatever that is. And oh man, that's a whole nother type of relationship to have inside a life that feels really good.

[00:58:49] Suzie Price: You're demonstrating it all over the place. Thank you. During this call and I love it.

[00:58:54] Douglas White: Thank you.

[00:58:55] Suzie Price: So I know you're passionate about this, tuning in and bringing your best self and understanding who the who you are and that you already are your best self. But some parting advice that you'd like to leave everybody with around this topic?

[00:59:10] Douglas White: Yeah, the biggest thing is you don't need this information to live an amazing life. You don't have to read a book. You don't have to listen to a podcast. You don't have to do anything because your natural way of being is love, value worth deservedness whatever else it is. So really, what the whole thing about is just let go. There's nothing you have to be doing. There's no way of being you have to go through. Right? You don't have to go through your bumps and your bruises to to have this, these aha moments and these, you know, that type of thing. Those are all myths. That's all bullshit that we pick up along the way. However, the one thing you got to do, you got to let yourself off the hook. The only way to feel that connection with yourself is to allow yourself to feel the connection. So you got to let go. You got to let yourself off the hook, and you got to just be okay with where you're at and who you are. And so I guess that would be the starting point on that.

[01:00:16] Suzie Price: Don't think you have to go through rough and tumble to get to a place of peace and happiness. The rough and tumble. It can help inform your peace and happiness, but it's not like a badge that you have to, you know you don't have to hit the bottom to find the top.

[01:00:30] Douglas White: Exactly.

[01:00:32] Suzie Price: Now, are you only coaching professional ball players or are you doing coaching people too? Is it mostly an athlete or.

[01:00:41] Douglas White: So actually, as we speak, I'm in the process of creating a personal website. So it would be more for consulting, coaching, speaking, that type of thing, kind of branding myself separate from sole integrated athletics so that if someone is, you know, an organization is a sports organization is looking at sole integrated athletics, they're like, well, who is this guy Douglas White? And so I can have this personal website so you can understand what that parallel journey is. So sole integrated Athletics is a platform for sports organizations so that their athletes can integrate emotional well-being with performance. That's what Soul Integrated Athletics is at the start. Eventually, we want to move all the way down into youth sports and so on and so forth, and we'll, you know, we'll spread our tentacles as we go. Right.

[01:01:30] Suzie Price: And you've got some technology related to that assessment that, yes.

[01:01:33] Douglas White: There's emotional check ins. There's surveys. We have there's a whole system to that deal that we're creating. We're in cahoots actually with a company called Blue Cross Sports Group. The owner is named Jeff Luhnow. He's a former GM and president of the Houston Astros. So he you know, we have a former relationship. And he agreed with what I'm trying to do. And he's a very innovative leader in sport. And he's like, you know what, Doogie? Let's do this together. And so he's helping me with his sport org and his professional team. So we're getting our proof of concept built our MVP built and starting to use it to collect the data that we need to then hopefully scale it. Right. But so that's all integrated Athletics. Douglas White is still Seoul integrated, right? You can't go around your life without your soul being integrated. Exactly. It doesn't work the other way, but yes, then that's more of the one on one coaching the group, coaching the speaking engagements, the consulting and that type of world. And so that website will be DouglasBryantWhite.com and that will be coming out the first of the year.

[01:02:42] Suzie Price: Great. So we'll put a link to DouglasBryantWhite.com. But I'll also above that put the Soulintegratedathletics.com. There's always the contact information there.

[01:02:50] Douglas White: Yeah. Soulintegratedathletics.com has my information.

[01:02:54] Suzie Price: Yep okay. We'll have that there. And are you active on social media.

[01:02:58] Douglas White: I am I have a interesting relationship that I'm currently working through still with social media. So Instagram and LinkedIn will be the ones that you I mean I'm on Facebook too, but anything that I put on Instagram goes to Facebook. I think in the new year, what I'm going to do is work on a new way of being inside of social media, and I'm working through that right now. I still want to be involved in it. I do know that there's some amazing things that go on inside of social media. I just want to know what I want to do with it, what I want my relationship to be. So I'm taking some time to create that.

[01:03:34] Suzie Price: And that's definitely a journey. I've been there. I'm really in a good place now, but I know what you're talking about.

[01:03:39] Suzie Price: Thank you so much for your time, your talent, your love, your message for your journey and for being with us today. I appreciate you very much.

[01:03:50] Douglas White: I love your energy. I love your way of being. So anytime we can have a chat, I'll be more than happy to.

[01:03:56] Suzie Price: We'll have you back.

[01:03:58] Douglas White: Sounds good.

[01:04:01] Suzie Price: Thank you.

[01:04:03] Suzie Price: I hope you appreciated our discussion. And you're thinking about your emotions now. Maybe some more awareness of them. I mean, they're happening. We might as well pay attention to them and figure out how to manage them and use them as information, information to grow. There's something that Douglas talks about in regard to, you know, there's the situation and then there's always feedback from the situation. And the feedback isn't always from other people. It's from what's going on within us. So if we tune in and so it's kind of the process that Douglas talked about. As we tune in, we come with a mind of discovery or curiosity. We take ownership of whatever the emotion is. There is no bad emotion, but we observe it and we understand that it points to what we're thinking and that if we can either pay attention to it and make some changes, change our focus and change our outcomes, or we can ignore it and keep getting the same thing. It's all about our view of things, and I love that Douglas is not going to move off of that. You know he is right though. The more you focus on it, the more you see it that he's not going to say it's other things. Yes, we need to get our skill set honed up and you need to learn how to do the breaking ball. But once you learn that the difference between success and not success of whatever the skill is, is your relationship with that thing you're doing, and that relationship is how you feel.

[01:05:21] Suzie Price: And think about it. And it is everything, and it's what matters the most. And I like that. He talked about something he said that I thought was very poignant, is the actions we take can be interrupted by our own self-judgment. So we see that a lot with the assessment, with Trimetrix, because we are always able to see how someone views themselves. And so you can see that for your TriMetrix assessment in the acumen, if you go look at the acumen graph, if you have any questions, you can always reach out to me, see what your self view scores are. The harder you are on yourself, the less resilient you are. I see it all the time, and so we've got to figure out how to tune in and give ourselves a break. Douglas talked about that when he talked about, you know, talking to his 25 year old self, you know, and saying, hey, you're okay. You know, what he said is you are not doing anything wrong. You will figure it out. This is how he would speak to himself. Be as nice as possible to yourself. And if you want others to love others more, know that it's only about how you feel about yourself. So we want to love others and we want to help others create a wake up ego life. I mean, we want to show compassion. Then we need to love ourselves too and come from that place when we're giving, and then we need to let ourselves off the hook.

[01:06:33] Suzie Price: You know, if things don't go as well as we want, we've got to be okay with who we are. And that is definitely a journey and I see many people struggling with that. So the actions we take can be interrupted by our own self-judgment. So the harder we are on ourselves, the harder it is sometimes to effectively move forward. So building a sense of self and that whole self view gives you a stronger foundation. So the exercise that Douglas talked about is just deciding that you're going to pay attention to how you feel and your relationship to things that are important to you, and then observe and do that for seven days and then make some notes. This is what happened. Here's what I was feeling. Here's what I was thinking. And that's going to just help you notice this thing, this relationship between self-awareness and self-management. You can't manage something if you're not aware of it. So it's that first self-awareness step. And if you don't change that relationship. When Douglas talked about the young ballplayer and how he started, it was very subtle. But it was powerful. Subtle. In other words, he started to say, okay, I'm going to be less defensive and I'm going to listen to what this coach says, and it's changing his game. We can change our game, you know? But if we don't change it, if we aren't aware and we bring the same thinking and the same feelings to the same situations, we're going to get the same result. And there's just this reminder that we live in this vibrational world.

[01:07:59] Suzie Price: So what is vibration? It's things we can touch, we can taste it's emotions. Motions and we have the ability to shift this. We do. And so just bringing that home. Thinking about that be okay with who you are. You know, one of the things that I like to do every day in regard to being aware of how I feel. I also like to sit down, and I've talked about this plenty of times, is making lists of appreciation. I have the day one app on my iPad, it's on my iPad, my iPhone and on my computer, and it's very easy. I can journal any time. I never really go back to read it. I do it to set my tone to remember what went well. I will pay attention to emotions, but the other thing you can do is just list what went well for the day as well. It's amazing when you make a list of appreciation. I don't show it to anybody, but I just pay attention to how I feel as I'm listing it. It could be little things, it could be big things, but all of it is a great reminder of how well things go. And a lot of times I'll forget about this great encounter I had with someone or some new business that came in because I'm so busy in the doing, and to just take those few minutes and make that list is a way to set your tone. If you talk about building a wake up eager life, setting your tone, setting your vibration, setting your expectation not in a false way as real.

[01:09:22] Suzie Price: What Douglas is talking about is not making it up, not acting like you feel good when you don't because it's okay when you don't. Anyway, just kind of all of that. I'm pretty passionate about all that I wanted to share. Many of you know Robert Hartman. Robert S Hartman from the Hartman Institute. He is the creator of the assessment that measures how we work in the world and how we see ourselves. And he talked about four steps for knowing ourselves. And he grabbed them these steps from other philosophers. But he put them together. So it's not all his. But he talks about it in his book, Freedom to Live his autobiography. But know yourself. Choose yourself. Grow yourself. Give yourself to something greater than yourself. So Socrates said, know yourself. Kierkegaard said, choose yourself. Kierkegaard also said, grow yourself. And then Jesus said, give yourself to something greater than yourself. So each one of those steps, what we're talking about here in this episode is the know yourself, choose yourself, grow yourself. And the point is more we do that, the more we can give ourselves. We can't give ourselves to others if our tank is empty. You can't give something that you don't have. That has been a great understanding for me, and understanding how I grew up and what my parents were going through. I mean, it's just a lot of compassion when I understand that maybe they didn't get the opportunity to know themselves to themselves and grow themselves.

[01:10:44] Suzie Price: So it was hard for them to give themselves. They did the best they could, and I would say everybody's doing that. But if we want to build a wake up, eager life, we want to have days that we love. This is the process. Each step is empowering the knowing yourself, and it provides a sense of control and possibility. When we choose ourselves, there's a lot going on around us. Things we cannot control, but we can control. How we decide to focus and how we decide to think. How we are feeling. And we can shift those things and therefore shift how our life works. And so that's, I guess, why I felt so much in love with Axiology. And the acumen is it helps us understand where we are. It's another way to build that self-awareness, especially with the self view part of that assessment. And it's he always talked about and I see it all the time. We can grow this. We can grow our self view. We can grow our self-confidence and understanding of who we are. And it's a good thing and that we can all do this and it helps us accept who we are and also points to where we can go, and points to where we can grow and shine the light a little bit about like what Douglas talked about. You're in the water and we're always in the water, but sometimes we end up on the rocks, but the water's still there. We haven't lost the water.

[01:11:58] Suzie Price: We're just kind of over to the side a little bit, and we can paddle back over there with awareness. And so this self-discovery leads to self-knowledge, and self-knowledge leads to self choosing and self creating. And this leads to an impactful way to give to others as we grow our inner selves, as we're talking about, we're growing our inner selves. So I'll leave you with a final quote from Hartmann and he basically said, talked about the know yourself, choose yourself, grow yourself, give yourself to something greater than yourself. And he says, you know this self, this you is the material you have to develop to infinity. And there is absolutely no limit to which you can go. You are your own creation and it's never too late. So thank you to Douglas for this episode and this wonderful content. Thank you to you for tuning in and being a part of the wake up eager world, and for being you. If you have any questions or it can help you with anything, give me a shout at Suzie@pricelessprofessional.com. Show notes again for this episode is pricelessprofessional.com/emotionalwellbeing. Got links to Douglas and to all the resources that are related to this topic. And we'll see you on the next episode. Leave us a review if you've got something from this episode. I'd love to have others that are like you finding this episode and let me know that you did. And I can send you a little bit of gift of something. Okay, take care and be well.

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