379: 3 Simple Steps to Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Others with Jeremy Reisig

Hal Elrod:Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is Hal Elrod. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it. You are going to learn today three simple steps to unlock the potential in yourself and others. And these three simple steps are not what you might expect. This is actually an interview or really a conversation that I just had with Jeremy Reisig. You may know him as brotha James and I've had brotha James, a.k.a. Jeremy Reisig on the podcast. I realize this as I was prepping for today that this is his fourth time on. It was like fourth or fifth. I don't know. It’s maybe a record. I'm not sure. But today he's on in a very different capacity. In the past, we talked about him as a conscious musician. Well, in the past few years, he's become one of the most experienced facilitators on the planet and it’s specifically using what's known as the XChange approach and XChange is the letter X, Change approach. So, there's no E at the beginning just to give a visual. But the XChange approach and what we talk about today, these three simple steps are kind of unique, unconventional. In fact, today's podcast went really in-depth. It really was a back and forth conversation between Jeremy and I, both, where we leveraged his expertise. And then I shared a lot of personal examples and actionable strategies to take what he teaches you and really immediately apply it and even deepen your understanding of how to apply it and how it can benefit your life.

So, I think that whether you apply these three steps to yourself individually or to your family, or to your company, you're going to find that there's really a broad array of applications for the content that you're going to learn in today's podcast. So, I think you should, yeah, I think you'll get a lot out of it. And I want to mention this. We're doing a free training for the Miracle Morning Community through the XChange approach. Initially, I reached out to Jeremy. I don't want to go into detail. You'll hear it in the episode today. But the point is, at the end of the episode, I asked him to give the website, the URL to register for the free training, and he gave this really long, obnoxious URL. And so, after the episode, I text him. I said, "Hey, can you shorten it? Can we do something simple?” And it took him like an hour but he got it approved and it's done. So, I want to give you this URL ahead of time. Also, we don't give it to like the very end. You don’t have to wait until the end in case you want to check this out earlier. But here is the URL. So, if you have a pen, you can pause this, jot this down. It is XChangeApproach.com/TMM. That's it. XChangeApproach.com/TMM. And I just want to save you. It was, again, a really long - you'll hear it at the end of the interview or the conversation but it's a really long kind of obnoxious URL. So, we shortened it, kept it simple, and I'm not going to go into detail on what is at that site because we talked about that today. But anyway, I just want to give you the URL. Shorter URL is also available. You don't have to use the long, confusing, obnoxious URL given at the end of the episode. So, that's that. I think you're going to really learn a lot from Jeremy today. And hopefully, my interjections and things I added to it will be valuable for you as well.

Now, before we start the episode, I do want to thank our sponsors for today's podcast. First is Organifi and Organifi is our long-time sponsor. They make some of the highest quality nutritional products that are made from whole food ingredients. I use their products every single day, virtually every single day. I use their protein powder in my smoothies every day. They have a probiotic supplement that I use on a daily basis. They have a - what's it called? I'm drawing a blank. Gold, it's called their Golden... I forgot the name of it. I don't even know the name but I scoop it in every day into my smoothie. It's got turmeric and some other ingredients that reduce inflammation. And so, the point is if you want to boost your health and you're looking for really high-quality supplements that you can trust because most supplements they're made overseas and they use a lot of synthetic ingredients, the vitamins are not from whole foods, they're from things like vitamin C is ascorbic acid, things like that, Organifi does it the right way, in my opinion, which is they're one of the few companies that I trust with the supplements that I put into my body. So, check out Organifi.com/Hal. That is spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com/Hal and use the code HAL at checkout. You'll get 15% off your entire order. And as I always say, I hope you find something there that you love because, again, I'm a big fan of their products.

And then last but not least, Self-Publishing School is our other sponsor and Self-Publishing School can help you to write and publish your book. Even at this point, you don't even know what you want to write a book about but have you ever had a desire to write a book, to share your message, to use a book to impact the world, or as a way to help people and grow your business, there are so many applications for a business. I ran a recent training with Chandler Bolt. It is a free training as well, and you can go to Self-PublishingSchool.com/Hal and the training is called Blank Page to Published Author in as Little as 90 Days and it can help you turn your dream of writing a book into a reality. So, hopefully, those sponsors serve you as they have served me over the years. And without further ado, my good friend, Jeremy Reisig, talking about three simple steps to unlock the potential in yourself and others.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Jeremy Reisig, hello, my friend.

Jeremy Reisig: Hello, Hal.

Hal Elrod: Hey, we've been talking for like 40 minutes.

Jeremy Reisig: I know.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. That's what happens when friends reconnect and I was like, "Hey, we should probably start this podcast. We both have other stuff to do when it's over. So, let's get going, man.”

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, man. We're talking about movies. We're talking about coffee enemas. We're talking about music that inspires us to…

Hal Elrod: We were screen sharing just pictures of us from different events and things we've been at, just, "Hey, look at this picture of me and you that I have.” And you're like, "No, no, look at this picture I have of you and me.”

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. And I think what's most meaningful is that the pictures that we're showing each other either you could see how much fun we were having or you could see how much love that we have for one another.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. Yeah, that's true, man. We do have a lot of love for each other. We've been, man, I remember, well, we've known each other, what? When did we meet? 2000-ish, right?

Jeremy Reisig: Well, let's see. I remember first seeing you. I will never forget this moment in time ever.

Hal Elrod: Oh, I'm excited to hear this, whatever this is.

Jeremy Reisig: April 2001 in Chicago. So, April 2001, this is not too long after you were in the horrific car accident. This is only, what, 18 months or so after that? And so, you had a shaved head. You had kind of a scar on your head and you gave a keynote at a Cutco FSM event in Chicago and I was pretty new to the Cutco company at that time. And I was kind of in the nosebleeds and I was watching you and I really resonated with who you were, how you presented, and how much fun you were having, and how confident you were. And also, I saw what you were doing on the sales report so that didn't hurt at all. And I really looked up to you in a big way.

Hal Elrod: That's cool, man. And who could have imagined that you and I would be on a podcast right now? Which, by the way, for anybody listening that doesn't know this, I had to go back and look, this is at least the fourth time I've had you on the podcast. That might be a record. I don't know. Other than like Berghoff, who hosted the podcast for while I had cancer, yeah, brotha James, so our first episode was called, it was Episode 181: Meet My Number One Favorite Motivational Musician, brotha James. So, that was the first one and then the second one and it’s actually great because this leads into what we're talking about today and your transformation, right? So, the first episode, Meet My Number One Motivational Musician. The second episode we did was 203: Music With A Message Empowering New Songs from brotha James. And then Episode 290 was our most recent conversation about a year ago in 2020, actually during the pandemic and it was How To Live In Alignment With Your Values with Jeremy, a.k.a. brotha James Reisig. And so, I guess a good place to start is, well, today is going to be very different, right? We're not talking about music today at all. I don't think that will even really come up.

You've gone from being brotha James, the musician, in fact, I think it was our last conversation where you're like, “Yeah. Hal, don't call me brotha James anymore. I'm going by Jeremy Reisig again.” Like I met you as Jeremy Reisig then you became this musician, brotha James, and I went from calling you Jer or Jeremy like my buddy to my buddy brotha James. And now you are one of the most experienced facilitators on the planet, literally, and have led I think it's what is it? Over a thousand group experiences now for companies, mastermind, schools, prisons, your family. Right? I mean, is that right? It's over a thousand experiences you’ve led?

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. Over 1,000 group experience designed and facilitated.

Hal Elrod: That's insane. So, talk about this. Talk about how you went from or what it was like, where the shift was. Because we're friends. I've been like on this journey with you but I think it's really interesting that you as a musician became a musician like a conscious musician. You were about creating change with the words that you used in your songs to open people's minds up to new ways of thinking, new ways of being, of living new paradigms. And then you started doing this work with XChange with Jon Berghoff and the XChange Company but you were still a musician. It was like, “I'm doing the XChange thing on the side.” And now that has gradually but it shifted, and now XChange is your main focus. So, talk about what was your mission as a musician and why are you now focusing on something different? I think it's fascinating.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. Thanks for the great question and thanks for having me on for the fourth time, man. I really appreciate it. I think to explain that transition, I'm going to just take one step back to a transition that was from Cutco and growing a large Cutco closing gifts program where I was creating thousands of clients that were ordering Cutco knives as gifts over and over again. So, I built a marketing business to sell Cutco knives and was unfulfilled. I loved doing it and I still love Cutco. I love the product. I love the company. I love the people. And my goal of transitioning from that experience and from that opportunity into becoming a conscious musician was that, plain and simple, I wanted to make a bigger difference and I wanted to follow my passions and I wanted to follow what I knew about the world to try and position myself in a place to make the biggest difference that I could. And to me, I was like music is the universal language. And so, I transitioned from being in sales and marketing with Cutco into becoming this made-up kind of figure, brotha James, and started making music. And as I started to make music and to become kind of turning this vision into reality, becoming brotha James, I started to be not just a musician but a musician who would do what are called keynote concerts where I would go in and be speaking to a group of high school students or speaking to a group of teachers or to a group of individuals instead of a correctional facility or a prison or your live events, right?

Hal Elrod: Well, yeah.

Jeremy Reisig: Live events, I was just speaking and playing music. And then one of the areas that I had the opportunity to go play music was your live event in 2014, which is where I met Jon Berghoff. That led to a series of events that Jon brought me into, which inevitably gave me an experience of being a musician at the events and watching Jon do something with the groups. I call it do something because at that time, I didn't realize he was facilitating. I didn't really even know what the word was. I just knew he was doing something very special with the groups. And then when Jon started the training, XChange training back in 2017, I was hired to go to that training as a musician, to support the training, to bring uplifting music into the training. And when I watched and train the consultants and coaches and trainers that were in that room, I just couldn't help but get curious. Could there be a bigger impact that I could make in the world other than just making uplifting conscious music? Was there something else that I could do that would make a bigger impact than just creating the songs? And so, I started to turn all of my keynote concerts into musical facilitations where I would bring music in but I would really facilitate conversations inside of all the groups that I was going into versus just taking the 60 or 90 minutes and speaking to them and directing them towards the strategies and skills and techniques that they needed to expand their ability to create income, to create impact, to create fulfillment in their lives.

I realized that I could use this XChange approach to unlock the potential inside of the groups by creating the safety, by letting them have their voices heard, by letting them have time to reflect on their strengths and their purpose, on their visions for the future. And so, XChange really helped me to understand how to take teaching and learning and turn it from passive into an active experience. And ever since that first training that Jon put on in Cleveland, Ohio, beautiful Cleveland, there's been something inside of my soul that has been connected to the XChange approach. And when the pandemic came, all live music experiences were shut down. And so, I doubled down on designing and facilitating as many experiences on Zoom as I possibly could, which over the last year, I've designed and facilitated roughly 350 experiences just online in the last year. And so that's one of the…

Hal Elrod: Almost one a day.

Jeremy Reisig: Almost one a day, and many times, five a day, a couple of days off but multiple in several days because the restriction of traveling and hotels and the complexities of events. Actually, the timeline to put on an event was much shorter because you could just get people together online in a much faster, more efficient way. So, that's how I transitioned from being a musician, an uplifting, conscious musician into being one of the lead facilitators for XChange.

Hal Elrod: That makes sense. And for anybody listening, I want to just clarify who Jon Berghoff is like if you're new to the podcast, Jon is one of my closest friends. We were roommates when I was 20 and he was 18. So, like over 20 years ago, we lived together, we worked together, and then Jon and I stayed friends. And then we came together using his abilities that he does with his XChange program and Jon helped lead the Best Year Ever Blueprint, the live event that we put on from 2013 to 2019. I believe we did six of them and Jon Berghoff was the main facilitator at those events and then, Jer, you played music, you gave messages, so on and so forth. Anyway, anybody who's listening who's wondering, "Who this Jon guy you guys keep mentioning?” And by the way, Jon also when I got cancer, Jon reached out. I mean, he's one of my best friends. He reached out, “How can I help? How can I support you, buddy?” And one of our conversations, I go, “I don't know how I'm going to run my podcast that I - it's a weekly podcast and I'm getting chemo. I'm sick. I'm exhausted. I'm in the hospital like I don’t know what I'm going to do with it.” And so, Jon Berghoff took over the podcast for almost an entire year and didn't charge me for it or anything. Just dedicated time to step in and help. So, anyway, that's who Jon Berghoff is and he is the founder and the leader of XChange.

And by the way, what is XChange in a word or not a word, sorry, in a sentence like what is XChange? What is the company that you work with? What do they do?

Jeremy Reisig: The XChange approach is a multidisciplinary approach to unlocking the potential in any group that you coach, consults, or train.

Hal Elrod: Got it. Okay. That's well said. I would have not been so articulate but like when we had our live event, it was Jon doing the XChange approach to unlock the potential of everybody in the room. I mean, Jon gets most of the credit. I brought people there but he did like I know what you guys do. I don't know how to do it. I haven't been to the training yet and I know we have one that we're going to offer for the Miracle Morning Community on June 1^st or 2^nd. What's the date?

Jeremy Reisig: June 2^nd.

Hal Elrod: June 2^nd. We're offering two. Two different times, right?

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. June 2^nd from 11:00 to 1:00 p.m. Eastern, and then also on June 2^nd, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern, where they're going to get an opportunity. This is like a crazy opportunity. I know we're getting ahead of ourselves but the group is going to get, whoever's listening to this podcast and decides to join us, you're going to get a first-hand experience to learn from Jon, which is, like I said, learning from Jon changed the trajectory of my life.

Hal Elrod: Beautiful. So, let's talk today. You and I, I've wanted to have you back on the podcast to talk about the work that like to do the work for the people listening because I talked to Brianna Greenspan a lot. Brianna's a mutual friend as well and Brianna has gone through the XChange training and she often tells me things like, “Hal, they're doing the work that the world needs right now.” Like what XChange is doing, what Jon Berghoff, what Jeremy Reisig, what they're doing, this is transforming the world at a bigger scale. It can be a catalyst for transformation. Where was I going with that? Oh, so something that I want to mention this and this is actually how you and I came together a few weeks ago. If you're listening to this, I want you to know a driving question for me. So, for everybody listening, for anyone that's a member of the Miracle Morning community, a question which we’re going to talk a lot about today, about questions. A question that really brought this podcast together today that I started asking about a month ago or some form of this question, "How do I create an army? Or how do I empower and incentivize an army of Miracle Morning practitioners to continue the Miracle Morning mission with or without me?”

So, I don't want to be the face of anything. I don't want anything to be reliant on me. And we already have. That's how the Miracle Morning mission is spreading is that millions of people have read the book, they do the practice, and they tell people about it because it's changing their life. But I thought, "How can I take that to the next level and actually incentivize and empower and create like a team, like a real Miracle Morning movement mission team?” I don't have a name for it and I was talking to Brianna about this and she's like, “XChange.” She said, "One word, XChange.” And by the way, if you're listening to this, you have a visual. There's no E. The company or the approach XChange. It’s a letter X and then change. But she's at XChange. She said, "Combining. Basically, if you marry the Miracle Morning community with the XChange approach, that is how we can empower Miracle Morning practitioners,” especially those that are already doing work of, you know, we have a lot of coaches in our community. We have a lot of speakers in our community or trainers or consultants or entrepreneurs that lead companies or CEOs that lead companies. So, we already have a lot of people that are in a leadership position and the XChange approach allows any leader to unlock the potential of a group or an individual but of a group.

Anyway, it was kind of not an aha moment as much as an “Oh duh” moment. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. XChange. Duh.” Anyway, so I reached out to you and I said, "Hey, can we do a free training for our community on the XChange approach to get this kind of ball rolling and start teaching people how to use this approach, this method?” And so, that's what we're doing on June 2^nd. And then today when we were deciding what are we going to talk about, I wanted to teach people, kind of give people, okay, here are some of the fundamentals of what makes the XChange approach so effective. Today, we're calling this the three simple steps to unlock the potential in yourself and others. And so, Jer, I'd love to go through these three steps and if you're listening, I want you to understand before Jer and I started recording, I said, “Jer, every podcast that I record,” just reminding him, “like, I want to give people a ton of value so that anybody listening gets to walk away and immediately be able to apply what you learn to improve the quality of your life or someone else's life,” and I really believe that that's what you'll get from today. So, anything else to share before we start diving into step number one of these three steps?

Jeremy Reisig: No, man. Let's get going.

Hal Elrod: All right. So, three simple steps to unlock the potential in yourself and others. Jeremy, what is step number one, brother?

Jeremy Reisig: Step number one is to become aware of the questions that we consistently ask ourselves and others. And, Hal, you pointed to such a practical example of this when you referenced the experience you had maybe a month or so ago when you literally created a question, how do I empower and incentivize an army of Miracle Morning practitioners to scale globally without you? I'm paraphrasing your question but you came up with a question, and as soon as you came up with that question, that question is probably has now recycled itself over and over and over and over and over again in your mind but now you've started to ask this question almost subconsciously, which is creating pathways to new possibilities for how to create a new reality or the Miracle Morning or its ability to scale globally without you because you are consistently asking the question. So, I just wanted to point to that question where you literally created a new way of seeing the world through the power of a question.

So, when you think about how do you become aware of the questions that you consistently ask yourself and others, one of the first steps, and our good friend at XChange, Dr. Danny Friedland, who wrote a book called Leading Well From Within, he was one of the very first individuals to unlock the potential of our research-based medicine or evidence-based medicine. And then he went on to focus on how to lead well by leading from within, conscious leadership. A lot of what he does is or what he teaches is about becoming aware of what's going on in your own mind and in your own being. And so, the first spot to start in regards to becoming aware of the questions and asking great questions of yourself and others is to become aware, to pause, and to become aware of the questions that you're asking yourself. And this is a game of patience and it's a game of practice, and for those of you on the podcast who have a meditation practice or a mindfulness practice, you're already on the right track because those practices cultivate the ability to become aware of your own being. And inside of that process or inside of becoming aware of your own being, you're pausing, you're slowing down, and you're giving yourself space to reflect. So, that's the first step to becoming aware of the questions that you consistently ask is to slow down enough to know what the silent questions are, what they are.

And then the next step is to ask the question, what are the results of these questions that I'm actually asking myself and others? Like if I were to play this out and now that I've become aware of this question, I paused and I've become aware, what am I noticing about what this question will create? And in many cases, you don't actually have to be in the experience. You can actually just reverse engineer it and go, "If I ask this question and some over to respond in this way, what would that be like?” And there are certain cases where you might go, "Wow. That's a really bad question.”

Hal Elrod: Can you give me an example of a bad question, a question that we ask ourselves that is somewhat maybe a common question or that you've asked yourself but just the example of what would be a question that leads you to results that are not optimal?

Jeremy Reisig: Yes. So, especially for entrepreneurs who are building something, building a business, building a membership, building a product, building their bodies, building their life, there are these two steps forward, one step back or one step forward, two steps back. And in that process, it's really easy to become self-critical. And the way we become self-critical would be, let's say, that we start to create momentum and then something gets in our way. And we have a roadblock, we have an obstacle or challenge which is inevitable. The knee-jerk reaction that I had in my life was, “Oh, why didn't I understand that that was going to happen or why is this happening to me or why am I not smarter or why didn't I plan for this?” As soon as I asked those questions, I almost vilified myself and take away my power. Whereas if I say, "What can I learn from this or how can I turn this into a win or even in the face of this challenge or obstacle, what can I be grateful for?” I've literally just turned what seems like the obstacle into the way. I can't remember who wrote that book.

Hal Elrod: Ryan Holiday. The Obstacle Is The Way.

Jeremy Reisig: Ryan Holiday, right? The Obstacle Is The Way like the obstacle can become the way if we know what types of questions to ask around the obstacle. And so, when you pause and then you notice, "Oh, wow, I actually feel this sense of sadness or vilification or tension or anxiety inside of myself. What questions am I asking myself right now? And when I notice that I'm asking questions around, why am I not smarter? Why didn't I know that this was going to happen? Why didn't I get better partners? Why didn't I prepare better? All I do is put myself in a place of more scarcity, of more blame, of more anxiety. What's interesting, if you look at the Map of Consciousness by David Hawkins, actually by asking most of the questions I just described around like why didn't I know better, why am I not smarter, or why didn't I plan for this? When I asked those types of questions, I put myself in an actual level of consciousness that is below what he has researched to be the number we need to be above. So, by asking the question, I actually drive my ability to be a conscious being down.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I'm going off memory but the lowest levels of consciousness on David Hawkins’ Scales level, the level of consciousness, I just really butchered that, but I believe it's shame I think is the lowest level. And if you think about it, if you ask, "Why did I do that? Why did I screw up?” you're literally putting yourself into the lowest level of consciousness. And I think, is guilt the next one?

Jeremy Reisig: You got it. You’re exactly right. You got shame and then you've got guilt and then apathy and then grief then fear, then desire, then anger, then pride.

Hal Elrod: Right. So, think about the questions that those are the lowest levels of consciousness, right? If you ask yourself, "Why did that person cut me off in traffic?” boom, anger. Or, "Why did my spouse not…” Anger. The questions that we asked literally so the mission, the Miracle Morning mission is to elevate the consciousness of humanity. And what we're talking about right now is literally how you can either elevate or what's the opposite of elevate? De-elevate, is de-elevate a word? I don't know. But your consciousness through the questions you ask yourself and also elevate the consciousness of another person by the question you ask them. So, think about it. If somebody in your world could be at work or could be your spouse or kids or family or whatever, imagine if you go up to them and they're having a fun day, their day is great. They're fine, right? And then you go, "Hey, why did you do this thing that I didn't want you to do?” You immediately take their level of consciousness, which might have been one of joy, which is relatively high on the scale, and through a single question, you dropped them into shame or guilt. You dropped them from maybe 300 on a scale, which is a scale of 1 to 1,000, you drop them to the bottom with a single question. And if you can do it to somebody else, you can do it to yourself just as easily.

Jeremy Reisig: Exactly. One of the most powerful disciplines, philosophies of XChange is to create questions that have an appreciative lens.

Hal Elrod: Love that.

Jeremy Reisig: So, within the creation of the question that you have for yourself or that you create for yourself or if you're a coach, if you're a consultant, if you're a trainer, if you're a leader, the questions that you create that you're going to ask others, how might you put an appreciative lens on the question and there's an amazing philosophy out there called Appreciative Inquiry which is the philosophy, it's a search for the best of what was, what is, and what could be. And that if we ask questions that are searching for the best of what was, what is, and what could be, that we actually raise our ability to be in a higher level of consciousness, to broaden our spectrum of what's possible for ourselves, including love, connection, earning, accomplishment, positive emotions, everything. So, when we ask an appreciative question, go back to the example I used, what can I learn from this that will help me in the future? As soon as I ask that question, if you go to this map of consciousness, I'm actually into willingness, I'm into acceptance, I'm into reason, I'm into understanding, and all of a sudden with the simple reformatting of a question, I reprogram my own conditioning of what's possible.

And so, the power of the questions that we create and the ability to become aware of them, it really starts with pausing and not just reacting and being in the reactive place. Because if we're in the reactive place and we don't become aware of the questions, we might put ourselves in a prison for the rest of our lives and not even know that we're the ones doing it and actually look outwardly and blame others in the world. And it's actually us doing it in our own mind's eye. And you have to be gentle with yourself because it's not your fault that you have a certain series of questions happening. It's part of our evolution as a species. It's part of the conditioning that we've gone through as we've moved through all of our education experiences, even in our families. We're only starting to unlock this capability of question design in the last several decades. It's a brand new superpower for human beings and it is the cornerstone of what we do inside of XChange. So, you pause, you notice, “Oh, wow. I notice that I'm asking this bad question. How can I redirect and create another question that might give me a new opportunity for a new reality?” And then you choose to present yourself in that new reality.

Hal Elrod: A couple of things that you said that really stood out to me and anybody listening, I'd love for you to grab a pen. I'm going to ask Jeremy to repeat something that I think is very profound. And so, if you're not driving right now, if you can grab a pen or something to take notes, your phone, your computer, I'd encourage you to write this down. I think this alone makes this podcast. This takeaway makes it all worthwhile. Tell me again, appreciative inquiry is the asking of, I don't know, is it asking the questions of what was, what could be, what? Say that again.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. Appreciative inquiry is the search for the best of what was, what is, and what could be.

Hal Elrod: If you can live there, ladies and gentlemen, that your brain and the questions you ask are always in search of the best of what was, what is, and what could be, I believe that alone would allow you to elevate your consciousness beyond that of 99% of human beings on this planet and would allow you to live life as it is. That question alone would allow you to unlock the potential of yourself. And then if you ask that question of the people in your life, then also to unlock the potential of others but, yeah, that appreciative inquiry framework of focus, if you will, and in designing questions accordingly, I think that's everything, man. That's a game-changer.

Jeremy Reisig: It is a game-changer. It really is. And again, it lies as one of the main disciplines inside of the XChange approach. It's just one of many but it is one that really guides the interaction patterns that we design as coaches, consultants, facilitators, and trainers. Coaches, consultants, facilitators, trainers, it's no longer about having all the information and knowing and telling and demanding that people follow a certain way. What we're realizing and what's continuing to come forward and the research and science is that the new superpower is actually about designing questions that allow individuals to unlock the best of what was, what is, and what could be. And so, if most of the world is conditioned to ask questions silently of themselves and then outwardly to others that are disempowering, and you as a coach, a consultant, trainer, leader, facilitator, actually have an awareness, and because you've paused, you've noticed and you go, "Oh, wow, when I go into this event, when I go into this one-on-one, when I go into this group coaching, when I go into this training, when I go in to lead my team, my job is to come up with some really good questions that allow the group to move more towards what it wants to become and who we need to be versus getting into conversations of blame, of shame, of guilt, of being miserable together.”

So, the new superpower is actually question design and on June 2^nd, we're going to dive into question design. You're going to actually go through an experience with other individuals on that workshop where we're going to design a question, we're going to give you the question, you're going to answer it, then you're going to go into small group interaction patterns. And actually, this kind of leads to step number two of the three simple steps to unlock the potential in yourself and others. You'll go into a small group interaction pattern on June 2^nd where you'll answer the question with people from all around the world and see what happens next. It's pretty exciting.

Hal Elrod: So, let me do this. Before we transition to step number two, I just want to close this out with kind of an action step for folks and just a really simple one around being able to take step one and implement it in your life. And it's simply utilizing questions in your affirmations, utilizing questions in your information. So, one of my affirmation categories is mission, right, mission and impact. That's one of the categories where I have affirmations, different statements, and questions to direct my focus around the mission I'm on, the impact that I want to make in the world. And so, that question that I ask that I opposed earlier, that I came up with a month ago, which was how can I create an army? How can I empower and incentivize an army of Miracle Morning practitioners to further the Miracle Morning mission with or without me? That question went into my affirmations and then every day when I would read it and then I would just sit there for five minutes or so and meditate on that question. And it wasn't that I was trying to force an answer. It was that I was opening myself up to the infinite intelligence that's available to us at all times to give me that answer, to provide different answers to that question, each answer becoming a new option, a new possibility, which one might be the best or multiple might be the best or some nuanced combination of multiple answers might be the best. Who knows?

But without the question, I would just be trying to force an answer to something I didn't even have clarity around what it is I was trying to figure out. And that's how most of us approach our lives. We try to fix things without crafting and designing effective questions that open up multiple possibilities of solutions to fix that thing that we're trying to correct or to improve. So, use your affirmations to utilize questions. Another question I have is how can I make my wife's life amazing today? Super simple question. But instead of me focusing on what's wrong or why did this happen or why did she do this or why do I keep screwing up or whatever? It's how can I make my wife's life amazing? And in that there come many options, many possibilities for me to act on.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. I love that. I just had one last thing before we transition is, in my Miracle Morning, before I go into visualizations for the last probably four months, I've asked myself one of the simplest questions I've ever designed in my life. And then I sit there and visualize for between a minute or 10 minutes, depending on the day. And the question is, "How might I be kind to them?” I just ask that and then I close my eyes and I visualize all the places that I'm going to be during that day and I visualize myself being kind with the human beings that I'm going to come in contact with. And I'll tell you, utilizing question design inside of the Miracle Morning is a very powerful practice because it really guides these subtle nuances inside of your SAVERS. So, I love that you said that because I'm using similar steps inside my Miracle Morning to utilize question design to amplify certain aspects of the SAVERS.

Hal Elrod: That is beautiful. I'm not trying to get the last word but something you said made me think of something else to throw in here. I think questions are great as a buffet, right? Like the more questions people are aware of because you might hear a question and go, "Oh, that's a great question that I can apply to my life. I never thought of that and I might not have thought of that.” So, one of the first questions that I ever came up with that really directed my behavior and transformed my life was in 2005, I read the book Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. The big focus of that book was adding value for other people. And I sum it up in my own mind as like the more value you add for others, the more valuable you become in the world. And it's not a value of like that you lack any value but it's like, "Hey, if we hang out and you don't add any value to my life, you're not funny, you're not kind, you don't teach me anything, well, you don't make me feel good,” well, eventually we may not be hanging out because there's no value being created for each other. And so, this question I would ask is, how can I add value to this person's life? And it was every single interaction.

When I was driving to a customer's house, it was, "How can I add value to this person's life?” And it's really similar to your question, which is what brought it up here, which is how can I be kind today? But very often if we're just being whether it's talking just to talk which I'm guilty of, I just get in the moment, I get excited, I start talking the talk, and I started to have that voice constantly interrupting my own. I would start talking and then I would go - I don't know if you remember this. It was when me and you were really spending a lot of time on the phone together during our last year with Cutco or one of our last two years together but I remember I would be in conversation with people and that was such a dominant question for me. How can I add value for this person that I would catch myself, I would start to tell a story, and that question would come up in the back of my mind and I would go, “Oh, I'm just telling a story to try to sound cool or this is just a way like does this story add value?” And I would go, "It doesn't.” And I would cut myself off right in the beginning of a story or mid-story, I would go, "Never mind.” They’re like, "What?” And I go, “I just realized this story will add no value to your life. There's no point in me telling it.” And it's interesting, recently actually during some journaling, I wrote that down, “I need to get back to what I call added value communication,” because I've realized I've fallen back into old patterns of talking just to talk and it doesn't always add value.

And I just think it's a really beautiful place to be in where you're being impeccable or striving to be impeccable with your communication with others so that it's always adding value and you become just this fountain, this fire hose of value for others. And they go, "Wow. I love being around or talking to that person because every time I talk to them, they're sharing something, they're telling me something. I feel great. I learn. I get better,” so on and so forth. So, we can go into step two, or did that bring about anything on step one that you want to add, Jer?

Jeremy Reisig: Oh, it's beautiful, man. It's a perfect segue to number two. And because in regards to adding value to others, one of the keys is to actively invite their voices into conversations and their voices, meaning if you're in a one on one and you're looking to add value, one of the most efficient ways to add value is to help them to be seen, to be heard, to be witnessed. And whether it's one-on-one coaching or one on one with your spouse or one on one with a good friend, or if it's one on many and you're actually the designer and facilitator of experiences, knowing how to engage the equality of voices in a group is one of the fastest ways to increase the value that you can deliver to the group.

Because what Hal just described, the old patterns, the old tendencies are the patterns and tendencies of the entire world, which is I want to have significance and I want to have certainty. So, I'm going to do as much talking as I can to look as cool as I can, to show that I know I have to pause and notice myself in this as well. So, when you invite someone's voice forward, hey, what do you think? And then, that's a bad question. Let's just say that like last night, for example, I'll use an example of equality of voices. I host a family call for my family three weeks a month. We've been doing it for the last 17 months or 18 months or so. And last week…

Hal Elrod: Which members of your family?

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, members of my family, and again, this is step number two, how to actively invite the equality of voices into every conversation. So, with my family, those who join the family call are my mom, my brother, my aunt Donna, her husband Fritz, her daughter Kelly, her husband Cam..

Hal Elrod: You started this during the pandemic, right?

Jeremy Reisig: I started this during the pandemic. Yeah, I started it during the pandemic, like, right in April. And we have met, I think we've only missed like eight or nine in the last whatever it's been.

Hal Elrod: Over a year.

Jeremy Reisig: Over a year, yeah. Let's just say over a year. We've met over 50 times.

Hal Elrod: Wow. That’s a lot.

Jeremy Reisig: As a family. So, one of the ways to engage the group is we come up with a question every single week that we meet. We come up with a generative question or a question that allows us to learn about one another in ways that if we were all together and just– we weren't together that much anyways. So, we used questions to generate connection. And the question I asked last night was a super simple question. I said, “Hey, before we get gone with the question we have designed for the week, I want to do a quick check-in. Hey, let's just share one or two things that you're most grateful for about the last week.”

And then, each person is going to get about 60 seconds, 90 seconds or so to share. And then we'll move on with our design question for the week. But there's a key there, it's not just, hey, let's just have a couple people share what they're grateful for, it's actually because it's a small enough group, roughly 10, 15 people, depending on the week. I can just say, “Hey, let's go around rapid fire, 60 seconds each. What's one thing that you're grateful for?” And within 10 minutes, the entire group has had their voice come forward. You can do that with your family, you can do that in the groups that you bring together to coach, to train, to facilitate, you can use a question at the very beginning.

Many times, with the family, I'll also use breakout rooms in Zoom where to make it more efficient for timing. We'll ask a question and then we'll put a group into these breakout rooms in Zoom. If you don't know what breakout rooms are, it's a superpower that Zoom has, to create small group interaction patterns. It’s not always just about the large group. One of the fastest ways to add value to individuals is to get them into a small group where they feel really safe and they can share their ideas, whether it's what they're grateful for or what their future visions are or what they're looking to accomplish over the course of the week, getting individuals. Giving them the ability to share what it is that's on their minds is one of the greatest ways to help people, to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged, and to ultimately unlock their potential.

In many cases, they're just never invited. And especially, if it's an introvert, they just won't say anything. So, we have several introverts in our family that when we're all together in the group and the extroverts are just dominating the conversation, they don't say very much on these family calls because of the design of the question and the interaction pattern. They many times bring such brilliance, such love, such intelligence into the conversation that by actively inviting equal voices, it actually elevates the entire ability for our family to feel love for one another.

Hal Elrod: I love that. I love that you're doing that, first of all, like that’s just what a beautiful thing for you to do for your family. And step two, again, if you didn't catch this, because I know we kind of went right into it, but it's to actively invite equality of voices into every conversation. And your point about the introverts, a lot of introverts, my son. It's a great example, if we don't invite him into a conversation, like, actively, “Hey, Halston, what are your thoughts on this?” He'll just sit there and be quiet the whole time. And it's not that an introvert doesn't have brilliant things to say. It's that they've got to typically be invited to say those things. And so, yeah, I think that it's so important. And so, we're there now in personal situations, one on one, just making sure you're creating space for the other person to talk, right?

Jeremy Reisig: Especially your spouse.

Hal Elrod: Especially your significant other, right?

Jeremy Reisig: Especially your significant other, yeah.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And again, I struggle with that because I'm like, and I gotta figure it out. Let me tell you what, I've been doing the work for a long time. Let me tell you how this is so and yeah…

Jeremy Reisig: Again is that pause, notice, choosing where you've got to pause, you’d be like, I've been doing most of the talking, I’m noticing I'm doing most of the talking. I really want to talk, but hey, babe, what are your thoughts on this? Or what is it you're most interested in right now? Or what are you most excited about for the day or that simple switch? And by the way, if you're wondering, what does this have to do with the workshop? At the workshop, you're going to experience us creating an environment where all voices get heard. You're going to experience the ability for both extroverts and introverts to interact with one another seamlessly across an entire group of people from all around the world who in many cases, I've never met before. So, that ability to pause, to notice, to choose, you're going to see that literally first hand on June 2^nd.

Hal Elrod: And to give people a broader like from personal to large scale, to people broader understanding of what exchange. What I've watched John do even at our live events is, and I know what they'll do it like for a company is at a company, normally, all the decisions are being made by like the board of advisors or the executive board. It's like 8 to 12 people sitting in a boardroom making the choices that affect everybody's life in the entire company. And the exchange approaches, hey, we're going to host an exchange summit, and the CEO's going to be there and so is the janitor and so are all the executives and so are all the secretaries and so are all the drivers, the delivery men and women. So, we're all right. It's literally bringing the entire organization together, and everyone has an equal voice. And that's what we mean by equality of voices on a larger scale.

So, I just wanted to, if you're listening, give you beyond just spouse to spouse or within your family, like, actually see how, oh, this could be the Unite– in fact, David Cooperrider, Jon Berghoff’s mentor, did this at the United Nations, right? So, it was like bringing every country together, every world leader together to share their perspective.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. Jon is currently doing this with the YMCA, and he's done it with BMW, with a group of German engineers. He brought the XCHANGE Approach into Facebook. We are currently training some of Keller Williams International's top master faculty trainers. So, this XCHANGE Approach, it really is something you can apply in your individual conversations with your family. And if you do work in the world where again, you're coaching, training, consulting, whether it's with groups of five and it's your small board of directors or it's a whole system summit, the approach of number one, creating quality questions that unlock the potential of a group, and then, number two, inviting all voices into the conversation are two key aspects of the XCHANGE Approach. And what's interesting, and you bring up a great point, Hal, is we found a way to do it at speed and scale so very quickly at the scale of a team or of an organization.

Hal Elrod: When I just experienced this at– I was at the Front Row Dads retreat in Florida a couple like two weeks ago, and I had Vroman on the podcast. I spoke with him recently. We talked about the retreat, but essentially, Jon Vroman has learned the XCHANGE Approach from Jon Berghoff. So, I get to experience it in the work that he does. And he took 40 guys. I think there were 40 of us there, give or take, and probably 25, maybe 30 of them had been together before. So, there's already an element of trust there. And then there were about 10 or 15 brand-new guys that were there that were like, “What the heck did I get myself into? I don't even know what to expect fully.” And because of the XCHANGE Approach, within literally like five or ten minutes, people in the group are sharing things they wouldn't share with their closest friends in a group of 40 people. And we do breaking off and doing one-on-one interviews and that sort of thing.

But the point is, you mentioned, like, rapidly, it's like I was talking with someone, my buddy Matt Recor was there, and he was just like, he goes, I'm blown away by how quickly this environment, this culture is like just it's created, it emerges where everybody feels so safe and so aligned that you get guys being vulnerable in ways that I've never heard guys be vulnerable before. And in doing that, when they're able to instead of just be like, hey, buddy, what's going on? How is the family? Great. How's your family? Cool. Okay, yeah. Normally, people don't go very deep with each other. Women probably. I don't mean to be– women may do that more than men, I think. Stereotypically or generally, I think that men can operate on the surface, and I'm sure women can too, but just the point of that psychological safety and understanding how to do that is so key and not just in group settings, but also if you're a coach doing a one on one, how do you quickly get that person on the other end of the phone or Zoom or however you're coaching them to completely trust and feel safe, trust the process, trust you feel safe so that you can quickly create and unlock the potential in that person?

Jeremy Reisig: Absolutely. And before we move to step three, I just want to amplify what you just shared, which is it would be very easy for Jon Vroman to just lead the entire event and just be the expert dad telling all the other dads all the best tips. That is actually the norm of a group that's coming together to learn about being something. In this case, you're learning about being a great dad, an epic dad, a loving dad. And many times, when you go to an event, it's an expert, it's a sage on the stage telling everyone what to think, what to feel, what actions to take, what strategies to use, and the group gets excited, but the research, the science, the emerging evidence actually says that that excitement will only last so long and will only get integrated into their lives to a certain level that almost makes no difference.

And so, what you're describing is an unlocking of connection at the scale of the entire group of 40 coming together, that also makes dads in this case, more excited to take everything they're learning to go back and to apply it to their families, because now they have, I think you guys call it, a band of brothers. And this band of brothers, they become a band because the questions and the interaction patterns that invite all voices and allow for the group to become hyper-connected and collaborative faster than anyone would ever expect. And so, you're pointing to, I think, a paradigm shift, which is instead of Roman being the sage on the stage, he's actually become the guide on the side.

Hal Elrod: I love that, the guy on the side. Yeah, and he talks very little, I mean, like he's talking less than 5% of the time and 95% of the time, it's all 40 of the guys’ voices being heard. So, then that goes back to that equality of voices. Let's talk about step three. What is step three for people to unlock the potential in themselves and others?

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, continue striving for mastery in areas that matter most to you. And there's kind of three points to this. Number one is what matters most to you. So, if you have a pen, if you have something to write with, what matters most to you? And why is that important to you? So, what matters most to you? Even taking the time to reflect and write down what it is that matters most to you ultimately gives you an even deeper connection to what it is that matters most. A lot of times, we leave things up in our heads and we don't write it down. So, when you continue striving for mastery in the areas that matter most, the first step is what is it that matters most to you?

Hal Elrod: I think you were going to go where I was going to just ask is just to say like what's the context how we might select areas or examples of areas?

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, well, like what matters most to you in the work that you do? Why do you do the work that you do? What matters most to you and your family? Why is your family important to you? What matters most to you and the way you want to show up for your community? And why is that important? What matters most to you in your relationship with your significant other? And also, you can just answer it broadly. What matters most to you and see what comes out? So, knowing what it is that matters most to you so that you can continue to strive to master those areas, because if we don't decide what matters most, everything matters.

And if everything matters, then we don't have enough time in the day, we don't have enough efficiency or effectiveness to actually become masterful in all of these things that matter most. We have to narrow it down to really become clear. Going back to my story at the beginning of like, hey, how did you go from being a musician to being this XCHANGE facilitator who's now designed and facilitated a thousand-plus experiences? Well, I've been very clear since I started the process of partnering my Cutco business to become a musician. To become an XCHANGE facilitator, I knew what matters most. I don't want to go to my grave thinking that I could have done something more with my time here on Earth, I want to follow the breadcrumbs of what it is that we need as a human population in order to be the best of ourselves, to be the best that we can be.

And at one point in time, I thought, “Wow, music could really amplify our ability to be a better version of ourselves, because writing these words in these songs makes me feel that way. So, let me make songs and give them to the world.” But in some ways that has a limitation because there's no interaction between the user and myself. They might interact with the song, but they most likely will interact with the song on their own. So, when I started to understand the XCHANGE Approach and what the possibilities were and the potential of becoming masterful at the XCHANGE Approach, it actually helped me to move forward with what matters most to me, which is making the biggest difference I possibly can while I'm here.

And so, by knowing what matters most, I knew where to lean into my learning. And so, in regards to also mastering the areas that matter most, what does mastery look like? And mastery is another way of saying learning about what it is that you want to master, like how do you learn about what it is you want to master? And in order to learn, there's a couple of principles that I love to use. I already said one of them. One is get it out of your head. One of my mentors a long time ago said, if you're in your head, you're dead. So, get it out of your head and get it into your journal, into your iPad if you write on an iPad. Give yourself an ability to write down your thoughts.

Mastery is really about reflection because mastery is about learning. And there's a great book, which is a book I've got right here in my hand, it's Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. You learn and develop how to be masterful. And so, in order to become master of all, we have to understand learning. And learning and the experiential learning specifically says that we don't learn from our experiences, we learn from reflecting on our experiences and then taking that reflection into action so that we actually learn how to apply what we're learning.

So, again, if you're like someone who has content, someone who has curriculum, someone who's consulting or facilitating in groups, and one of your jobs is to teach groups a skill, a strategy, a technique, a curriculum, a framework, one of the fastest ways to help them master what it is you're teaching is to give them active experiences versus passive experiences, because if you activate their learning, they'll get smarter, faster. And if you activate it for them reflecting and then you get them into small groups and they get to connect around that reflection and share with each other where they want to take action, actually, they hack the future. They're already further along versus them just listening passively to this amazing information.

So, part of mastery is deciding what areas matter most and then understanding how I can be most effective in the way that I learned how to become masterful. And that is really tied up in the art of learning, which is again new research is coming forward that is helping us as people, as humans to get smarter faster. It's essentially just now coming to the forefront of our– because we’re in the information age, right? There's so much information out there.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I want to share an analogy for people listening that came up for me, I think, helped me understand this. It's the difference of if you were at a karate class and you were sitting in, your instructor said, “This is how you do this karate move on somebody.” And you were to watch it or listen to it and then go, “Ooh, yeah, that looks really good. I see how effective that is. That makes sense.” And then you wrote down, do that karate move someday. You just like we go to events, we take notes, but if you didn't actually stand up and get with the partner and practice that karate move real time and go, “Ooh, that's what it feels like, let me adjust. Ooh, okay, now I get it. Now I feel it. Now I've experienced it. Now I have actually learned it.” Very big difference of just watching your instructor do it and then going home versus watching your instructor do it and then standing up and actually doing the thing you just learned.

And to me, that analogy helps bring home what you just said, where it's like, yeah, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get the difference in the impact that learning is going to make if you just learn it passively and go home versus learn it and get with a partner and engage with it. And I think that's where the XCHANGE Approach takes learning to the next level.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, it makes learning efficient and it also makes it fun and also harnesses question creation and inviting in equal voices, because in order to create an active learning experience, the first step is, of course, to teach whatever strategy techniques, skill, curriculum you’re teaching. Step number two is to come up with a question that invites the participants to reflect on what they just learned, which could be as easy as, as you reflect on what you just learned, what stood out to you that you think will impact you most? What was the most important thing you learned? What was the golden nugget that you want to take away from this? What was the aha? What was the most important learning that you just took away from what I just taught? Those series of questions are questions that invite the person who's learning to actually investigate and inquire. Oh, what was the most important learning I just got from this 30-minute keynote? Like, what was the most important thing? I got all these notes. What was the most important? Oh, wow. I'm going to circle this thing right here.

And when you circle that most important learning, hey, where are the areas that you want to apply that learning in your life or in your profession? Oh, wow, I'm going to do it here. So, again, the question creates a new reality and almost projects the learning into the future, which now let an individual be more aware of that learning being applied in the future because now they visualized it. Visualization, essentially, the only way they can get the answer is by answering the question in order to answer the question, hey, where am I going to apply this learning? They have to see the future.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Jeremy Reisig: And then actually, precisely put the learning into the future, which makes them more acutely aware of applying the learning. And then if you say what's the one intention you want to set that will allow you to bring that learning into those moments that you just described you want to bring it into? What's your intention? Discipline, persistence, patience, courage, what is it? Now, you actually have an affirmative word that you can call upon to basically remotivate yourself in the moment where you're like, oh, I could apply this learning right now, but I don't know, oh, but I said this word discipline. I will do this right now because I've actually created an agreement and accountability with myself.

This is all just like three simple questions off of what usually is a passive learning experience. We're so used because we did this in school, right? The teachers taught and we learned and maybe we did Q&A, but basically, it's like do this, do this, do this, knowing, telling, demanding. If you don't do what it is that I demand, you're going to get a failing grade and you're not going to pass and you're going to be embarrassed in front of all your friends, and your mom and dad are going to ridicule you and take away all your privileges and take away all the things that you hold near and dear, because now you got this grade. Like we're conditioned to be crappy learners. And we have to turn up the dial because we have to become smarter and more efficient if we want to have an opportunity to solve some of the biggest challenges that we have in front of us and to harness some of the largest opportunities.

The only way to do that, whether it's adapting to change or moving towards our opportunities, is to become really efficient in the way that we learn and at the speed and scale at which we learn individually and together. So, this whole idea of mastering the ability to teach and to learn, it comes through simple question design and activities that allow someone's curriculum or allow someone to teach something or coach on something and then lead a person through an active experience that allows them to take the learning and to go further, faster with it. And so, that's part of mastering the areas that matter most to you is becoming an effective learner, an efficient learner.

And then, the last part of this continued striving for mastery in areas is commit to experiences that bring you closer to the thing that you want to master. I was just writing about this. I don't know about any of you, but I experienced FOMO on a daily basis. There are so many cool things happening in the world. There are so many workshops. There are so many things that you could go to. There are so many live streams. There are so many YouTube videos. There are so many Netflix shows that are so good at marketing to make you want to click the button to watch the second one. We have to be really clear on what it is that we want to master so that we can choose what it is we want to learn about, because when we learn about everything, we become a jack of all these different trades and we don't master what it is that's most important to us.

So, when you decide what it is that you're– when you actually put a boundary on what you feel FOMO, and you're like, oh, I don't need to learn about that right now, that's down the path. I don't need to learn about that right now. These are my lanes of mastery. These are my lanes of learning. It actually allows you to not have to work so hard to say no to other things. And it allows you to be more laser focused on what matters most to you so that you can master it. So, priorities are a big part of mastering the areas that matter most to you. And the world doesn't make it easy. The information age makes it extremely difficult and requires us to be even more disciplined, to not go down a Facebook trail of like I'll just go learn about this, this cool thing, ClickFunnels. Now, I'm not really building a funnel, yeah, but I'll build it in the future, but God dang, his video is really nice. And all of a sudden, you're like 20, 30 minutes in to your learning time, your mastery time and you're down the wrong trail of breadcrumbs. And if we do that, we do it 10 times, we've lost such a significant amount of time to progress towards what matters most to ourselves, what matters most to us, and therefore, we lose our ability to become masterful and we just become mediocre or pretty good.

Hal Elrod: I love that, and I think that everything that you're talking about for anyone listening, I want to, before, and I know we've got the June 2^nd, we're going to do this training for Miracle Morning community specific for just our community, but you just gave a lot of– I feel like a lot of how, like how to approach mastering the areas that matter most. And I want to tie a bow on this with a little bit of why, meaning why does this matter? Why should you care? Why should you? Why? What's the benefit here for you in terms of approaching mastery? And this was a realization for me recently. It's been a realization for me throughout my life.

It was a big part of when I wrote the Miracle Morning, there was a chapter called The 95% Reality Check. I talked about how we all accept mediocrity in our lives. And it was actually the day that I was about to fly out to the Front Row Dads retreat. That morning, during my Miracle Morning, I had a realization that I'm settling for mediocrity in most areas of my life right now. I'm in a season of my life where I'm settling for mediocrity. Like I'm doing enough physical exercise to get by, which is okay, it's not bad. And as a husband, I'm doing pretty good. And as a father, I'm doing pretty good. But what I realize is, and I wrote in my journal, I go, I'm ready for the next level. I want to go to the next level in every area of my life. I want to go to the next level in terms of being diligent about my finances and savings. I want to go to the next level in terms of being the most extraordinary husband that my wife could ever hope to have, and as a dad, in all of my roles. I want to take this to the next level, in terms of my impact in the world.

And so, here's the point, all of a sudden, when I got clear that, okay, I'm accepting mediocrity in most areas of my life and what mastery looks like. And I started writing down, like what would– and for me, mastery, by the way, and if you're listening, mastery is the next level, meaning you can define mastery, like the level 10, like the perfect version of where you could ever be in your entire life, but that can be overwhelming. And it's okay to know that and know that that's the eventual target. Like, that’s maybe the five-year target or the 10-year target, but in terms of mastery, if I can master getting to the next level, that's the only way to get to the level after that and the level after that and the level after that.

So, for me, mastery started with going, okay, what's the next level as a dad, as a husband? What's the next level of impact? What's the next level of income? What's the next level of fitness? And I started just bawling, pointing, and brainstorming. The question creates multiple options and possibilities. So, like for me, I go, I want to be able to do the splits. That was something I've always wanted to do. I thought that would be a level of mastery when it comes to fitness. And then there's another, I bullet point a different– putting on muscle, different things, but here's the point is I got excited, like I was reinvigorated realizing that I've been accepting mediocrity and life's been pretty good, but not excellent. And now, I'm getting out of the cocoon and I'm ready to strive for excellence, again, strive for mastery. And that got really exciting. And it lit me up and I felt a level of fulfillment that was immediately available to me before I achieved the mastery, just getting clear on uncommitted to go to the next level in each and every area of my life.

So, I wanted to share that for anybody listening as just hopefully, a little bit of oomph, a little bit of okay, that sounds pretty good, I can get on board with that. I can get on board looking at every area of my life, looking at where I might be accepting a level of mediocrity, which simply means accepting less than you're capable of, less than your full potential. And then you can look at what's the next level in each area of your life that matters most to you and then write that down and then ask yourself, what can I do? What’s one or more things that I could do to move toward the next level on my journey to mastery? And so, that was what got me excited about committing to mastery in each area of my life. And for everybody listening, hopefully, that is helpful to you. And any other thoughts? And then I'd like to talk about June 2^nd. What are the details? Where will they get the details and sign up for that? It is a free training, like we always do.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, it's a free workshop. Thank you, Hal, for that, the detailed explanation of why it matters to choose these different areas in your life that you want to master. And I love the example that you brought in around another question. What does it look like? What was the exact question you asked?

Hal Elrod: What does the next level on the journey toward mastery look like for me in each area?

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah. What is the next level, right? And as soon as you ask that, your brain starts to evaluate where you're at. And it now starts to project what is possible. And just a simple question, it's a simple question that literally elevates your consciousness to see possibilities. And I'm going to try and make a smooth segue from step three, which is the ability to continue striving for mastery in the areas that matter most. If you are, and I know I've used these labels throughout the podcast, a coach, a consultant, a trainer, a facilitator, a leader of a team and you want to enable yourself, whether you're one of those labels, a coach, trainer, facilitator, leader, you want to enable yourself, to elevate the questions, to increase the effectiveness of the questions that you create for the groups that you lead, teach, train, you want to know how to choreograph the right types of conversations that allow for equal voices to come forward, you want to amplify the learning of your teachings, you want to create connections in the groups that you're bringing together, you want to create community in some way, shape, or form, if you want to master the ability to amplify content, to create connection, and to build community, the workshop on June 2^nd is an opportunity for you to step forward in mastering that craft.

The workshop, which is led by Jon Berghoff, who we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, so if you like, jumped down to this podcast and somehow ended up on the second half of the podcast because you fast forward it or something, go listen to our explanation of who Jon Berghoff is. It's that explanation that we gave at the beginning, he's masterful. What he's done inside of organizations like Cutco, inside of organizations like Vitamix, inside of BMW, inside of Facebook, inside of the YMCA.

Hal Elrod: The city of Cleveland.

Jeremy Reisig: The city of Cleveland. You're going to learn directly from Jon, who is the founder of the XCHANGE Approach, directly from Jon on June 2^nd. So, if you're someone who's looking to master the craft of being a designer and facilitator of group experiences, and you have groups that you're responsible for designing and facilitating for, right now, this workshop is for you. It is really for you to help you to amplify your ability to get results, to create income, to create impact. And so, that's what June 2^nd is all about.

Hal Elrod: And I want to say also, if you're a member of the Miracle Morning community, like I almost could say, it's that broad, right? And yes, everything you've mentioned it's for specifically, but our plan, I shouldn't say plan, but my intention, as I mentioned, is how do I create an army? How do I incentivize and empower Miracle Morning practitioners to carry forth the mission? And I don't know what that looks like yet. I just know that Jeremy, you and Jon and XCHANGE are arguably the best in the world, that's the empowering part, right? That's the empowering part. I'm not in the incentivizing part yet, but the plan is that eventually, in the next few months that I'm working through trying to figure out what this looks like, that we do have some sort of program. And I have a tentative name like the Miracle Messengers or the Miracle Morning Messengers, something like that, but some form of something where people can get, like, certified to take the Miracle Morning out there to schools and to companies, organizations.

So, again, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but to me, this free workshop is kind of like the first step whereby going through it, even if you don't currently coach or lead a team or train, but it's something that sounds interesting to you or sharing the Miracle Morning with the world sounds interesting, that's something that speaks to you, this is like the first step in going, oh, this is what it might look like. And then from that, I feel like it could open you up to all sorts of possibilities that right now, might not even be available to you because you're not aware of them. It's like I don't even know what I don't know, but after the XCHANGE Approach, I feel it's like, oh, wow, now I can see applications for this that I didn't even know were possible before.

Jeremy Reisig: Absolutely. And yeah, very well said, you're going to be creating an army of Miracle Morning ambassadors out there in the world that their ability to go out and spread the Miracle Morning message will only be amplified by learning about the XCHANGE Approach and then as you become clear, they'll be able to take their learnings of what they actually learned from the XCHANGE Approach and apply it directly towards what you start to roll out over the months to come.

Hal Elrod: So, where do people sign and register? I realized we have not given any sort of website or anything. People are like, “Dude, okay, we get it. Just give us the frickin website.”

Jeremy Reisig: Okay, we get it. Give them the website, the website, and this is where we are going to. I'm moving over to my…

Hal Elrod: Jeremy is looking for the website right now.

Jeremy Reisig: I'm looking for the website right now, yeah.

Hal Elrod: Way to be prepared. We're so prepared.

Jeremy Reisig: We are prepared.

Hal Elrod: While Jeremy is doing that, I'll think of something to say. I'm just going to recap the steps here, right? So, the topic today, three simple steps to unlock the potential in yourself and others. Step one, become aware of the questions that you consistently ask, that you consistently ask to yourself and ask to others. So, that’s step one is become aware of the questions that you're already asking, because we're always asking questions. What if? What if things go wrong? What if this happens? What if she doesn't like me? Like, we're asking questions all the time. So, become aware of the questions that you're already asking.

Step two is actively invite equality of voices into every conversation. It simply means it's old school, how to win friends and influence people. Make sure that you're being more interested in others than you are trying to be interesting for others. And then step three, continue striving for mastery in the areas that matter most to you. And so, identifying what areas do matter most to you. Do you have a family? Are you a parent? Are you a spouse? Do you lead a community? Do you want to make an impact in the world? Is it your health? Is it your happiness? What are the areas of your life that matter most to you? What are the roles that you play that matter most to you? And really striving for mastery in those areas by asking where am I settling for less than my best mediocrity in some way. And then identifying what's the next level in those areas because that next level is your next step toward mastery in your life.

And Jeremy, just put in the chat, the website. If you want to attend the free training on June 2^nd, the website is XCHANGE Approach. That's no E, just the letter XCHANGEApproach.com/UnlockWisdomTMM, nice one, you are all there, XCHANGEApproach.com/UnlockWisdomTMM.

Jeremy Reisig: We nailed it, just like when we wrapped together.

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

Jeremy Reisig: We were totally locked up. And this will go in the show notes, right? They can just click on it in the show notes, and it'll take them to the landing page.

Hal Elrod: Yes, it absolutely will. This is Episode 379.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, you're going to want to go to the show notes for this one. I was looking for a way to shorten it, but for all the reasons I don't know, this particular link for you to sign up for the workshop on June 2^nd is XCHANGEApproach.com/UnlockWisdomTMM. And what you're going to get at the workshop, if you're wondering because we haven't said it explicitly, is you're going to learn how to unlock collective potential and psychological safety at speed and scale. And the groups that you coach, consult, train, you're going to learn about the science and the research behind the XCHANGE Approach. You're going to learn about why BMW, Keller Williams, Facebook, YMCA, and many more have called upon XCHANGE when the stakes are at their highest and they need to bring their teams, their groups, their organizations together. And the last thing is you're going to learn how the XCHANGE Approach elevates learning, connection and community in any learning environment, Mastermind group, or networking group that you're a part of. So, that's what you're going to get, June 2^nd, the times are 11:00 to 1:00 p.m. Eastern or 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. There is a max of 200 people per workshop.

Hal Elrod: Which is why we're going to do it two times, by the way.

Jeremy Reisig: This is why we're doing it two times. So, there is probably going to be more demand than supply. So, make sure to click that link, get signed up, and follow the process. We have an intake form that we're going to send out. We want your information on what it is you want to learn. You're going to get a series of emails that will lead you into the workshop. We're going to give away some free videos, a free playbook. So, there are multiple resources and tools that you'll be given along the way before the June 2^nd workshop.

Hal Elrod: Yes. And to clarify, this is free. It's a completely free workshop and it's only for the Miracle Morning community. So, you're not joining a public group. This is literally something I asked Jon and Jeremy if they would run for our community to kind of get everybody just to teach you all this great training. Well, Jeremy, I learned a lot today, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

Jeremy Reisig: Yeah, I always love being with you, buddy. I am so grateful for our friendship, for our partnership, for all the amazing pictures that we have to reflect on. And more than anything, I'm so grateful for your generosity and for your courage and for your friendship, man. Like, you're so generous. You're so courageous in the way that you tackle life, take on big projects, think big. You're courageous in the way that you've battled a life-threatening disease. You're courageous in the way that you've overcome obstacles that are incomprehensible for my mind. And you're just an incredible friend, man. You're just an incredible friend. And I really appreciate you. And I always loved meeting individuals from your community because they always have a similar heart to yourself. So, we look forward to meeting more individuals on June 2^nd. I love you, man.

Hal Elrod: They are the best, I have to admit, yeah. No, but I thank you, Jerry. I appreciate the kind words and it's very mutual. And everybody listening, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning community, thank you for being here. I really appreciate your time. If you've made it this far, I don't even know how long this episode is. It’s one of our longer episodes, but I really appreciate you listening. I hope you got a lot of value today. I hope you can join Jeremy and Jon at the XCHANGE workshop on June 2^nd. And to sign up to that, go to XCHANGEApproach.com/UnlockWisdomTMM. And until next week, I love you. I appreciate you, and I will talk to you all very soon. Take care.

Jeremy Reisig: Bye, everybody.

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