Podcast
The Kevin Miller Podcast
Hosted by Kevin Miller | YAP Media · EN
The big question - what is the meaning of life? The great quest - to find meaning in life. I devoted my life to filling all the roles, pursuing all the achievements, and engaging with all the relationships I thought would provide the greatest meaning to my life. Only to come to the reckoning that the world doesn't give meaning to my life. I do. Join me as I discuss how we make meaning from our lives and how we can satisfy ourselves in every moment, regardless of the circumstances.
kevinmiller.co
*Over 75 million downloads, 350 expert guests, 1,700 episodes...and the journey continues on the podcast evolution from 'The Ziglar Show' to 'The Self-Helpful Podcast' to 'What Drives You' to 'The Kevin Miller Podcast'...
68episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Deconstructing & Navigating The Hero’s Journey w/ Strategist Peter Bailey
2d ago01:09:34Tap to summarizeMy focus here is not on being a hero in the fashion our culture uses the word, in regard to caretaking humanity and saving the world. A quick search for the hero’s journey says it is a universal story structure where a protagonist ventures out of their comfort zone, faces a major crisis, wins a victory, and returns home profoundly transformed, and in this I find a core of human desire. In author Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years he takes a script writing course and is taught that a good story is about a character who wants something, and overcomes conflict to get it. We all seem to inherently desire deep, fulfilling experiences, and those by proxy tend to include an effort in order to achieve them. Making the effort and overcoming some challenges are part of what make the experience fulfilling. So my expert on the topic is Peter Bailey. Professionally Peter has worked as a leadership strategist for four decades in more than 50 countries. But my interest is Peter’s research and discoveries in “Developing Your Heroic Journey Mindset,” of which he has a TED talk by the same title. Recently he’s written a book, The Epic of You : Reframe Your Past To Navigate Your Future. As you will hear, at the heart of heroism is not what has happened to you, but how you have responded to life. Peter experienced a difficult childhood and in adulthood has traveled through many of the main trials of life and love. I wanted to dig into how we understand and navigate our lives as we face crisis and not let them dictate the outcomes of our lives. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Understanding Emotional Intelligence Through The Enneagram w/ Organizational Development Expert Scott Allender
5d ago01:20:27Tap to summarizeI continue to find and place value in Emotional Intelligence. I spent much of my life misperceiving social intelligence as emotional intelligence. I felt I could read and cater to other’s emotions, but I was very ignorant and neglectful of my own emotions, which took a toll on myself, and others. In this episode I brought on an expert who cites that emotional intelligence as the single biggest predictor of our personal and professional success. Scott Allender is an expert in global leadership and organizational development. He regularly teaches Enneagram workshops and conducts emotional intelligence assessments for individuals and teams who seek to become more radically self-aware and cognizant of the impact they have on the world. Scott has a book titled, The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence: A Journey to Personal and Professional Success. This is another installment in my continual pursuit of understanding and owning my own emotions. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →In A World Bent On Achieving Destinations We Look At The Empowerment of Leaving Things Behind w/ Empowerment Expert Rosenna Bakari
1w ago01:09:25Tap to summarizeI appreciate people who help us paradigm shifts. I have viewed life as progressing to the next goal. The next destination. Focused on what I can add to my achievements. And yet as I’ve gotten older and dealt with more things that have humbled and tempered me, I’ve started wondering if there is as much or more growth, not from adding, but subtracting. Not from learning new things, but unlearning old things. In a similar concept, my guest today says, “Transformation is the power of departure.” DR. ROSENNA BAKARI is a psychologist, empowerment expert, and educator who has just published a book titled, Seven Exits: Leave Behind What No Longer Serves You. Rosenna had a childhood seizure at age seven and was misdiagnosed as “mildly retarded.” She went on however to be identified as mentally gifted. At age 17 she entered Cornell University and by age 22 earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. For more than 25 years, Dr. Bakari taught psychology to graduate and undergraduate students, published peer-reviewed articles, and delivered presentations across the country with a focus on empowerment, healing, and transformation. Here is a quote I tuned into from Rosenna, “High-quality mental well-being displays positive characteristics, such as managing stress and recovering from adversity. It also includes emotional regulation, self-awareness, and cognitive flexibility. However, individuals with high mental functioning can still be disempowered.” I feel we have a culture that feels tremendously disempowered, even amongst the so-called, “successful.” So I dug into the issue with Rosenna. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →How To Move Through Modern Life With Inner Calm w/ Former Monk Dandapani
2w ago01:01:23Tap to summarizeMy guest is Dandapani. He became an ordained Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time. For 10 years he lived a life of serious personal discipline and training at his guru’s cloistered monastery in Hawaii. Here he learned to control his mind. He learned to focus. And he believes this is the key to finding one’s purpose. We would probably all agree that it is easier to focus when you live in a monastery in Hawaii. Dandapani readily agrees. Yet he believed the teachings would work in the outside world as well, and now he’s proved it. He left the monastery and moved to New York where he started a business, got married, and became a father. Today he is a highly sought-after international speaker and leading expert on leveraging the human mind and the power of focus to create a life of purpose and joy. I just attended an event in LA with 5,000 attendees and spoke onstage along with Dandapani. I inspire myself to see him remaining centered and at peace, even as he endures the busyness of travel, work, and family like the rest of us. He has a book, The Power of Unwavering Focus. One concept from his message has changed my life. That of the mind being a vast space with many different areas and our awareness is a glowing orb of our focus that can only light up one room at a time. I invite you to settle into this discussion. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →What Creates The Feeling of You? w/ Neuroscientist David Sussillo
2w ago01:06:54Tap to summarize“Could we really reduce your conscious mind to a set of underlying processes that, when composed, create the feeling of you, the view of right now?” This is what my guest questions and proposes. David Sussillo is a world-renowned neuroscientist, an adjunct professor at Stanford University and has been a scientist at the Google Brain group and Meta Reality Labs. In his professional pursuits, David researches brain-machine interfaces to develop the next generation of computers. He works to understand the ghost in the machine – how cells in our brain collectively give rise to the computations that determine behavior. But David is not just a researcher. He’s his own test subject. He had a difficult childhood, to put it mildly. He spent five years living in the Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home. A home for children who were basically abandoned. They had unfit parents, but weren’t up for adoption. This was near to my heart, as my family and I served at a similar children’s home in Gallup, NM, and I understand much of the heartbreak associated with such a place. My core interest was how David came from such a traumatic childhood, to be the high achieving adult he is today. His sister, who experienced much of the same lifestyle, killed herself. So again, what was different about David? And the point here is not David and his story. But you and me and our stories, and understanding how we imprison, and free ourselves. David discusses his journey in his new book, EMERGENCE: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Are You Treating Your Anxiety As An Alert Or A Constant Passenger w/ Neuropsychotherapist Britt Frank
3w ago01:20:24Tap to summarizeWe have made anxiety a bad term. But anxiety is a normal response of the body to a worry or concern or perceived threat. Your anxiety in and of itself isn’t doing anything wrong. We just seem to be responding inappropriately. Britt Frank is a licensed neuropsychotherapist and trauma expert who is trained in IFS (Internal Family Systems) and SE (Somatic Experiencing). She is a speaker and an award-winning adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas where she’s taught classes on ethics, addiction, and clinical social work. She has a book, The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia To Find Your Path Forward. I brought her to us to discuss her research on anxiety and body based feeling vs thought based therapy. Britt ultimately points to anxiety as a cue from your body. Think of it as a dashboard light in your car saying something is not quite right. Like the “check engine” light. But instead of giving the light attention, our culture has primarily normalized anxiety, as it has many pathologies, and decided to just live with the check engine light on. I think what you will hear is some paradigm shifting information that will change how you view your anxiety and get you paying attention to your body's responses in order to better manage your mental state. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →Desensitized or Oversensitized: Why We Are So Anxious About Our Differences And How To Find Peace w/ Social Psychologist Claude Steele
3w ago01:09:19Tap to summarizeWe are more sensitive than ever to our differences. Most people I know are really striving to be aware, kind, considerate, and inclusive. But is this sensitivity also increasing our cultural anxiety around the issue? My guest in this episode is social psychologist Claude M Steele, and he feels this is the case. Claude is the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Over a decade ago Claude authored the book, Whistling Vivaldi, which became a groundbreaking resource on stereotypes and identity. His new book is, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How To Overcome It. Claude lays out that we all, inherently, are more comfortable with people like us. Which by proxy means we discomfort ourselves with people who are different. Many of us try to be "color blind" and pretend there is not difference, but we all feel the elephant in the room. Claude says, "Prejudice doesn't survive proximity. As you will hear, Claude has a primary solution. If someone is different, and if you really care, be curious. And seek to connect. This sounds simple, and I'm not sure it is, which is why I offer you the following conversation. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →How To Be Your Authentic Self & Still Be Kind To Others w/ Mindvalley CoFounder Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani
4w ago01:17:17Tap to summarizeWe are tired of performing. We want to be our authentic selves. We want to have boundaries. But I see and have experienced two challenges. You finally just let it all hang out and tell everyone how you really feel and let the chips of dissension fall where they will. Or, you just fold at the critical moment and feel it’s easier just to perform and appease people. Is there another option? Most of you will be aware of Mindvalley, and have likely participated with them. They have become one of the most popular personal development platforms on the planet. My guest in this episode is Mindvalley co-founder, Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani. Kristina is an entrepreneur, writer, international speaker, artist, and philanthropist. She is also someone who spent much of her life striving to please others, but she now cites that you won’t find peace being even 95% honest and authentic if you’re still 5% fake or performing. But we also want to accommodate others as much as we can. She writes about this in her book, Becoming Flawesome: The Key to Living An Imperfectly Authentic Life, and we dig into the issue here in this episode. We also candidly discuss the dark side of personal growth and how it can feed our insecurities, which coming from the co-founder of Mindvalley, I feel is a big disclosure. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcribe →What Measures Whether You Matter Or Not w/ Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein
Jun 101:09:05Tap to summarizeDo I, intrinsically matter? Do you? Based on...what? There is almost a saturation of information and ideas on what purpose is and having purpose in your life. But if you dig down, I find purpose to primarily be a pursuit to...matter. Do we matter just because we exist? Many religions say so, but I generally find the religious scrambling to prove they matter in the same ways everyone else is. So does that testify that we have to do something to matter? This is the episode. I sat down with renowned philosopher and intellectual, Rebecca Goldstein. Rebecca is an award-winning philosopher and writer. She is the author of ten books of acclaimed fiction and non-fiction. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University and has taught at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Dartmouth, and Harvard. In 2015, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. In many ways however, from all of Rebecca's philosophical pursuits, the concept of mattering is her culmination of wisdom. Her new book is called, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. In this conversation we dive straight into how we perceive mattering, what we generally do to matter, and what actually results in feelings of mattering. We discuss the cultural and relational conflicts we have around what and who we think matters most. Rebecca then identifies four psychological types based on how people pursue mattering, which in itself begs the question: We generally pursue proving that we matter. Belying we think mattering is earned. I found the conversation very revealing and bringing me to consider my core motives for my life. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Living & Thriving With Pain of Loss That Will Never Go Away w/ Neurosurgeon Lee Warren
May 2901:23:37Tap to summarizeThe concept of trauma has gotten more focus than ever, as of late, it seems. But I feel much of what gets labeled trauma is the pain of loss. Losses we don’t know how to, or maybe never will, reconcile. I don’t claim having trauma in my life, but I have loss that I don’t think I’ll ever get over. I don’t want to minimize trauma at all, but I feel even more people resonate with the concept of loss. Even if it stems from a tragic trauma. And what I’ve been considering is some losses I don’t expect or even intend to “get over.” They are now a part of me. And, I want to thrive in my life anyway. My guest knows much about this, not only from his own life, but with experience with so, so many people. Lee Warren is a neurosurgeon. Every day he is dealing with people who may lose some of their cognitive abilities, or their lives. And he deals with their loved ones who are losing someone significant in their lives. This is Lee’s life. In addition, Lee knows what I’ll call straight-up, big T Trauma. On August 20, 2013, his nineteen-year-old son Mitch died of multiple stab wounds to the neck. Mitch’s best friend died along with him with one stab wound. Whether the knife used to kill Mitch was in his hand or someone else’s, whether he was at fault or a victim, they will never know. An unsolved murder. This could have been the end of Lee. Obviously it was not. But he hasn’t gotten over it and doesn’t expect to. All this adds up to what I found to be a profound conversation that I’ve understood more as time has passed and I’ve experienced more loss. Lee has a book about all this, Hope Is the First Dose: A Treatment Plan for Recovering from Trauma, Tragedy, and Other Massive Things. And wherever you are listening to this podcast, you can find his podcast, just search for The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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