The 9 Winning Moves in the Game of Life: Play Bigger, Live Better: Ep 58

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In this episode of Transform Your Future, Eddie Isin is joined by leadership coach Rick Tamlyn to explore the 9 winning moves that can help you play a bigger game in life and unlock your true potential. Whether you're seeking personal growth, business success, or a more fulfilling life, these nine components can guide you to living beyond limits and creating a meaningful future.

Timecodes:

• 00:00 - The Role of AI in Creativity
   Eddie and Rick kick off the episode discussing how AI should assist us with routine tasks, giving us more time to focus on creative and impactful work.
  
  
  
• 05:30 - Playing a Bigger Game: The 9 Key Principles
   Rick introduces his powerful concept of "playing a bigger game" in life, a mindset shift that takes you beyond survival mode into creating the life you truly want.
  
  
  
• 10:15 - Hunger and Compelling Purpose
   Rick delves into the first two components: identifying what truly matters (hunger) and understanding the deeper purpose that drives your actions (compelling purpose).
  
  
  
• 18:40 - Gulp: Embracing the Uncertainty
   Discussing the feeling of uncertainty and fear as you take on bigger challenges, Rick explains how stepping into the unknown is a crucial part of playing a bigger game.
  
  
  
• 27:05 - Allies and Sustainability
   The conversation turns to the importance of having the right allies to support you and how maintaining sustainability (in relationships, health, and work) is key to long-term success.
  
  
  
• 35:50 - Bold Action and Legacy
   To wrap up, Eddie and Rick talk about how taking bold actions without hesitation is critical, and how creating a lasting legacy should be a part of your bigger game.
  
  
  

Rick shares his own personal journey of stepping into the bigger game, and how his philosophy has inspired thousands globally. By the end of the episode, you’ll have a roadmap to play a bigger game, live better, and take actionable steps to design a life of purpose and impact.

Resources:
Join the NEWSLETTER: Http://TransformYourFuture.com
🎁 Get Eddie’s Free Course: 8 Ways to Supercharge Your Motivation & Crush Sales

Contact Rick Tamlyn https://www.ricktamlyn.com/
Connect with Eddie Isin http://facebook.com/edward.isin

Subscribe to Transform Your Future Newsletter Where Eddie writes about personal development, reinvent & identity: http://transformyourfuture.com

Transcript

0:00

Just was going to say, you mentioned ai and I read a great quote and it said, I don't want AI to write and make art for me. I want AI to do my laundry and wash my dishes while I create the art and write. Exactly. It's so good. I thought that was so good. I'm like, wow. I agree a hundred percent with. That. Yeah. Yeah. Because if we start making the art, then we shouldn't even be here. What are we here for? Just to sit on the couch while the thing makes the art. Exactly. So I just get to stay at home and do the laundry, clean the floors, sort out my sock drawer while it writes everything for me. So I don't have nothing to do. It'll be an interesting game where that goes. It'll, but I'm sure that AI will do my dishes wash, do the laundry, cook my meals. I'm sure it'll get there and it'll at. Some point, right, exactly. It's going to happen. Everything you saw in sci-fi is what's going to happen because the idea comes out there, the creatives. People write about it. The artists show it and get you into it, and then the next thing you know, I'm going to create it now for real. Exactly. The concept. Exactly. Swiping your finger. Like what? Yeah. Dick Tracy. Watch. Tracy watch. Totally. I mean, I have one as a kid. Like what? So there you go. Well, it has to live in mind first before it comes into the physical form. Mind starts it. So Dr. Rick Tamlin, welcome to Transform Your Future Podcast. Thank. You. Thanks for having me. Eddie. Eddie. Yes. Sir. Go for it. I've been looking at everything and going back and forth, and I appreciate you. I'm grateful you spend the time with me today. I want to talk about your book. Sure. It's a mouthful. Hold on. I wanted to get it right. I play your bigger game. Oh, that helps me play your bigger game. I'm a good market. I'm right. Here. Nine minutes to learn, a lifetime to live. I love it. Yeah. So I'll just get into a little bit of the origin it of the origin. I'll tell you sort of the philosophy of it. Thank you. So I've been in the life coachee space, an early adopter in the life coachee space since 1990. Back then we only had consultants and therapists. Either I'm being fixed with my psychology or I'm being told what to do with by a consultant. This life coachee thing happened in the middle. What if you talk to a person about the life you want and they don't tell you exactly how to do it, but they keep you engaged and the conversation starts to open up the imagination, which then has people take more responsibility for the life they want. So a life coach is actually about helping people take more responsibility with their creative geniusness about how they can create the life they want. So that's a mouthful on what I think a life is really about, and we've been made fun of and we've been thrown under the bus. And there's a great episode, by the way, if you ever get to see it. It was on the Simpsons, made fun of life coaches, one of the best. They had a life coach on there, and it just made us look like horrible humans. We were like idiots. It was just, but as soon as you're on the TV and you've made it that way, you've made it right. We knew we arrived. So why I'm telling you that is out of thousands of conversations, I'm now 65 years old, but a number of years ago, my business partner and I at the time, we started to analyze the data and also through the conversations, what were having people be more successful, more engaged, more alive, more connected, more fulfilled, all those words that we love to throw around, what was going on in those people versus the client who would show up and can you get me through the next week? That kind of a client. And the terminology we made it up was the people who were up to something bigger than they knew how to do that was oriented towards impact, not income. Were the ones who were in the game playing a bigger game. Then we actually dissected. Well, what are the elements of what it means to play a bigger game? Like cool philosophy, cool language, what the hell does it mean? So we actually created a very simple game board. These nine words that I'm going to walk you through here. Everybody understands them, they've all heard them, but it's a simple philosophy of understanding the human spirit and its ability to create with me enough on the context, right? Yes, yes. So it's a tic-tac toe board. First of all, we needed a playful way to, there's no strategy to this. There's no perfection to this. No linearness not a linear model. It's not like, do this, do this, do this. Right? But there are nine elements to it. I'm just going to walk you through them really super fast. And by the way, this is either a 10 minute conversation, it can be a two hour conversation with a client. It can be a three day workshop. I've done it for corporations for 5,000 people over a week. So the philosophy has now taken me out into the world and around the globe and 2.7 million miles later. So I happened to bump into a philosophy and a thing that really took off, and I feel very proud about that. So anyway, I am going to start with the word hunger. This is not complicated everybody. Those that are listening, it's not just what you want. It goes beneath that. It's what matters to you so much. And for many people, it's your family and it's your income. And those are all beautiful things. But what matters to you that you are willing to go to the mat for more than almost anything else on the planet. It's the calling card. It's like, what's the calling? What are you called to do? What are you not just here to do to make a living? So it really pokes at making a living versus creating a life. Most people make a living, you and I dare say, are in the advanced consciousness conversation. We're here to actually up level living, not just make a life. So that's that first square. And there's always answers in there, and there's never a right answer. But that starts to feed what we termed a compelling purpose, which is the why we all know the Simon Sinek work of Begin With. Why Great book recommended highly. What is the big why? So hunger sort of as a state of being compelling purpose answers the question. I am here to activate people to understand their greatness. Fantastic. That's a compelling purpose, not a bigger game. There's no doing yet. That's just a lovely statement. So I know I'm going really fast here. So then I want to go to this next one. So the next term, very, very, very scientific gulp. All it means is I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if how to do that. I don't know if I up to do that, but I must do that. It's the state of being of I don't know if I can or have it, but I must. And there's literally this sensation in the body. Right? Literally like that, just before you walk off the. Edge, you got it. It's that. It's that metaphor we borrowed from that metaphor. So like, are you kidding me? I don't like, right? And in my daily life, are there enough gulps in my daily life? You and I both know, most people are. I don't want to say most people. So many people in my world right now are bored out of their minds. They are just, I don't know why I'm here. I'm just, anyway. So I'm like, well, let's play a bigger game, right? Okay, very simple. Next square investment, you've got investment. What does that mean? You got to talk about it. You got to write a book about it. You got to turn it into workshop. You got to hire somebody to help you. I mean, Eddie, you're here in my language. You're playing a bigger game. You are on a mission to wake up people to their greatness, to have people understand something. You've chosen the modality called podcasting. Thank you. To get to as many people as possible. You've invested a microphone. Technology. I mean, it's straightforward, right? You said yes to it. Allies, of course you can't do it alone. And I. Gulped. I gulped. Of course, right? I mean, right. Is this going to work? Is anybody going to listen to me? Does anybody care? Can I make a living from this? Oh my God, am I going to have to work at Trader? I mean, all this stuff. It's all a part of it. And we all want to be comfortable. And yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute. But let me go to allies really quick. Can never do it alone, of course. But allies also implies, what are the people in your life, the dogs in your life? Do you talk to people on the other side? Do you go through life with a context that there are people who are here to support and believe in you? Who are the coaches, trainers, teachers, mentors? However, allies are also the people who think you're crazy. Steve Jobs. Here's to the crazy ones. Remember that? Remember on the wall of the Apple store, that great poem to the crazy ones? We are the crazy ones. One other story related to allies. So sometimes a bigger game happens to you in your life. Sometimes you choose it. My brother 35 years ago diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, you'll be dead in a year. Go home and die. Okay? I watched my little tiny diminutive mother, five, two, a hundred and twenty pounds a nurse, find fire and energy, and that sort of leader within that goes, watch me. And she goes, and four hospitals say, no, go home and die. And she goes and finds a hospital. I won't go through the whole story, but if she hadn't decided to, she was so hungry. I'm going to keep my son alive. I'm going to do everything I can to keep this guy alive. And she did. And $1.6 million later, 14 hospitals, he's been written up in medical journals because they tried brand new shit that my mother said, you're going to try it. You're going to try it. So the leader in her, I was like, wow, that's leadership. It's also, in my language, a bigger game that grabbed her and designed her life, designed those 10 years. It was a 10 year recovery. He's alive and well today, by the way. God, that's awesome. So sometimes, by the way, what I related to Ally is that wasn't pretty. That wasn't like a, oh, yay, I'm going to do this good work in the world. That was like a, now I'm off doing public speaking, and I tell that story and I say, sometimes you have to find something that matters to you like that. I don't want it to be death, fear of death, because that was a fear. That was like, you're going to die. But sometimes, what is that? And you have to have a conversation with somebody and have a conversation with a coach and go, okay, let's figure this out. What matters to you more than almost anything? Sustainability. This is the square. These are called squares, by the way. Knock boxes. This is the square that says you must take care of yourself. You must work out. You must eat right. This is the vehicle in which the bigger game is going to happen through. You need to take extreme care of yourself, whatever that means for you. So that's sustainability of the player, the bigger game player. It also means has two parts in this square. Will this work? This thing you create, go on without you. It's the Legacy Square. So bigger game is a philosophy. It's an ideology, it's a workshop. And I have trained the trainers. When I die, this will go on without me. That's responsible leadership, that's legacy rather than, oh, it was a good run. Rick Tamlin, iss dead, right? I mean, that's because I want it to go on. Okay? Assess very simple. How's it going? Is it fun? Is it working? No judgment. It doesn't say good or bad. It just says, how's this working? I need help. I need to hire help. I need to get on a podcast. I need to talk to somebody. I need to invest. Right? Very simple. This other, sorry. The square over here. Comfort zones. We've all heard the term a bit overused, but it does ask us to step through them. But here's the distinction on this model. There are comfort zones that serve us. And there are comfort zones that do not, they're not good or bad, they just are what they are. I have a comfort zone called jogging every single day of the week, three to five miles. It is a non-negotiable in my life. That's a comfort zone. Serves me brilliantly. I also have a comfort zone called worrying about my future. If I'm going to have enough money, there are days, right? I am in the personal growth space. My business goes like this. That's a comfort zone that doesn't serve me. So what do I need to do about that? Who do I need to talk to? What do I need to do in my business life to handle that? What television channel do I need to turn off so I don't keep getting fed the fear game? Because we're in the fear space. We've never been in a fear space as we are now. And then the final square, very simple. It lives in the middle, bold action without a bold action. This is all just a lovely conversation, and it's another cup of coffee with you about a big dream I want to have with my life. And the ultimate way to think about this is, you're on this game board all the time in your life. You're hungry for something to be different. You want to make a difference while you want to hear, you need help, you're going to invest in it. You're always somewhere. You're never not on this game board. So that's the simplest explanation I want to say. It's not thin, but it's not complicated. It's Really simple. And if you and I were to have a bigger game coaching conversation, you'd have answers to any one of these. And I would ask you on this right now, today, like, Eddie, where are you on this gameboard right now? You would have an answer. And that's the doorway into the next level of your expression, next level of your consciousness, next level of the life you want to create. Because ultimately, this is what I believe. This is why coaching works. I get so excited. Slow me down. By the way, at any point, the transformation we want happens through the conversations we're having. And we're having two conversations all the time. We're having a conversation in our head all the time, either about ourselves or another human being. And by the way, it happens in our sleep time that's called unconscious dreaming or our awake time. And we're judging, we're voting, we're liking, we're disliking, and we're doing it here all the time. The second conversation we're having all the time is the one we're having with other people that's designing our life. Am I off colluding with how horrible the world is? Am I off hanging out with people and throwing people under the bus and being mean? Because it's sort of fun. But that is, we get so unconscious with the conversations we're having. That's why coaching works, because a coach comes along and says, let's have an intentional conversation about the life you really want. Because most of the time you can't have that with your friends because your friends just want you to collude with them about things. And a coach comes along and says, we're not going to collude about how things are. We're going to talk and create things about how you want things to be. So coaching is a creative conversation. Colluding is a reactive conversation. Well, I would like to unpack some of that. I have some questions first though. That's a lot. I have some questions. First, you said some really interesting things. You talked about comfort zones and how you have this comfort zone that's actually a negative thought process. There's a fear-based thing. Why is that a comfort zone? I have, I don't have a habit. It's a habit. It keeps. Up. So you're saying if I'm comfortable with certain habits. They don't feel good, but I keep. Right. They don't serve me. They don't feel good. I don't like them, but I, I'm comfortable doing it or thinking about it. It's a repetitive thing. I got you. And they've actually proven, you probably have heard this, the neuro pathway, the neuro pathway of fear is actually, it starts, well, there's a neuro pathway for everything. Every emotion we have has a neuro pathway that's a tiny little thin line in the brain. And if you keep having it, it gets thicker and thicker and it becomes like a six foot lane freeway. They've proven it. They open up brains and they go, oh my God, look at that neural pathway. It's really thick. I wonder what that one was. And for many people, that's the fear one. And we also know, by the way, the amygdala in the brain, the whole brain stuff. I'm not a brain scientist, but I know this much. The amygdala in the back is there to keep us safe. There's a bear run. Right? Right. But we've also then taken it on like, oh my God, the economy's bad run, but the frontal cortex. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen many dinosaurs or tigers and lions. Right? I know. That's right. We are living out, and they've even proven it. They'll say in 10,000 years that part of the brain will probably be gone. This is not needed. So it's interesting though, about the neuroplasticity and the neuro pathways and how so repetitive thinking, repetitive focus on something actually creates a much larger, thicker pathway. That's interesting. And then it becomes a habit. You know how they say it takes 21 days or 30 days to break a habit? You're actually, you're fighting against the neuro pathway. It's actual, it's an actual electronic signal that keeps wanting to happen. It's this. It's also the addiction to the dopamine hit. This is a dopamine hit. This is now a drug. We check our phones. I dunno if the status I saw, I heard somebody say it the other day, and I was like, holy. Right. We wake up, we check the phone. We check the phone and check the phone, check the phone, check the phone. That's a dopamine hit. It's an actual drug addiction, which they're proving. I don't know if anybody's doing anything about it, but at least we're aware. So I can choose to pick it up or not, instead of it just goes there. Well, a lot, the focus is a lot of those conversations. I hear that the focus is about social media. And. How the social media companies know that people like that dopamine hit, and they keep figuring out ways to keep serving it to you. Just keep you on the platform. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm one of those people. I don't really like to take too long on social media. I go there, I check some things out. Yeah, I do too. We need it. What family's doing, whatever. But after 10, 15 minutes, I'm like, oh my God, I got to get out of here. No, exactly. It's a rabbit hole of nothingness. And I want to be careful that we throw that completely under the bus. I mean, I wrote a book and the publishing company, hay House says, we need to know how many followers you have on the different platforms because we need to know how many books you're going to sell because that's how you sell books. So of course, there's a positive and a negative to all of this. I mean, there was a positive and a negative to television. There was a positive and negative to movies. I mean, we're just going to the next level of how do I want to be with this? Because it's not going away. It's not going to go away. Certainly, it serves me in a lot of ways. Yes, my God. Just my health is very, very important to me. Yes. I've lost over 200 pounds over a long period of time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In 1995, I was up to 380 pounds. So I had to do a lot of work. That is a lot of work. Both this. I was always a little overweight, but then I had a car accident and I couldn't walk, and It changed my life and surgeries later and everything. And I just ate, ate, ate, and just sat around and wasn't active. Yeah. But anyway, my point is my health's very important to me. And so you lose weight, you exercise, you do things, then you take it more serious. More serious, more serious. I have physical problems. So in all of that, the thing is that there are things that I rely on that are helpful in that, that are apps and things like that to help me track certain things, track my sleep, track my movement, things like that. I like that. Those are things that serve. Me totally, totally with you. I need blood pressure, heart rate, I love all. Exactly. I keep track of everything. Keep track of my health, my prescriptions, all that kind of stuff. I go to the doctor, he asks me a question. I'm like, hold on. Here's the information. I know. It's a beautiful thing, right? I mean, exactly. So again, we don't want to throw any of this stuff under the bus. We just want to be conscious. How am I using this? And again, it's serving me or not, right? Excuse me, I'm going to get some water. Hang on, my cup is over. Here. Go. Yeah, do that. Do that. So let's unpack some of this. I love your term. So when we talk about purpose, Simon Sinek wrote the book and everybody goes around parroting your why. I know, right? I feel like there's some kind of thought process that's going on that if you know your why, suddenly everything changes in your life. And I don't find it to be that way. I agree completely with you, by the way. I agree. I think there is a reason why I'm motivated to do certain things. There's a reason why I want to reach these goals. There is something internal. For example, I wanted to put my daughter through private school. She was in private university. She's been private school since she was a pre pre-K. You know what I'm saying? So I really cared about education. I did everything I could to make sure that she'd always have that education. That's true. And I was willing to do whatever was necessary. Right? And when I think about Exactly, exactly. That's. Not a life purpose statement. That's a compelling period of your life. This matters almost more than anything else on the planet. That's your why. See, our whys change. Yes. They must change because we're evolving. And like you said, you have a new why maybe that it has to do with about your future, knowing that things are happening in the future, things are going to change, and you want to make sure that things are taken care of in that this is going to drive you. Correct. So why is something that you understand that helps to understand why I want to do these things, why I'm focusing on this, but it doesn't help me to reach the goals? No, ultimately it doesn't. I think we put too much pressure on it that it's supposed to motivate me. And let me just go down the rabbit hole of motivation for a second. I think it's a little overrated because if you're like me, do you know your day? You're motivated, then you're not. I want to go to the gym. No, I don't think I do. I want to write this book. No, I'm not going to. I mean, can we just get honest about that? It's kind of a crazy motivation. I'm all in. No, there's something, the language I like to play with is I'm not always motivated, but I'm committed. I'm in my marriage with my husband now for 33 years. That's a commitment. Am I motivated all the time to want to be with this person? No. There are days where I hate him. Or at least he annoys you. Yeah. Yeah. I know I'm being very extreme for the sake of drama here. But you know what? The antidote to doubt is not certainty. It's commitment or that whole sort of, I don't know if I have, it's like, but I said I'm going to, it's that simple. And do I follow through on the commitment versus I let the lower self sort of win. And I mean, your loss of weight, Eddie, I mean, you made a choice at some moment called I'm going to die early and projecting all over you. There's probably some moment where you were like, holy, holy hell, Batman, we got a problem. And you got help. Who knows? It became so first I couldn't walk because of the accident, and I had some surgeries and whatnot, but then I gained a lot of weight. And then it became clear that the problem I was having with walking was really just all the weights that I was now carrying. So I had to do something quickly if I wanted to have any kind of functioning life anymore. Life. Exactly. Absolutely. I wrote, like we were talking about this story about your mother, how this situation came, and she rose to the occasion and just. Grabbed. Her. And that's kind of what happened to me. I didn't think about this. I didn't write down goals and say, gee, what would I like to do with my life? I was just, holy crap. I need to do something right now. Let's go. And God willing, most of us get to choose that, but sometimes it happens to us. Like Steve Jobs did a great talk. It was one of his most famous speeches, his commencement speech about motivation. Do you remember that one where he goes, you know what? The greatest motivator is death. The room goes silent. These kids are like 18 years old, and he's talking about dying. And it became one of his most famous speeches. He goes, you're going to die, so let's get on with it. Make sure you go create some stuff that really matters to you because you're going to die. I can imagine some of the parents in that room going, my God. And then ironically, he did die early. But that's sort of an example of that. I don't want death to be the motivator, but I also, I think you said it earlier, we don't want to get to the end and go, either we're left with we went for it, or we're left with regret. Great. One of the things that I, like you said, that word is Jeff Bezos Bezos's regret minimization story that he posted in the nineties. I really liked that, and I used that on myself many, many times. It's how I decide a lot of what I'm going to do, where I'm going to go. It was like, so when I'm 90 years old, I don't want to regret that I didn't do certain things that I didn't take those risks. Yeah, it's the same. We're all kind of saying the same thing. We just maybe have a different methodology or vocabulary to it. But it's that same. My dad was the voice to me, and my parents were a big influence. We had good stuff. We had shadow stuff. We were a classic family of light and dark. But my dad, towards the back end of his life, he was a General Motors guy. 46 years, got on the train, New Jersey, New York City every day, four 30 in the morning, got home at seven 30, repeat 42 years, God bless. That was the fifties, sixties and seventies. But he did say to me, he had enough gumption to be able to say to me, he goes, Rick, this life is really, it's classic. It's classic sage moment from your parents. This thing's pretty short, so you're welcome to do what I did. But he didn't say bigger or game, but he said, I want you to design a life that really calls to you instead of just a life that you get to pay the bills and you got through it. So I know it's a lot of this going on out there. There's a lot of motivational people talking about this, And here's the gift of Covid. I mean, the shadow of covid is awful. We must also mourn, and I don't think we've done a good job of it on our country and our globe. We must mourn the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been lost. We haven't done that by the way. We just get on with it, sort of like nine 11. We were just like, okay. It's the American way. Yeah, we just step over it. But this is why we're having so much trauma. To be honest, it was trauma that was absolute trauma. We're like, oh, we're back. I'm like, oh my God, we're not really back. We're just functioning. We're back. But the gift of Covid, from my perspective, is it had everything slowed down and have a stop and reflect. Some people that made them crazy. Some people that saved their lives, some people that lost their lives, A big, huge wake up call. And now younger. I want to be careful of absolutes. Not everybody, but a lot of people are like, I'm not going to go kill myself anymore. I mean, the corporation's doing the four day work week. I'm like, yay, we're going from the 80 hour work week to the four day work week because yay. What are we doing? Where's this going? And I know we're all part of a capitalistic system, so we can't quote unquote stop, or it all falls apart. We all know this, but there's great work out there around the world. The word sustainability, kind of like, it's part of my language, my workshop too. It's like, no, no, not sustainability. What is the word where it's just enough. We don't need to do anymore? What is that term? Lynn Twist talks about it in her book. Lynn Twist is a great teacher about money and how we've gotten obsessed with Nora's better. Sufficient. Sufficient is her word. What is sufficient? It's a great, I have enough money. I'm sufficient. I don't need 18 million in the bank. I mean, so she's the voice. She's running around the globe going, this is sufficient, everybody. This is sufficient. So what I love, that's happening. There are a lot of great voices out there that are. I want to interrupt you. I like what you were saying earlier about how the consciousness is changing, and it's no longer about many years ago, it was just about get a good job with stability and work towards your retirement. And then when you're 60, 65, whatever, you can retire and just do whatever you want. And that's changing now. Changing. To not waiting till you're 65 to figure it all out. Figure it all out now before you're 65, and start including all those other areas in your life that's important to you, instead of just focusing on your vocation to focus on your entire life, like your relationships, your finances, your time and money, freedom. What do you really, are you doing what you really enjoy? Would you like to be doing something else? Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's great. I mean, I've been doing that for a long time and eliminating things from my life that I don't like, that I don't want to do. Getting other I know. That's right. And figuring out how to run a business without me having to work all day. Exactly. Well, certainly as a solopreneur, an entrepreneur that you and I both are, could we just hire people to help? And of course we are. But to your point, that is the life coaching. But there's always those things that we love doing. Of course, my talent, my skill. I love working with people. I love talking. I love sales and influence and certainty. So that's what I'm always going to focus on those things. I'm glad to take those things over and lead in those areas. But things like editing and administrative work and some of these other, I don't want to do with that. Right, exactly. I know. And there's, that's brain damage. Damage. No, I know exactly. Well, I love what you said, Eddie. What's the no that I need to say in my life? So the yes can happen better. Yes. Yes. Those are great things. That's. Another good thing. And. I really liked you saying earlier, I guess I should say that transformation. Happens through two. Conversations, two conversations. I like that a lot happens. Conversation. Yeah. Whether it's with ourselves. Having. Or with somebody else. Yeah. I mean, my goal has been for the last, I would say, I don't know, maybe 15 years, 14 years, has really been to design the life that I want. That's the life that I feel is worth living and worth showing up to every day. And it has been, in the beginning, it was really quite a struggle, and I was absolutely scared as hell. Absolutely. I was just like, oh my God, what would I be if I'm not in this relationship anymore? What would they think about me if I divorced this person? What would my kids think and feel? And then could I find somebody else? Because I like relationships. I think I need to have a real relationship in my life to share things with. But I went through all that and did all those things, and I'm very, very happy. I'm very, very happy. And I feel like so much freedom in my life, and I feel so, so much joy about things. I mean, I don't mind working. I don't mind working and doing things. I don't mind the hard stuff. But if it's for a purpose that's going to serve me, and it has meaning to me, it's fine. Yeah. It's no longer a work. It's a lifestyle. Yeah. Because I'm going to do this until I drop, by the way, I'm going to speak, write books. I'm going to do my husband and I laugh. My biggest dream how to end is I'm on a stage and there's 5,000 people, and I just say something really profound and then I just drop. It was a good run. Boom. Or maybe you sit down, you say, okay, boy, that took a lot minute. Lemme sit down a minute. And then. You Yeah. Yeah. I know. There's funny you say that. I was chatting with a theater friend of mine the other day, and I forget who it was. Yo Brenner, it was Yo Brenner. Remember Yo Brenner? Yeah. Okay. So he died that way. So he had just done a show, a scene or something, and he walks off stage and sits down and dies. I never knew that. Isn't that a great way to go? Yeah, he wouldn't do it on the stage. No. Yeah, a little too much trauma for the room. But there's something about that with death. Actually, I did a lot of studies on death when I was in college. I made a lot of movies and TV shows in the past, documentaries, sports, television. I worked with a lot of celebrities. That was another company that I had for 20 years. But how somebody was very ill, and they had weeks to live or whatever, but their granddaughter's graduation was in nine months, and they wanted to be there for the graduation of their granddaughter. They will keep it. And right after it happened, they passed. So it's like somehow internally, we know what we need to do and we're going to hang on until that moment. And once that happens, then we say, okay, now I can. I know. Isn't that fascinating how the mind can really be involved in that? Yeah. It's really fascinating. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now you mentioned, while we were talking, when we talked about allies, you talked about people, and I forgot the exact term you used, but it was something like people on the other side. I think you said whether there are people on the other side. So can you explain the other side? Yeah, I know that went by fast. So my spiritual practice is I believe, by the way, we're all one. There's no God outside of me. I'm one with all of it. My doctorate, by the way, the doctorate is in something called advanced consciousness studies. Basically it was quantum physics and how we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, quantum physics, metaphysics, all of that rolled into one. So when I say talking to the other side in that context, I go for walks in the morning and my dad is no longer on the physical plane, but I have conversations with my dad three to five times a week. And here's the cool thing. I have no idea if I'm literally talking to him, but if I believe I'm literally talking to him, then I'm talking to him. Do you what I mean? The science doesn't need to back it up because I so believe in the power of my belief. See everything for me, and most people I think are getting this these days, the belief of anything makes it real. A good, solid Christian, and I'm not going to go down the path of religion, but a good solid Christian who's healthy, who believes that Jesus is the path. Jesus is the path. Fantastic. And then you got a really good Jew and you got a right. And why can't we just let that belief? Because that belief is what they believe and let that be because the mind has made it real. I've decided this is the truth for me. We're in a world right now of everybody's projecting their truths on each other, and we don't know what's true, but we get to decide what's true. Yeah, no, there's a great connection, obviously, between the mind and the body and what's really possible. I mean, I was always fascinated as a child of these stories. I was an avid reader. I'm an intelligent guy, and I was very advanced for my age. And so I was reading when I was very young, and I just remember gravitating a lot to these stories that were stories of people that just somehow find some incredible strength in a moment and can do something that no human could really do. And then I started really looking into all these mysteries. What are all these mysteries? One of the ones that fascinates me is the internal combustion. That there are people who can just suddenly just pop out of them. Like, wow, how is that possible? But there's these weird mysteries in the world that happen and you recognize them. And I feel like I knew that there was a presence of something. I knew that there was a spirit. I knew that there was something One night, I always love to tell this story. One night I walk up at two o'clock in the morning at a bed when I was 14 in my parents' house. Everybody was asleep. And I woke up and I popped up in the bed for some reason, and I looked at the fan, a box fan on there. It was the summertime. And all of a sudden flames started shooting out of the box fan. And I jumped up and I threw it on the floor and the flames went out. And I was always like, it was like, God walked me up at two o'clock in the morning to do that. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. And so we have these Moments and these things when we're young, where we know there's something else, there's something more. And then we get a little bit older and we start thinking, we write all that stuff off and we think that's nothing. It's all nonsense. But I found myself going through a lot of things and realizing that there was something. And so I have great spiritual practice in my life for 36 years now because of those things and because of what I believe. And I identify what you're talking about people, when you say the other side, I knew that's what you were talking about and that's why I had to ask you, because I feel that way too. I feel like all those special people in my life who cared about me, that prayed for me, that that's why I survived some of the crazy things that have happened to me in my life. And I feel like they're still with me and they're still there, and they are. I feel like they're part of my God now at the end of Star Wars, when all the people who have gone on, they're all come together and they're stand. That's how I feel about it. For me, I thought it maybe a little bit morbid, but I was thinking about putting all of their pictures behind my head where I sleep. But maybe that's a little bit warmed, but I think it's good. I want to honor them. I want to honor them. I don't think that's morbid at all. I think that's a beautiful tribute. You're honoring them. I will add to the story, I had a death experience where I went to the other side and they didn't pronounce me dead or anything, but I passed out. I was unconscious. And. You had an experience. I literally on the ground at this party passed out, told me it was about, I dunno, 30 to 45 seconds and white light, I mean right out of the books, pure white light. I am always amazed like, wow. It was pure love. And I remember thinking, I don't want to go back. I remember thinking that because it was so pure, you can barely put words around it. It was like an essence and an energy. And my brother then all of a sudden was kind of yelling at me, Rick, come back. Come back. And then I made a choice, I guess, to come back and I'll never forget it. And in that moment I went, okay, there is something on the other side. Now they've done studies. Is that the brain shutting down from oxygen? I don't know. I want to hang with the other truth that there's absolutely, it's About belief. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's about belief and the classic language that's out there. It's been around for years. There's only two energies in the world. Fear, love, that's it. Everything else is a slice of the same pie. And we're very. Much, one of my favorite books is Gerald Lansky's Love is letting go of fear. Yeah. Yeah. So we're in a world right now, and we all know it. We're experiencing it. We're doing our best to get through it. We have to go through this fear space. We just have to, we've never been more, as we all know, the politics and calling each other names and the whole destroying each other game, the war in the middle. It's just like, wow, this really is a phase. That it's an Orwellian nightmare. Yeah, it is. And I keep going to, I don't want loss of life, of course. But there's something that we have to go through this to go to the next level. It's that classic sort of meltdown, the term breakdown before a breakthrough. Yes, yes. So we're having a global cultural meltdown, and it's hard on our hearts, and I'm always telling people, turn off the news. You don't have to live from the news. You're getting too much news. But at my highest level, I do believe this is unfolding for our highest good. Long-term might not happen in my lifetime. If I can get really meta view, I can go, okay, there's something bigger that has to happen here that I can't control. I'm going to be my best self. I'm going to try to be nice to my neighbor, even though they're screaming at whatever. I'm going to do my best to get through this. And also from a personal perspective, not live it out. Not play the game of well, they want to destroy me, so I'm going to destroy them. Not do that. Not do that. Revenge tit for tat. Calm it down. I get it. You're upset. You don't like me. I'm a gay man. I should be burning in hell. Got it. Thank you so much. And I just let it go because half the country thinks I should be burning it out. Okay, fine. Thank you so much. So that's at my highest. And when I'm at my best self, when I'm at my worst self, I just get mad at people who don't like gay people, because I'm one of those people. And you don't happen to like me just because of my lifestyle, not because of my personality. Anyway, that's a different topic, but there's a lot there. No, but there's a lot there. And obviously this has informed you in many different ways about how you handle things and do things. Yeah. Well, I've trained many, many rooms in leadership. When you dare to put your work into the world, you're going to be judged like crazy. It's just a welcome mat. I don't care what you do. So as a gay man, what I learned early on is I am judged blatantly by my minister, my church, my parents had a rough go. AIDS almost took us out. I had friends die left and right. Like, okay, got it. I am now mostly able to be with huge judgment coming at me and not being triggered because I've been there, we're done. We're like, okay, got it. You hate me, but can we just have a funny moment then millions and millions of people. But can you put on my curtains? Can you come paint my house? Can you, how many people in my world who, of course they have gay best friends. I don't mean to use the gay topic too much, but they're like, oh no, I have gays who come over and decorate my house. I'm like, of course you do. Anyway, there are many people, little. Mind. Little minds. Little minds. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. So anyway. So I want to go back for one second. Sustainability, it seems like a lot of these wares, to use your term. Yeah, thank. You. They have a lot in them. They do. There's a lot in them. There's a lot in them. And sustainability is loaded. It's loaded with stuff in there. So it's not just about my lifestyle. Is my lifestyle sustainable? Is my relationship sustainable? Is my work sustainable? Is the business sustainable? Is my health sustainable? It's everything. It's everything. It's the sustainability of all areas. Correct. And now it's opened up the window of Mother Earth and the planet and resources. Can we really be conscious? I have a number of clients who I work with in leadership development, and their bigger game is to ask companies to please take more responsibility with the planet. That's their mission. To get C-suite people more conscious and more into this, and then have them train them. By the way, this will actually brand you better. This will help your brand. So they're actually. Helping. Yeah. I have a good friend that 10 years ago started on this journey of social responsibility and helping companies to be more socially responsible and to use that as part of their marketing and their absolutely their view. So that other people view them as more socially responsible companies. That they're not just evil giants trying to get money. Yeah, no, it's very in right now. And it has to be. I mean, right. So yeah. It's interesting. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. So listen, I've really enjoyed our time together. We should do this again sometime. Thanks. I'm right. Back. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you want to tell me about living the bigger game? Playing my bigger game? Yeah. Well, I'll just say, let me just see what comes to mind. I'll just start talking. Sometimes you have to talk it to find it. So I agree. I think the key philosophy is, are you up to something bigger than you know how to do? That's a bigger game. If you know how to do it. It's not a bigger game. When I talk to companies, I go, doubling your profits next quarter is not a bigger game. That's just doubling your profit. What are you doing that could double your profit that matters to you and you're hungry to make a difference with and all that? So I think it's very much in line with what you and I have been chatting about. It has this quality of it's a wild ride, and these elements simply are sort of a consciousness of what's going on. Because I think the thing that happens is we get stuck and confused as humans because we don't know what's happening. We get like, oh, I don't find it. And then you come along and you get maybe a silly game board that goes, oh, what's happening is I need to call for help. I need to call. I need to talk to a coach. Oh, what's happening is I don't know what I'm hungry for anymore. Well, what's happening? So once you know what's happening, then you can make more conscious choices for the life you want. And then the big phrase that sometimes I've said in rooms is playing a bigger game is not for the faint of heart, however, it is full, the full of heart because it's very, this matters to me a lot, and it matters to the planet. It matters to people. And I'm a fan of still thinking this is very Aunt Frank. Oh my God, I can't believe I'm going to say this right. But people are good until further notice. Deep down in some of them, deep. Down. I mean, I know, right? Sometimes I'm like, my gosh, but. I love the book. I want to get the book. I want to get the game. I want to play with my kids. I want to see if I could light a fire. Yeah. That's kind of the job. I'd love that you said that. It's sort of like, okay, let's get more conscious here. Where are we really going with this thing called My Creative Self? You know what I want to leave you with? Here's what I believe we're on the planet for. We're here to create stuff. We're here to create families. We're here to create people. I mean, babies. We're here. We're here to create a business here as creators. And I think people start to lose their, they start to get depressed when they forget that they're here to create something. I don't care if it's a recipe book or a right, but we are here to create. And when we are in the act of creating something that matters to us, it's very fulfilling. Think about a good hobby. So. There you go. Absolutely. Eddie, it's a pleasure. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the good work you do. Thank you for touching hundreds of thousands of lives. God bless you. Thank you for writing that book and sharing your ideas with me. And I'm going to stay in touch and we could do this again and talk more. Anytime you want. I am thrilled that I found you, and in my language, you are a fantastic ally of waking people up to their greatness. So thank you. Absolutely. Thank you my. Friend. Be well. Do I just click out.