S2 Ep38. From Van Life to Visionary Coach: Edwards Holliday on Creativity, Coaching, and Connection

In this inspiring episode of ABWilson's Heart of the Matter podcast, host Aderonke Bademosi Wilson welcomes Edwards Holliday, a uniquely self-described "Road Scholar," forward-thinking creative, enthusiastic coach and advisor to advisors. Edwards shares his extraordinary life journey marked by alternative learning and a deep commitment to personal and professional growth.

Edwards narrates his unconventional educational path, choosing to travel across the United States for five years instead of following the traditional academic route. Living out of a Chevy van and later exploring Hawaii on a motorcycle, his adventures shaped his perspective and skills uniquely. He explains what being a "Road Scholar" means to him, a metaphor for life-long, experiential learning.

The conversation delves into Edwards' approach to forward-thinking creativity, a key trait that defines his coaching practice. He describes helping clients find their own personal or professional anthem through an interesting tool called the Fascination Advantage System, which blends personality insights with outcome-oriented creativity.

Edwards also reflects on his early career challenges, including buying a leadership development franchise, enduring hard times and how perseverance, faith and daily mantras sustained him. He shares touching stories from his family life, particularly the role of his wife Melba, a fellow coach, and their shared passion for equine-facilitated leadership development.

His client work shines through examples of transformative mediation and relational theory, focusing on creating quality communication and resolving conflicts in high-stakes financial advisory settings. Edwards offers valuable wisdom on integrating appreciation, presence and shared purpose in leadership and team dynamics.

Edwards shares recent personal and professional accomplishments, including leading a groundbreaking equine leadership day for a UBS team and his long-term joy in witnessing the growth and impact of his clients over decades.

The episode closes with reflections on mindfulness, the power of enthusiasm, the importance of high-trust human connection in an AI-driven world, and Edwards’ ongoing journey of writing a book while embracing the continuous evolution of consciousness and leadership.

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Transcript

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:03.029)
 Welcome to another edition of ABWilson's Heart of the Matter, a podcast that uses overwhelmingly positive questions to learn about our guests, where every episode uncovers extraordinary stories of triumph, growth, and empowerment. Hi, I'm Aderonke Bademosi Wilson, and my guest on today's show is Edwards Holliday. Edwards is forward-thinking creativity, a road scholar, enthusiasm, and an advisor to advisors. Edwards, thank you. And thank you for being here and welcome to the show.

Edwards Holliday (00:44.696)
 Thank you, Aderonke. I'm really happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this, and I appreciate your kind invitation.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:50.965)
 And so Edwards, I'm gonna go to the descriptor that intrigued me the most. And then I saw it, thought, that is such a cool playing word—road scholar. Tell me about being a road scholar.

Edwards Holliday (01:04.642)
 Right. So I guess for the listeners, we have to spell it the way that I wrote it to you, which is R-O-A-D, right? Which is not the academic Rhodes scholarship. And I've just referred to that as a self-title because my educational path was alternative. I didn't follow the path that some of my peers coming out of high school followed as far as their education and next steps. And I decided to do some traveling instead. Did that for about five years. And even when I started

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:10.783)
 Yes.

Edwards Holliday (01:34.444)
 my business, how I developed my competencies and skills was alternative as well.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:41.729)
 And when you were traveling, where did you travel to?

Edwards Holliday (01:47.118)
 I left home December 19th, 1983. I was 19 years old. And my plan at the time, I had a Chevy van that two of my friends helped me to fix up so I could live out of it if I wanted to. This was before it was cool to travel around and live out of a van. You know, the Saturday Night Live episode of living in a van down by the river kind of comes to mind when we think about that. But I wanted to travel and explore. And my default plan at the time was to spend a year in each of the 50 states. And if nothing else came along, I was okay with that happening. And that would take me to, you know, almost age 60. And I headed off from Pennsylvania, the central PA area, Harrisburg, and went to Florida and lived on a bunch of couches down there in Gulfport and St. Pete Beach, Madeira Beach, Treasure Island, and Sunset Beach. That was, that was the beginning of

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (02:38.539)
 Wow, and you did this for five years.

Edwards Holliday (02:41.984)
 I went from there to Ocean City, Maryland, and then back to Pennsylvania. And then my brother, who was in the Air Force at the time, completed his language training and called me and he said he had two weeks off and then he was going to go to Oahu for the rest of his term of service. And I was getting kind of ready, itchy to head to California. So I thought, well, Hawaii's just a little further. Let's go. So I sold the van and bought a motorcycle.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:03.554)
 I'm not even sure where it stopped. Okay, so...

I'll start over again. Edwards, tell me about being a Rhodes Scholar. What does that look like? What does that mean? And explain the difference between your version of Rhodes Scholar and what is generally known as a Rhodes Scholar.

Edwards Holliday (00:24.701)
 Right. The way that I wrote it to you is spelled R-O-A-D, right? So being on the road is what I mean by a road scholar. My educational path in life has been different than most of my peers. And instead of going from high school into university, I chose to travel for a period of time. And even after that five-year period of travel, when I started my own business, even that learning and development took an alternative path to get to where I am today.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:56.930)
 And so when you were traveling for five years, what did that look like? Where did you go?

Edwards Holliday (01:01.833)
 When I was 19, I left home December 19th, 1983 in a Chevy van that a couple of my friends helped me to fix up so I could live out of it if I had to at a campground. And this is before it was cool, you know, to travel by van. People kind of looked at it like, you know, the Saturday Night Live episode of living in a van down by the river. I didn't care. And my default plan at the time was to spend one year in each of the 50 states just as an objective. And I felt that if nothing else came along and it worked out that way, I'd be totally okay with that. And of course it didn't work out that way, but I did travel from Florida, lived there in the St. Pete Beach area, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach, Gulfport, going from couch to couch for about a year and a half. And then moved to Ocean City, Maryland for a very long summer there and then back to Pennsylvania. And at that point I was getting ready to travel again and my brother, who's two years younger, his name is Matthew.

He was in the Air Force and finished his language training and found out he was going to be stationed on Oahu at Wheeler Air Force Base. And he had two weeks of leave time. And he said, I'm going to Hawaii. And I thought, well, I was going to go to California. So Hawaii is just a little further. So let's go together. So I sold the van, bought a motorcycle and he took his Camaro. When I took the bike and we took his leave and made our way across the United States and then hopped on a plane and he dropped me off in Waikiki the next day. And I had a suitcase and about $500 in cash and $900 of credit on my credit card, and that was it. And no, anybody didn't have a job. There was no cell phone. You know, I didn't have an address. And it was an interesting way to kind of start my adventure in Hawaii. That lasted for two years. I ended up back in Pennsylvania after that.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (02:47.084)
 Indeed, a road scholar. And so Edwards, you've described yourself as forward-thinking creativity. What does that mean?

Edwards Holliday (02:56.253)
 That's an anthem, and an anthem is...

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:01.154)
 Thank you, Edwards, for sharing that really wonderful story. Forward-thinking creativity is another one of your descriptors. What does that mean?

Edwards Holliday (00:12.089)
 Forward-thinking creativity means the ability to be able to come up with ideas and insights on the spot and to do so from an outcome orientation. And that particular phrase is an anthem. And it's something when somebody says, what makes you different as an executive coach or consultant? I think there might be 20 things that make me different, but that's the one thing that I lead with because it's a product of my personality. It's a product of how I'm wired.

And it's something that I naturally do.

And if a person wants that or hires me for that, then I will deliver on it. And this adjective and noun—in this case forward-thinking, and then creativity being the product—is an anthem. And that's one of the products that we help our clients to define as part of their value proposition statement when they're marketing and branding themselves.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:03.886)
 ... And so how would you help somebody to define their own anthem? Like if they came to you and said, I want to be able to stand out in my own field. What process do you go through to help them find the adjective and noun?

Edwards Holliday (01:24.483)
 Thank you for that. And we use—just to credit Sally Hogshead, and she's the creator of a tool called the Fascination Advantage System. I got introduced to her at a client's conference through Morgan Stanley. I was a guest at their Chairman's Club event and she was a keynote speaker, and she presented data on all the top producers and her matrix and the whole idea. And when I saw it, I knew instantly that this is helpful, useful, and valuable. And we, my

My wife, who's also my business partner, she's an executive coach, her name is Melba Holliday, and she works on the other side of the house with her clientele who are special operators, special forces coming out of the military and career transition. We help them in that transition in the private sector, and she manages that part of our business and I support her. And so she became certified in this tool, and then I became, and then I learned the tool, and it starts with a questionnaire, results in a report.

And we have a starting place and then we conduct a webinar for learning purposes, like a two-hour learning session about the seven ways to fascinate. Then there's a process for beginning to identify your own adjective and then your own noun. And sometimes the individual figures that out on their own pretty quickly. And other times we normally need to facilitate it and help them through that process. And for some, like when I went through the process and I looked at the example,

I nailed it, and I could give a lot of evidence and I can find threads throughout my entire life where I've been doing that. Melba landed on the same archetype. There are 49 archetypes. Mine's called the avant-garde and hers as well, but she took over a week of a lot of effort of wordsmithing to arrive at her anthem, which is "Exclusive Experience."

So if you have dinner at our house or you go out to the farm and she conducts an equine facilitation with you, it will feel like an exclusive experience. So that's what she delivers. So it's interesting that we have the same archetype, but two different anthems, although they're kind of in the same domain. Our oldest daughter, Sarah, we have two girls. Sarah works also in our business with us and her anthem is "Unexpected Thought." And if you have a conversation with Sarah, that's exactly what you're going to get from her.

Edwards Holliday (03:40.366)
 The way that she thinks and sees the world and the insight that she brings forward are pretty amazing.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (03:46.562)
 Thank you. I'm not familiar with this, so I'll do a little bit more research. Sounds fascinating. And another word that you use to describe yourself, enthusiasm.

Edwards Holliday (03:59.649)
 Enthusiasm is one of my favorite words. And I thank Paul J. Meyer, who started Leadership Management, Inc. and Success Motivation Institute. We own a franchise. That's how I started in 1989. I bought a franchise of LMI. And I listened to a lot of his audio recordings from the speeches that he gave. And one was called Enthusiasm Sells. And in preparation for this, I actually found the cassette tape

holder that my father gave me, it was 1977 when he gave the speech. And he laid out, you know, why enthusiasm matters. And it comes from the Greek word, entheos. If you look up entheos, you're going to get the definition of a religious zealot, but also of the universe moving through you, which is the definition that I like. So when a person is naturally enthusiastic, they have interest in something, they have knowledge about it.

They want to learn more and get better at it. And they have a desire to share it with others. And so if we're walking around naturally with enthusiasm, it means that we are in this flow, right?

Where we're working with something that we have some skill at and we're interested in, and it activates all the positive brain chemicals, dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin. And it's just when we're in our element. And so I just love that word.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (05:19.499)
 Hmm. And you're an advisor to advisors. What does that look like in your practice?

Edwards Holliday (05:29.625)
 Well, I had to give myself the title so I could call myself president of Atlantic Leadership Group, which I am, or coach or executive coach or consultant or leadership development person or whatever. It's because of the market. My primary target market are private wealth advisors, mainly in the big wirehouses like UBS, Morgan Stanley, and so forth. We work with some independents as well. And I act as the advisor to them. So they are financial advisors, right?

They have a clientele, and every aspect of their practice management includes acquiring clients, serving clients. We speak to leadership, strategy, and productivity to help them to grow their franchise and grow their revenue and transform or evolve their business model and transform themselves into being the best that they can be.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (06:20.311)
 Thank you. Thank you, Edwards. Now I'd like to get a little bit more information from you and help our listeners learn more about you. So please share three interesting things about yourself that our listeners may not know and your friends will be surprised to learn.

Edwards Holliday (06:42.947)
 This was difficult for me to choose to prioritize what I'm going to talk about here. There's so many things that kind of fall into this category. So one is, I in my life have made some very short timeframe decisions that created profound directions. And when I made a decision to get into this coaching business or leadership development by buying the franchise of LMI, it was a two-week decision.

from the time that I got a phone call because of a business reply card that I mailed in and a recruiter called me. And LMI was like the best of recruiting in the world at that time. I went down to Texas that weekend. I went back down to Texas the weekend after that. I made a decision sitting on the couch at Waco Convention Center. And within like five days, I sent them a very large check from money that I just borrowed and scoured from wherever.

This is during the kind of the tail end of the recession in the eighties. And so those were very high interest rates that I didn't care. I really wanted to be in the business. And so that was a very quick decision and a profound one, right? It created a whole direction for my life, but I knew it when I saw it, like always knew because of my parents and my father specifically, but I would have my own business of some type. And then I knew that it would be helping people in some way.

I was very confident that I would discover it. I just didn't know what it was and I didn't put any timeframe on it and just kind of went about my life until it met me. And I was like, yes. Same thing happened when I met Melba. We were in Asheville, North Carolina in 1994 near the end of July. We're going through an outcome facilitation workshop by Robert Tennyson Stevens, some really deep, profound, significant work. And two weeks after I met her, she was living in Florida at the time and had a happy little life down in Boca Raton, working as a personal fitness trainer at St. Andrews, going to the beach every day. And I was living in LeMoyne, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg. I had ridden my motorcycle and she flew in.

And so two weeks after meeting her, she flies up to visit me for the weekend. And I had already made the decision that I was going to propose to her. And I had a gift, a ring and a poem, and I picked her up at the airport.

Edwards Holliday (09:05.249)
 On a Friday for the weekend at five o'clock went back to my little apartment and I got on my knees and I read the poem, which was an 80-year outcome of if she, if we choose to be together, this is how our life could work out. I presented the ring. She said, yes. I gave her the gift. It was a motorcycle jacket, got on my bike, went to a seven o'clock dinner reservation at the Boiling Springs Tavern, which is a really nice old 1700s building with my parents, my brother, his wife, friends were waiting for us. So when you know it, you know it.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (09:40.127)
 That is such a romantic story. And I'm sure you've heard that before, but wow. Very cool.

Edwards Holliday (09:45.785)
 Thank you.

I had to ask her and take action before she thought too much about it. Because if she thought too much about it, her analytical side would kick in and she probably would have, you know, it wouldn't have worked the way that it

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (09:53.293)
 Absolutely.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (10:01.557)
 Okay, thank you. And was that three things? Your business, getting married.

Edwards Holliday (10:06.957)
 That was one thing; I took a long time talking about it.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (10:10.817)
 Ha ha ha ha!

Edwards Holliday (10:13.197)
 Well, you know, okay, I'll give you one more. This is a good time to introduce the one behind me. So that's a picture of my mother. She passed in 2017 and she's with me every day. And when I was very young, sometime between ages like five and nine, somewhere in that age, she left the Catholic religion because she was very devout and, But then she started to question things. And because of that, she decided to just take her own journey. And she was a very ardent and adroit student, and pretty much anything was game for her to study. And if it worked for her, then she kept it. If not, then she let it go. And as she explored all these different ways of understanding herself and the universe and God and her interpretation of all that, she would share her experiences and knowledge with my brother and me, and to the degree that we were interested. And I was very interested. And so she shared everything. And as a result, I had a lot of experiences at a very young age that most people have never had. And it formed my understanding of life and the universe and my relationship with myself, my relationship with whatever created all this, God, higher power, whatever we want to call it, and kind of the holographic universe that we live in. And I thank her every day for that type of understanding.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (11:49.262)
 Thank you for sharing. Can you tell us about a recent accomplishment or success that you're particularly proud of?

Edwards Holliday (12:03.673)
 Well, from a business point of view, just in July, just to go to something recent and specific, we implemented a day with the horses in Cincinnati with one of my clients. Had an 11-person UBS team that took the entire day off. Had an intern back at the office answering the phones and they trusted us right to invest that kind of time together to lead them through an equine-facilitated learning experience that Melba and two of her facilitator peers led in Cincinnati. And they taught them the diamond model of shared leadership based on how horse herds move in the wild in a diamond formation, using the capabilities of attention, direction, energy, and congruence. And having an experience with a horse, they didn't ride the horse. They did ground exercises. And we discussed concepts and they executed the exercise and we came back and discussed the concept and learning. And that was the whole day.

And it's kind of profound what an animal can teach somebody, you know, animals will teach you something about yourself, horses specifically, because they don't lie. They don't care about your title. They don't care what you know, but they will reflect back to you exactly how you're showing up and whether you have attention, whether you have clear direction, your energy, whether you're congruent or not, it shows up instantaneously. And if you change, the horse will change towards you instantaneously. So it's this kind of immediate feedback loop that a person can have. And that was a significant accomplishment, not because we haven't done those before, but because that was the first one of that magnitude with her peers out of state, where we now have a system that we can replicate pretty much anywhere in the United States because of Melba's relationship with Teaching Horse, which is a worldwide organization. And she's very involved with them. And we have access to farms and facilitators, and now we have a model that we can teach.

That's a leadership model, which is pertinent to leading in uncertainty today. So that was a big deal. If I was to answer that question more broadly, what I'm most happy about is having a successful marriage, right, to Melba and having two wonderful daughters is extremely significant to me, right? Those are the most important relationships in my life. And to see both of our girls go off into the world,

Edwards Holliday (14:32.569)
 Sarah moved to San Diego just because she wanted to live there, packed up her car and off she went. And, you know, to be in an empty industry, you can't get further away than that because we live on the East coast. And Elizabeth, they're 28, 24. So Elizabeth, because of her heart and desire to travel and work in a third world country, went to Nepal in January for her 27 months of service in the Peace Corps.

And I'm very proud of them....

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (15:05.387)
 What are some of the tools you bring to ensuring successful relationships?

Edwards Holliday (15:14.571)
 One of the most important books, I think, I mean, you know, we have—I don't know, a thousand or two books in the house. So I could say most important to most of them because they were at the time that I read them. And that's one of the alternative ways in which I gained knowledge was just read a tremendous amount. The current one that's so important that I'm asking my clients to do a book study. Like the whole team gets the book and we're going to spend an hour on a chapter every week or two weeks until we get through the whole book and we're going to talk about it.

That's how important this book is. And it's by Louise Phipps Senft and William Senft, last name S-E-N-F-T. They run the Baltimore Mediation Center in Baltimore, their husband and wife team.

They are amazing. I love Louise. She's just mean, Bill's okay too, but I was trained by Louise specifically in transformative mediation early, like the first year of the pandemic.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (16:04.671)
 You...

Edwards Holliday (16:12.767)
 And the whole basis of that is relational theory and the book Being Relational, the seven ways to quality interaction and lasting change. Being relational. These are simple things. Being engaged, being grounded, being clear, being centered, being generous, humble, and kind. And they sound like simple things. What they're about and the execution of it, not easy.

And every time that I read the book and discuss it with a client, it just goes deeper. I just value it so much more. And the basis of it as a tool is that, you know, if you're reading the book or on a podcast or have internet, you're a winner. You're used to winning, especially United States. And winning means you get what you want. And that's all about how you negotiate, which is okay.

However, the higher standard to be relational nis to win and negotiate while mutually enhancing the wellbeing of both parties, yourself and the other party, mutually enhancing the wellbeing. So that's now the standard at which I think about how I communicate, negotiate, go about getting what I want. Am I being relational in this moment? And to be relational means being all seven of those ways at the same time. And to me, it's relevant, it's timely, it's profound.

And it's really important stuff because AI, artificial intelligence, is going to replace a lot of stuff, but it's not going to replace connection with people. It's not going to replace oxytocin that's created through deep trusting relationships. It's not going to replace the touch and the care and the connectivity when we're in a personal service of business, which my clients are in. And for that reason, raising our skill level and how we show up, how we treat people, how we engage with them. that we are facilitators for ourselves and others is a difference maker.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (18:16.854)
 So, what I do, as you probably know, is at the end of each conversation, I ask for book recommendations. So I'm gonna assume this would have been or is one of your book recommendations. And I'm gonna list it anyway on the website under your book recommendations. And I have not read it and I look forward to reading it.

Edwards Holliday (18:29.774)
 Number one.

Edwards Holliday (18:42.466)
 Excellent.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (18:44.406)
 Please tell us about a time when you made a difference in another's life. What were the circumstances? Paint a picture for me.

Edwards Holliday (18:53.417)
 I thought about this question a lot and there are two, there are some specific examples that come to mind. There is also, probably what's more important to me is that there's a thread over time of every day finding way to do that. You know, we, we are, you are, I am, we are in the people development business and we have an opportunity every day by what we do that a simple conversation just to be a listening presence can be healing. That can change a person's life. And so when I think about the question you asked, I appreciate this opportunity that we have and that it can be a daily experience. Now, specifically, since I mentioned transformative mediation and being relational theory connected to the book, I had four opportunities about two years after I went through the training where one of the major firms that I work with in New York City called me. I have a good relationship and the manager called whenever he has kind of a tricky problem. especially where there's conflict between people. He calls me to help them resolve it so that he doesn't have to go in and making a decision. Cause then one of the two parties is unhappy with him. And he'd rather that they work it out themselves. And I got to use transformative mediation as a specific role in those four cases. And these were high profile, big money, big, big egos, big team situations. It wasn't small stuff.

And if it didn't work out well, that would have been, you know, not good for my reputation and not good for them. All four cases came to resolution. Three were like done, done. The fourth one isn't completely finished. But the important thing is that when we all agreed to sit in a room voluntarily, both parties wanted to find a resolution. They didn't want to go to arbitration. So that was important. And then I had to stay in this role.

Edwards Holliday (20:58.859)
 of transformative mediator, which supposes, right, I don't get to direct, I don't get to decide.

That's not what a transformative mediator does. I'm simply there to restore a quality dialogue and help people to go from feeling weak to strong and from self-absorbed to being able to notice and appreciate and respond to others. And it took the entire day. In all four cases, before we were done, about 30 to 45 minutes before we were done, somebody came up to me during a restroom break and said this. They said, uh, this is not going well. And I think it's worse than it was before. And I don't see his ending.

Somebody said that to me in all in all four times and within 30 to 45 minutes, it was resolved.

Now what the reason why it was the hardest thing for me to not tell them what to do because I really wanted to because that's what I do as the advisor, right? That's my day job is giving advice and counsel and sometimes I can direct very easily and I couldn't do that. I had to ask questions and guide and allow them to determine where it's going to go. But at some point because of reflective listening, which is the big tool,

Edwards Holliday (22:07.411)
 You asked me what are some of the tools that we use and since you understand the exchange approach. And by the way, I forgot to mention, I want to thank Natalie, who's our connection in common for bringing, making this happen. I love Natalie. She's on the team at the exchange approach.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (22:24.862)
 Absolutely. And I'd like to shout out to Natalie as well. Thank you, Natalie.

Edwards Holliday (22:30.015)
 And, and so I just stayed in the role and eventually at some point they hurt each other through reflective listening exercises and somebody went, okay. And then something clicked where they had an understanding of what mattered to the other party. And then as soon as people begin to feel strong and they, you know, start noticing the other party, now they have the capacity to solve their own problem. And they, and they all did, they came up with a solution. Agreed to it.

Everybody walks out quite not very happy, right? But it's done. I mean, that's a successful negotiation, right? But it was done. And they had resolution. And that was like, you know, my... my reputation was preserved. And I was so excited that I got to stay in that role because it was so hard.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (23:10.080)
 I'm sorry.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (23:20.332)
 So what are the key strengths and qualities you relied on, especially when it becomes difficult for you, right? Because oftentimes if we're the person helping both sides, we can see the answer. It's like, how can you not see this? But as a facilitator yourself, as I facilitate, my role is to help them get there. Because I can walk in and tell you the solution. but it's not gonna stick unless you yourself get there. What do you rely on to continue to make a difference, to continue to stay in the roles that you walk into the room as and maintain your focus, but also your success?

Edwards Holliday (24:07.641)
 There are three very important things that come to my mind. Two of the three are decrees or call it a mantra or prayer or something. I say it to myself one in the morning, one at night. And the thing in the morning is to let, let divine will be done. May I be of highest use to the people that I meet. So that, very simple reminder to myself works for me and who is divine will. Well, whatever, you know,

For me, the greater, it's the high self. It's the collection of high selves in Huna that see Ho'i a makua and it's God. so let whatever that greater good is come through me, meaning don't let my ego drive it. And that just is, I have to say that every day because my ego is pretty strong and it will want to direct things otherwise, cause I have an agenda, you know. Number two is at night, the last thing I do before I go to sleep is I think I say, please, it's actually an invitation and it's thank thankfulness. Please send to me those who I can help and those who can help me, or it's thank you. And like when it shows up during the day and I acknowledge that when I take inventory of my day, thank you for sending me people who I can help and those who can help me. I don't qualify it any other way. I don't, I don't say what kind of people or what type of situation. I haven't found that to be necessary because

It just shows up and then I can use wisdom and discernment in the moment to decide what to do about it. And with that, I give recognition, not just to seen and physical who have helped me, but to the unseen, including my mother. I mean, I have an army of help. I am loved and I am supported and I've known that my entire life. And I know that there's stuff happening behind the scenes in a productive way.

And my job is to remember that, right? To give credit that I have to do my part. And there's a lot of other parts that are going on that are helping in this situation. And so that helps to keep me humble. So those are the two. The third thing is because of Robert Tennyson Stevens, he passed away now almost two years ago. He's one of the people I have studied under for a long time. And that's the course in which I met Melba, as I mentioned.

Edwards Holliday (26:27.937)
 And he's kind of like one of those people that they're, you know, they're just a genius on this planet that they take something and they just take it to a whole nother level. And he was one of those guys. And when I met him, everything he talked about fit into my construct of what I understood based on Huna, which is what the Hawaiian Kahunas practice. That was one of the many things that my mother shared with me when I was very young, everything fit. And he taught us about conscious language, that words have power. He taught us about body energy signals, meaning that the subconscious is always going to reveal itself and body signals instantaneously. It never lies. And that's a great way to interpret the full picture of communication. And he taught us that for every lesser or negative, such as fear, that a higher attribute is returning. not only returning but already delivered waiting to be claimed. So he said, fear is faith and confidence returning.

Like I didn't, I didn't know that until I heard it from him and I was 30 years old. So what does that mean? It means that no matter what the emotion or the situation or the thought, if, if you, if it surfaces, it automatically means that the higher attribute is already a possibility and in the same degree. So if it's big fear, then it's big courage, confidence, trust, faith.

If it's a big anger, then it's big forgiveness action with love and the voice of your authority is a big grief and it's big joy for the big pain. There's big love. And then you could do the same thing with any thought or situation and that people normally do communicate what's on deck in the first, I don't know, 15 seconds of a conversation in the first couple of minutes. It always shows itself right away in a conversation. My, my job is to see it.

Edwards Holliday (28:29.761)
 and hear it and receive it. So what I've been appreciating is how I listen, how I, and to do that, you got to be fully present, obviously, right? I get to check myself and walk in clean, fresh, ready to go. There's nothing that is distracting or coming up for me. There's no withhold that I have.

I've done the work inside. done my own, you know, I'm practicing what I'm preaching, managing my own feelings and transforming them. And now I can be completely present for you.

And then tune into my three brains of my gut, feelings, my heart center, knowing the truth for me and my cognitive and what all three of those. I know that your recent, Abby, that her name?

Abby Paul. You just had a guest on. And by the way, can't, yeah. When you're speaking Libby,

Libby, thank you. Yeah. Libby Paul. she, she spoke about this. And, so some of the things I talked about today are kind of....

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (29:21.132)
 Libby Paul.

Edwards Holliday (29:29.645)
 you know, just happened to be your most recent guest that I have a lot in common with in terms of experiences and thoughts. I might use different ways to language it or label it, but same, same stuff. So when we are fully present, we get to activate and receive from all three brain power centers. And you can really, your, our instrument can get fine tuned very quickly.

So I might hear something. It can just be one word. And then I ask permission to ask a question about that.

And then based on the question, cause I know exactly where I'm going. I don't know what I'm going to find. I, you know, I choose to know, but it always reveals itself if the person is willing to share. And that's for me to, you know, create some, some psychological security and safety and, uh, to, respect what the boundaries are for that individual. if they give me permission to facilitate, it doesn't take very long to get right down to the heart of the matter.

And that's kind of funny because that's your name of your studio. And to help them become aware of something. And I've done that over and over and over over again. And I have a lot of examples of it. I would like to read something to you, just as an example of the effect that this type of listening has on people.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (30:48.844)
 Please do, go ahead.

Edwards Holliday (30:50.965)
 And, so what I'm to read, this is a gentleman. I'm not going to share his name, kind of permission for that. He came to me because he was the mentor. He's about my age recently left a very large financial services organization and a very important position. Big, big, big time stuff.

And so he's kind of going through his, whatever his next step is going to be. And one of my clients, worked under him at another firm and was his mentor and they mentioned his name. And so I loved to meet this guy. And, and then what happened, we just ended up having a conversation.

I ended up just kind of helping and facilitating. And we just now we've had six sessions over just the summer months. And this is a text he sent to me after our first conversation. He said, thank you again for today. The clarity, support and sense of alignment I experienced with you was profound.

I know this is your lane, so to speak, but wow. I spent most of the rest of the day quietly reflecting, expressing gratitude and appreciating the experience.

Edwards Holliday (31:56.558)

That, that type of feedback is, it happens a lot. And it's because, and Melba does the same thing.

So both of us have been trained in some of these tool sets that we use. And we doubled down on the training during the pandemic period. And then, more like about three weeks after that, I took this particular person through an exercise that I'm working on now as, a book called your greatest inheritance. and simply stated it's a way of appreciating your inheritance from your parents or whoever you would, whoever raised you or that you were raised by could have been a grandparent, could have been one, whatever, but to appreciate in your experience, what were some of their positive attributes and all those are part of your inheritance. And then we list the negative attributes as you experience them, which could be unique to you, maybe different for a sibling.

And then we take every one of those and those are also your inheritance. And usually those get passed down unless we reverse the curse of some of those things. And then we take each one of those and we look, going back to the idea that every lesser has a greater, we transmute, which means to transform to a higher energy level, every one of those negatives to say, what does that turn into when it's completely healed, right? In a loving state. And then that,

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (32:59.372)
 Thank

Edwards Holliday (33:25.621)
 is your inheritance to claim. So either the parent ends up working that out and we see that in our lifetime or sometimes they don't and they die and they never transmuted it. Well, then we get to, right? That's our job to transmute that. And it's a really wonderful collection. So it doesn't really matter what experience somebody's had with their parent or grandparent. It could have been good. It could have been horrific. The person I'm talking about had some unusually horrific experiences.

And so even still we can find, you know, call it the silver lining or whatever you want to find to say, if I had this experience with this person, because I also believe that we choose who we're born to, it's an agreement on some level of intention, maybe deep intention, maybe kind of like a so what intention, but we're hanging out with people for a reason. And if we can discover the purpose behind it, that that person uniquely is here to help us grow in some way. There's some gift in this, even though they're really pissing me off right now or, or whatever, there's always a way to look at the other side. And if we can claim it, then we can be the victor of it instead of the victim. And then we can have gratitude and appreciation that this happened. I'm not like, good. You know, I was abandoned when I was two years old. No, we're not going to say that's, you know, we're happy about that. But we're going to say is, It happened. I was not the cause of that. However, it's an experience I had. And so how do I transmute it to that into the higher attribute? And sometimes people need some help in how they, how... they see what that transmutes into. We're very good at helping them see that. So I went through that exercise with him. So this is the text he sent me after that. He said, thanks again, Edwards. I feel like a teenager on a spiritual quest, moving forward at times, feeling my way. going on instinct, then I speak with you and everything is clear. The fragments fit together. And then he commented about a person I reflected on with him, your comments about so-and-so were so spot on, putting words to what I sense, but couldn't articulate. I feel very connected to you. And that's just because I've, I've only known this guy for like, what are six hours or so about the, like the total amount of time we spent together. and he shares stuff with me, never share with anybody else. And, that, you know, they're.

Edwards Holliday (35:47.907)
 there's a reason. And so that's the work that Melba does as well, and also Sarah. And I feel profoundly honored and blessed to be able to have those kinds of conversations with people.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (36:01.598)
 Edwards, thank you. I truly appreciate you sharing your processes and the presence that you

bring to your clients and to situations and your perspective, your perspective on the work that you do. And it's given me some insight into that world. And I'm even more curious.

I'm even more curious about how it works and helping people to see the positive, right? And I know it's not just about the positive, but switching the negative so that you can get the good that is there and use it. And so I think what you said, and I wrote it down, I'm just trying to find it. And one of the things that, stuck out for me, we choose who we are born to. I think that is fabulous. And I've heard people say, you I got to be this person's mother, I got to be this person's father, because they chose me. And we learned something from each other, right? And you've talked about your mom.

And you didn't give me her name. What was your mom's name? Joan. And I felt the connection that you have with her.

Edwards Holliday (37:20.131)
 Joan.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (37:28.886)
 So thank you for sharing. Thank you for opening up on that aspect of your work and your life.

Can you recall a situation where you overcame a challenge that led to personal growth and what did you learn from that experience?

Edwards Holliday (37:51.257)
 I've had, um, I have many, and I think that people who have had many challenges that were significant have become exceptional people because we had to, you got to grow, you know, if everything's really easy, there's not, that doesn't really stimulate a lot of growth. Uh, okay. The one, the one I'm to talk about is since I, I mentioned starting, you know, this business in 1989,

I'm 61. I started when I was 25. And at the time I had a lot of self-confidence and ego and enthusiasm. And I was just riding on this, this romance of how awesome this is going to be. And I can, I can do this. I can do this better than those guys, you know, that type of thing. And I bought the franchise. I borrowed a lot of money. Within two months, we had an outside office because I grew up with my parents working out of their home. My father left a very secure state department job because he didn't like the leadership change, he didn't respect the person he was working for and decided to start his own consultancy, helping schools to do PR called the Educational Communication Center. So before it was cool, I grew up with parents working out of the home and my parents worked together. So I had that experience and I appreciate that my father taught me. He said, do what you love and then be excellent at it. You can be mediocre, but choose to be excellent. And, and I followed that cause I watched him do that.

took a lot of courage. Anyway, so back to bought the franchise. We got an outside office. I was half responsible for rent. I recruited an associate. They said recruit, recruit, recruit. So I found someone and convinced them to work with me on complete commission in a business that I just started that I had no experience or academic credentials for or business contacts. And so the two of us were out there, you know, the first couple of months was okay because I sold some family and friends and you know, I had a few units of sales and got moving.

And then nothing. And now I have all this looming debt. I got this office, I got this associate, and we're both on the phone dialing, dialing, dialing, back when you can call people and they would answer the phone. Get appointments, go out and see them, no sale. I wasn't closing. And I realized how hard this business was. And it's like, what have I got myself into? This is really hard. And I found out quickly where I was lacking certain skills and abilities that I didn't know that I was lacking.

Edwards Holliday (40:14.837)
 After a month, this associate who also didn't make any sales, actually moved into my apartment. had a two bedroom, small apartment. He couldn't afford to live where he was living. He moved into my apartment. This is really sad, right? You could just picture this.

Eventually he got a job bartending or something. He says, I love you and I believe in this, but I got to eat, brother. And so I'm sitting at my desk, no sales for a month, looming debt, realizing how hard this was. And I'm remembering a conversation that I had with Jim Serbascu. who at the time was president of LMI. He's passed away now. And on my second trip to Waco, I met all the VPs in the company and Jim gave a speech and I chased him down the hall after he gave a speech and I introduced myself and I said, Mr. Serbascu, I'm Edwards Holliday. He said, great, I'm going to become a franchisee. He said, great. And I said, and I'm going to be rookie of the year. He said, all right, Tiger, go get him. I look forward to seeing you up on stage next year.

All right. I'm sitting there thinking about that conversation.... And I got out, I typed a letter back when you use a typewriter and I sent him a letter and I said, you probably don't remember me, but some months ago I said I was going to buy a franchise and all this and that. And I had bought a franchise and I said I was going be rookie of the year, but I'm nowhere close to that. But I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to give up.

And I can, and I, and I feel it today. Like, I like it was that moment writing that letter and I had tears in my eyes and I sent the letter off and I got back on the phone. And, two weeks later, I got a postcard from Jim Serbascu, which I didn't expect. And it said, I do remember you, you're a winner. Just keep going. You can do this. And I held that and I put up on my little cork board and I thought, you know, somebody believes in me. And, That's why I'm still here today. Now I've had many dark moments like that over, over the career. You know, it's hard. This business is hard to develop the business. But what I refer to that as is the dark moment. And I believe everybody has one. And when you're going through it, you're alone. I mean, you might have people around you, but you are alone and you got to look in the mirror and say, what am I going to do? Right. I have to make a choice.

Edwards Holliday (42:40.075)
 And it's okay to quit sometimes, right? There's no problem with that. There's a good book by Seth Godin called The Dip where he talks about that. But I had to really, because that was the moment of decision. It wasn't when I told my parents I was going to buy the franchise. It wasn't when I borrowed the money because I got people to lend it to me. It wasn't all that. It was now I know what I got myself into. Am I going to do this? That was the moment of decision. And I've had to re-enroll myself over a period of time. right for probably the first 10 or 15 years of my career. Now it's been years.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (43:18.327)
 Thank you for sharing your story.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (43:23.797)
 You are listening to ABWilson's Heart of the Matter podcast.

Welcome back to ABWilson's Heart of the Matter. My guest today is Edwards Holliday.

Edwards, we've talked about how you started your career. We've talked about the time that you spent traveling as a young man. We talked about how you met and married your wife. And we've also talked about some of the darker days of your career, your chosen path. What self-care practices or strategies help you to sustain your energy and motivation while navigating your journey.

Edwards Holliday (44:05.603)

This is an important subject and I first want to credit Melba. She's an elegant woman of grace and health, and she brings a dimension into our lives of health and wellness in all ways. So she's a very important partner for me. And she cooks, makes delicious food, and she kicks my ass and I go to the gym because of her. So this morning we were with a personal trainer, you know, who I'm with two days a week, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's enough.

So that's number one. Number two, I do pushups every night. 50 of those. So that helps. And then I ride my motorcycle. All of us ride motorcycles. We're a motorcycling family. Melba has her own bike. Both girls ride. And that's really the time when to be on a motorcycle, one must be completely present. Otherwise you can die, you know, for a variety of reasons. And I am one with the bike as I ride.

It's as close to flying as I can get, although I am taking private pilot lessons. So one day, you know, when I get my license, I will be up on a plane. A motorcycle was my love. And then I just, sometimes sit quietly or I will read or talk to friends or just do something that's, that's relaxing for me. Just like even before this call today, I sat in the chair for 10 minutes and just did some deep breathing and, connecting. And you know, for me, that's a as a form of meditation that can happen just in a matter of a minute.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (45:40.493)
 Thank you. And how might your experience of success and growth create a positive ripple effect in your family, community, the world?

Edwards Holliday (45:57.121)
 One of the benefits of the business that we're in or the way that I choose to do it is I've got some very long-term relationships and I'm able to see things happen in someone's life over 20 years. Some have been more than 25 years. They get married, they have kids, the kids are now going to college, kids now have kids. And so I get to be witness to those things. So sometimes they come back around and they tell me, Hey, it was because of this.

Because of the work that we did, had one guy I recently talked to that I work with like, I don't know, almost 20 years ago. And he said, there was one exercise that you took me through. And I was kind of like, you know, disturbed by it at the time. just, was not a fun exercise, but it caused me to shift my business. And as a result, here's what happened. As a result of that, here's where I am today. And as a result of that, here's what I get to do. And he's on his path.

And he like takes it all the way back.

So that one exercise which he happened to anchor to me, right? So I'm not taking credit for all the things he's done in his life, but it's kind of funny how if we introduce somebody to an idea or a thought or an exercise, or we give them an experience of being listened to and reflecting back to them in a way that they've never experienced before, and if it's significant, you you're doing important work, they will remember that the rest of their lives and they will talk about it for the rest of their lives.... I have a guy named Mike McHale, who's a former client, a friend. And he really adopted the goal-setting principles that we took his company through. He was a plant manager and has since retired. And he just loved the mind mapping and the way we did goal- setting. And he used it in every area of his life. And we'll talk about it every year, well, I'll do like a vision letter. He'll do his goals and we'll, we'll prompt each other and we'll send it back and forth and we'll have a phone call about it.

So it's kind of like an accountability partner for making sure that I do that in my life. And then we'll talk about how's it going. Sometimes we won't talk for eight months. Sometimes we talk every two months, whatever. But he credits, every time we talk, he always goes back to that goal-setting. He attributes it. And now he just completed a lot of, he did some Ironmans, marathons. He just did, he's a grandfather. He and his grandson did this amazing bicycle ride of like 500 miles somewhere.

Edwards Holliday (48:21.825)
 And there's actually a podcast where he and his grandson were being interviewed. So you just think about the little things that we do that end up having a major change. Now, maybe he would have done that anyway, if he never met me. I don't know. But I know he's a goal setter and I know that he challenges himself. And because of that, he stretched and done certain things in his life and he still does it today. So that's extremely gratifying just to watch how little seeds of ideas or processes people will carry through their lives.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:00.705)
 Hmm.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:04.277)
 And what exciting opportunities do you see on the horizon? And how do these opportunities align with your passions and aspirations?

Edwards Holliday (49:15.767)
 What's on the horizon? One is to bring appreciative inquiry and specifically the five lie process that the exchange approach teaches. We have an opportunity to really embed that into our work with the special operators and their transition process, as well as with our private wealth advisors and how we do strategic planning, things like that. So we're really at the beginning of getting serious about that.

I'll be attending the design summit through exchange coming up in September. Melba and Sarah will both be there. So the three of us, it's like the first time that we'll have that little collaborative experience. So that's one. Two is what's coming up is to really, to help Melba to do more of the equine work because it is profound, transformative, unlike anything else. It's experiential in the body. And it can advance a person and a team so quickly that sometimes a human conversation or conventional methods can't. So I'm on a little campaign to get her clients to do her diamond model of shared leadership with the horses. And of course, I'm working on my own book, which

I've been for the last 36 years.

But this conversation today has stimulated to another level. So thank you for that. And then understanding how the other AI, the new AI, artificial intelligence, is going to be changing our work and trying to be on the leading edge of understanding how that might be integrated into our work as coaches.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (50:51.565)
 So you've said several things that have resonated with me. When you said appreciative inquiry, I'm all over it. I've been a student and practitioner of appreciative inquiry since 2009. And it has, it really, for people who don't know what it is or how it works, it's a way of looking at successes and strengths and using that to change any human system.

That's the easiest way that I use to describe it. And this podcast is built on that. It's built on asking overwhelmingly positive questions because if you start with a positive question, it changes the dynamic of everything. It changes how people show up, how people talk to each other, how systems change. And it creates a way forward in a manner that you can never anticipate because you're asking people to show up at their best to recall the best of what's happened in any given change situation. So Edwards, I mean, I'm sure I could sit here for the rest of our afternoon and talk about appreciative inquiry and some of the amazing examples of how it has helped individuals and groups and organizations that I've worked with over the years.

And I'm truly grateful. And I always appreciate meeting others who are doing that work because I know that it really does make a difference. It makes a difference. And I know it's made a difference for me in my life and just personally, just how I show up for those that I'm close to or those that I'm getting to know. And it changes how they themselves show up.

Edwards Holliday (52:47.819)
 Aderonke, that's very well put. what I've, what I'm really respecting every day more and more is, you know, a lot of business owners talk about, want people to take responsibility. They want people to have buy-in. They want people to act like owners. You know, every business owner says that and ownership comes from involvement. And just like, you know, the exchange approach, which is kind of my, the format at which I have come to learn appreciative inquiry is giving people a voice, giving 100% of the people in the room a voice is really the opportunity and a convening to be able to source the best of the head, the heart and the gut of everybody present. And you can't do that if you're the sage on the stage, you can only do that when you move to the guide on the side and you have a process. And what's been so much fun is to like, I used to never hate doing like a full day event.

I would purposely say, no, I don't, I don't do one day things.

because I just know, but I do now because I just ask a few questions and then they go off and do all the work and I'm sitting there waiting for them to complete their conversation. They come back and it's, think it's amazing. You know, what have I done? I've, I've offered about an inch of content. That's it. But we guided them to the questions that help everything to come forward in a structured way with precise instruction. And you just see people light up.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (54:08.013)
 Yes.

Edwards Holliday (54:15.127)
 And then the other idea is that when you get people together that want to, that want to work on the same thing, you get this shared purpose and people, when there is a shared purpose, people will want to be their best self and they will stretch into greater personal development.

When there's a shared purpose, if you take the shared purpose out, I think everybody's eagerness or commitment to personal development, professional development, in terms of really stretching drops significantly, but shared purpose automatically

Everybody wants to achieve mastery in some way. That's magical.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (54:50.701)
 It is. I remember I did a workshop for a client and one of the comments that I got back was, the facilitator hardly talks. I was like, well somebody knows this.

Edwards Holliday (55:03.266)
 That's awesome.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (55:06.061)
 And they were used to, I guess, a more traditional model where the facilitator stands up and is the sage on the stage. And there is a power to being on the side and letting the voices in the room, because I always say, the wisdom is already in the room. My job is to help self-surface it.

And when people do, you are absolutely right, they light up. There's a magic and an energy in the air that

That is like no other and that is almost like a drug for me. I want more and more of that because when they bring their own energy and it's my job to help surface it and they do really great work in the room, but equally important when they leave the

Edwards Holliday (55:49.411)
 Yes.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (55:53.984)
 ... And you also mentioned your book. Do you want to talk about that at all? Do you want to mention? You said you've been writing it for many years.

Edwards Holliday (56:04.985)
 That was a way of just kind of poking at myself to say, okay, get on and finish it. So there's really nothing else to talk about until it's done. But thank you. You could give me a little window there to pitch it, but there's nothing to pitch yet.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (56:12.061)
 Okay.

Okay, and I look forward to adding it to your book of recommendations once it is done. Edwards, what brings you joy?

Edwards Holliday (56:22.275)
 Thank you.

Edwards Holliday (56:27.053)
 My first thought is, Melba is the light of my life. And when we are in harmony and in conversations, either about our work, because we stimulate each other, right? We're in the same line of work and we support each other that way. Or just being together brings me joy, whether it's physical intimacy or conversation, going out to dinner and enjoying ourselves. The activity of motorcycling me is unlike any other. I held a vision, like just to tell you how important it is. When I met Melba, I had a list of all the qualities that were important to me for my divine partner. And there were a whole bunch of things on that list. And it was very specific. And motorcycling was in the top like three. And I drove down to Asheville, North Carolina on my bike and halfway like on a Wednesday, was a Monday through Friday workshop. On Wednesday, I took a lunch hour and went into Asheville found a bike shop, bought a helmet on speculation, went back. And then I asked her she would go for a ride because if she wasn't going to go for a ride, it would have been over right there.

That was, that's non-negotiable for me. Anyway, she went for a ride and then she rode on the back until about 2002. And she said, okay, I'm going to ride my, myself. since from that day, she's ridden her own bike. So I had this vision, right, of the entire family enjoying motorcycling.

I bought a sidecar rig and how many, you know, it tells you about the amount of trust that Nova has, but how many mothers would let their four and a half year old get on the back of a bike and their one year and 10 month old get into a sidecar. But that's exactly what happened. And so the, both of our girls had probably more time, you know, riding with us than most motorcyclists have motorcycling because they had been doing it the whole life. Sarah, I taught her how to ride. She got her license, taught Elizabeth how to ride. She got her license. And there was one day,

Once they were all licensed up and we had four bikes. We departed this driveway and we rode up this street. And it was during the pandemic, like 2022 when that happened. And that was the moment that I had achieved that vision. Cause I'm looking, I'm in front and they're all behind me. And, um, and they're, and they're very good riders. They're extremely skilled and athletic and they follow directions. And so here we are all going up the street, riding together.

Edwards Holliday (58:52.727)
 I just, it's always indescribable, the feeling that I had in that moment.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:57.663)
 Hmm, it sounds wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you for sharing that memory.

Edwards, what book recommendations do you have? It can be books that you've read recently or something that has stayed with you over the years.

Edwards Holliday (59:03.864)
 Yes.

Edwards Holliday (59:20.345)
 All right. Now you might, you might pick the three that you want to put into the podcast, but I'll, I'll go through a few more than that quickly. Stalking the Wild Pendulum, which was a, which came out many, many years ago, 1977, I think is, is a, and if you look into this book, just like I just happened to flip open to a page, there's just little simple drawings. And the guy is talking about quantum physics. I, I read this as an adolescent. My, mother gave me this book and I understood it. because of his little pictures and stuff. Amazing stuff about the mechanics of consciousness.

Love that book. Huna, right? My mom taught me this when I was a kid. Huna is a word for secret in Hawaiian, or kahuna is the keeper of the secret. When I was in fifth grade, my science project, I made 20 pendulums out of a red string and a fishing weight. And my project was to teach the students how to communicate with their basic self or lower self or the id, id ego, superego. by using a pendulum and creating either a yes-no system or an alphabet system. Because I had that younger self inside of you has its own voice and this is a way to communicate through energy. That was my fifth grade science project. That was a Huna principle. So this one happens to be by Daniel Glover. Excuse me, William had your first name wrong. William Glover. It's a very good simple book called Huna, The Ancient Religion of Positive Thinking. about the three selves. And I can take anything I've learned or religion, I can put it back into the system of Huna as being the more complete way to understand it and think about it and use it.

And I feel we have a responsibility to coach ourselves, adult to child within. And if these two are on the same page in harmony, then we have access to our great self or access to the unified field or whatever you want to call it, God and the universe. We can really be hooked up.... and anything can happen. And that's the mana loa. You know, there's mana, which is energy, mana, mana, and mana loa, which is the showering down of multiplied blessings. And all that is contained in the language of Huna. This book is called I Say Sunrise by Talbot Mundy. My mother gave me this book, again, in my early 20s. It was so important, what I read, that when I had a...

Edwards Holliday (01:01:47.427)
 This is an example of some of the my day planner. It's called a my time planner pages. The preface, he lays out his nine principles. And when I read the nine principles, I read no further.

It's like it was years before I even read, I never read the whole book because the nine principles just sent my mind soaring to places where they were, wow, they were so important. I carried them with me, right? These nine principles since 1991, I have a date of December 30th, 1991 is when I started carrying this with me. Now I use electronic calendar, but this is just about the business of life is to enjoy life and it's the evolution of consciousness and that's it. And seek, seek enjoyment instead of seeking pleasure and misery is just caused by resistance to evolution of consciousness. That's the only cause of misery. And those are just some of the principles. These are amazing. And the last one I happened to pick because I think it's relevant today. is you may have come across this book called The Art of Impossible. And it's by Steven Kotler.

And he studies peak performance states, states of flow. He studied professional athletes, he did what they did. And he kind of stacks it up. There are like six or seven things he stacks up to say if you do these things, you can be in a state of high peak performance. And the reason why he...