Hello everyone, this is Tonya Dawn Recla, your SuperPower Expert and I have with us today a really, really fun show. I am actually really, almost ridiculously excited about this topic because I think it is a make or break it for success in business, in the professions, pretty much in life. And so I’m super excited to have with us today Bryan Falchuk. We’re going to be talking about daily self improvement and he is the expert on these things so this whole concept is Do A Day, right? So it’s like the idea of you can try to eat the whole elephant or you can eat it one bite at a time and I love this concept because I think we are so overwhelmed with information and pacing and, in our world, frequencies, and vibrations and speeding up of things and everything else that it’s easy to get into this space of what do I do?
And so he’s all about how to live a better life every day and he can certainly back this up. So not only is he the best selling author but he’s written articles for Chicago Tribune, LA Times, and Ted Talk. Expert at this point, right? I mean, how many times do you have to do that before you become an expert? Anyway, he’s just fabulous and I’m really excited to share him with you today and to dive into this topic. So please join me in welcoming to the show Bryan Falchuk. Welcome, Bryan.
Thank you very much.
Well, we’re really excited obviously to feature you and to talk about this topic but before we dive into that, let’s just jump in and ask what are your superpowers?
I’m just kind of annoying.
So I’m trying to think of a nice way to say it but I think I’m just kind of annoying. What I mean is, I don’t accept the answers that are out there. I wanna understand why and, I mean that mostly from the position of being someone’s coach, trying to help them understand themselves and I just help you probe yourself, which some people get annoyed by but the reality is we’re gonna dig into stuff that I think you probably know under the surface but you just may not be in touch with and that is a key to moving yourself forward.
I love that you’re like …
That I’m kind of like Annoying Man.
… kind of annoying. I love it. I think that’s a superhero. We should do poke, I’m not touching you, poke, poke, poke, poke.
I think my wife would agree but probably for a different reason.
She’s like, “Oh no, it’s actually annoying.” That’s great. But it’s true, right? I don’t know that everybody is equipped for that level of self-reflection or skill. Maybe I should say we’re all equipped for it, we’re just not necessarily skilled in it and I think you hit the nail on the head, especially as a coach, right? It’s our job to say the things that people maybe don’t want to face but that they’re ready to hear and so I really appreciate that but I’m getting from you, maybe I’m putting word in your mouth, but it’s not just about the external environment but I’d imagine you often turn that back on yourself also?
Oh completely, yeah. I mean, I don’t find myself annoying when I do this but yeah, there are times where I need to just stop and say, hang on, are you really in touch with what’s going on here? Are you really in touch with what’s driving you to behave this way or choose this thing or feel this way about whatever’s happening? And the answer is pretty much always no and that’s okay, that’s a chance just to stop and reflect and try to get under the surface and learn what the heck’s going on even with yourself.
Well and I think, again, I’ve often said that my own self-doubt or self-interest has evolved over the years but very clearly it started off as self-doubt when I was much younger and it’s evolved just into that introspection and the willingness to do that, to take that pause and say, okay, where’s this off? What’s going on here? And I often teach people, if the projection is off a little bit, if there’s friction with friends or with other people or just something’s not looking the way that you’d prefer for it to look, it’s a good opportunity for you to take that look inside and ask what’s going on there. Shortly after Neva was born, Justin and I kind of agreed that she was like our barometer. Like, if something’s off with her, that’s a pretty good indicator something’s off with us, especially when she was a baby and I was like, what else could it be other than the response to something energetically going on internally for her or externally for us but it helped us to look first at, okay, are we good?
Like vibrationally, are we good? And if not, then let’s look there first.
Yeah, kids are so attuned to that so good for you for spotting that you now have this living barometer sitting amongst you.
Yeah, it was really fascinating to approach it from that place because when you operate in some of these higher frequencies and levels of self-dominion, it’s like you really can’t blame anything else and it’s much easier just to get annoyed and just too irritated with it. But for the most part, we always carry a piece of that. If you’re getting annoyed by it, then it’s triggering something, right? Otherwise, you’d be able to pass through it relatively unscathed, is really my rule of thumb with it. Where did this concept of the Do A Day come from for you? It sounds so, I think on the surface, it sounds really simplistic but in my experience, it is deeply, deeply complex to approach things from that way.
Yeah, it’s simply complex. I’ve grown up with a lot of anxiety. My parents got divorced when I was really little and as a result of being that emotional barometer, right, I didn’t really know how to deal with those feelings and so I turned to food and I spent most of my life obese. I lost weight towards the end of my teen years and I still hadn’t dealt with the emotional reasons why I was obese and I was overeating in the first place. Fast forward a number of years, I was married, had a two-year-old kid at that point and the anxiety was all still there and I’d slowly been gaining back some of the weight. I’d lost a hundred, I was now fifty pounds overweight again and there was this moment in 2011, my wife had become very sick with a chronic illness and her doctors gave up on her and she wasn’t expected to make it more than a couple more weeks and that, that was this moment that just brought clarity to me of what the heck am I doing with my life? I’m failing my wife. I’m certainly failing my son.
I recognized this was a lifeline.
I was a miserable person to be around and that’s certainly not what either of them needed, given what was going on in our family and it’s not what I needed. And so I woke up the morning after this final call from her primary care physician who was like, “Hey, I’m going on vacation, nothing more to do. I’ll talk to you in six weeks.” I’m like, “She’s not gonna be here in six weeks.” So that was quite a wake-up moment for me and what I discovered through that was my deeper lie. It forced that stuff right up to the surface about what I really care about, what truly motivates me and I had been missing that through my whole life and I recognized that this is a lifeline and this is my one chance to grab hold of it and finally make the changes that I needed to make to actually get to a point of living my life and not just working in it.
That was when I started the Do A Day. So, on a daily basis, I refocus myself on my why, on what really matters and what I’m actually seeking for my life. And then I make the decisions about what I do in my day around that. Am I acting aligned with that intention? And, of course, there are some things that I do that have anything to do with my ultimate purpose, like there are some obligations in life, paying bills or whatever but if you really think about it, do I like to pay the bills? Is that how I want to live my life? Well, no, but at the same time, I like having a roof over my head. I like having heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer and I like being able to provide food and clothing and all the good things that we enjoy in life, to my family and to myself so there are bills that need to be paid with that. So, yeah, in an indirect way, I am living aligned with the purpose of the kind of life that I wanna have.
So it’s on this daily basis and looks, all those things are too big. Losing a hundred pounds, paying for a house, they’re all giant things. Those are all elements. So, on a daily basis, you’re not paying off your mortgage, you’re not losing a hundred pounds, whatever the other major things that either is challenges to you or things that you will face for the rest of your life or for a good number of years to come. You don’t have to worry about all of it right now.
You know, it’s funny, I had a similar experience. My story was just kind of looking for that perfect job, for so long, that’s kind of what drove me. And then when I found myself as a counterintelligence agent, I’m kind of running around chasing spies, I remember it was one day, I think we were cleaning weapons or something, something just menial, right? I was just like, “Really? I work so hard to get to this place in my life.” And I’m cleaning this weapon or I’m writing a report or whatever and it dawned on me, similar to what you’re talking about, was that, yes, but it was in service to something bigger and that was kind of why that job was kind of like this culminating moment in my existence because I could always say it was in service to national security, which was a pretty big deal for where I was sitting at the time and that was the first time I remember where I could trace the direct line from even the little tasks and the day to day, do I really wanna be doing this but in service to this bigger thing?
And I think that oftentimes especially in some of the more woo-woo self-development circles, we kind of bought this whole story of you have to follow your passion and live your passion. It’s like, okay great but let’s get a little bit more detail oriented with that and say there’s a lot that goes into that. There’s a lot that goes into developing a successful systemized sustainable scalable business. And you’re not necessarily gonna love all those pieces but you can certainly draw the connection with that and being in service to the bigger image.
Yeah.
Very cool. Well, we need to take a quick break. I really wanna explore some of these concepts and help people see how they can start adopting this really, I love it because it’s such a methodical way of looking at things, this idea of daily self improvement. But before we jump into a break, let’s tell people where they can find out more about you.
So the easiest place to find me is at doadaybook.com. So we’re talking about Do A Day and I’ve written by that name so hopefully, that’s easy to remember and I link everything else that I do up there. I also have bryanfalchuk.com but then you gotta figure out how to spell my name. So doadaybook.com. That’s probably the easiest way to do it.
I love it. All right so we’ve been talking to Bryan Falchuk today about daily self improvement. We’re gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we’re gonna walk you through exactly how you can get started thinking about things in this simply complex manner so stay with us and we will be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
