Ryan Andrews, best-selling author and entrepreneur, joins Tonya Dawn Recla to talk about the strategy of true power using perseverance and fun. Ryan created a proven system to find passion and purpose. His ALIVE program develops leaders, builds relationships and connects families. He uses brain science, biochemistry and cutting edge Positive Psychology to step people through the areas that are holding them back. Ryan’s mission is to represent life turned on in every moment and to show others the power of living from purpose, passion and joy. Listen in as he shares with Tonya his journey back to true power and fun.

Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert and I am so excited for a really fun-packed show today. We have with us today Ryan Andrews. Ryan is the fun guru. He is the master of fun. He is like, you know, the Jedi knight with the fun-ness. And so we’re, I’m really excited to have him on today because he brings us this really cool twist to things. You know, when I first met him and really got a chance to sit down and connect with him, it’s just amazing the light that like exudes off of him and how he’s able to really overlay things with this concept of fun. And I’m of the opinion that it’s severely lacking currently in our society so I’m all for a little more fun in the conversation. So I’m really excited to have him share some of that perspective with us today. So please join me in welcoming Ryan Andrews to the show. Welcome, Ryan.

Thank you so much. And what a great introduction. I love being touted for my fun and I tell you what, it was not that many years ago that I didn’t know how to have fun.

I love that. I’m really excited to get into all of that. And let’s jump right in by asking you, what are your superpowers?

My superpowers are different than most people. I would call myself a spontaneous strategist and I’m counter-intuitive there but it is and I’m a change expert.

I like it. I like it. So tell us more about those.

Well, you know, I’ve always loved spontaneity. I love just kind of like receiving the world as it comes to me. But at the same time, I’m very strategic in I can see the pathway down, you know, five, six, seven, eight moves ahead. And if I do this, what’s it going to look like down there and then if I move here what’s it going look like over there and the joy for me is in having it happen kind of like rapid fire on the move being spontaneous. So that’s kind of the impetus for that one as it were. And the other part is, as a change expert, I realized that I love change so much and a lot of people don’t like change. My sister, being one, so we were raised by the same parents. And she does not like change at all. She wants to be exactly the same. She wants, you know, she has a specific way that she does it, and she does not like change. But I’m the opposite. I love change. And in the process of that, I’ve discovered that there is a lot of power in learning how to be flexible and really desiring change when staying the same is painful.

Absolutely. So what do you attribute that to? Why you…why do you have this propensity for change and you know perhaps others don’t? What cultivated that for you?

I remember early on I’m going to say high school. I think it was my sophomore year. I had a teacher come up to me and he said, “Ryan why didn’t you do your homework?” and I said, “Well…” you know, I tempted to. I was tempted to kind of do the typical high school lie and, oh I was busy I couldn’t make it, I was sick, the dog ate the homework that kind of thing. And what I ended up doing was I told the truth 100 percent. I was just super truthful about it. I said you know, to be honest with you, my friends came over they wanted to play football outside and I thought you know what, I’m OK with getting a B in this class and I want to go play football. So I decided to do that instead. And the look on his face was priceless. He didn’t know what to say because he knew that, yeah, I am probably going to get a B in this class and you’re OK with a B. What do I say? I mean he had nothing to say. And that moment I realized that being truthful about where you’re at in your situation really is powerful. And it’s a process of that is if you take that internally and you’re just as truthful internally as you are externally I think change becomes fun and easy.

You’re never the most intuitive person in a room anymore.

I really love that concept of being truthful internally I think that I had a dialogue with our daughter. You know, we dialogue a lot about these things. And she…she was asking me if somebody was lying and I said, well, you know, that’s really actually more complex of a question than, you know, she probably realized. So we talked a lot about how you know it’s… there are all these different ways to explain the truth, you know, through or to exude that through words, the body language, through energy you know. And a lot of times people aren’t even all that connected within themselves to know whether they’re even lying to themselves or not. And so, you know, like it was a really cool conversation, and how it unfolded just kind of dived into what does that even mean? Like at what level do we lie to ourselves or to others and can we really lie, you know, with the work that we do energetically? It’s like, you know any more I pretty vocal to tell people like you’re never the most intuitive person in a room anymore like it’s just like go in with that idea and feel like you know even if you’re not doing that internal dialogue and making sure that in my language, you know, all your pieces of parts are kind of on board with whatever it is that you’re exuding at that moment, it’s going to be obvious to somebody. And so for you to learn that at a younger age where it’s like wow it’s really liberating to be able to say, you know, why didn’t I do that? I guess I really just didn’t want to.

Absolutely. And I think there are two sides of it too, right? Like so this kind of borders on being vulnerable and being open to people. And I tell people a lot I say, you know, there are two forms of vulnerability there’s appropriate vulnerability and inappropriate vulnerability. And it’s the same thing with truth and speaking the truth and even being overly honest with yourself because it’s not…sometimes we take things a little bit too far. And here’s my example. If you’re standing naked in the bathroom that’s vulnerable. If you’re standing naked in the grocery store that’s inappropriately vulnerable.

That’s pretty clear.

Right? I mean there are definite times where it’s important that they are not overly vulnerable.

And it’s the same thing with truth, you know, facts don’t have any meaning on them in and of themselves. If you can take a glass of water, right, the half full half empty thing. And if that glass of water is, you know, has four ounces of water in it and four ounces of air, those are facts. In and of themselves they don’t have any meaning. If you just drank half of that cup, it is now half-empty, right? It has a meaning to you. You drank half and you’re missing that half. And if you haven’t had any water, you’re in the desert and you’re dying of thirst that glass is half-full. And so that the meaning is really only ascribed to the facts. The facts themselves don’t have any meaning. And the reason why this is valuable is when we’re looking internally for ourselves and we’re trying to be honest with ourselves sometimes we’re overly honest. And in my case, it was with weight. I was close to a hundred pounds overweight and I used to look at myself in the mirror when I get out and I would say horrible things to myself, “Looking good fat ass!” you know, things like that. I would be very mean and harsh with myself when I’d look in the mirror. And maybe there was truth in it, maybe I was being honest that I was overweight, maybe I was being honest that I didn’t look very attractive when I stared in the mirror, but it’s inappropriately vulnerable. It’s not the truth. The truth was I’m a beautiful wonderfully made human and my wife loves me and is attracted to me. And the other parts are just what I’m wearing. It’s just what’s happening at the moment. It doesn’t have any, in and of themselves, doesn’t have any specific meaning so there’s definitely a place where you can go too far with being honest with yourself and you’re being overly honest or inappropriately vulnerable. But it is valuable in being honest to the point where I could look in the mirror same person and go, “Wow..” or I, you know, “you may want to work on this a little bit like maybe you want to go fix some of that.” And that’s what I did. I ended up losing 80 pounds.

So I really like the distinction that you’re making. In our languaging, you know, I talk a lot about the fact that truth exists if we take the principle that we are multi-faceted or you know, even multi-dimensional kind of human beings. And I contend that we exist in many different places with many different pieces and parts of us that have different frequencies associated with them and at any given time we can do exactly what you’re talking about and it’s not that it’s an untruth like you’re saying in that space. It may very well be true however what we trained people in is how do you choose to identify with the specific frequency, therefore, that specific truth in that moment that you want to identify with? And it’s a level of awareness and different, you know, dimensionalities that we talk about because I think it’s important. I quote this a lot. Doctor Strange, you know, the Ancient One says, you know, we never really get rid of our demons, we just learn to live above them. And it’s not the idea that you’re that those parts of you those, again I do I like to refer to them as pieces and parts because it helps to keep it from being really personal or overwhelming. But they all have those stories and I think that internally we can do a lot of work on ourselves to aid those stories. But as a collective those stories exist, you know, in the media in collective consciousness and throughout society. And so I think that we always have the opportunity to drop down into them if we want to. We also have the opportunity to not. And so I like the overlay that you’re presenting with it is like there are appropriate and inappropriate times to kind of dive into them. And that presents us with a choice. You know where how do you want to be in that moment and what you tapped into was. Well, it’s a much more powerful place to come from when you say, “OK got it. Duly noted.” And maybe it doesn’t mean what I think it means and I do have power in this situation to create change. And I think when you come from that what you’re calling inappropriately vulnerable space, it’s a powerless position like it really does feel like there’s nothing you can do about it. And it just perpetuates that cycle. So I think it’s a really powerful distinction that you make.

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Well and one of the ways that I overcome it because, you know, this is something that everybody battles on a consistent basis like you say, you know, the media is constantly barraging us with negativity and negative self-image and worth and all that stuff. But one of the reasons why I wrote the book Fundamental: The Transforming Power of Having Fun was specifically because of this situation and learning how to just bathe it in fun, you know. If your intention is to enjoy your life, if your intention is to enjoy your relationships and have fun at work and have fun with your daily encounters in life, if that’s your intention then what happens is your decisions that you make come from a place of, “Hey, I want to have fun.” And saying bad things to myself isn’t having fun, you know, or treating that other person poorly isn’t having fun or, you know, receiving negativity and taking it internally for myself isn’t having fun. And so when you bathe everything in this concept of like enjoying life and being full of joy and happiness and fun, I think it gives you the opportunity to really grow and change appropriately.

I like it and I think that’s so powerful and when I, one of the things that have been very vocal about it is, I was going through that process for myself it was really fascinating to me all of the various stories as if they were hidden really deep inside of me whether it be about money or self-identity or image or business or you know accomplishment, you know, I call it like whack-a-mole. Like it doesn’t really matter which vertical that stuff wants to come up through. And I found that there was a connection there between whatever I thought was ideal, and usually, it was identifying that the situation wasn’t ideal, and fun. And it showed up as my daughter in the sense of, you know, if I didn’t have whatever the magical number was that I thought I should have in my bank account, I had an ongoing script that said I didn’t deserve to stop and have fun with my daughter. Self-image, business, like it just didn’t matter which of those verticals that wanted to jump in through. It kind of if I overlaid it with, you know, here’s this amazing creature who wants my time and wants to play like I didn’t feel like it was responsible to do because of that script. It was so fascinating to listen to because it’s totally illogical but it was there and so I like the idea of overlaying it with fun it’s like well what happens if we flip that and put it first and say you know if you’re not having fun then all of this other stuff is never going to change. Like it’s just never, it doesn’t matter how hard you want to work at it. If you’re going at it from that real drudgery like has-to enslavement kind of energy you’re not going to shift it anyway. So it’s this perpetual cycle which, you know, we could go in all kinds of conspiracy theories about why that is the value in keeping us in that cycle. When I stopped…

Yeah, I’m trying to…

That’s a whole other podcast. When I stopped and I was like wait, take a breath like what happens like you’re not going to die if you stop and just play for a minute like so I that concept of fun I think is so much more solid than, you know, than maybe really serious, you know, seekers might want to give it credit for. I think you’re on to something.

You want a challenge, raise some children.

Well, thank you. Well, you know, I think it’s learned behavior too. It’s, you know, as you get, as you grow up and you become an adult you have to be responsible and fun as a responsible right or you know, it just gets beat out of you just with life and people saying look you’ve got to be focused, you’ve got to be you know, this is hard work, not everything is roses and sunshine and all that and it’s true. It’s really true like there are challenges like no it’s really hard sometimes in life, you know. I mean really raising children. You want a challenge, raise some children. You know, I like to say that’s the single greatest source of joy and pain at the same time in my life. And, you know, and I’m a half-joking with it and half not you know, I mean they are so precious and wonderful to me and they mean so much to me but they also challenge me to be a better dad, a better father, a better person. You know, they’re on a constant daily basis, your children are great at just rubbing off the rough edges, you know. And so there are definitely times in life where it’s challenging and it’s not always going to be easy to have a smile on your face but I can tell you this, I did an Ironman race, a half Ironman and it’s 70.3 miles. It’s a triathlon. For those of you who don’t know, you’re swimming 1.2 miles, you’re biking 56 miles and you’re running a half marathon after that. And it’s a lot of work, to say the least. Now before I had done this race, I had never run more than three miles in my life. I had never swum face down ever. I have never ridden a road bike ever in my life. And so the challenge of doing this race was my brother saying, “Hey, let’s do that.” and I’d go, “OK. That sounds like fun.”

Sure!

Yeah. Why not? Let’s try that out, you know. And at 36 or how old I was when I did that race, you know, it was painful. Every day was painful and I had no choice. I had to like I had to work, I had to train. I had to run and run and run and I hate running. And I learned how to love swimming and biking but the running part always chilled me. But in that process I realized that this is so fun, you know, and I and even though it was hard, my legs hurt every day, and during the race I felt, you know, so full of pain, there are photographs of me throughout the race and I’m, I have a smile on my face the whole time. And if things are going to be challenging and they’re going to be painful whether you enjoy them or don’t enjoy them, whether you enjoy the good parts and ignore the bad parts or not. And it’s still going to hurt, it’s still going to be painful, it’s still going to be challenging, and you’ve still got a choice. Do you want to enjoy the beauty of it or do you want it to take you down? And, you know, that’s really the gist of bathing everything in fun.

I really love that I’ve been playing with the concept very similar here lately and the absolute peace that comes with it is remarkable and it’s you know I have other words for any kind of other processes for it but it really is the idea that in every moment we get to choose, for sure our response and then once you master that you can take it beyond that, too. You really do get to create kind of what comes next. And when you start to wield that power. But it’s…but it all comes down to exactly what you’re talking about if you’re not willing to even entertain that you have a choice in the matter about how you choose to see things, how you choose to respond, what energy will it come from, then you never get to move on. You know, I talked to a lot of really frustrated people who, you know, they want to know how to manifest things. You know, usually, it’s money but it’s like, you know, they want to manifest things and when we kind of dive into those conversations there’s always this root element of victimhood. You know being a victim of circumstances, being a victim to fears or disgruntlement or whatever the case may be, the anti-fun element and it’s, you know, people are really hesitant to let go of that. It’s like a security blanket in the midst of a storm. It really becomes debilitating for folks when you ask them, you know, what happens when you don’t have that anymore? If you set that down who do you get to be beyond that? And I think that there are some components there like wait what do you mean? And you brought it up earlier like it goes against all of those ideas of, you know, life is hard and you have to work hard at it. And even in the midst of the challenges like you said if you have a smile on your face, even in the most challenging moments with your children if you can tap into that connection and be like wow, you know, even in the midst of all of that, I wouldn’t change it for the world, you know, and it’s…it allows you to kind of open up that space and it’s not naive. It’s not you know Pollyanna-ish to take that approach. It really is the best shot any of us have to be in the midst of that change in a really powerful and fun way. So I think there are so many valuable pieces in that and I’d imagine you’d come up against folks who are like, “Oh, can’t it all just be fun?” like it’s kind of a fluffy concept, don’t you think? I don’t know if you get that but it’s like…I feel like that’s…it’s like, wow, you know, I don’t see it that way. I see it as being a really strong foundation to stand on.

I was the worship pastor at my church and I was miserable.

It really is. And, you know, how it came about for me really is, I was, well, it’s in the beginning of my book. I was living in Hawaii with my smoking hot, amazingly powerful wife. We had three kids. I worked for myself from home. I was the worship pastor at my church and I was miserable. And that’s where it all started for me. And the key that I discovered was as I moved forward I wanted to, you know, I came home from work or I came home from what I was doing. And I was at the house and the kids were nagging and yelling and whatever else. And my wife was just needing help and so she was needing me, right, and I was just tired of being needed. So I chose to try to disengage, right? I wanted to…just leave me alone for a minute, just leave me alone so I can get my thoughts together. You know, give me a second to just kind of sort out what’s going on. I need to relax. I need to just calm down and then I can come back and be a part of everybody, right? And so that was my need. I felt like that was my need. I wanted to, I needed to disengage. Then I discovered the power of engaging and that if I came home and instead of doing what I thought I needed, which I thought I needed to disengage ok, but instead I engaged. I played with the kids for 5, 10, 15 minutes. I got down to plates and Legos. You know, I helped my wife with the dishes and worked on dinner with her and engaged. It took about 45 minutes of my life and all of the sudden, what I thought I needed was to disengage was gone. I was fine. I was happy. I was connected. I had everything that I wanted even though I thought I needed something different. And in the process of that, I think that’s where I discovered that this whole fun thing is not just a, like you said, a fluffy concept. There is so…it’s so important to realize that there is power, there is true power for change, true powerful growth in this concept of just enjoying the moment that you’re in. You know, I didn’t have to drag with me all of the stresses and strains, the financial pressure I was under at the time. And you know, the issues I was having, I didn’t have to drag those home with me because I had people that were there, that were ready to receive me. And when I chose to engage in that part of my life, all of a sudden everything else just kind of disappeared and disintegrated and went away. And I was free to really see the truth of what was going on. My kids weren’t nagging at me. They wanted me. They wanted dad. They were loving on me. My wife wasn’t needing me. She was wanting me, you know. And there’s a huge difference between me being needed and being wanted and all of a sudden, now my heart was full of love and life and freedom and peace and joy just from simply learning how to receive people where they’re at.

I love that. So absolutely perfect. I think that’s a great note to end this on. I love everything about it and the connection. And at the bottom of all of that is that really strong pillar of, you know, when we meet each other in love, its magic happens every time. And sometimes it takes a little bit of courage. So absolute kudos to you for promoting this concept of fun because, at the heart of it, I think you tapped into something extremely powerful. So thank you.

Oh, thank you for having me. This has been a wonderful conversation. I always love chatting with you.

Very cool. I know our listeners are going to want to find out more about you. Where can they go?

Yes. You just pop on over to ryan8.com. You get to my website and I’ve got all kinds of links on there. If you’d like to get a copy of my book, just go to ryan8.com/fun and there will be a link there to both of my books.

Awesome. Very cool. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today. Please let us know how we can continue to support you. I think you’re doing magical things in the world. And we’d like to know that you’re out there making a change. So thank you.

Well, thanks again for having me. And just remember to have fun.

Absolutely, and to all of you out there as always we appreciate your loyalty. And until next time, go out, uncover your Super Powers and change the world. Take care everyone.

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