The Kevin Miller Podcast

One of our primary cultural badges is being “busy”. We adopted the idea that busyness equals importance and status. I feel in the same way we’ve adopted a badge of perfectionism. This is now a wildly common label we give ourselves, as we all struggle with our “perfectionism” as we strive for excellence, as if not being a perfectionist means we have succumbed to mediocrity. But what my guest reveals to us is how we are often hiding, protecting, and limiting ourselves with our so called concepts on perfectionism. Thomas Curran has a PhD in psychology and is a professo...

When a new book on imagination was sent to me for review, I initially began thinking how we have culturally seemed to decrease in being imaginative. We seem more black and white and limited than ever, lacking the imagination to consider other perspectives, alternatives, and options to evolve ourselves and our lives. But in reviewing the material it dawned on me that from another angle we may be more imaginative than ever. We are experiencing a mental health crisis at the hands of our own anxiety, which is in essence our propensity to sit around imagining all the bad...

Don Saladino is a famous fitness expert, in part due to being the trainer for celebrities, such as Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Emily Blunt, Sebastian Stan, Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hugh Jackman. I appreciate that he has to know his stuff when he’s paid the big bucks to transform the physique of a celebrity for a film. He has to produce results. However, I also realize it’s easy to discount the big celebrity transformation when they can devote as much time as needed to training, have a well paid nutritionist, and trainer like Don. But I also...

If we look at any disagreement, whether you call it a fight or a conflict, we can ask, “What is at stake.” Sometimes there may be a real danger or consequence involved. However. What we find in therapy and counseling is that many times, actually the majority of our common conflicts, there is nothing of danger or serious consequence involved. What we are actually fighting for, as my guest says, is our honor. Our identity. We feel our character is under threat. I resonate with this concept very, very personally, as you will hear. My guest is Kim Polinder, a re...

Of all the people we look to for guidance, expertise, counsel, and help, where do we figure into the equation? Are we a self we also rely on for guidance? This could sound like an elementary concept, but I find people more and more falling into two distinct sides: relying too much on themselves, or not relying on themselves at all. I feel I have spent much of my life relying too much just on me. Trusting myself more than anyone else and not getting enough helpful guidance and help from others. But in today’s culture of influencers an...

My focus here is as I say in the intro, how we make meaning in our lives. How we experience life. There are many great shows that deal with the specific issues we face out in life, as I tend to the issues we face in our minds. But what I found with my guest was not a focus purely on the climate issues we face today, but looking at them as a means to and end in essence, to our overall peace and joy of life on this earth. So as we of course talk about climate issues...

I once argued with the leader of a soul care institute who said you can’t live in the white water all the time, and that you must have some time of calm waters in order to live sustainably. I told him I was strengthening and equipping myself to endure the white water all the time. And I believed it. And I did it! Until…I couldn’t. And then it took multiple episodes of acute burnout to finally let go of the pace I was trying to sustain. A pace that I now recognize was more about feeding my ins...

I’m going to assume you are aware that we are at a time when, even though we are often in communication with more people than ever, quantity wise, we are statistically connecting with fewer people than ever. The stats on loneliness and isolation are at equal or all time highs. I have been giving focus to how we connect, but a key issue is what we are connecting with. Meaning, what are we sharing with other people? My guest in this episode is Leslie John, the James E. Burke Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He...

I appreciate personality profiles that help us better clarify some of the what and why we tend towards certain propensities and predispositions. However, I don’t like that people sometimes use them as an excuse for how they are. And, I don’t like that they are self-reporting. We can easily grapple with answers that vacillate between how we believe ourselves to be and how we want to see ourselves, and still miss how we actually are. So when I was introduced to the concept of human design, I intrigued myself. After I repelled myself. I was at an even...

When I first laid eyes on a book with the title, SELF-HELP FROM THE MIDDLE AGES: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us About Living, I interested myself. Even more when I found out the author is an expert in medieval times. Peter Jones is a writer and academic specializing in the history of the human heart. Over his career he has taught at New York University, the University of Toronto, University College London, Complutense University of Madrid, and School of Advanced Studies in Tyumen, Siberia, where he helped put History at the centre of the liberal arts...

I really appreciate finding commonplace practices that are leading us astray…that we can alter immediately. Imagine an olympic athlete that performed year round. They are always either prepping or recovering for the next event. Their performance would stall. Elite athletes count on having a season of performance, then a season of training. Training. Where they learn new techniques and try new things to raise them up another level. In the workplace and often in our lives, we get stuck in the rut of performing, day after day. In our roles as a spouse or parent, in our work, an...

My guest today is an addiction expert, but I interest myself more in the concept of compulsions. I may have something I habitually do that is not necessarily harming anyone else, and is arguably not harming me in a direct sense, which is generally how we define addictions. But a compulsion may be something that I keep doing that may keep me from other, healthier activities. It may own me more than I own it. And more importantly, what we find is that addiction and compulsions are generally not being done for pleasure, but to mask or numb emotions...

This is another story of drive from when my book, What Drives You, came out. Kara Goldin was the youngest of five children and at the age of eight realized her parents had dreams they never pursued. She decided then, she would pursue hers. She went on to have a classic entrepreneurial story. She wanted to be drinking more water, but wanted some flavor with it. She didn’t want it carbonated or sweetened though, and with nothing available that fit the bill, she started experimenting and making her own brand of flavored water right out of her kitchen. Pe...

I read an article yesterday about the fourth season of the tv series, Ted Lasso, coming out. The series was celebrated for bringing the concept of positivity to the forefront. But in this new season they feel positivity isn’t what the culture needs. They depict the populace this way: "People are fine. Not hopeful, not despairing — just fine." So the new season is focused on hope. And I agree. We seem to be losing hope in anything more than just…existing. So when a celebrated author comes out with a book about his research on what “thriving” looks like, I wa...

I have always interested myself in people who make significant life shifts. And not to minimize traumas and tragedies and difficult circumstances, but I intrigue myself with people who made big shifts that didn’t have to. But for various reasons they stepped back to audit their lives, and decided to be, and from that do, something different. This story comes from a conversation back when my book, What Drives You, came out. Shawn Askinosie is my guest. Shawn's dad died at 14 and he felt his world was destroyed. He committed to accomplishing big achievements and prove to God he...

I’ll continue to preface anything regarding AI, or any tech for that matter, that I’m not convinced it will prove to be a net positive for overall human well being. As a tool however, I see some opportunities. Such as, I was sent a device that hangs around my neck like a pendant, that will record my voice when I talk. It feeds into an app where I have set an “intention” that I desire for myself, such as, “I want to be more patient” or in my case, “I want to communicate with taking full ownership of my perspect...

I am not nearly as concerned about my lifespan as my health span. I’d rather live 10 years less but be very capable physically and mentally than to linger an extra 10 years while physically and mentally impaired. I’m not much for gimmicks and hacks that address one thing and are promoted as cure alls. I don’t believe in it. So with all that said, in this episode we are talking about muscle. My expert on the topic is Dr Gabrielle Lyon. I’ve known of Gabrielle for a long, long time through Functional Medicine circles. Her focus and expe...

We have a culture that reports an almost all time high of human suffering. A predominant term this suffering gets labeled as is - trauma. But I just don’t think it’s the right term for many of us. Trauma is defined as - an emotional and physical response to a very stressful, scary, or harmful event. What I experience myself, and feel so many others do, is loss. Loss that may not seem super stressful, scary, or harmful, but it pains us to a deep, deep level. And nobody is speaking well to this. Which is why I br...

I’m a fan of mind games, because I feel most all of what we experience is just that, a mind game. But I’ve always helped myself by considering different angles to stories. And today I bring you one I’ve benefited myself with. You’ve probably heard of the concept of “10X,” as in 10 Xing your goal. But I want to be clear, today I look at this as a practice or exercise and am not presenting it as what you or I should do. This then is a conversation I’m revisiting with renowned organizational psychologist and author, Dr...

We tend to understand and acknowledge that what we say matters. But I find an increasing lack of attention to how we say things. And yet we make conscious and unconscious judgments about people regarding how they are talking, that sometimes become more important than whatever it is they might actually be saying. This is a focus on being aware of our own speech patterns and habits and how they may be hampering our desire to really connect with others. My guest is Valerie Fridland, professor of linguistics in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. As...

Every day we encounter the stimuli of our lives. Events and people. And we have feelings about most all of it. Some good, some bad, some fairly neutral, but we are processing everything through how we make meaning of things. Some of us have negative emotions about certain things that don’t serve us. After 15 years as an elite cyclist I came to equate negative emotions to rain, as I associated rain with riding in it or riding indoors to stay out of it. I held this negative emotions for many years after I retired, for no real reason. Fr...

As humans we have spent a majority of our lives outdoors until very recently, when in a short time, we spend almost all of our time indoors and even in our short exposures to the outdoors we are not opening ourselves to the true benefits of nature. I don’t believe in hacks and shortcuts and secrets to health, and this episode contains none of that. It points to data and I think you’ll agree, common sense. We are spending ever more amounts of time and money on therapies and strategies and looking for the next magic cure, and...

I feel we are at a time with a schizophrenic perspective of confidence. We would generally feel positive about a doctor who expresses confidence in their abilities before doing surgery on us, but if that same doctor was at a party and mentioned anything about their level of confidence in themselves we would likely feel some negativity. So do we want people to be confident, or not? And do we feel ok about being confident in ourselves, or not? My guest is Heather Monohan, host of the podcast, Creating Confidence. She has two books as well, Confidence Creator and...

From the restaurant menu that has 10 pages of entre options, to trying to pick out a new set of ear buds on Amazon, to telling kids they can be “anything they want.” The anxiety around our seemingly unlimited world continues to increase. Tactically I think we must become more discerning. But conceptually I think it helps to understand that too many options are unhelpful, and why. So when a new book titled,  INSIDE THE BOX: How Constraints Make Us Better, came across my desk, I interested myself. The book is authored by David Epstein who is already the author of th...

I find almost everyone has some physical boundaries that they feel fine with. But emotionally I still find the culture, and historically myself, fairly uncomfortable and unclear on what emotional boundaries look like and what the purpose really is. It took so long for me to have some understanding that emotional boundaries are not just selfish and not against someone else. My barometer is now, simply my attitude. Meaning, if I am relating to another person in any way and I tune into myself and realize I’m feeling some negative emotions, that’s my red flag. My mindset is...

My focus here is not on being a hero in the fashion our culture uses the word, in regard to caretaking humanity and saving the world. A quick search for the hero’s journey says it is a universal story structure where a protagonist ventures out of their comfort zone, faces a major crisis, wins a victory, and returns home profoundly transformed, and in this I find a core of human desire. In author Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years he  takes a script writing course and is taught that a good story is about...

I continue to find and place value in Emotional Intelligence. I spent much of my life misperceiving social intelligence as emotional intelligence. I felt I could read and cater to other’s emotions, but I was very ignorant and neglectful of my own emotions, which took a toll on myself, and others. In this episode I brought on an expert who cites that emotional intelligence as the single biggest predictor of our personal and professional success. Scott Allender is an expert in global leadership and organizational development. He regularly teaches Enneagram workshops and conducts emotional intelligence assessments for individuals an...

I appreciate people who help us paradigm shifts. I have viewed life as progressing to the next goal. The next destination. Focused on what I can add to my achievements. And yet as I’ve gotten older and dealt with more things that have humbled and tempered me, I’ve started wondering if there is as much or more growth, not from adding, but subtracting. Not from learning new things, but unlearning old things. In a similar concept, my guest today says, “Transformation is the power of departure.” DR. ROSENNA BAKARI is a psychologist, empowerment expert, and educator who has just...

My guest is Dandapani. He became an ordained Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time. For 10 years he lived a life of serious personal discipline and training at his guru’s cloistered monastery in Hawaii. Here he learned to control his mind. He learned to focus. And he believes this is the key to finding one’s purpose. We would probably all agree that it is easier to focus when you live in a monastery in Hawaii. Dandapani readily agrees. Yet he believed the teachings would work in the outside world...

“Could we really reduce your conscious mind to a set of underlying processes that, when composed, create the feeling of you, the view of right now?” This is what my guest questions and proposes. David Sussillo is a world-renowned neuroscientist, an adjunct professor at Stanford University and has been a scientist at the Google Brain group and Meta Reality Labs. In his professional pursuits, David researches brain-machine interfaces to develop the next generation of computers. He works to understand the ghost in the machine – how cells in our brain collectively give rise to the computations that determine behavior. But David...

We have made anxiety a bad term. But anxiety is a normal response of the body to a worry or concern or perceived threat. Your anxiety in and of itself isn’t doing anything wrong. We just seem to be responding inappropriately. Britt Frank is a licensed neuropsychotherapist and trauma expert who is trained in IFS (Internal Family Systems) and SE (Somatic Experiencing). She is a speaker and an award-winning adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas where she’s taught classes on ethics, addiction, and clinical social work. She has a book, The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Iner...

We are more sensitive than ever to our differences. Most people I know are really striving to be aware, kind, considerate, and inclusive. But is this sensitivity also increasing our cultural anxiety around the issue? My guest in this episode is social psychologist Claude M Steele, and he feels this is the case. Claude is the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Over a decade ago Claude authored the book, Whistling Vivaldi, which became a groundbreaking resource on stereotypes and identity. His new book is, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How To...

We are tired of performing. We want to be our authentic selves. We want to have boundaries. But I see and have experienced two challenges. You finally just let it all hang out and tell everyone how you really feel and let the chips of dissension fall where they will. Or, you just fold at the critical moment and feel it’s easier just to perform and appease people. Is there another option? Most of you will be aware of Mindvalley, and have likely participated with them. They have become one of the most popular personal development platforms on th...

Do I, intrinsically matter? Do you? Based on...what? There is almost a saturation of information and ideas on what purpose is and having purpose in your life. But if you dig down, I find purpose to primarily be a pursuit to...matter. Do we matter just because we exist? Many religions say so, but I generally find the religious scrambling to prove they matter in the same ways everyone else is. So does that testify that we have to do something to matter? This is the episode. I sat down with renowned philosopher and intellectual, Rebecca Goldstein. Rebecca...

The concept of trauma has gotten more focus than ever, as of late, it seems. But I feel much of what gets labeled trauma is the pain of loss. Losses we don’t know how to, or maybe never will, reconcile. I don’t claim having trauma in my life, but I have loss that I don’t think I’ll ever get over. I don’t want to minimize trauma at all, but I feel even more people resonate with the concept of loss. Even if it stems from a tragic trauma. And what I’ve been considering is some loss...

I don’t think we like to hear it, but there seems to be continual evidence that our culture is growing more risk averse, less willing to try new things, and as a result, becoming stagnant. Another data point on our reported, near all time low of subjective well-being. So I brought on an expert to discuss the issue. Ben Swire is an innovative thought leader on human connection and authentic living. Ben is an award-winning designer, writer, and former Design Lead at the iconic innovation firm IDEO, and he co-founded Make Believe Works where they help people build de...

I believe much of what motivates our life perspective and choices is around protecting ourselves. It’s human nature. I’m not talking about self-absorption, but even amongst the most giving and serving and confident of people, I still experience a lot of motive and behavior around self-protection. I’m including myself in this as well. My guest today has a very unique perspective on this concept. My guest is Jordan Grumet. Jordan was an internal medicine physician who left clinical practice to devote himself to hospice care and deep conversations about life. Jordan walks with people who are given...

How do you view your sense of self? Do you feel more or less understanding of who you are? How about those around you, friends, family, and others? Do you sense them as feeling more or less stable regarding themselves and their place in the world? I think it’s worth considering, and I feel a continued shift toward insecurity in an of ourselves, culturally. I have kids from 13 to 30 years old, from middle school to grad school, and I see and hear of consistent quandaries vs self and identity. But I’m 55 and even amongst my peers I feel...

First, I’m surely not saying that what you are or are not eating doesn’t matter. But after a decade of my own involvement in functional medicine, I see the biggest culprit for gut and digestion issues to be our minds more than anything else. I continue to meet people who are doing “all the right things,” eating clean, taking all the great supplements, exercising, getting good sleep, and they are still dealing with gut and digestive discomfort. I was the same. And I don’t have a magic solution like meditating or something for the mind. But I’m concer...

Most everyone knows the story of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who wrote the book, Man's Search For Meaning. In the book he shares his journey of finding meaning, purpose, and peace even as a prisoner in a concentration camp. A primary message he had for humanity was that regardless of circumstances, we have the freedom to choose our attitude in any situation. He feels this is what kept him alive while most around him died. But when the time came when Viktor was freed from his prison, he didn't stay there, saying he'd found peace and was good. He...