The Reinvention Evolution with Steve Olsher and Opening Up The Growth Mindset with Amanda Gore

I’m so glad you joined us because we have Steve Olsher and Amanda Gore here. Steve is a new media influencer. He is the host of New Media Summit, the Founder of Liquor.com and a New York Times bestselling author. Amanda Gore is a hall of fame international keynote speaker. She’s a bestselling author as well and she’s one of the biggest names in Australia and around the world.

Listen to the podcast here

The Reinvention Evolution with Steve Olsher

I am here with Steve Olsher who’s known as the world’s foremost reinvention expert. He’s a keynote speaker and the host of Reinvention Radio. He has created several multimillion dollar companies from scratch and even co-starred in the award-winning film, The Keeper of the Keys. He’s the author of the New York Times bestselling book, What Is Your WHAT? Discover The One Amazing Thing That You Were Born To Do. It’s so nice to have you here, Steve.

It’s so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

I’m interested in what you do. I’m writing a book right now on curiosity. What I am fascinated about is it all ties into the same things that you talk about. That’s why Alex was nice enough to introduce us because we’re both looking at ways for people to become more successful, whatever that may mean to them. I was watching some of your videos and listening to you talk about defining success and I want to know how you define success.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all for it. For me, it’s being able to do what I want to, where I want to do it, when and how I want to do it. That to me is the pinnacle of success, where you’re able to create the life that is of most meaning to you.

It’s the clarity to know what it is you want to do is sometimes hard for people, don’t you think? I liked how you talked about the cost of postponement of things. You’re waiting for what’s going to happen next. I don’t think people think about the opportunity costs for not doing things.

We as a society tend to get caught up in this whole, “When I have this then I can do that,” type of mentality. What that translates to is living our lives on pause and that whole living life on pause is what deprives most people from having true fulfillment, joy and satisfaction because they’re always waiting for that imaginary line in the sand to be crossed. The reality is once you draw that line in the sand, whether it’s, “When I have $50,000 in the bank then I’m going to be happy. I’m going to walk with that little bit of jump in my step and things are going to be great” and then they get the $50,000 and they’re like, “$100,000 would probably be better.” That’s what ends up happening and that’s what so many of us do. That’s why so many of us live our lives in that pause mode that robs us of being able to enjoy the lives that we’ve been given, the gift of getting here.

That brought to mind the George Carlin routine. He used to do about stuff. You had to get more stuff and then you’d have to build a bigger house so you could put more stuff in it. It’s like there’s never enough. That pause mode is also an interesting thing to think about because in my research on curiosity, there were four things I found that held people back and it was fear, their assumptions, either they are not interested or they don’t care or whatever. Technology being too difficult or doing it for them and their environment. What people say, what they hear from their parents or teachers or everybody around. It’s interesting to see why people are waiting. Sometimes it’s fear. I’ve had people tell me they fear success, which is an interesting perception.

We are so used to the grind of having to make ends meet and of having to go through those struggles that it’s often difficult for a lot of people. That’s why you see many people die within years of retiring because the body needs something and the brain needs something to focus on and to believe that we have a purpose, a passion or whatever you want to call it. When you take away that purpose for being whatever that is, the body dies. Sometimes that’s literally what happens is the body and the brain just die. That fear of success as you’re talking about in a large measure, people don’t know what to do with that. What would you do if you didn’t actually have to work? If you didn’t have that grind, if you didn’t have those struggles, what would you do?

I’ve looked into that because I had time. I could have retired and it would be very boring to me. As you get older, body parts start falling off. You can’t exercise all day, you can’t do certain things that you used to be able to do and it’s largely dull if you don’t constantly grow. I agree with that and I’m interested in a lot of the things that you talk about because you use the wording born to do. What we’re born to do in what you were talking about. That type of wording interests me because I’ve taught so many business classes, it’s well over 1,000 now. In all the courses, the students always seem to have this debate about are leaders born or made? When I was watching what you were talking about, you were saying that our what can change. Are we born to do certain things or does it change? Do you think leaders are born or made? I’m curious to hear that answer as well.

Let me start with the What is your WHAT? framework, which is a framework that I created to help people gain clarity around what it is that they were truly meant and made to do. I struggled with that for years. When I did the Myers-Briggs, what color is your parachute and these sorts of things, they all left me with more questions than answers. What I became very clear on is that we only need three answers to create a life that not only revolves around the things that we love doing, but it also is something that we’re good at and something that people will pay us for. I’m sure you’ve seen diagrams that are similar to that. Getting to those answers was not easy based on the modalities that were in place. What I did over a number of years is break it down into three core elements of who we are. That gives us that framework for which we can create a purposeful, impactful and lucrative life for ourselves.

[bctt tweet=”Your vehicle and your people can change over time, but the core gifts that you have is in your DNA, that’s not changing.” username=””]

Number one, it begins with understanding what your core gift is. We all have a core gift, whether that’s communicating or teaching or healing or enrolling or protecting or entertaining or whatever that might be. The second piece of the puzzle is understanding the primary vehicle that you will use to share your gift with the world, and the third piece of What is your WHAT? framework is understanding the people that you’re most compelled to serve. It is as simple as that, understanding your gift, the primary vehicle and the people that you’re most compelled to serve. If you have clarity around those things, you can literally hit the ground running and do something with it.

In answer to your question, your what, first of all, has chosen you. It’s not that what you have chosen. You can choose your why like, “I want to feed starving children in Africa or I want to provide clean drinking water for families in India.” Whatever your why is. I believe that your what is ingrained in your DNA. Your vehicle and your people can change over time, but the core gifts that you have, that’s in your DNA, that’s not changing.

If your dream job is at the intersection of what you love to do, what someone will pay you to do and what you’re good at doing but what you love to do and what you’re good at doing, don’t pay much, then what do you do?

That’s why we have hobbies. There are lots of folks out there who try to turn their hobbies into professions and that’s a huge mistake. Do what you love and the money will follow is BS. It would be great for all of us to have something that we absolutely love doing that can pay us well but that’s not always the case. You might love growing tomatoes in your garden and every time you have this awesome crop of tomatoes, you pass it out to your neighbors and they’re all like, “These are the best tomatoes in the world,” but it doesn’t mean that you should become a tomato farmer.

Just because you love growing tomatoes doesn’t translate into that being a profession. There are oftentimes where we have the rude awakening of what we love to do, what we’re good at and what someone will pay us for, unfortunately doesn’t result in enough compensation. If that’s the case, that’s where you got to be more creative and you got to put some spin on it and probably ease a solution. You could create an online program for teaching people how to grow great tomatoes and if you sell that for $100 a pop to 1,000 people a year, you’re at $100,000.

You do so many things. You’ve been on CNN, ABC, Fox, NBC, Forbes, Huffington Post, Mancow, you look at the list of where you’ve been seeing. I’m interested in this Liquor.com, you’re a Founder of that and you’re also the host of New Media Summit and you do a variety of things in addition to being a New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker and all that. What is your what?

Overtime, what I’ve really become clear on is that my what is truly helping people discover, share and monetize theirs. I have the rare ability to meet people where they are. In terms of if you’re at square one and you have no clue what to do and what puts fire in your soul, then the book, What Is Your WHAT? is the perfect place to start. That helps people answer that core question. I have created multimillion dollar businesses from scratch, including Liquor.com and other businesses. I also have the rare abilities to not only be a teacher from the standpoint of teaching you how to discover what that is, but then how to share and monetize it. That becomes clear to me over the years now that my what is sharing the gospel of this framework and helping people discover, share and monetize what their what is.

I wrote a book about reinventing yourself and a lot of my work seems to mirror some of the stuff that you do because I’m fascinated by a lot of the same topics. What topics do you deal with in Reinvention Radio and how did you get to be the foremost reinvention expert?

In author land, they say “You write the book that you most need.” For me, writing the book What Is Your WHAT? is the personification of who I am. That whole process of trying to figure out what I truly am good at. From nightclubs, catalogs to real estate, dot-coms and so on, you name it, I’ve done it over the years. The consistent reinvention of who I am has led to the evolution of me as a human being. Sharing the stories of other amazing people who have reinvented their lives and what they’re doing as a result, I love finding and sharing those stories. We’ve had people who run the gamut, from those who are reinventing fear to those who are reinventing sex to reinventing marketing, you name it. We’ve covered it over the years on the show, but yet week-by-week, I’m still consistently amazed at the stories that we’re able to bring folks. Reinvention to me is more than just a word. It is the personification of who I am.

I had a job for twenty years and completely switched gears and started all over again in another industry and it’s that exhilaration and fear at the same time. It’s like I was on coast for too long. I don’t like to be on coast for too long. Is that how you are?

I’d like to say it is how I am, but interestingly enough I feel like I’ve been coasting for the last fourteen years or so because my oldest son is now fourteen and I’ve had the privileges of being able to take my kids, my youngest is now eleven, but taking them to school every day and coaching their teams and be working from home, and being there when they come home and whatnot. You talked about Liquor.com and that’s a company that I’ve been involved with. I actually started that company on CompuServe’s electronic mall in 1993. That’s how long I’ve been online and we bought that domain in 1998, but it’s been through a number of iterations and right now we’ve got a team out in San Francisco that’s running it.

I’m based in San Diego so I have no day-to-day with it. I’m the Chairman and Founder but I have no day-to-day with it and there are plenty of days where I’m sitting here going, “I need to get more involved again and do something with it on a more fulltime basis.” I wake up and the next day and I go, “I don’t really want to do that.” I’d like to think that the answer to your question is I also don’t like to coast and I like it to be busy and do a lot of things, but somehow I found a happy medium of doing enough but not doing so much. I don’t work Mondays, I don’t work Fridays and it’s enough for me right now and maybe that’ll change, but I keep telling myself if it’s going to change, I would do something but I keep not doing something. I must enjoy the general coast right now.

[bctt tweet=”People that look good on paper might be absolute duds in person.” username=””]

My kids were more than twice the age of your kids, but when they were that age, I definitely did the same things because I wanted to be home and be around. It wasn’t until they hit sixteen that I started to get that I got to do something else because now they can drive and they don’t want to be around me as much, that type of thing. I don’t look at that age as coasting, I look at that as this is where you’re supposed to be.

It was a great time and sometimes I missed that time, but as soon as they got a little older, things changed and I got more involved in trying to learn new things and I’m fascinated by learning new things. I know you have all these other things. I wouldn’t exactly call what you’re doing is coasting when you’ve got all this other stuff going on and you have this New Media Summit, tell me a little about that.

The New Media Summit is a unique event that we created as being born out of my doing podcasting since 2009 and loving the space and being able to develop some pretty nice relationships with other podcasters over the years. What we had often discussed is finding good guest and how do we find the right guests? People that look good on paper might be absolute duds in person. You get halfway through the interview and you’re like, “This guy blows. This is awful.” Part of that discussion that we had with my fellow podcaster was how do we find good guests and given my event background of owning a nightclub and having done events, I did an event called Internet Prophets Live for years. We had people like Vishen Lakhiani, Lewis Howes, Janet Bray Attwood, Jay Conrad Levinson, Larry Winget, you name it. They’ve taken the stage at that event over the years.

I love events. I love being with people. I’m a relationship person and there’s only so much you can do online. At the end of the day, you got to sit down with somebody and you got to look them in the eye to get to know them. I got to thinking about what if we did an event where we give the coaches, authors, speakers, business owners, etc., the opportunity to meet and pitch top podcasters, on who they are and what they do and literally get booked on the spot.

I had attended other events that were in the traditional media space and they were decent but the results were pretty fair at best. What if we created an event in this new media space specifically with podcasters and gave folks an opportunity to pitch the podcasters and get booked on the spot. That’s how the New Media Summit was born. We did our first one in 2017. We’ve been cruising right along and I’m happy to say that we’ve got 100% track record of people who attend the summit getting booked on shows.

There are so many podcasters out there that are looking for a good talent and they’re looking for help. A lot of people always asked me how I got this together and I think at the beginning it’s challenging, especially to find the best guest and I could see why that would be popular. As you interact with all these podcasters, I know most of the people I’ve talked to are using it to either get speaking, consulting or other different ways they monetize, but how are the podcasters you’re dealing with monetizing?

What we’ve been able to do really well in my worlds in terms of my personal brand, the Steve Olsher world is we’ve been able to do a good job of monetizing the visibility that I’m able to create for myself and our team is able to create for me. What it boils down to is there are only seven things that we’re doing to fuel our seven-figure business. We created this whole framework around what I call the seven by seven model. That’s a lot of what I teach at the New Media Summit is the 7×7 model and how to monetize the visibility that you were able to generate for yourself. Being on podcasts as a guest or having your own show is a great way to create that visibility. The honest truth is most podcasters that I know are struggling to break into the high five figures, let alone six or seven.

There are so many out there and who’s listening to all this is my question. There’s only so much time in the day. You have to stand out. You either have to have amazing guests or you have to have something different that you offer. Is there some angle that you find is the most successful type of podcast? There’s a lot of business and there’s a lot of self-help, what do you think is the biggest?

If you want to start podcasting, breaking into that visibility realm or being found in terms of discoverability is difficult. Unless you have a huge platform already, it’s super hard for iTunes to help you in any meaningful way outside of the eight weeks of the new and noteworthy, which is possible. Unless you’re Tony Robbins who has a million subscribers and can just say, “I’m putting out a podcast, go listen to it,” and then they’re on the charts. It’s hard because the ascending spiral of, “I’m a popular show, I show up in the charts, people listen to me, I stay being a popular show, more people find me, more downloads, more subscribes, etc. so I continued to increase my ranking.” Breaking into that spiral is hard as a newcomer. As a newbie, if you don’t have the benefit of having a fairly large database or a fairly large social media following, I do think that it is all about niche.

[bctt tweet=”Do what you love and the money will follow is bias because that’s not always the case.” username=””]

What I have found is the shows that focus on a particular niche, like for instance, I have a woman who is a former client of mine who wanted help starting a show. As we dug into her story quite a bit to try to figure out what would make the most sense to create a show around, what’s interesting enough is she contracted genital herpes when she was in college. She had told me the story of how when she was on stage a few months back, she had shared the story of how on stage a few months back, she had publicly shared this for the first time and the outpouring of love was off the charts. People came up to her afterwards and “Thank you for sharing and I know somebody who is there.” I’ve got to tell you, out of everything that we’ve discussed, she had a huge opportunity there because no one else is talking about this and she’s a pretty girl. She’s a good spokesperson for this because she’s the opposite of what you might perceive that person to be.

She started a show called Life with Herpes and especially in podcasting because it’s a poll medium, which means that people listened to shows or choosing to listen to those shows, no one’s forcing it down your throat like they do with traditional broadcast media. If they’re subscribing or downloading, they are choosing to hear that. 100% of the people who listened to that show, either have herpes, know someone or love someone who does or they’re in that industry. You talk about a targeted market and being able to enroll people into related products, programs and services it’s monumentally easier. I think the more niche you go, the easier it will be for you to grow a very loyal, dedicated, borderline fanatic audience.

I’m interested to see what you do next and I’m sure a lot of people want to know more about you. Aside from Liquor.com, do you have other websites or ways that people can connect with you?

I would suggest that the best place to start if you’re interested in discovering what your what is and figuring out what your core gift is, the primary vehicle that you’re going to use to share that gift, and the people that you’re most compelled to serve, my suggestion would be to go grab a free copy of that book because we do give away the entire book at WhatIsYourWhat.com and I’d love for you to grab a copy of it and start there.

Thank you so much, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

Opening Up The Growth Mindset with Amanda Gore

I am here with Amanda Gore who is an internationally renowned motivational speaker and author in the fields of joy, resilience and leadership. She blends modern scientific research with ancient wisdom to create amazing joy filled experiences for her audience. She is a frequent radio and TV expert, interviewed for her comments on YouTube and she’s got over a million viewers on that alone. She’s the founder of the Joy Project, an international organization dedicated to eradicating fear and helping people rediscover their joy. She wrote, Joy Is an Inside Job as the basis of the Joy Project. Her previous book You Can Be Happy was translated into ten languages. I’m so happy to have you here, Amanda. Welcome.

Thank you, Diane.

You have an interesting background. You’re a big speaker in Australia and in the United States as well. You are very interesting to me because you’re a physiotherapist with a major in psychology, right?

Yes. I lived in Dallas and Vermont for about eight years. I’m very grateful to America. It was very generous to me.

I thought you said you had got children in Dallas or something. I was watching one of your videos.

I do. I had three beautiful grandchildren who started off very small when I was there now they’re very old.

You do neurolinguistics, you have this different background than a lot of the people I talked to. I’m fascinated how you got interested. What is your education? What led to all that?

I don’t ever remember wanting to be anything other than a physical therapist, we call them physiotherapist. My mom was one, my sister was one, it’s like a family culture and I loved being a physio. In Australia, they’re quite different from PTs in America where we work in a whole lot of different areas, whereas in the States you split them up into respiratory therapists and exercise therapists, we do all of it. I loved being a physical therapist. I moved from that into private practice.

Then I moved into ergonomics and occupational health and I had written a book while I was working as a consultant with various organizations in essence and in risk management as well. I met a man who was an American living in Australia who was a speaker. I didn’t even know what a speaker was. I had been invited to speak at a conference on my book, which was called The Office Athlete. That was back in the day when the repetition strain injuries were a big thing in companies. I spoke at the conference and he said, “You should be a speaker,” and I said, “What’s a speaker?”

He mentored me into the business, which was a wonderful thing because he’s still the best speaker I’ve ever seen that’s taking an audience up and down emotionally, and finishing them off on a huge high, feeling like I was able to change their lives. I was very blessed and that’s how I got into speaking. I had a blessed journey with speaking too. I studied with a man called Michael Grinder who is the brother of one of the Co-founders of NLP, neurolinguistics. Michael is extraordinary, you should interview him. He is a master of nonverbal leadership and communication. I studied with him for about 30 years and that what made the difference to me with my speaking success. One of the things he talks about is the difference between the process of communicating and the content with which that you deliver.

It’s the process, the magic behind the delivery that changes the way people can hear the information that’s delivered. The content always has to be appropriate and up to date and relevant. It’s the process that creates the magic that lifts the crowd up that it creates a space in which they can get the messages into their cellular memory. Lao Tzu is one of the philosophers with whom I resonate and one of his things was when the teacher is done, the students will say we’ve done it ourselves. I love it when I know I presented a great deal of new information that expands their minds and opens them up to a growth mindset. I walk away feeling that they remember things that they already knew, but they’ve forgotten. For me that’s the magic of the process.

You’re one of the only three non-US people to be inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame. Who was the first guy that got you into speaking?

That was Ron Tacchi. The American who was at that first conference I ever spoke at and he mentored me into the business.

[bctt tweet=”It’s the process behind the delivery that changes the way people can hear the information that’s delivered.” username=””]

You are fun to watch on stage. I have seen a lot of your videos and you’re so high in energy and fun and funny and that can be hard. I’ve watched men, they pulled that off well, but sometimes women, we tend to be a little more uptight. It’s not as easy to let loose like that and I love seeing you having so much fun. Was that hard for you or were you always a fun person?

The Australian culture is one where they encourage you to make fun of yourself. The other blessing that my mother embedded in the three of us was not to have FOWOT and I quite often speak about FOWOT, which is Fear Of What Others Think. That combined and I don’t know how my mother did it, but she managed to bring us up with this philosophy of we don’t care what other people think. We’re polite and respectful and have reverence for other people, but I’m not ruled by what other people think about me and how I look or what I do because my internal clock is always to have reverence for other people and lift them up. It makes me sound like a saint, and I’m not a saint, by any stretch of the imagination. I have wrestled judgment much of my life, but at this age, I constantly work on myself, which I think is one of the reasons I’ve managed to stay relevant even though I’ve been in the speaking industry for 30 years.

I’m constantly learning new things. I didn’t have to overcome FOWOT, which 90% of the population anywhere seems have as a driving force or the fear of what others will think of them. Ron also said to me that the most important thing if you’re going to present it in any way, and I teach this when I do my presenting workshops, is to have fun because if I have fun then the audience can have fun. Layered on top of that was Michael Grinder who taught me about the process.

What I can do is to inject fun and laughter in, and in between putting some profound and life-changing if you take it on broad messages, but because it’s sandwiched between two bits of humor, people have less resistance and they’re more open. I like to think that’s one of the things that I do when I speak and people will often use me to kick start a conference because it opens up their minds and their hearts and they leave a lot of the junks that they bring with them behind.

They have a capacity to look at the things that worry them every day or the bickering at work or the sense of unfairness or injustice. It gives them an opportunity to step back from it and look at it and put it into perspective because on one of the videos I caught up and show personal problems, which is on YouTube and on my website. It’s brilliant because it shows you the sorts of things that we allow to rule our thinking. Most of the problems we worry about are personal problems, if you can step back and look at it. People might be reading to this and going, “She doesn’t have my problem.” If it’s not life-threatening, they’re personal problems.

You’re bringing up a lot of things that I studied for my research, for my book about curiosity and you were talking about opening up the growth mindset. You’re talking about not caring what other people think. A lot of the things that I’m interested in is helping people grow as well, so we have a lot of the same focus. I just go about it in a different way. It’s interesting how you said your family impacted you, but a lot of people have the opposite. They have family that impacted them in a negative way that makes them shut down.

I like how you get people to open up. I was watching some of your videos when you get your animals, I assume it’s something to do with cats and you’ve got people making these noises in, playing in, growling or whatever they’re doing. Has any of that not gone over where people don’t want to do it? Do you ever worry that they’re not going to be playful along with you or do people always jump around and have fun? It looked like you’re always having a great time.

That’s where the process comes in because I don’t have a set speech, I play with the crowd. It’s like a conversation and I’m constantly watching them, although you’d never know it. When I see a group movement or barometers, leaders in the group who may not understand something I’m saying or not feel comfortable with it, I can say or do something that helps them get over themselves and open up. I create a safe environment that I never know how I’m going to end up doing that specifically. I have never had a group that haven’t, at the end of the presentation, even if it’s like a thousand men who are in maintenance in convention centers, they all stand up at the end and sing and dance. Occasionally there’s one or two who won’t dance, but they’re standing up and they’re smiling. A person like that is like something out his skins.

I wanted to clarify too that in my background, I haven’t had an ideal life. My parents separated when I was five and back in those days, nobody ever divorced. My father was an alcoholic and there was an episode or two of sexual abuse. If people are reading and thinking I had a gilded childhood, I certainly didn’t, but I haven’t let that define me. I have worked very deeply to integrate what’s happened to me without judging it. To be very honest with myself, which is a fairly new journey for me in the last couple of years and be very honest with the story that I’ve told about myself and about other people. If we’re talking about success in life, how do you define success? What I’m teaching now transpire more into becoming an observer of our thoughts. Our thoughts create the stories we tell ourselves, and our thoughts create the beliefs that we hold about ourselves because the beliefs are just stories.

We know with epigenetics, because I love science so I’m in tune to these. Epigenetics tells us that it’s not our genes that determine our future, it’s our belief. This new research on stress, it should be given stress does not make you sick or not. It’s what you believe about stress that will determine whether you’re sick or not. The essence of what I’m teaching these days bring almost everything back. Everything is about the stories that we tell ourselves because they formed the beliefs and the stories are formed by the thoughts we have, but 95% to 99% of the time, we’re unconscious of our thoughts which is operating on our reflex.

[bctt tweet=”There’s a big difference between feelings and emotions. Emotions are reflex while feelings are the deep and the knowing.” username=””]

Something happens and we don’t even know we’ve reacted. That capacity to slow down a bit and start to observe our thinking then allows us to make conscious choices about what we think or how we behave or with whom we interact. Raising your consciousness and waking up about how we literally have been programmed and program ourselves allow us to make dramatic changes in life and start to fully live.

I couldn’t agree more because in the research I’ve just done with curiosity, it is what you’re telling me. It’s the mindset. It’s all the things that you’re talking about. I love that you played Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Are you a Monty Python fan?

I am a Monty Python fan but these days, I play Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling. It pulls out of feelings of very not suppressed in both the American and the Australian cultures, particularly in Australia. The feelings are often the indicator that you’ve had a thought that’s triggered the feeling and yet most of us are not only unconscious of our thoughts, but we don’t feel. People listening to this might say, “I feel terrible” but that’s more emotional stuff.

There’s a big difference between feelings and emotions. Emotions are reflex while feelings are the deep and the knowing. I’m not an expert at this by any stretch of the imagination. I’m still working my own way through recognizing feelings. I’ve been able to get to a place now where I noticed when my stomach starts to turn or feels tight and I backtrack and I go, “What was I thinking and what am I thinking that’s causing me to feel this way?”

Other people are triggers and mirrors for us to look inside. I often say to people, “Who’s in charge of your thinking?” and of course people go, “Me, I am,” because there is no gorilla outside shoving thoughts into your head. They’re all kept. Most of us are living lives of habits, and patterns, and reflexes ruled by fear. It’s exploring those fears that help us shine the light on them and they dissipate. If you think it’d be helpful to people, I’m happy to sit and say the three main fears that rule people.

Fear is a big part of what holds people back from curiosity too, so I’d love to hear that.

It’s interesting how many parallels there are with us. To me that we call fear, the first one is, “I’m not worth loving,” and a lot of women get that and the men get, “I’m not good enough.” Most of these fears are embedded by the time we were seven. For the adults reading this, know that you will not the seven one and you may have one or all of these fears. I’ve got them all to myself, but you might have one or you might have two. If you’re a parent of children who are not yet seven, pay good attention because these are fears you do not want embedded in your children. I’ll mention if you’re interested later about the School of Joy Program that we’re on here, we want to try and get the children aware of these things too. The bottom line is everyone is worth loving. You are worth loving. You are good enough, which doesn’t mean you can’t get better, which doesn’t mean that you can’t improve and come more into yourself and fully live and feel the joy that you were born with.

Often that’s a challenge for people. The one I grew up with is, “I’m not worth loving,” either, which is very common in people who were sexually abused because so many people have been, men and women. It’s important to shine a light on it and look at it and hear someone say, “You absolutely are worth loving.” When you’re reading this, if you have a little voice that pops up inside you that says, “No, you’re not,” then you know you’ve got work to do. There’s a little gremlin inside you that is constantly feeding you the line that you’re not worth loving and pointing it up to you every opportunity it can and it’s not true. I’ve come up with a little strategy recently where if I hear that voice or if I get the feeling that tells me that little gremlin is saying, “They wouldn’t care because you’re not worth loving.”

I slapped myself on the right shoulder and I go, “Get out,” which sounds very simple but very effective. All it’s doing, even though it’s simplistic, it’s raising your consciousness and allowing you to make a conscious choice. Will I listen to this little gremlin or will I choose not to and that’s very freeing? Sometimes people think, “That’s too simple. It’s got to be more complicated than that.” Things are more complicated but it’s a very good first step and sometimes it is “simple,” but the complexity of observing and catching your thoughts, recognizing the fear is choosing at that moment to not let that fear get you. Even if you reflect on a scenario later on and you’re able to go through that process, there’s a lot of complexity in that. It just sounds simple.

The second core fear is that people feel unsafe in some way. That usually stems from naught to seven. My mom left. We grew up in India and my dad was an alcoholic and my mom had to leave India to get some treatment in London. She was gone for a year. I didn’t find out until after she died when I was about 54. A whole lot of things were revealed after that because it was at that time that a stranger came and abused me. I learned to feel unsafe around men and that’s taken a very long time for me to even recognize that I felt unsafe around men, let alone deal with it. I didn’t love being alone. I thought I loved being alone because that was what my job entails. I was forever alone in airports and hotel rooms and travelling.

It turns out I don’t like being alone at all. It’s becoming honest with yourself because it’s so easy to lie to ourselves. Then the third core fear is separation but I throw in death and abandonment but the bottom line is it’s the fear of separation. Most of us have that as a core fear because we’ve forgotten that none of us are ever separate. We are all connected all the time. That’s an enormous concept to get your head around. We’re never disconnected from our source energy, the core energy. It’s just that we don’t recognize that connection. Those are the three-core fear that I feel rule most of us unless we’re conscious of them.

These are some of the things that you’re working with kids at a young age to help them. The School of Joy, is that what you said you’re focusing on these things?

[bctt tweet=”Choose gratitude. Choose to be a good finder.” username=””]

There’s a brilliant principal in Adelaide in Australia who read my book and I had been looking for a principal who would be interested in implementing it into their school. We’ve done it on the fly. We took the chapters of the book and we decided which chapter we would focus on each term. Then we have these brilliant activities for primary school children to incorporate them at the different levels and using some of the exercises that I had in the book. The first term we worked on gratitude because if I were to give your readers a gift, the gift would be, be grateful. Choose gratitude. Choose to be a good finder. No matter what’s happening, even if nothing else is happening, except you are learning something profound. Even in the most difficult circumstances. You can choose gratitude or you can choose victim or choose me or choose everybody else is doing this to me, but if you constantly focus on gratitude, it’s like a master re-framer.

That’s one of the things you may have seen on the videos, I asked people to make a circle between their index finger and their thumb and put them over their eyes and they are your gratitude glasses. If you choose to put your gratitude glasses on first thing in the morning and keep them on all day long. Life changes and that’s the simplest piece. It’s one of the twelve chapters but it’s the first, because it makes such a difference. We can catch ourselves when we’ve taken that gratitude glasses off. I may just add that I embed my presentations with symbols because it’s like a picture paints a thousand words. When you give people symbols, all of the concepts that you shared with them hang on that symbol. In their memory, they can remember the symbols and then they remember the content that goes with that.

At the school for the first term, we focused on gratitude and the children made their own gratitude glasses and they stood up in class in the morning and they talked about the other children and things for which they were grateful. They went out into the community and did things in the community and talked about gratitude. We have a whole lot of little exercises and we taught them in that time to be good finder. As simple as it sounds, if you’re aware of whether you’re being a good finder or you’re looking for the bad in everything, that changes everything. I can consciously choose to be a good finder. The teachers were brilliant and the principal was brilliant. The number one problem they had in the school when we started, in the primary school, and it’s very common, was self -harming and by the time they finish that first term, the self-harming had stopped.

I worked on the Board of Advisors for a LeaderKid Academy, which is a similar thing that they’re doing in the East Coast for K through 12 trying to develop emotional intelligence and different qualities in children. I studied emotional intelligence for my Doctorate degree. I’m fascinated in all this work you do and I’m sure a lot of people would like to know more about, I know you can get your books on Amazon. Are there other websites or information you want to share because a lot of people could use your information to help them? I know that I’m going to be telling Rishi and Preeti Dixit who run the LeaderKid Academy about what you’re working on because I think it’s fascinating. If you have some links or ways to contact you, can you share that?

My website is AmandaGore.com I’ve written an online program that is based on the book and that’s at TheJoyProject.com. My YouTube channel is Amanda Gore TV and there are lots of little clips on the YouTube channel that if they’re in a leadership position, they can use in staff meetings or team meetings to introduce various concepts that I’ve talked about. If somebody wanted to book me to speak then the easiest way is through AmandaGore.com and put an inquiry in. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share that.

You’re welcome. I hope everybody looks at your videos because you are so much fun to watch. You’re my ideal of what a speaker should be because you’re informative and you’re having fun and everybody’s laughing and it looks so great. I’m glad that I’ve got a chance to meet you. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you so much, Diane, for giving me the opportunity. It’s wonderful to speak with you.

I appreciate that.

I want to thank Steve and Amanda. You can sign up to find out about the Curiosity Code. That’s the new assessment I’ve created and it’s going to be tied into the Cracking the Curiosity Code book. Check out the site and check out the next episode of Take The Lead Radio.

About Steve Olsher

Steve Olsher is known as the world’s foremost reinvention expert, keynote speaker and the host of Reinvention Radio. He has created several multimillion-dollar companies from scratch and even co-starred in the award-winning film The Keeper of the Keys. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, What Is Your WHAT?: Discover The One Amazing Thing You Were Born To Do.

About Amanda Gore

Amanda Gore is an internationally renowned motivational speaker and author in the fields of joy, resilience and leadership. She blends modern scientific research with ancient wisdom to create amazing joy filled experiences for her audiences. A frequent radio and TV expert interviewed for her comments, her YouTube channel has had over one million views. Founder of The Joy Project, an international organization dedicated to eradicating fear and helping people rediscover their joy, Amanda wrote Joy Is An Inside Job (first edition called The Gospel of Joy) as the basis of The Joy Project. Her previous book You CAN Be Happy was translated into 10 languages and was the precursor to her current passion – The Joy Project – helping one million people become walking joy spots!

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