Ed Mylett’s Secrets to Success & Happiness

Ed Mylett:

You're one decision, one relationship, one thought, one new emotion, one interview, one book away from completely changing your life, but you will never see those one mores if you hold onto these things that don't serve you.

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Marie:

Ed Mylett is a globally-recognized entrepreneur, performance coach, and speaker. He got his start in the financial services industry and has spearheaded ventures in technology, real estate, health and more. With over three million online followers, Ed inspires audiences all over the globe with his weekly podcast, The Ed Mylett Show. He's also a speaker in both small gatherings and big arenas. He's the author of the bestseller, #Maxout Your Life, and his latest book, The Power of One More. 

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Ed, I am so happy we're getting a chance to finally do this on the show. I adore you. I want to first say congratulations on this new book. It's incredible. How are you feeling?

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Ed Mylett:

Thank you. I feel amazing, and I'm so grateful you're doing this for me. I've told you that. Since you were on my show, we've become such good friends, and I feel like our relationship is growing and growing. So, I'm grateful for you, I love you, I believe in you and I feel awesome. I get to spend the morning with you. It couldn't be better.

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Marie:

Thank you. For those who don't know you and they see us together right now they might be like, "My God, Ed Mylett, Amazing. I've heard about him. He's got millions of followers online. He's got all this confidence." But most people don't know our beginnings, so they're just seeing the end or where we're at right now, but they don't know how we actually got here. I'm wondering if you can start off by telling us a little bit about your childhood, especially as it relates to your beautiful father, and how…

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Ed Mylett:

Thank you.

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Marie:

…his transformation in many ways, set the groundwork for who you've become as a man today?

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Ed Mylett:

That's 100% right. You're so right, by the way. It's so easy to look at the after and by the way, I'm not even so sure my after isn't a massive work in progress still, itself.

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Marie:

Are you kidding? Two hands up for that one.

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Ed Mylett:

We both know that. And we do that for one another, and so do some of our other mutual friends. But how I grew up? I grew up in a loving family, but I grew up in a dysfunctional family. My dad was an alcoholic and a drug addict until I was almost 15. Only my dad would do this, but my dad got sober on 4/20, which is pretty funny. My dad's sobriety birthday is 4/20. And what's interesting about that is my father never celebrated his actual birth date again the rest of his life, he only celebrated his sobriety birthday. But the first 15 years of my dad's life, he didn't live the best and so, one of the reasons I believe so deeply humans can change is because I watched my hero do it. First 15 years of my life, not very good at all, last 35, just the best human being I've ever known. But it certainly impacted me.

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I didn't have a lot of self-confidence, I didn't... No, that's not true, let me amend that. I had no self-confidence and I felt ashamed of where I came from and I went to school every day insecure. I was a little guy, so I got bullied. It was always Eddie spaghetti, your meatballs are ready and then I'd get beat up on the playground and then I'd have to go home and my dad would probably be drinking. I got to tell you one thing about that Marie, it's just for you and I. I realize I've made pretty significant amount of money in my life with very limited skills and two of them I have, that I do know I have, I get myself credit for is one, I'm really present with people and I read them well and I love people.

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And the second thing I'm pretty good at is talking or changing someone's state than feeling energy when I speak and it dawned on me when I was writing the book. Both of those are born out of my dad. That when I was a little boy five years old, I was never a little boy actually the truth is I was never a little boy, but when I was five, I had three sisters and a mom. When my dad would come through that front door, I had to read this man at five years old. I remember looking up at him hundreds of times, was it sober dad and we're going to have dinner and go shoot baskets in the backyard or is he drunk? What's his physiology? How's he walking? Is his tie tied the right way? How's he speaking? How did the key go in the lock?

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I could tell by the sound of the key in the lock and if he was drunk, I had to get my sisters upstairs and I had to tell mom, go take a shower and then I'd have to grab my dad's hand and talk to him. Dad, I got a 93 on my spelling test. Daddy, I hit a home run in little league today. How was your day? And I tried to walk and change his state. What I didn't know was happening that whole time was it was giving me, Napoleon Hill says on the other side of temporary pain, you meet your other self. This boy that was in all this pain growing up, I was slowly getting on the other side of it and meeting my other self, which was this person who's present and who can talk and now here we are so there's blessings in all of it as well.

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Marie:

I didn't have that exact same situation growing up, but in my own family, one of the things that I learned and it's still something that I am working through today is hypervigilance and having to be hypervigilant, to be able to manage all the different things happening because in many ways, I didn't know who was around when I was showing up and needing to adjust myself. And I've never actually articulated it this way before, but I think that there is something so beautiful about taking something that was extremely painful and being able to find the gift of how it can serve you so you can serve others as you work through that part.

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Ed Mylett:

I agree. I have a chapter in the book called “One More Question'' and it's the questions we ask ourselves. It's not the events of our lives that are going to define us, it's the meaning we take from them and that meaning comes from the question we ask ourselves about it. And when we get the right answer, then it creates the emotion that serves us and then our behavior is favorable. If we take the wrong meaning or a meaning that doesn't serve us, then our lives go in another direction. That's why two children can be raised by the same alcoholic and one becomes one and the other one goes on to do maybe extraordinary things in their lives. Same events, just the different meaning that we take from it, so totally agree with you.

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Marie:

So, you've had a lot of pivots and changes in your life and career which I think everyone watching and listening can relate to. We have chapters of our life where we're doing different things and I think so often some of our most impactful growth experiences come from things that are really painful. So for you, I think one of those pivots was around baseball. Can you share that story?

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Ed Mylett:

Like many people, my first big dream of my life ended and so for me it was baseball. I really never thought I was going to do it. There's the only thing I was good at, Marie, when I was a little boy. The one place that... I used to conflate... I talk about this in the book. I conflated love with significance or recognition and a lot of us do. And so for me, the only time I really felt love from my dad is if I hit that home run, if I got the A, then I felt loved. So, I started to get, significance is love. That's a dangerous way to live because now you're always having to earn love, you're always having to earn it. But for me in baseball, it was my dream, it was all I was really ever going to do, it was what I was good at, and then I had a really catastrophic injury.

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I got hit with a pitch and believe it or not formed a tumor on my right calf and then they had to take part of my leg to take the tumor and then it grew back and I went back and played again, I wasn't as good, but I could still play and then it grew back again and then they took more of it. To this day, it grew back a third time. It's still in my right calf because if they took anymore, I would not be able to right lower leg and so the tumor's not cancerous, but it's been in my leg now, the existing one for 30 years. And so that career ended and I just felt myself lost. It can be the same way of you lose a relationship you've dreamed of or a business you have that's failed and if I could share something really personal with you that I just occurred to me and I haven't told you this, but I know I won't try to answer this long every question, but I want to share this with you because I think you're going to think this is amazing.

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So, I write this book, I wrote it after my dad passed away.

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Marie:

Yes.

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Ed Mylett:

And it's all these lessons of one more plus how I've applied them in my life and the most significant decision of my lifetime is my dad getting sober. I don't think you and I are talking if my dad doesn't give it one more try and then stay sober one more day at a time was my dad's thing. Two weeks ago after I saw you in Florida, I woke up about 3:15 in the morning and I woke Kristianna up and I was in tears and I don't cry often enough I should probably cry more, but I cried and I said, "Babe, please wake up" and she says, "What honey?"

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And I said, "Someone helped daddy." She went, “What?” Because she was foggy. I said, "Someone helped daddy." Some precious soul in my dad's darkest moment of his life when he was on his knees, going to lose his family, intervened in a coffee shop somewhere or a dark room somewhere and helped my father. And I've never thought about it before. And I don't know who this precious human being is. It was just one human helping another human with their humanity and I said, "Babe, here's the craziest thing, what qualified this person to help my dad was their own shame that they were also an alcoholic and a drug addict at one time." The things they're most embarrassed of the biggest failures of their lives is what qualified them to help my father in his darkest moment.

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And as humans we think... My first dream was ending baseball, my relationship ended, my business didn't succeed, I've done something I'm so embarrassed or ashamed of or I've just never done anything extraordinary in my life. What qualifies me now to do something awesome? It's those very things you may be embarrassed by or ashamed of or what you think are failures are the actual thing that will connect you with the human beings in your life that you can make the biggest difference for. Little did this person know Marie, when they were using drugs and probably stealing from their family or drinking and driving and in bars late at night, doing things they're completely ashamed of, they were being prepared to change my father's life and my life and I've reached millions of people because of this person.

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And so never disqualify yourself. This is what we do, we carry these bags of shame around with us and we think that's it and it's not it. This person's most extreme mistakes changed my life, my children's lives, my grandchildren I haven't had yet, owe a debt of gratitude to this person and that's what we're born to do is to help one another in quiet moments and in loud moments in our lives, big and small ways and you never know the ripple effect so I had to tell you that.

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Marie:

I love that so much because I think that especially for those listening and watching right now, one of the things that I know about us, about ambitious creatives, about people with big hearts who know deep down that they're here to make a difference is that all of us are often really hard on ourselves.

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Ed Mylett:

You got it.

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Marie:

And when we stumble and when we fall and when we don't reach up to that height that we know we can eventually reach, we want to hide and we want to keep it to ourselves and we want to go in that dark corner and just pull away from the world. And what I love about that story is the very thing that might bring you the most shame and the most embarrassment and the most humiliation is that connection point that can open up another person's soul and give them the opportunity to try one more time, to get up one more time and to go forward.

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Ed Mylett:

That’s right. I totally agree. Yeah. Amen.

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Marie:

So speaking of meaningful experiences, we got to talk about the McKinley Home for Boys and how you ended up working there and the course that set you on for the rest of your life.

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Ed Mylett:

This is so good, I love this. So, all these one mores happen. My dad, I'm 15, we're driving to a little league game. My dad's crying and he basically pulls over and says, “I'm going to try to get sober one more time, I'm going to give it one more try.” I said, "Daddy, why would this be different?" He says, "Listen, your mom's taking you and sisters, I'm losing my family and I don't want to lose you and you deserve a father you can be proud of, your mom deserves a husband she can respect, I'm going to give it one more try." Then he got sober and I said, "So, dad, you never going to drink again?" He goes, “I don't know. I'm just not going to drink for one more day.” And my dad stacked those days up for 35 years. That's impacted me a lot, Marie, because in my business career there have been a lot of times I wanted to quit and we think, well, I have to decide I'm never going to quit. Everyone says that, never quit. That's a big decision to make.

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I've just a whole bunch of time said I'm not quitting for today and gone on to the next day. But my dad came home from his first meeting and I get emotional about this because it changed my life. He came home, he goes, I was living at home, baseball was over, living at his house, eating out of his fridge, not really trying to find a job and my dad says, “I got you a job.” My dad was a dude, he was a tough dude. He goes, “I got you a job.” I said, "Hey, what is it?" He goes, “You don't get to pick. You're eating out of my refrigerator, man, you're a grown man, get your butt down there.”

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So, I showed up the next morning and I said, "Hey, I'm Ed Mylett, I'm here for the job, I don't know what it is." They go, “Well you need to come back when you know.” I said, "I have no idea." They said, "Who's giving you this job?" I said, "Tim." They said, "There's three Tims here." I said, "Here's all I know, this guy was at a meeting for alcoholics with my dad last night." They go, “Drunk Tim, that's cottage eight head over there.” And I walked into cottage eight and I did not know this, but in the instant that door opened when I walked in, my entire being changed, not just my life, my being. I went from being an ego-driven athlete who was about me and my life to instantaneously in love and in serving these precious boys and my boys were all 8-10 years old, there were 11 of them.

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Most of them are still in my life to this day, but my life changed. I wasn't a psychologist, I didn't have kids of my own, I didn't have preparation to do this, but I did because my dysfunction in my family helped me with their dysfunction. My boys' parents were dead, incarcerated, or had actually molested them, their own parents, and I became their father, their big brother. I took them to school, I walked them to school every morning, I went trick or treating with them, I was there when they'd opened their one present on Christmas. When their uncle stood them up for Thanksgiving, I was there to hold them and my life changed and what I learned Marie, and this is maybe why I'm a complex dude. I look rough, I've got this deep voice, I'm muscular like I come across as like, what these boys wanted from me and I hope everyone will never forget this the rest of their life.

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They wanted someone to love them and they wanted someone to care about them and here's a biggie that's very rare. They wanted someone to believe in them and then just really simply show them how to live better. Love, care, believe’s a biggie, and truly believe and show them how to live better. And it was while I was there that I started out in my business career a couple years later part-time and then I went, oh my God, my boys aren't unique. Every human I meet is dying for more people to love them, care about them, believe in them and just show them in your unique way with your unique skills, with your unique business, with your unique ambition, just how to do better.

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And if you can come from a place of, I love you, I care about you here and I really believe in you, because I believe in you, let me show you how you can do better in my way with my product or my company or my service and I've applied that. And so when Marie Forleo comes all the way out to my house to do an interview, when I know when this precious soul gets there, just like me, she could use one more person who loves her and cares about her and believes in her and just shows her how to do something better. And you do that for me, I do that for you. It's what I've done in all of my businesses so it altered my life and I fell in love with... You know what, I've had five jets, you know this.

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I own an island, I own houses. That stuff is great, I love it, I want everyone to have them but it doesn't fill me up. It just doesn't. It's good, but it doesn't fill you up. 

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Marie:

Yeah.

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Ed Mylett:

Helping another human being fills me up. It's not work for me. I get to do it. I can't believe people will let me do it, but they do. And so that's what McKinley Home for Boys did. It changed my being, not just my financial life or anything like that, I was making $5 an hour, that's how old I am, but it changed my being.

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Marie:

Are you loving this conversation? I hope it's inspiring you to go for all of your dreams and if you want a little more tactical help on how to get there, you need to pick up a copy of my number one New York Times Best Seller, Everything Is Figureoutable, you are going to love it. You can go to EverythingIsFigureoutable.com to learn more and grab your copy today. 

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One of the other things and many things I love about you and I discovered this even more when we were together in Florida not so long ago, I knew you had a big heart, but some of our conversations about animals and helping figure things out, I was like, oh my goodness, Ed Mylett is even better than I thought he was.

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Ed Mylett:

Thank you.

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Marie:

And so I know I was poking a little fun because look, I'm from Jersey, I had a gold gym membership since the time I was 14, 15 years old, pumping iron, being in the gym, it's just a part of who I am and that's a little bond that we have, but what I admire and respect about you so much is that your heart and your soul is way bigger and grander and more powerful than your muscles will ever be and your muscles are awesome, we love that, that's fun.

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Ed Mylett:

Thank you. By the way, you know we have in common that I've never told you before?

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Marie:

What?

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Ed Mylett:

We also have dancing in common.

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Marie:

Wait what?

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Ed Mylett:

You would never think. Well, first off I can't dance like you dance, but people always, what's one thing I don't know about Mylett? Well, I danced in college and I'm not talking about Chip & Dales, I'm talking about I danced in college, I danced in a club. I danced in a club for three years. That's how I made my living in college. And then I toured with some different hip hop groups a couple years during that as well. So, you would never know that, but me and you have dancing in common. Now, if you get with me and we go to a wedding, I'm showing you what worked in the 90s. I haven’t evolved or changed at all.

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Marie:

All dance, I will say this Ed Mylett, all dance is fantastic dance.

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Ed Mylett:

There we go.

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Marie:

Every time I'm with people, I don't care if they're offbeat, I don't care if they're doing their own thing and it is completely disconnected from any rhythm, movement is medicine, movement is magic and it's like…

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Ed Mylett:

I agree. Can you please tell my daughter this?

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Marie:

Yes.

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Ed Mylett:

Can you please tell my daughter so I stop embarrassing her at weddings because she's like, daddy, this is 24 years old, you have to stop the Roger Rabbit, you got to…

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Marie:

It's new again. It’s new again. Listen, I will do the running man, I will do the sprinkler, I will do it all.

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Ed Mylett:

Oh my God.

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Marie:

And then we'll take a new school. I'll tell you, not even just three days ago, I was doing the worm in front of 30 people.

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Ed Mylett:

Yes. Yes.

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Marie:

Yes and I'm like, look, we're going to pull it out, we're going to take a new school, we're going to take it old school, but we'll talk to Bella, it's Bella, right?

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Ed Mylett:

It’s Bella. Exactly.

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Marie:

We're going to talk to Bella about that so all movement is medicine and when people move…

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Ed Mylett:

I agree with you totally, God bless you.

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Marie:

And when people dance together, there's healing and magic that can happen that just doesn't happen in any other way. So, I feel like your career from a financial and success perspective, really took off in this high-octane world of finance and entrepreneurship and you hit it out of the park. And then you made a shift into the world of personal development. Can you tell me more about how that transition happened? What inspired it? What was in your heart? What was in your soul? What was happening in your life?

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Ed Mylett:

All the stuff in the book is... By the way, it's a pretty heavy book I got to say. I do stuff on your reticular activating system, time management and I get really heavy on how to change yourself because I had to get heavy. So, I learned all these tools truthfully, Marie, to become a baseline functioning person. And then when I got good at them, I started to refine what worked for me, my own strategies, my own slant on things, my own understanding of your the prefrontal cortex of your brain and managing your emotions. And so I think for me when I got into business, I had to use these things to become relatively successful. And then I started speaking and certain CEOs say, come talk to our company, come talk to this which leaned into coaching people, coaching executives, then coaching entertainers and athletes and now I'm blessed to coach... I enjoy coaching all people, but I particularly enjoy coaching people who can move the needle in the world.

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And so I have a chance to coach some really impact players in my life, but I started to just really become addicted. But the funniest part of it is that it was really Tony Robbins who convinced me, I'll tell you the funniest story. We lived near each other and he is like, “Hey, listen I think you're the GOAT, I think you should go do this, I think you should really share.” and I'm like, “Well, I want to help, but I don't want to be a public person. I'm too introverted, I like my privacy, I see how people treat you. I need that intro.”

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He goes, “That's why you're an F-ing liar,” right to my face. And I go, “What do you mean?” He goes, “Well, you say you want to help people, but not if it's going to inconvenience you so you don't really want to help anybody.” I go, “You know what MFer? Get me the phone.” And I turned to my son... I swear to you Marie, this is a true story, just gives everybody hope because I've got millions of followers, I've never run an ad. I’ve never run an ad. Never one ad. So, my son's there, it's on a balcony. I said, “Max... “I swear to you Marie, this is true just believe me you know me, I said, "Max, you need to get me an InstaFace account."

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Tony goes, “What the hell are you talking about?” I said, "Whatever it is man, get me one." Max's like, “I already have you an Instagram account, it's called Instagram, the other’s Facebook.” I'm like, “I know it's Facebook, I didn't know what the other thing was called.” So, Robbins goes, “You got to post a video.” You got to hear this. And I go, “Well, how do you do it?” He goes, “It's a minute long or less.” I said, "A minute? I'm doing hour long keynotes, I can't even clear my throat in a minute. What am I supposed to say in a minute?” He goes, “I don't know dude, figure it out.” So, I make the video. I said, "Max post it, you're my social media guy now." I make this video, it's 59 seconds long, it gets three views and one like the first day.

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So, I call Robbins and I go, “Hey dude, this stuff doesn't clearly work, this is not for me.” And he goes, “How many have you done?” I go, “One.” He goes, “One? That's not going to work.” I go, “Man I have two followers, one of them's Max, my son who's my coordinator and he didn't even like the video.” And I'm like, how did... He goes, and this is what I hear him say Marie, I swear to you, you're going to love this. I hear him say, because we're both on our boats. I hear him say, “Hey, you got to post earlier in the morning, you got to post at breakfast time.” And I go, “Okay.” And by the way to this day, I still post every single morning on Instagram at 7:30 Pacific Time because of this advice, I've never changed it. But the other thing I hear, I hear breakfast and then I hear him say, “And you got to have hash browns in the video.”

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Marie:

My God.

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Ed Mylett:

And I go, I don't want to sound stupid because already did the Instaface thing I said, “All right.” I call Max I go, “Hey, the reason this video tanked dude, we have to post a breakfast time and there needs to be hash browns in the video. Everybody knows this, how do you not know?” I'm getting on my son. So my second video, if you go look, it's me, it's breakfast, there's a plate of hash browns and eggs for no reason whatsoever and I do the video and I make the video and this one gets three views and no likes. And I call Robbins back. I go, “Dude, the hash brown thing tanked, the breakfast thing tanked.” He goes, “What did you say?” I said, "The hash brown thing tanked.” He goes, “What the F are you talking about?” I go, “You specifically said breakfast with hash browns in the video.”

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He goes, “It's hashtags dumb ass, hashtags not hash browns”. I said, "I heard hash and breakfast.” And I go, “What's the hashtag?" He goes, “It's a pound sign and then a word.” I go, “What is that? Why would that matter?” He goes, “I don't know, but my team does it so do a pound sign and then a word and they’ll find your video.” And then I finally started to get the hook of it and a year later I had a million followers or something, but my second video, it's still out there. There's a plate of hash browns for no apparent reason in the video.

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Marie:

I adore you. Well, next time I see you, I might be bringing some hash browns your way because that would just be some fun.

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Ed Mylett:

That is the truest story. I was on InstaFace with hash browns.

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Marie:

I love this because it's like when all of us are starting anything new, we are stumbling around in the dark and we don't know what that heck it's all about.

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Ed Mylett:

People should have hope. This dude's got millions of followers, that's where it started. It wasn't 100 years ago, it was seven years ago.

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Marie:

I love it. One thing that really moved me, I don't think this is in the book, this is just out of our other research and I love it because again, folks in this audience, heart-centered, bighearted, want to make a difference, many of them also are healers and helpers and people who are of service no matter what their business or their career is. And I want to talk about a mistake you made, you said there was a point when you were showing up as one energized dude on a podcast or in a speech or in public and then you'd come home and you'd have very little to give your family when you were there. You said, “I was a little grumpy, little quiet, little distracted and almost a loop with my own family.” And then your dad said something to you. He said, "How about you be that dude in here every once in a while, be a little bit tired or aloof in public".

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Ed Mylett:

Well, by the way, I became really good at that, but my dad would say this to me all the time. Marie, it's an interesting thing. I've been really blessed, I've owned a bunch of different jets and my jet is hangared about a mile from where my dad lives, lived. I can't believe I just said that, where my father lived and he's never been on one of mine. He's never been on it. I used to call him “Dad, hey, let's go play golf in Maui, let's make this happen.” my dad would go, “Why would I go all the way to Maui to golf with my best friend? I don't care about where we are, I want to be with you. And so let's just play in Chino.” And I couldn't get him to go and my dad would always bring it back to always, what kind of a husband are you? What kind of a father are you? What kind of a man are you being? Are you being philanthropic? Are you being a good man? Are you keeping your word? Do you keep your commitments?

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And really coming from a family like that served me tremendously, but there was a stage in my life where I became so obsessed with trying to not be broke and trying to win and trying to make something great happen for my family, that I did pour all my energy. Here's what I learned. What I did is I had my entire business life and then I try to fit my family in around it. And when my dad said that to me that day, I'm a strategy guy that's why the book's so strategically based. And I said, "What would I need to do?"

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And so what I started to do, I changed it about 16 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, is I schedule my family things first and then my life's around that. And so they're first in my calendar, show me your calendar and I'll pretty much show you your priorities in your life, show me the way you manage your time. And so I just started where's Bella's game? This is quiet time with him, this is where I'm going to take a walk with Max, this is my date night with Kristianna and so then everybody else scheduled around them.

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So, that really changed. That's not something I'm proud of. There's many times Marie, where Kristianna will go, remember when Bella and I have to be honest and say no. And she goes, well, you were actually there, but I wasn't there. And if anyone can learn lessons from me, hopefully you can learn lessons from me on what to do, but I can also at 51 years old, save you some time and tell you that no amount of money I've ever made in my life, no external amounts of success have been anywhere near as important at this stage of my life as the time and moments with my family and learning to be present and I've worked very hard at that. I've worked really hard at being a present person with my family and not just in business and by the way, treating them better than I treat strangers, treating them better than I treat even my friends. My family should be first and I've gotten pretty good at it I think now.

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Marie:

Yeah. No, we're all a work in progress and the reason I brought up that story though, is because I think in our culture and where we are right now and especially for those in our audience who do similar things or they have some type of public-facing persona, whether they're in real estate or they're a chef or it doesn't matter what their business might be, we're just living in a time where it's like, you almost feel pulled to give it all and to show up and to have this exterior where you've got all it together all the time and so I always try as much as I can on the show to share it with people, it's like, I am not always happy 24/7. I have my down times, I catch myself, I am that continual work and progress so that people don't feel in their quiet moments alone like they're not enough or if they made mistakes like this showing up… Yeah.

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Ed Mylett:

I’m with you. When you become Marie and I try to be that way too, you'll see each other's stuff. I'm like, hey, I'm having a really bad day or I'm down, and the reason is that there's people... I want to be aspirational, not always just inspirational and aspirational means I'd like to be more like him, I'd like to be vulnerable, I'd like to have weaknesses, I want to overcome things, I want to give you hope not think I'm unapproachable and perfect and I'm not. You write books oftentimes to heal yourself, you teach things that you need to learn and so this book is loaded with things I do very well, but then sometimes when I do an interview about the book and I'm so glad we're talking about this, I get off of it and I feel a little bit guilty because there was no room in the interview to share some truth, which is that there are things in this book I don't do regularly that I need to do more of.

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And I want people to not when they listen to me go, wow, this guy has his act together. I want them to go... I say in the first page of the book, I know you because I am you. I know what it's like to have fears, I know what it's like to have anxiety, I know what it's like to worry, I know what it's like to get somewhere and go, it didn't feel quite like I thought it would feel, I know what it's like to have imposter syndrome, I know what it's like to self loathe after a speech and go, my God, you forgot this, you should have said that, why didn't you do this? I know what all of that's like. And I also know what it's like when I overcome it and I know what it's like to have strategies and tools that go, no, you don't win this time Mr. Not Confident.

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Marie: 

That’s right.

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Ed Mylett:

The self confident guy stepping up and here's how I do it. 

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Marie:

Yep.

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Ed Mylett:

And so it's like a weapon I use against it sometimes.

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Marie:

That's right. I love in the book, you talk about better questions lead to better answers and that's one of the tools that I'm always looking at, trying to dig around in this mind of mine that can be a very tricky place at times. There's so much power in asking questions and then doing the work. Can you talk to us about the one that's used by the Navy SEALs, this notion of what part of this situation can I control right now? How does that show up for you? How have you seen it show up for your clients or any other questions that…

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Ed Mylett:

It's a biggy. What our mind will normally move towards is what we're afraid of and what we can't control, it's where we go. What's this thing I can... In fact, oftentimes if I'm not careful when I wake up, the first thoughts I'll have is, what am I worried about today? What can't I control in this situation? The SEALs are really good at teaching that, finding immediately what you can control even if it's a small thing, because that gives us a sense of control and typically one thing can lead to another. So, where it shows up for me often, actually just questions in general is, I'm really conscious of... I have a chapter in the book about one more thought, another one on one more question and the reason they go together is what is thinking?

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If you actually think what's a thought? A thought is actually the internal process of asking and answering a question to yourself. And so if you can change the questions in your life, you actually change your thoughts. And so if you don't change the questions, you will not change your thoughts and our mind moves towards what it's most familiar with. Emotionally, we have an emotional home, we have a thought home and so we move towards what we think about most often, even if it doesn't serve us. I realized something about me. I'm talking about all these things I'm weak at in this interview which is great.

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Marie:

By the way, it's making me fall even more in love with you because we know your power, we know your strength, we see that, but this is this other side of you that makes us even more in love with who you are.

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Ed Mylett:

Thank you. I realize a lot about my... As I get older, a few things, one, I don't know as much as I thought I knew. And two, but what I wrote in the book, I know and and I know and I know it works, but one thing I realize about me is you have an emotional thought home. And so my normal thought... My father, God bless him. We get installed these softwares programs in our thinking by people who love us, but it's when we're young and they project their limited thinking into us or their emotional state and we end up adopting. Most things as a child are caught, not taught, you catch it. And so one of mine is my dad more than a thousand times in my life Marie, when we hang up the phone, he’d go, “Hey, I love you.” And he’d go, “Be careful.”

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He didn't even know he was saying it. I'm 50 years old before my dad passed away, “Hey, have a good speech out there, be careful.” “How'd the flight go?” “It went great.” He goes, “Good. Hey, you and Kristianna going to dinner?” “We're going.” “Hey, be careful.” I have no idea what that even means, but if you tell someone that a thousand times in their little boy, what do I walk out into the world? What do I need to be afraid of? What do I need to be worried about? Who's coming to get me? How can I lose here? I might blow it. So, I've lived with this internal fear. That's one thing I realized about myself. I don't need to be careful, dad.

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I don’t need to be careful. That's not a great way to go through life, it's not a great premise to live a life is being careful all the time. How about be peaceful, be bold, be passionate, but that wasn't what he would say to me. The other thing I realized about myself is that I love chaos. In fact, I've bragged for years, I operate great under chaos. Is that really how I want to live? So, the fact that I'm functional in it, do I want to live with chaos? But it's one of my primary emotional homes. In any given week, you have four or five emotions in your life, no matter what the external conditions are, you're going to find a way to get your emotion. You're going to find a way to get your worry, your peace, your joy, your ecstasy, your anger, your chaos and for me, I got them to where they're all really ones that I loved except chaos.

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So, no matter how good things are going, I got to stir it up, mess it up and make it better and fix it and I finally just determined. I don't want to live in chaos and the reason I live in chaos is I was a son of an alcoholic. I grew up in a chaos home, I'm familiar with it, so even if it doesn't feel good, even if it doesn't serve me, it's familiar and we move towards what's familiar. And so long answer is, when you change the questions and you become aware, the emotion and the thought loses its power over you and you are now in the game to change those emotions and those thoughts when you change the questions. And often it's as simple for me Marie, as going, what would I need to believe about this so that it would serve me?

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I literally play that basic game. What would I need to believe about my dad dying? I could say I watched him suffer for eight years, my best friend's gone, his grandchildren will never talk to him again. I could focus on all of those things and ask those questions. God, why'd you take him? Why'd you make him suffer? If there's a God or a universe, why would you have my father suffer like that? So, I could choose to ask those questions and I'll get those beliefs and those answers or I could change and say, what do I need to believe about my father's passing that would serve me? And that's what I've done. And from that, I've created a series of answers that give me a beautiful set of emotions that ended up being a book.

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Marie:

I love that. Isn't it interesting again, I raise my hand to this, how so many of us can hold onto something that doesn't work whether it's an aspect of our business, it's an aspect of our emotional home, it's an aspect of a relationship, it's an aspect of our creation that is no longer working, but we hold tight because it's comfortable. It's like a binky or a blanket and we're afraid of what's on the other side of the unknown.

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Ed Mylett:

Marie. I think you just defined the limitations in our lives.

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Marie:

Yeah.

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Ed Mylett:

The premise of the book is really pretty simple, it's that you're one decision, one relationship, one thought, one new emotion, one interview, one book away from completely changing your life, but you will never see those one mores if you hold onto these things that don't serve, you'll miss them and you know the power of one more in your life when I take it from you. I just want you to think about this, how blessed you are if you're listening to this. My favorite thing to do in the world is to golf with my dad and neither one of us were any good. It was my favorite thing. It was five hours with my best friend and we would just talk and we'd talk spirituality. We viewed that even differently, politics, life, deep conversations, but Marie, do you know what I would give for one more round of golf with my dad?

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Just to watch my father walk across the green again and come towards the golf cart with his big old floppy hat on and get in, put his arm around me he goes, “That's a pretty good putt, wasn't it?” I go, “Good putt dad.” Do you know what I would give for one more of those? What if I told you only have one more conversation with your sweetheart, how different and precious would that be? One more dance with them, one more chance to hold their hand, one more talk with your father or your mother if you're blessed to still have it, one more time to walk in and see Bella, I love you Bella boo. What if I only had one more? And what if I started to look at my life a little bit more that way? I start to take these things as very precious that even a podcast, what if this was just one more? How much more present would I be?

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This is what creates presence. This is what creates change, where we understand that things are finite. I watched my father die with me holding his hand. I'm holding my father's hand when he died. Do you think my dad was worried about the things he was holding onto that didn't serve him anymore? See, what you have to understand is that someday you will have one more day, all of us will, our physical bodies, will have one more day. Napoleon Hill says, begin with the end in mind when you set a goal. What did you do with your life? What if you began with the end in mind and worked your way back? Man, I'm a better father because my father suffered through this. I'm a better businessman, I'm a better husband, I'm a better friend because I know how precious one mores are because I don't get one with my dad again. I don’t get that. And so just everyone should contemplate that just for a second.

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Marie:

I'm so excited about this book. I'm so excited for everyone to get this book because it's fantastic and I can feel your heart and soul in every word and I can feel all your lessons and all your challenges and all your triumphs. And I adore you as my friend and I'm so excited for this to get out there all over the world so people can understand and really live the power of one more. Ed, is there anything else that you want to leave our listeners and our watchers with today?

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Ed Mylett:

Well, I love you. Thank you for today. And that just that you were born to do something great with your life and you deserve to be happy and you deserve to win and oftentimes it's just easy to forget that and we just think it's not us and the truth of the matter is you were born to do something great. People ask me all the time, Marie, “In your family, you're the most successful person.” I say, “I don't really know that's true.” I think success is when your life matches your vision, when you make a life that matches your vision. And I have a sister who's blind, most people don't know that my middle sister Andrea is blind and she's a Christian school teacher, a little Christian school and she's at least as successful if not more than me. She makes $38,000 a year because that's not her priority in her life, her priority in her life is to teach children to be with children and what she's done is she's taken advantage of her gifts and use them in the service of other people.

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She's kind, she's generous, she's patient, she can't grade papers, she can't drive, but she can show up every day and love those kids and teach and she's 4’11” so she's the same height as all of them and she's living a totally successful and blissful life. She was born to do something great and she's doing it and so is I, and so is Marie, and so are you and it's about time you get after doing that in a different level. And I would just say, I sound like a book salesman, but if you read my book, I will help you do that better. You'll be happier and more successful. Some of the chapters will resonate with you more than others, but there'll be a few in there that will hit you like a bolt of lightning and there'll be something you'll use as a tool or a strategy the rest of your life, because you're supposed to do something great. So that's what I would leave everybody with.

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Marie:

Ed, I wish I could reach through the screen right now…

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Ed Mylett:

Me too.

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Marie:

And InstaFace you.

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Ed Mylett:

We need to InstaFace, have some hash browns, and dance. That's what we need to do.

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Marie:

That’s right. That's exactly right. Thank you my dear friend for being who you are, thank you for shining your light so bright and for being the most loving and generous and kind human and maxing out, I still say it sometimes, I will tell you that was one of the things I was like, I'm going to max out, I'm going to do like my friend Ed, I'm going to max out right now. And I've been feeling next time we see each other we're going to max out on the dance floor and hopefully somebody will take a video of it.

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Ed Mylett:

Do it. I got to sprinkler waiting on you right here.

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Marie:

I love you dearly. I love you dearly.

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Ed Mylett:

Love you.

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Marie: 

Thank you so much and I'll see you soon. Are you fired up from watching that? It is time to take it even further. You got to click here and watch this interview with my friend and mentor Tony Robbins. It will help you change your life I promise. Click here, watch it now.

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Tony Robbins:

Problems need energy to live and some things you just don't give them an energy they're much easier to solve. Plus it's easier to solve something in a beautiful state than in a pissed off, freaked out state.