883: How to Thrive in Uncertainty and Chaos with Dan Thurmon

Pete Mockaitis
Dan, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Dan Thurmon
I am delighted to be here. Thanks, Pete, and great to be with your awesome audience.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, I’m excited to be chatting. And I think we first need to hear about some of your amazing physical feats that you do when you’re speaking, handstands, etc. What’s the story here?

Dan Thurmon
Well, I was a hyperactive kid who was getting in trouble constantly in school and at home. And, fortunately, I found a channel for that energy that was very positive in my life. I learned to juggle. I learned acrobatics when I was 11, 12 years old. And someone I always admired told me, “Never let this out of your life. Like, I see what this means to you. And as long as you do it, you’ll always be able to do it.”

So, I’ll be 55 this year, and, yeah, I’m still tumbling across stages and doing handstand pushups on the lecterns at my speeches, but not just because I can, but really to illustrate principles about balance and taking action in big bold ways, and the fact that balance is not what you get ever, it’s what you do, and we need to become better balancers, and learn to adapt to the uncertainty and actually use it to our advantage.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you said you started early, and you said if you kept doing it, you’d never lose it. So, if I am approaching 40, and I haven’t done handstand pushups before, is it still possible for me to learn?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, I think so. It all kind of comes into that whole, “What is your level of willingness? How much does it matter to you?” And then you can map the course to the ability, which handstand pushups is really about strength, it’s about flexibility and confidence, and it’s a road to get there. But if you’ve had some kind of measure in your past of physical activity, your body knows how to respond to exercise then you can likely get there, I would say, with the right coach. But how much time do you have? And how serious are you about the goal?

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you.

Dan Thurmon
That’s kind of the deal.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was randomly on YouTube and I encountered this fellow Chris Heria who’s doing these just fantastic feats, and he did something I’ve never seen before, and it blew my mind, and I was just like, “I want to do that.” It was a, I hadn’t even heard of it, a full planche pushup.

Dan Thurmon
Nice.

Pete Mockaitis
You probably know what that is, whereas, I didn’t. And for those listening, this is a pushup but your feet are not on the ground. They are hovering in the air. You’re basically flying by using your arms. I thought it was so cool and I just wanted to do that. But it sounds like it’s going to be a long road, Dan. Is that fair to say?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, you gotta start somewhere, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, we’re talking about Positive Chaos. Tell us, what is the scoop here with your latest book?

Dan Thurmon
Well, I was really excited about this book because the idea is that chaos is ever increasing, it’s all around us, it’s the word we hear coming up constantly, generally used to disrupt people, to make them dispirited or to feel like they have no control over their life, when, in fact, it’s true in some sense. There is greater uncertainty and greater opportunities.

And the divergent possibilities of how the future will unfold are exponentially increasing as a result of the openness of our systems and our technology, but you can use that to your advantage. It could be a great thing and it really is a chance, not only for you to be more awesome at your job, but also to help others because, let me tell you, we did some research about how chaos is hitting people right now, and it’s not good.

People are really struggling in many ways, and one out of four American workers think about quitting at least once a day. And that’s just their job. That doesn’t even get into anxiety and depression, and concern for loved ones, and even suicidal ideation. So, people need a tool to change their mindset and their skills around uncertainty, and that’s what this book is all about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, go ahead, paint a picture. We can hear the darkness, Dan. What is the state of play here in terms of chaos and how we are dealing?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah. So, anxiety is off the charts, depression. You could sense this all around you, and disengagement, perhaps not with this audience who understands self-improvement and motivation and determination, but in the people around you perhaps, that comes down to the economy, fear. Financial concern is the number one type of chaos people are thinking about. And concern for others, concern for the people they really care about. Six percent of working Americans think about suicide at least once every day, which is just crazy when you think for every 100 people in the workforce, six of them are having these thoughts.

And so, I think the opportunity and the obligation for all of us is to recognize we need to be better encouragers of one another and help each other through this time because you never exactly know who those people may be. And so, don’t underestimate your own influence and the impact that you can make on those around you.

Because chaos is nothing more than that determined effort where it intersects uncertainty and randomness. But if you look at the future not as uncertain, but as unfolding in just new and interesting ways, you can be really curious about that and very much in control. And so, what I do in the book is also go into what chaos really is, chaos theory.

I don’t know if you know, but in 1962, Edward Norton Lorenz was trying to predict the weather, and he realized he couldn’t because little variable that he could not measure would amplify over time in enormous ways, and that’s mathematical chaos. He called it the Butterfly Effect, the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings could, theoretically, start a hurricane hundreds of miles away. And this became a very catchy phenomenon, this idea that little things change everything in big ways.

And so, the idea of going on offense and with positive chaos is that your inputs, your words, your actions, your intentional efforts, your interactions with others, will also amplify in enormous ways that you can’t even predict. So, we have an intention and a determination but the ripple effects of what you do and say is going to amplify probably more than it ever has before. So, owning that is a big, big part of this book, and I think of what’s really critical right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then we’ve seen the dark side of our relationship with uncertainty and the positive pictures that it’s unfolding. That’s sort of interesting and we’re curious about that, okay. Well, tell us, how can we get there?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, so when you think about chaos and the word itself, I break it into an acronym that people can kind of think about. A couple more quick statistics for you. Seventy-six percent of working Americans think chaos shortens people’s lives, 79% think it leads to mental health challenges, 81% of working Americans believe that being able to handle chaos well should be a requirement for all their leaders, and they really value that.

Even though money is such a big concern for everyone in their financial picture, especially in this economy, it’s like they would rather make less. Seventy percent of working Americans would rather make 10% less but work for someone who could handle chaos well. And so, how do you do that? In the book, I break it into three sections.

The first is to recognize things in a different way to be able to see the patterns that are at work in your life, in your business, in the world around you a little bit differently. And then you can learn to respond in a new way. And then you can realize different results over time in huge ways. But the response is critical, and it goes to that acronym for the word chaos. The negative aspect is challenging, hectic, anxious, overwhelming, stress.

Now, this is where most people are living right now, things are hard, things are moving too fast, they feel hecticness, an anxiety, which is the negative projection about the future. They’re fearful about what’s happening and they feel overwhelmed because it’s just too much, and it’s all on them, and they’re pulled apart by this stress that they live with, makes it hard to sleep, makes it hard to work, and hard to be awesome.

But when we take control over those, over our response system, and we can see things in new ways, and recognize patterns, then we could change that. And so, the acronym, or the five transformations that I suggest and teach in the center section of the book take you to a different version, which is challenging, healthy, aspiring, ongoing, synergy.

So, it is hard, it’s going to be hard, but we self-prescribe intentional challenges. We ask for a course of learning. We learn things that are more difficult, and recognize, even though we can’t understand how everything will play out, we can create more certainty by determining we’re going to get better in specific ways.

And so, that intentional challenge is the first part. The second part is we move from hectic, which is just racing against life and pace and trying to fill every second, to a more healthy way to look at things, which is to understand we, first of all, need to prioritize health – mental health, physical health, and also find the space between the throws and catches.

I’m a juggler, okay? And so, just like Michael Gelb, who’s one of your recent guests, I learned to juggle and I found a huge amazing resource in my life for channeling my energy, for starting a business, paying my way through college, getting a business degree, and, ultimately, personal improvement, self-help, and really how do you develop a skill, what is learning, what is practice, all these things.

And, for me, juggling was also a great way to understand this concept of patterns, of how everything fits together, different challenges require new patterns, and complexity when you add something new, you really create an exponential version of something more difficult. But what you learn is, like, even if there’s five or seven objects in the air at once, there’s space between the throws and catches.

And part of moving from hectic to healthy is understanding you can’t race life, you can’t ever outrun the pace of change because it will always accelerate, but what we can do is create that space between what you were doing, what you’re doing next, what you hear and how you choose to respond. And it’s in that space that you become a greater instrument for self-intended direction and responsiveness. So, that’s hectic to healthy.

Aspiring is really a positive version of the future. So, rather than anxiety and being fixated on the potential negative aspects, which may or may not play out, we look at what’s getting better, what we want to improve in our life, the things, again, not just you’re choosing to develop in terms of skills, but what you stand for and what you value.

And when you focus on that, you’ll see it all around you in new ways, and it becomes an intentional focus. And the key is both things can be true at the same time. It’s like when I teach my whole audience how to balance peacock feathers. This is an exercise I do in my keynotes. I first have them do it while trying to look at their hand, which is nearly impossible. You can try this at home right now or in your car if you’re stopped. I know you don’t have a peacock feather but any long large object will do.

If you’re looking down, you can’t have any sense of prediction or control, but if you look at the top, immediately you know what’s going on. And so, it’s that change of perspective, both things can be true, we choose to see what’s aspiring. And then overwhelming to ongoing, it’s really important, Pete, because it recognizes that life is a series of repetitive patterns.

What you’re dealing with now, even though we may think of it as an unprecedented challenge, or a new role at work, or a new job task, it’s probably just another version of something you’ve dealt with in the past in some way. Finding those commonalities and those connections will help you to leverage into a measure of competence, like before you even try it.

And, also, this has to do with negative patterns or the things that we postpone learning or addressing in our own lives, relative to behaviors, or situations, relationship conflict, etc. If you just hit the snooze button on those things, they’ll just keep coming back in bigger and bigger ways. And so, we need to change that by moving into an ongoing approach to improvement.

And then you begin to see how it all fits together, and that’s where stress becomes synergy, and you see the connectedness of how, really, kind of everything affects everything all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool in that, yes, indeed, the same uncertainty we can internalize and experience completely differently. And I’ve been doing some of my own reflection in terms of when it comes to fear and excitement, physiologically it can be quite similar in terms of how like you’re breathing, what your palms are doing, like going up for a speech. It’s like, “Ooh,” some people say, “Oh, I’m so excited.” Some people say, “I’m so scared,” even though, physiologically, what’s going on in their bodies can be pretty darn similar but they’ve interpreted it differently.

Or, some folks would say, “Oh, I’m so bored. There’s nothing to do,” versus others might say, “Oh, I’m so content and peaceful here. I don’t have to do anything. It’s awesome.” So, what fascinates me is that sometimes the same stimulus on a different day, I will experience totally differently. Like, “Oh, I’m going to be interviewing four people today. That’s so awesome. I’m going to do so much learning and discovery and adventure,” versus, like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got too much work. I’ve got all this stuff back-to-back, and now I’ve got four people I’m interviewing today.”

So, it’s just fascinating that we humans are such enigmatic creatures that this could be the case. What’s up with this, Dan? Solve it for us.

Dan Thurmon
Well, we can always find something to complain about, and it’s really one of the prerequisites for this positive mindset. It seems like passé these days to say, “I’m a positive person,” or, “I default toward looking on the bright side of things.” That almost seems cliché in, like, an embarrassing way because sarcasm and negativity has become such a part of acceptable culture, and it’s almost like when people get together, that’s how they relate, is we talk about what we can both agree is crappy.

And to say what’s wonderful in the world, you come off as kind of like a freak of nature sometimes. But this whole idea of being a victim is one of those aspects you need to let go. Talk about the price of positive, like if you really want to engage this mindset and change life and change others for the better, you have to let go of negative people, you have to choose not to take the bait when people try to pull you into those negative conversations.

And sometimes that means, like, relationships, you need to kind of distance yourself and be the model for a different way, and that means sometimes others will draw away from you. And then this whole notion of victimhood because, yeah, things can be horribly awful and tragic, and yet in the middle of that, you can find amazing joy and discovery and knowledge and growth. And you might not see it right away, but if you open yourself to that possibility, you’ll get through it so much more quickly. So, yeah, that is our nature, is to look down.

It’s also part of our physiology. It’s part of that protective instinct to guard against potential threats in our world, which could cause us physical harm, or take away our source of food, or our source of intimacy and relationships. So, we do have that natural tendency. That’s part of our physiology, not just our personalities.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d also love to get your take in terms of just day-to-day, what are the practices, either immediately in the heat of the moment, or just sort of ongoing each day that we can conduct so that we are more frequently engaging the chaos in a pleasant positive way as oppose to, “Ugh, I’m freaking out” kind of a way?

Dan Thurmon
Freaking out, right? Well, what you should be thinking about is complexity and stability. And so, a more stable system will be able to endure some change and some threats and some flexibility. So, wherever you get stability in your life, double down on that. So, that could be physical health, it could be a spiritual practice, great relationships with family and friends, the people you surround yourself with. Really lock down your source of, like, the go-to place to get centered and stable and connected in your life.

Then you also need to look at the complexities of life in a few different ways. Simplify where you can. Like, wherever you can remove unnecessary complexity, like that’s probably a good thing. So, if there are some commitments you can let go of, now is probably a good time and create some space in your life to say no to some things that, as a default, you typically would accept. Do it in a loving way, do it in a kind way, etc. but create some space and some simplicity, and find better ways.

Always look at your systems of how you operate or the things that we do, and say, “Is there an easier way? Is there an easier way to make this happen?” With technology, there typically is. There’s a lot of ways we can remove complexity. But then some of the complexity is necessary because our lives are complex, problems are complex, and so necessary complexity is really important because you can create more chaos by trying to oversimplify something that’s not that simple.

And so, if you’re going into a business venture, or you’re starting a new job, or you’re trying to solve a really complex problem, but your only options are this or that, and you think it’s going to be simple, yeah, you’re going to learn really quickly that that’s not the right answer. And that’s what people do with really big issues.

In the book, I have a case study, for example, about violence in schools, gun violence, school shootings, which people will typically, in conversation, just break it down to one issue or another issue, and the reality is it’s incredibly complex. And one of my clients, Navigate360, the CEO is actually really addressing this problem and making incredible strides, but it’s very complex because it involves, like, how do you approach, yes, a smart conversation around gun policy.

But also, like, early intervention and identifying the possibility of people in your school that might be at risk in de-stigmatizing mental illness and creating a sense of stability through acceptance and a sense of what’s important in kids’ lives, and really going after this in a holistic way. It’s a big deal, right? But there’s a lot of unnecessary complexity that we might choose.

So, complexity we choose are things, like, we say, “I could go this easy way through this process, but I want to make it better, or I want to make it uniquely my own, and so I’m intentionally adding some complexity, and I’m choosing that.” And we choose complexity when we have kids, and when we get married.

I dedicated the book to my wife, I said, “To Shay, my wife, my stability in chaos, and the complexity I choose,” because, hey, marriage is a very complex way to go through life. It creates stability in some sense, but other ways that things are just going to always be more interesting because you involve someone else.

And then the third piece of complexity is the malevolence that really is out there. People who are intentionally trying to disrupt you, to either compete with you in a business sense or in a job sense, but also there are malevolent forces at work who are hacking into our computer systems and destabilizing governments, and trying to steal your money. That’s all out there, too. And so, there’s just a lot to think through but it’s helpful to compartmentalize that complexity.

And then, also, look for the patterns because you might not realize you’ve been going through the same thing over and over in your life, whether it’s a relationship issue, or a job challenge, or professional challenge, or money, how you handle money. And those things will come back bigger each time if you don’t address them the right way, or if you don’t address them a new way.

And so, interrupting those patterns is really, really important. If something happens once in your life, it may be an anomaly. If it happens twice, it should get your attention. And if it happens three times, it’s definitely a pattern. And so, it’s either going to keep happening in bigger ways or you have to change it up. You’ve got to say or do something different.

But the key is really to recognize, again, you don’t have to make big, bold, enormous shifts to create a huge difference. Just like with the Butterfly Effect, little things change everything. So, the big question to ask yourself is, “What is the one thing that could possibly change everything?” Relative to your job, if there was one skill you could learn that would change everything about how you contribute, or how you respond, or how you show up, what would that one thing be?

Because we have a tendency to, like, say, “I want to take in everything, the totality of the big picture,” but when we drill it down to the one thing, then we can find something we can really start to do. And for most of us, it’s language, it’s how we use our words, how we talk in our thoughts to ourselves, how we speak to others. Begin to change those little things and you’ll see some big results.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Wow, there’s so much to follow up here. Okay. So, stability and simplification, I’m thinking one piece of resistance folks might have to some of these pursuits is just simply, “Dan, those things are boring. It doesn’t sound fun or entertaining to do that.” How do you respond?

Dan Thurmon
I think you can make it incredibly interesting. So, stability is not predictability, right? It’s not trying to keep change at bay. Again, we’re inviting the chaos, we’re creating positive chaos, but we’re finding a sense of self. And you could find stability just by knowing yourself to a greater degree. What do you love? What do you value? What are your principles, your life mission?” That’s a part of the process of the book is leading you to really get clear on your intentions because those are the things, once you know what that is, those become your inputs, and they amplify in huge ways, and you begin to get so much more opportunity in your life.

So, stability is not, again, it’s not predictability. It is a sense of grounded-ness. Like, physical health, yeah, you’re going to have a more stable life if you can show up to any situation with a bit more energy and with a bit more mental wellbeing, and you’ll also be able to be there for others. So, your stability becomes the tool you can use to help the people around you.

Pete Mockaitis
When you talk about simplifying, can you share some examples of some specific areas of life or work and/or interventions that are just fantastic for simplifying and a lot of us would get a lot of bang for our buck by just going ahead and doing that simplification process?

Dan Thurmon
Sure. So, the idea is less is more, right? And I think we were all kind of forced through a simplification process during COVID, during the pandemic, where our lives were stripped down to the basics. And a lot of what we did, just by default because we’d accumulated all of these habits and routines and extraneous activity in our life, was sort of stripped away to the basics.

And many of us were able to recognize in that moment, if you go back to it, what really worked well and what wasn’t working. And for some of us, that was really painful. It’s like relationships were broken, things were in trouble, and we couldn’t do some of the things we really loved to do. And so, if you think about that, you had a sense of clarity of what really mattered in your life.

And I think a lot of this is happening naturally, Pete, like, people have simplified their lives, and said, “I don’t need to reengage with everything I was doing before. Less is more. And maybe I’m just going to keep it a little bit more basic.” I would also say that when we think about, like, how we work and how we contribute, getting back to the theme of the podcast and how to be awesome, it’s about really showing up and doing your job.

It’s wonderful to understand the synergy and the complexity of what’s all around you, but there’s something, there’s one thing probably you’re really responsible for. And if you take care of that and just nail it, like your value to the entire organization, company, team, to the world maybe, who knows, it just escalates. So, just think about that.

Simplifying is really about prioritizing. And so, if it’s everything, “I want a little bit of everything,” you’re going to always be spread too thin. But if you had to prioritize, what would you put at the top of the list?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then when it comes to, you said many of us can get a big return on checking our language, including what we say to ourselves, can you provide some perspective there in terms of what are some problematic self-talk patterns that you’ve encountered? And what are some ways to approach them?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, it really bothers me when people say things like, “I’m so stupid,” or, “I could never handle this,” “I’m always this way. I always make this mistake.” It’s like, in a way, you’re doubling down and reinforcing that pattern as opposed to interrupting it by creating some possibility, like, “I’m still learning this,” or, “I’m working on this,” or, “I’m getting better in this regard.”

If you were to find a way to frame your process and even your struggles as a journey that’s moving forward, then you create that sense of trajectory. Improvement, goals are really important. I’m a big fan and believer in goals, but, really, it’s about momentum. We got to have a sense of forward motion, a trajectory, which is a feeling that things are getting better over time, not every day, but over time my trajectory is going upwards.

And then alignment, that I feel like I’m more and more in alignment with the set of values and principles that, if you’re serious about personal growth and lifelong learning, will continue to come into greater clarity over the course of your life. So, you’re never really done with this. We’re just working toward that goal.

So, I would just be very careful about your language. The other things, just very simply, is people say, “I have to. I have the sense of obligation. I would love to do that but I have to do this.” It seems very innocuous. But saying you have to is a sense of obligation that deprives you from the value of intentionally getting it done.

If you were to say, “I need to,” just that one change from “have to” to “need to,” “Yeah, I need to do this first.” Well, now you’ve recognized “This is important, this is really important. Yes, maybe it’s an obligation of my job but my job is important to me.” “It’s an obligation of my relationship. I have to see my parents.” But, no, “I need to see my parents because I value them and I love them.” So, you get credit for doing the right thing as opposed to an obligation, “I have to” where you’re just kind of like at the mercy of your life, and at the mercy of your calendar.

And then the next level even above that is “get to.” So, if you were to say “I get to go to work today,” even higher than “I have to…” “I need to…” Hey, a lot of people don’t have a job, a lot of people don’t have a sense of purpose, a lot of people don’t have loved ones they get to visit, or people they get to provide for, or sacrifices they get to make to demonstrate what’s important to them in their life.

And so, these are small subtle ways that you can change your language and your internal thoughts and also change your perspective of your external world which changes everything.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And I think “need to” is a nice little bridge because sometimes “get to,” I’ve tried that and sometimes it’s like, “Pete, I’m just not buying it. I know what you’re trying to do here, brain, but I’m still not looking forward to that thing.” But “need to” is like, “Okay, yeah, we acknowledge this a value, this is important, and, thus, need to feels fair.”

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, and also it might be a commitment, “So, I need to do this because I said I would. And I’m the type of person that follows through on commitments.” And so, all of that just builds reinforcement of your values, your principles, and helps you to move through life in that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, if you do catch yourself in a thought, just like, “Oh, this is such bull crap. I can’t believe they’re doing this to me. They should appreciate my efforts, blah, blah, blah,” or, “Oh, man, I’ve screwed it up again. I’m never going to be able to…” so, whatever. You’re in the stuff, you’re thinking it. What’s the best approach? Do you want to play police officer to your brain, like, “Halt! No, no, no”? Or, how do you talk yourself through those moments?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, that would be a great example of where you recognize a pattern. So, is that something that happens frequently or is it an occasional thing? And if you see yourself going down that road, you’re probably not in a good state of mind to make a decision. So, you have to interrupt the pattern, and you could do that in a number of different ways. You can’t just disengage from the situation. Go for a walk. You can find things that will uplift you.

And the best way to know what will help you become more resourceful through those moments is to not find them when you’re frustrated or when you’re struggling, but to basically acknowledge them when you’re doing well. So, when you’re not in that state, when things are rocking, and you’re feeling strong and life seems easy to you, that’s when you go, “Okay, what am I doing here? Like, what am I thinking? Who am I around at this moment? What did I just do to prepare for this physically, mentally, whatever?”

And then those become your go-to’s when you’re back in that unresourceful state, and you’re like, “Okay, crap. This is not good. This is stinking thinking. I need to get out of this.” Or, you can indulge it because that feels good for a while, if that serves you, but just recognize, like, the longer you stay there, the longer you’re preventing yourself from getting out of it, and that you’re also reinforcing that pattern.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Dan, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, so in this whole world of how you can become a better influencer and the little things that really can change things in big ways, one of those I really wanted to mention is how you can activate the people around you. When you see others, again, understand a lot of people are really struggling right now, and we can help them only by naming their strengths, by basically telling them what we admire about them, or what they’ve done well.

And just think about that as almost like a superpower that you have to flip a switch inside someone that makes them want to do that more. I remember all the great mentors in my life, all the great leadership opportunities in my life, from my earliest days when I started performing to leadership positions within the National Speakers Association, or bigger opportunities with new clients, etc. Other people generally saw those things in me before I saw them in myself, and they named them. They were like, “Dan, I could see you in this role.” I was like, “Really? You think I could do that?”

And so, right now you might be thinking about people who did that for you. Understand this is a power that you have. So, just by going through your day with a little bit more awareness of the people around you, in saying, “Pete, you’re an awesome listener. You’re a great podcast host. I really have enjoyed listening to the episodes. Amazing.”

Or, Stephanie, who’s in the studio with us, “Stephanie is an incredible teammate of mine. She keeps me on schedule. Incredibly focused.” Like, those little things activate those qualities at a much higher level, and you help people kind of spiral up and get to the next level.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dan Thurmon
Sure. Okay, I’m sticking with the theme here. From Mother Teresa, she said, “We cannot all do great things but we can all do small things with great love.” That’s one of my wife’s favorites. So, in her honor, I thought I’d share that one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dan Thurmon
Well, the research, if you’ll indulge me, I would mention the impact of chaos study on the American workforce, which is DanThurmon.com/research. And that is something I’m going to quote quite a bit because it’s not just about the things that are wrong, but it’s, like, 10 insights that we can use both as individuals and as leaders, and here’s how to help make that work for you. So, go to that study.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, I have so many favorite books but the one that I decided to share is Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. This is something I keep going back to and listening to. It has an audiobook in his own voice. And one of my favorite things to do is ride my mountain unicycle through the woods, listening to Eckhart Tolle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, that’s my own weirdness but it’s one of those skills I’ve kept alive. And so, unicycling for me is like the ultimate meditation, especially when you’re in the woods.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Dan Thurmon
Right here, man, the Thera Cane. Do you know the Thera Cane?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve seen one before but I didn’t know what it’s for.

Dan Thurmon
So, if you’re listening to the podcast, it’s a big hook. It’s a cane with handles on it at the bottom and knobs on the top, and it’s for self-massage. So, as an aging acrobat and gymnast who’s always getting ready for shows, what it helps you do is to really get into those deep cracks and the tensed muscles in your neck and back and hips, and loosen them up without a lot of extra effort. I have one of these in every one of my cases, in my office, at my house, in my car. I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I feel like I can talk 20 minutes about the Thera Cane alone. Maybe I need them to send me a product, as a podcast. So, the idea is you sort of like put pressure on a stiff tight sore point on your shoulder or body, and then it makes it better?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, exactly. If you’ve ever had, like, a stiff shoulder, and you try to work it out but you’re working it out with your other hand, so you’re rubbing on it, it takes a lot of effort and energy.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a little hard to reach.

Dan Thurmon
You’re working on the other one, this gives you leverage. So, it’s like a crowbar for your back and it flexes a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you could use it with two hands instead of one.

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, exactly. And you just kind of work it into that muscle. You could do the hips. You use these knobs on the side for the legs. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I love it.

Dan Thurmon
I make no money on this, by the way, the Thera Cane.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I appreciate. Well, sometimes I ask a favorite tool, folks would be like, “Oh, my iPhone,” or, “Google Sheets.” I was like, “Okay, yeah, those are pretty good tools.” Like, Thera Cane, first time ever, Dan. I appreciate it.

Dan Thurmon
I had to be different.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Dan Thurmon
Sure. So, for me, exercise and practice is every day. I do a thousand catches with juggling every single day, which sounds like a lot but it takes like five minutes with five balls if I don’t drop. But if I do drop, I have to start over. I also do hot yoga, other things for exercise, but I would say the biggest habit for me that’s been very productive is every week I do a weekly coaching video.

They’re short, they’re like two and a half minutes, really well-written and produced from wherever I am in the world, and I just give it away for free on my blog and my LinkedIn channel and everywhere else we do social media. But it’s like this creative commitment to keep me on the hook to creating new content.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget that you share, maybe in one of these publications, that really connects and resonates with folks?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, sure. So, I try to get something of a nugget in every week that’s meaningful but the biggest ones from my keynote, I’ll give you two. One is, “If you limit yourself to what’s comfortable, you deny yourself what’s possible.” And the second one is, “If you think what you’re doing now is difficult, it’s time to try something harder.”

And that goes back to a story of learning to juggle, going to four, learning a whole new pattern with four, and then struggling with four. As I was doing that, struggling with four balls, my three-ball juggling was getting really easy, and I never got the hang of four until I tried five. So, if you think what you’re doing now is difficult, try something harder.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Dan Thurmon
DanThurmon.com, Thurmon with an O, so it’s T-H-U-R-M-O-N.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Dan Thurmon
Yeah, I think I’ll go back to kind of where we started, is don’t ever assume that someone else is okay, or that they understand their own strength or what makes them unique. Go out of your way and tell them and acknowledge that, and you’re going to change their life in a big way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dan, this has been a treat. Thanks, and keep on rocking.