467: Finding Internal Clarity and Purpose with Paul Durham

Pete Mockaitis
Paul, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Paul Durham
You’re welcome, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we have so much fun stuff to dig into. But I want to go to a moment in which you said your band was playing and you had 70,000 people throwing mud at you. What is this?

Paul Durham
Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. It was more like only the thousand people in front were throwing mud at us, so 2,000 it seemed.

Pete Mockaitis
Were they pleased or angry? Why were they throwing the mud?

Paul Durham
We were in Florida. It was a little bit of a mystery. It was 1998, my band was on tour. We had a song on MTV, and a song in the Top 40, I think top 5. Like, rock and alternative track, so we were playing all these big radio festivals. We’re opening for Foo Fighters and Green Day, and all this kind of classic ‘90s band. And when we hit the stage in Florida, they seemed like they liked us but I think it had rained. And I think throwing a little bit of mud at the band was just kind of part of the fun, which is not so great when you’re playing like a $4,000 vintage electric guitar, which we were young, we didn’t know better at the time. You take your crappy guitars out on tour with you.

But, anyway, my bass player got very irritated and then, finally, at some point, threw the whole audience the finger, and waved his arms in the universal signal for bring it on. And a black cloud of mud descended on us from there. And, yeah, we were basically covered in mud, and we just played all the louder and harder at that point.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, was any of the equipment destroyed?

Paul Durham
No, but our poor crew guy was up all night pulling mud out of like the hollow body and the drums.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s the glamor of rock and roll, huh?

Paul Durham
Well, I had our manager kick him an extra couple of hundred bucks because he was really above and beyond. We were idiots.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we all have kind of fun points of intersection. Now, you use my podcast microphone, the Shure Beta 87A when you’re singing on stage.

Paul Durham
I do. On stage, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Which is cool. And so that makes me feel all the more validated. Thank you for that. And I became aware of you from my father-in law, he said you do some really cool stuff with YearOne education which is for younger people, but I think there’s so many parallels and valuable takeaways. So, could you orient us to what do you do there and what kind of results do you see there?

Paul Durham
Well, I’ve been in the music business for 25 years, I’ve relied on mentors. And so, when the sons and daughters of my friends get interested in the music business, and their parents don’t know what to do, they ask me if I can mentor them, which I’m always really happy to do, and have been doing for years.

And then, several years ago, a friend of mine said, “Can I hire you to coach my son? He wants to drop out of college and go become a professional musician?” And I had been meeting with this kid and I recognized that some of my advice may have influenced his decision, which I then went into a moral panic, and I was like, “Yes, I will coach your son.” And he was like, “Well, how much should I pay you?” I said, “I have no idea.” So, he said, “How about $40,000? That’s what I’m spending on his private school.” And I was like, “Well, that seems like a bit much but how about half that?”

So, then I went home and realized, “Oh, I need to create a curriculum to justify charging money for this thing that I’ve been doing for years.” And, in creating that curriculum, I got really excited about the idea of creating a framework for young people who are smart and ambitious and interested in things, but maybe not the best fit for going to college, not ready to go work at 7-Eleven either, but something in between.

And then I really started realizing that pretty much kids who are going to college as well should probably take a year. They’ve been in school for 13 years, like three quarters of their life, maybe they just want to take a year, figure a few things out, get some experience under their belt, grow up a little bit, get some skills so that when they do head to college, and they face the culture shock of being totally responsible for themselves, their eating, their bedtimes, their homework. They’re not in school eight hours a day, and studying two hours a night. They’re in school for two hours a day and need to be studying a lot of the rest of that time. That’s a big shock.

That maybe if they went to a program and got some preparation, that they would be much more likely to be successful in college, which is good, given how incredibly expensive college has become. Three times more expensive than when you and I were in school and adjust the dollars. So, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I understand that as you engaged these folks, you see some real transformation. So, could you maybe tell us a tale or two that illustrates this?

Paul Durham
Well, it’s such a great age, 18, 19, 20, where people, especially the way we raise kids these days. They’ve really been under our thumb. That’s how I raised my son too. It’s sad but true. We’re really kind of overmanaging our children in such a way that when they hit 18, a lot of them don’t know very much about the real world.

And so, for example, Kaito, this friend’s son of mine, he was really unclear about paying rent, about getting a checking account, about how often the oil needed to be changed in his car, etc. And when we sat down and we started to work some of those out and started to help him get clear about his vision, to show him, plug him into a really effective powerful time management system, and getting responsible for his money and that kind of thing, he really just started to blossom in a way.

And we might think, “Oh, well, that’s something that parents should handle.” But I think we underestimate the fact that the degree to which teenagers don’t listen to their parents, you know. And as a culture, we have disconnected young people from mentors. And we’re hyper social species like bees and ants. We need more than just our parents to get ourselves raised into full adulthood. We need mentorship.

And so, I sort of recognized the power of having someone that a kid could rely on, that could hold them accountable. And, in Kaito’s case, he went from mastering a lot of kind of basic life skills into getting clear about what kind of music he wanted to record, and then going through a transition of connecting with him with a mentor in the music business who was a string player like himself. And he started doing publishing chores and kind of administration for that guy, and soon discovered, “Oh, my gosh, this is what I want to do. I don’t want to play music. I want to be in the business of music,” which was a big remarkable shift for him that he went through.

And then he just really got lit up. He just started reading music business books like crazy. This was a kid, we couldn’t even get him to read a novel. And now he’s reading music business books, he’s reading personal development books because he found that fire that I think most of us have experienced at different points in our life, that pointed him in a direction, and he just really went crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, to what extent do you see a similarity carry over in terms of professionals who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s and the teenagers?

Paul Durham
I think it’s really more similar than we would think. I do executive coaching with real estate developers and corporate guys in Silicon Valley. And I think we have this idea that we’re going to figure out what we’re really good at, and that once we figure out what we’re good at, we’re just going to keep doing that. It’s kind of this old industrial model where you go work at a job, and then get a gold watch at the end, you know.

And I just don’t think that’s how people actually are. I think passion is a moving target. And as we work, and as we master things, those passions shift and we become more interested in other things. And so, really getting clear about vision, everybody talks about this, but spending the time, going deep, going deep over time and continuing to develop that clarity of vision is so important and people staying connected to their work, staying connected to their job, staying connected to that business that they started, that they love, and now they’re tired of, staying connected to that role in their corporation that they were so excited to get, and it was so interesting for a few years and now it’s just not. It’s not that interesting.

It’s like we blame ourselves because we’re not being good cogs. But the fact is that our vision and interest have evolved but we have not kept up in terms of our awareness of that evolution. So, for me, when I work with an adult, it really begins with the clarity, the excavation, and the definition of vision. So, we can start from there.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, so let’s hear just that. So, how did you go about getting that clarity and excavating a vision?

Paul Durham
Well, I do a lot of guided journaling. I think writing is very powerful. I think when a client is talking to me, or they’re talking to their wife or husband, or they’re talking with their therapist or their boss, people bend themselves depending on who it is that they’re speaking to. But when you’re writing on pages that no one else is ever going to see, you don’t have to bend yourself. It’s the one safe space in which you can receive feedback from the person who knows you best, which is you.

I don’t like to tell people what to do a lot. It’s tempting as a coach because it’s fun to exercise power. But what I really try to do is to create frameworks in which people, in which I draw out of people what they know, the wisdom that they have, and the clarity that they have, which we just don’t take time in our cellphone, Netflix, driving to work kind of world. We just don’t take time. We got kids. We got jobs. It’s stressful. And if we don’t take that time, we don’t get the level of clarity that we really need to connect to our hearts and then to connect our hearts to our work.

So, yeah, I would say guided journaling, conversation, inquiry, really asking why, asking, “Okay, so you created this situation. Where is the benefit in it for you? Or maybe there isn’t a benefit. Okay, so what else would you want? What else would you imagine?” You give yourself permission to really, “What if failure wasn’t an option? What would your life look like? What would you try?” Just really kind of get people to expand beyond their survival emotional status that is arising for all of us week by week, and get into more of a visionary space where something else is possible, something different is possible.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, with the guided journaling, is it your view that pen and paper is superior than digital media?

Paul Durham
Absolutely. Maybe because I’ve been scribbling songs in notebooks for 30 years, but I have a huge prejudice against typing when it comes to really connecting to the deepest part of ourselves. I think this culture is like brains on a stick, and we’re not brains on a stick. We are bodies and the brain is a part of the body. So, for me, writing is really a great way that I find that I can connect to the wisdom of the body by moving my body, by moving my hand across the page, and having to navigate the whole physicality of it. I think that that actually evokes a lot of, yeah, just the body’s deeper wisdom.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you sort of mentioned a number of those questions pretty quickly. But could you highlight one or two or three that just seem to open up the floodgates of self-awareness and insight quite frequently?

Paul Durham
Yeah, it’s a lot of different things. I have people do a five-year exercise where you describe the life that you’re living five years from now. What kind of sheets are you sleeping in? What kind of house do you live in? Who’s beside you? What do you do for a living? What do you do with your days? What’s your physical exercise like? What’s your diet like? What is your life like in detail? So that people can really get a sense of, “There is a desire in my heart for a life that I have not yet achieved.”

And not that it’s all about more, better, different because a lot of times it’s just about settling into who you are and what you have. But that life that we can imagine often has important elements of what we’re not being true to in terms of who we are. Because maybe you’re not living on mansion on a beach. Maybe you’re living in South America and you’re providing healthcare to a village. Or maybe there’s some vision in you that you’re afraid to express because of the pressure of modern life that needs to come out and walk around a little bit, breathe.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So, you do some of these journaling. And, let’s say, once you zero in on something like, “Yes, that is a desire,” what then?

Paul Durham
Well, then we start testing it. Then we start testing it over time. Write some letters to your parents that you don’t mail to them. Write a letter to your spouse that you don’t give to them. Write a letter to yourself as a young person. Walk around in the world and feel what it’s like with that vision in you. It’s, all of a sudden, your job lit up because you recognize that there’s a way in which you can express that vision at work with your coworkers. Like, maybe there’s an element of service that emerges in your vision that you’re not actually expressing at work.

A lot of times people’s jobs are dead and dry because they are there for themselves and their families. And it’s not that we don’t serve our families by going off to work every day. But I find that without a service attitude, an attitude towards service, anything can get dry. You can be a singer or songwriter in a rock band, and it can get very dry if, for me, if I’m not thinking about the people who have sent me. Facebook messages in the middle of the night, saying, “You saved my life,” you know. It means a lot to me. And if I don’t think about those people in my work, the service I’m doing, then my work gets very much about logistics and technical craft and money, stuff like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And this is a theme that’s come up a few times and it’s amazing how easy it is to slip out of the service orientation and forget who you’re enriching, and then go focus on like what’s right in front of you, like, “There’s 83 emails. I need to answer them all.”

Paul Durham
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, boy, when you’re in that moment, what are some of your favorite ways to reconnect to the purpose and the service that’s going on there?

Paul Durham
Well, I mean, me, probably like a lot of other guests that you have, I really believe in structures, I believe in automating your finances, I believe in spending a lot of time leveraging time management tools. I think the FranklinCovey paper planners are unbelievably powerful. I think trying to organize, prioritize your life on a computer screen is, on some level, hopeless. That’s just my opinion. I think you need a separate device. It’s the same reason why I wear a watch so I don’t have to look at my phone to tell what time it is.

And I think it’s important to organize your email. Use smart folders so that you’re not staring at 10 emails. You’re staring at the two important emails. So, I think those things are really important. But I also just find that if you are looking at your phone first thing in the morning, and you’re prioritizing the world’s, it’s basically you’re putting the priorities of the world ahead of the priorities of yourself and your heart, whether it’s your boss or coworkers emailing you, or nonsense on Facebook, the fantasies that people put up on Instagram, just all the crap we poison ourselves with first thing in the morning.

Maybe we have 20, 30, 40 minutes before our kids wake up to actually be a person and figure out who we are. And I find that the most important thing is to take that time and to meditate, or to journal, or to exercise if you need to. But to do something that settles you into who you are into yourself and what’s important to you because, otherwise, the day, and we’re off to the races and the rest of the day doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to your email box.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intense. And so, we got some journaling, we got some smart practices associated with time management. Well, let’s say we just get one or two of these practices in terms of like that’s the most transformational and gets you the most kind of realigned to your desires and priorities. What would you say are some of the biggies there?

Paul Durham
In terms of the morning practices?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I guess the morning practices as well as it sounds like I don’t yet want to resign that the rest of the day is not mine.

Paul Durham
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
How can I get a little more for me?

Paul Durham
Okay. Well, I think weekly time management is critical. I love the FranklinCovey system where you figure out your roles and your goals so that you know what the absolute most important thing you need to do or the two most important things you need to do today as a father, or as a boss, or as a spouse, or as a person with a body who needs to exercise and eat a certain way.

I think defining those big rocks, as they call them, that whole metaphor of the guy comes in, he’s got a jar of big rocks and gravel and sand and water, and he’s like, “How am I going to get all this stuff in the jar?” And he’s like, “No, you can’t.” He’s like, “Well, I can.” But the way he does it, he puts the big rocks in first, then he puts the gravel, then he puts the sand, then he puts the water. And if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you can’t get all of the little rocks in the jar. So, it’s really starting with those big rocks.

And I find the weekly is vastly superior to daily.

Daily is just really kind of keeping your head above water. It’s weekly time management that we define, that we can sit back on a Sunday afternoon, and define the big priorities in our lives, and make sure that we’re taking one step forward in each one of those. And, yeah, it’s only one step, but you take one step forward in each of the main priorities, the main roles in your life, one year is going to go and you’re going to be a different person in one year.

Honestly, a lot of what I do in my coaching is just saying, “Look, we spend all this time getting clarity about these deep long-term goals that you’ve been putting off for a decade and that you really want to do. Okay, let’s take the steps because we’ve got to take the steps this week. Send me a picture of your weekly plan, and I’ll be holding you accountable a week from now.” I think that accountability is really powerful.

It’s easy for me to sit here and say all this stuff into the microphone, but in my own life, when I want to make a shift, I hire a coach because if I could’ve done it by myself, I would’ve done it. I have all the tools. I know what the tools are. If I haven’t made the shift, it’s because I need help. We need help as people. So, weekly time management, and if I had to point to one other thing other than really taking the time to get clarity of vision, doing a course.

I just saw there’s life book course where they guide you through all this stuff. I’m like, “Oh, I’ve been doing that.” It’s like, “Yeah, that’s important. It’s important to get clarity about your vision and what you really want, who you want to become. Who do you want to be? What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?” A lot of us are no on track to hit that target of who we want to be on our deathbed. And we think, “Well, I got the house paid for.” It’s like, “Man, none of that stuff matters.” Who you are and who you’re becoming, that’s what matters. That’s what’s going to matter to your kids. Not some Swiss watch you left them.

So, yeah, it’s the vision, it’s the weekly planning, and then it is connecting to your soul. And some people do that through meditation. I practice Zen meditation for years, and I love meditating, but I find that, nowadays, I wake up and I really want to get my day started, so I need something more active than meditation so I really turn to the journaling. And I find that you can get the artist way. That’s, really, I’ve been doing those daily morning pages for years, just sit down and write through pages. No matter what it is, or even if it’s like writing and writing, I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what to write, over and over. Pretty soon you will know what to write and you’ll connect to a source of wisdom about yourself that you didn’t know was there.

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess I’m curious to hear, if you think about some of your clients, the most dramatic transformations that you’ve witnessed, kind of what’s core to the human nature or condition when it comes to making change? And it’s kind of difficult for us. How do we succeed when we’re kind of in the thick of it?

Paul Durham
Well, I think it’s different for different people. I think it’s different at different age. I think we really have to honor our part in the lifecycle. When I was in my 30s, I was working 60 hours a week. I was just killing myself to build a number of different businesses, and that’s what I was interested in. And now, at 50, if I say, “Man, I just don’t have a 60-hour week in me anymore. I just don’t have it.” There’s a reason for that.

I think working with people at 18, 19 and 20, working with people in their late 30s, and then working with people kind of around 50 has helped me see that honoring lifecycle plays. A lot of guys who hit 42, 45, they’ve had some success, and the color just goes out of the world for them, and they’re like, “What’s wrong with me? I got a nice relationship, or I got a nice house, or I got nice kids, or I got a great job, or whatever. But, man, what is it? What is it that I have been neglecting all these years that now has finally caught up to me?”

And the solution for that is not to take testosterone and go to the gym five days a week and just try to bust your ass back down to 30 years old. The solution to that is to listen to what your lifecycle is pointing you towards. And, in doing that, that’s where I feel like I’ve had a lot of success for these young people. I’m like, “Get hungry. Get passionate. Make mistakes. Go make mistakes so you can learn how to fail, and you can build your resilience, and you cannot be afraid.”

But for someone, just get out there and do it. Just take people out to lunch, like interrupt people in the lobby, make a fool of yourself. Do whatever it takes. But for a man or a woman in their 50s, it might be very much more like, “Hey, maybe have you thought about working less? Have you thought about finding a way to stop trying to grow your career and start trying to grow your being?”

So, I don’t know, I would say the specific success stories, I don’t know, it’s also individual. Sometimes guys just need to be told what incredible jerks they are. Seriously. Like, sometimes they hire me to tell them what jerks they are because they’re just jerks, and no one will tell them because if anybody tells them that, everyone around them pays too high of a price. And they’re like, “Oh, man, I really am a jerk.” I’m like, “Yeah, maybe you should look into that.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Paul Durham
But, you know, we live in these isolated boxes and we insulate ourselves with money from the perspective and wisdom that others have of us and it’s too bad.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your take then in terms of how do we have less of that insulation and to get more valuable input from other people so we can see things more accurately?

Paul Durham
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I would say that another way in which 18-year-olds are the same as 45-year-olds is that 45-year-olds don’t take risks either. We just don’t take risks, man. We just stay in our comfort zone. We don’t go talk to people we don’t know at a party unless we absolutely have to. We don’t necessarily go take some online education course and take it really seriously or have a goal and really hire a coach and just say, “Look, I’m just going to take this money and I’m going to make this shift. I’m going to make this shift.”

And I think that there are opportunities all around us that many of those opportunities lie in the service realm, in the realm of volunteers, it’s like, “Oh, I need to spend time with my kids.” Okay, well, take your kids. Take your kids and go volunteer. Take your kids with you and go out for a day and do something that really helps other people in a direct fashion, not just write a cheque kind of fashion.

So, that’s what I would really say is that we don’t take risks. We are afraid to fail, “I’m afraid of signing up for that online education course that seems like really legit and like it would be speaking to exactly what I’m suffering with right now because what if I don’t take the time and I waste the money?” It’s like, “Okay, so you don’t take the time and waste the money. But if you did follow through, you know you would get 50 times the value back from that course.”

Or, “Oh, I’m stuck in my job. I don’t know what to do about it.” Well, there’s all kinds of nonsense that shows up in my Facebook feed every single day about starting your own business. Have you tried one of those? Because, yeah, maybe it will be nonsense and a scam, but maybe it would be real. You actually could like be able to quit your job, or at least learn more about business which you might be able to then bring back into your job and create more value and success there.

So, that’s what I would say. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s like the richer we get as Americans, the more afraid we get and the more risk-averse we get.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, boy, I don’t remember the quote. I think it was St. Augustine of Hippo said something about when we don’t have wealth, we just worry about how we’re going to survive and acquire it. And when we do have it, we worry about how we might lose it.

Paul Durham
I know. I know. Well, it’s like the Buddha saying, “Suffering comes from losing things and from having things,” because when we lose things, it’s painful. And then when we have things, we’re afraid of losing them, and that’s painful. So, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I also want to get your take in terms of when you’re in the moment and you know a certain thing needs to be done, it’s on your weekly plan, by golly, and you’re just not feeling it, how do you power through?

Paul Durham
Yeah, I don’t power through.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Paul Durham
That’s what I don’t do. When I was 30, I just power through, man. I could just eat a big, giant wheelbarrow full of crap from morning to night, all day long.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s quite an image.

Paul Durham
I just pile up those tasks and just motor through them. And, partly, I work a lot smarter now than I used to. But I would say go for a walk. Go walk around the block. Find out who you are. Just reconnect with who you are. You’ll get it done faster I promise you. You might, “Oh, I don’t have time.” Yeah, you have time. You have time to look at Instagram. You have time to waste your time. You’re returning emails that if you actually like were a little bit more centered you would recognize should be ignored.

So, that’s what I try to do more and more and more. Try to settle into who I am rather than what I have to do, what I’m trying to get. If I can settle into who I am, so much stuff falls away, so much stuff that doesn’t need to be dealt with, and certainly doesn’t need to be dealt with in a kind of unskillful fire-setting ways that happen when I just jump on it, “I’m just going to crank through this stuff.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess I’m thinking certainly there’s many things that we’d be better off not doing, that don’t fit us and need to go, so I’m right with you there. But I guess I’m thinking like if you’ve been through all the process associated with the journaling and the pondering and the identifying of a desire and, “Yes, that is very important, and then, yes, this is the key step I need to take in order to do that.” And then it’s the moment that you’ve calendared for yourself to do that, and you’re like, “Hey, I’m not really feeling it.” Then what?

Paul Durham
Totally. Yeah, it’s funny. I’m building a new business right now over the last few years, so this new education business for young people. And it’s a whole new world. I talk to people and they’re like, “Oh, you’re kind of making a new thing.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m making a new thing. There’s nothing I can go out and just rip off.” It’s very disheartening in moments.

And when I run up against that, if I have the presence of mind to think of my clients, to think about their lives, to think about the struggles that they have, to think about some of my clients that are a year or two out of the program and the lives that they’re living and the messages that I get from them and where they were when they started, and I think about, man, if I hadn’t kind of done this weird thing and put a bunch of time into developing something that I had no idea whether it would work, that kid would still be in her parents’ basement, in conflict with her parents about wanting to do something that she didn’t really know what it was, or she might be still using drugs or whatever.

It’s like I just get so stuck when I’m in myself and for myself. And I even extend that, even thinking about my son or my family, it’s like my son is kind of, in certain ways, an extension of myself. I’m doing this for my family. It’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re doing it for your family but there’s a way in which your family is an extension of yourself.”

And if I can take myself and de-center my perspective a little bit so that I’m thinking about my clients, I’m thinking about my collaborators, I think about my mentors, how much they’ve invested in me, so on the one hand I’m contradicting myself if I’m saying, “Yeah, this all should really come from your deepest internal vision.”

But I tell you, if your deepest internal vision doesn’t have a service portion, if it doesn’t encapsulate something, especially if you’re getting up there in years, if you’re not giving back on some level, it’s not going to do it for you. And the day-to-day process of executing that vision is also not going to do it for you if you lose sight of the people that you’re here to serve. So, that’s what I try to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. Well, Paul, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Paul Durham
No, I think I’ve been running my mouth a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, then could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Paul Durham
Something that I find inspiring.

Pete Mockaitis
As a quote, yeah.

Paul Durham
Well, I think I mentioned it earlier, which is a quote from the coach that I worked with and who kind of trained me to be a coach. He always used to say, “If you were going to do it, you would’ve done it. If you could’ve done it by yourself, you would’ve done it by yourself.”

And so, really, we need help. We need help. We need help from our friends, man. We need help from our enemies. We need help from people who have the hard truth to tell us, our nemesis at work, or the spouse that we’re in conflict. We need help from them. We need help from allies, from coaches, from mentors. And if we can bring ourselves to reach out, I’ve got to tell you, it’s like pulling teeth to get these kids to ask even just family and friends out for lunch, let alone potential mentors. It’s one of the biggest things I have to get them over.

And then I say to myself, “Yeah, but you’re the same way. You’re the same way. There’s people you know that could help you that you’re reticent to reach out to and ask for help.” So, I really try to. And when they have big breakthroughs, I really try to take that as a model for myself of reaching out. If you could’ve done it by yourself, you would’ve done it by yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Paul Durham
A favorite book. Well, I got to say I still really love “The War of Art.” I’m sure a lot of people say that on here. But it’s kind of a masculine book. There’s a lot of push to it. But in the spirit of reaching out and getting help, like that book is a resource where you can reach out and you can get help and you can be reminded that the thing you are resisting, you are resisting for a reason, and that that reason may very well be because it’s the thing you need to do, and we’re just scared of failing. In a way, we’re scared of being committed.

Everything I’ve been talking about is just about commitment basically. And when you commit to something, it’s scary because now you’re all in. So, that book can really help support that process of getting all in and rushing forward.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit?

Paul Durham
A favorite habit. Well, if I had to mention the habit that I like the most I would have to say Bulletproof Coffee. I really don’t like to eat in the morning, and having a cup of coffee with a bunch of fat in it allows me to get from when I wake up to when I actually want to eat, which is not usually until 11:00 or 12:00, so that is a good habit. It’s probably not a habit. It’s more of an addiction. So, here, I’ll try do better.

My favorite habit is to wake up in the morning and do something that provides a framework for me in which I can feel what I feel. Because I wake up and all kinds of things, you know, a weird dream, financial, relationship, parenting, business concerns. And if I can just, either through journaling or by meditation, or by kind of guided internal process, I can come to a place in which I feel what I actually feel, then that’s really valuable.

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

Paul Durham
So, my website is PaulDurham.com and from there you can go to YearOne, which is my program for 18 to 24-year-olds who want to take a gap year from college or who know they don’t want to go to college and are interested in forging a creative career through an apprenticeship model. Or you can connect to my coaching page, which I think I only have up because my GoDaddy client said I needed to have a website. All my clients come through word of mouth. So, yes, so I have a small website there as well, and then you can also connect to my band Black Lab.

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

Paul Durham
Yes, if you’re seeking to be awesome at your job, your coworkers are your number one resource. And the obstacle to accessing that resource is your pride and your fear. Like, your coworkers know who you are, they know what your strengths are, they know what your weaknesses are, and they can help you grow and develop. They can tell you strengths that you don’t even know that you have that you could really be capitalizing on. And they know the weaknesses that are crippling you and that are the reason why you didn’t get that promotion.

And so, if we can stop treating our coworkers as those neurotic annoyances in our life, and instead start looking them as valuable mentors, and even if they’re 20 years younger and dumber and more arrogant than you are, if we can just take them out to lunch, or take them out to a nice lunch, and say, “I want to take you out to lunch and pick your brain because I want to know what you think I could do better at work.” You make yourself vulnerable in that way, you will be awesome at work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Paul, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you lots of luck in your adventures and music and all you’re up to.

Paul Durham
Thank you so much, Pete. I really enjoyed it.