Focus On Wellness: Aphorisms & Affirmations of Success, Joy, & Gratitude with Brian Biro

🌟 In this uplifting episode of Pathways, Amber sits down with the inspirational keynote speaker, motivational coach, and bestselling author, Brian Biro. 

🙌 Together, they dive deep into strategies for maintaining personal growth while dealing with negativity, the importance of gratitude and joy in life, and the power of living with purpose.

🎙️ Key Takeaways:

💫  Brian Biro shares how being easy to impress and hard to offend can protect you from absorbing negativity.

💪 Discover the value of diversity and differences in cultivating rich, meaningful relationships.

👇 Learn why it's essential to let go of consistently negative influences in your life.

📘 The importance of finding inspiration and purpose, illustrated through Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

👏 Practical advice on embracing gratitude even in tough situations, featuring a personal story about Brian's daughter.

🤔 Insights on the power of affirmations and how focusing on desired outcomes can manifest positive changes in life.

🎁 Explore the significance of receiving compliments gracefully and allowing others to experience the joy of giving.

🏆 Discussion on the impact of Coach John Wooden on Brian's life and the importance of choosing eagerness.

💡 Understand the concept of energy as a choice and the role of physical movement and purpose in generating joy and vitality.

✨ Tips for discovering personal purpose and living life according to your true desires.

🌞 Affirmations and their impact on personal and professional growth.

To learn more about Brian Biro:

- Brian Biro's website: http://www.BrianBiro.com

- Books by Brian Biro: "It's Time for Joy," "Beyond Success"

❤️ Whether you're looking for motivation, guidance on dealing with negativity, or ways to enhance your life's purpose, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice. 

🎧 Tune in to hear Brian Biro's inspirational stories and wisdom, and learn how to create a life filled with joy, gratitude, and intentional living.

🔔 Subscribe to Pathways with Amber Stitt for more inspirational content!

👍 If you enjoyed this episode, give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends! 

📢 Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below – we love hearing from our listeners!

- Connect with Amber Stitt:

- Website: https://www.amberstitt.com

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amber-stitt-acp-chfc%C2%AE-cltc%C2%AE-clu%C2%AE-gallup%C2%AE-1b186821/

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberstitt_

To watch this episode:  https://youtu.be/fpjmMH_U5OU

#BrianBiro #PathwaysWithAmberStitt #Motivation #Positivity #Purpose #Affirmations #Gratitude #PersonalGrowth #Joy #Inspiration #LifeLessons

Transcript

Amber Stitt [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Pathways. I am your host, Amber Stitt. Welcome to the show, Brian.

Brian Biro [00:00:05]:
Well, thank you. It's so much fun to be with you, Amber, I'm excited.

Amber Stitt [00:00:08]:
I'm so excited to have you on the show. We met through a mutual friend who's quite goofy and he just thought we'd have a gas getting together too. So I appreciate you making the time in your busy schedule. I know that you work with a lot of businesses and individuals in your day as a keynote speaker, motivational coach, bestselling author. So I'm so excited the audience gets to meet you today.

Brian Biro [00:00:31]:
It's always a joy to have these conversations and the chance that we've had to talk before the show, I can tell we're going to have a blast. And yes, I'm grateful to Joel Zeff, who you had, who was absolutely...goofy was the best word. He's a great goofy guy.

Amber Stitt [00:00:45]:
Got to live life. And I know that maybe you are a little goofy, too, but mainly you're trying to live a life of joy and happiness and gratitude and give that back to people. And so I think that's been a mission for you. And so I'm curious, I have some...not hard questions, but maybe some Amber-isms as I do my reading about your stories through your books. And so I'm excited to be able to get you face to face and ask these questions. Now, I was curious with, there's a story about Diana that you speak of that's really that starting foundational point for one of your books, "It's Time for Joy", and I have to ask, were you always a person that led with a joyful, gracious kind of attitude? Or was it like a catalyst to change your life and kind of pull this into a new routine ritual for yourself after knowing the Diana story?

Brian Biro [00:01:34]:
Wow, that is a really neat question. I've always loved people. I believe that we have so much in us that is good. I've always believed that joy and happiness are choices. And that's really one of the basic foundations of writing the book "It's Time for Joy". To say joy doesn't happen to you, you have to create it. It is your choice. Two people can look at the same circumstance and one can see only darkness and the other can see possibility.

Brian Biro [00:01:58]:
And so in that regard, I've always loved people and always been a pretty happy guy. But the Diana story really woke me up to...I think the most important thing that I've ever written is one sentence. And it really comes out of that story and says, "The love we fail to share is the only pain we live with." The love we fail to share is the only pain we live with. And the Diana story, which is...It's interesting, I wrote that as the first chapter of the book. It's definitely a bring your tissues kind of story.

Brian Biro [00:02:26]:
I never tell that story in my speaking. It's a very personal story. The essence of the story, so people know where we're coming from, was that I had a woman when I was going to college. I went to Stanford University. I was a public school kid. I didn't have any money, so I put myself through school through megaloans, which I didn't love, and through teaching swimming. And she was the mother...

Brian Biro [00:02:48]:
Diana was the mother of a couple of kids that I taught to swim. And then she helped me build my swim teaching practice. And we started talking, I was 20 years old, 21. And she was probably 15 - 18 years older and not very happily married. Loved her kids. And I was just a young guy thinking, the world is on a string. We can make anything happen.

Brian Biro [00:03:08]:
And so we became friends. But I got scared. I got scared that she had fallen in love with me, which she hadn't. She had loved me for being someone who saw in her more than just a mom, more than just a person of circumstance, but a person with endless possibility. I got scared, and I ran away. Essentially, when I started my career, I didn't reach out to her, even though she had helped me in so many ways, including financially, to get through school. And then I found out years later that she had died of cancer, and her children reached out to me. And so the story is about that.

Brian Biro [00:03:40]:
And it hit me that I had run away, that she loved me, she wasn't in love with me. And because of that, I was so afraid to continue to have the relationship. And it woke me up that if the love we fail to share is the only pain we live with, if we don't get it right, the love we fail to share is the only pain we leave with. And that's too late. And she taught me to say, when you care about people, tell them. When you feel gratitude, tell them, because you may never pass that way again.

Amber Stitt [00:04:06]:
I think the fact that her family did reach out means that she probably knew in her heart that she was still proud of you. And it just didn't matter how the story ended. And there was time that had passed, that you guys hadn't been around each other. She just had that wisdom of maybe being older at that point. Isn't it interesting where you might not see something that's great about yourself, but others can see it. And so I think a lot of times we downplay something that's a compliment. People go, "Oh, I just loved this and this about you". And you're like, "Oh, it's nothing."

Amber Stitt [00:04:34]:
And really trying to embrace what you bring and really celebrate that. And I know that you catapult that into your work.

Brian Biro [00:04:42]:
We've been raised that we're supposed to be modest and humble. And so when somebody says, "Oh, you know, you're really great at that, or you're looking really good," and you kind of go, "Yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Gotta go." You can tell people how great they are, but when they tell you, you get all squirmy and want to run away, but, what is receiving, if you get down to it? Let me ask you a different question. You're supposed to be asking questions, but I'll ask a couple.

Amber Stitt [00:05:03]:
Do it. Put me in the hot spot.

Brian Biro [00:05:05]:
Do you love to give? Do you love giving? Absolutely. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world, right?

Amber Stitt [00:05:10]:
So I think I'm like, do I take a moment to think, am I actively doing that? I'm like, yes, I was at an event last weekend. I donated money, and I showed up to support. But giving could be just like these times where you're giving some space to other people, and just if they're asking for help, you're giving that advice. So it's not like always on the charity level, but it's more of a mentorship that you're giving. I think that happens a lot when you do nonprofit work. Be on a board, be on a team, maybe you're not getting paid for something. So, yeah, giving can come in all different forms, I suppose.

Brian Biro [00:05:40]:
It absolutely does. But it always feels good. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world is the feeling inside, not from what you get, but when you give. So when you think about it, receiving, taking in that compliment, just saying thank you. Receiving is allowing people to feel the joy of giving. And whenever you receive poorly, you snatch that joy away. And so she also taught me that when she wanted to compliment me, I'd get squirmy and want to run away. But she also taught me that every time that I do that, anytime somebody says, 'Amber, I'd love to treat you, or, Amber, you're doing great," and you push them away, all right? You're teaching them that giving hurts, and so come back to that place.

Brian Biro [00:06:17]:
Receiving is allowing other people to feel the joy of giving. And when you receive poorly, you snatch it away. So don't snatch it away anymore. So if you have any gifts for me, baby, I'm there.

Amber Stitt [00:06:26]:
Yeah. I'll have to...no...you definitely do deserve some. You gave me a few already. So excited. Okay, so this is a very...maybe not strange question, but I need some help, and I think this could help the audience, too. When you are, let's just say, leadership, you dive into personal development and people tell you it's really about who you hang out with and trying to keep that positive brain matter, that headspace of just, like, joy. Let's just say, what do we do when we know there are people in our lives that are maybe negative? And I know you give so many resources to people on how to ask questions to help make it less about you, more about them.

Amber Stitt [00:07:00]:
So where's the cutoff between receiving the negativity while you're trying to maybe spend some time with people and trying to kind of pull out what's the main thing here without enabling their negative attitudes, I suppose. Do you know what I'm saying? What would be the best way to kind of gauge making sure your time is valuable for you and the work that you need to be doing while also trying to not receive some of that bad energy potentially?

Brian Biro [00:07:26]:
It's a great question, and I think it's an important question for so many people because we can absorb negativity if we don't find a way to make sure that we don't allow ourselves to take it in and be brought down because of it. The first thing I would say is that if you want a recipe to have a great life and to be happy and joyous and to not absorb that negativity is to be easy to impress and hard to offend. What I mean by that is when you're easy to impress, you're interested in people. That means you don't fear people's differences. And let me put it this way, so many people only we hear the, "I want people around me who are like minded." I want people around me who are like hearted. They don't have to be like minded.

Amber Stitt [00:08:04]:
You're not going to learn anything.

Brian Biro [00:08:06]:
A great example, my wife and I are so different. We've been married 38 years. We're so different in so many ways. She loves social interaction, and I'm not quite so social. I love being in front of a room. She would rather have root canal than be in front of a room. So we have these interesting dichotomies.

Brian Biro [00:08:24]:
Those differences have made us both grow. And so being impressed with people is looking at people for who they are and the gifts that they bring. I want people around me who are great at things I'm not good at, because then we're going to get farther. I don't want people to be just like me. I want us to have the same purpose, which is to create the best we can create. Hard to offend is the key one about negativity, because really, when you get down to it, the negativity that starts to take us down is because we get defensive. It's because we feel like we're being attacked, or we feel like people are pointing it at us and saying, "How can you be happy?" You know, sometimes people look at me, I've had this over the years, "Are you really that happy or are you just faking it?" And I really am because, hey, isn't that funny? I mean, I have an incredible family. I have a choice every day to do work that I love to do.

Brian Biro [00:09:13]:
Is every day perfect? No, but every day is a perfect day. And I love the fact that I have the choice to not be as defensive. Because as soon as we get defensive, then we're going to get negative, too. The highest frequency emotion of all, it's actually been measured. Emotions have frequencies just like we're electrical beings. The highest frequency emotion is gratitude. When somebody's in that state of gratitude, you can't be down any more than it's impossible to be down when you look up.

Brian Biro [00:09:41]:
You can't be down when you look up and you smile. We're that kind of electrically charged being. So be easy to impress, hard to offend. Understand that we can disagree without being disagreeable. This is huge to me. In the last several years, we seem to have forgotten that, and that if somebody doesn't agree with our point of view, they're somehow a terrible person. They're subhuman.

Brian Biro [00:10:02]:
If we can't learn to disagree without being disagreeable, how can we ever learn from anybody? How can we ever take the good that somebody has to give and get beyond the stuff that isn't that good? I think the last piece that I'll put into this is to be a blame buster. The single most destructive word in the language of relationships, teams, families and organizations, is blame. B L A M E. Blame kills teams. And here's why. If you think about blame in the context of time, is blame about the past, the present or the future?

Amber Stitt [00:10:33]:
Past.

Brian Biro [00:10:33]:
It's always about the past. So the second you go into blame where are you? In the past. Can you do anything about the past? No, it's done. So being a blame buster doesn't mean you say, everything's rosy, everything's perfect. No, you still say, hey, we messed up, or I messed up, or, this didn't work. But then you take it out of the past and bring it to the now by saying, what can we learn from this? How can we use that to get better now? So when you remove blame that is a huge source of that negativity, because that's that whole defensive piece, giving blame or being blamed, you feel it's all about you. And so you gotta let go of that. If you're gonna find consistent joy easy to impress, hard to offend.

Brian Biro [00:11:12]:
Blame busting, those little simple tools, can make a massive difference. And then there's one last one. If you've around somebody who just seems to always, always look at the bad side, the grumpy cat, and let them go. Because here's the truth, you cannot control them. You're not going to change them. By trying to change them, you may have an impact on them by being who you are. By spreading that joy, you may be having more of an impact than you think you are, but you're not trying to change it because it ain't going to work.

Amber Stitt [00:11:40]:
So many things. Okay, Brian, the world needs more of the gratitude and joy because at this...like you've said, it's been very interesting as people disagree, probably more politically than ever, because media does its job to be very radical, to have us thinking things are so outrageous and there's outrageous things happening. But we only get to see sometimes the things that are so polarizing, when the rest of it might be just more bipartisan than crazy. If we could be more joyous about it, have that smile, more positivity. And again, blame busting. Yeah, we have some facts and some data. What are we going to do about it? Let's move forward. I love that a lot of these tools and resources can be corporate, but can also come down into the family.

Amber Stitt [00:12:21]:
And you talked about the differences between you and your wife. And I feel that growing up, the like minded people might have a riff or like money talk. Like in financial services, sometimes partners don't always see the money goals the same way. I think if we could just be okay with the differences, and I know you're different than me, wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't we fight less?

Brian Biro [00:12:44]:
Throw out another name for differences. Because the word differences right away gets people, "Oh, we're having differences," but I look at differences as resources. In other words, when somebody is really skilled at technical things and if I get a three prong plug in correctly, it's a moral victory, you know? So that's a resource. That difference is a resource. I play a game in some of my events called, "A Piece of Cake." It's a really fun game, but it teaches us that we've really never learned to actually collaborate because collaboration is putting our resources together. In other words, what we tend to do is do our thing here, they do their thing there, and we hope we find a place in the middle. But when we take people's actual talents and put them together and mesh them, whether it's in your family, or it's in your organization, or it's in your community, that's when you can get the farthest.

Brian Biro [00:13:33]:
So those resources, as long as we're going towards a goal that says, let's get better, those different resources are incredibly valuable. It can exponentially increase the rate and the level of your accomplishment.

Amber Stitt [00:13:46]:
So what's the piece of cake part?

Brian Biro [00:13:47]:
Well, it's complicated game, piece of cake.

Amber Stitt [00:13:51]:
You have to come to one of my events. You're not handing it out.

Brian Biro [00:13:55]:
You'll have to come to my event. It's really a funny game, and it also is one of those things where people go, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it!" Well, another one I do in my events, which is simpler to explain real quick. I've asked probably 1500 audiences over the last 30 some years, what color is a yield sign? And every audience answers the same way. Yellow. Well, they're red and white, and they've been red and white for 53 years. Not one audience has ever said red and white. At least 95% of the participants say yellow.

Brian Biro [00:14:24]:
And the question is why? We've seen thousands of them. We see them every day. If we drive a similar route every day, but we haven't seen one for what's right in front of us. Why? Because a foundational key to breaking through is realizing that we rarely use our vision to see. We use our memory and our conditioning. And whenever you use your memory to see, you do not see what is. You see what was. And when you lock onto what was, you block out what could be.

Brian Biro [00:14:47]:
So the game "A Piece of Cake" has the same kind of thing because every audience, when they go and I show them the real yield sign, they go and they google it now and go, "Darn it, he's right, it's true. It's red and white."

Amber Stitt [00:14:59]:
Well, when I was reading your book that talks about that, I was, okay, is it because I'm picturing the stop sign or the light by my house? Like the yield, yellow arrow goes yellow. Is that why I thought that? Because you think yield in your memory. Okay, so these "A-ha" moments have come about for you through some parts of your rituals, and I'm going to call them rituals, but you, I think, call them affirmations. There was a moment in time that you kind of got off your affirmations, and then you got back in the game, and then you get a phone call, and it was a person that you've known about that then gives you a call, and this person is interested in you and your books and so forth. And so you write about in your book, I'm gonna call it the Joy book. I don't know if that's okay to say, but... Can you tell the audience, it's not simple because you actually have to do it, I suppose...

Amber Stitt [00:15:45]:
But once you're in the routine of writing your affirmations, what kind of magic are you creating? Or can you share how that's been magical for you and connecting with people and opportunities?

Brian Biro [00:15:56]:
Oh, yes. The foundation of understanding the power of affirmation and visualization is a simple vision principle that says, "What we focus on is what we create." What you focus on is what you create. Now, it's very important, and it's not, "What you focus on, is what you get." Because unless you put yourself in the game, you get zippo. You can't be on the sidelines. To have affirmations work, you have to really be in the game. But once you get in the game, what you focus on is what you create.

Brian Biro [00:16:21]:
So if you want to have a great life, focus on what you want to create. And the foundational question that I ask people that makes them aware of why affirmation can make such a difference is this. What are you focusing on? How many of us focus more on worrying about what will go wrong than creating what we want to go right? How many of us focus more passionately on what we don't want want? And since what we focus on is what you create, you want to be conscious about creating what you want. And so the process of affirmation is getting clear about what you want, writing it down in a very clear way, and then visualizing it with full passion. And it's been remarkable how that's gone off in my life. I think the story that you're referring to the individual that the story about was Bob Proctor. Bob Proctor, for those who don't know, there was a movie done years ago.

Brian Biro [00:17:11]:
What's it called?

Amber Stitt [00:17:11]:
The Secret.

Brian Biro [00:17:12]:
The Secret, that's it. So Bob Proctor was the elegant, white haired, kind of the star of the secret in a lot of ways. And when I was deeply into my affirmations, I had written this new book and I was going, what am I going to do with this book? I didn't really think about money with my book. I thought about, I want people to read it because I was really happy with this book. And so I started writing affirmations about the book. And I didn't even know who Bob Proctor was at the time, who was one of the great speakers in history. I mean, he's been around forever.

Brian Biro [00:17:40]:
So as soon as I started writing these, within one month I got four different people who had no connection to one another tell me that I should get in touch with Bob Proctor, who I had not heard of before. And all of a sudden I go, well, the first time I thought, well, that's nice. Second time, well, that's a coincidence. Third time, what's going on here? Fourth, I'm writing Bob Proctor. So I sent him a book. And three weeks later, and this is how the affirmation process works because I was focusing on creating the magic with this book growing. And three weeks later, I get this call at 6:30 in the morning from Toronto. "Is this Brian Biro?" I go, "Yep, who's this?"

Brian Biro [00:18:17]:
"Bob Proctor, that's a heck of a book!" And the next thing I know, he's promoting my book like crazy. The book flew off the map, became 16 on Amazon out of 2 million titles. And he was a good part of that. We became lifelong friends. We lost him a couple years ago. He affected so many people. So that affirmation, just in that arena, focusing on how can I create this book to grow of seeing it reaching places where I never could have thought of before.

Brian Biro [00:18:43]:
A beautiful example of what you focus on is what you create. I've used it for my physical health. I've used it for my family. And that's really an important part. If you're going to do affirmation, do it in each quadrant of your life, your professional life, your family relationship life, your health life.

Amber Stitt [00:18:57]:
Thanks for sharing that. I remember that over 20 years ago thinking, "Oh, vision board..." And it just didn't connect. And you have some of these biases or however you grew up or maybe narrow mindedness. And then I've seen it play out in my life. And sometimes you just have to be with the okay that you don't know exactly why it's happening and maybe the reason behind it, but just accepting it and receiving it, it's amazing.

Brian Biro [00:19:21]:
There's a part of our brains right back here that's called the reticular activating system. Now, that's too hard to remember, so I call it the RAS. The RAS. And it's very important that you get your RAS in gear. So it's your RAS. It's a function in our human body and our nervous system. It's the brain spam filter. So people really, nowadays, we all know what a spam filter is.

Brian Biro [00:19:40]:
That's what that part of our brain does. It blocks out stimuli, and if we didn't have it, we'd go into overload, because there's so much stimuli in any moment, and it lets in what's a value to us and what's a threat, and it basically blocks most everything else out. Now, we've all experienced it. If you ever bought a new car and you're driving it off the lot, and you start driving down the street and you're feeling good in your new car, and then you go, "Hey, everybody's got my car!"

Amber Stitt [00:20:08]:
No, I was the one with the cool car!

Brian Biro [00:20:10]:
But you hadn't assigned value to them. So the process of what you focus on is what you create. An affirmation is getting your RAS in gear, because everything we need is out there. There's resources beyond what we could even imagine. But until we assign what is really important to me, what I really want, we'll walk right by it like it's not even there, right? But as soon as we've assigned it, all of a sudden it's like we'll be walking through an airport, and it'll feel like somebody grabs our head and walks us into a bookstore. Because here's the exact title of the affirmation that we just wrote, and you go, "Oh, my gosh, the book was always there." We were always there. But the affirmation was the connector to bring us to those resources that can create what we want and bring us that joy.

Amber Stitt [00:20:54]:
Now, it's been a long time since I was even around "The Secret", but when I read this from your book, I felt like there was overlap there. Like, is there some overlap between the way Bob felt about some of this connection, that law of attraction there?

Brian Biro [00:21:06]:
Oh, absolutely. It's funny, I've been speaking now for 34 years, and every time I think I thought of something brand new, totally creative, it's in the Bhagavad Gita. It's been spoken 400 times. So it comes down to some very, you know, I believe in the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Superstar. And these simple principles kind of flow through all that really matters. You know, we may find a fun new way to express that principle that's been around forever, but that's timeless and that's our creativity is come up with a fresh way to express it.

Amber Stitt [00:21:38]:
So, "Beyond Success." That's the OG, the original book. The bestseller.

Brian Biro [00:21:42]:
Yep.

Amber Stitt [00:21:43]:
How many years ago did you write that?

Brian Biro [00:21:44]:
Oh, goodness, about 30 years ago. And it was really fun. My mentor, if I have a mentor in my life, it was the great coach, John Wooden. You can't really see him, but his picture is right up on my wall and his pyramid of success is behind me. There he is, John Wooden. Now, John Wooden was, for those who don't know, Coach Wooden was the most successful men's college basketball coach in history. He's a legend.

Brian Biro [00:22:06]:
He won ten national championships, and no other coach in history has won more than five. But he was a better person than he was a coach. He was an incredible father, husband, human being. He was a remarkable person who believed in some simple principles. And so one of the greatest gifts of my life was that Coach Wooden wrote the foreword to "Beyond Success" and became my friend. And, yeah, I'll give you one, Coach Woodenism that I think is really a fun one for people to live a great life and live with joy. I asked him when I first met him what seems like a simple question, but it's a really important question. I said, "Coach, what's the difference between a good team and a great team?" And this can apply to your family team, to your work team, to a sports team, to whatever team.

Brian Biro [00:22:45]:
We're all on teams. And I have a background as a coach. I was a US swimming coach. So I thought he'd say, "Well, it starts with recruiting and talent." You got to have the recruits, you got to have the talent. And the first thing he said was, "You know, Brian, it doesn't have that much to do with recruiting and talent." He said, "There are no overachievers." And I thought, "What?"

Amber Stitt [00:23:02]:
Yeah, let's talk about that.

Brian Biro [00:23:02]:
We are all underachievers. We have more in us than you ever dreamed of. So he really caught my attention. Then the next thing he said was, "You know, Brian, the difference between a good basketball team and a great basketball team is exactly the same difference between a good company and a great company, between a good leader and a great leader. A good parent and a great parent. A good life and a great life." So now he had my undivided attention.

Brian Biro [00:23:22]:
And he said, after a lifetime of working with people, which is what we all do, we're all somehow in the people business, he said the difference between good and great came down in his mind to the difference between two words he said on good or average teams, good or average managers, leaders, good or average anyone, those people, when they're good or average, are willing to support each other and the greater good of the team. And the key word he used was "willing". Now, I got to tell you, Amber, I always thought willing is a really good word. It's way better than unwilling. But then he described it in a way that I bet a lot of your viewers can kind of relate to. He says willing is about the same spirit and effort and energy with which teenagers clean their rooms. Yeah, they'll do it because they're really hoping to eat this week, all right. But they're not excited about it.

Brian Biro [00:24:06]:
He said on a great team, a great parent, a great leader, a great manager. Those people are absolutely eager to do whatever it takes. No job is too big. No job is too small. No starts too early, or ends too late. He says only when you break through from being just willing to being eager that you have a chance to really move to your potential and live fully and have full passion in life. When he said this to me, I thought of this thing that I created called the eager meter. And it looks like a speedometer.

Amber Stitt [00:24:31]:
Yeah.

Brian Biro [00:24:32]:
With this side over here towards zero, being willing, this side being eager. And here's the truth. If you can move one notch in the direction towards eager and away from willing, you're going to elevate your life in so many ways. And here's the funnest part about eager meter and joy. You're 100% in charge of your eager meter. I mean, no one can ever give up for you. No one else controls your own faith, your own hope, your own joy. And so that's great John Woodenism.

Brian Biro [00:24:57]:
He was a very even keeled, very gentle, kind of grandfatherly type of guy, but he had a passion that burned gently inside of him. But it never stopped burning to move that eager meter and that little arrow down towards the side and to live every day a little bit with a little bit more eagerness rather than just, "Okay, I'll do it." You're on the way to joy.

Amber Stitt [00:25:16]:
It's almost like when they say, you need to say, remove the word, "Now Will". I'll try to. I am in the "I Am" statements, and this is what's happening. And you're creating that by owning that. And there's this intertwining message that's been the foundation, or like the denominator here. Everything you're talking about, you are controlling it. So that should feel pretty good that you get to choose.

Amber Stitt [00:25:39]:
Like you have said before, you get to choose. You get to say how eager you want to be about something. And that attitude shift and a lot of it with even financial freedom discussions I talk about, it's like you have to participate in your financial success. You hire people at times depending upon your proficiency, but you have to understand money before you hand it off to people to manage it for you. Participate in that. It starts with you.

Brian Biro [00:26:03]:
Absolutely it does. We don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. And that's really what I want to get people to understand, that we do have a choice. And here's a foundational I'm so glad you just talked about some of the words we use. This is a foundational breakthrough key to having a sense that you do have a choice. And therefore, when you feel like you have a choice, you start to create momentum in your life. You feel like you're doing what you choose to do. This is a question for everyone that's watching this show.

Brian Biro [00:26:31]:
How often do you say to yourself, whether actually verbalizing it or just saying it in your self talk, I have to do this, I have to go right now, I have to do this, I have to do that. Here's the simple truth. You only have to do one thing in life and that's die. Everything else is a matter of choice. And where did we get this "I have to" thing we got it when we're little kids out of love. You have to not touch that stove or you're going to burn yourself. But there were two other words attached to "I have to" when we were little that never have faded in our conscious, unconscious brain, but were very clear when we were little kids. The other words were, "or else". You have to do this, or else something bad is going to happen.

Brian Biro [00:27:08]:
Well, what I said so I have more people understanding of choice. Replace the words "I have to" with "I choose to, want to, can't wait to, love to, like to." Simply doing that shifts it from I have no choice to where im living life according to what I choose. If you, you know, so many times we say, "Oh, I just can't do that," "I choose not to do that." And as soon as we take on that feeling that we have a choice. We want to, choose to, love to, can't wait to, what a different spirit than, "I have to, or else something bad's going to happen."

Amber Stitt [00:27:38]:
I think that segues into some of the wellness health principles that you have talked about. So what's the deal? Why don't people care more about their health when we know some of the basic KISS methods to life don't require much? Why do you think that is?

Brian Biro [00:27:54]:
Well, I think we have a lot of challenges around us relating to that. And something we talked about a little bit before is that although there's been a definite movement over my lifetime in terms of eating healthier and understanding exercise and all that, but again, you must choose. And I think the foundational key, I think to health is before you're going to make that movement to better nutrition, before you're going to make the movement to consistent exercise is to understand that your energy is your choice. And to everyone you touch, your energy is your example. You know, people won't remember much of what you say, no matter how well you say it, but they'll never forget your energy. That's what they're really...And that's partly because 93% of what communicates is not the words we say. It's our body language and our tonality.

Brian Biro [00:28:39]:
This is not making up numbers. It's from the Banner UCLA study that asked a question about the three elements of communication, body language, tonality, which isn't what we say, but how we say it, and words. And they replicated the study after about 25 years, came out the same. 55% of communication is body language, that we're communicating more through our faces and our eyes and our smiles and our expression. 38% is tonality, not what we say, but how we say it. Only 7% are words. So to understand the energy that we're bringing through our body language, through our tonality, is our example. That's what people will get from who we are. And so my passion when it comes to health starts with just like joy is a choice, energy is a choice, and it has two foundational ways that we can generate more energy in our life.

Brian Biro [00:29:29]:
The first is so simple that we miss it. And as simple as this, your energy is created by the way that you move, period. In other words, anytime you've been your best, you've given your best presentation, you've been your most creative, you've been your most understanding, you have moved your body in distinctly different ways than when you've not been your best, specifically, your body line and posture. Your facial expression, your eye position, focal point, and your breathing. Now, I said that to some people before, and they go, "Brian, if I had more energy, I'd move more." Move more, and you'll have more energy! I bet every single person watching your show, Amber, knows somebody in their life. Maybe it's their parent, maybe it's a grandparent, maybe it's an old boss.

Brian Biro [00:30:06]:
They have known somebody in life, who blows them away because at a very advanced age, they have this incredible energy. And though I don't know who you're specifically thinking about, I bet I know two things about that person. Number one, they're one of your heroes. They're somebody who really is a neat example in your life you want to emulate because of that energy. Number two, they keep moving. We don't get older. We just stop moving. I'm actually 92 years old, but I just move too much all the time.

Brian Biro [00:30:31]:
That means, in a simple and practical way, to improve your health, if you want to move your business, if you want to move your relationships, if you want to move your health, you got to move yourself. You got to elevate your physical movement. And it doesn't have to be enormous, but adding five minutes more per day each week for a month, you'll add 2 hours and 20 minutes of movement to your life by the end of that month. That's a lot of movement. And whenever we're moving, all right, our spirits, our minds, our bodies are generating much more joy. So the first way that you create more energy is to change the way you move. Want to move your life, you got to move yourself.

Brian Biro [00:31:10]:
Second, and even more profound, because when you get this second one, you'll have movement. Our energy is in direct proportion to our level of purpose. Whenever we're full of purpose, we're full of energy. When you get to do what you love to do, it doesn't matter how much sleep you had. It doesn't matter how you...When you get to do what you love to do, you're like my grandkids, 5 and 7, where anything's possible. But you ever notice what happens to your energy when you lose sight of your purpose? It's like somebody puts a pin in that balloon. And so the road to purpose is through gratitude.

Brian Biro [00:31:39]:
Ask yourself every day, what am I truly grateful about today? And what you're grateful about has within it a secret, especially if you're not really big on spelling. What you're grateful about has within the capacity, the power to make you great full. What you're grateful about will zero you in on priorities. Priorities are the pathway to purpose. I bring with me to every event at which I speak, a picture of my family. They're my purpose. I love them more than life itself. And the last thing I do before I speak is I actually connect with that photograph.

Brian Biro [00:32:08]:
I spend time with each of them in that photograph, and it changes me instantly. It doesn't matter how many flights I was on. It doesn't matter if my knees are sore. All that matters when I get clear with my purpose that if I don't give the people I'm about to speak to the best I have to give, in my mind, that means I'm not giving my family my best, and I won't do that. So if you want to live with more joy, connect it to purpose.

Amber Stitt [00:32:29]:
People have asked you, are you really like this? Well, yes, I know my purpose. And you are truly fulfilling that because you know. So when people ask you, do you sometimes wonder if they are still trying to search for their purpose? Because usually people can understand it if they're in the same shoes. So that's where we might need to help those that can't really understand, but they're attracted to it. Maybe we do need to spend a little time with them to kind of shine a light on how they can find their own.

Brian Biro [00:32:56]:
Nobody can tell you your purpose. I mean, some maybe will observe it who know you well, but again, they can't give it to you. Don't think that purpose is some elusive thing that you can never be able to find by asking yourself, "What do I do that time just flies by?" Like, I can't believe it went that far. What do I love to do? Who do I love to do it with? Ask yourself a lot of questions, and you'll get focused in on that level of purpose. I feel so grateful, Amber, every day, to do the work that I love. I love to speak.

Brian Biro [00:33:25]:
And the interesting thing is, I don't do it for the love coming back. I mean, I'll appreciate it. I love the kind comments. I love even the stories of how people apply something they've learned. And I don't want to diminish how I love those things. But it's not why I speak. I speak because when I'm speaking, I know I'm doing what I was put on earth to do. And that's why that energy flows out and why I joke about it. When I'm on stage, I'm 25.

Brian Biro [00:33:49]:
I get off stage, I'm 69 again. But on stage, I am 25, because I am living full purpose.

Amber Stitt [00:33:55]:
Yeah.

Brian Biro [00:33:55]:
If you ever really want to understand the power of purpose, there's a book, a small book called "Man's Search for Meaning", and it was written by Viktor Frankl, who lived through Auschwitz, the concentration camp during world War War 2. He was Jewish and he said that the people who survived, survived because they had a purpose left undone. That a child they felt they must get back to, they had work they felt only they could finish. And that was the very thread of life. So if you're not inspired, you're on the way to getting expired. But inspiration is a choice. I just spent the last four days with my 93 year old father, and he's losing his inspiration. My mother passed away a little while ago.

Brian Biro [00:34:33]:
And I want to say to him, "Dad, there's so many things you could do, you could carve things with your hands." He was a sign carver for 50 years. I said, "You could read. There's so many things you can do, but you're looking at all the things you can't do, and that will never bring you joy. Focus on the things that you can do and the things that you love, and you'll find your purpose."

Amber Stitt [00:34:53]:
Thanks for sharing all of that. On the pathways, the podcast here, we originally started talking about just some fundamentals, focus areas to have resilience in life. It's been two years now, having the podcast, people have different pathways to get through life, and sometimes we don't understand why we're on this path. And maybe it's a choice, maybe it's not the right path, maybe it's something we're learning. But truly, any path you're on, you can pull in having gratitude and joy, and it's going to certainly make it a lot more fun and purposeful.

Brian Biro [00:35:23]:
Absolutely, and you know, you bring up a really important key to dealing with, because life isn't going to always be just the way you want it. You're going to have things pop up that you didn't see coming and you wish they hadn't come. But within every adversity is planted the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. And what I mean by that is, think about it. Haven't the toughest things you found your way through, though they may not have been a whole lot of fun in the middle, aren't they the things from which you grew the most, you learned the most? And so gratitude needs to extend not just to all the wonderful things, but grateful for the things that were tough, the tough lessons we had to learn, because they helped us grow, and we never would have got there...My youngest daughter, who's one of my heroes, her name is Jenna.

Brian Biro [00:36:02]:
When she was 23, the man that she was about to become engaged with was found dead from a drug overdose. And it tore this beautiful young lady's heart apart. Well, if she was on this show today, Amber, we'd have to adjust the lighting because she shines so bright now. It took a lot of years to get through that, and I wanted to fix it, and I can't. No one could fix it for her. But along the way, she began to rediscover gratitude. Along the way, she began to rediscover that she even had a choice, that she could always hold the love that she had for him, but she could love again. And this summer, she got engaged to a man that we love.

Brian Biro [00:36:36]:
And my point is, is that would I have chosen that way for her to learn, because what she learned from that more than anything else, Amber, is she knows she can handle anything. That there's very little in this world that could have been harder for her and who she is than what happened to her. But now she knows whatever life throws at her, she's going to find her way. It may be tough, may be emotional, but she'll find it. Now would I have chosen that circumstance for her to learn that lesson? No way.

Brian Biro [00:37:03]:
But she did learn it. And there's a sense of gratitude for knowing something that she to learn. So within every adversity is planted that seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. So start looking for that benefit and that seed of possibility, because when you do that, you're going to find it, because what you focus on is what you create.

Amber Stitt [00:37:20]:
So amazing. Thank you for sharing that. And that's one thing I've, before meeting you, I just...There's the honesty in your writing, telling the stories makes it really neat to be able to comprehend the way you story tell through real life experiences. So I know that you have a website. Can you share the best way for people to find you? And you have books on Amazon as well, correct?

Brian Biro [00:37:41]:
My website is just my name is www.BrianBiro.com. It's BRIAN BIRO. And as I say, if somebody reaches out to me, I always respond. I feel honored to get any kind of people reaching out to me. I love to get out there and speak to your organization, your company, your association. That's what I do, and that's what I was put here to do. And 34 years is just a starting place.

Brian Biro [00:38:04]:
I'm going for another 34. That would be way up there.

Amber Stitt [00:38:07]:
It's possible. With your energy, who knows, right?

Brian Biro [00:38:10]:
Who knows?

Amber Stitt [00:38:11]:
Smash those statistics. I don't believe it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with us today.

Brian Biro [00:38:17]:
Thank you, Amber. You're a pure delight. Keep doing this. You ask great questions. I've been on many podcasts, and your questions are real and insightful and really searching to discover. So you're great at this. Keep it up.

Amber Stitt [00:38:30]:
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Pathways. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, the blog, and so much more, please visit my website at: www.AmberStitt.com. And remember, let's take action today! Thank you for listening!