# 1 - The Best Conversation in the World

Episode 1

The Best Conversation in the World

Hi, My name is Rick Lewis. Welcome to the Follow-Through-Formula Podcast. This is my maiden voyage into podcasting, and my aim is to talk about what stops us from following through and taking action on what matters most to us in our lives. 

I'd actually like to start with a couple of stories. The first story I want to tell you about happened to me today. I was on a technical support call with someone who was trying to help me troubleshoot and figure out why my email address wasn't working. She was looking something up, so there was silence on the phone, and I asked her, “Do you like your job?” 

She kind of laughed and said, “Well, there are parts of it that are okay.”

And I said, “But if you could be spending most of your day doing something else, would you?” 

And she said “Yes.” 

I said, “What would you be doing? What would you rather do than be on the phone all day long?”

 And she kind of laughed and said, “I would like to be a human concierge.” 

She then described how much she truly enjoys helping people, supporting people with whatever it is they want or need to do. No matter what it is they need help with, she just likes making people's day better. Obviously there a lot of constraints in her job, a lot of things she doesn't get to decide about how she helps people.

So we got into this conversation about her technical support job and what she would prefer to be doing, and maybe 15 minutes passed. I think these calls are actually recorded, so I hope she doesn't get in trouble for speaking with me that long! I couldn't turn away once she told me that she would love to be helping people more directly, perhaps in some form of self-employment. 

I just wanted to help her right then and there, figure out how she could do this thing that I could hear in her voice. This is what she really wanted to do. She wanted to help people in an unfettered way. 

I have had this conversation with hundreds and hundreds of people over the last few decades because it's something I am fascinated by. I love to talk to people about what they love to do, about what matters most to them. And yet, the vast majority of people are not actually doing the thing they feel called to do. And I've always wondered, why is that? 

I think I know why it is because I'm not an exception to it. We become anxious and fearful when we begin to inhabit the thing that most brings us to life. I have a theory about this.

When you think about it, when you are a kid, it would never occur to you to do anything but go after the thing that is most interesting to you. All the things you're doing are the things that you're most curious about, that you most want to explore or learn or master. Human beings are hard wired to move toward the things that make them feel the most alive. If you have kids, you know this is true. And if you can think back to what life was like for you as a kid, you might even be able to remember that free spirited sense you had and that willingness to risk and explore and try things. 

Of course, right along side of that, there's this thing called socialization. All the beliefs in our culture (both useful and not useful) that are held by the adults that say, “Well, we’ve got rules around here and things need to function practically and according to a plan that allows us to keep things from falling apart and becoming a mess. We need some degree of organization.” This approach that the adults hold is very practical. 

This idea of what is practical is a big part of what I hear in conversations with adults when I ask, “What would you really like to be doing?” People are hesitant even to put language to it because they feel that it's not practical and to speak about what's not practical is a waste of time. Maybe it is even taboo to say, “I would just love to be doing my watercolor art and selling those and making a living doing it.” I had a conversation with a woman who is in her fifties, who is a very successful master architect. When it got right down to what she would like to be doing, she said she would like to be painting and selling her paintings. 

I have conversation after conversation with people who are involved and engaged in some form of work that “pays the bills” and is a practical thing to do for money, while at the same time they're turning away from, avoiding, or ignoring the thing that lights them up. I don't know if you have had these kinds of conversations with people yourself. There is a difference in their voice, the way they speak, the manner in which they're holding themselves. Their eyes light up, their face comes alive, their whole tone and mood shifts when someone starts talking about the thing that they love. These are my favorite conversations, because my experience is that when someone speaks from that place, I come to life, too.

I'm no exception to this dynamic of social anxiety and worry about whether or not I've got permission or I'm gonna be judged or criticized by others. In fact, this very podcast is a lot of work for me because of this! I'm in a bathroom right now that is functioning as a sound booth. The walls are covered with blankets to muffle the sound so that it doesn't sound echoey. It's 10 o'clock at night. The rest of my family's asleep, and I was on the verge of just going to bed. I have an early start tomorrow because I have all day online classes for three days. 

But I am also in touch with a part of me that wants to speak about this. I want to help other people to find a way to follow through and begin to move forward with the thing that brings them most to life.

I'd like to create a community where we can gather together to talk about this, to keep that fire alive for each other and hold each other accountable to being lit up this way, especially when we start talking about all our excuses for why we don't paint or draw or dance or sing or start our own business or open our own coffee shop. Of course, we know why someone wouldn't do that right now in the middle of the covid pandemic. But at the same time, there are so many ideas that people have got about ways they would like to serve and contribute in the world. Ideas that they do not pursue and don't follow up on because there's some sense that it's bad or wrong to even consider it, or they don't have permission to do it, or it's going to fail. Or, worse, that they're gonna wind up on the street with no food and no roof over their head because they've broken the code, the cultural code of what it means to be adult and practical. 

I want to create a community where we can gather together and have these kinds of conversations and keep poking each other until one of us says, “Alright, already! This is what I really want to do!” and speaks it, and when we hear it, everyone wakes up to their own passion and their own possibility because someone else has spoken it. 

I just had a whole series of coaching calls, about a dozen of them a couple of days ago, and I just heard story after story like this. The architect who wants to sell her watercolors. And someone who is a corporate c-suite executive who just wants to coach people. In our conversation he gave me so much value that I said, “Why aren't you doing this?” And then he admitted that he had started a coaching business and had a few calls, and it didn't go perfectly as planned so he stopped. 

Another conversation was with someone in a large accounting firm. All she wants to do is build her home on a beautiful piece of land that she has. It’s been sitting bare for seven years because she allows all the emergencies and the fires that are constantly going on at work to pull her attention away from what she would love to be doing in the time she has outside of work, which is to build her dream home on this piece of gorgeous land, with an incredible view out in nature. I become so invested when I hear these stories. I want that woman to have her home. And I want to build a place where she and the architect and the C Suite executive and me—who wants to help people in this fashion—and others can all come together and talk about this. 

To this end, I've designed something called the Follow-Through Formula Course. I've taken all the research I've done over the years—psychological, neurological, physiological, anecdotal—and I've studied and codified what the obstacles are, especially for those of us in North American culture, that are the obstacles to change of this kind. What are the greatest obstacles that we face to being able to follow through with that which is most important to us? I've created a document that describes the 6 obstacles to change, and the six hidden resources that you need in order to be able to follow through.

I'm creating this course so it will be available inside the community. The reason I'm doing this podcast is to introduce the idea of human beings gathering together to light that fire under each other and hold each other accountable to living in this way—which may sound stock and corny to say, but—to live your best life. 

Of course, there are many people using that phraseology—live your best life, be your best self! But what I'm talking about is a little different. It is more like live your most secret self. The part that so many of us are hiding from others and even hiding from ourselves, that part of us that has work to do. Something that we just feel in our cells is important. We are as interested in this activity or project or mission or cause or form of expression as a two-year old is interested in figuring out how to walk. It's actually hard-wired in, all our cells are calling for us to move and take that risk to learn and grow in a certain way, and yet we talk ourselves out of it in our head. 

So this is my invitation to whoever you are, listening. Come join this community that I am calling Life Leap. It lives online at my website, gamesforconfidence.com, at the top of the page you will see the tab for Life Leap. If you go there right now, you're going to see my initial offer to join in with the community to take the course and become part of this project that I'm starting. 

I've been a speaker and entertainer for a long time. I've been an entertainer my whole life. I've worked as a street performer and actor and professional dancer. I entertained as a comedian for many years in corporate events and then took a big leap into corporate speaking and wrote books. A few business books have been very successful. And each time I found a degree of success it has been a huge leap into the unknown and very scary for me to do. 

Now I'm looking at how we are in the space of Covid, it is still happening, and of course all my speaking work is canceled, so how do I connect with and help people? It's gotta be online. So I have this big learning curve ahead of me to figure out e-commerce, social media, how to translate into the digital realm my passion for helping others to live their passion. And this podcast is part of it. 

So there you go. The die has been cast, so to speak. I put the invitation out, my arms are open wide, and I'm inviting you in. Go visit my website at gamesforconfidence.com. If you have questions, then send me an email. Send it to rick@gamesforconfidence.com. And if you want to hop on a call to ask questions, let me know and let's talk. Let's talk about what you've been sitting on and what you really want to be doing with your life.

My course promise is that you will never come to a stand-still again with what matters most to you. I'm not promising that you're gonna get there overnight. What I am promising is that—having been self-employed for 40 years and accomplishing some really wonderful things that were scary to me at the time—I've developed methods and tools that I know will help you to keep moving forward, so you'll never have to look back after a day, a week, a month or years and say, “I haven't done anything with this passion. I haven't done anything with this interest in all this time.” You will always have a way to move forward. I would love to help you with that. 

I have a sort of side business I created three years ago when I was still working as a speaker called Games for Confidence. You can see it when you go to the website, gamesforconfidence.com. This is one of the things in my toolbox. I've made up hundreds of games that you can use to train yourself to get outside of your comfort zone, one small step at a time. These are simple, easy little things you can do in the flow of your daily life, that you can use to train yourself to stop playing small. You can actually lessen your anxiety by moving toward those things that feel a little bit scary to you, and by doing it in small increments you can increase your capacity for living a bigger life.

 I've been doing this for years, sending emails to my clients with these games, and at the end of the suggestion for the exercise, I say “Game on!” I think I'm gonna import that into the Life Leap community as well. Every time we get to talk about this game, which is to move forward with your passion, to move it forward a little bit each day, it's “Game on!” It's time for me. It's time for you. Let's join forces and I hope to see you in the Life Leap community. Thanks for listening. There's gonna be more of these, so tune in again. 

Game on!