I Am No Limits With Brian Bogert

Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments

 

There’s a sleeping giant in every human. To awaken this giant, we need to help them grab what they believe is out of their grasp. Brian Bogert is the person that does just this. Brian is a passionate performance coach on a mission to help people prevail over the limits they’ve set for themselves. Brian disrupts the normative approach on how to create sustainable growth personally and professionally. He joins John Livesay in this episode to talk about his philosophies on how to embrace the pain to avoid suffering. Listen in as Brian shares his own story and how overcoming his triggers helped him acknowledge his limitless potential.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

I Am No Limits With Brian Bogert

Our guest on the show is Brian Bogert, who talks about how we need to get unstuck by moving and that moved people move people and when you embrace pain, you avoid suffering. Find out what he means. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Brian Bogert. There’s a sleeping giant in every human. Brian’s purpose in life is to awaken giants within and turn them into legends by helping them grab what they believe is out of their grasp. Brian is a heart surgeon without a blade. He does not start outside with what you need to do. He instead starts inside with who you are. In a world that is disconnected, Brian is revolutionizing how individuals, leaders and entrepreneurs deeply connect with their authentic selves to achieve the best version of themselves.

As a human behavior and performance coach speaker and business strategist, Brian disrupts the normative approach on how to create sustainable growth and lasting change personally and professionally. His philosophies on how to embrace the pain to avoid suffering, people before profits and who before what has helped individuals and companies discover and activate their limitless potential. Brian’s team have in led with intentionality as they are driven by their vision to impact one billion lies by 2045. We better hurry up and help him do that. Brian, welcome to the show.

I need all that I can get, so yes, please. Let’s hurry up. We got to do that impact quickly. I’m happy to be here with you, John. Thank you.

We had the pleasure of hearing you speak at an event virtually. I was so compelled by your story. Let’s go back to your story of origin before you had this intense inciting incident as we describe it in the world of storytelling on our hero’s journey. Did you know you wanted to be different, make an impact or get into the world of helping people perform better? How did all that start?

I have always had a deep desire to serve and impact people, but I didn’t necessarily know the vehicle that was going to get me there. As with anybody, I have done a variety of different things, thinking that what I wanted and chasing was going to be the path to realize later in life that it was who I was that was going to be that vehicle.

It’s there that I’ve realized that I’ve got greater power to influence others by allowing my truth to give them permission to live theirs. I have always had a deep intellectual curiosity for people, human connection and human behavior. Though I did not start out saying, “I’m going to be a speaker, coach and entrepreneur to do these things,” I always had that drive and desire. I just didn’t know how I was going to get there.

Sometimes we hear a speaker, read a book, or someone introduces us to a concept of professional growth or have a wake-up call. For some people, it’s a health challenge. Your situation is a little different. Why don’t you take us right to that part in your story?

 

When I was seven, my mom, brother and I went to our local Walmart to get a 1-inch paintbrush. As we were heading back to the car, getting to go on with our day, I had to wait for my mom and brother to catch up to the car so she could unlock the doors. This was back in the day before there were key fobs. She had to put that physical key in the door and turn it so that we could get on and go with our day.

As I was standing there waiting, a truck pulled up in front of the store. The driver and middle passenger get out. The passenger to the right felt the truck moving backward. He did what any one of us would do and scooted over to his foot on the brake. I always imagined in my head that he scooted it over and gingerly, put his foot down calmly.

In reality, when you’re in a vehicle moving and there’s no driver in the seat, there’s probably panic setting in. He probably had his knee way up to slam it down on the brake pedal, but he missed. He hit the gas pedal. All that force went right into the gas. He threw himself up on the steering wheel and dashboard. Before you know it, he’s catapulting 40 miles an hour across the parking lot, right at us with no time to react.

Fortunately, my mom and brother were still a few feet behind me. By the time he got there, I was holding onto the handle. The truck went up and over the tree in the median, hit our car, knocked me down, ran over me diagonally, leaving a tire track scar on my stomach, tearing my spleen and continued to sever my left arm from my body. It was August 10th, 1992, 115-degree day, 6:10 PM. I’m, all of a sudden, laying in the parking lot. My mom and brother look up and see my arm lying 10 feet away.

Fortunately for me, my guardian angel also saw the whole thing happen. I always have to tell this story and she always has to be a part of it because I’m forever indebted to this woman for choosing to go into action versus go on with her day. When she walked out of the store, she saw the literal life and limb scenario in front of her. She rushed immediately over to stop the bleeding on the main wound and save my life.

She also instructed some innocent bystanders to run inside, grab a cooler and fill it with ice to get my attached limb on ice within minutes. If that did not happen, I either wouldn’t be here with you or I certainly wouldn’t have an arm be reattached because that arm was cooking like hamburger on a 115-degree day on the parking lot.

What I know in all this time, John, is that I’ve got a unique story. It’s not one you hear every day. What I realized through everything we’ve done, the more I’ve done it, is that every single one of us all has unique stories. What’s important is not to look at the extremity of anyone else’s stories but to start with your own and realize, “How do we become aware of the lessons we can extract from our stories? How do we become intentional with how do we apply them in our lives?” We all can do that and tap into the collective wisdom of other people’s lessons to shorten our curve to learning. I’ll share with you two quick lessons and we’re going to go from there.

The first one is I learned very early not to get stuck by what has happened to me but instead get moved by what I can do with it. What I’ve realized through many years of seeing this is that when you get moved, moved people moved people. That approach to impacting one billion lives is only going to happen with several moved people pulling in the same direction. That’s what I call collective impact.

[bctt tweet=”If we don’t feel, we don’t heal.” username=”John_Livesay”]

The second lesson is this concept that I didn’t quite understand until later in life. At 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, I was in a fog. Although I was the one having surgeries done to me and all these years of therapy, I was being guided through the process. My parents, however, were not. They were intimately aware of the unceasing medical treatments, years of physical therapy.

The idea of seeing their seven-year-old son grow up without the use of his left arm was a source of great potential suffering for them. They willed themselves day in and day out to do what was necessary, what was tough and embrace the pains required to ultimately strengthen and heal me. What they did, whether intentional or not, was ingraining me in this philosophy and way of living, which is to embrace the pain to avoid suffering. When this is done correctly, it’s also where we gain freedom.

Let’s unpack some of these things. I first want to go back to why you’re a good storyteller for people who might want to think about improving their storytelling skills. My mission is to help as many people as possible to embrace storytelling and get better at it. When I have a master like you here, I like to take them behind the curtain a little bit.

Part of what you did so well was the descriptiveness of it. We know exactly where you are, how hot it is, how old you are, how a few seconds, one way or the other, would’ve changed everything. Your whole intent of going on that trip was for something as insignificant as a 1-inch paintbrush. I thought to myself, “It doesn’t get smaller than that.”

Suddenly, the three of you are on that trip that’s seemingly an innocent everyday experience. The other thing you said that was so clever is about losing an arm and extremity. Then you talked about, “Everyone’s got stories, but let’s not look at the extremities of those stories.” It’s a clever play on words. Was it intentional or is that something that I’m the only one to notice?

There are not many things I do at this point in life that aren’t somewhat intentional. That was intentional. I’ll tell you that part of that is I’ve had to learn to normalize my story because it is so extreme. Extremities and the play on words connect with people because that’s the truth.

It’s clever.

Thank you. I’m impressed at the little elements that you picked up on that I have learned to embed in storytelling, which are ways to root and connect with people and get them to be in their bodies, experiencing it as their story. When we do that, that’s when we move people the most effectively.

 

There’s a craft to this, honing of words, editing out and consciously choosing things. When it lands to the audience, that’s true artistry. “Was that intentional? It seems so spontaneous, yet that’s the cleverest thing.” I never thought of the clever use of that word on that. That’s a childhood incident that is going to either inspire you or take you down. It’s one or the other. It’s not going to be like, “I forgot about it a few years later.”

In this first lesson you talked about, we need to keep moving and not stay stuck in the past is so challenging for so many people or they get paralyzed by a fear of the future that gets them stuck. They don’t know what to do in their business, career or personal life. Either something happened in the past that is so terrifying, horrifying and traumatic, I can’t get past it like, divorce, death of a loved one or I’m playing out a horror movie in my head of what this future’s going to be either in my career or the world.

Therefore, I’m not even sure I want to bring a child into the world. All of these are things that cause people to not take action. I’ve seen it where people were like,” I was so devastated by the death of my pet. I will never have another pet.” I thought to myself, “That is a big choice to not be willing to feel that pain again because it was too traumatic the first time.”

I remember when my dog died, I was devastated and extremely sad. A friend of mine said to me, “Knowing this amount of pain, would you still choose to have a dog?” For me, the answer was yes. There were years of joy and all that. I was shocked that that’s not the choice everybody makes. You seem to be a real expert in this concept of, “Move again, get another dog, get up from the life knocking you down and embrace the pain to avoid struggling.”

That phrase alone, people go, “What? It’s like putting my hand on a hot stove and taking my hand off the stove to prevent the pain. What are you saying, ‘Embrace the pain?’ How does that help me avoid suffering?” Our brain makes you stop and think because your brain’s going, “They seem like opposites. I want to avoid both pain and suffering. How can I embrace one and avoid the other?” Can you give us an example of that maybe not tied to the accident that you help people look at that?

I can. You did a very solid job of articulating the things that keep us stuck. It’s either stuff in the past or a fear of a fabricated future that hasn’t happened yet. At the root of both of those are the things that keep us stuck. Those are situations or timelines that allow us to experience the world in a different way, either in the past or in the future, both are existing in a way that’s not right here. One of the things that I want to talk about is that so many people think that they are stuck and seek strategies and tactics to solve the problem.

If I get a new program, a new leader, switch companies, make more money, buy that car, that house, remove this spouse or whatever the case may be, then all of a sudden, I’m going to be free of either the confines of the past or the fear of the fabricated future. What we’ve learned in working with some of the world’s highest performers is that it’s not the stretching tactics to keep us stuck. It’s a combination of emotional triggers, behavioral patterns and environmental conditioning that keeps us perpetually repeating the same patterns in our lives.

That feeling of being stuck is because we haven’t unrooted and dealt with the emotional trigger that’s tied to it. You talked about the dog example. Being around other dogs and the idea of having another dog is triggering a person into a place of pain and not allowing them to see everything else that’s right in front of them, all the joy, freedom and fulfillment that comes through that experience. It’s the singular trigger.

[bctt tweet=”Moved people move people.” username=”John_Livesay”]

If we pull out that root that’s connected to that trigger, that’s when people can move. I had to hit on that point because you articulated it so well. It’s important to understand that it’s not about putting yourself into pain intentionally. I will break down and answer that question. It’s about understanding the dynamics that keep us stuck are not what we think they are.

It’s the emotional triggers that cause a certain behavior, then there’s a third element to that?

Environmental conditioning is also a dynamic of that. It’s these things that get so deeply ingrained in us. An example of the triggers is when your spouse gets on you about loading the dishwasher incorrectly. It has nothing to do with your spouse or the dishwasher. It has everything to do with how your grandma looked at you when you were four. That’s a point I had to hit on because of this idea of move, we have to understand the only way we can move is to uproot those triggers so we can see ourselves and the current situation more clearly.

Does it help people get over their addictions, whether it’s an addiction to food, smoking, money or getting likes on social media? Some of that seems to all be trigger, especially in young people, an addiction to getting people’s approval of how many likes and shares.

Validation, worth and all those things are tied to this thing. Those are all triggers that create these types of patterns that we tend to numb ourselves through so that we can experience the world or seek to connect more deeply either with ourselves or the outside world in some form or fashion. It’s not the things that fill us. You’re spot on, but this is an important place to say, “What is the difference between pain and suffering?” Often we’re seeking validation to fill a void. We have to understand in pain and suffering the definition of both.

First, we have to understand the narratives of the world, which is to reduce, eliminate or avoid pain at all costs. We see seek comfort, safety and protection. The world is wrong. It makes sense why we have this tendency because it’s a natural evolutionary response to survival. You cut your leg 100 years ago, you could die. That’s not the reality that most people in the world live in.

If we understand that pain is defined as short-term, intermittent, a direct cause from something and alleviated once that direct cause is removed, what do we do as human beings? We tend to screw it up by throwing other adjectives in front of it like we screw up so many other things. We say, “Acute pain and chronic pain.” Acute maintains the definition inherently, but chronic changes it because it implies that it’s no longer short-term and doesn’t heal after that direct cause is removed.

Let’s stop calling that chronic pain because it changes the definition of pain and call it what it is, suffering. We don’t want to admit suffering exists, particularly when it’s a direct result of our choices. Often we are blind to the fact that it’s even there because it creeps up on us so much so that we don’t even notice the effects of it sometimes until the point, it’s irreversible, whereas pain gets lots of attention because we feel it, so we want to react to it and eliminate it at all costs.

Let’s use an example. Let’s say someone’s parent dies and they get addicted to either drinking or eating too much to eliminate that pain. They can’t imagine a life where they are not in that much pain. They can’t zoom out and say, “Years from now, I’m going to still miss my parent, but I won’t be this sad. This is going to be this much pain or forever. I’m numbing myself whenever I’m at.”

There are consequences to that behavior. You get diabetes. It’s not like some genetic diabetes. This is years of eating too much sugar and then you’re in this endless circle. Your premise for all of us is if you embrace this pain of, “I’m so sad. I feel so lonely and rejected,” whatever the feeling is that you don’t want to sit with, that causes you to numb it. If you can embrace it, you will avoid the long-term suffering as the consequences of acting out in a way.

If we don’t feel, we don’t heal. To give you a couple of other examples, we can embrace the pain of hitting the gym for 30 minutes a day to avoid the suffering of aches and pains of a sedentary lifestyle. We can embrace the pain of difficult conversations with a spouse or loved one to avoid the suffering of being stuck in a loveless marriage that’s going to end in divorce or wanting a divorce and not being able to escape that dynamic.

We can embrace the pain of the fit our kids are sure to throw by having them put down their mobile devices at the dinner table to avoid the suffering of years of lost connection and conversation that will never get back. As business owners, we can embrace the pain of firing our top salesperson who’s contributing the most to top-line growth to avoid the suffering of losing all our other top talent because they were the greatest cancer in our culture.

The list goes on in every category of life. It’s important that we have to acknowledge the suffering we wish to avoid. We can identify the pains we tend to avoid and learn to embrace them to establish them as a habit in all areas of our lives. You had heard this, “Get comfortable being in the discomfort.” What I’m suggesting is discomfort is the 5K to pains marathon.

It goes deeper than that. If we need to truly avoid suffering and have joy and freedom and film it holistically in our lives, we must understand that the small decisions that compound over time leads to suffering. Seeking validation externally online is filling a void and worth that likely was the inability to give or receive love effectively as a kid to know how to connect at that deepest level. When we tend to numb ourselves, it makes sense as well.

One of the first things we want to do is feel safe. The human experience is rooted in four areas. We all seek the desire to feel safe, protected, seen, understood and connected. Seen, understood and connected don’t happen unless the first two do. When we don’t feel safe, we put protect ourselves. Our armor goes up. We guarantee at that moment that that impenetrable force, nobody’s going to see and understand us through that.

On one side, we can’t project who we are clearly, nor can they see through it, which means we won’t connect. We’ve got to embrace the pain of lowering our armor and convincing ourselves that we’re safe, wrapping an element of protection around either who we’re with or the environment we’re in so that everyone can feel safe, protected, seen, understood connected. That’s what effective leaders do.

[bctt tweet=”To have the power to influence others, you have to allow your truth and give them permission to live theirs.” username=”John_Livesay”]

It reminds me of a quote from A Course in Miracles which says, “In my defenselessness lies my safety.” Most people go, “What? I’m going to lower my defenses and put my weapon down?” You’re like, “If you’re thinking you need to be in fight or flight mode all the time, you’ll burn out.”

True strength hides behind vulnerability.

With this concept of the outcomes of feeling a little bit of pain, years ago, the trainer I was working with said, “I want you to do some deadlifts.” I said, “Who cares what the back of my legs looks like?” He calmly said, “Have you ever seen some elderly men in their 80s who may be in the shower? They don’t have any muscles in the back of their legs, so their butt has dropped.” I go, “Yes.” He goes, “If they had done deadlifts, that wouldn’t have happened.” I’m like, “How many do you want me to do?”

It’s true. When you understand what you want to avoid, it’s much easier to embrace the pains in real-time.

I’m like, “I don’t see the back of my legs. Who cares?”

You’re like, “There’s no way an 80 is having no butt that hangs.”

I didn’t even know that was preventable. I’m in. I thought that’s gravity. That’s sad. I wanted to lighten it up a little and then we’ll go back into the intensity of this. We need to ease it people and out a bit. When I was working in media sales, some personalities were running certain publications that were tyrants. They were top producers, so they got away with horrible behavior. They were making so much money and getting away with anything. There were drugs involved. There’s all that drug behavior that causes people to scream, yell and be horrible.

I’m so happy to see people saying, “The culture’s more important than one person’s bottom-line performance.” If you are afraid of losing a top performer or a top client and you put up with the abusive behavior or you’re in an abusive relationship, that’s not coming from a place of abundance. When your message is, “No, let’s shift. The ends do not justify the means.” Therefore, if we create a wonderful culture, we’ll attract the right clients and people who can perform.

 

There are 2 dynamics to what you said that hit on 2 very strong elements. You focused on the pain piece. We need to embrace the pain because the culture is going to supersede any individual. Recognize that what you said is, “If you are afraid to get rid of a top performer or an abusive spouse, the individual and the leader that can remove that person, the one to embrace the pain also has to recognize that their hesitancy is rooted in an emotional trigger. If they’re afraid to lose it, that scarcity is tied to something deeper.”

There are two things to pay attention to. If you’re in a position where you are not able to freely move when things are out of alignment in your world, pay attention to, “What do I need to address internally?” A guy by the name of Alex Charfen has one of the greatest quotes that I’ve heard. I’ve always said for a long time that everything begins and ends with you.

He says, “If you’re constantly putting out fires in your life and business, there’s a good chance you’re the arsonist.” Not only do you have to learn how to embrace the pain to avoid the suffering and protect the people in your environment and your culture but recognize that if you have any hesitancy to do that when something’s out of alignment in your culture, it’s probably something you need to deal with first.

This is so valuable for entrepreneurs who are reading, who maybe are in the first few years of their new business. They have a client who is not paying on time, never happy, never going to give them a referral, and making their lives miserable. There are no boundaries. If you need every dime for your cashflow needs, it’s hard to fire that client or even to say no at the beginning. My whole thing is, “Who you say no to is more important than who you say yes to.” Ironically, the more you keep your boundaries of, “I don’t do that for that price. This isn’t working out,” we’re always teaching people how to treat us in our personal and business lives, but if we have these emotional triggers still there, then we’re reacting and not coming from a place of choice.

That’s one of the things that we talk about around emotional triggers. Triggers cause you to react versus respond. When you react, you create damage. When there’s damage, you need to create repair to neutralize and diffuse the energy and connection with everybody involved. Whereas if you respond, you can realize that what you’re reacting to internally likely has nothing to do with the situation right in front of you. You can move through it without creating damage and eliminating the need to create repair, which takes more energy, time and attention.

People are always focused on speed. How many things are slowing you down? When you have resistance and energy drain because of a bad relationship, a bad client, somebody who’s not paying on time or you’ve created damage that you’ve got to create repair, how much energy does it take to move through that? If you’ve responded in the first place and seen it clearly, you would’ve eliminated 75% of the drain from that experience.

When people hire you to be a speaker, who’s your ideal audience? Is it sometimes salespeople need some insights on resilience? Is it more of a leadership people looking for ways to become a better leader or both?

I would say both because of the direction in which we take things. We will do very strong leadership and culture development-type themed talks. We will do one to be able to help people move through those blocks that are limiting them from living at the level they’re capable of living. People with variable incomes identify on that side very deeply. They start to recognize when there’s hope and desire that they can lean into if they address the stuff they need to. Their performance, their teams’ performance and the organizations are raised.

[bctt tweet=”Do not get stuck by what has happened to you, but instead, get moved by what you can do with it.” username=”John_Livesay”]

As a speaker, generally, individual organizations hire me to fit into 1 of those 2 buckets. I also speak at a lot of conferences, though. My ideal audience in that space is on the entrepreneurial side because where we engage with organizations typically beyond the stage is at the top level of leadership. These are large organizations we’re working with C-Suite and executives, mid to small-sized organizations and even large ones that are true entrepreneurs. We hit on two different areas. It only depends on the way that we enter the world.

Tying back to your goal on your mission to impact one billion lives by 2045, how are you tracking that? What can people do to assist that?

It’s being tracked in a couple of different ways. What I largely recognize is it’s going to be untrackable to a large degree. I have a genuine belief that if I chase impact, income always follows and everybody else gets to be moved so they can move other people. Collective impact is something that we talk about. If you hear one thing for me that you’re like, “That’s in my life,” whether you pass it on or not, you’re part of the billion.

What often happens when people hear something that moves them is they move it through the world. They’ll pass it on to somebody else or say, “I heard this great quote,” as I did with Alex Charfen. The ripple effective impact is significant but that’s also why for myself. I typically am working with the leaders of these organizations. If we permeate them, there’s also a trickle-down effect through the culture and everybody in that organization can have an impact if the leaders change.

That is a philosophy, at least in the speaking and coaching stuff. We’re in four different businesses, all rooted in the who, helping people discover who they are, who they’re doing this for, who they’re doing this with and who they’re going to impact. Each one of our entities has different ways that we’re tracking impact and how that is translating.

We’ve got a movement over on the side that’s going to be launched. There have been months of foundational stuff, but the movement is called I am One Billion. It’s going to be something that we’re going to have as collective energy to move things forward. I’m less concerned about tracking and more concerned about focusing on the day-to-day individual or mass aggregate impact we can have. Over the next years, if that happens and we stay regular and consistent in it, one billion’s going to be behind us before we know it. I don’t say that arrogantly. I just believe in the added benefit of the compound effect and collective impact of people.

We’ve seen things go viral. Once you start going global, it goes fast. Brian, if people want to find out more about how they can discover to let go of these emotional triggers and embrace some pain so they don’t have to suffer, where should they go?

If you’re on social media, it’s @BogertBrian on any channel. If you are perusing the web, go to BrianBogert.com. Those will both be great entry points. We realized to impact 1 billion lives that 99.99% are never going to pay us $1. We are very okay with that. We do have a free resource as well that we put a lot of time, energy and attention into. It’s a free course with over 30 minutes of video dialogue to help individuals evaluate these concepts themselves.

If you go to NoLimitsPrelude.com, that’s a place where you can get that. I always get full disclosure here. Do you exchange an email to get it? You do. Will you get some emails throughout the experience? You will. Will you get four emails after you’re done with it? You will because we want you to have other opportunities to do so but there are big unsubscribe buttons on there every single way. This is not a way to funnel you. This is a tool and a gift we want to give you to hopefully elevate and empower you.

Thank you for that gift and for being you. I am so grateful to be able to know you and help in some small way, get your message out through this show and share what you do on social media. I love it. It’s needed and you’re the right person to be doing it.

Thank you so much for building a platform to give me the ability to serve your audience and pour my soul into the world. You are a part of the collective impact. It’s not lost on me who you are in this world and I’m grateful as well.

Thanks so much.

 

Important Links

• Brian Bogert
• A Course in Miracles
• @BogertBrian – Instagram
• NoLimitsPrelude.com
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

 

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Tags: emotional triggers, environmental conditioning, Human Connection, long term suffering, no limits, storytelling