Episode 101--I Just Want to See You Win

This week, Billy talks about the importance of promoting your success and fostering a positive, collaborative environment. He also discusses how social media can be leveraged as a powerful tool for recognizing you and the significance of being genuine and authentic when sharing and celebrating your accomplishments. With personal experiences and practical strategies, this episode will inspire you to embrace the power of promoting yourself and reap the benefits of mindfulness in your own life.

If you liked this episode, check out these episodes as well:

• Episode 100--How to Make Radical Life Changes with Bianca Thomas
• Episode 56--How to Balance High Performance, Relationships, and Happiness with Christine Chang

All of our episodes are available at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com

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Transcript

Billy: Coming up on The Mindful Midlife Crisis

We live in an Instagram look at my world. So it's easy to overlook the importance of supporting and uplifting others. Yet research shows that promoting other successes not only benefits the other person, but it also brings immense advantages to ourselves. There are numerous studies that have found that promoting other people's successes can foster a positive and supportive environment.

When we celebrate and publicize someone else's achievements, it creates a culture of encouragement and collaboration. And in doing so, we inspire and motivate those around us to reach for their own goals.

Welcome to The Mindful Midlife Crisis, a podcast for people navigating the complexities and possibilities of life's second half. I'm your host, Billy Long, an educator, personal trainer, meditation teacher and Overthinker who talks to experts who specialize in social and emotional learning. Mindfulness, physical and emotional wellness, cultural awareness, finances, communication, relationships, dating and parenting all in an effort to help us better reflect, learn and grow so we can live a more purpose-filled life.

Take a deep breath, embrace the present and journey with me through The Mindful Midlife Crisis. Welcome to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. I'm your host, Billy La. Thank you for tuning in wherever you are. The purpose of the show is to help others navigate the complexities and possibilities of life's second half. One way I do that is by providing a platform that gives people the space and permission to share their expertise and life experiences so you can use that information to enhance your life with whatever you find relatable and practical.

I also share how cultivating my own daily mindfulness practice over the last ten years has helped me navigate the trials, tribulations and successes of my own midlife crisis. And I'm teaching you how to navigate life more mindfully through my virtual mindfulness sessions. My mindfulness practice has helped me process my ruminating thoughts, anxiety and stress in a much healthier and productive way by reducing my emotional reactivity and impulsive behavior, which in turn has helped me improve my relationships and communication with others.

So if you're interested in learning more about how mindfulness can help you jumpstart your life, join our mindful midlife community at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com. Our mindful midlife community members get access to free resources such as a personality profile assessment to help you identify what your high gear and low gear behaviors are so that you're more aware of how you can use your strengths to get more of what you want, while also working to decrease the self-limiting thoughts and behaviors that are getting in your way.

You'll also receive a perceived stress scale assessment so you can gauge just how stressed you've been feeling lately, and you'll gain access to our weekly virtual mindfulness sessions that will provide you with the skills necessary to help you alleviate some of that stress. And listen, as someone who's in the thick of a major midlife pivot right now, I also use these skills and resources to help me reflect, learn and grow.

Because trust me, there are still days with no hot mess. Just know that you are not alone in your experience. So if you're looking for a community to help you better navigate whatever you've got going on these days, come join our mindful midlife community at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com so you can take inspired and intentional action to jumpstart your life.

This is a big episode for me for a lot of reasons. So allow me to indulge myself a bit. First of all, I've finally finally released my first online course. It is available to you now. If you go to the website, it's a short two day course called a Mindfulness for Anxiety, which is something I definitely know a thing or two about because the whole reason I started practicing mindfulness in the first place is because I had allowed my anxiety to spiral out of control.

So this course covers many of the skills I have learned over the years to help me manage my anxiety in a much healthier way so I can channel it into being much more productive and less debilitating. And people ask me all the time, You're such a spaz. Do you really practice mindfulness? Do you really meditate? And the answer to that question is yes, I do.

I meditate and practice mindfulness so that I can be this level of obnoxious because if I did it, I would be out of control.

So, yes, mindfulness benefits me because it helps me regulate the swings in my emotions so that I can be at this level and not project a lot of that anxiety to others. And in this course, we define what anxiety is and what it looks like for each of us. We identify the differences between fear, rumination and anxiety. We identify the sources of our anxiety and our anxiety triggers, and we tap into the somatic experience of what anxiety feels like in the body.

That last skill is the one that has helped me manage my anxiety the most. So if you or someone you know has been struggling with anxiety, go to www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com or you can click on the show notes and click on the mindfulness for anxiety link that you see there. And if you needed another reason to become a member of the mindfulness life community, you get 20% off that course as well as all future courses that I'm planning to release.

My goal is to drop two more courses for you by the end of the year, and I'm working diligently on that, so stay tuned. You may have noticed that this is episode 101. Now there's actually more than 101 episodes if you include the summer sessions that I did a year ago. But in terms of the way I number each episode, it actually marks a pivotal point in the show that will be exploring here in the next few weeks.

I'm really leaning into this experiment mindset that Jason Robertson talked about in episode 84. So if you haven't listened to that episode, be sure to check that one out too. But it's wild to look back on how much the show has evolved since Brian on the bass and I first launched This Bad Boy way back in February 2021.

There's no more shitty ukulele music throughout the episode. There's no more meditation in the segment breaks and there's no more Brian on the bass. Not that he's dead, not that he's dead. He's just continuing to melt faces with his band Gen-X Jukebox, which by the way, was Summer, just around the corner. I strongly encourage you to make a point to go see them because it's an incredible trip down memory lane for us and nineties kids so sure.

Gen-X Jukebox Some love on social media give them a follow. Visit their website so you can see when their upcoming tour dates are because here's the thing if you want to be my lover, you got to get with my friends. And Brian on the bass is one of my best friends and his funky basslines are going to make you sweat sweats and so you smell like Teen Spirit.

And that was all for my entertainment. And I apologized for absolutely none of it. Anyway. You may have also noticed that I keep changing things up in the intro and outro because I'm trying to find this sweet spot between sharing what they call in the biz a call to action and overselling. Because this whole starting a coaching business thing is all brand new to me, and this idea of selling my services has always felt sleazy and gross to me, which is probably why I enjoyed working in education for so long, because they would just send me new clients year after year and they weren't always my ideal clients, that's for sure.

And I had to sell them on the value of what we were learning at the time, but I wasn't working on a commission, so my livelihood never counted on it and never relied on that. And if you're like, well, making money is my motivation. Okay, It's not mine, though, and I'd like to make money, sure. But being a servant leader is much more important to me.

And by the way, small business coaches on LinkedIn, I don't want to work with you, so please stop messaging me. I feel like they hear the podcast and they're like, Oh, he's starting his own business. I should reach out and see if he wants my services. Thank you. I appreciate the connection. But right now I already have a fantastic podcast business coach in Kevin Palmieri, and he's the best of the best.

You heard my guest in episode 100 Bianca Thomas talk about how Kevin helped transform her life. And he's doing the same for me through our coaching calls. So if you're looking for a coach to take your business or podcast to the next level, go to www.nextleveluniverse.com and shoot him a message. Tell him that Billy from The Mindful Midlife Crisis sent you and I assure you you're going to be in good company.

Now I want to reiterate this here that neither the Gen X Jukebox nor Kevin nor Next Level Universe have sponsored this show in any way. They are not sponsors. I just wanted to give to people I admire and respect some free promotion. And there's another person I'm going to shout out later in this episode as well. And if you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that I also highly recommend using Betterhelp and I have a referral link in the show notes and I've given them some free promotion at the end of my solo episodes.

And you think about it, of the previous 100 episodes that I've recorded, 87 of those have featured a guest of some sort. So today I want to talk about why promoting others achievements matters. And I'm going to share some of the research around this, as well as some of my own anecdotal experiences with promoting others achievements. Now we live in an Instagram look at me world, so it's easy to overlook the importance of supporting and uplifting others.

Yet research shows that promoting other successes not only benefits the other person, but it also brings immense advantages to ourselves. There are numerous studies that have found that promoting other people successes can foster a positive and supportive environment. When we celebrate and publicize someone else's achievements, it creates a culture of encouragement and collaboration. And in doing so, we inspire and motivate those around us to reach for their own goals.

So there was a research study conducted by a sociologist at Yale University, and his name is Dr. Nicholas Christakis. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. It sounds very Greek. And this research study showed that success tends to be contagious within social networks. You may remember, Brian, on the base talking about this in episode 57 when we talked to Christine Chang about balancing high performance relationships and happiness.

And what he said was that is something to the effect of if you hang around five millionaires, you'll be the sixth. So when people in our social circle who we admire do something, we feel worthy of our praise, showing them some love by giving them a shout out on social media or wherever, increases the chances that they'll genuinely do the same for you.

Now, I don't think you should expect them to do that, but it sure is nice when they do. In fact, if you're doing it with that expectation, then maybe you need to reassess why you're promoting their achievements in the first place. I go out of my way to create cover art, a social media clip and an audiogram for each of my guests to share on social media.

Almost none of them do that, though. I put in all that work. My production team is wonderful. They do all this work. I share it on my social media. I share it with my guests, and very few of them put it out there. Well, that's all right, You know, that's okay. Shout out, though, to Ed Latimore and Venus Lau for posting the social media clips I sent to them on their social media networks.

And thank you to people like Matt Meline and Dr. Yvette Erasmus, who shared links to our conversations and their newsletters. I'm sure others have done this as well, but those are the people who immediately come to mind because I noticed a bump in my downloads for those episodes when that happened. But here's the thing When we first started the show, we didn't have social media clips or audio Grahams.

We were just having conversations with people we thought could bring valuable insight to this idea of navigating midlife, because I firmly believe that those guests had something of value to share with you, the listener. And my hope is that you're able to absorb some of their success and turn it into your own success. Not only that, but I take what they say to heart as well, and their expertise and life experiences have not only contributed to their own success, but giving them a platform increases the likelihood of my own accomplished moments.

It's like a ripple effect where the achievements of one person inspire and elevate the entire community. And you, the listener and I, are all part of this mindful midlife community. By listening to this show, you are actively listening to a researching and understanding the accomplishments of others, which helps us expand our knowledge and gain valuable insights. It's why I wanted to have Jordan Harbinger on the show, and it's why I directed you two episodes of his show in this show, because the Jordan Harbinger show is a level to which I aspire.

So to sit down with someone I admire and have a conversation about how to avoid it. Toxic self-help advice was a valuable learning experience for me. But then we also have to be careful that we're not asking people if we can pick their brain. I didn't realize this was such a huge trigger for people because I'm someone who is like, Hey, if you have a question and I have some experience that might help you navigate the situation, shoot me a message.

But there are people out there who are like, You don't get access to my expertise and life experiences for free. It's like, okay, all right. That's a boundary that that person has set and I'll respect that. But because I don't have a lot of money to shell out for high end guests, I reach out to people whose message resonates with me and see my show as an opportunity to spread their message to others.

So in a way, we're promoting each other. They're promoting me by sharing their wealth of knowledge, and I'm promoting them by giving them a platform. It all comes back to what Marcus Ogden talked about in Episode 93 when he said, Be sure that the value that you are going to bring to the table far supersedes what they are going to pay you or what you want in return.

And in that way we boost our credibility and open doors to new opportunities and collaborations. Another crucial aspect of promoting other successes is the impact it has on our own mindset and well-being. Research has consistently shown that acts of altruism and generosity contribute to greater happiness and life satisfaction. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology revealed that people who actively promote others achievements experience higher levels of positive emotions and a greater sense of purpose in their own lives.

By shifting our focus from self-centeredness to promoting the accomplishments of others, we foster a more positive and fulfilled state of mind. So let's do this. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about how we can start promoting other people's successes to foster an abundance and gratitude mindset and what it means to me to help you put a W in the win column.

Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. If you're enjoying what you've heard so far, please do me a favor and hit the subscribe button. Also giving the show a quick five-star review with a few kind words helps others find a benefit from this podcast just like you are.

Finally, please spread the wealth of free knowledge and advice in this episode by sharing it with the people in your life who may find this information and my mission to help others live a more purpose-filled life valuable. My hope is that these conversations resonate with others and inspire people to live their best lives. Thanks again. And now back to the show.

Welcome back to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. We are talking about the importance of promoting other people's accomplishments today. So now that we understand the benefits of promoting other people's successes, using a little bit of research to substantiate that, how can we practically incorporate this into our lives? Well, first, we can actively seek out success stories and research them, whether it's through books, articles, podcasts, online platforms.

There's a wealth of information out there that is available to you By investing time in understanding the journeys and achievements of others, we can curate a collection of inspiring stories that we can share with our networks. That share button on Facebook and LinkedIn isn't just for funny cat videos and misinformation about conspiracy theories. Share good news, share other people's achievements, and they don't necessarily have to be people you know.

It can just be some random news story or speech or podcast episode like this one wink wink that inspired you in some way to take action or reframe your way of thinking. And who knows, maybe that person will acknowledge you back again. That shouldn't be your motivation. But I do remember the time when my TV crush, Sabrina Soto, liked one of my comments on her page, so I took a screenshot of it and wrote my TV crush Sabrina Soto liked my comment.

My day is officially better. Your workday and I shared it in my stories and I tagged her and she deemed me, You're too funny Now. Was I walking on cloud nine that moment? Yes. Yes, I was. That has nothing to do with curating a collection of inspiring stories, But that sure did bring happiness and joy into my life.

So I wanted to share that anyway. Use social media for good. Leverage your social media to promote other people's successes along with yours. Social media platforms, blogs, and even face-to-face conversations offer opportunities to spread the word in, uplift others using other people's accomplishments. In doing so, we can contribute to a culture of positivity and support for all things we need more of.

And finally, as I mentioned before, we should strive to be genuine in our efforts. Authenticity is key when promoting other successes. It's important to truly appreciate and believe in the achievements we share sharing because it serves your best interests or you have an ulterior motive is just disingenuous. Your sincerity will shine through and have a more profound impact on those who come across your messages.

I've said this before, but one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever given me came from my buddy Mike Calawerts, who said, Billy, the reason I like you is because when you're excited about something, you want everyone else to be excited about it too. Which makes sense because promoting other people's achievements is one of my favorite things to do.

That's why I've formatted the show the way that I have. I love providing a platform for others to share their expertise and life experiences to help you navigate the complexities and possibilities of life's second half. For me, it's a form of gratitude. I find guests who have had an impact on me, and I firmly believe they'll have an impact on you as well.

So I want to share their message with a wider audience by amplifying their voices and promoting the good deeds and accomplishments of others comes quite naturally to me. I mean, at the beginning of the show I hyped up Gen X Jukebox and my podcast business coach Kevin Palmieri, for no reason other than I love my good friend and former co Brian on the bass and I love working with Kevin.

There's no sponsorships, there's no side deals. I just want to see them win. In fact, that's what Kevin said to me when we talked last fall when I was looking for a new podcast production team to work with me. He looked me right in the Zoom Room camera and said, Billy, at the end of the day, I just want to see you win.

And he said it so genuinely that I was like, Take my money because I believed him and because I'm so impressed with what he's accomplished as a podcast host and a podcast business coach. And because I know he just wants to see me when I listen to what he has to say to me during our coaching calls, because I know he's going to challenge me when I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the little things it takes to start a coaching business and trust me, I've been on the brink of burning the show to the ground and just giving up multiple times because it's so much work and at times I don't always feel like I'm making

a difference. But the two most important conversations I have a week are with Kevin and with my better help Therapist Lacey, because they helped me reframe my insecurities and my anxiety. And you know what? I'm going to catch myself right here because I just said something that I've told you not to do. So I said it here. I'm going to reframe this idea of when I said reframing my insecurities and my anxieties.

And those are not part of me. Those are feelings that I have. So I should say instead that because they helped me reframe when I am feeling insecure in when I am feeling anxiety, oh, that's what awareness feels like. Hmm. That feels good. That does feel good. And if you're thinking, Hey, didn't you release a course called Mindfulness for Anxiety?

Aren't you using those strategies? Do you even work? Bro? I just demonstrated that I am using those strategies because I caught myself saying that insecurity and anxiety are a part of me when they're not. They are in fact feelings that I experience. But those feelings come and go. And I'm not only using mindfulness, there are all sorts of different strategies that I'm using.

I'm using daily routines, I'm using chip lists because just like a car is more than a steering wheel and four wheels, there are all sorts of parts to it. A football team has more than just one head coach. There are all sorts of parts that make up a team. You have offensive coordinators, you have defensive coordinators, your special teams coordinators, baseball managers have bullpen coaches and base coaches and scouts.

It's a team effort, so it's important to develop skills. But if you don't have those skills, it's important to surround yourself with people who do have those skills so that you can make progress in your life. So when I'm making progress in my own life, I like to take a minute to acknowledge the people who have helped me get there, because this whole idea of I did it all on my own.

No, you didn't. You didn't. I hate when people say that somewhere along the line someone helped you get to where you are today. It could have been a teacher. It could have been a boss. It could have been a supportive friend who hyped you up. It could have been the person who bought your great idea and turned it into a cash cow for you.

Without that person, you don't have a customer base. Even your customer base helped you get to where you are today because if you didn't see value in what you created, you wouldn't be where you are today. They believed in your product or service and they forked over hard-earned money for that product or service because they believe in you.

Maybe even when you don't believe in yourself. Maybe some of them took the time to write your review. I always appreciate hearing from listeners. Thank you to everyone who's left a five-star review for this show. In fact, I recently had a conversation with a listener not too long ago that helped me take some inspired intentional action of my own.

And I am talking to you. Big Hail out of Montreal, Canada. BBG reached out to me and said, Hey, I've been listening to your show recently and I love your message. Can we chat sometime? And I was like, Whoa, what a lovely compliment. Of course we can chat. So we got to talking and I learn that she hosts her own podcast called Speaking with Women, which is a global conversation with women about being visible and crafting your professional path.

And as we got to talking, she was hyping me up saying things like, Your message needs to be heard by more people. Have you ever thought about doing a TED talk? And I was like, Well, I've thought about it, but I don't know what I would talk about. And as she rattled off like three or four big ideas and themes that I've discussed on the show that I honestly didn't think anyone would value or want to hear in a TED talk.

And then I was like, Wow, Having someone believe in you is kind of an incredible feeling. And then she was like, Listen, all of my guests on my show are women because I focus on helping women be more visible. But I truly believe that your message is one that would benefit the listeners of my show. So would you like to be a guest?

And I was like, Yeah, yes, I would. I love being a guest on other people's podcast. Side note if you'd like to listen to what it sounds like when I'm a guest on other people's shows, you can go to the website and under the podcast tab you can click on Billie on other shows and check out those episodes.

Go support those shows too. Anyway, the overarching takeaway from that conversation was this BBG just wants to see me win because she believes that my wins will help others win and that's what I truly want for you as well. I just want to see you win. Hopefully, this podcast has helped you put a few more W's in the win column the last 100 episodes, but if you're looking for more ways to win, you're invited to join our mindful midlife community at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com.

You get 20% off the mindfulness for anxiety course. You're also welcome to join our free weekly virtual mindfulness sessions when you're a member of the community. Together we can start taking inspired and intentional action to help you jumpstart your life. And don't forget, progress isn't linear. Our growth looks more like the stock market. Some days were up, some days were down, and we may not reap the benefits for a while.

But if we play the long game and stay consistent, disciplined and patient, you'll see that the stock market always bounces back and so can you. If this episode inspired you to promote someone else's achievements, please do me a favor and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would share this episode with the people in your life who may find value in what I shared today.

In fact, that would be my favorite example of how you can promote someone else's achievements. Remember, the purpose of this show is to help you navigate the complexities and possibilities of life's second half. And I hope this free and useful information provide some insight that will help you reflect, learn and grow. So with that, this is Billy. Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. May you feel happy, healthy and loved.

Take care, friends.