Your Life is Precious – Coming to Grips with That

Welcome to The Missing Secret Podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield,

Hey, and I'm John Mitchell. So here's our topic today, your life is precious, coming to grips with that. Now, Kelly, I know that you believe that life is precious, right?

Oh my gosh, yeah, absolutely. And it's easy to forget, you know, and so I'm excited to dive into this today and give some people some context and some perspective around this, and to and to remind folks of how precious life is.

Well, I'll get us rolling into this, and I think this will make everybody look at their own life. That's really the purpose of it, but everybody, probably more or less, knows my story, that when I was 50, I wasn't as successful as I thought I should be. And so there I am at 50, trying to figure out what to do, and the bright idea comes to me to find the top book of the world on success and apply it literally, word to word, to my life. Then I buy the book, and I discover the secret. I discover that there's a secret to success, but the author only gives us half of the secret. And so I mope around for three weeks, and finally man up and decide to figure out the secret. And so I'm starting to read the book like 20 times over a two month period. And so along this time again, I'm 50, and I'm feeling the scarcity of time, but there's something more going on. And that what else was going on was my mom was dying of pancreatic cancer. And so every, every day after work, I would go see her, and I'd love on her and hold her hand. And then it was everything I could do to keep from sort of breaking down in front of her. And so I'd hold it together. And then after spending a couple hours with her, I'd go and leave, and I'd get in the cold, dark parking lot and just cry my eyes out like for 45 minutes every night. And again, it's going on for like eight weeks. And obviously I'm losing. I'm feeling the impending loss my mom, but I knew there was something deeper going on, because I'd never had this level of gut wrenching emotional upheaval going on in my life ever. And I had some things as I guess we all have, like I lost my best friend at 40, and I found him, well, that was devastating, but this was a whole new level to every night pry my eyes out for 45 minutes, and what I realized ultimately was that I felt like I was letting my mom down with My life because my parents had given me everything. I went to Jesuit High School in Dallas when they didn't really have the money to pay for it, but they did, and they sent me to the University of Texas and paid for everything. I didn't have to pay for anything. And so there I am at 50, my mom's dying, and I see that all I got to show for this privileged life was I had an average life, and, you know, I hated the average life, and and I would just felt like I was letting my mom down. And so the the point of that story is there was that seminal moment in my life where I really saw how precious life is, especially, I guess because my mom was losing her her life. So I'm tuned into life, leaving and then, and it's making me think about my life in a in a way that I I never had before, and I saw how precious it was and and you know, that was ultimately that that feeling of letting my mom down was like rocket fuel and causing me to go deeper into thinking, Grow Rich, to figure out it full secret than any other person on the planet, and so I just see that that was a seminal moment in my life to appreciate how precious life was, and to basically kick myself in the ass to Let's go. Let's figure this out. Let's let's play to our full potential and figure out how to do that. And so I'm curious when in your life has that full circle to you that made you appreciate how precious your life is.

Yeah, I think for me, it started early. You know, so as weird as this may sound. And the gift of, you know, from the time that I was 12 until the time I was 18, I spent a lot of time in the cancer, what pediatric cancer ward with a very close like, there was a brother to me. And there's something about, you know, and watching child after child like this is over 30 years ago, you know what I mean. And so when you were having a bone marrow transplant, you know, over 30 years ago, the survival rate bone marrow trans like there's been so many advancements since then. And so you saw a lot, unfortunately, of these childhood cancers not go the way. You know, there was a lot of young children passing away, including Ben, who, when I was 18, and he was 17, passed away after a long, you know, battle with it. So I think, for me, and there's something too, there was a knowing that those souls have, that are going through that too. And so being around that, and the joy that they were having for the moment and being present, and there was a knowing that they weren't going to, even though these are small children or so, I think being around that for me, and then also to having had that exposure anytime, that's a whole different perspective, right? So anytime I don't feel like doing something, or I don't, it's like, I get to do this. Yeah, I am so grateful that I get to do this, because Ben will never have the opportunity, you know, to do this. One of my close friends, she's like a sister to me, and is also a business partner in a couple of other businesses that I'm involved in. You know, her dad, at 30, was in a paragliding accident and became a quadriplegic, right? So anytime I don't feel like doing the work and running, going out and running, I'm like John would. His name is John two. Would give anything to be able to get himself up out of his own bed and go on a run. So I think for me, that life is precious. I look at then everything I do is a privilege. Because, you know, while I'm here, there are so many people who wake up today not knowing that today is going to be their last day, right? And so it's about then, all right, so if today is my last day, is this then something I'm is the way I'm living, is the way I'm showing up? Am I proud of that? Am I proud of the direction I'm going in? Am I going to be able to put my, you know, if my last breath, you know, and I know that that's morbid, you know, it's kind of mortality motivation, but that's just been a part of my life, and the lens that I look through in a very positive way is more like, man, you know, I'm so grateful that I get to do this and and then too, when I'm not making the impact, or when I'm not, it's what you were just mentioning, John, where you feel like you're letting people down, right? You know, I think about Ben all of the time. I think about those children, you know, I think about John, you know, who does and I have the ability and the privilege, and almost feel like I have a responsibility, then to show up in the world in the way that I show up, because it's a gift and it's presence. And so I think when you've had that experience, and I know probably everybody listening has had the experience of a loved one dying or somebody close to them, I just encourage people to not just move past that, but to think about it on a deeper level. Because really be a motivation or that fuel you need to show up differently in life, right?

Wow, that's that's interesting. One things, I think, is, is the takeaway from this, really, is for each of our audience members to really, just maybe, maybe, when you're got your head on the pillow tonight, just think about how precious your life is and and how your life affects other people. Maybe, maybe that it puts it into perspective in terms of how precious it is, and if it's not like you want it to be man up or woman up and and take control of your life, and I see that most people are just winging life, as you all know, and the people that are listening to this podcast, by and large, they're not winging life, they're doing our methodology. But one of the things that came through to me, I just finished teaching my class this semester, and it's a every class is a four month journey of, you know, start launching it and then teaching them all the methodology, and then you get to the last week and the final assignment, final two assignments of they do a video that is like three min. It's long each one of them. I let them do it in pairs that they want to, and they just articulate what they learned in the class. And that is so fun. We show the videos at the in the class the last day of class, and it's so, you know, gratifying to me to see that they will articulate that before this class, they were just winging life. I asked them, what's the most significant things you learned? Of course, they didn't know they were wired for survival and didn't know the downside. But now it's so enlightening that, oh, that's why I don't feel like I'm enough or I'm not good enough, and and then the other big one is, is they didn't know that 95% of their daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. What a game changer that is. And so it just interesting, but, but one of the things that always came up was a they go, I went from just weighing life to now actually having a way of doing life. And so it's so gratifying here at the end, just to see those 30 to 40 lives that I've given every semester to impact. And then actually you see that the impact and and I think largely, they're starting to understand how precious their life is and that, but one of the things I also see is that sometimes they don't grab a hold of it, and I think, and it's, you know, hard to tell, but It appears to me that 80% of the class is embracing the methodology and doing the methodology, but some of them struggle. And I'm like, Why the hell should you be struggling? It's 12 freaking minutes a day. I mean, what do you got going that's more important than this? Just do it and do it the first as soon as you get up, there's no struggle in it. What's your take on that?

I think it's like, you know, anything into you do have to think about now you're dealing with some smart kids. They worked hard to get into the University of Texas, so Right? Got that piece. But they are still young adults, yeah, brains are still forming, who still think they'd probably know, you know, let me go right, everything you know. And so I think there always is that resistance, you know, with some people, and that's, you know, 80% you know, that's not in a number to, you know, blink an eye out, that's for sure, that is a 80% of the people in the class taking it on, and only 20% you know, resisting it. You know, that's an excellent ratio. It's flipped your way. The reverse side, get to be adults. So there may just be some people that are either skeptics, you know, who, yeah, I don't know what my take is on that, but, you know, other than the fact that I think there are just some of those sometimes people who I don't know aren't ready for the message. You know what I mean?

Yeah, no, yeah. Like, like you said 100 times before, you know, meeting where they are, yeah, but, but I it's funny. You know me, I and I don't sound arrogant, but I'm like, Listen, you think they're gonna let me teach this at McCombs if it hadn't been thoroughly vetted? Yeah. I mean, what? You don't think it works. You don't think it's the 95% of your daily thoughts and actions are unconscious. You think that's a fate statistic. I'm like, Come on, just now, I'm a little more polite about it in the classroom, but, but in some ways, but I'm also confrontational to a point, because I think that is a value to them.

Yeah, I do too. You've got to, again, some people receive the message in different ways, you know. And so, you know, having that more, you know, kind of direct approach is going to resonate really well with some. And then the, you know, the other approach, where you're just showing them, and they're, you know, taking in the information and and then seeing the proof as they experiment with it. Yeah, I think that that's too once you start to see and go, Oh, you know, it's really quick, you become a believer in, like, as far as just the science behind it and everything, because you're watching it happen in real time, you're like, Yeah, gosh, you know,

That's a great point. Then they, they all said that in the in, basically, in the final exam, that, Oh, I I'd see the results and, and I'll tell you something that that said I did this sort of off the top my head one class, and I was telling him, I said, You're the problem, you're also the solution. That's the good news, yeah. And of course, you're, you're hitting 20 year olds with this, which is an advanced concept. And what was so cool. So I spent probably 20 minutes just going off on, on your. Or the whatever the problem is in your life that you think is, is somebody else's somebody else caused it? No, you are the problem. You are the problem. But the great news is you're also the solution, especially holding this methodology in your hands, because the first step though is you got to embrace, oh, I am the problem. I am the problem. And, and then you go, Oh, well, I gotta, I gotta fix me. And, oh, this, this template that I hold my hand is how I fix me and and I think when, when they started to see that one of the students in the final exam said that class changed her life, that that she never thought about it that way, and how empowering it was, because she intended to be, uh, perceive herself as a victim, Yeah, but how, how powerful it was to actually see that any problem, basically she can fix it, and how, how much of a sense of control that that gave her,

Yeah? I think that there's that awareness, you know, once you really become aware that, like, oh, I created mine reality, yeah. Like, so there's that radical accountability that, like, every you know, and even like, there could be some unfair things that have happened to you, you know what I mean, but the way you choose to look at them, or to take the lessons from them, or like, you know what I mean, how you perceive or respond to those situations. That's your choice. You know how you're going to do that. So I think that once people start to understand when, you know, you say like, Hey, wherever you're at, and you know, in this, I like to say this because it makes people like, Well, wait a minute, you know, because it almost feels like they're being blamed when you're like, wherever you're at, good and bad or otherwise, it's your fault, yeah, you know. And they're like, wait a minute, it's my fault. That feels like a and it's like, yeah, that's, I'm purposely doing that to set you back on your heels, because this is we're talking about radical, you know, accountability. So wherever you're at, whatever your lot in life is, whatever your station in life is, you know, you are where you are, and it is through you know your the different choices, the way you choose to respond to a situation, the people you have in your life, you choose to have different people in your you know what I mean? Like, yeah, with every single situation that somebody brings up, being able to then to point out, where is your where's your agency or control in this particular situation? And then for them to go, oh, wait a minute, I did have agency at these three different points of this, you know? And so I think once you get people to wrap their head around that, it really, truly can be game changing, because that means, if that's true, then the other is true, yeah, then change. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I love that.

I tell you another thing that I've, I've realized, and I'm very observant of this these days, is, is, how enlightened are people that I kind of come in contact to? I'm looking at that with everybody I'm I'm involved with, how enlightened are they? How self aware are they and and I see that everybody is just a function of their genetics and what has come into their consciousness to this point. That's that's what makes them who they are. And I see this a lot, interestingly, with the athletes in my my class, you have the regular business school students that are super sharp, and they've got this, this school thing down, which, by the way, is way different than than the real world. But you know, they've got the school down, and then you have athletes. And I would say, you've got, I don't know, maybe, maybe a third of the athletes are just behind the other ones. I mean, oftentimes they grew up in the ghetto, maybe they've been passed in school, just because they were good at football or whatever. And then they get to the University of Texas and and certainly now within i l it's there, they're professional athletes coming out of high school, when they are freshmen in college, they are now professional athletes making anywhere from 600,000 to a million dollars a year as a you know player on on like the University of Texas football team. So it's a whole new dynamic. But it doesn't change the fact that that some of them are their level of enlightenment is way. Below what normal students are, and I've wrestled with with this in what I'm teaching. You know, how do you how do you factor that in? But I see that the process of enlightenment is not linear, and I know in my own life, when I look at those moments where, where I got way more enlightened. It wasn't just a straight line linear. It was like the first time I remember. It was somebody handed me the book Psycho Cybernetics when I was 19 years old, which is all about self image. Boom. I am immediately more enlightened by probably a factor of five, and then off I go. And I get in the real world. I get my ass kicked a little. I'm rolling, yeah, I'm doing the best I can, but but I'm also clueless about what doing my best is, and I didn't learn what that was, because in my 50s, when I when I was blessed to be making, you know, 5 million a year, I'm very observant of why is this happening, and now I'm understanding, oh, there's like, six components of doing my best. Yes, it's getting up early and and putting in the effort. But it's also being highly organized. It's being it's deep thinking two times a week. It's being a conduit of learning. It's understanding what moves the needle, and then foundationally, it's understanding how the human mind works well. So I learned all that sort of in the moment where, in in my 50s, well, boy, if somebody has explained that to me at 20, what a difference. So by God, they they learned it now where they're going to apply it, I don't know, but the the point, yeah. And also the other obvious enlightenment jump for me was figuring out the secret to think and grow rich. But the point of this long winded story is basically that that you get enlightened by moments where lightning strikes. It's not just that linear path. When you look back on your life, what were those pivotal moments? Yeah, I think, I mean, Ben, like, when your dad got you to read,

Yep, richest thing in Babylon. And think Rich were two books. And, I mean, I was probably 12, right? Like, you know? I think, yeah, those pivotal moments like that. I think Ben's death, I think, you know, at different points in my career, before I started my own business, starting my own business, and the conversation that was one of the ones that kind of was like, you know, are you ever going to do this? You know, cutting a cold glass of water in my face was a pivotal moment. I've had some mentors say things to me that were that changed. I think who I am as a, you know, or how I think about things. So, yeah, I can absolutely think of, you know, you know, those moments we've just recently had one, you know, both of my husband's parents have passed away, and his dad passed away just this last, um, November, and that was another moment where, right again, you're reevaluating things.

So yeah, now it's, it's interesting, but, but I think in this world of clutter, you have to look for those things that are significant, those events, those people, those sayings that just make you more enlightened. And and I look at at myself and I today, and I look at how unenlightened I was in the past, I'm like, That's okay. I I was doing the best I could. I was as enlightened as I was enlightened, but my my lesson to the younger version of myself would be, get more enlightened. I mean, seek realize you there's so much you don't know, and there's people that are playing this game of life at a higher level. Learn how they're doing it and and like I saw a video with Jordan Peterson, he was talked about, as you get older, dealing with regrets and accepting the fact that maybe your body fails you now, but your mind, you know, doesn't necessarily have to diminish and and I thought all that was interesting. And I personally have zero regrets. I mean, I always did the best I could. And sure, I look back and wish I hadn't done this, wish I had done that, but still, I'm doing the best I could. So where's the need for regret? I don't see it.

Yeah, and I think too for me, and again, I don't know, as far as a. On the deathbed, but if I were on it today, like, any of those regret like, I can connect all the dots as to why something did happen didn't happen, where the opport like, I think it's all just a beautiful like, mess, you know what? It organizes itself the with wisdom and being able to reflect on your life and look at all like you could see how all of the things connected and why, maybe the one thing you didn't do opened up the door that maybe, yeah, like you regret today, but it actually opened up the door to these four other things that would have never been possibilities had you done the thing that you regret. You know what I know and so, like, I just think of it all as, you know, when I'm looking at it like that were, you know, so and I think too, if I were talking to my 22 year old self, you know, it would be, be more curious. So same thing where you're like, you know, ask lots of questions. Be really curious. Be really interested. Be more interested than interesting, than trying to be more interesting. Be more interested. Meaning, be curious. Get to know people. Ask questions, you know, get mentors learn, you know, and don't stop learning just because you're 22 and you graduated and you know, like that is not when education stops, it continues on. You know, through however you want it to continue, but you know, be curious your entire life, because the more questions you ask. You know, the more your mind opens, and the more doors open,

Right? Why? I know as as I go forward in life, I I use clear as a bill that, like we have something that's life changing, no doubt about it, and how big it becomes, I don't know. I look at TV as my art and and I'm going to continue to refine the art, and I'm also going to make the effort to expose it to more people, because I see that nobody is teaching in the success and human achievement field, a way of doing life, and that's what this is. And so in this world of clutter, it's on me to make people aware of it. Well, I'm going to do that, but I'm not going to kill myself doing it because I'm enjoying my life. So if there that, you know, there's a little part on them, hey, you got to step up and recognize it when you hear it. I'll do my part, but you got to do your part. So absolutely okay, okay, until next time, we'll see you.