The Gentlemen Project Podcast
Bi-weekly podcast highlighting impactful stories of parents and what they do to be successful at home and at work. Helping you turn the time you have with your kids into time well spent helping them learn the most important lessons in life. The Gentlemen Project Podcast is hosted by Kirk Chugg and Cory Moore-friends who are passionate about fatherhood and raising the next generation of great kids.
The Gentlemen Project Podcast
"Learning to Speak Human, Increasing Emotional Intelligence and a New Parenting Paradigm" with Paul Blanchard
In this episode, our guest Paul Blanchard shares insights on how our vulnerabilities can be turned into strengths on the path to better self-awareness. He talks about the importance of authenticity and vulnerability in forging meaningful relationships and introduces the Habit Finder as a tool for personal assessment. Paul also offers a fresh perspective on parenting and human connection, emphasizing the necessity of creating spaces for open dialogue and allowing our kids to feel safe when they most need their parents. This episode is a masterclass in communication, habit formation, and coaching that transcends transactional relationships.
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Welcome to the Gentleman Project Podcast. I'm Corey Moore and I'm Kirk Chugg. Today, Paul Blanchard joins us in the studio. Paul and I have been connected via social media for several years now and I have been so impressed and blown away by the man's ability to. He has a presence about him and it doesn't have to be in person. It can also be through a Zoom or through one of the lives that he does.
Kirk Chugg:He's a coach, an author, a mindset guru. I know he doesn't like to be called an expert, but when you listen to this guy talk, you will be blown away at how well he knows the subject matter in which he speaks, and we're just grateful that he would join us today. We're really looking forward to talking to him about family, what makes him who he is and how he's affecting change in the lives of others. So welcome, paul. Thank you, we're happy to have you. Pleasure to be here. So, paul, tell us quick about your family and just the makeup of your family, so that we've got a little bit of context for for the conversation today.
Paul Blanchard:Sure, so I'm married. I've been married for almost 19 years. I have three daughters 16, 13, and 10. And that's everything for me. Of all the damage, all the wounds, all the problems, I've never wondered if I was going to be good at being a dad.
Kirk Chugg:It's just.
Paul Blanchard:I'm sure I make mistakes, but they don't strike at the heart of things. It's, it's, it's been the most natural thing that I've ever done in life the, the, the role of that um. My wife and I have certainly had our wild adventures and crazy experiences, and um, we met on hot or notcom. That's always a fun one to throw out early.
Cory Moore:Hot or not? I haven't heard of that one.
Kirk Chugg:I think I remember that it was like back in, like the night, my space, days right.
Paul Blanchard:Totally. I had someone say to me hey, when you get back in the country, check this site out, it's hilarious. And so um. So I, I uh checked it out and they had just added a meet me feature because, like matchcom wasn't really popular yet. I think someone had died trying to date on Craigslist or something at that point and and I she clicked to meet me. I, you know strategically, wore the sweater, the grand piano picture.
Paul Blanchard:I had Billy Joel sheet music behind me. She's like I didn't notice any of that. I was like okay, well, your subconscious did so, it all worked out.
Kirk Chugg:Yeah.
Paul Blanchard:It all worked out. It worked yeah, but yeah, we have a blast, we have a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to talking about all those things. I'm a big believer that professional problems are personal problems in disguise, so it's kind of all connected and so anything I can do to offer some insights you mentioned. I don't like being called an expert. It's not as much. I don't like any particular thing with semantics or words, as much as I don't necessarily agree with or align with some of the implied things about that or some of the limitations. Like expert, oftentimes we become very exclusionary.
Paul Blanchard:It's very standing on my experience, which is beautiful, except that it naturally trespasses on, and that should be your experience, you know so just opening that up, not so much I don't like that word kind of a thing.
Kirk Chugg:One of the things that I'd like about you is you, you kind of let people go on their own path and their own journey, but you, you will help them discover things about themselves and then let them find it very, very humble. But you don't come across that way, naturally, because of your voice, your stature, your water. You're like six foot five, Can talk. Talk to us a little bit.
Paul Blanchard:Yeah, I think the dynamic that makes that really interesting is I've I. One of the most powerful discoveries I made was that my insecurity was a superpower. Made was that my insecurity was a superpower. I've spent a lot of years, as I think many people have, trying to overcome that and using confidence as some shield, some sword to fight through that and to prove that I had conquered the insecurity. And the more I tried to do that, the less confident I felt, the more alienated I felt really deep inside. And so then that required all kinds of other ways of creating peak, strong, you know States to be able to power through that and then having to recover, and that just didn't feel like a way to live. And so when I got an opportunity to start to build a relationship with my insecurity, to find out it wasn't what everybody said it was, it actually had some beautiful things to share with me. It was a. It actually wanted to be seen and expressed and cared for and connected to, and that just opened everything up.
Paul Blanchard:I do have some physicality that I navigate. Um, I am a large man. Although I don't feel that way Anytime I see a picture with someone else, it's almost always, to this day a shock of like oh, I am really big, um, but I don't feel that. But it is important to remember like my volume can be misinterpreted very easily just because of that physical nature. Um, but that conflict used to create a lot of shame for me until I started to lean into the relationship with insecurity and it's opened some amazing doors.
Paul Blanchard:I believe that I've had an opportunity to get into some places with some people that I don't believe I would have had the ability or even the right to if I had gone there confidently, whereas going there with my insecurity so that theirs could, on some level, feel mine and be willing to open up.
Paul Blanchard:I've found that to be very disruptive for people and I certainly had the time in my profession where I prided myself on being the disruptor until I realized you don't have to try to do that If you just show up stable and calm and clear and available. That's actually incredibly disruptive to us as human beings that are constantly trying to check some balances and strategically navigate. What is it that he really wants from me, what is it that I'm really supposed to do here? And and you just show up and like and whatever that is is great and it takes a second for people to buy into that. But I think there's a sense, when they feel that whatever mine is is okay, that it kind of gives a tacit approval to, to theirs to to show up and and I think that in and of itself is quite disruptive.
Cory Moore:I'd like to dive a little deeper into the insecurities thing, because I would say I talk to our people all the time and I would typically say that leaders who are having a tough time they're usually having a tough time because of their insecurities. They're letting it get in the way of them being a great leader, right. They can't get out of their tough time because of their insecurities. They're letting it get in the way of them being a great leader, right. They can't get out of their own way because of their insecurities. So they're either guarded, or they pretend that they're overly confident, or they don't bring people around them that are really good at where they're not right. Get people around them who compliment them.
Cory Moore:They don't do it because they don't want to show their weaknesses or their insecurities, right. So I think I'd like to go a little deeper on, like how are you using insecurities as a superpower? It sounds like you know you're you're. You're just open about them and you don't hide them. In fact, maybe you're telling people about them in order to have great conversations about those insecurities. I don't know. Give us a little deeper on how you're doing that, because for me, I would love to use that in my life and tell other people how to do that.
Paul Blanchard:Yeah, I think the first part is just allowing them to be here. They're not a problem. I'm not. I'm not trying to solve my insecurities. They're. They're a part of me that probably a lot of it came from comparison.
Paul Blanchard:You know, biblically, who taught you you were? Who told you you were naked Like, who told you that how you are as an? Okay, that's not a rhetorical question, that's an incredible question Like, oh, yeah, where did that come from? You know, there there's so much power to stepping back and going. We're making all of this up, all of it, every construct that we feel is just, this is how you should live and this is the way that this works, and even from the greatest experts in the world, when you zoom out, that may be true within a certain construct, within a certain arena of things, and I think being able to zoom out and be like, wow, we're making all of this up, and then being curious about how you feel in that space, cause, just like you can feel insecure if you're around someone that is living the life that you think you're supposed to be living, you can feel just as insecure zooming out and going, wow, it really doesn't matter, and just seeing what comes up in you when you consider that I think that's probably the biggest thing that I would want anybody listening to grab onto is the power of considering.
Paul Blanchard:I didn't diagnose. I stopped trying to diagnose and fix my insecurities and I just considered them, and that spilled over into everything. I don't try to diagnose my kids, I just consider them, and consideration occurs in a non-dual space, a liminal space, which is incredibly difficult, especially for entrepreneurs, business leaders. We have very dualistic anchors in life this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad and a non-dual space where you can actually consider your insecurities. You can actually consider questions that might create an identity response or a visceral response.
Paul Blanchard:It just demonstrates the lack of capacity to consider, because you've got to pick a side, you've got to decide quickly whether this question is okay to consider before you even considered it, and so opening that up, which started with my insecurities and led to so many other things, just gives you freedom, which freedom, in my humble, simple definition, is just options. That's all it is. The more options you have, the more freedom you have. The less options you have, the more freedom you have. Less options you have, the less freedom you have.
Paul Blanchard:And and most of us are trying to operate within the complex construct of of conceptual options, like I know. I know I have the option of quitting my job, but can I really like? Is that an embodied option? Um, and so being able to sit in and consider and process and create that landscape, I think, is amazing work, Because then suddenly you can start to see the elements of your insecurities, that you've been taught about them and so much more. And that's granted, that's got to be done slowly because it can be system overload if you dive into that too fast.
Kirk Chugg:I mean, that's huge. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about today is parallel with this in helping us ourselves realize that we are not our thoughts, and then also how we teach that to our children, because they're constantly bombarded on what they should be, what they ought to be. Comparison is the thief of joy, and how do we teach this we are not our thoughts to our children?
Paul Blanchard:That's a great question. I think some of that is to consider. Well, if we aren't our thoughts, then what are we? That could get really, really bizarre. I think the simplest stopgap to put in that for this conversation is that we are. We are the observer, and the observer cannot observe itself, and so anything that we attach to is not us. It's what we're observing. It's what we're noticing.
Paul Blanchard:And so I think if we can consider that we are not our thoughts, well, then that automatically gets us rolling into. Then, what are we? Then we can start to consider what else we attach to. I think is more productive than to consider well, what are we or who am I? I was just asked yesterday by someone who said what do you think of the quote? Know thyself. And the simplest response was well, if we want to talk about the actual self, that is, your existence or your consciousness. You can't know it because it just is, there's nothing to know you are observing
Paul Blanchard:and the observer can't observe itself. But then that gives us a really cool platform for considering the things that we've thought were ourself. And just because they aren't ourself doesn't mean they're irrelevant, doesn't mean they're not important, but it does kind of lower the stakes a little bit, which is really important for actual transformation, because we're living in a world that believes the higher the stakes, the higher the accountability I mean like weaponized accountability the more productive you are, and that just depends on the scope that you look at. The longer you play that out, the less productive you are, because you can't sustain that. It's a force versus a natural rhythm and things like that.
Paul Blanchard:So if we're to step back and say I'm not my thoughts, what else might I be, I think is probably a great next step to take there. What else might I be, I think, is probably a great next step to take there. And one of the next things that I think you can land on in the infinite advancement of being you is your feelings. And that's an interesting landscape, because most of us don't feel our feelings. We react to what we think about our feelings. And what do we think about our feelings? What we've been taught to think about our feelings and what do we think about our feelings? What we've been taught to think about our feelings and in fact, we don't even know what. Most people that I work with don't even know what their feelings actually are. They just know words that they've been told to put on labels Anger, sadness, depression, anxiety. Those aren't feelings, those are labels on jars that have an infinite number of aspects to them in how they're actually experienced. But now we're on our way. We're not just saying you're not your thoughts. Just like we don't say stop smoking, we say stop smoking and consider doing this instead to help you rewire these things. So you're not your thoughts. Let's start feeling and let's start learning how to feel beyond what we think about what we're feeling and when you can start to get into that place. That's the crux of the work that I do Is I've never met anyone that didn't want to feel better, and the secret to feeling better is to get better at actually feeling. And so you consider your children when you can start to find this in you that I'm not my thoughts.
Paul Blanchard:I'm a sensory creature. I am driven by feeling, and we have some conceptual constructs in this world that has told us if you buy this. You'll feel this If you get educated like this. You'll feel this If I gave you a piece of paper and said you've got five minutes to write down everything you want, and at the end of the five minutes I'll snap my finger and give it all to you. But there's one catch you don't get to feel anything for the rest of your life. Would you take that deal? No, way, no.
Paul Blanchard:But it totally reveals the man behind the curtain, it totally rips the cover off the ball to go, wow, everything we seek, everything we crave, is a feeling, a sensation.
Paul Blanchard:And then this world we've made up has put a bunch of different things in place to leverage the desire to feel something and what's driven our consumerism and I'm not here to burn that down or whatever Capitalism, socialism, yes and okay, but to say like wow, that's actually what's driving me.
Paul Blanchard:You just got like the secret recipe that if you can crack that code inside of you to say, wow, what if I didn't have to do that to feel that and I could feel that without having to do that, then I could figure out if I actually want to do that, because most of the things we want to do or most things we want in life aren't because we want to do them, it's because we want to feel what we think doing that will allow us to feel.
Paul Blanchard:And if you can learn that you can actually feel without having to do anything, then suddenly the obligation goes down, the need to whip yourself and drive yourself goes down and that can actually feel unbelievably disorienting at first. But coming back to kind of the heart of your question with your children, when you can start to do that, you can start to have conversations and I mean that loosely connections with your kids where you are speaking the language of what they are feeling, not what they're saying. When you find that in you, when you can loosen the grip on rationale and judgment and social programming of what's okay and not okay to say to yourself and just allow it to be seen and expressed and then felt in the body, suddenly you can start to speak that language with your daughter or your son, who are going to be expressing far more feelings and desires for feelings than what they're actually saying on the conceptual surface. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Kirk Chugg:Yeah, no, that's, that's pretty powerful, and I think that goes back to another question that I wanted to ask you was this uh and maybe this is a little bit more business oriented, but I think it translates well to family too is this the hype of the hustle? Right? Like you got to, you got to get out there and pound the streets, you got to go hustle, hustle, hustle, and that hype is really just a mirage right for hiding what's beneath these feelings that you're feeling. You want to expand on that a little bit, so hustle it.
Paul Blanchard:Um, it's a trauma response. That doesn't make it bad, though. We have lots of trauma responses, we have, we have. We have this messy network from the moment we're born, pre-verbal, uh, to today that is, that is just clogged and and and enmeshed in trauma and shame and attachment wounds and so much of what we think is the right way to live, and the and the identity of the identity of me is how I am managing and triaging that not actually me, because the actual me was the original instructions that were a clean canvas when I was born in this primal state, but then I immediately started inheriting the genetics, the epigenetics, the energy, the influence of all the people around me who were dealing with their shame and trauma and attachment wounds, and, and it cascades on and on and on, and I don't think that's tragic, I think that's kind of part of the human design.
Kirk Chugg:Yeah.
Paul Blanchard:Like. That's what we essentially signed up for, and I'm not here to claim like how that actually worked. You know whether we were in some pre-existence or whatever. I don't feel attached to figuring that out. I'm a big fan of Ken Wilber.
Paul Blanchard:One of my favorite modern philosophers says anytime you're considering something transpersonal, spiritual, mystical, always put the glasses on of as if. So you can, as if this was true, which I think gives you this incredible ability to jump into it full force as if it were true. But then when the flow changes or when you get curious about something, you're not attached to it, you're not clinging to it. You can make a cleaner break.
Paul Blanchard:And I think all of us can relate to the things in life that we have been so convinced were true. And then we cling to it and it created unnecessary suffering and whatever the case. Like people make fun of flat earthers all the time, but like, uh, the majority of our conscious existence, in science we believe that was the case. So the fact that it's just taking them a small margin in the history of humanity, a little longer to catch up or whatever, but then even to expand beyond that, I'm not here to say that I know 100% for sure that it's not just because I like throwing that into the mix of my own consideration Like, hey Paul, what if it is flat? Just to feel what it's like to propose that to myself, not because I'm attached to needing to be right or wrong about that.
Kirk Chugg:Well, this is the skill of unlearning that you talk about.
Paul Blanchard:Yeah.
Kirk Chugg:You know, like one of the things that you help your coaching clients do is figure out how to hone this skill of unlearning the things that they thought they knew their whole life through programming, or one of the things that I really like about this is like the personality profiles that we have all done. I'd love for you to talk about Habit Finder, because all of us know, like the disc profiles and the colors and the letters and the alphabets and the animals, and we've all taken those types of personality profiles. Talk to us a little bit about the danger of putting yourself in one of those boxes.
Paul Blanchard:So the danger? Is an interesting way to put it that all depends on what the outcome is that you're wanting to have. Things being good or bad really has to do with whether they do what we want them to do for us.
Paul Blanchard:I mean at the end of the day, like an apple is only rotten because you can't eat it, that doesn't make it bad. There's lots of other things you can do with a rotten apple, which makes the context of the word really, really interesting. But but I will speak in terms of what why most people seek those tools and why they may be out of alignment. Okay, most people seek tools like that for transformation. They want to understand themselves better, to be able to transform, and we crave conceptual anchors and boxes Like if I can explain why I am the way that I am, I should be able to change it. And yet explanation is, in a lot of cases, the opposite of transformation. It's one of the number one things that holds us back from transforming is, the better we can explain how we currently are, why we currently are, the more ingrained we are in staying where we are. And so if someone's never explored themselves, they've never read personal development books and tried to figure out, like self-awareness, a disc profile, which, which I've worked closely with um in building a, an MBA program, we what. We put that into the curriculum, um, or the Enneagram or whatever it is. That's a. That's a cool introduction. If you'd never considered that something else could know things about you without you telling it about you is pretty cool, you know, like a doctor coming in and saying hey, we, uh, we looked at your, your blood work, any chance? You feel like this pretty often and feel like this, like that's kind of mind blowing the first time that ever happens. Like how did you take this stuff out of me and have it tell you that stuff? How did you ask me those questions and have it tell you that? So that's a cool introduction, but to believe that a deeper investment in that identity is the key to unlocking things, that's like walking up to a big Oak door with a huge vertical handle and you grab on with both hands and you're like this is going to help me transform and you're ready to yank it open to get to the next version of you. But you put your foot against the door and so the harder you pull for the definition, the explanation, the this is why I am the way I am the more likely you are to stay there. However, what I see most people doing in that space is why they feel like they are transforming is they're rearranging the furniture. So they pull on the door for a little while, then they stop and they go oh um, let's move the couch over here, let's put the desk over there, let's put it's transformed, but you're, you're still in the same place and that's not bad.
Paul Blanchard:We're not here to say that any of this stuff is inferior or superior. We're just having an expansive conversation. That's what I try to do. That's why I try to stay away from the expert is. I'm not here to say this is right and you are wrong.
Paul Blanchard:I think that's there's way too much of that out there, as much as just. Hey, what have you considered more than you've considered before? How does that feel? How did it feel when I said well, I don't know for sure if it's, if the earth is flat or not, like how did that feel in you? Did you feel violated by that? Did you feel offended that you are a scientist and we know that it is? How could he say that? Well, what is that science based on? And if we zoom out from that, what is that based on? We zoom out, you zoom out far enough.
Paul Blanchard:We made it all up, you know, like one of the scariest theories in the world. I forget what it's called, but it's the idea that you cannot prove that anything else, you might be the only thing that exists and everything else you are making up. That theory is sound in terms of it. It can't be disproved. It can't be proved. But that's what theories are they're not proved, they are just extensively tried to be disproved. And eventually we get to a point where it's like, okay, that might be true. And then we're quick to adopt it as true until the next one comes out and we find out wow, we were wrong about that. And then we were in awe of every time that happens, like right now we're so sure that this is happening. And well, how many times have we done that before? Which doesn't mean let's not, let's stop digging, but let's stop getting so attached to it.
Kirk Chugg:You know what I mean. So if somebody's taken these personality profiles and they say I'm a, I'm a dominant D, listen to what you just said right, I am.
Paul Blanchard:I am drying the concrete of my self perspective. I am adding layers of explanation and I can't change that because now I am a D, yeah, yeah.
Kirk Chugg:So that's kind of what I wanted to touch on was you do not necessarily have to fall within that or dry the concrete of that. If you do one of those, there's always room for other things, and so talk about habit finder.
Paul Blanchard:Well, it doesn't mean that there aren't people out there using those tools and creating transformation. I had an entire college course on this stuff yeah.
Paul Blanchard:It just means that the majority of people and the way their brains typically work are going to have a hard time doing that. And it can be the littlest of tweaks. Even in your language. You could say, rather than I am a D or a red, yellow or an owl or whatever it is, you could say I noticing that I experience myself as this, just those words, as semantic as they sound, creates a totally different relationship as the observer, to say not, I am stamp on it, stuck, but to say I notice that's the first one, and then experiencing. And then you can start doing that with your emotions to create an expansive landscape. It's not I am mad, it's I notice that I'm experiencing anger right now. That is that alone just powerful. That framework is is unbelievably powerful in terms of your autonomy, your options, your freedom, rather than immediately attaching the wagon of I am so.
Paul Blanchard:Habit Finder is interesting because we decided to want to. It was actually from Augmandino's book the Greatest Salesman in the World. And I say we, my father and I, I was business partners with him for about 10 years, world. And I say we, my, my father and I, I was business partners with him for for about 10 years. And uh and uh, I was there kind of in the beginning of this in 2000. Uh, my dad was in film at the time. Um and uh, betty Mandino Og had passed away in 1996, offered the film rights to the greatest sales in the world to my dad. And, uh, he was in New York filming something for CBS at the time, or whatever, and and said, yeah, sure, one of the best books ever written, totally I'll take, I'll take the film rights to that. And then he called her back a short time later and said what if we built a company out of the principles of the greatest salesman in the world? And? And we'd love to give you ownership in that and carry Aug's legacy forward. And that was the start of the Augmandino Group, which later became the Six Advisors, which then became Intentional Creation and then finally, in its last iteration, habit Finder. But it's always been the Augmandino Company.
Paul Blanchard:And it was actually in Scroll 1, in the greatest sales in the world, where Aug introduced us to things that neuroscience is just figuring out in the last decade or two. And he wrote this thing in the 60s when he talked about the other mind that never sleeps and makes us act in ways we do not comprehend, and he went on to say poetically, marks out a path that threatens to imprison my future. We wanted to figure out how to measure the other mind that Og was talking about, and so we started looking into Myers-Briggs and DISC and everything we could get our hands on, and personality wasn't the other mind. Personality was an aspect, it was a manifestation of that other mind, an archetype, if you will. And even then it's tough to say you are this personality type. That's more likely saying this is your dominant personality type. Most people have seven to nine personality types anyway, and if you're married, I promise she'll tell you that you do. And so with that, the opportunity to be able to be curious about rather than this is the most common manifestation, or these are the manifestations. What's the wiring underneath that?
Paul Blanchard:And that's where Habit Finder came in, when we found at the University of Tennessee the Hartman Institute, dr Robert Hartman, who was born in World War II in Germany, across the street from what would later become the actually, I think he was born in World War II in Germany, across the street from what would later become the actually, I think he was born during World War I, across the street from what would later become the headquarters of the Third Reich.
Paul Blanchard:He was a mathematician, a theologian and just an amazing human being and asked one simple question like why are we so good at organizing bad? And that led to wanting to be able to mathematically define good or bad, take the ethics out of it, the morality out of it, and see if he could get it down to the bare bones of mathematical good or bad. And he was able to do it, and it's called axiological mathematics mathematical good or bad. And he was able to do it and it's called axiological mathematics. And uh, it's like my little magic trick. It's in terms of the mouthful. It's. It's the formal science of axiological mathematics cantor's transfinite calculus and the concept of infinitudes that's very good, thank you.
Paul Blanchard:You can slow that down at half speed and let's do it again well, the the biggest thing of that is like it's's, it's not tea leaves, it's not, you know, it's. It's science and and it is based on patterns and risk. So we were able to build an assessment from that that does not induce a diagnosis. That's what 99% of assessments out there are. Is there inducing a diagnosis of your personality, your type, one of the manifestations, depending on the framework that you're wanting to identify in your behavior, your aptitude, your personality?
Paul Blanchard:your emotional construct, which is a little redundant, because that's all. Personality is First. I think it was Joe Dispenza who said your personality are just the emotions you've memorized. We want to find out what's under the surface of all that, what's the actual wiring in the house, not just what is the biggest room. And so with a deductive assessment we can in 10 minutes, online, no questions, can't manipulate it get about 6.4 quadrillion variables in the patterns of your brain, just from you ranking two lists. Patterns of your brain, just from you ranking two lists.
Paul Blanchard:One of the keys to those lists is they are not, they weren't driven by committee. They're actually mathematical equations that were turned into words and phrases. So your brain is seeing words and phrases, but what it's being required to do is subconsciously reveal its cards of how it values the world, your inner world and your outer world. And then we've spent 20 years, in addition to Hartman's four decades of work and research, creating definitions around the risks of thinking out of alignment with the mathematical alignment. So we don't have to argue about what's good or bad morally or ethically, what is the right thing to have at the top of the list, what's the or bad morally or ethically? What is the right thing to have at the top of the list. What's the wrong thing? It's simply here is the mathematical order and here are the risks to thinking out of order. Not, it's bad to think out of order. Here's the risks.
Paul Blanchard:Entrepreneurially, there's a risk that last time I checked I think 74% of entrepreneurs have of being vivid visionaries Very visual, naturally visual people windshield time, shower time, like their minds going places that they even can't keep track of. And because it's so powerful, the chemistry changes with what they're visualizing to the point that it can feel real Major risks to that. But we don't necessarily want to get rid of that because that can be an amazing gift. So identifying it as a risk rather than being bad allows us to figure out if we want to manage that risk. Like the freeway that's a block from us, people are going 70 miles an hour in 4,000 pound hunks of metal. That's risky. But the fact that tomorrow night, if I want, I could throw my kids in the car and be in Las Vegas in six hours is incredible. That was a two-month journey not that long ago. That's so cool.
Paul Blanchard:So that's what I love about habit finders we're not looking at what's good or bad, what's ideal or not ideal. We're just looking at patterns and curious about how they're showing up, and is that in alignment with how you want your world, your life, to be showing up? And is that an alignment with how you want your world, your life, to be showing up? And if it's not, we can adjust it. Because if you can change the patterns and you change how it shows up because that's all your interpreted reality is, is it's what all the patterns in you want to see happening right now.
Paul Blanchard:Your reality, no matter how much you do or don't like it right now, is best case scenario for all the parts of you. It's a consensus. This is the best compromise for the parts of us that really want recognition, the parts of us that pretend that they don't, the parts of us that care about our body, the parts of us that don't. The parts of it like whatever you're experiencing right now, even if you think it should be different and that you think you want it to be different, this is the best case scenario. So if you keep trying to force, like watching Congress or the House of Representatives, you force the other side to vote differently because they're wrong, then you continue to stalemate your current reality, if you can then go seek to understand why not having more money makes sense to those parts of you, then suddenly you can start to collaborate with them differently and guess what starts to show up in your life? More money.
Paul Blanchard:If you are having certain impacts on your relationship with your kids and you don't want to acknowledge those parts, it just keeps repeating itself. I mean, the kiss of death is I don't want to be like my parents. All your brain heard was be like your parents, which it was headed towards anyway, because that was one of the primary influences in your life. You don't not be like your parents If that's a goal of someone that's listening. You don't not be like your parents by setting out a plan to not be like your parents you set up.
Paul Blanchard:You do that by feeling what it was actually like to be a child with those parents, rather than just thinking about what you thought, you felt and what you were wrestling with. And so getting into that with a habit finder, seeing those patterns, that gives me a at least a six month headstart with my clients, because rather than talking and doing all the due diligence verbally, they can take that and I can see that much data. That quickly, we go cool, what do you want? Ah well, here's what might be getting in the way, and here are some ways to reformat that, to shift those patterns, and then if you can get that down into the sensory experience, then it actually becomes a new habit, it becomes a new pattern, rather than something you have to expend a lot of energy trying to maintain or creating whips and chains and pressure to get you to maintain it too.
Cory Moore:So so how does someone work with you and or how does someone utilize this habit tracker and go down that path?
Paul Blanchard:Great question. So the easiest way to experience is you can just go to wholebodymindsetcom, forward slash habit finder. So all one word, just like it sounds H-A-B-I-T-F-I-N-D-E-R and my, my company, is wholebodymindsetcom and you can click on that and take it there and that will ping my system and it'll send you a little bit of information about it and it will invite you to like hey, do you want to learn more about this? And if you do, then I'll be happy to provide that in different capacities depending on what my bandwidth is, but you're not going to be left out in the dark. Um, even if you know thousands of people heard this and took it.
Paul Blanchard:Tomorrow it just might take me a minute to get through all of that, but right now I have a intentionally intimate coaching practice. I don't currently not because it's wrong, necessarily, but I don't currently invest a lot in funnels or lead generation. I play with it because I learned a lot about me messing around with that stuff. But almost everybody I work with comes from referral, comes from some kind of experience with me, and I'm okay with that. Over the years I've gotten a lot more picky about who I will work with and it's not a selfish thing as much as you just get to a place where I think somewhat compassionately, you get to see and appreciate where people are at and where I'm at and how I can best serve them, and I want that to be in alignment. And so one of the greatest things I ever did as a coach was realize the difference between I could and and I could help that person versus the energy of I want to, because where I am is beautifully built for where they are, and I wish I could tell you how to figure that out, but you'll know like people might hear this and be like there's something about that guy. I want to, I want to figure out what that is, and then we talk more and it just happens to turn into something amazing and I'm, I'm a little hesitant and it's maybe just my thing from trying to do that with really strategic marketing.
Paul Blanchard:Um, cause I, I again, I'm I don't want to be overly judgmental, but there's a lot of great marketers who call themselves coaches and I, I just it's, it's not something that I choose to do, and I believed that standing up for that meant it was just going to be harder to get clients for me. You know, it was just going to be harder to try and do that, and that was a story, that was a belief system, that was something that needed to be unlearned. But yeah, if people want, I try to make myself pretty accessible as far as point of contact. Um, I have great boundaries. That's been a big part of my own work, um, but I I don't. I don't have a lot of landing pages and funnels to send people into right now.
Paul Blanchard:I just I find that, um, there's enough people ready for what I do and as long as I just kind of put enough out there, occasionally all I do every week is just ask myself what did you do this week that exposed you to people that you wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise? And that might be saying hi to somebody at the grocery store, I might be doing a podcast or just throwing something up on social media. I don't claim to have a lockdown on social media strategy. In terms of my execution, I've worked with some of the top experts in the world and can certainly teach other people to do that if that fits their model and their energy. But mine is a lot more organic and it fits because of the type of work I do with people.
Paul Blanchard:If they don't find me organically. It's really hard to find the organic platform that we're going to reach that will make the difference. And, of course, we all want to be more successful, we all want to feel better, we all want whatever, and there's a lot of ways to do that. I'm not the answer, I'm just one of many. And there's enough people out there that might be ready for that, and that's kind of many. And there's enough people out there that that might be ready for that and uh, and that's kind of the magic of it, you know, not not forcing it.
Kirk Chugg:So if somebody's listening to the podcast today and they go do the habit finder quiz, uh, but they don't end up working with you, what do they get after the quiz? Like is there, is there some type of an output that they get, or does that output have to be interpreted by you to mean anything?
Paul Blanchard:So they get access to the report and it's pretty comprehensive. If you take your time, there's two things take your time with it. Don't try to consume it all in one go because it's a lot. And secondly, be aware of most people's assessment programming. You're going to see words programming. You're going to see words. You're going to see bars and colors and you'll be more drawn to the red stuff than the green stuff and and you'll see words like coachable and you'll naturally most people think it's saying I am or I am not coachable.
Paul Blanchard:No, it's saying that that the axiological mathematical equation was a lot easier to just call coachable rather than give you the actual mathematics for it. And we're just saying in the part of your brain that we call coachable because it has to do with conflicting ideas. Here's where it leans. It leans more to quickly jumping into this is the answer. Or it leans more into nope, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, or it has a natural balance. But even that doesn't mean you're immune from either one, depending on the situation and the person. So having someone walk you through it can be really, really helpful. But even then it's not about the analysis of it. It's about how you experience yourself in going through that with someone is, at the end of the day, all you've got to do to be more successful, to transform, to be better, is occur to yourself differently. That's all, and there's lots of ways to do that.
Cory Moore:So another question for you is so you've learned a lot through your life, I'm sure, especially in the business you're in or the world that you're in growing up doing things with your dad and then having your own coaching and working with so many people how has that changed you as a father, or how does that change the dynamics in the household? I mean, you're definitely not the same person I'm you're. You're definitely not the same person I'm sure you were when you're 20, that you are today because you've learned and you've grown and you've studied and you've worked with others. And so how has, how has the person you are affected, how you communicate and interact with your family members?
Paul Blanchard:I love that question so much, like what we were just talking about. I certainly occur to myself differently than I did 20 years ago, but, as a quick detour, all the parts of me that were here 20 years ago are still here. I think that's something that people get caught up in unnecessarily is trying to surgically prune out the parts of them they don't like. We've seen all the human development models. That's not how we work. As advanced as we've become in society. Every baby born starts at the same level as we were when it was ooh, ooh, ah, fire. They start basic, primal. Now they accelerate much quicker over the next several years than ever before, and especially today. So again, it's semantics, but I'm not a different person much quicker over the next several years than ever before, and especially today. But so I I again, it's semantics, but I don't. I'm not a different person, I'm more, and that more has allowed me to occur differently to myself and that has had the most rewarding impact on how I I parent. I kind of got to borrow from my clients for a while um, who had older kids and different things, and I there's seven of us in my family growing up and um and so and four of them were were sisters of mine, and those those were the ones I was right in the middle of my two brothers were the oldest. So I tell people, I got my undergrad in female studies and now I have three daughters, I'm getting my master's, um so? But with that said, I've been able to borrow clients and said, hey, try it this way, try it this counterintuitive way, and see what happens, cause I believed I could feel that that was, that was human. We can call things parenting, entrepreneurship. What, at the end of the uh like, uh, how to how to talk to this personality type, how, what have you learned to talk human? Uh, how to how to talk to this personality type, how, what have you learned to talk human? You know, like I love to teach people how to speak human, and it's amazing because we're all human and so, regardless of someone's personality type and not needing to remember what letter should be on their forehead while you're talking to this employee and that employee, when you can at least start there's. It's relevant that we're all built differently, we all have different preferences and whatever, but if you can start at a human level and I think that's important in parenting and one of them.
Paul Blanchard:A couple of things that have made a huge difference. For me is one thing I try to remember the most is it's not my fault. Whatever happens with my kids, it's not my fault. Something bad happens, it wasn't my fault. Something good happens, it wasn't my fault. It just gives this really beautiful, experimental, open space to be with your kids, and some people have an identity response to that.
Paul Blanchard:We've been taught that we are engineers of our children. Because of our modern society and the ability to take little bits of data and make huge stories out of it, take subjective interpretation and believe that's objective reality. And if you want to do that, go for it. It's just not very fun. It's not very enjoyable to put that kind of weight and burden on you as a parent.
Paul Blanchard:I was listening to a famous psychiatrist. I can't remember his name right now, but he pointed out that there are 400 unique traits that will emerge in your children from age zero to 25 that have nothing to do with how you parent them. You have influence sure, I'll meet you there but you do not have control and in a lot of ways, a lot of ways, you're not responsible for how your kids turn out. They're people and it doesn't take very long till they're really close in terms of neurological development to where you are right now, like you live a hundred lifetimes from age zero to seven, compared to the one lifetime you live neurologically from then on in terms of development and we're learning all kinds of new things about when a lot of natural pruning happens, like in girls.
Paul Blanchard:10 and 11 years old is when it seems to be. Two years old is pretty consistent regardless of gender 10, 11 years old for girls and 13 or 14 for boys Significant pruning of old patterns and new opportunities. But even then, after seven years old, I believe your top priority moves from teaching and modeling to listening Period, end of story, and being safe is really what that means. And being safe is really what that means. I remember my oldest daughter came in. She was 11. She came in it was late at night and she said I need to talk to you and my wife and I were just laying in bed and said sure. She said sometimes I think about hurting myself. Talk about being grateful.
Paul Blanchard:I was able to borrow from some of my clients that had those situations, because my instinctual response was that's awesome. I said that out loud. She said I think about hurting myself and I went that's awesome and she went what that's awesome that you would tell us.
Paul Blanchard:That's so great that you're telling us this. And it was like she was covered in mud and the shower turned on in terms of just the shame. And suddenly we started having a conversation about her thinking about cutting herself or hurting herself in a totally different context, because it wasn't wrong, it wasn't bad, and you know we're getting into some tricky water here and I'm not here to pick a fight with anyone about what they believe is right or wrong in this, and there are lots of experts out there and I've studied most of them and I and, and I think they can be helpful, helpful reference points, but again, zoom out and see that may be correct within the game that they are playing. You know, if I want to play chess, I can't grab the rook and just throw it all the way on the other side of the board. I can't move a pawn more than one space. However, that doesn't mean that I can't do that. It just means, as soon as I do, I'm no longer playing chess. And so when I can help parents understand, they can play a different game than the world has told them they're supposed to play. It can feel really dangerous and I bring a lot of deference and sensitivity to that.
Paul Blanchard:But I believe that the sooner you can see your child as their own person and you can bring your child into the parenting relationship and bring their parent, their person, into the parenting relationship and you can dance with all of those, so you can see them as a child, but you also get to see you as a child right next to it. That's a beautiful reference point. But also you get to see you as a child right next to it. That's a beautiful reference point. But also you get to see you as a person and you see them as a person. And that's another beautiful reference point. And that's kind of your right foot and left foot in the dance and when the right foot goes forward, the left foot of the other person goes back and so on and so on. And it can create this beautiful flow in your parenting where they just get to be a person and you don't have to beat yourself up so much.
Paul Blanchard:You just you get to be a witness, which I think is the most beautiful point of parenting in the first place is you get to witness them and if they feel safe and I believe the data backs this up, depending on why they were trying to do the research in the first place which is a big part of how research tends to turn out as making a point or not is that if the child feels safe, they may make a lot of stupid decisions while they live with you, but they'll make so many less afterwards. And so I'm like cool, like let's, let's experiment with this. You know she may not appreciate me saying this out loud, but that same, my oldest daughter text us as a as evidence of her feeling safe. She texts us. On Saturday night, my wife and I, we were, we were in bed it was 10 o'clock, I think, and um, and she said, can I sneak out tonight? We're like, uh, that's a weird question.
Cory Moore:That's awesome.
Paul Blanchard:We're like what do you mean? Well, my, my friends just asked me if I wanted to sneak out with them tonight, so I figured I'd ask. I was like cool, so how does this work? Like, do you come home first and then you sneak back out later tonight? Do you need to go out your window? So it's convincing to like whatever it is you know like this is the conversation I'm having with my 16 year old. Like who does that? I think that kind of freedom is is amazing, and I have no doubt there's people that are willing to line up and point out all the issues with that and I don't disagree with those are issues within the construct that they may be operating in. But in the basic human concept of when we feel safe, we're better people, and I don't mean necessarily safe, protected from danger. That's kind of a requirement for all of us. If we're not addressing that, then everything else we're doing is trauma-based and survival-based, and that's the opposite of freedom, because in that space it's all or nothing. You have two decisions, two options, the least amount of options you can have without having no options. And so we had the conversation.
Paul Blanchard:I woke up at 2 am. It was like I wonder if she's home. Checked her location, she wasn't. My next text to her was how's your sneak out going? You know, like I've been taught that's bad, that's dangerous. Okay, taught that's bad, that's dangerous. Okay, maybe I don't. I think you could look statistically. It's not any more dangerous than her driving during the day when there's more traffic, or than being at seven, 11 at 2 AM getting a slushy with friends or whatever.
Paul Blanchard:And then the next morning I was like hey, I asked you to text me when you got home and I noticed this morning that you didn't. What's up with that. She's like oh, out on the couch, I'm so tired. Oh, how was it a good time. She's like it was really hard to stay awake, but it was pretty fun. Like well, did you go out the window? Did you at least go out the backyard?
Paul Blanchard:Come on, you were supposed to be sneaking out like and just stepping back from that and being like if I get to have conversations like that with my kids they feel that safe. That would normally be done in secret, gets to be done out loud, gets to be done in witness then I'll bank on that more than them presenting themselves as a obedient child in my presence. And if we hit a boundary, like if she had asked to sneak out and that was a boundary, we get to talk about that too. But it doesn't get to be about that was bad of you to ask or that was bad of you to not bring it up. It's.
Paul Blanchard:It's about a safety and I think one of the other coolest things about parenting that I think will really serve people that was taught to me was that lies are just protection. This moral indignation we get with our kids when they lie to us is not helping us out. Now, I don't, I'm not saying when a kid lies, they're just protecting themselves and so it's okay for them to lie. We're not talking about whether it's okay to lie. We're talking about what's the priority. When we get this moral indignation, we make the lie the priority because we were lied to. Can you hear that? I was lied to. How dare you? Like we can't hear the narcissism in that, rather than going, wow, my child didn't feel safe. I'm really curious about why that is. And then we can go have that conversation, not because we don't care about the lie. We can go have that conversation, not because we don't care about the lie, but because that's actually a more effective way of addressing it rather than forcing a behavior that is supposed to happen. And then we add to it by saying if you had told the truth what do we usually say after that? You wouldn't be in trouble. You wouldn't be in trouble.
Paul Blanchard:Well, that doesn't work, because the child knows the lie wasn't okay, but they weren't thinking about it when they did it. They were in a survival response, so they weren't using that part of the brain. So they just lied because in the moment it was to protect themselves. And then, when you call them on it, they can't tell you why they lied. So they feel even more shame, they feel even worse. And then you tell them if you had told the truth you wouldn't have gotten in trouble. But part of them knew, because of the moral programming, that they did something wrong, so they need to be punished. So you didn't give them any motivation to tell the truth anyway, because a part of them feels like they were supposed to get punished. And so if they told the truth they wouldn't have got punished, which wouldn't address the shame that they're feeling.
Paul Blanchard:And on, and on, and on, and on. It's not about you fixing them or or you know the right things. It's a. Do they feel safe? Do they feel like they're allowed to explore themselves as a person? Because I don't know about you, but the thousands of clients I've worked with. We're usually talking about stuff that happened seven years old, 10 years old, 15 years old, 17 years old the time that every other adult was telling them how to act, telling them what was right and wrong for them, telling them like I know better for you, and we just continue to buy that, even though there's, you know, therapy and the coaching and the healing and all the work that people are trying to figure out now happened at that time Like, hey, let's take a look at that, let's take a look at that.
Cory Moore:That's good stuff. That is great, I'm going to take some of that with me, that's for sure.
Kirk Chugg:Absolutely, and hopefully the people that are listening today got. I mean, there's a lot of content here, uh, and I hope you can pick a couple of these things. Implement them in your life. Be a better parent. Help your kids feel safer um. Be a better parent. Help your kids feel safer um. Recognize yourself, and the way that you are feeling um is not necessarily you know your, your, uh, your identity. You're a gentleman and a scholar, and I mean that At the end of every Gentleman Project podcast episode, we ask our guests what they think it means to be a gentleman.
Paul Blanchard:Well, the thing that stands out to me the most is gentle. Yeah, I think that may not be what being a gentleman has always meant, but I think today, where the world is, we don't need more strength in terms of force. I think we need more gentle. We may not agree with what this upcoming generation is, the way they're trying to do that, and every generation judges the next one, you know we're we're, we're the, we're the those whippersnappers like get off my front lawn.
Paul Blanchard:Yeah, like that's what we're doing. Like look at the way they text, look at this. Look at the way they text, look at this, look at that. Like we've naturally rolled into that. That's not new, um, but I think that that this upcoming generation, one of the most beautiful things they're they're pointing out is that we have developed so much as a world, at least in in.
Paul Blanchard:Western domesticated society if you will not, as that's the only one, but that's the one that I can speak to because that's the one I live in that we have developed so much that we don't need the brute force as much as we used to to survive you know, we, we get to be hunters and gatherers, but let's not forget as a gentleman if you believe a gentleman should be a hunter, the gentle part of that is understand that even a hundred thousand years ago the hunter would only hunt once a week, once every couple of weeks, guess what he?
Paul Blanchard:spent the rest of the time doing Singing, dancing, connecting, eating, resting, and today we're trying to convince ourselves you've got to be a hunter 24-7. That's not a gentleman, that's not gentle. Being able to hustle, I think, is a skill the gentleman will want to have, but needing to I don't believe is the epitome of a gentleman. And we live in a society now that is so advanced that it can be so much easier if you'll let it, if you'll allow it to be. And I believe that gentleness, connection, awareness is the next currency. We've been in a technological age where data has been the currency, labor before that. I think awareness, consciousness, that thrives in a gentle. You're gentle with you, so I can're gentle with you, so I can be gentle with you, I'm able to be those other things if I need to. I'm not afraid of being strong, but needing to be. The desperation that comes from that, I think a gentleman is able to quiet that storm.
Kirk Chugg:It's a beautiful definition. Thank you. Thank you All right, everybody. If you haven't liked and subscribed to the podcast, we'd appreciate that. If Paul's message resonated with you today and somebody's name popped into your head that you think might need to hear this message, share it with them. Act on each good thought. I'm Kirk Chuck. I'm Corey Moore.
Cory Moore:Thanks everyone.
