How to Stoke Your Passion with Fortune 50 Executive John R. Miles [Episode #869]
This week’s topic is: How to Stoke Your Passion with Fortune 50 Executive John R. Miles
I am so excited to have my very special guest, John R. Miles, a Speaker, Podcast Host, Founder, CEO, Navy Veteran and celebrated transformative leader in intentional behavior change. He is also the bestselling author of Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life.. Listen in as John R. Miles shares his powerful and profound insights on …..
TOPICS COVERED
- Background and Military Influence
- Leadership and Teamwork
- Reinventing Yourself
- Intentionality and Purpose
- Passion Struck Model
- Fear and Mindset Shifts
- Reinventing Your Life
- Negative Thought Loops
- Overcoming Fear
- Taking Small Boundary-Shaping Actions
- Building Mental Strength through Small Steps
- Overcoming Challenges through Persistence
- Creating a Positive Environment
- Identifying and Managing Negative Influences
- Setting Emotional and Mental Limits
- Creating a Positive Environment
- Communicating Boundaries and Prioritizing Self-Care
- Optimizing Anxiety and Embracing Originality
- Embracing Originality and Tapping into Peak Performance
FEATURED GUEST
About John R. Miles
John R, Miles is the dynamic force behind Passion Struck®, captivating millions with his globally renowned podcast, “Passion Struck with John R. Miles,” and national radio show and cementing his status as a guiding voice in alternative health and leadership. A former U.S. Navy officer and Fortune 50 senior executive, he is celebrated as a transformative leader in intentional behavior change and personal mastery. As an author, entrepreneur, and podcast host, John’s profound insights and inspirational guidance have earned him accolades as a visionary in modern leadership. John is the bestselling author of “Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life.”
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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:
How To Find Your Life’s True Calling
Create Your Vision with Sean Dollinger
How to Feel Emotionally Lighter in Your Mind and Body in Day-to-Day Life
How Emotional Intelligence affects Personal Relationships in Your Daily Life
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Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly Snyder (00:01.218)
Hi loves and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have author, speaker, podcast host, founder, CEO, and former US Navy officer and Fortune 50 senior executive with me today, John Miles, who has his new book out. I’m very excited to discuss this. Those of you that are viewing it, it’s called Passion Struck, 12 Powerful Principles to unlock your purpose and ignite your most intentional life. John, thank you so much for joining me here today.
John R. Miles (00:39.989)
Kimberly, I’m so excited to be here. You’ve got such a fantastic podcast. And I love the episode that you recently did with my good friend, Chris Carr.
Kimberly Snyder (00:48.778)
Oh yes, I saw that she gave a quote as well for your book. Everybody’s so interrelated. And so I just loved, you know, your book really stood out to me as it came across my desk. And I think there’s a lot of amazing principles here for us to share. And of course, I encourage everyone to dive deeper into Jon’s book. Speaking of which, we will be linking directly to Jon’s work and this book in the show notes which will be over at mysolluna.com. We will have the show notes, we will have the transcript for today.
Those of you that may not realize this, we are also on video. So if you wanna watch this conversation with John and I, you could head over to our YouTube channel.
Otherwise, if you like to listen while you’re walking your dog, while you’re driving your car, of course we will continue to offer the podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you like to listen to our podcast. And a little reminder, we’ll also have over there other links to articles, guided meditations, recipes, other podcasts I think you would enjoy. All right. All that being said, John, I’m so excited to chat with you. Where are you based?
John R. Miles (02:06.945)
I am in Tampa Bay, actually in St. Petersburg.
Kimberly Snyder (02:08.622)
Oh, I spent a lot of time in Florida. I love the warm weather. I absolutely love humidity. So I love it there.
John R. Miles (02:20.753)
Once you get used to humidity, anytime I go to Colorado or the West Coast, you end up just missing it once you’ve gotten adjusted to it. So I completely hear you.
Kimberly Snyder (02:32.246)
Well, we’re between California and we have a small farm in Hawaii. And so when I’m there, I just love the tropical environment. And I love it here too. We’re up in the mountains and it’s beautiful. But if I had my preference, I think that humidity is so healthy. It’s really great for our skin. It’s just great to feel that real moistness. I love it. So one of the… Some people complain.
John R. Miles (02:55.457)
Yeah, absolutely.
Kimberly Snyder (02:58.942)
So one of the things that struck me right away, I wanted to ask you right away, John, you have a very interesting background. And so this book is all about passion, of course, it’s about igniting our creativity. You have a chapter on reinventing yourself. It’s all this innovation. And yet there’s part of your background, which was being in the Navy and in the military. And sometimes when we think about the military, we think about discipline and conforming to the rules. Tell us how that part of your background impacted your work today.
John R. Miles (03:37.077)
Yeah. So even before I went into the military, I grew up in a pretty strict Roman Catholic family. I went to parochial school all the way from kindergarten through high school. And so when I did go into the military, I had already been raised by a former Marine father and a mom who was a bit of a perfectionist, really encouraging us to be high achievers, my siblings and I, and I’m the oldest.
Kimberly Snyder (03:45.302)
Yeah.
John R. Miles (04:05.461)
So you’re right, there was a lot of conform… I have two siblings. I have, they’re both younger. My sister is three years younger and my brother is five years younger. And, but I went to the academy and you’re right, it was structure that was built on a, built on top of conformity and structure that was there before. So obviously a lot of brainwashing during my first 21, 22 years of life.
Kimberly Snyder (04:06.23)
of how many.
John R. Miles (04:35.829)
But I think both really created a solid foundation for me of understanding the importance of values in life and having values that really ground you when you’re faced with those most difficult decisions. The military specifically really showed me how to be a leader and the purpose that a leader really serves in not only leading their people and recognizing who they are, whether they’re in the military or at work, but more holistically and trying to understand what their long-term aspirations are and how you can help guide all of who they are to become something more than that.
And then lastly, I really understood the power of team because nothing happens in the military solo. It is all team function, whether you’re on a seal team, you’re on a ship, you’re on a sub. You’re in a Marine Corps unit. It doesn’t matter. Everything hinges on the power of the team, not the individual.
Kimberly Snyder (05:42.946)
That is such a key part, John, in executing our dreams, isn’t it? Right. Because I know even for me as an author, the team it takes to publish a book, you’re working with the publishing house and you’re working with your editors and you’re working with the marketing team. And if you don’t have these skills, then you know, it’s, you can’t just make things happen on your own. We need that harmony within these teams. And that’s pretty critical part of success.
John R. Miles (06:11.137)
Well, absolutely. I have to say, this is my first novel and the whole publishing world to me was as if I was learning a completely new skill set because there is so much more to this than meets the eye and it is much more difficult than anyone tells you it is to become an established author. I remember having to go out to agents and really I was turned down by like 80 agents. I was at the point where I was going down the self-publishing route. And I really felt nothing wrong with self-publishing. I think it’s a fabulous way to get your message out. But I wanted to have a traditional publisher. And so I decided I would rewrite the book proposal one last time, put all my energy into it, sent it out, and the last five agents, all of them came back and wanted it. And…
John R. Miles (07:09.585)
And so you just never know. And when people ask me about the process, I just say, get used to rejection and just, you got to keep persevering through it. And even when I had the agent, I had so many publishers who turned me down. So the early part was rejection.
Now that it’s out in the world, I feel a lot of jubilation that so many years of work is now in the hands of people who can actually use it to better their own lives.
Kimberly Snyder (07:37.394)
I have a similar story, John. I also was rejected by many agents. And I remember I come back from backpacking. I was broke. I was working. I was going to nutrition school. I was running around teaching yoga and yoga privates. And then I got this book at Barnes and Noble about how to write a book proposal.
So in the evenings, I was working on the proposal and sending it out. And back to this, you know, some of the principles I want to talk about here in a moment around your minds, mindset shifts. There’s this consistency. There’s, you know, sometimes people think about passion and creativity. Like it’s just kind of like, oh, I just get to imagine great ideas.
But for me, it was that inspired action. It was everyday working on that proposal to move it forward. The things that had helped me being a perfectionist, being really obsessed with getting great grades. There was this drive and it didn’t have to be to the point where my self-worth was tied in the outcomes. But I can say, honestly, John, that training, like you said, that foundation that you also had in your background, that helped to propel my dreams forward.
It allowed me to get up every day and not sink into the self-doubt. Everybody’s saying no, because to move things forward when passion comes in, we need to move it into the world. We need to get our actions behind it. Isn’t that true?
John R. Miles (08:58.413)
Oh, it’s absolutely true. And I have a solo episode I’ve been working on where I recently heard a very well-known self-improvement influencer talk about how confidence is built uh, through the need to take action. And I, I kept thinking about this and action is the first thing that you need to take if you want to have confidence or courage or anything that’s bountiful in your life. And I think the same thing goes with passion. Oftentimes we think that we, we can just stay in the same place that we are. And that passion is just going to find us. And I really believe.
Kimberly Snyder (09:27.022)
Mmm.
John R. Miles (09:42.305)
that it’s when we allow ourselves to grow by taking intentional actions, making deliberate choices that are in alignment with our aspirations and our ambition, that opens up new pathways to then allowing ourselves to experience new ways of looking at things, which then invites your passion or purpose in.
Kimberly Snyder (10:04.618)
We have to start that energy going. And you know, as a student of yoga, to John Paramahansa Yogananda, who brought yoga to the West, uses, he’s talking about some of the same principles that you’re talking about. I noticed in your book, from a yogic standpoint, he’s talking about using our dynamic will. So we start to take that action, and things start to happen. Like you said, I know when I started taking those steps, writing the book.
For example, chapters, you start to feel like, hey, this is actually a possibility. Right? So, so you talk about confronting fear. You have a really interesting term in here in your mindset shifts, mosquito auditor. Can you talk about some of these principles? Maybe actually there’s so many, but I want to start with brand reinventer. And I love how you say, do not be scared to reinvent yourself.
And this one felt really close to my heart, John because I started as a nutritionist and a lot of people knew me for that.
And then it started to expand into the lifestyle. I could see food was not the end all be all, it’s part of it, but I started teaching meditation. I started writing spiritual books as well and all around wellness. So I had to shift my identity and still get really behind that. So when I was reading that section of your book, I really appreciated you saying, you can always reinvent yourself. You can always, you know, shift things and you have to be authentic, but there’s always this opportunity to be dynamic and to not feel stagnant.
John R. Miles (11:36.545)
Yeah, thank you for asking me that. And I’m going to just give the listeners a little bit of a backdrop of how the book is organized. So I have something that I’ve developed that encompasses everything in the book called the passion struck model. And in the book and encompasses three sections, but it really has four key components in it. It’s and what passion struck is, is it’s really a comprehensive approach to personal growth. And it’s built upon.
Kimberly Snyder (11:50.177)
Mm.
John R. Miles (12:04.757)
the synergistic interplay between mindset shifts, behavior shifts, action-oriented psychology of progress and intrinsic motivation, which then all fuels our sense of mattering and that we’re leading a life of significance. And as you just described in these different mindset shifts and behavior shifts, I have some fun names for them because I wanted the reader to remember them and take away. But one of the most important ones that I think I brought forward was this whole idea of brand reinvention.
And as I was studying this chapter, I was reading some of the works of Dan Swabel, who like he was a New York Times bestselling author, and he’s also a partner and research director at Future Workplace. And it’s interesting, he and I did research independently. I looked at about 800,
Kimberly Snyder (12:43.134)
Yes.
John R. Miles (13:04.021)
what I would call luminaries, he ended up looking at 1200, but they both ranged from everything from CEOs to celebrities to authors, politicians, astronauts. And throughout both our conversations, what we both observed was there’s a prevailing characteristic amongst all of them. And that is this consistent pursuit of passion and reinvention. And this reinvention is so important
Kimberly Snyder (13:28.291)
Mmm.
John R. Miles (13:35.765)
We really need to look at our lives as that, especially in the future, they are going to change so much with the evolution of autonomous transformation. And so getting yourself used to flexing the muscle of reinvention is so extremely important. And if you think about some of the vanguards who are out there, Oprah Winfrey, Wayne the Rock Johnson, as just a couple examples.
They exemplify this because once they reach a certain pinnacle that they’ve set from themselves, they don’t just sit there.
And that is their end point where a lot of us do that. We reach a certain plateau and we stop. No, they realize that in order to keep going, in order to continue this and make the impact that they want, they have to continue to push themselves and reinvent and find new pathways. And that’s exactly what this chapter.
Kimberly Snyder (14:13.25)
Yeah.
John R. Miles (14:34.357)
really dives into.
Kimberly Snyder (14:37.13)
I think it’s so important because otherwise it starts to feel stagnant, right? And I was reading this chapter and I was saying to myself, there was a point, John, in my life where I was working with all these big celebrities. I could just keep making a very good living, you know, having private clients and being known as this celebrity nutritionist.
But inside of me, I said, I have so much more to share about this lifestyle and taking my books in different directions and opening up our brand. And so some people would say, well, know, it’s really cushy where you are. Why don’t you stay there? But I think if we, you know, and Deepak Chopra, my co-author a few books ago says this,
I’m paraphrasing here, John, he says something like, you won’t stay in a situation for long that doesn’t feel natural, right? Or we could try to contrive it, but then energy tries to push out and maybe you start not sleeping well or you develop some kind of addiction or distraction or something because the passion wants to come. This prana, this life force, whatever you want to say. If it’s lit up in you, we need to find a way to open a new pathway. Otherwise I can say for myself, it just started to feel like, eh, this isn’t exactly right.
John R. Miles (15:51.681)
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. We all wanna feel that. And it’s such an easier thing to say than to accomplish, isn’t it?
Kimberly Snyder (16:00.818)
Yes. Will you give us some cues in here? Let’s say someone says, let’s make it real world for a minute. What advice would you give John to it? Let’s say a new mom or a mom who’s been home for a while with her kids and previously she had a certain career. Let’s say she was a lawyer, she was something and now she says, I want to reinvent myself. I want to do something else. I have a passion for this. What advice would you give her in this period of really making a huge life shift. I mean, there’s a whole chapter about this, but some top line stuff.
John R. Miles (16:38.954)
I think one of the most important things is to really examine in this new stage of your life what does success mean for you. And I would encourage people to challenge the conventional metrics of success instead of looking at your worth as being aligned to I think what society gravitates us towards, which is wealth and possessions.
next path in your life around personal growth, fulfillment, and most importantly, the positive impact that you can have on others. Yeah, and I think from there, it then really becomes this exploration of discovering your passion and what are your unique capabilities that inherently you can utilize to solve a problem that needs to be solved for others. It could be for you a long forgotten hobby,
Kimberly Snyder (17:12.036)
Mmm, I love that.
John R. Miles (17:34.217)
It could be a cause that you’re deeply passionate about, or maybe it’s a skill that you’ve always wanted to embrace. Whatever it is, it’s this radical self-discovery that’s crucial in transitioning from this point that you’ve been at to this new one where you want to be actively engaged in a new pursuit for this next chapter of your life. And then to me, one of the things I talk about throughout the entire book is the need to embrace intentionality.
And that is to live each and every single day with purpose and make conscious choices that align with your core values and your passions. Because I think intentionality is about being proactive and shaping your life rather than letting the circumstances around you or expectations of you drive it. So those would be three starting points.
Kimberly Snyder (18:23.818)
love that. And I love the part about service. How can I help? How can I make an impact? Because to me, that’s always been my North Star is I want to, I’m so excited to share XYZ. This helped me. I know this can help other people. Now, so to someone listening to this, they can say, oh, I have this thing I want to share. I’m so excited about this hobby.
Let’s talk about another principle, fear-confronter. So that elation comes and often then the voice of doubt in our head comes swiftly afterwards saying, well, is anyone really going to care about what I have to say or can I really make this successful? What are some of your principles? And this was a very strong part as well, confronting our fear and still wanting to move forward, still taking those inspired action steps, John.
John R. Miles (19:17.601)
Yeah, so this chapter is one that really explores the negative thought loops that go on within each one of us. And I didn’t use it in this chapter, but a term that I like to use to describe what’s happening here is we allow ourselves to become visionary arsonists. We arson the very hopes and dreams and aspirations that we want to accomplish.
And so I think a key message I like to share with listeners is that the most profound person, the most incredible person, the most capable person that you are ever gonna meet is the person that stares at you every day that you wake up in the morning. But the flip side of that is the biggest competitor that person is ever gonna face is that same person who’s staring at them in the mirror.
And so what I try to do in each one of these chapters is I try to talk about these principles through my own research that I did on my way to using them. And then I talk about other people. Some are famous people, some not as famous and how they also utilize these principles to reshape their lives. So in this chapter, I have the story of Kirsty Annis, and if someone is not familiar with Kirsty, she was a Marine Corps Staff Sergeant. She’s on her last tour of duty.
And unfortunately, it seems like this is a repetitive cycle that people who are in their last days before leaving end up having incidents happening to them. But she was part of a helicopter crew and she was on her last mission, like down to 48 hours left in country and the aircraft crashes. She wakes up in the hospital and she’s lost her legs, has a traumatic brain injury, a number of other things. And.
Kimberly Snyder (20:56.93)
Yeah.
John R. Miles (21:16.949)
Hers is a pretty extreme situation, but it shows you this choice that you have to make. And not a lot of us are going to have to be faced with what. Herstie had to go through, but she faced the fear of having to live her life completely differently from that point forward. And really she could have at that point put limitations on what she thought was possible, but instead she set extremely ambitious goals.
And one of them is to climb the seven tallest peaks. And so she is, she is well on that mission. She has climbed six of them so far. She’s attempted Everest twice and it’s the last one she has to do. But I think that just gives us an example of if you don’t allow self sabotage and imposter syndrome.
Kimberly Snyder (21:55.455)
Oh my god.
John R. Miles (22:15.525)
and self doubt to cloud what you are truly able to accomplish. You can do anything that you put your mind to.
Kimberly Snyder (22:27.442)
It’s so powerful and it’s true. It’s, you know, other people in a similar position could complain, could play the victim, right? It’s this choice we make to keep moving forward. So for me, John, because fear is such a big topic. And I wrote about that as well in my last book. We all have fear, fear we’re not good enough. We’re not smart enough. Other people don’t care. We don’t have this. We don’t have that.
For me personally, I had to go into that fearless place on the inside. That’s why meditation has been really powerful for me to sit in that and then I start to visualize, you know, whatever the outcome is.
What have you done personally, John, in your life? You know, it could be one of the tools in the book or something that you live when you do, when you are confronted with that fear. 80 people have rejected my book, literary agents or whatever, or, you know, starting out on this book tour for your first book or in the past being in the Navy.
John R. Miles (23:29.773)
Yeah, Kimberly, I think we each have our own journeys in life. And I think it’s interesting because when you meet someone, you don’t know their backstory and you don’t know what that person has been through both the big T and the li
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