Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller. I have conversations with people that help us make better meaning of our lives. In this episode, finding motivation to embrace life when your only exposure is motivation not to. I'm bringing back a conversation that really changed some foundational beliefs that I had on aspects of motivation.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy. So he's now a famous organizational psychologist. He's also the author of multiple bestselling books.

I first had him on the podcast for his book, Willpower Doesn't Work, which I became a fan of.

Then again, for his book personality, is it permanent and multiple books?

Here's another one for those of you watching the video.

Be Your Future Self Now.

I think he's been on the show four or five times.

But it was during one time we were talking that he just touched on a story that I ended

up using as the opening story in my book, What Drives You? Ben grew up in what I would call

a fairly strict religious construct where the religion was looked at as for his family,

kind of the purpose of their life. So then he watches his parents

divorce, which was incredibly antithetical to the whole religious construct. And while his mom

devoted herself to some kind of a like sketchy health related business, his dad became a meth

addict. So Ben couch surfed as a teen, barely made it through high

school, and at age 19, found himself, this is what got me playing video games literally all day long.

He said like 15 hours a day or something. And it's sometimes having to fend off meth addicts if he was staying at his dad's apartment.

And I hear about this while Ben's on my show with his bestselling book in the self-help

category.

Meanwhile, I've got nine kids of my own at home who I'm trying to raise perfectly, right?

So they would grow up to be, well, maybe a renowned psychologist and best-selling author,

making big money with a beautiful family like Ben.

It just blew my bubble in a lot of ways.

...